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Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe
A charmingly personal history of Hapsburg Europe, as lively as it is informative, by the author of Germania
From the end of the Middle Ages to the First World War, Europe was dominated by one family: the Habsburgs. Their unprecedented rule is the focus of Simon Winder’s vivid third book, Danubia.
Winder’s approach is friendly, witty, personal; this is a narrative that, while erudite and well researched, prefers to be discursive and anecdotal. Beginning his travels in Hungary, Winder winds his way to the town of Brixen in a German-speaking region of Italy and visits a museum whose modest claim to fame is its elaborate sequence of crib scenes. He reflects on the tiresome tradition which dictated that Charles the Bold’s daughter would be known as “Mary the Rich”; meditates on the striking number of characters in the nostalgic post-1918 novels set in Habsburg Hungary who are casually armed with guns; and marvels at the Guinea Pig Village at the Budapest Zoo, “a work of extreme satirical savagery” that features a European town inhabited by guinea pigs.
In his survey of the centuries of often incompetent Hapsburg rule that have continued to shape the fate of Central Europe, Winder does not shy away from the horrors, railing against the effects of nationalism, recounting the violence that was often part of life. But this is a history dominated above all by Winder’s energy and curiosity. Eminently readable and thrillingly informative, Danubia is a treat that readers will be eager to dip into.
From the end of the Middle Ages to the First World War, Europe was dominated by one family: the Habsburgs. Their unprecedented rule is the focus of Simon Winder’s vivid third book, Danubia.
Winder’s approach is friendly, witty, personal; this is a narrative that, while erudite and well researched, prefers to be discursive and anecdotal. Beginning his travels in Hungary, Winder winds his way to the town of Brixen in a German-speaking region of Italy and visits a museum whose modest claim to fame is its elaborate sequence of crib scenes. He reflects on the tiresome tradition which dictated that Charles the Bold’s daughter would be known as “Mary the Rich”; meditates on the striking number of characters in the nostalgic post-1918 novels set in Habsburg Hungary who are casually armed with guns; and marvels at the Guinea Pig Village at the Budapest Zoo, “a work of extreme satirical savagery” that features a European town inhabited by guinea pigs.
In his survey of the centuries of often incompetent Hapsburg rule that have continued to shape the fate of Central Europe, Winder does not shy away from the horrors, railing against the effects of nationalism, recounting the violence that was often part of life. But this is a history dominated above all by Winder’s energy and curiosity. Eminently readable and thrillingly informative, Danubia is a treat that readers will be eager to dip into.
464 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2013
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4595 people want to read
About the author
Simon Winder
17 books150 followersSIMON WINDER has spent far too much time in Germany, denying himself a lot of sunshine and fresh fruit just to write this book. He is the author of the highly praised The Man Who Saved Britain (FSG, 2006) and works in publishing in London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 362 reviews
October 28, 2018
Half an hour's drive north of me, following the path of the River Reuss, is the little hamlet of Habsburg. The first time I saw it on a roadsign, I assumed it was a coincidence, since the House of Habsburg is something I would generally associate with the bustling metropolises of Austria and Hungary, not a damp cowfield in the back end of the Aargau. But sure enough, this turns out to be where the whole gargantuan dynasty acquired its name.
The ‘castle’ here was built in the 1020s, when castle technology was still pretty basic – it's really just a biggish drafty house with a little donjon tower attached, perched on a drab hillock. A minor count called Radbot built it, dubbing it, rather aspirationally, Habsburg or ‘Hawk Castle’. From the top of its low tower, you can pick your way around the splotches of pigeon poo (and indeed around the pigeons themselves), and peer hesitantly out of the embrasure – towards Vienna.
It seems an inauspicious beginning for what would become the most powerful family in continental history, and indeed I only mention it here because even Simon Winder, in this mad, exuberant, generous history of Habsburg Europe, chooses not to begin until four centuries later, when one of them first became Holy Roman Emperor. It's one of many things that Winder cheerfully skips over, as he makes a great show of the sheer unmanageable scale of his subject – he is not averse to rattling off comments like the following:
With even a smidgen less authority this would all seem dreadfully flippant, but fortunately it is soon obvious that Winder's knowledge, and his grasp of the material, is much greater than he's letting on. The mock-dilettantism is just one aspect of a fantastically engaging and discriminating narrative style, a style that sometimes seems to owe as much to Douglas Adams as it does to AJP Taylor or John Julius Norwich. The result feels rather like talking to a great historian in the bar after their lecture.
This was one of those books that had me throwing up my hands with a renewed sense of how little I know: every chapter, every page, revealed enormous new vistas of my own ignorance. It was particularly galling since I've travelled a fair bit in the Balkans and other parts of ‘eastern Europe’ (an unsatisfatory phrase, as this book makes plain), and had quietly prided myself on knowing something of the area's history and culture. But in fact what was totally obscure to me was the extent to which this region had been connected to the west; the extent to which cities such as Lviv, Debrecen or Cluj were (in Winder's words) ‘part of a culture rooted in mainstream European values’, indeed a culture that was thought of as being at the heart of Europe's identity and character until really the twentieth century.
Though Winder is careful to stress again and again the problems and contradictions in the Empire, it is hard not to be a little swept up in the sheer romance of a single entity that stretched from Bregenz on the shores of Lake Constance all the way to Braşov in the middle of what's now Romania, from Kraków or Prague in the north down to Trieste, Sarajevo, and the Croatian coast. In the context of the tumultuous convulsions that this region experienced over the last five hundred years, the Habsburgs themselves emerge as a rather baffling constant: always rather distant, sometimes downright inconsequential.
Many are scarcely distinguishable – a tangle of Ferdinands and Leopolds – though some have attained a kind of legendary status, such as Rudolf II, who was obsessed with the occult and who had a lion and a tiger wandering round Prague Castle. And most of them were afflicted by various abnormalities that resulted from the generations of in-breeding – notably the famous ‘Habsburg jaw’, which makes a family tree of the Habsburgs look like a series of Jay Lenos in fancy dress; it affected one of the Leopolds so badly that his mouth would fill with water every time it rained.
Winder keeps you distracted with bear-moats and lunatics while sneaking in a huge amount of geopolitical history under the radar. And approaching European history from this direction gave me a very new, and sometimes quite revelatory, angle on things like the Reformation, the Thirty Years War, or the revolutions of 1848. This is especially the case towards the end of the book as the First World War looms into view. From a British perspective, 1914–1918 is vaguely thought of as having been about fighting Germany, along with a few of their allies; this is all very well, but it does mean that the killing of some pooh-bah named after a post-punk indie band in an obscure part of Yugoslavia seems like an inexplicable reason for a global conflict. Here, though, coming at it through the morass of Imperial nationalisms and separatist movements, I felt things slotting into place in a completely novel way.
It's perhaps surprising that a book this chunky – upwards of five hundred pages, before you hit the bibliography – ends up feeling so selective, but such is the result of Winder's faux-snap decisions about what is and is not of interest: he succeeds in building a powerful cumulative argument. This has to do with the fact of the Empire's being a ‘chaos of nationalities’, where ‘the very idea of “nation” was an unresolvable nightmare’.
Instances of quite how contingent Central Europe is, in linguistic or political terms, are everywhere. Béla Bartók can stand for innumerable other examples: generally thought of as a ‘Hungarian’ composer, almost none of the places that formed him lie within the borders of the modern Hungarian state. He was born in Nagyszentmiklós (now the Romanian town of Sânnicolau Mare), then moved to Nagyszőllős (now the Ukrainian town of Vynohravdiv), then to Nagyvárad (now the Romanian city of Oradea), and then to Pozsony (now the Slovakian capital Bratislava). Indeed Bratislava itself only acquired its name in 1918, plucked more or less out of thin air by Slovak nationalists squinting heavily at some old manuscripts – before that, it had only ever had German and Hungarian names (Preßburg and Pozsony).
Similar examples are piled up, until the overall sense is of an entire gigantic region whose multilingual, multiethnic nature has been obscured only by successive (and recent) waves of expulsions and massacres. The point is not a fluffy one of the necessity of getting on with each other (though certainly Winder comes to have an extremely negative view of nationalism, comparing it at one point to bubonic plague); no, the point is just that the borders and divisions of Central Europe are characterised by their near-total arbitrariness, with most of the modern nation-states having only the most cursory historical justification once the poetic myth-making has been set aside.
I found this very moving, for reasons that are difficult to explain – or, perhaps, that are too obvious to go into. Winder enriches his story with just the right amount of personal anecdotes about his travels around the region – it never feels like someone talking through their holiday photos armed with a stack of museum pamphlets, which is the danger with this kind of project. And his constant references to the music and literature mean you will come away with a healthy further reading list.
It was a pleasant surprise, reaching the end, to find a note saying that an underlying inspiration had been Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, which is perhaps the single book that impresses me more than any other. Danubia is not at that level, but the comparison – which hadn't occured to me while I was reading – helped me understand why I liked this so much. Though it's not perfect, it has a similar ability to uncover a wealth of fascinating detail, and also manages to draw a plausible, cumulative thread out of such an overwhelming historical and geographic scope. I thought it was fantastic, and every farmhouse in the Aargau should have a copy.
The ‘castle’ here was built in the 1020s, when castle technology was still pretty basic – it's really just a biggish drafty house with a little donjon tower attached, perched on a drab hillock. A minor count called Radbot built it, dubbing it, rather aspirationally, Habsburg or ‘Hawk Castle’. From the top of its low tower, you can pick your way around the splotches of pigeon poo (and indeed around the pigeons themselves), and peer hesitantly out of the embrasure – towards Vienna.
It seems an inauspicious beginning for what would become the most powerful family in continental history, and indeed I only mention it here because even Simon Winder, in this mad, exuberant, generous history of Habsburg Europe, chooses not to begin until four centuries later, when one of them first became Holy Roman Emperor. It's one of many things that Winder cheerfully skips over, as he makes a great show of the sheer unmanageable scale of his subject – he is not averse to rattling off comments like the following:
Incidentally, it is generally around here that anybody writing about the Habsburg Empire is obliged to have a section on people like the Empress Elisabeth and her son Crown Prince Rudolf, but really if these people are of interest you should probably just look them up on Wikipedia, which has excellent entries.
With even a smidgen less authority this would all seem dreadfully flippant, but fortunately it is soon obvious that Winder's knowledge, and his grasp of the material, is much greater than he's letting on. The mock-dilettantism is just one aspect of a fantastically engaging and discriminating narrative style, a style that sometimes seems to owe as much to Douglas Adams as it does to AJP Taylor or John Julius Norwich. The result feels rather like talking to a great historian in the bar after their lecture.
This was one of those books that had me throwing up my hands with a renewed sense of how little I know: every chapter, every page, revealed enormous new vistas of my own ignorance. It was particularly galling since I've travelled a fair bit in the Balkans and other parts of ‘eastern Europe’ (an unsatisfatory phrase, as this book makes plain), and had quietly prided myself on knowing something of the area's history and culture. But in fact what was totally obscure to me was the extent to which this region had been connected to the west; the extent to which cities such as Lviv, Debrecen or Cluj were (in Winder's words) ‘part of a culture rooted in mainstream European values’, indeed a culture that was thought of as being at the heart of Europe's identity and character until really the twentieth century.
Though Winder is careful to stress again and again the problems and contradictions in the Empire, it is hard not to be a little swept up in the sheer romance of a single entity that stretched from Bregenz on the shores of Lake Constance all the way to Braşov in the middle of what's now Romania, from Kraków or Prague in the north down to Trieste, Sarajevo, and the Croatian coast. In the context of the tumultuous convulsions that this region experienced over the last five hundred years, the Habsburgs themselves emerge as a rather baffling constant: always rather distant, sometimes downright inconsequential.
Many are scarcely distinguishable – a tangle of Ferdinands and Leopolds – though some have attained a kind of legendary status, such as Rudolf II, who was obsessed with the occult and who had a lion and a tiger wandering round Prague Castle. And most of them were afflicted by various abnormalities that resulted from the generations of in-breeding – notably the famous ‘Habsburg jaw’, which makes a family tree of the Habsburgs look like a series of Jay Lenos in fancy dress; it affected one of the Leopolds so badly that his mouth would fill with water every time it rained.
