Metternich has a reputation as the epitome of reactionary conservatism. His biography is at the same time an examination of European history in the period of upheaval between 17.A compelling new biography that recasts the most important European statesman of the first half of the nineteenth century, famous for his alleged archconservatism, as a friend of realpolitik and reform, pursuing international peace. He also had to fight against the Emperor‘s obstinacy and against the selfish interests of Habsburg domestic power politics. His great adversary Count Franz Anton Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky was in charge of police, censorship and finances within the Habsburg Monarchy. 8) Metternich was not the all-powerful „coachman of Europe“. As a counter-model, he envisioned a loose, confederative union of various nationalities based on the model of the Swiss Confederation. He saw a permanent source of wars in the will of the various nationalities to each establish a linguistically homogeneous nation state in the middle of Europe. This means the imagined anticipation of coming crises, catastrophes or problems or even concepts of a desired peace order up to the ideal of a League of Nations. He never lost sight of his long-term strategy (European peace and the internal legal security of the many peoples within the Monarchy). He was a strategist who was always forced to compromise in the face of the temporary supremacy of the Napoleonic Empire and dependent on a fragile Habsburg Empire. 6) The new sources show that Metternich was not the political opportunist he had been taken for, but rather a pragmatic political leader who acted in a realpolitical manner but always remained committed to long-term principles. His preferred model was based on the political philosophy of Edmund Burke.

5) The Revolution did not make Metternich an absolutist or counter-revolutionary, but an adherent of the British constitutional system. 4) The new sources show how intensively Metternich experienced the French Revolution from various nearby hot spots: in Alsace, Coblence, Mainz and Brussels they reveal how the Revolution shaped his thinking and politics.

3) For the first time, the biography takes into account the many roles of his person (Imperial Prince, Head of the Family, Lord of the Majorat, politician, manufacturer, forester, winegrower) and asks about the development of the Prince from Imperial Count to early industrialist.

Metternich by Wolfram Siemann