Austria and Russia - the fall of dynasties # 2024

Austria and Russia – this relationship is historically more complex than is generally believed. In the revolution of 1848, the Habsburgs only managed to put down the Hungarian rebels with Russian military help. At the Vienna World Exhibition in 1873, the Austrian and German emperors as well as the Russian tsar reaffirmed their unbreakable solidarity at the meeting of the three emperors. All three saw each other as logical partners at the time. However, it soon became apparent that this alliance depended on individual people. With a change of power in Russia, the wind changed and the conflict began that Europe would then run into in the First World War. In the end, it was not so much the strategic differences between the individual powers that determined the course of history, but the rejection of the monarchies by their own subordinates. In Switzerland, the German army command put Vladimir Ilyich Lenin on a train to Russia in order to destabilize the tsarist empire through the communist revolution. However, Emperor Charles's prediction that this revolution would come back to haunt them all proved true.

The Erbe Österreich new production explores the causes of the fall of Europe's dynasties and tells the story from the perspective of the Austrian ambassador in Russia and the Russian ambassador in Vienna.