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All for Love
A brilliant reconstruction of the operatic--and catastrophic--romance of a Hapsburg princess and a lowly cavalryman
It was a great European scandal: she was the wife of a prince, the daughter of King Leopold II of the Belgians, and a familiar figure in the court of the aged emperor Franz Joseph. Her lover was Second Lieutenant Géza Mattachich. Ten years younger than the princess, a dashing figure in his fitted tunic and shiny boots, he was an undistinguished subaltern of dubious origin and extravagant ambition. Ahead of them both lay assignations, adultery, flight, the squandering of a fortune (not his; not hers either, as things worked out), a duel, imprisonment, bankruptcy, madness. And, as well, a genuine heroine--in the form of canteen worker Maria Stöger--who was no less ready than the princess and her soldier to risk all for love.
With sparkling, satirical prose, All for Love moves from one end of pre-World War I Europe to the other. Shuttling between historical fact and fiction, between their time and ours, it evokes a world in which propriety conceals what is predatory, greedy, and corrupt. Long forgotten, Louise and Mattachich have been resurrected and placed, along with their few friends and many enemies, at the center of a drama that is both extravagant and profound.
It was a great European scandal: she was the wife of a prince, the daughter of King Leopold II of the Belgians, and a familiar figure in the court of the aged emperor Franz Joseph. Her lover was Second Lieutenant Géza Mattachich. Ten years younger than the princess, a dashing figure in his fitted tunic and shiny boots, he was an undistinguished subaltern of dubious origin and extravagant ambition. Ahead of them both lay assignations, adultery, flight, the squandering of a fortune (not his; not hers either, as things worked out), a duel, imprisonment, bankruptcy, madness. And, as well, a genuine heroine--in the form of canteen worker Maria Stöger--who was no less ready than the princess and her soldier to risk all for love.
With sparkling, satirical prose, All for Love moves from one end of pre-World War I Europe to the other. Shuttling between historical fact and fiction, between their time and ours, it evokes a world in which propriety conceals what is predatory, greedy, and corrupt. Long forgotten, Louise and Mattachich have been resurrected and placed, along with their few friends and many enemies, at the center of a drama that is both extravagant and profound.
273 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
2 people are currently reading
170 people want to read
About the author
Dan Jacobson
81 books7 followersDan Jacobson (born March 7, 1929 in Johannesburg, South Africa) is a novelist, short story writer, critic and essayist. He has lived in Great Britain for most of his adult life, and for many years held a professorship in the English Department at University College London. He has also spent periods as a visiting writer or a guest-professor at universities in the United States, Australia, and South Africa, and has given lectures and readings in many other countries.
His early novels, including The Trap, his first published novel, focus on South African themes. His later works have been various in kind: they include works of fantasy and fictional treatments of historical episodes, as well as memoirs, critical essays, and travel books. Among the awards and prizes he has received are the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 1959 (A Long Way from London and Other Stories); Somerset Maugham Award 1964 (Time of Arrival and Other Essays); The Jewish Chronicle Award 1977 (The Confessions of Josef Baisz); the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography 1986 (Time and Time Again). In the year 2000 he edited and translated from the Dutch Een mond vol Glas by Henk van Woerden, an imaginative re-creation of the circumstances leading to the assassination of a South African president, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, in the country's House of Assembly.
Dan Jacobson has received an Honorary D. Litt. from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and on retirement from his position at University College London was elected a Fellow of the college. Collections of his papers can be found at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austen, Texas; Oxford University, England; and, in South Africa, at Witwatersrand University Library, Johannesburg, the National English Literary Museum, Grahamstown, and the Africana Museum, Kimberley.
His early novels, including The Trap, his first published novel, focus on South African themes. His later works have been various in kind: they include works of fantasy and fictional treatments of historical episodes, as well as memoirs, critical essays, and travel books. Among the awards and prizes he has received are the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 1959 (A Long Way from London and Other Stories); Somerset Maugham Award 1964 (Time of Arrival and Other Essays); The Jewish Chronicle Award 1977 (The Confessions of Josef Baisz); the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography 1986 (Time and Time Again). In the year 2000 he edited and translated from the Dutch Een mond vol Glas by Henk van Woerden, an imaginative re-creation of the circumstances leading to the assassination of a South African president, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, in the country's House of Assembly.
Dan Jacobson has received an Honorary D. Litt. from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and on retirement from his position at University College London was elected a Fellow of the college. Collections of his papers can be found at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austen, Texas; Oxford University, England; and, in South Africa, at Witwatersrand University Library, Johannesburg, the National English Literary Museum, Grahamstown, and the Africana Museum, Kimberley.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 20, 2023
"It was a great European scandal: she was the wife of a prince, the daughter of King Leopold II of the Belgians, and a familiar figure in the court of the aged emperor Franz Joseph. Her lover was Second Lieutenant Géza Mattachich. Ten years younger than the princess, a dashing figure in his fitted tunic and shiny boots, he was an undistinguished subaltern of dubious origin and extravagant ambition. Ahead of them both lay assignations, adultery, flight, the squandering of a fortune (not his; not hers either, as things worked out), a duel, imprisonment, bankruptcy, madness. And, as well, a genuine heroine--in the form of canteen worker Maria Stöger--who was no less ready than the princess and her soldier to risk all for love.