Winder keeps you distracted with bear-moats and lunatics while sneaking in a huge amount of geopolitical history under the radar. And approaching European history from this direction gave me a very new, and sometimes quite revelatory, angle on things like the Reformation, the Thirty Years War, or the revolutions of 1848. This is especially the case towards the end of the book as the First World War looms into view. From a British perspective, 1914–1918 is vaguely thought of as having been about fighting Germany, along with a few of their allies; this is all very well, but it does mean that the killing of some pooh-bah named after a post-punk indie band in an obscure part of Yugoslavia seems like an inexplicable reason for a global conflict. Here, though, coming at it through the morass of Imperial nationalisms and separatist movements, I felt things slotting into place in a completely novel way.
It's perhaps surprising that a book this chunky – upwards of five hundred pages, before you hit the bibliography – ends up feeling so selective, but such is the result of Winder's faux-snap decisions about what is and is not of interest: he succeeds in building a powerful cumulative argument. This has to do with the fact of the Empire's being a ‘chaos of nationalities’, where ‘the very idea of “nation” was an unresolvable nightmare’.
Instances of quite how contingent Central Europe is, in linguistic or political terms, are everywhere. Béla Bartók can stand for innumerable other examples: generally thought of as a ‘Hungarian’ composer, almost none of the places that formed him lie within the borders of the modern Hungarian state. He was born in Nagyszentmiklós (now the Romanian town of Sânnicolau Mare), then moved to Nagyszőllős (now the Ukrainian town of Vynohravdiv), then to Nagyvárad (now the Romanian city of Oradea), and then to Pozsony (now the Slovakian capital Bratislava). Indeed Bratislava itself only acquired its name in 1918, plucked more or less out of thin air by Slovak nationalists squinting heavily at some old manuscripts – before that, it had only ever had German and Hungarian names (Preßburg and Pozsony).
Similar examples are piled up, until the overall sense is of an entire gigantic region whose multilingual, multiethnic nature has been obscured only by successive (and recent) waves of expulsions and massacres. The point is not a fluffy one of the necessity of getting on with each other (though certainly Winder comes to have an extremely negative view of nationalism, comparing it at one point to bubonic plague); no, the point is just that the borders and divisions of Central Europe are characterised by their near-total arbitrariness, with most of the modern nation-states having only the most cursory historical justification once the poetic myth-making has been set aside.
I found this very moving, for reasons that are difficult to explain – or, perhaps, that are too obvious to go into. Winder enriches his story with just the right amount of personal anecdotes about his travels around the region – it never feels like someone talking through their holiday photos armed with a stack of museum pamphlets, which is the danger with this kind of project. And his constant references to the music and literature mean you will come away with a healthy further reading list.
It was a pleasant surprise, reaching the end, to find a note saying that an underlying inspiration had been Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, which is perhaps the single book that impresses me more than any other. Danubia is not at that level, but the comparison – which hadn't occured to me while I was reading – helped me understand why I liked this so much. Though it's not perfect, it has a similar ability to uncover a wealth of fascinating detail, and also manages to draw a plausible, cumulative thread out of such an overwhelming historical and geographic scope. I thought it was fantastic, and every farmhouse in the Aargau should have a copy.
October 12, 2020
Simon Winder's Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe was sometimes fascinating and sometimes tedious. His look into the long history of the Habsburg realms is insightful, but not well-told. Winder delved into many of the interesting and often amusing aspects of Habsburg political, military, artistic and dynastic history while maintaining a parallel travelogue characterized by feeble attempts at humor and the use of sophomoric vocabulary. Sometimes it seemed as if I was reading a teenager's tweets. Perhaps he didn't care to be taken too seriously, and writing: “Driving through dozy Hobbitons on the hilly border...,” referring to Joanne of Arc (yes, Joanne) as “available-looking,” and describing Eleanor of Portugal “as a sort of cream-of-the-crop supercatch” guarantees he won't. Winder also disclosed a peculiar obsession with fatty foods (you'll have to read it).
To his credit, Winder exploded misconceptions about ethnicity, national territories, and cultural and historical heritage. Much of what is now considered cultural reality or historical fact in central and eastern Europe is simply untrue and derived from 19th and early 20th century nationalist rationalizations, irredentist agitation, and mythology. These misconceptions contributed to the millions of dead and displaced people who suffered in recurrent ethnic cleansing up through the present day. Today's borders in central and eastern Europe hold little historical legitimacy. They are just as arbitrary as any drawn by a Habsburg prince.
I noted two odd shortcomings. Winder's book presented numerous rich and perceptive evaluations of great architectural monuments, scenic locations and famous objets d'art, but curiously the book contained no photographs of the places, people, portraits, or statues described. Also Winder frequently remarked on the “Habsburg jaw,” it's unsightliness, and its relation to the family's reproductive difficulties. He never explained the nature or cause of the condition. It is a mandibular prognathism exacerbated by inbreeding. I looked it up.
Awarding an overall rating to Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe was not easy. It was captivating, yet frequently off-putting. Comprehensive, but too cute. The effort itself is just worthy of Three Stars.
To his credit, Winder exploded misconceptions about ethnicity, national territories, and cultural and historical heritage. Much of what is now considered cultural reality or historical fact in central and eastern Europe is simply untrue and derived from 19th and early 20th century nationalist rationalizations, irredentist agitation, and mythology. These misconceptions contributed to the millions of dead and displaced people who suffered in recurrent ethnic cleansing up through the present day. Today's borders in central and eastern Europe hold little historical legitimacy. They are just as arbitrary as any drawn by a Habsburg prince.
I noted two odd shortcomings. Winder's book presented numerous rich and perceptive evaluations of great architectural monuments, scenic locations and famous objets d'art, but curiously the book contained no photographs of the places, people, portraits, or statues described. Also Winder frequently remarked on the “Habsburg jaw,” it's unsightliness, and its relation to the family's reproductive difficulties. He never explained the nature or cause of the condition. It is a mandibular prognathism exacerbated by inbreeding. I looked it up.
Awarding an overall rating to Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe was not easy. It was captivating, yet frequently off-putting. Comprehensive, but too cute. The effort itself is just worthy of Three Stars.
April 27, 2023
It took me quite a while to get used to Winder's freewheeling style and indeed found it so irritating that I abandoned it 14% of the way through to head for more illuminating territory - Claudio Magris, Joseph Roth and back to Norman Davies' histories and Patrick Leigh Fermor.
But some days later, in the absence of any other convenient book, I picked up my kindle again and found myself in a section that was both illuminating and more carefully written and have now finished it.
Danubia has filled in great gaps in my knowledge of central and Eastern Europe, the shifting power balances within Europe over centuries and the endless conflicts between the three great empires that intersected in these regions - the Holy Roman Empire/Austro-Hungarian (Hapsburg), Ottoman and Russian.
In each of these empires, one religion was dominant (Catholic Christian, Muslim and Orthodox Christian respectively) and other religions were tolerated to varying degrees at different stages. Religion wasn't always a cause for war, but it was a mighty divider in European politics for centuries following the Reformation, with the Hapsburg rulers in Austria and Spain the ferocious drivers of the Catholic counter-Reformation and its accompanying vicious persecution of Protestants and Jews.
Winder points out that the populations of great swathes of Eastern Europe have been massacred and replaced many times, especially in the centuries of battle between Ottoman and Hapsburg, and people from different origins would trickle in to resettle from Romania, Germany, Slav countries, living next to each other, speaking different languages and worshipping differently.
As the great empires weakened in the nineteenth century, local nationalisms arose, based on language,. religion and ethnicity, building intolerance between different groups and creating new sources of conflict.
Territorial settlements after World War 1 carved up the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires into a multitude of small states in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
Poor Poland has been divided and redivided again and again.
Galicia has disappeared into Ukraine, with an entirely new population since World War II. And so on.
Much of the subject matter is so grim, that Winder's light style makes it possible to go on without giving up in despair. I'm glad I persisted.
And next I will read Germania, knowing full well that it will be similarly light, selective and personal, and quite happy with that. I'll learn from it too.
But some days later, in the absence of any other convenient book, I picked up my kindle again and found myself in a section that was both illuminating and more carefully written and have now finished it.
Danubia has filled in great gaps in my knowledge of central and Eastern Europe, the shifting power balances within Europe over centuries and the endless conflicts between the three great empires that intersected in these regions - the Holy Roman Empire/Austro-Hungarian (Hapsburg), Ottoman and Russian.
In each of these empires, one religion was dominant (Catholic Christian, Muslim and Orthodox Christian respectively) and other religions were tolerated to varying degrees at different stages. Religion wasn't always a cause for war, but it was a mighty divider in European politics for centuries following the Reformation, with the Hapsburg rulers in Austria and Spain the ferocious drivers of the Catholic counter-Reformation and its accompanying vicious persecution of Protestants and Jews.
Winder points out that the populations of great swathes of Eastern Europe have been massacred and replaced many times, especially in the centuries of battle between Ottoman and Hapsburg, and people from different origins would trickle in to resettle from Romania, Germany, Slav countries, living next to each other, speaking different languages and worshipping differently.
As the great empires weakened in the nineteenth century, local nationalisms arose, based on language,. religion and ethnicity, building intolerance between different groups and creating new sources of conflict.
Territorial settlements after World War 1 carved up the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires into a multitude of small states in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
Poor Poland has been divided and redivided again and again.
Galicia has disappeared into Ukraine, with an entirely new population since World War II. And so on.
Much of the subject matter is so grim, that Winder's light style makes it possible to go on without giving up in despair. I'm glad I persisted.
And next I will read Germania, knowing full well that it will be similarly light, selective and personal, and quite happy with that. I'll learn from it too.
March 22, 2018
Part of my heritage/ancestry is Austrian/Bavarian, with my grandfather's German name being forcefully "Italianized" during Fascism; on the other hand, my grandmother experienced being treated by the Italian Fascists first (and by the Nazis later) like a second-class citizen simply because of her Slovenian origins.
The irony is that her Slav origins did not spare her (and my grandfather's) experience of being deprived of their house on the Istrian littoral near Trieste (a city that belonged to the Habsurgs since 1382, and that was nearly killed by the incompetence and corruption of the Italian authorities when Italy got possession of it after the Austrian Empire dissolved), a house which was stolen by the Yugoslavian authorities soon after the end of WWII, as my grandparents were, officially speaking, Italian citizens.
I also vividly remember that my maternal grandfather always had a portrait of Emperor Francis Joseph I of Austria in his study - he never recognized the Italian government, not for a second.
On the other hand, my (fully Italian) paternal grandfather fought in WWI against the very Hapsburg Empire which my maternal grandfather so much identified himself with. Quite a multifaceted and interesting situation, where talking about international politics might have easily triggered some sensitivities :-)
As a result of this, it is clear why the experience of the dissolution of the Hapsburg empire, and its cultural legacy, is something that I feel of great personal interest.
I also deeply share the great distaste that the author himself feels towards all forms of stupid nationalism that so deeply affected Eastern Europe and the Balkans after the dissolution of the Ottoman and Hapsburg Empires, when much of Europe disintegrated into separate, mutually hostile, ethnic-based nation-states with scant regard (if not open persecution) of ethnic and/or linguistic minorities. Intellectual simpletons like Donald Trump should really read books like this one, in order to get a better appreciation and understanding of how damaging ideas of nationalism can prove to be. Before his stupid "America first" slogan for the intellectually challenged, there were in Europe very similar messages of "Hungary first", "Serbia First", "Germany First", "Austria First", "Romania First" ect. with the result that, in a sense, they all ended up last - with ancient German towns with no Germans, ancient Polish towns with no Polish people, with ancient Hungarian towns with no Hungarians, with Jewish village with no Jews, and with entire "mixed" areas (such as Galicia) whose richness and variety of their historical multilingual and multicultural legacy were virtually annihilated. A process that, sadly, continued with the bloodshed and ethnic cleansing associated with the dissolution of Yugoslavia not long ago. Anyone caught in the overlaps suffered terrible consequences in 1918, 1945 as well as in the 90's.
