This biography is a long-needed vindication: it not only shows the Crown Prince Rudolf who was a Playboy, but also the liberal intellectual who, in opposition to his father, Emperor Franz Joseph, saw the signs of the time and wanted to follow them.
Rudolf's childhood was shaped almost entirely by his father's military style of education. Only his sympathetic mother, Empress Elisabeth, and his liberal-minded teachers introduced change and shaped his future ways of thinking. Carl Menger awakened in him the understanding of economic and social relationships, and Anton Josef Zhisman Gindely trained him to tolerate other religions and nationalities. Under the influence of zoologist Alfred Brehm, Rudolf became ornithologist. Szeps Moritz, chief editor of the left-liberal "Neues Wiener Tagblatt" was his confidant.
Why, then, the tragic end? Rudolf died by his own hand, because his will to live was broken. His dream of a multi-ethnic state of Austria-Hungary, the idea of a "United States of Europe" was thwarted by nationalistic intolerance, and this disillusionment ultimately resulted in his death.
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