"With sparkling, satirical prose, All for Love moves from one end of pre-World War I Europe to the other. Shuttling between historical fact and fiction, between their time and ours, it evokes a world in which propriety conceals what is predatory, greedy, and corrupt. Long forgotten, Louise and Mattachich have been resurrected and placed, along with their few friends and many enemies, at the centre of a drama that is both extravagant and profound." (From the back cover of the 2007 paperback editions of 'All for Love''
While the above description provides enough information on what the book is about it utterly fails to indicate what Dan Jacobson has created, not an account of a long ago scandal but a literary examination of the evidence of the sandal - the memoirs of the participants and other historical documents to create their tale as fiction - I would compare what he has done to the many historical works of Thomas Keneally (but with the enormous caveat that Jacobson is a writer of infinitely greater magic) and to Javier Cercas in the way he uses the past illuminate the present and fiction to bring out the reality of the past.
This is a wonderful, captivating read and is a monument to the imaginative strengths of a truly amazing writer. This is the first work by Jacobson I have read, indeed I must be honest and say I did not of Jacobson when I picked this up. But now he is an author whose works I am seeking out with a vengeance. This may be the first of his books I review but it won't be the last.
"With sparkling, satirical prose, All for Love moves from one end of pre-World War I Europe to the other. Shuttling between historical fact and fiction, between their time and ours, it evokes a world in which propriety conceals what is predatory, greedy, and corrupt. Long forgotten, Louise and Mattachich have been resurrected and placed, along with their few friends and many enemies, at the centre of a drama that is both extravagant and profound." (From the back cover of the 2007 paperback editions of 'All for Love''
While the above description provides enough information on what the book is about it utterly fails to indicate what Dan Jacobson has created, not an account of a long ago scandal but a literary examination of the evidence of the sandal - the memoirs of the participants and other historical documents to create their tale as fiction - I would compare what he has done to the many historical works of Thomas Keneally (but with the enormous caveat that Jacobson is a writer of infinitely greater magic) and to Javier Cercas in the way he uses the past illuminate the present and fiction to bring out the reality of the past.
This is a wonderful, captivating read and is a monument to the imaginative strengths of a truly amazing writer. This is the first work by Jacobson I have read, indeed I must be honest and say I did not of Jacobson when I picked this up. But now he is an author whose works I am seeking out with a vengeance. This may be the first of his books I review but it won't be the last.
November 1, 2020
Good historical fiction can make you interested in the mostly unlikely and unappealing characters. This is the case here with Dan Jacobson lifting back out of obscurity a sex scandal involving Princess Louise, the eldest daughter of the infamous King Leopold II. In her early 40s, Louise fell for Mattachich, a mediocre Croatian lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian army. Louise had never loved her husband, Prince Philipp of Saxe-Coburg, and wasn't particularly close to her 2 children by him. She was so bored and so convinced that she could get away with anything that instead of enjoying her little liaison quietly, she flaunted it and was promptly expelled of Vienna by Emperor Franz Joseph. For a few heady months, she whirled through Paris and other fashionable spots with her hussar in tow, but adulterous sex was not enough of an aphrodisiac: she also went on a shopping spree to make Kim Kardashian green with envy, so sure was she that her father and/or her husband would always foot the bill. When some bankers grew alarmed, Géza Mattachich forged Louise's sister's signature to obtain yet more credit. Eventually Prince Philipp announced that he wouldn't fork out another pfennig, and the carnival stopped. Eventually Franz Joseph and Prince Philipp colluded to have Mattachich thrown in gaol and Princess Louise decorously put away in an insane asylum. The most fascinating chapter of this sordid saga is yet to come: a disaffected wife from a working class background fell in love with Mattachich through reading about him in the newspapers, got herself hired at the military prison where he was kept, bore him a son, and managed to get some opponents to Franz Joseph to campaign for the release of the poor soldier whose summary trial had not followed proper forms. Once Mattachich and Maria Stöger were free to live together, all should have been well, except it wasn't. They quickly grew bored with each other, and felt that it was necessary for the Mattachich myth to remain intact that they liberate Princess Louise. Which they did. For a while afterwards the threesome lived together, then Maria moved on with her life and Princess Louise went on to spend in excess of her means just as before. Jacobson based this account on the memoirs Mattachich published in German in 1904, and the autobiography Princess Louise published in French in 1921. Needless to say, both books distort the facts and depict the writer as both hero and victim. Both Mattachich and Louise had vested interest in appearing as pure, selfless lovers set upon by a cruel world. Maria's role emerged only in a biographical study of Louise published in 1991. Jacobson's enthusiasm for this tawdry romance is infectious. That Louise is an even more pathetic example of self-delusion and entitlement than Princess Diana gives added piquancy to the tale, although Jacobson is too subtle to make any explicit allusions. I do agree with the reviewers who labelled this a page-turner when it first came out, and can't account for the neglect this shrew and witty historical novel has fallen into since then.