I must therefore say that this book may have resonated with me on a much deeper level than what might have happened with the average casual reader who might not have such personal links to this fascinating, complex, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, contradictory, atypical empire that covered significant parts of central and eastern Europe for several centuries, and that played a critical role at several fundamental junctures in modern European history, starting with the Ottoman sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683, down to the Napoleonic wars, concluding with the apparently irreconcilable tensions in the Balkans and the fateful assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that triggered the catastrophe of WWI.
Having said that, I think that this book is a really insightful, informative, riveting and highly original description of the birth, evolution and final dissolution of the power of the great European family of the Hapsburg, a family that held the monopoly of the title of Holy Roman Emperor for several centuries, with an overwhelming influence in most of the German-speaking lands until 1866, when the baton of the supremacy over the "German world" passed to the rapidly expanding military power of Bismarck Prussia. Without the clever and forceful policies of Bismarck, and with a different outcome to the Battle of Königgrätz in 1866, modern Germany might well have had quite a different shape and evolution to what actually happened.
The history of the Hapsburg is described starting from Frederick III (1452-1493), through to the formidable Maria Theresa of Austria, to Franz II (who switched from being Holy Roman Emperor to Emperor of Austria, after Napoleon abolished the old Holy Roman Empire), to Franz Joseph and finally the ineffective and last emperor Karl I.
The tone of the book is informal (and it takes a little while to get used to it), and the approach quite original and rich with personal details of the personality of the individual Emperors, as well as with many descriptions of several localities of historical interest; but the potential reader should not be mislead into assuming this book is a shallow exercise in popular history: on the contrary, the book is accurate, interesting, informative, highly personal, and of good academic value. The author has done serious research and has personally traveled around much of the lands that used to be part of the Austrian Empire, and he is clearly invested, emotionally and intellectually, into this subject. The only potential issue is that the author occasionally assumes a prior good knowledge of the history of modern Central/Eastern Europe, which not all readers might necessarily have.
A very enjoyable reading, a book from which I learned many interesting facts and that I highly recommend to anybody with an interest in the history of modern central and eastern Europe. 4.5 stars (rounded up to 5).
The irony is that her Slav origins did not spare her (and my grandfather's) experience of being deprived of their house on the Istrian littoral near Trieste (a city that belonged to the Habsurgs since 1382, and that was nearly killed by the incompetence and corruption of the Italian authorities when Italy got possession of it after the Austrian Empire dissolved), a house which was stolen by the Yugoslavian authorities soon after the end of WWII, as my grandparents were, officially speaking, Italian citizens.
I also vividly remember that my maternal grandfather always had a portrait of Emperor Francis Joseph I of Austria in his study - he never recognized the Italian government, not for a second.
On the other hand, my (fully Italian) paternal grandfather fought in WWI against the very Hapsburg Empire which my maternal grandfather so much identified himself with. Quite a multifaceted and interesting situation, where talking about international politics might have easily triggered some sensitivities :-)
As a result of this, it is clear why the experience of the dissolution of the Hapsburg empire, and its cultural legacy, is something that I feel of great personal interest.
I also deeply share the great distaste that the author himself feels towards all forms of stupid nationalism that so deeply affected Eastern Europe and the Balkans after the dissolution of the Ottoman and Hapsburg Empires, when much of Europe disintegrated into separate, mutually hostile, ethnic-based nation-states with scant regard (if not open persecution) of ethnic and/or linguistic minorities. Intellectual simpletons like Donald Trump should really read books like this one, in order to get a better appreciation and understanding of how damaging ideas of nationalism can prove to be. Before his stupid "America first" slogan for the intellectually challenged, there were in Europe very similar messages of "Hungary first", "Serbia First", "Germany First", "Austria First", "Romania First" ect. with the result that, in a sense, they all ended up last - with ancient German towns with no Germans, ancient Polish towns with no Polish people, with ancient Hungarian towns with no Hungarians, with Jewish village with no Jews, and with entire "mixed" areas (such as Galicia) whose richness and variety of their historical multilingual and multicultural legacy were virtually annihilated. A process that, sadly, continued with the bloodshed and ethnic cleansing associated with the dissolution of Yugoslavia not long ago. Anyone caught in the overlaps suffered terrible consequences in 1918, 1945 as well as in the 90's.
I must therefore say that this book may have resonated with me on a much deeper level than what might have happened with the average casual reader who might not have such personal links to this fascinating, complex, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, contradictory, atypical empire that covered significant parts of central and eastern Europe for several centuries, and that played a critical role at several fundamental junctures in modern European history, starting with the Ottoman sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683, down to the Napoleonic wars, concluding with the apparently irreconcilable tensions in the Balkans and the fateful assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that triggered the catastrophe of WWI.
Having said that, I think that this book is a really insightful, informative, riveting and highly original description of the birth, evolution and final dissolution of the power of the great European family of the Hapsburg, a family that held the monopoly of the title of Holy Roman Emperor for several centuries, with an overwhelming influence in most of the German-speaking lands until 1866, when the baton of the supremacy over the "German world" passed to the rapidly expanding military power of Bismarck Prussia. Without the clever and forceful policies of Bismarck, and with a different outcome to the Battle of Königgrätz in 1866, modern Germany might well have had quite a different shape and evolution to what actually happened.
The history of the Hapsburg is described starting from Frederick III (1452-1493), through to the formidable Maria Theresa of Austria, to Franz II (who switched from being Holy Roman Emperor to Emperor of Austria, after Napoleon abolished the old Holy Roman Empire), to Franz Joseph and finally the ineffective and last emperor Karl I.
The tone of the book is informal (and it takes a little while to get used to it), and the approach quite original and rich with personal details of the personality of the individual Emperors, as well as with many descriptions of several localities of historical interest; but the potential reader should not be mislead into assuming this book is a shallow exercise in popular history: on the contrary, the book is accurate, interesting, informative, highly personal, and of good academic value. The author has done serious research and has personally traveled around much of the lands that used to be part of the Austrian Empire, and he is clearly invested, emotionally and intellectually, into this subject. The only potential issue is that the author occasionally assumes a prior good knowledge of the history of modern Central/Eastern Europe, which not all readers might necessarily have.
A very enjoyable reading, a book from which I learned many interesting facts and that I highly recommend to anybody with an interest in the history of modern central and eastern Europe. 4.5 stars (rounded up to 5).
December 18, 2025
When I was a child my mother explained to me that my grandmother had had to speak German in school because Slovenia was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It is possible that this tidbit of information may have sparked my lifelong interest in history, because I spent considerable time pondering why that was so and what it would have been like.
Fortunately for our family, as adults my grandparents and all their children (except my mother, who was born in Alabama) migrated to the US as part of that great mass of people from all corners of the Hapsburgs’ realm who, at the turn of the 19th century, got out while the getting was good. Same was true on my father’s side, although he had been born in Slovenia.
My mother also took a sort of personal pride in the fact that Slovenia was the only part of the Balkans that was never part of the Ottoman Empire. More fuel for my nascent interest in history.
I mention those two items because they both feature prominently in Simon Winder’s entertaining, and educational, book Danubia. Feuds over languages fired much of the internecine bloodshed in the Eastern European parts of the Hapsburg’s empire, whether it was German vs. Hungarian or Hungarian vs. Romanian or Polish vs. any of these, not to mention Serbian, Czech, Slovak, Croatian, and on and on, right down to Slovenian, which also butted up against Italian.
Those disputes consumed much of the last hundred years of Hapsburg rule, and appear primarily in the latter part of this book. Earlier sections focus at length on the centuries-long tug of war between the Hapsburgs and the Ottoman Empire, which extended to the outskirts of Vienna at its high point. But not Slovenia!
I’m happy to say that you don’t need personal connections to appreciate this book. Winder mixes in a wealth of accurate historical content with witty descriptions of the feckless Hapsburg rulers and his own reflections on the people and places of the empire.
To say that the results of the inbreeding within the Hapsburg clan were disastrous would be a gross understatement. Winder manages to make us chuckle at the distended chin passed down from Charles V, which made his female descendants look “as if they’d had a pink slipper sewn onto their chins”. Since their marriages were all arranged for dynastic purposes this did not affect their love lives, but it was still a sad affliction.
Sadder still were the dozens of miscarried, stillborn or short-lived offspring of these marriages between cousins. Particularly poignant was the early death one empress, whose husband was also her uncle.
Whether their ineptitude was the result of these genetically triggered issues or some other course, few Hapsburg emperors rose to the level of inept and Winder spends considerable time marveling over their incompetence and seeming derangement. He is frequently at pains to explain that although the reader might find certain of his content unnecessarily detailed, he has indeed made an effort to make things more intelligible:
“Rather than defeat the reader with a family tree which would look like an illustration of the veins and arteries of the human body drawn by a poorly informed maniac, I thought it better to start with this summary of just the heads of the family, so the sequence is clear. I give the year each ruler became Emperor and the year the ruler died. It all looks very straightforward and natural, but of course the list hides away all kinds of back-stabbing, reckless subdivision, hatred, fake piety and general failure, which can readily be relegated to the main text. To save everyone’s brains I have simplified all titles. Some fuss in this area is inevitable but I will cling under almost all circumstances to a single title for each character. To give you a little glimpse of the chaos, the unattractive Philip ‘the Handsome’ was Philip I of Castile, Philip II of Luxemburg, Philip III of Brabant, Philip IV of Burgundy, Philip V of Namur, Philip VI of Artois as well as assorted Is, IIs, IIIs and so on for other places. So when I just refer to Philip ‘the Handsome’ you should feel grateful and briefly ponder the pedantic horror-show you are spared.”
When I decided to read this as part of an effort to make my way through some of the longer books on my shelves, I said to Berengaria, “What could have possessed me to think I would want to read 567 pages about the Hapsburgs?” She was right in her response - there is a LOT of content there, and as it happens, Winder is an excellent storyteller, and educator.
LBC
Fortunately for our family, as adults my grandparents and all their children (except my mother, who was born in Alabama) migrated to the US as part of that great mass of people from all corners of the Hapsburgs’ realm who, at the turn of the 19th century, got out while the getting was good. Same was true on my father’s side, although he had been born in Slovenia.
My mother also took a sort of personal pride in the fact that Slovenia was the only part of the Balkans that was never part of the Ottoman Empire. More fuel for my nascent interest in history.
I mention those two items because they both feature prominently in Simon Winder’s entertaining, and educational, book Danubia. Feuds over languages fired much of the internecine bloodshed in the Eastern European parts of the Hapsburg’s empire, whether it was German vs. Hungarian or Hungarian vs. Romanian or Polish vs. any of these, not to mention Serbian, Czech, Slovak, Croatian, and on and on, right down to Slovenian, which also butted up against Italian.
Those disputes consumed much of the last hundred years of Hapsburg rule, and appear primarily in the latter part of this book. Earlier sections focus at length on the centuries-long tug of war between the Hapsburgs and the Ottoman Empire, which extended to the outskirts of Vienna at its high point. But not Slovenia!
I’m happy to say that you don’t need personal connections to appreciate this book. Winder mixes in a wealth of accurate historical content with witty descriptions of the feckless Hapsburg rulers and his own reflections on the people and places of the empire.
To say that the results of the inbreeding within the Hapsburg clan were disastrous would be a gross understatement. Winder manages to make us chuckle at the distended chin passed down from Charles V, which made his female descendants look “as if they’d had a pink slipper sewn onto their chins”. Since their marriages were all arranged for dynastic purposes this did not affect their love lives, but it was still a sad affliction.
Sadder still were the dozens of miscarried, stillborn or short-lived offspring of these marriages between cousins. Particularly poignant was the early death one empress, whose husband was also her uncle.
