Karl Max, Prince Lichnowsky
Karl Max, Prince Lichnowsky (8 March 1860 – 27 February 1928) was a German diplomat who served as ambassador to Britain during the July Crisis and who was the author of a 1916 pamphlet that deplored German diplomacy in mid-1914 which, he argued, contributed heavily to the outbreak of the First World War.[1] [a]
Not to be confused with Karl Marx.Pre-1914 life and career[edit]
He was the sixth Prince and eighth Count Lichnowsky. He succeeded his father in 1901. His father was Carl, Prince Lichnowsky (1819–1901), fifth Prince and seventh Count Lichnowsky, a general of cavalry, and his mother was Marie, Princess of Croy (1837–1915). He was the head of an old noble Bohemian family, possessing estates at Kuchelna, then in Austrian Silesia, and Grätz in Moravia (present Hradec nad Moravicí, Czech Republic). As a hereditary member of the upper house of the Prussian Diet for Free Conservative Party, Lichnowsky played a part in domestic politics, adopting in general a moderate attitude and deprecating partisan legislation. Though a Roman Catholic, he avoided identifying himself with the clerical party in Germany.[2]
Entering the diplomatic service, Lichnowsky was appointed an attaché at the London embassy in 1885 and later served as legation secretary at Bucharest.[2] He became German Ambassador to Austria-Hungary in 1902, replacing Philipp, Prince of Eulenburg, but was forced into retirement in 1904, accused of too much independence from the Foreign Office after several conflicts with Friedrich von Holstein, head of the Office's political division. In 1904, he married Countess Mechtilde von Arco-Zinneberg (1879–1958).[2]
He spent eight years in retirement, as his memoirs relate, "on my farm and in my garden, on horseback and in the fields, but reading industriously and publishing occasional political articles." For several years, newspaper rumour in Germany had connected the name Lichnowsky with practically every important diplomatic post that became vacant, and even with the Imperial chancellorship. No official appointment was forthcoming, however, beyond the designation of privy councilor (German: Wirklicher Geheimrat) in 1911.[2]
In 1912, Lichnowsky was appointed ambassador to the United Kingdom, in which post he served until the outbreak of war in 1914. Soon after his appointment, he filed a report on a conversation with Lord Haldane, British secretary of state for war. In it, Haldane had made clear that Britain could go to war if Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia and Germany attacked France. The report was said to have infuriated Kaiser Wilhelm II.
His privately printed pamphlet, My Mission to London 1912–1914, circulated in German upper-class circles in 1916, accused his government of failing to support him in efforts to avert World War I; its 1917 publication in the United States led to his expulsion from the Prussian House of Lords. In 1918, the renamed "Lichnowsky Memorandum" was published in The Disclosures from Germany (New York: American Association for International Conciliation, 1918). It was also published in the Danish journal Politiken in March 1918, from which a British copy was published by Cassell & Co., later in 1918, with a preface by Professor Gilbert Murray.
The pamphlet mainly covers the period 1912–1914, and occasionally back to 1900. Lichnowsky deplored the German alliance with Austria-Hungary (though he owned land in Austria and had served as a diplomat in Vienna), feeling that it inevitably pulled German diplomacy into Balkan crises and tensions with Russia, without any compensating benefits to Germany with its new industries, trade and colonies. "This is a return to the days of the Holy Roman Empire and the mistakes of the Hohenstaufens and Habsburgs," he wrote.[3]
The Kaiser had commented on 31 July 1914 about an encircling British diplomacy during the crisis: "For I no longer have any doubt that England, Russia and France have agreed among themselves, knowing that our treaty obligations compel us to support Austria-Hungary, to use the Austro-Serb conflict as a pretext for waging a war of annihilation against us. ... Our dilemma over keeping faith with the old and honourable Emperor has been exploited to create a situation which gives England the excuse she has been seeking to annihilate us with a spurious appearance of justice on the pretext that she is helping France and maintaining the well-known Balance of Power in Europe, i.e. playing off all European States for her own benefit against us."
In contrast, Lichnowsky outlined how the British foreign minister Sir Edward Grey had helped, with two treaties, on dividing the Portuguese Empire and establishing the Berlin–Baghdad railway, and had supported Germany's policy in the resolution of the Balkan Wars in 1912 and 1913 that excluded Russia. Britain had held back from declaring war until 4 August, after Belgium had been invaded, yet in a telegram sent to him from Berlin on 1 August: "... England was already mentioned as an opponent..."[4]
Lichnowsky summed up his view on blame for the outbreak of war, and the failure of diplomacy, in three main points:[5]
"In view of the above, undeniable, facts, it is no wonder that the whole of the civilised world outside Germany places the entire responsibility for the world war upon our shoulders."
At the pamphlet's end, he forecasts that the Central Powers were doomed to lose World War I, and says: "The world will belong to the Anglo-Saxons, Russians and Japanese." The German role, he wrote, "will be that of thought and commerce, not that of the bureaucrat and soldier. (Germany) made its appearance too late, and its last chance of making good the past, that of founding a Colonial Empire, was annihilated by the world war."[6]
The pamphlet heavily influenced the minds of the French and British politicians who promulgated the Versailles Peace Treaty in 1919.