Friedrich Ferdinand, Graf (count) von Beust

Friedrich Ferdinand, Graf (count) von Beust (born Jan. 13, 1809, Dresden, Saxony [Germany]—died Oct. 24, 1886, Schloss Altenberg, near Vienna) prime minister and foreign minister of Saxony (1858–66) and of the Austrian Empire (1867–71), who negotiated the Ausgleich, or “Compromise” (1867), establishing the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and who also helped restore the Habsburgs’ international position.

A descendant of the Saxon line of an ancient aristocratic family, Beust studied law, philosophy, history, and politics at Göttingen and Leipzig. Relatively progressive, he was inclined toward liberal constitutionalism and in 1830 began his diplomatic career, which led him to Saxon missions in Berlin, Paris, Munich, London, and, in 1848, Berlin once again. By that time he had acquired a remarkable practical knowledge of constitutional matters and of important political personalities, among them Otto von Bismarck.

The Saxon king, Frederick Augustus II, favoured the movement for German unity developing out of the revolutions of 1848 but not its tendencies toward democracy. In 1849 he called for Beust, whom he thought to be a stabilizing influence, and appointed him his new minister for foreign affairs. Beust called in Prussian troops to suppress the popular uprisings in Dresden in May and negotiated a conservative alliance of Saxony, Prussia, and Hanover later the same month. He thus proved from the outset to be the dominant force in the Cabinet. As minister of the interior (from 1853) he sought to expand the Saxon economy through a policy of moderate internal reforms. In his foreign policy he aimed at setting up the smaller German states as a third force between Austria and Prussia. Although Saxony’s economic interests naturally gravitated toward Prussia, Beust’s foreign policy increasingly drew him nearer to Austria, thus forcing him into an ever sharpening opposition to Bismarck.

After Prussia’s victory over Austria and its Saxon ally in 1866, Beust had to give up his office under pressure from Bismarck. Beust, who in Saxony had felt like a “horse harnessed to a perambulator,” unexpectedly found a wider field of activity. In October 1866 the emperor Francis Joseph appointed him Austrian minister for foreign affairs and in February 1867 imperial chancellor of the Habsburg monarchy (minister president in June 1867). Although a foreigner, Beust, optimistic as usual, did not hesitate to accept this difficult office. His diplomatic experience, political imagination, and a certain cynicism helped him to master his new tasks quickly. He restored constitutional government and temporarily solved the most difficult internal problem by bringing about the compromise with Hungary, allotting to the Hungarians hegemony in the eastern part of the monarchy. Nevertheless, Beust’s attempt to regain German popular sympathy for Austria by establishing a model liberal regime was doomed to failure. In the long run he was not able to harmonize the status of the Germans—the dominant group within the western part of the empire—with the claims of the other nationalities subjected to Habsburg rule, particularly the Czechs.

Beust’s foreign policy was finally defeated by national ambitions whose force he underrated. Neither Francis Joseph nor Beust was willing to accept the consequence of Prussia’s defeat of Austria in 1866—namely, Austria’s enforced exclusion from Germany. Beust was dominated by the idea of revenge, by his rivalry with Bismarck, and by his fear lest Prussia lay hands upon the Habsburgs’ German territories. He therefore tried first to prevent the southern German states from uniting with Prussia; he wanted to create the preconditions for later reestablishing Austria’s old hegemony, though in an improved form. In pursuing his plan for an alliance with France and Italy to corner Prussia in the east, he proved to be a formidable adversary of Bismarck, much superior to Napoleon III of France in political skill and cleverness. Although his policy moved on the brink of a new war between Austria and Prussia, he was realistic enough to abstain from any attempt to involve Austria-Hungary in the Franco-German War.

Beust was denied the ultimate realization of his political aims; in 1871 he had to recognize that the German Reich under Prussian leadership, excluding Austria, had become a historical reality. Francis Joseph, who had raised him to the rank of Graf (count) in 1868, dismissed him from his post as chancellor in October 1871. Beust continued to serve the Habsburg monarchy as ambassador in London and, after 1878, in Paris until his retirement in 1882.