July 6, 2011
Stopped reading about halfway. Quite interesting story though, but written in tabloid/gossip magazine style which was very tiring.
July 24, 2023
Based on a true story, All for Love sits uncomfortably between novel and historical account. It has too much fictionalised content to be a history but doesn't work as a novel because its protagonists don't live as real people, just examples of an argument. Jacobson was bullied as a child and, to his credit, channelled that experience into a lifelong determination to challenge similar behaviour and champion the underdog both politically and personally. There lies the strength of the book. Our lovers, the spoiled and spendthrift daughter of infamous King Leopold of Belgium, unhappily married off to an equally odious and stuffy Hapsburg and a Croatian army officer with big ambitions and philandering ways bite their thumbs at the establishment and setting off on a fraudulent spending spree around Europe's pleasure domes. When their financial misconduct and become a major pain in the neck for the powers that be, revenge is swift and brutal. She is consigned to a lunatic asylum, he to a prison with provisos for periodic and systematic ill treatment to boot. By the end of the book, any reader with a heart cannot fail to be outraged by this barbarous treatment. Thus, we sympathise readily with two very unsympathetic characters. AfL cannot completely succeed as a work of fiction however without some attempt to round our victims out as living breathing people.
January 21, 2026
I had high hopes for this novel. I was sadly disappointed. It was not a compelling read in the least. It felt like required reading for a history course. No thanks.
I should probably read the memoirs that it's based on, they're probably more interesting.
I should probably read the memoirs that it's based on, they're probably more interesting.
February 6, 2014
I'm really sorry for what I am about to do, I am not the typical hormonal reader who appreciates trolling authors whenever some novel upsets her (and yet, here we are).
However, how can I help myself from advertising you naïve folks who, just like me, would buy this expensive piece of scroll longing for a Time Travel to early 1900's European 'Belle Époque' against doing so. This novel is so, SO BADLY WRITTEN one cannot read more than 50 pages on a flow. Its style is greasy, heavy and there are so many notes to be checked out (mostly containing excerpts of the published diaries of the characters) the reader often feels like getting lost on a labyrinth - and not a good one, such as those Borges spots us in.
I would have been able to put everything aside, seize the tangled plot and focus on the Historical immersion IF ONLY there wasn't such an annoying narrator pausing the descriptions and impressions of the characters in order to make a list of all stuff unavaliable in those times: coffee machines, eletric showers, planes, K-47s (!!!!!).
So, no, no, no. It was useful only to grab the notes and order the respective journals of the Royals as my next reads. An excellent transgressive love affair gone to waste by an unskilled narrator, what a sham(e). Wikipedia was able to provide me a better plot. Thanks a lot, anyway.
However, how can I help myself from advertising you naïve folks who, just like me, would buy this expensive piece of scroll longing for a Time Travel to early 1900's European 'Belle Époque' against doing so. This novel is so, SO BADLY WRITTEN one cannot read more than 50 pages on a flow. Its style is greasy, heavy and there are so many notes to be checked out (mostly containing excerpts of the published diaries of the characters) the reader often feels like getting lost on a labyrinth - and not a good one, such as those Borges spots us in.
I would have been able to put everything aside, seize the tangled plot and focus on the Historical immersion IF ONLY there wasn't such an annoying narrator pausing the descriptions and impressions of the characters in order to make a list of all stuff unavaliable in those times: coffee machines, eletric showers, planes, K-47s (!!!!!).
So, no, no, no. It was useful only to grab the notes and order the respective journals of the Royals as my next reads. An excellent transgressive love affair gone to waste by an unskilled narrator, what a sham(e). Wikipedia was able to provide me a better plot. Thanks a lot, anyway.
March 21, 2015
Not something I would normally choose to read - I was given this book. It is a novel that is about a fascinating historical situation, a married Belgium Princess of the Hapsburg court succumbing to the charms of a commoner and abandoning her position for him. Basically it's a historical biography based on real events with the details reimagined. So it is a fiction work that reads quite like a biography, quite unusual. The historical context is interesting but I found that it felt quite distanced from the actual emotion of their lives, it had an analytical approach rather than an immersive approach. It may have been more compelling written in the first person from the perspective of the 'lovers' and treated more as fiction rather than trying to stay true to all the facts.
June 7, 2015
A novel based on the liaison of Louise, daughter of King Leopoldo II of Belgium, married to a prince and Geza Mattachich, a soldier. The novel read like a soap opera. These two people had no clue about money and common sense. They did whatever they wanted without thinking there could be consequences. A fun read but not a must.
August 19, 2021
Read it today and I felt that its a good story, but it could be better.
September 10, 2015
Very interesting story about Princess Louise of Belgium's love affair with Count Geza Mattachich.
I enjoyed parts of this book but found it difficult to get into.
I enjoyed parts of this book but found it difficult to get into.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews