We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Jashnski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts as well. Today,
I'm excited to be joined by Edward Habsburg. He is Hungry as ambassador to
the Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta. His family reigned in Austria,
Hungary, Germany, Spain and some other places as well. You probably
know that by the name Edward. Thank you so much for joining us.
Emily, thank you very much for having me on your show. So you
are out with a new book, and it's called the Habsburg Way, Seven
Rules for Turbulent Times. I want to talk all about the book before we
dive in. Why don't you just start by giving us a little bit of
history on yourself and maybe a little bit of history on your family for people
who aren't familiar. Well, I'm the Hungarian ambassador to the Holy See right
now. I wasn't always a diplomat. I was many different things before I've
written novels. I've produced animated cartoons. At some point, I wrote on
Thomas Aquinas, and I worked for TV. I worked on a TV show,
And so you see, I'm not your typical diplomat. In fact,
I think I'm one of the only diplomats are alt the Holy See who has
already written a treatment for a zombie movie. Apart from that, I am
very happily married since twenty seven years and have six children and the first grandchild
is set to arrive and of May. And yes, I'm a Habsburg from
the Garian branch of the Habsburgs. The Habsburg family ruled Europe for about a
large parts of Europe and sometimes the world for about eight hundred years, and
we're about four hundred right now. But over the centuries, of course,
there were thousands of Habsburgs that lived, had children and family and died.
And yes, and my book is trying to to tell the story of my
family, but not simply a family history, but to take a look at
what were the central values, the central principles of my family, and why
might it be useful to take a look at them in our world of today.
As you sort of looked back on your family's history. With this particular
project as your lens, you're trying to compile rules guidance for life from the
all of that background. Is there anything that surprised you? Are there any?
Did you find any lessons maybe you didn't expect to find as you look
back. I think what surprised me most were the many points in common with
the United States. I would have never thought that there could be bridges built
between an old dynasty of Europe and the United States. And I mean,
I wrote this book for readers in the United States, for Sofia Press.
But why going about it? I realized that the basic principle of what the
Habsburg Empire and the Holy Roman Empire stood for and what the United States stand
for are very similar. You have a great respect for the lower levels.
The United States are built from the grassroots up from the home, the township,
the county, the state, and the federal elements should be less than
that, because you're built from down up. And this sounds exactly like like
the like the definition of how to be a good emperor that Emperor Charles the
fifth gave his son Philip the second. He said to him, if you
rule over several countries. You have to respect their languages, their habits,
their rights, their different attitudes, and if you don't do that, you're
in a hell of a lot of trouble. And this is what Habsburg Empire
and also the Austrian and Garian Empire that we're built upon, a juggling,
are balancing and a respecting of different nationalities under one roof. And that that
surprised me. I was surprised about the many points of contact. I suppose
you don't know that the first governor of Texas was put there by the Spanish
Habsburgs, and that I would consider a few states in the United States all
have some territories, so it's some fascinating history, to be sure. And
in fact, you know, maybe this is a question I'm just thinking of.
Actually, are there times you stumble upon new information about the Habsburg history
even now, despite all of your years already of course studying your own background.
Yes, absolutely, I stumble upon it on Twitter. You know,
if you are on Twitter right now and you you would follow me, you
would see that I have a Habsburg World Championship running right now leading up to
the publishing of my book. And it's so interesting. The feedback you get,
you know, I throw out there for you know, four Habsburgs per
round, and you can you can vote for two of the two of them
make it to the next round. And then I get feedback in the commons.
And for instance, Charles Cologne who gave told me that the Leopoldina,
who was a Habsburger who went to Brazil and became empress there in the nineteenth
century, and it's a great hero in Brazil nowadays. Leopoldina inspired the foundation
of the so called Leopoldina Foundation, through which the Habsburg emperors pumped millions into
the church in the United States. I had no idea of that, and
I learned that via Twitter from a reaction, so that happens all the time.
