Abstract
Abstract I use the personnel files of three consuls in the Austro-Hungarian foreign service to consider the ways Habsburg bureaucracy recorded the emotional lives of civil servants. Consuls were expected to interact with Habsburg subjects and other civilians dispassionately and objectively. But conflicts that occurred in their ‘free time,’ outside the consulates, spilled over into their professional time. The resolution of those conflicts involved their colleagues in the consulates and administrators in Vienna. While showing emotion in interactions inside the consulate was frowned upon, responding to attacks on personal honor with the strongest of emotions was expected of an Austro-Hungarian “gentleman.” Consuls had to abide by both the standards of their profession and the standards for “men of honor” (Ehrenmänner) that had been codified with the officer corps in mind. The recognition that both roles were compatible shows the repackaging of certain kinds of “emotion” as professional requirements, rather than excesses.
Highlights
Es ist meine Pflicht, ihm als Freund entgegenzutreten.[3]. This is a story about bureaucratic storytelling, about civil servants whose impartiality and professionalism lay at the core of their self-identity and about the emotional richness of the records they kept about their professional lives
In order to function as a consul, Szathmáry Király had to receive satisfaction. It was a question of personal honor and of the emotional stability required for bureaucratic competence
I use the personnel files of three consuls in the AustroHungarian foreign service to consider the ways Habsburg bureaucracy recorded the emotional lives of civil servants
Summary
This is a story about bureaucratic storytelling, about civil servants whose impartiality and professionalism lay at the core of their self-identity and about the emotional richness of the records they kept about their professional lives. Both men ›won‹ the moment they appeared; as Ute Frevert has explained, »the point was not to kill one’s opponent, but to prove one’s own courage by showing up«.89 It was not, only satisfactory because Szathmáry Király behaved well or because the major eventually responded honorably, or because the person whom the major had dared insult had not been a Habsburg consul or a lieutenant in the reserve but rather only a ›stranger‹, all that helped. In order to function as a consul, Szathmáry Király had to receive satisfaction It was a question of personal honor and of the emotional stability required for bureaucratic competence.
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