Bernhard von Rechberg and the Metternichian Tradition: The Dilemma of Conservative Statecraft

Abstract

Count Johann Bernhard von Rechberg, foreign minister of the Habsburg Empire between 1859 and 1864, considered himself a student of the Metternichian school of diplomacy. A Bavarian by birth,.Rechberg owed both his entry into Austrian service in 1830 and his appointment as foreign minister in 1859 to the patronage of his mentor, Prince Clemens von Metternich.1 After a variety of assignments in Germany, Belgium, and Sweden and an inconsequential tour as Austria's minister to Brazil, Rechberg entered Metternich's inner circle during the revolutionary upheavals of 1848 when he accompanied Metternich and his family on their flight from Vienna. During those hectic months Rechberg became Metternich' s confidant and his agent.2 Thereafter he and Metternich maintained a regular correspondence, and Rechberg eagerly absorbed the principal tenets of the Metternichian Weltanschauung.3 Prince Schwarzenberg and