I learned. It's a big history, and I'm surprised at what members
of my family are finding love out there. And yeah, so that's that's
why I enjoy this Twitter contest right now that we have. It's like it's
much madness. But with the Habsburg everybody says, what's this much madness that
every he mentions all the time, I've never heard of it is that the
NCAA College basketball tournament schools from all over the country compete, and it's a
very interesting process because you'll have really you know, low ranked schools making runs
at the championship. So it's it's a thing that everyone in the United States
goes a little mad about every March. Now I get it. That's several
people wrote that much Madness thing to me, Emily, and I had no
idea what they were talking about. Now I know it, Thank you very
much. It's very funny that you're running this tournament in March, because all
kinds of people run different tournaments in March to play on the March Madness thing.
So you had perfect timing and didn't even realize it. Well, I
had to run it in much because the book comes out in April and in
this tournament is sent to run for about a month. So yeah, I'm
building the hype, but most of all, I'm I'm meeting many, many
people who seem to know and love the Habsburgs. Yeah. I believe that
Twitter is It's an interesting place. You know, it has so much bad
but also so much good. And as we talked about all the bat it's
always easy to overlook some of the good. What made you want to get
on Twitter in the first place. How long have you had Twitter? You're
a pretty prolific user of it. What do you like about Twitter? This
is a conversation of several hours. Don't please, don't give me a soap
to stand on, but I love Twitter. I see Twitter as something enormously
positive. What I like most about it is that you are always at the
pulse of things happening. When something happens, If something happens, Twitter is
the place where you can follow it most closely when you get the first tremas.
That's one thing what I love about Twitter is that you can interact.
I still I only have fifty eight thousand follow us. I'm still at the
point where I can react to almost everything that people write back, and can
react to direct messages. And I love this because you will only have Twitter
followers if you interact, if you react, if you if you engage in
discussions about what you wrote. And what I also love is that you know
I'm a diplomat. I'm a diplomat and I always try to be nice to
everybody, so most people would usually what I get as a moniker for my
for my Twitter account is wholesome. I'm really very, very wholesome all the
time, which is a bit of a of a difficult thing if people say
that you're an inbred moron, or those pictures of the Habsburg John which the
Americans seem to be absolutely fascinated and and and then then to react in a
good way, and I usually always managed to do so is yes, that's
something and there since about I think fourteen years, I took Twitter. When
I became I forgot to say that I was for five years I was a
spokesman media responsible of bishop in Austria, of a Catholic bishop. And when
I became that, I realized I have to interact with media, and most
journalists in Austria were on Twitter. So I took a Twitter account and I
began interacting and I love it. I love it. It's not a very
typical way of acting on Twitter. Most other ambassador's post pictures of their meetings
and lots of hashtags or statements of their government. And what I do is
wild and wooly. I you know, some some families, some faith,
some hungary, some Godzilla movies, and people seem to like the mix.
The Washdoto Wahtreet podcast with Chris Murkowski every day, Chris helps unpack the connection
between politics and the economy and how it affects your wild It's time to see
the forest through the trees. After the mainstream media's NonStop coverage of the Trump
indictment, his twenty twenty four poles continue to surge. Do Democrats in the
mainstream media actually want Trump to get the nomination just so he would lose?
Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.
Be informed. Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris mccaski
on Apples, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts right. And you
know a lot of this book. It's funny you mentioned that people are sending
the pictures of you that Americans are obsessed with the abstruct jaw, because the
book is so interesting when you look at the lessons that you pull out from
your family's history, talking about marriage, even talking about death, and in
ways that have become almost outmoded in today's hypermodern society. And I guess I
wonder when you're looking back. First of all, I was going to make
a joke because I'm an American that is similarly obsessed with the jaw. Um,
I guess I wouldn't say obsessed, but I was going to make a
joke about how I find it. It's rather amusing that the book is giving
marriage advice from the Habsburgs, because that's you know, going to the jaw
part of the part of the part of the joke, of course, but
you got it all the time, I'm sure. But on that note,
when you're looking at a time period that people today will tarnish as as one
that was um, sexist, misogynistic, or they'll use any word you know
that that says we're basically come past that, we've progressed, advanced past that
stage in human society evolved. Um. Was it difficult to write advice drawing
on this time period, Um, these sort of tested values like marrying young,
having lots of children, etc. And explain them to a modern audience.
