Watching the Vienna Philharmonic New Year's concert, I am
once again struck by the impression that modern Austria is the most
schizophrenic and hypocritical of all the European republics that used
to be monarchies. Everything they pride themselves on, everything they
market to tourists, everything they present to the world, is from the
time of the Habsburg monarchy and indelibly linked to it. There is no
attempt to hide this or pretend that Austria is all about
being Modern. Yet they insist on maintaining this drab ahistorical
Republic, in which even the use of "von" is illegal, voting for horrid
Socialists, and treating my friends in the heroic Die Monarchisten - Schwarz-Gelbe Allianz
(whose stickers I proudly display on my car) like irrelevant harmless
eccentrics at best, traitors at worst. The mind boggles. Austria, like
the rest of Central Europe, needs an Emperor, not a President! Restore
the Habsburgs!!!
(At
14:00 there's an interlude in which Dame Julie talks about how Queen
Elizabeth II recently became Britain's longest-reigning monarch, but the
length of her reign was exceeded by Emperor Franz Joseph's, with
footage of the Emperor, concluding the narration in the room where he
died in 1916.)
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