Austria Hungary Quotes

“My homeland,' says the guest, 'no longer exists. My homeland was Poland, Vienna, this house, the barracks in the city, Galicia, and Chopin. What’s left? Whatever mysterious substance held it all together no longer works. Everything’s come apart. My homeland was a feeling, and that feeling was mortally wounded. When that happens, the only thing to do is go away.”
― Sándor Márai, Embers

“The struggle had been a people's war. The suffering and sacrifice had been immense. Those who survived the ordeal were left with the question of what it had all been for.”
― Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I

“As the nineteenth century progressed, Austria-Hungary took refuge in reaction at home and adventurism abroad in an effort to contain the centrifugal forces which eventually blew it, and much of Europe, apart. Austria, and Vienna in particular, was the real home of Central-European anti-semitism. Jews wew bottom of the pile. No matter how low you sank, the Jews were still below you, along with the gypsies. At the tail-end of the nineteenth century, the Viennese politician Karl Lueger founded his power base on an anti-semitic platform. Stories of ritual murder by Jewish cabals featured regularly in the Viennese gutter press. It is no accident that Schickelgruber, the faied artist who became Hitler, should have neen the son of a petty official and have spent his ambitions at the butt end of Viennese snobbery.”
― Walter Perrie, Roads That Move: A Journey through Eastern Europe

“The Uskoks – like reformed alcoholics brought face to face with row upon row of brightly coloured liqueur miniatures – were simply unable to avoid helping themselves to passing Venetian Christian ships.”
― Simon Winder, Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe

“In vielen österreichischen Einheiten sprachen Offiziere und Mannschaften unterschiedliche Sprachen. So berichtete der Stabschef des österreichischen I. Korps bei der Schlacht von Münchengrätz, dass das gemischte polnische und ukrainische 30. Regiment tapfer bis zum Einbruch der Dämmerung gekämpft habe, die Männer dann aber nicht mehr in das Lage gewesen seien, die pantomimisch erteilten Anweisungen ihrer Offiziere zu erkennen.”
― Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947