Well, no, of course, because I'm a Habsburg. I also
have the advantage of being the Hungarian ambassador to the Holy See, and you
expect me to be a conservative because I'm the Hungarian ambassador. So you know
it's I don't have anything to lose to begin with. No, I think
I mean, you can feel that when you read my book, I suppose
you saw it. I think we're a bit lost. I think humanity has
gone a bit astray. We've lost we've lost touch with our base, where
we come from, what we are. People are not happier than they were
in the past. I believe I stayed that several times in my book.
And I have to say, Michael Knowles said that I redeemed the Sales help
Book, which is very, very funny. I never set out to do
that, but what I what I found. What I found out is that
these very you can say, reactionary values, they worked for a reason,
and they led to many, many, many people having normal, happy life,
happy families, a life where they knew where they stood, they knew
where up and down was. And we are living in a time where everything
that was right four years ago is already long past Neanderthal Middle Ages. And
this can't be right. I mean, for the last twenty thousand years,
the elders were respected and history was being seen as something important. And suddenly,
since a few years we are the crown of evolution of science of humanity.
Humanity was never as fantastic as it is today until in a year when
we will look back and say, how could they have been so incredibly primitive
one year ago? And if you see that, then you realize that perhaps
it was not so wrong the way we did it before. Because this is
total madness we're living. We're living in, as somebody once said, in
a wilderness of mirrors, it's it's it's crazy. And that's why I think
that people will sit down the book and put their prejudice aside for a second
and just read and see what I propose. Might just say, well,
that doesn't sound that stupid, but you're right the first reaction of many people
out there. I'm looking forward for the reviews from the German speaking world of
from Europe right now. They're going to be furious, most bold that I
praise the HAPs books to the sky and and and also you know America,
America has built on the myth of fighting tyrants and an aristocracy. I think
that's the reason why they always try to send me the weirdest pictures of HAPs
books from the sixteenth century, because that seems to prove the point. Those
people with a huge jaw must have been total, absolute dunderheads, and they
weren't. Charles the Fifth before he met the French. The French king wrote
to him and said, by the way, when we meet, it's true
that I have a huge jaw and that my mouth always stands open, but
it doesn't stand open to bite. And he was he was one of the
most intelligent people of his time, Charles the fifth. So just don't just
look at the jaws. And another thing that I also found out while I
wrote this book, several things I found out just to grab the thing by
the jaw, is that the hapsbook jaw is not a result of inbreeding.
Oh now, will this will shock quite a lot of people, but coming
on the result and everybody can find out for themselves. It's like, you
know, I love to point out to people who say that the Church thought
that the earth was flat in the Middle Ages. I said, you just
grabbed Thomas Aquinas, summatiolo gear. You go to the first question, you
open the first question, you go to the third article, and you can
find out for yourself that Thomas Aquinas says that the earth is round in the
Middle Ages the Church. And the same thing goes for the Habsburg jaw.
If you think that it's a result of you know, cross marrying between the
Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs, as most people probably think. Then just go
and look at the portraits of Emperor Maximilian, who lived seventy years before the
reading or the inter marrying began, and he and all his children have that
already. So this is something that came from a Polish princess that married into
the family two generations before, before all the intermarrying began. So while the
intermarrying may have you know, prolonged, it never caused it. So there's
another mission. And you blamed the Poles. No no, no, no,
no no, I'm not even sure if she's Polish, but her name
is tim Burguese of something, and she was the grandmother of Maximilian, and
they say it comes from her. And the worst part is, perhaps book
George jeans are still in our in our DNA, and they might pop out
again one day if we marry the wrong person. Right. Oh, it's
recessive, I see, um, you know, that's that's all very interesting.
It's true that in America we have a healthy sort of disdain or prejudice
against aristocracy, especially from that era. But this book is to your point
about Michael's comment, very much self help very much about personal decisions and choice,
and obviously that bleeds into a societal critique as well, that we could
all be better served if we, for instance, prioritized marriage, prioritized children,
prioritized faith. I want to ask why you started with marriage. We
talk about marriage a lot on the show. We talk about the importance of
marriage a lot on the show. From your perspective, as you're looking back
at the lessons of your family and of the society, they oversaw why I
start with marriage? Why is it the building block that you lay, that
sort of cornerstone you lay first and work from for the rest of the book.
That's a very very intelligent question. You noticed that, right, Well,
I uh, my instinct, of course would have been to begin with
Catholic, but I don't only write for Catholic readers. A B. Marriage
is with my faith the strongest experience of my life. And see if I
would make a polem among historians and about European everybody, what are the HAPs
books known for except for that jaw I would I would probably hear the world
marriage politics. So I thought, to understand the absperts, you have to
begin with a topic of marriage. And why did they do marriage politics.
And my point in the book is that they had no choice when they when
they When the first habsperg Count Rudolph in twelve seventy three, became a member
of the Holy Roman Empire, he didn't become emperor of you know, of
a nation that could greedily attack other nations and enlarge itself, but of an
incredibly complex mix of countries, princes, laws and other things that had to
be constantly balanced. It's like chess on throw three D and you cannot go
hard on that. You have to be a diplomat. You have to be
international, you have to work on alliances, and the best way to do
so without shedding blood is always by marriage. So even the first Habsburg,
as an old Roman empire, already massively made peace and made alliances by marriage,
and that was just a normal way, and that shaped our DNA for
centuries. And that's why I think that it's absolutely right to begin with that
point. And then of course you see that two chapters on the Habsburgs and
their faith and Catholic faith in the Habsburg family, because I believe that the
Habsburgs as a Catholic family still has to be written and I sort of laid
the groundwork for that with these two chapters. And I had very strong feelings
about about the kind of Catholicism that different Habsburgs lived or didn't live. As
you can tell when you read the book, you tell us more about that
if you if you can flash out that point, it's an interesting one and
definitely a feature of the book. But when you say that, especially for
nine Catholics, what do you mean? Yes, Well, at the beginning
of the chapter on Habsburgs and their faith, I sort of I asked,
I ask pardon of my non Catholic readers for my enthusiasm for some of the
measures that Hapsburg emperors took, which sometimes were rather harsh to non Catholics in
their in their empire apology accepted, Yes, But what what what my feeling
is is that we have grown used to, perhaps not during the States,
but in Europe. We've grown used to the idea that freedom of religion means
freedom freedom of freedom from religion, and that basically religion should not appear in
the public space. And the politician is a good politician if he's totally neutral
in his in his opinions and his faith and in everything. If best that
you don't see his faith, you don't see what he believes in, because
that's a private thing. And the Hapsburg system was, of course totally different.
Perhapsburgs lived their faith, and the court followed, and the public nation
followed, and you expected to know what your emperor stood for. And my
theory is that if I know what somebody's faith is as the political leader,
then I can know what I can hold him accountable to, and then I
know. This is my sort of that's the joker. The joker point is
that if somebody believes in God, then he believes that he will one day
be accountable in front of the judgment of God for what he's doing. And
perhaps you will be less tempted to cut corners, to be corrupt, and
to do horrible things. At least that's my opinion. Somebody who really lives
their faith will think twice before they do something bad. At least that's my
experience, and the has live that in my opinion to the full. I
mean, I give very strong examples. Leopold the First, who was the
Baroque Habsburg Catholic emperor. The whole year consisted of procession, pilgrimages, Holy
Masters, and so much that the French ambassador at some point complains in the
letter homes thing, uh, from from Palm Sunday to end of Easter,
I've been hundred hours on my knees. And we ambassadors to the Holy seek
and sometimes feel with him because we spend lots of time on our knees as
ambassadors, because we go to Mass all the times, it's part of our
job. But one hundred hours never, So you see, this was this
was very intense. And then afterwards you had a time wherehaps books were more
privately Catholic, which perhaps is closer to the idea nowadays that you should sort
of treat your faith as a private, private matter and don't bother other people
with it. And then there were a few HAPs books who were extremely warbly
Catholics, you know, sympathizing with Protestant ideas. And then you had other
members of the family who stepped forward and carried the Catholic banner. In that
time. It's an try to be exciting moving history, and of course for
me, when I write such a book, it's also my own identity that
I'm writing about, and it confirms me in what I live with my family.