Whether their ineptitude was the result of these genetically triggered issues or some other course, few Hapsburg emperors rose to the level of inept and Winder spends considerable time marveling over their incompetence and seeming derangement. He is frequently at pains to explain that although the reader might find certain of his content unnecessarily detailed, he has indeed made an effort to make things more intelligible:
“Rather than defeat the reader with a family tree which would look like an illustration of the veins and arteries of the human body drawn by a poorly informed maniac, I thought it better to start with this summary of just the heads of the family, so the sequence is clear. I give the year each ruler became Emperor and the year the ruler died. It all looks very straightforward and natural, but of course the list hides away all kinds of back-stabbing, reckless subdivision, hatred, fake piety and general failure, which can readily be relegated to the main text. To save everyone’s brains I have simplified all titles. Some fuss in this area is inevitable but I will cling under almost all circumstances to a single title for each character. To give you a little glimpse of the chaos, the unattractive Philip ‘the Handsome’ was Philip I of Castile, Philip II of Luxemburg, Philip III of Brabant, Philip IV of Burgundy, Philip V of Namur, Philip VI of Artois as well as assorted Is, IIs, IIIs and so on for other places. So when I just refer to Philip ‘the Handsome’ you should feel grateful and briefly ponder the pedantic horror-show you are spared.”
When I decided to read this as part of an effort to make my way through some of the longer books on my shelves, I said to Berengaria, “What could have possessed me to think I would want to read 567 pages about the Hapsburgs?” She was right in her response - there is a LOT of content there, and as it happens, Winder is an excellent storyteller, and educator.
LBC
March 3, 2022
In my review of this author's earlier book 'Germania,' I referred to him as "the irrepressible Simon Winder". In the first chapter of 'Danubia,' we find this pearl:
Or later, referring to a castle in the Italian Alps:
Or try to top this:
Why bother typing a review? If these three excerpts don't make you want to read this, then you probably won't enjoy the book. But if you found these amusing then dive on in.
There is a particularly hysteria-edged frieze in the Western Bohemia Museum in Plzen by V. Saff, carved in 1900, imagining the ancient Czechs in a forest, torturing and killing their enemies, tying them to trees, strangling them. In the usual proto-Art-Nouveau style, the sculptor follows through on an ethnographic hunch that surprising numbers of the tribal womenfolk would be in their late teens and free of clothing. The sadism of the carving is oddly reckless and preserves the nationalist mania of its period: urging the Czechs to stop sitting around reading newspapers and sipping herbal liqueurs and instead to embrace the burly virtues of their forebears. In practice we do not of course have any sense at all of what these ancient Czechs were like and Saff may not be entirely wrong about their savagery: although occasions on which women with amazing breasts swung around a severed human head by its top-knot were probably infrequent.
Or later, referring to a castle in the Italian Alps:
...This new bilingualism has had a bizarre effect on the castle. In Italian it is called Castel Roncolo, which implies a pretty turfed courtyard with maidens in gauzy outfits skipping about to tambourines and lutes with weedy youths in coloured tights looking on. In German it is called Schloss Runkelstein, which implies a brandy-deranged old soldier-baron with a purple face and leg-iron lurching around darkened dank corridors, beating a servant to death with his crutch. Seeing the two names everywhere side by side is deeply confusing, like having one eye always out of focus.
Or try to top this:
I once read a truly harrowing account by marine scientists of an attack by a pod of killer whales on a blue whale. The attackers repeatedly smashed into the side of the whale, twisting off great lumps of blubber to get at its internal organs. The whale swam grimly along, gradually falling apart like a cheap home-assembly sofa-bed, with stuff trailing everywhere and randomly exposed angled bits of rib. Reading this really made me think that, having given up whaling, humans should now start intervening actively to make the oceans less awful -- perhaps by dropping enormous blocks of buoyed-up, nutritious tofu as an alternative for the killer whales to enjoy. Oh no -- you think -- he is typing rubbish about tofu to put off confirmation of the awful truth: that he is about to foist on us the feared Hapsburg monarchy sea-mammal analogy.
Why bother typing a review? If these three excerpts don't make you want to read this, then you probably won't enjoy the book. But if you found these amusing then dive on in.
June 18, 2022
"Danubia" is a superbly written history of the Hapsburgs. Yet, it is not a traditional history. Simon Winder brings a refreshingly interesting look at the Hapsburg, replete with fascinating information and all of it delivered with a dry wit that makes for memorable reading.
The format of the book is Winder's reflection on the Hapsburgs, as he travels to their various fiefs and views the remnants of what was once, one of the greatest families in Europe. The House of Habsburg (Hapsburg in English, Haus Habsburg in German) takes its name from Castle Habsburg, built by Radbot of Klettgau in the 1020s. His grandson, Otto II, was the first to call himself "Count of Habsburg". From this small start, through a variety of intrigue, conquest, and strategic marriages- the Hapsburg family became one of the most influential and dominant houses in Europe.
But this strange amalgam of different nationalities, languages, and tension would contain, within itself, the seeds of its own destruction. Not only for the family, but the entire European theatre, the actions of the various Emperors would lead to their Empire being more of a paper tiger, than an actual power. This was especially true near the end of their house. The first truly great catastrophe for the family was Napoleon and finally ended with a proverbial bang with World War I.
While not a "traditional" history book, it works more of a memoir of the author's thoughts on the various rulers, it is very well written, full of interesting lore, and is full of dry wit and humor. An excellent look at the Hapsburg and their impact on the European world.
The format of the book is Winder's reflection on the Hapsburgs, as he travels to their various fiefs and views the remnants of what was once, one of the greatest families in Europe. The House of Habsburg (Hapsburg in English, Haus Habsburg in German) takes its name from Castle Habsburg, built by Radbot of Klettgau in the 1020s. His grandson, Otto II, was the first to call himself "Count of Habsburg". From this small start, through a variety of intrigue, conquest, and strategic marriages- the Hapsburg family became one of the most influential and dominant houses in Europe.
But this strange amalgam of different nationalities, languages, and tension would contain, within itself, the seeds of its own destruction. Not only for the family, but the entire European theatre, the actions of the various Emperors would lead to their Empire being more of a paper tiger, than an actual power. This was especially true near the end of their house. The first truly great catastrophe for the family was Napoleon and finally ended with a proverbial bang with World War I.
While not a "traditional" history book, it works more of a memoir of the author's thoughts on the various rulers, it is very well written, full of interesting lore, and is full of dry wit and humor. An excellent look at the Hapsburg and their impact on the European world.
Read
April 4, 2014Just ok. I'm very easy to please with a passing reference to some eccentric bit of history, like microscopic kingdoms ruled by nuns or weird buildings or people with odd names, so this book had a head start with me. That said, It never did seem to find a good middle ground between telling some of the drier political and military history and merrily skipping away from it in favour of the funny stuff. Chapters and chapters did go on abouut successions or military campaigns, but with a carefully cultivated air of sheepish embarrassment that rather wore itself out, and on the other hand still didn't really deliver enough information for it to be interesting. Or to make any sense.
Winder also largely shied away from the really salacious personal gossipy stuff about various demented Habsburgs, which seems a bit of a shame. Come on, that's really all we can salvage out of the awful idea that was thousands of years of aristocracy. What does work pretty well is the cultural stuff, particularly art and music, and the book did add a few writers to my mental tbr pile. Winder's joy at encountering and describing various strange and disturbing paintings, statues, victory columns, overegged gazebos and that sort of thing is pretty infectious.
Winder also largely shied away from the really salacious personal gossipy stuff about various demented Habsburgs, which seems a bit of a shame. Come on, that's really all we can salvage out of the awful idea that was thousands of years of aristocracy. What does work pretty well is the cultural stuff, particularly art and music, and the book did add a few writers to my mental tbr pile. Winder's joy at encountering and describing various strange and disturbing paintings, statues, victory columns, overegged gazebos and that sort of thing is pretty infectious.
December 26, 2019
Also available on the WondrousBooks blog.
"
During my first ever trip to Vienna this year, I spotted Danubia in the airport bookstore and despite my best efforts, I couldn't stop myself and bought it.
In fact, unbeknownst to me, Danubia was exactly the thing I had been looking for. After several trips around Central Europe, I decided that my historical knowledge of the region was rather limited to the bits of history that related somehow to Bulgaria in any given time period. Sure, I knew of the existence of the Habsburgs, but my knowledge was by no means deep. I was interested, however, and I started thinking about buying a book that goes into the history of the region.
Danubia is the perfect read for someone who wants to learn a bit more, but is perhaps not passionate enough, or doesn't have enough time to do a more thorough research. In other words, it's the perfect abridged version of a big chunk of European history where it relates to the Habsburg Empire.
On the minus side, the author sometimes got carried away in rather far-fetched allegory or entangled in topics which might mean a lot more to a die-hard fan than they do to the casual reader of Danubia. Lengthy musings on specific composers, for example, left me sometimes baffled, unfamiliar as I was with their music save for a few selected pieces.
Everything else in the book, though, was just right. I found the amount of detail just enough to keep me interested, but not lead to confusion (except for the lot of Habsburg rulers with repetitive names, but that, alas, cannot be changed). Also perfectly balanced with the politics and political details, were the small fun facts of the personal history of the rulers. For example, I had noticed the Habsburg chin, in passing, but I had never noticed the trend of the Habsburg chin, or thought about the naming of it, or even more so, how it lead to the existence of that particular chin.
Another thing that I quite liked about the book was the attention the author paid to the less famous, nowadays, yet historically important cities of the Habsburg Empire. Cities in today's Romania, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine and so on, that were once the scenes of great battles, political conflicts, religious drama, etc. I love Romania, for example, but I knew very little about the political situation that once existed in cities like Cluj-Napoca, or the fact that once they were not Romanian cities at all. Similarly, I live in Poland, and I knew that Lvov was once an important Polish city, but I didn't quite realize how important indeed. Or that, for example, the nearby city of Gliwice was not a Polish city at all, but was in fact the German city of Gleiwitz, until the Poles of Lvov were forced to relocate there, and the Germans of Gleiwitz to go even further west.
If you, like me, are incapable of delving further into the historical world of a certain family, dynasty, specific region or time period, Danubia is perfect for you! It will give you just the right amount of information and definitely make your world a little wider.
During my first ever trip to Vienna this year, I spotted Danubia in the airport bookstore and despite my best efforts, I couldn't stop myself and bought it.
In fact, unbeknownst to me, Danubia was exactly the thing I had been looking for. After several trips around Central Europe, I decided that my historical knowledge of the region was rather limited to the bits of history that related somehow to Bulgaria in any given time period. Sure, I knew of the existence of the Habsburgs, but my knowledge was by no means deep. I was interested, however, and I started thinking about buying a book that goes into the history of the region.
Danubia is the perfect read for someone who wants to learn a bit more, but is perhaps not passionate enough, or doesn't have enough time to do a more thorough research. In other words, it's the perfect abridged version of a big chunk of European history where it relates to the Habsburg Empire.
On the minus side, the author sometimes got carried away in rather far-fetched allegory or entangled in topics which might mean a lot more to a die-hard fan than they do to the casual reader of Danubia. Lengthy musings on specific composers, for example, left me sometimes baffled, unfamiliar as I was with their music save for a few selected pieces.
Everything else in the book, though, was just right. I found the amount of detail just enough to keep me interested, but not lead to confusion (except for the lot of Habsburg rulers with repetitive names, but that, alas, cannot be changed). Also perfectly balanced with the politics and political details, were the small fun facts of the personal history of the rulers. For example, I had noticed the Habsburg chin, in passing, but I had never noticed the trend of the Habsburg chin, or thought about the naming of it, or even more so, how it lead to the existence of that particular chin.
Another thing that I quite liked about the book was the attention the author paid to the less famous, nowadays, yet historically important cities of the Habsburg Empire. Cities in today's Romania, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine and so on, that were once the scenes of great battles, political conflicts, religious drama, etc. I love Romania, for example, but I knew very little about the political situation that once existed in cities like Cluj-Napoca, or the fact that once they were not Romanian cities at all. Similarly, I live in Poland, and I knew that Lvov was once an important Polish city, but I didn't quite realize how important indeed. Or that, for example, the nearby city of Gliwice was not a Polish city at all, but was in fact the German city of Gleiwitz, until the Poles of Lvov were forced to relocate there, and the Germans of Gleiwitz to go even further west.
If you, like me, are incapable of delving further into the historical world of a certain family, dynasty, specific region or time period, Danubia is perfect for you! It will give you just the right amount of information and definitely make your world a little wider.
May 12, 2025
[I have just reread this marvellous book and haven't changed a word my review but feel I must add that Mr. Winder provides a wonderful introduction to the complex world of the central European Habsburg lands (Spain and the Americas are not part of this story). His book is an immensely sensitive introduction to the wonders of these countries but also to their terrifyingly sad histories. If you want to know what that means look up the entry for Cemetary of the Defenders of Lwow (which is now Lviv but was previously also called Lemberg and Lvov): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cemeter.... If you are thinking of reading a work like 'Bloodlands' by Timothy Snyder, the closing chapters of this work will provide you with a sense of what that book provides in technicolot.]
My original review:
A splendidly idiosyncratic book of travel and memoir but mainly a history of the Habsburgs, sort of, it is also, sort of, a companion volume to his previous Germania. What it is though is marvellous hodge-podge of bizarre and interesting facts and personalities along with a bit of reminiscence over things and places he loves.
This is not a conventional history of the Habsburgs or Habsburg lands but they are the linking liet motif of this immensely charming and readable book. Winder has a passion for the obscurities of history and also a love of literature - I defy any one to come away from this book not wanting to read Joseph Roth, Aharon Appelfield, Miklos Banffy, or Gregor von Rezzori amongst many others. He also has a love for places and art and he clearly loves the earlier Habsburgs. You won't find much about the dreary soap opera of Franz Josef and his empress 'Sisi', let alone his vainglorious brother Maximilian. But of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian and his glorious tomb in Innsbruck cathedral (which because the emperor perennially short of cash meant there was no funds to bring his body to Innsbruck so the tomb is empty) or the Austrian archduke Ferdinand whose wonderful collections at castle Ambras are beyond doubt one of the greatest cultural artifacts left by royalty anywhere. He doesn't have much time for the counter Reformation religiosity of the dynasty though he enjoys, and makes you want to go and enjoy, the excesses of the great pilgrim churches of Austria swathed in tromp L'oeil, putti and martyred saints.
It is Winder's enthusiasm that makes this book so captivating. I love it and wish I could visit all the places he mentions.
My original review:
A splendidly idiosyncratic book of travel and memoir but mainly a history of the Habsburgs, sort of, it is also, sort of, a companion volume to his previous Germania. What it is though is marvellous hodge-podge of bizarre and interesting facts and personalities along with a bit of reminiscence over things and places he loves.
This is not a conventional history of the Habsburgs or Habsburg lands but they are the linking liet motif of this immensely charming and readable book. Winder has a passion for the obscurities of history and also a love of literature - I defy any one to come away from this book not wanting to read Joseph Roth, Aharon Appelfield, Miklos Banffy, or Gregor von Rezzori amongst many others. He also has a love for places and art and he clearly loves the earlier Habsburgs. You won't find much about the dreary soap opera of Franz Josef and his empress 'Sisi', let alone his vainglorious brother Maximilian. But of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian and his glorious tomb in Innsbruck cathedral (which because the emperor perennially short of cash meant there was no funds to bring his body to Innsbruck so the tomb is empty) or the Austrian archduke Ferdinand whose wonderful collections at castle Ambras are beyond doubt one of the greatest cultural artifacts left by royalty anywhere. He doesn't have much time for the counter Reformation religiosity of the dynasty though he enjoys, and makes you want to go and enjoy, the excesses of the great pilgrim churches of Austria swathed in tromp L'oeil, putti and martyred saints.
It is Winder's enthusiasm that makes this book so captivating. I love it and wish I could visit all the places he mentions.
January 25, 2023
DNF @ 147 / 550 pages (approximately 27%)
The book was a gift. It's not the usual type of book I like for history, so I've been ignoring it... for almost a decade (WOW! time flies). I'm not sure why the author chose to write this book (other than someone payed him to), because Wider seems to hate the inhabitants of central Europe and has nothing but derogatory comments to make about them and their history. I found the portion of the book I read a huge disappointment. After about 30% I just simply couldn't muster the energy to deal with this opinionated and overwhelmingly biased hodge-podge "travel magazine" pretending to be a book. I have more coherent history books I would rather read.
This is a "personal history of Hapsburg Europe", which essentially means the reader gets a random, rambling collection of regional obscurities and sensationalist anecdotes that caught the author's fancy, along with an obnoxiously opinionated commentary and semi-travelogue of whatever existing structural remnant he happens to be visiting. There isn't a coherent narrative structure, and only vaguely a chronological structure. Winder kept jumping around between time frames (and people that nearly all share the same collection of names) without the benefit of a time line or even the most basic of family trees. There are maps. The maps are probably the best part of the book. The writing style is glib and condescending. Winder isn't nearly as funny as he seems to think he is. Whole pages are dedicated to snotty commentary of a particular piece of artwork, but no picture of the artwork is included. Whole paragraphs are dedicated to absurd metaphors, which don't really convey anything, but may possibly be vaguely amusing. The history presented is simplistic, disorganised, leaves out whole swaths of relevant and important events, but manages to blather on about minor details. If you want to know something of the history of Central Europe or the Hapsburg Empire, find a different book - any other book.
The book was a gift. It's not the usual type of book I like for history, so I've been ignoring it... for almost a decade (WOW! time flies). I'm not sure why the author chose to write this book (other than someone payed him to), because Wider seems to hate the inhabitants of central Europe and has nothing but derogatory comments to make about them and their history. I found the portion of the book I read a huge disappointment. After about 30% I just simply couldn't muster the energy to deal with this opinionated and overwhelmingly biased hodge-podge "travel magazine" pretending to be a book. I have more coherent history books I would rather read.
This is a "personal history of Hapsburg Europe", which essentially means the reader gets a random, rambling collection of regional obscurities and sensationalist anecdotes that caught the author's fancy, along with an obnoxiously opinionated commentary and semi-travelogue of whatever existing structural remnant he happens to be visiting. There isn't a coherent narrative structure, and only vaguely a chronological structure. Winder kept jumping around between time frames (and people that nearly all share the same collection of names) without the benefit of a time line or even the most basic of family trees. There are maps. The maps are probably the best part of the book. The writing style is glib and condescending. Winder isn't nearly as funny as he seems to think he is. Whole pages are dedicated to snotty commentary of a particular piece of artwork, but no picture of the artwork is included. Whole paragraphs are dedicated to absurd metaphors, which don't really convey anything, but may possibly be vaguely amusing. The history presented is simplistic, disorganised, leaves out whole swaths of relevant and important events, but manages to blather on about minor details. If you want to know something of the history of Central Europe or the Hapsburg Empire, find a different book - any other book.
November 5, 2013
I should start this by saying that I adored Germania.... also that I, like Simon Winder, have a strange fascination with Central Europe. It is thanks to this fascination that I was lucky enough to spend a couple of years living in the wonderful city of Vienna, and that I have made several visits to other central European cities such as Prague, Brno, Bratislava Kutna Hora etc.... I've also been lucky enough to ski in the Tyrol.... all in all you could say that I am smitten with the region, and that I do know a reasonable amount about the crazy customs and histories of at least some of it. Danubia is then, pretty much the book for me. Danubia is a slightly loopy history of the huge area that came under Hapsburg rule, this includes the Spanish realm at least until the split during the counter reformation; and thanks to the vast area that fell into the sphere of 'Holy Roman Empire' it is a history of the Europe that falls between the French and Russian borders. There is so much that could be covered, and to be honest Winder really does seem to touch on just about everything. We have mummies and relics, escaped lions and free roaming tigers, battles and assassinations. Everything is here. As with Germania the whole book is brought together with an eye for the ridiculous little details and with a dry wit that is similar in style to Bill Bryson; in fact I am now thinking that a travel show involving the two authors exploring some of the kookier aspects of europe sounds like an amazing plan. Yes there are things missing, the topic is so enormous that it would be impossible for there not to be ommissions. Some of these could prove controversial, Winder makes no bones about cutting the whole history of Empress Sissi and of the Mayerling incident for example, however the items that are left out are so generally well known that their loss is of little consequence. Overall this is a wonderful, funny and fascinating book packed full of little gems.
April 2, 2014
The language in this book is reminiscent of a what a tour guide sounds like guiding you around a historical site: they attempt to hold your attention with loud and crazy sentence structure, they jump around a ton in the historical timeline, and they only offer dumbed-down history.
I couldn't even get through the first chapter
I couldn't even get through the first chapter
January 9, 2015
Have you ever bought something (in my case usually computer software) thinking it would solve a particular problem only to find that it doesn't answer your original question but leaves you asking even more? This is one such book. If you are looking for a historical timeline of the Hapsburg Empire it is best not bought. It is, however, completely fascinating and captivating. It is also intelligent and very well written.
The easily available information on the writer is sparse. He has taken the time to explore both the history of the Hapsburg family but the geography and ethnicity as well. In a parallel universe the Hapsburgs would have taken over the world operating brilliantly both sides of the Atlantic (the unfortunate Maximillian I of Mexico was a Hapsburg whose territory included Texas) and we would be speaking German or Spanish. Fortunately the level of inbreeding (everybody was cousin, uncle, aunt or a combination of the three) made their brain function decrease as their chin size increased. In fact their overall passivity and ability to make the wrong decisions at the right times made the Hapsburgs demise inevitable. One has to ask how they survived as nominal rulers of vast tract of land for as long as they did.
Winder has used the individual emperors as telegraph poles from which to hang a series of short vignettes which depict some of the events of the reign but also the impact that their decision making had on the geography. Loosely affiliated states were regularly repopulated after the effects of warfare or infection changing the ethnic mix of the area. A mutual suspicion of any ethnic minority (which one in particular varied depending on where you were) allowed for overall geopolitical stability until the end of the First World War when the entire area was artificially rearranged after the Treaty of Versailles.
The overall feeling in this book is one of wasted opportunities over long centuries. The inherent belief in the sacred duty of Emperor created a long line of essentially passive characters to whom world events just happened. In the overall drive to keep the Empire at peace individual states were allowed latitudes that created the drive to make individual nations. By the time the nineteenth century ended every linguistic minority was agitating for self government based on (often highly perverted) historical precedents. This partially explains how Serbian nationalism led to the assassination in Sarajevo but, even by then, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was on its knees.
This is a really enjoyable book to read; intelligent, funny, whimsical and perceptive. I can only hope that its prequel, Germania, is equally good because I have already bought it.
The easily available information on the writer is sparse. He has taken the time to explore both the history of the Hapsburg family but the geography and ethnicity as well. In a parallel universe the Hapsburgs would have taken over the world operating brilliantly both sides of the Atlantic (the unfortunate Maximillian I of Mexico was a Hapsburg whose territory included Texas) and we would be speaking German or Spanish. Fortunately the level of inbreeding (everybody was cousin, uncle, aunt or a combination of the three) made their brain function decrease as their chin size increased. In fact their overall passivity and ability to make the wrong decisions at the right times made the Hapsburgs demise inevitable. One has to ask how they survived as nominal rulers of vast tract of land for as long as they did.
Winder has used the individual emperors as telegraph poles from which to hang a series of short vignettes which depict some of the events of the reign but also the impact that their decision making had on the geography. Loosely affiliated states were regularly repopulated after the effects of warfare or infection changing the ethnic mix of the area. A mutual suspicion of any ethnic minority (which one in particular varied depending on where you were) allowed for overall geopolitical stability until the end of the First World War when the entire area was artificially rearranged after the Treaty of Versailles.
The overall feeling in this book is one of wasted opportunities over long centuries. The inherent belief in the sacred duty of Emperor created a long line of essentially passive characters to whom world events just happened. In the overall drive to keep the Empire at peace individual states were allowed latitudes that created the drive to make individual nations. By the time the nineteenth century ended every linguistic minority was agitating for self government based on (often highly perverted) historical precedents. This partially explains how Serbian nationalism led to the assassination in Sarajevo but, even by then, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was on its knees.
This is a really enjoyable book to read; intelligent, funny, whimsical and perceptive. I can only hope that its prequel, Germania, is equally good because I have already bought it.
April 13, 2018
This was fantastic. Winder is an extremely erudite and fun personality to stalk through the history of Central Europe with. It was such a pleasure to tag along with his asides and enthusiasm that I was almost blind-sided how quickly the whole thing moved. I also have to mention how thought-provoking his depiction of the end of the Habsburg Empire was. The unforeseeable viciousness of national consciousness and the complete destruction of the civilization that had existed before. Great stuff.
October 23, 2022
Odlična ocena je samo iz razloga sto mi je pruzio drugaciji pogled na istoriju. Na mestima knjiga je cak i dosadna, ali cinjenice koje do sada nisa znala povezane sa istorijskim kontekstom su me obradovale.
March 27, 2020
Two stars is maybe a little harsh because Danubia isn't a bad book. Some people might really get a lot from it. But I can't say I'll be looking for more from Winder.
This is a sort of meandering walk through early modern eastern Europe, sometimes tracking Winder's actual travels, sometimes just talking through courses of events, selected seemingly at random, that happen to grab his interest. In some ways this is an effective presentation because the Habsburgs are just so freaking weird, so they invite anecdotes about their manifold weirdnesses.
Imagine if Bill Bryson decided to write a history of the Habsburgs. Now imagine that he was just as arch, but was more of a humor striver than an actual talent, and not as effective at actually conveying information.
I will say this, Winder gets the award for consistent use of the most goofily unhelpful metaphors I've ever read, which itself is kind of entertaining. The sort of thing where you're left wondering what the hell is going on with the metaphor and stop thinking about the actual subject. This isn't a specific example of that, but it gives you a flavor:
"In an extraordinary scene, Rudolph [II, Holy Roman Emperor] once hunted deer around the park with cheetahs -- an image almost infantily exotic -- as he and his followers orchestrated this no doubt mutually baffling encounter between fearsome, if chilly, African megafauna and some appalled Bohemian ungulates."
The scene is crazy enough, why does Winder describe it twice, just using bigger words the second time? There's a lot of stuff like this.
Fantastic cover though!
This is a sort of meandering walk through early modern eastern Europe, sometimes tracking Winder's actual travels, sometimes just talking through courses of events, selected seemingly at random, that happen to grab his interest. In some ways this is an effective presentation because the Habsburgs are just so freaking weird, so they invite anecdotes about their manifold weirdnesses.
Imagine if Bill Bryson decided to write a history of the Habsburgs. Now imagine that he was just as arch, but was more of a humor striver than an actual talent, and not as effective at actually conveying information.
I will say this, Winder gets the award for consistent use of the most goofily unhelpful metaphors I've ever read, which itself is kind of entertaining. The sort of thing where you're left wondering what the hell is going on with the metaphor and stop thinking about the actual subject. This isn't a specific example of that, but it gives you a flavor:
"In an extraordinary scene, Rudolph [II, Holy Roman Emperor] once hunted deer around the park with cheetahs -- an image almost infantily exotic -- as he and his followers orchestrated this no doubt mutually baffling encounter between fearsome, if chilly, African megafauna and some appalled Bohemian ungulates."
The scene is crazy enough, why does Winder describe it twice, just using bigger words the second time? There's a lot of stuff like this.
Fantastic cover though!
April 17, 2014
I admit this may not be the best of all possible history books--its quirky digressions even annoyed me a little at first--but by the end I was totally convinced. Not that everything in the book is incontestable, but that Winder has eased the reader in his own highly eclectic way from the beginnings of political unification through the peak of empire to the catastrophe of the empire's irrelevance when faced with 20th-century nationalisms, all the while maintaining a sense of continuity. Most interestingly, he shows how our last, bloody century was itself centuries in the making, with all the trappings of state managing to outbluff growing interethnic hatreds even as it sometimes exacerbated them.
The tone of the book changes--rather jovial when evoking all those Maximilians, Leopolds and Rudolfs, and increasingly serious, censorious and elegeiac as Europe's worst, most murderous disasters loom into view. (Although he may be overly cynical about modern nations--I certainly hope his pessimism is unwarranted.)
The tone of the book changes--rather jovial when evoking all those Maximilians, Leopolds and Rudolfs, and increasingly serious, censorious and elegeiac as Europe's worst, most murderous disasters loom into view. (Although he may be overly cynical about modern nations--I certainly hope his pessimism is unwarranted.)
September 21, 2019
"Rather than defeat the reader with a family tree which would look like an illustration of the vein and arteries of the human body drawn by a poorly infomed maniac..." Personal history in the modern mode can often be little more than some bumptious prick skipping over the good bits so as to wedge in some more Relatable Content and Personal Journey, but Winder pitches it wonderfully, somewhere between a more woke version of the old gentleman scholar, a historian mate getting drunk and expressing their professional opinion with unprofessional vigour, and a slightly less mournful Lemony Snicket; there's definitely a pinch of Sellars & Yeatman in the mix too, not least when (always a good litmus test for a history) he summarises the Italian Wars as "completely pointless". But this is not a book built on cheap laughs, and not just because some of the laughs are very abstruse ones. He's set himself no small task in taking on the Habsburgs; one ridiculous, inbred dynasty, alternately bonkers and incredibly boring, would be topic enough even before you include their sprawling dominions, the many fractious peoples within them, and the European history shaped around them. Winder is at pains to point out that political constructs like Savoy, or indeed the Holy Roman Empire itself, which may now seem like silly gimcrack affairs, in fact endured for far longer than Germany or Italy has thus far been a united nation in anything like their modern forms. He has a negative capability too often lacking of late (though it's curious to speculate how this 2013 book might be different had it been written later, its entreaties against the dangers of resurgent nationalism now so much more urgent), able at once to adore Mitteleuropa as a neverland of sleepy settlements and charming landscapes, and to mourn it as a bitterly contested landscape soaked in centuries of blood over the most futile of squabbles. He's a master of the bait and switch, as on the "famously soporific" War of the Austrian Succession – where his brief summary then goes on to point out the many ways in which, had it gone slightly differently, world history from that point might have gone entirely otherwise. He can turn effortlessly from giggling at General Paris von Spankau's name, or a Jesuit pretending to be a ghost, Scooby-Doo caretaker style, to the sheer scale and regularity of the devastation, or the thankless lives as brood-mares and dynastic tokens lived by many Habsburg women – sometimes holding the mood for a moment somewhere between the two, as with his savagely satirical reading of a particular guinea pig village. He tries as much as possible to bring alive for the reader the mindsets of the everyday people in the Empire, as well as their ridiculous rulers, while admitting that much of the experience must remain forever irretrievable, no matter how hard we guard against the fallacies of hindsight (I was particularly taken with his names for two of these, Christmas Pantomime Syndrome and Pilgrim's Progress Syndrome). And while this is by no means an area on which I'm any kind of expert, nor did I spot any of the inaccuracies which can bedevil so much popular history*. Of course, the one bit of the story we all know is how it ends, and the ghastly sequel - though even here there were details new to me - and the closer one draws to that, the more one comes to share Winder's frustrated fondness for a regime which, sclerotic, nonsensical and intermittently plain deranged as it was, was definitely preferable to what followed.
*One previous reader of my copy felt minded to make precisely one annotation, on page 270, objecting quite strongly to the notion of mules having descendants. But a) their sterility is much exaggerated and b) in any case, can't subsequent mules in the same role and location be considered adoptive scions of a sort anyway?
*One previous reader of my copy felt minded to make precisely one annotation, on page 270, objecting quite strongly to the notion of mules having descendants. But a) their sterility is much exaggerated and b) in any case, can't subsequent mules in the same role and location be considered adoptive scions of a sort anyway?
January 1, 2024
Another review vaporized!
Better than “Germania”—in part because of shorter sentences and paragraphs. But longer than Germania. It very much is Simon Winder’s Personal History of the Hapsburg lands, in the sense that one can visualize the author walking past thousands of boring museum displays. But I expected more about the reasons for the near instantaneous collapse of the empire, an event when seems to puzzle even the author. I also expected more than a single sentence on Col. Redl and more than the three paragraphs on Stephan Zweig.
Better than “Germania”—in part because of shorter sentences and paragraphs. But longer than Germania. It very much is Simon Winder’s Personal History of the Hapsburg lands, in the sense that one can visualize the author walking past thousands of boring museum displays. But I expected more about the reasons for the near instantaneous collapse of the empire, an event when seems to puzzle even the author. I also expected more than a single sentence on Col. Redl and more than the three paragraphs on Stephan Zweig.
December 13, 2015
I blame Wes Anderson for this obsession.
As soon as I sat down and the Russian Doll opening of 'Grand Budapest Hotel' was presented before me, I wan transfixed, it was the most pink ornate cake like looking movie I had ever seen. Usually with Wes Anderson I get a little board half way after the gimmick has run it's course. But I loved it all, Ralph Fiennes (I sleep with all my friends, hands off my lobby boy), Zero, Jude Law's character, Jeff Goldblum, Adrien Brody's hair, the lift operator (I have spent way to much time on the Grand Budapest) but more importantly I loved the sentimental nostalgia of it all, the story and tone just appealed to every part of me. So, to bring it back to books, when based on the writings of Stefan Zweig, purchases were made and 'World of Yesterday' was read and a descent into a rabbit hole of everything Central and Eastern Europe I was dropped, every book I am buying these days is in translation and most likely a book from Pushkin Press, and it is awesome. It is turning into quite the obsession. My boyfriend asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I answered Poland.
Anyway, to the actual the book I am reviewing. I liked it. I liked it because it is about the Hamburgs and Central Europe. The book on it's own is kind of a mess, with Winder turning charm into waffle at times. But this isn't exactly a history more a reaction to history, hence a personal history of Habsburg Europe. I was never going to say no to wondering around Austria, Hungry and Romania, it is a whimsical escape and Winder can be very thoughtful and funny at times about the nature of such a chaotic empire, nationalism, art and his own obsession with the area.
Of course this has just deepened the rabbit hole, and a history of the thirty year war, Rebecca West and Claudio Magris have been purchased. And any recommendations on the Ottomans or Prague magicians would be appreciated.
As soon as I sat down and the Russian Doll opening of 'Grand Budapest Hotel' was presented before me, I wan transfixed, it was the most pink ornate cake like looking movie I had ever seen. Usually with Wes Anderson I get a little board half way after the gimmick has run it's course. But I loved it all, Ralph Fiennes (I sleep with all my friends, hands off my lobby boy), Zero, Jude Law's character, Jeff Goldblum, Adrien Brody's hair, the lift operator (I have spent way to much time on the Grand Budapest) but more importantly I loved the sentimental nostalgia of it all, the story and tone just appealed to every part of me. So, to bring it back to books, when based on the writings of Stefan Zweig, purchases were made and 'World of Yesterday' was read and a descent into a rabbit hole of everything Central and Eastern Europe I was dropped, every book I am buying these days is in translation and most likely a book from Pushkin Press, and it is awesome. It is turning into quite the obsession. My boyfriend asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I answered Poland.
Anyway, to the actual the book I am reviewing. I liked it. I liked it because it is about the Hamburgs and Central Europe. The book on it's own is kind of a mess, with Winder turning charm into waffle at times. But this isn't exactly a history more a reaction to history, hence a personal history of Habsburg Europe. I was never going to say no to wondering around Austria, Hungry and Romania, it is a whimsical escape and Winder can be very thoughtful and funny at times about the nature of such a chaotic empire, nationalism, art and his own obsession with the area.
Of course this has just deepened the rabbit hole, and a history of the thirty year war, Rebecca West and Claudio Magris have been purchased. And any recommendations on the Ottomans or Prague magicians would be appreciated.
July 11, 2014
This book is a delight. It's billed as a "Personal History" of Habsburg Europe. The personal nature of the narrative makes it a bit more breezy, and allows Winder to skip over bits he doesn't feel like covering. The Author might claim that it is not serious history, but his treatment does a marvelous job of covering two aspects that would not have come across as well in a more traditional treatment.
Nationalism, which he describes as similar to the bubonic plague, Destroyed the 500 year old Habsburg empire. He uses the stories of just a few cities to describe the way that demographics, education, and the politics of the empire worked to create the "national problem" on the ground. By leaving out the exhaustive detail of more traditional accounts, he manages to tell the story more clearly. It certainly added to my understanding.
Every history that attempts to tell a story that crosses the gap of industrialization and mass literacy has problems. Our sense of what happened, or at least what we know happened before 1800 or so is much more focused on the doings of Kings, emperors and land-owning families. As we approach modern times, the mass public becomes more powerful and leaves a better record of its concerns. Most histories do one of these well. It is hard to get the two different types of story into a single narrative. Most histories treat one or the other as an after-thought. Not this one. Winder's "personal" approach does a very effective job of conveying the whole sweep of Habsburg history, from wacky emperors to the general public's nationalist yearnings. Quite an accomplishment. If you are at all interested in Central Europe or general European history it is definitely worth a read.
Nationalism, which he describes as similar to the bubonic plague, Destroyed the 500 year old Habsburg empire. He uses the stories of just a few cities to describe the way that demographics, education, and the politics of the empire worked to create the "national problem" on the ground. By leaving out the exhaustive detail of more traditional accounts, he manages to tell the story more clearly. It certainly added to my understanding.
Every history that attempts to tell a story that crosses the gap of industrialization and mass literacy has problems. Our sense of what happened, or at least what we know happened before 1800 or so is much more focused on the doings of Kings, emperors and land-owning families. As we approach modern times, the mass public becomes more powerful and leaves a better record of its concerns. Most histories do one of these well. It is hard to get the two different types of story into a single narrative. Most histories treat one or the other as an after-thought. Not this one. Winder's "personal" approach does a very effective job of conveying the whole sweep of Habsburg history, from wacky emperors to the general public's nationalist yearnings. Quite an accomplishment. If you are at all interested in Central Europe or general European history it is definitely worth a read.
November 29, 2020
So I read this book as part of a reading challenge - I had to find a book about Austria. I thought this book would be appropriate (and it was). Although it can't really be said that this book is about Austria per se, it is a worthy read. This book is really about the contradictory state that was the Habsburg Empire/Holy Roman Empire/Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Simon Winder presents a refreshing style of history writing. It doesn't come across as overly academic, although it must be said that Winder comes across as slightly insane (in a good way) at times. He has a sense of humour, and a history book with humour in it is a precious rarity.
An example: "Presumably the court humanists, rather than rolling their eyes and making farting noises with their cheeks, must have smiled at the Emperor’s perspicacity, bowed deeply and returned to their library to start all over again."
He is certainly passionate about Central Europe and its culture, arts, and music, and it is made apparent in his often baroque writing style when describing composers, paintings, and other usually ignored and atypical historical fare. I found myself constantly stopping and googling the things he was writing about, which was at first quite entertaining, and later, an irritating burden. I resigned myself to taking notes and promising myself I'd look into these interesting tidbits later (which realistically, I won't).
There were times where I was completely entranced by this book, and others where I couldn't bear to continue reading, but I believe that the incredible amount of relevant (and often funny) information in this book as well as the astronomical effort Winder put into it merits 5 stars.
And it only took me three and a half months to read.
Simon Winder presents a refreshing style of history writing. It doesn't come across as overly academic, although it must be said that Winder comes across as slightly insane (in a good way) at times. He has a sense of humour, and a history book with humour in it is a precious rarity.
An example: "Presumably the court humanists, rather than rolling their eyes and making farting noises with their cheeks, must have smiled at the Emperor’s perspicacity, bowed deeply and returned to their library to start all over again."
He is certainly passionate about Central Europe and its culture, arts, and music, and it is made apparent in his often baroque writing style when describing composers, paintings, and other usually ignored and atypical historical fare. I found myself constantly stopping and googling the things he was writing about, which was at first quite entertaining, and later, an irritating burden. I resigned myself to taking notes and promising myself I'd look into these interesting tidbits later (which realistically, I won't).
There were times where I was completely entranced by this book, and others where I couldn't bear to continue reading, but I believe that the incredible amount of relevant (and often funny) information in this book as well as the astronomical effort Winder put into it merits 5 stars.
And it only took me three and a half months to read.
June 22, 2015
Speaking of a little Alpine town which had changed hands several times, Winder writes:
"This new bilingualism has had a bizarre effect on the castle. In Italian it is called Castel Roncolo, which implies a pretty turfed courtyard with maidens in gauzy outfits skipping about to tambourines and lutes with weedy youths in coloured tights looking on. In German it is called Schloss Runkelstein, which implies a brandy-deranged old soldier-baron with a purple face and leg-iron lurching around darkened dank corridors, beating a servant to death with his crutch. Seeing the two names everywhere side by side is deeply confusing like having one eye always out of focus."
Or another time writing about Spilberk fortress in Brno, he notes:
"This odd place contains the mummified corpses of monks, laid out in rows, their heads resting on bricks, dressed in their habits and holding crucifixes, the whole place having an air of a deeply unsuccessful hospital."
Just two examples of a self confessed "personal history of Hapsburg Europe" by Simon Winder. I have never, in my several hundred book reviews on Goodreads, taken the time to type out a quote but here it seems important; if you laughed, as I did, then you will LOVE this book. If you find it shocking and not serious enough, this is not the book for you.
Winder's research and scope are beyond compare. Had a I read this book in high school, I might have seen the appeal of studying history. This was a thoroughly, highly entertaining and informative book. Five stars is not even close to what it deserves.
"This new bilingualism has had a bizarre effect on the castle. In Italian it is called Castel Roncolo, which implies a pretty turfed courtyard with maidens in gauzy outfits skipping about to tambourines and lutes with weedy youths in coloured tights looking on. In German it is called Schloss Runkelstein, which implies a brandy-deranged old soldier-baron with a purple face and leg-iron lurching around darkened dank corridors, beating a servant to death with his crutch. Seeing the two names everywhere side by side is deeply confusing like having one eye always out of focus."
Or another time writing about Spilberk fortress in Brno, he notes:
"This odd place contains the mummified corpses of monks, laid out in rows, their heads resting on bricks, dressed in their habits and holding crucifixes, the whole place having an air of a deeply unsuccessful hospital."
Just two examples of a self confessed "personal history of Hapsburg Europe" by Simon Winder. I have never, in my several hundred book reviews on Goodreads, taken the time to type out a quote but here it seems important; if you laughed, as I did, then you will LOVE this book. If you find it shocking and not serious enough, this is not the book for you.
Winder's research and scope are beyond compare. Had a I read this book in high school, I might have seen the appeal of studying history. This was a thoroughly, highly entertaining and informative book. Five stars is not even close to what it deserves.
April 16, 2024
I picked this up because I’ve been trying to read one history book a month, and I happened to scroll past a viral tumblr post with a quote from its introduction as I was figuring out which book that would be for April. Helpfully, there was no one ahead of me waiting for it in the library. A one-paragraph quotation and the book’s cover aside, I went it basically entirely blind. The book took a bit of adjusting to.
The book is a history of Central Europe through the lens of the Habsburg Dynasty, and it is a history of the Habsburg Dynasty through Winder’s extensive travelogue visiting every historical city and museum exhibit in the Danube basin. A roughly chronological sequence of events is followed (common and sometimes extensive tangents and diversions notwithstanding), but nearly every new section is introduced with an anecdote of visiting some town, castle or church that was relevant to the events about to be discussed, and a contemplation of its aesthetic significance to the modern traveller.
Meandering aside, the book does a good job of covering the broad sweep of a millennium of history and hits all the high points you expect it to (Charles V, Rudolph’s Prague, the 30 Years War, 1848, 1866, 1914, etc). The basic dynastic and political history is broken up and intermixed with a surprising amount of time dedicated to the cultural products of each era, which one does very much get the sense are what really fascinates Winder. The painters, composers and architects features get space that’s determined less by their general modern fame or contemporary significance and more because they happened to capture the author’s interest. I certainly came out of this with far more opinions about Vienna’s classical music output across the ages than I expected.
Winder’s voice is strong to the point of overpowering throughout. Which is quite deliberate I’m sure – this is a breezy read full of cute trivia, not a monograph – but even still, it sometimes gets a bit much. Instead of an academic lecture the effect is similar to listening to a guy whose perhaps not quite as insightful or interesting as he thinks he is hold forth over drinks in what only barely qualifies as a conversation. The effect is usually quite charming! But it does wear on you. It also makes getting particularly caught up on the precise accuracy of every bit of trivia feel kind of beside the point.
Winder is also a middle-class guy from southern England, which I might feel bad about saying ‘and you can tell’ if he didn’t bring it up himself quite so much. Anyway, knowing this makes the whole pitch of the book as ‘a walk through the age and region where all the slaving and massacres and depopulation and brutality we associate with Over There happened in Europe too” make so incredibly more sense. Even if it perhaps still shows an ever-so-slightly naive view of what preodern history also looked like in Western Europe.
Still, a significant portion of the book is dedicated to the sheer brutality of early modern religious warfare, both between the Ottomans and various Christian princes and coalitions, and between different sects of Christians. Winder thankfully has no taste at all for grand battles or heroic violence, and devotes as little wordcount to the various epoch-defining wars as he can get away with. He’s more interested in the consequences of them, the brutal and brutalizing violence that led to the depopulation and resettlement of what became the Hapsburg empire several times over across its history.
Which leads into the book’s other main theme. Winder is very much not a fan of nationalism, especially of the kind that made the region’s 20th century such an apocalypse. The book views it as an absurd horror in general, and even moreso in a region where every city and ‘national homeland’ was hopelessly intermixed, and every land continually resettled. The last chapters make the point that the ‘nationality’ of much of the population was, if not arbitrary, then certainly contingent, with massive amounts of assimiliation across national and ethnic lines happening quite late into the 19th century (and before that, historical nationality being more happenstance of language and religion that any primordial cultural essence). It is only as the Habsburg’s legitimizing mythology fell apart that nationalism became the only vital organizing force in the empire, and the grounds on which battle lines were drawn and spoils competed over.
The book does portray the whole latter 19th century as a dialectic between increasingly absurd and ineffectual but (and so) increasingly benign Hapsburg rule to the rising and inevitably exclusionary and vicious nationalisms that would tear it apart. The closest thing to the political left that makes a sustained appearance is Napoleon. Which is somewhat excusable in terms of what the post-Habsburg political situation did end up looking like, I suppose, but given the size and significance of the SPO it’s a bit of a gap. One more way the author shines through, I suppose.
The tragic epilogue is of course that Europe now is full of (more-or-less, if you squint) neat and semi-homogenus nation-states. Not because of any peaceful triumph of liberal nationalism and self-determination, but rather one outburst after another of apocalyptic violence, of emptied cities and gore-soaked fields. The book was written before both the current invasion of Ukraine and the most recent war in Gaza, but had either been ongoing they probably would have gotten referenced as further examples of the bloody logic of nation-building (Winder have basically categorized Zionism as the Jewish iteration of the general outburst of homeland-conquering nationalisms in later Austria-Hungary, with the Palestinians in the same unfortunate position as the inconveniently-non-Romanian Magyars in Transylvania.)
Anyway, overall a fairly charming read, and Winder’s steadfast belief that the only real justification for the Habsburg Dynasty is all the weird art they paid for is very endearing. But more entertaining than enlightening, I suppose? And if I hadn’t read it in small daily chunks Winder’s voice would have worn on me until I wanted to reach through the pages and pour a drink on him halfway through the second tangent about his family vacation in Paris.
The book is a history of Central Europe through the lens of the Habsburg Dynasty, and it is a history of the Habsburg Dynasty through Winder’s extensive travelogue visiting every historical city and museum exhibit in the Danube basin. A roughly chronological sequence of events is followed (common and sometimes extensive tangents and diversions notwithstanding), but nearly every new section is introduced with an anecdote of visiting some town, castle or church that was relevant to the events about to be discussed, and a contemplation of its aesthetic significance to the modern traveller.
Meandering aside, the book does a good job of covering the broad sweep of a millennium of history and hits all the high points you expect it to (Charles V, Rudolph’s Prague, the 30 Years War, 1848, 1866, 1914, etc). The basic dynastic and political history is broken up and intermixed with a surprising amount of time dedicated to the cultural products of each era, which one does very much get the sense are what really fascinates Winder. The painters, composers and architects features get space that’s determined less by their general modern fame or contemporary significance and more because they happened to capture the author’s interest. I certainly came out of this with far more opinions about Vienna’s classical music output across the ages than I expected.
Winder’s voice is strong to the point of overpowering throughout. Which is quite deliberate I’m sure – this is a breezy read full of cute trivia, not a monograph – but even still, it sometimes gets a bit much. Instead of an academic lecture the effect is similar to listening to a guy whose perhaps not quite as insightful or interesting as he thinks he is hold forth over drinks in what only barely qualifies as a conversation. The effect is usually quite charming! But it does wear on you. It also makes getting particularly caught up on the precise accuracy of every bit of trivia feel kind of beside the point.
Winder is also a middle-class guy from southern England, which I might feel bad about saying ‘and you can tell’ if he didn’t bring it up himself quite so much. Anyway, knowing this makes the whole pitch of the book as ‘a walk through the age and region where all the slaving and massacres and depopulation and brutality we associate with Over There happened in Europe too” make so incredibly more sense. Even if it perhaps still shows an ever-so-slightly naive view of what preodern history also looked like in Western Europe.
Still, a significant portion of the book is dedicated to the sheer brutality of early modern religious warfare, both between the Ottomans and various Christian princes and coalitions, and between different sects of Christians. Winder thankfully has no taste at all for grand battles or heroic violence, and devotes as little wordcount to the various epoch-defining wars as he can get away with. He’s more interested in the consequences of them, the brutal and brutalizing violence that led to the depopulation and resettlement of what became the Hapsburg empire several times over across its history.
Which leads into the book’s other main theme. Winder is very much not a fan of nationalism, especially of the kind that made the region’s 20th century such an apocalypse. The book views it as an absurd horror in general, and even moreso in a region where every city and ‘national homeland’ was hopelessly intermixed, and every land continually resettled. The last chapters make the point that the ‘nationality’ of much of the population was, if not arbitrary, then certainly contingent, with massive amounts of assimiliation across national and ethnic lines happening quite late into the 19th century (and before that, historical nationality being more happenstance of language and religion that any primordial cultural essence). It is only as the Habsburg’s legitimizing mythology fell apart that nationalism became the only vital organizing force in the empire, and the grounds on which battle lines were drawn and spoils competed over.
The book does portray the whole latter 19th century as a dialectic between increasingly absurd and ineffectual but (and so) increasingly benign Hapsburg rule to the rising and inevitably exclusionary and vicious nationalisms that would tear it apart. The closest thing to the political left that makes a sustained appearance is Napoleon. Which is somewhat excusable in terms of what the post-Habsburg political situation did end up looking like, I suppose, but given the size and significance of the SPO it’s a bit of a gap. One more way the author shines through, I suppose.
The tragic epilogue is of course that Europe now is full of (more-or-less, if you squint) neat and semi-homogenus nation-states. Not because of any peaceful triumph of liberal nationalism and self-determination, but rather one outburst after another of apocalyptic violence, of emptied cities and gore-soaked fields. The book was written before both the current invasion of Ukraine and the most recent war in Gaza, but had either been ongoing they probably would have gotten referenced as further examples of the bloody logic of nation-building (Winder have basically categorized Zionism as the Jewish iteration of the general outburst of homeland-conquering nationalisms in later Austria-Hungary, with the Palestinians in the same unfortunate position as the inconveniently-non-Romanian Magyars in Transylvania.)
Anyway, overall a fairly charming read, and Winder’s steadfast belief that the only real justification for the Habsburg Dynasty is all the weird art they paid for is very endearing. But more entertaining than enlightening, I suppose? And if I hadn’t read it in small daily chunks Winder’s voice would have worn on me until I wanted to reach through the pages and pour a drink on him halfway through the second tangent about his family vacation in Paris.
September 17, 2015
Gave it 2 stars because I technically didn't finish the book, and assume there may be information in the other half of it. Otherwise, this reads like the History of the Habsburgs as told by Steven Moffat. The author is way too full of his own personal sense of wit, which seems to be the only thing holding together a story that jumps from time period to time period like it has ADD. Coupled with the fact that the author seems to have a tremendous disdain for every member of the dynasty, I wonder why he wrote the book at all, and how on earth it ended up as well known as it is.
January 14, 2025
The author has an utterly charming personality and a great sense of humor. He does his absolute best to make Habsburg nonsense approachable, but Habsburg nonsense remains what it is and I had to stop 4/5ths of the way through because I just couldn't deal with learning about another ethnic group.
October 24, 2020
This reads like a travel guide written by a history professor. The focus in on Europe drained by the Danube river. The historical range covered in the book is on the order of a thousand years although there is more on the later Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg, and European political history up through the world wars - mostly WW1. Simon Winder writes in an easy and personal style and still manages to tie together hundreds of people and places so that one can place them in broader timelines. He seems to have forgotten more than most avid readers of European history know and the resulting book is filled with intriguing story lines, references to art and music to catch on visits, a building and architecture tour that seems fairly up to date, and lots and lots of cool trivia. The Hapsburgs come across as a bit strange and even goofy as dynasties go, Winder seems to have some residual affection for when they ran the show in Central Europe. This is because once they left the scene, they was nothing to hold the huge diversity of their realm together and linguistic nationalism was left to itself on stage to sort things out. That is what matters go bloody and continued bloody up through the 1990s and beyond. In his last chapters, Winder discusses how the various ethnic and religious divisions in the population of the Hapsburg lands were sorted out over the course of the first half of the 20th century. A focus point is Lviv, now in Ukraine, which had been under varied overlords after the Hapsburg, with dire results for those not part of the new dominant population. For an interesting comparison, readers could look at “East-West Street” by Philippe Sands, a 2016 book which focused on this city in the context of tracking down traces of long dead Jewish families destroyed there during the Hololcaust.
I read another of his books on Central Europe (Lotharingia) and this is of the same quality.
Since I cannot travel to Europe right now (and likely for a while given rising cases) I can at least read about it and get ready to visit once conditions improve. This book will be helpful in doing so.
I read another of his books on Central Europe (Lotharingia) and this is of the same quality.
Since I cannot travel to Europe right now (and likely for a while given rising cases) I can at least read about it and get ready to visit once conditions improve. This book will be helpful in doing so.
April 25, 2023
A winding history of the Habsburgs and their multi-ethnic centuries-spanning empire. A travelogue of tiny town museums and boggy battlefields and manor houses. A love letter to the great artists and musicians and architects of Central Europe. Winder, in a style which is somehow chummy, academic, and giddy all at once, takes us through one of the most complex and fascinating parts of Europe's infinitely variegated history. Skipping incestual family trees for descriptions of unique provincial churches, or bypassing the oft-heard sequence of events leading to WWI to speak about the magic of Béla Bartók's music, Danubia feels like being led around Europe by a rogue tour guide who realizes his group is already in the know and is craving more, but is also eager you leave the tour cleared of common misconceptions. If you don't mind the occasional overly long tangent about Hayden or Mahler or a medley of other composers (the author really loves classical music!), Danubia has a little something for everyone who has a deep interest in European history, culture, politics, and geography. Strongly recommend!
January 27, 2015
I never really thought much about Central Europe. It seemed fusty; it was where much of the Holocaust occurred; and my parents were interested in it. I read about Latin countries and I learned romance languages. My only interests in the Hapsburg empire were waltzing and Viennese coffee. Then the 2013 Smithsonian Folklife Festival's focus on Hungary made me think I may have been missing out.
Since I knew almost nothing about the Habsburg empire, this book gave me a good overview of Habsburg history, as well as a selection of cultural highlights. The author had several theses that made me think. Several of his arguments imply that what happened in Eastern Europe presaged the European experience in the Americas. He wonders if plagues decimated the Central European countryside, leading to seemingly unoccupied land. Habsburg encounters with Ottoman slavery and war practices may have influenced Spanish colonialism. His evidence made me very interested in the history of slavery in Europe.
He spends a significant amount of time documenting how European nationalism is based on a misunderstanding of European history. People try to claim how their "race" has ancient claims on their land. He shows how Eastern Europe was repeatedly emptied out and resettled, making many of these claims meaningless. Right now, the current cultural moment believes in authenticity. I finished the book wondering if American cultural festivals are just as "authentic" as much of what is presented in Europe. Lastly, he states that our current image of pre-war Vienna would have surprised American and British contemporaries. Vienna was viewed as stuffy and a cultural backwater. Anglo-saxon countries ignored the Empire.
For the first third of the book, I loved the author's informal style. After a while, it began to feel a bit self-indulgent. I think an editor could have focused the book a bit more clearly. Winder spends a lot of time talking about the various ethnicities of Eastern Europe, and he spends time on cities that became a part of Ukraine, but he does not mention Ukrainians. I would have removed some of the disparaging comparisons with Asia. I also feel that some of the author's arguments were unsupported. For example, was the Austro-Hungarian empire really militarily unprepared for WWI, or was it undermined by well-placed Russian spies? Was Franz Josef really as narrow-minded and dull as the author implies, or was he aware that any public comment or action could take on a life of its own? On the other hand, the digressions could be fascinating. I loved reading about the Uskoks about how they supposed used their victims blood in their bread. No wonder people were willing to believe what happened to Simonino.
After a while, I used this book more as a compendium of cultural recommendations. Towns to dream about, operas to listen to. I am inspired enough that I hope to check out the Spranger exhibit at the Met.
Since I knew almost nothing about the Habsburg empire, this book gave me a good overview of Habsburg history, as well as a selection of cultural highlights. The author had several theses that made me think. Several of his arguments imply that what happened in Eastern Europe presaged the European experience in the Americas. He wonders if plagues decimated the Central European countryside, leading to seemingly unoccupied land. Habsburg encounters with Ottoman slavery and war practices may have influenced Spanish colonialism. His evidence made me very interested in the history of slavery in Europe.
He spends a significant amount of time documenting how European nationalism is based on a misunderstanding of European history. People try to claim how their "race" has ancient claims on their land. He shows how Eastern Europe was repeatedly emptied out and resettled, making many of these claims meaningless. Right now, the current cultural moment believes in authenticity. I finished the book wondering if American cultural festivals are just as "authentic" as much of what is presented in Europe. Lastly, he states that our current image of pre-war Vienna would have surprised American and British contemporaries. Vienna was viewed as stuffy and a cultural backwater. Anglo-saxon countries ignored the Empire.
For the first third of the book, I loved the author's informal style. After a while, it began to feel a bit self-indulgent. I think an editor could have focused the book a bit more clearly. Winder spends a lot of time talking about the various ethnicities of Eastern Europe, and he spends time on cities that became a part of Ukraine, but he does not mention Ukrainians. I would have removed some of the disparaging comparisons with Asia. I also feel that some of the author's arguments were unsupported. For example, was the Austro-Hungarian empire really militarily unprepared for WWI, or was it undermined by well-placed Russian spies? Was Franz Josef really as narrow-minded and dull as the author implies, or was he aware that any public comment or action could take on a life of its own? On the other hand, the digressions could be fascinating. I loved reading about the Uskoks about how they supposed used their victims blood in their bread. No wonder people were willing to believe what happened to Simonino.
After a while, I used this book more as a compendium of cultural recommendations. Towns to dream about, operas to listen to. I am inspired enough that I hope to check out the Spranger exhibit at the Met.
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