M Now you're also ambassador to the Holy See, as you mentioned,
and I love asking Catholics right now about the revival of Latin mass, of
more orthodox forms of Catholicism, certainly in parts of the States. Here it's
kind of hard to put a number on what's happening, but really all over
the world in a sense, do you find now that there's something about the
hyper modern, high tech world we live in that is pushing people to seek
more ancient more We could just be simple and say older, simpler form of
religion that haven't been you know, made casual by madernity, that are that
are formal and rooted in something deeper. Are you seeing that happen as well?
Very much, very much so. I have a theory on this.
My theory is that with the arrival of mobile phones, um, something happened.
And what happened is that you have constant entertainment from the early morning until
the late evening. You don't have a quiet moment. You wait for for
for the metro and you look on your phone. You switch on your phone
before you switch on the light in your room. You switch off your phone
after you switched off the light in your room. And in in between your
you're entertained constantly, and this is like a rubber band that is always overstretched.
I don't think that the human mind can can can live for a longer
time. So what are the only places where you can't be on your phone
anymore? You're even on your phone when you're when you're when you're skiing,
you know, in between, when you stop, or when you're, when
you're whenever you are, you can always be on your phone. But you
can't be on your phone you're in liturgy. And I think that people are
tending towards more respectful, more beautiful, slower, and more traditional forms of
liturgy because it's one of the few places where they can where they can stop
and think. When when can you stop and think? That little thing is
always there. It's always there and you always have to react to it.
And you find a great part of your identity on Twitter, on Instagram,
on TikTok, and it's entertaining you. And entertainment will get better and better
and better and better, more intrusive, more into your brain and people.
For the last forty thousand years, we never had that human beings had long
phases where they just couldn't do anything when you walked from A to B,
when you hiked, there were so many moments where you couldn't read, You
couldn't you could just think, there is no time to think anymore. But
in liturgy, your soul comes to peace, and that's why I think that
there is a great first for that. I think in the young and con
generation. I agree with you Emily that the numbers may not even be that
great, but they are very strong. People who find that kind of peace
in liturgy will not go away anymore and drop it for something more superficial.
That's what I'm observing. Yeah, I know that's so interesting, and especially
from a Hungarian perspective, and without getting into Hungarian politics, which I'm far
from an expert, and you do have new regulations on architecture, for instance,
you have the scrutiny cafes, and Orbon talks a lot about truth and
beauty and those those sort of first principles. So on that note, I
want to ask if if you think as the world is groping and searching for
those first principles, when it's getting harder for people to understand, maybe that
that is what they're looking for. They're looking for some of the rules you
lay out in this book, or some of the guidance you lay out in
this book. You know, they would be better served if they were married,
with children, and had faith, and had a good sort of understanding,
or a comfort with death, all of those different things. Do you
feel as though the Holy See understands these these challenges or understands, for instance,
why people are flocking to things like Latin mass and are looking for something
perhaps more ancient. That was quite a few questions that you threw out.
Now, the first thing you said, I am very impressed that, you
know, is the thing about architecture in Hungary. I've never nobody ever asked
me that the Hungarian government is, for instance, rebuilding a classical palay on
the Castle Hill that used to belong to my great grandfather. They're putting a
ministry in there in the traditional style with modern materials, of course, And
you're right, You're right, Hungary is going back to the roots in many
things there is. I think there's two reasons for that. One of them
is that, of course, the years of communism stole some of our roots,
many of our roots. But these years also may explain why the Hungarians
are very strong on traditional values, on sovereignty, on faith, on history,
because we had to fight for these things, while in the West people
got bored with these things from the sixties on and put everything in question.
In all parts of the world, you had to fight for them and you
had to defend your values, your traditional values. So that is one explanation.
The other is surely that Hungary was first occupied by the Ottomans by Muslim
rule for one hundred and fifty years in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, then
in Hungary's opinion, by the Habsburgs for another two hundred years, and then
by the Communists, and when they had finally left and Hungary was free and
sovereign after nineteen nineteen eighty nine, there is a strong feeling of let other
people from outside of Hungary not tell us what we should do, and that
is that sometimes makes life in the European Union a bit difficult because Hungarian sort
of put up there, how you say, put up the heckles now when
people from outside tell them what to do. But on the other hand,
it makes Hungarian population immune against the latest fan that comes along because we know
what we believe in. We know where we stand and we defend this.
So yes, and as for the Holy See, in the Pope is coming
to Hungry for the second time now within two years, to Hungary. Perhaps
he even he likes Hungry more than most journalists. Thing, yes, that's
part of my job as the bestler to the Holy See. Now you I
mentioned this just a second ago, but you you end on death, and
I find that so interesting, so important. What did you learn from the
Habsburgs or what do you think other people can learn from the Habsburg's approach to
death? Well, most of us, I think half of the world population
was watching the funeral of Queen Elizabeth last last year, and everybody was impressed
by that. And one of the last images you saw of her was her
coffin disappearing into the floor in in that castle. And while this happened,
slowly being lowered into the lower ground, her her titles were being read.
And that is a crucial difference to what the Habsburgs did, because of course
they were Catholics, and very Baroque Catholics. So they made a whole whole
ritual around It's called a knocking ritual. And I experienced this twice at the
funeral of the last Empress of Austria, Zeita, when I was a young
man, and then again when Otto, our head of family, was buried
years later, and it goes, it goes like this. The procession with
the with the coffin arrives at the so called capucinakoft It's it's a crypt under
the Capusan church in Vienna, in the center town center, and the Capusans
have looked after the Habsburg dead for centuries now. And the procession arrives,
and the master of ceremony knocks on the door, and the voice of a
Capusian from inside says, who is out there? And he says, I
give you a title, Franz Joseph, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary,
Bohemia, Lodomeria, Croatia, and then he enuminates old titles, and
when he's finished, the voice from inside says, we don't know him.
And then he knocks again. He says, who goes there? And then
he lists all the things the emperor has done and all the achievements in his
life, and again the voice says, we don't know him, and then
he knocks the third time, and then he says Franz Joseph, a poor
sinner, and then the door opens. Now this is a ritual, and
rituals are sort of quaint and historical, but they say a lot about The
Habsburgs lived with death in front of their eyes all their lives. They knew
that the hour of their death not only decided upon how they would spend eternity,
because the Habsburgs believe that there is an eternal judgment, meant that that
you can go to heaven, but you don't go to heaven automatically, like
now there's most people seem to think that you just need to die to go
to heaven, and that the way I live the way I die, besides
over how I'm going to spend eternity. So they took this very very serious.
And therefore, and a third thing they knew was that their death was
being watched because people took their cue from how their emperor died. They knew
that a report about how they died would be sent out and the people would
know about this. So they lived and mostly died very consciously, and it
was in our in our DNA for centuries. One very touching story that I
write in my book is when one of the daughters of Empress Maria Theresia in
let's say seventeen fifty, and we had smallpox came through. And when smallpox
arrived at the court, three things happened. Either you didn't get it,
or if you get it, you either died, or you were totally disfigured
for life as a woman. You weren't as beautiful anymore. Your face was
changed. And so that was in any way was terrible. And smallpox arrived
in Vienna court and one of the small child, one of the young daughters
of Marie Theresia, got it. And her father, who was a more
liberal minded man. He was a freemason and not as baroccoly Catholic as Marie
Tersia was, and he writes in a letter deeply touched. He writes,
when my daughter learned that she had smallpox, she at once asked for a
priest and gave a life confession. That was her first reaction to that,
and she died a few days later. So they had their priorities right.
And that's why while I put them die well at the last point, I
also write at the beginning of that chapter, I could have put it the
first point, because it shaped the entire thinking of the Habsburgs very strongly.
And we live in a time where death doesn't exist either. It exists in
you know, in violence. Death that we can see oil is put away
in hospitals, very far away. And yes, that was different for the
last forty thousand years, and for Christians it was different because most Christians,
who might only have lived forty years, were very aware that they could die
tomorrow and that they have to meet God there. That is so true and
beautifully said. The book is called The Habsburg Way. It's out on April
eighteenth. Edward Habsburg, thank you so much for joining us. You've been
listening. It was a joy speaking to you, and I have the impression
that we can we can think on similar lines in many in many of the
topics we spoke about. Indeed, indeed, to everyone, make sure that
book. Check it out. It's available on April eighteenth. Once again,
I'm Emilijrashnski, culture editor here at the Federalist. You've been listening to another
edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. We'll be back soon with more. Until
then, be lovers of freedom and anxious to the fray right wrong