Page:EB1911 - Volume 13.djvu/589

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
HOHENLOHE
573

colonel in the Austrian campaigns; in 1799 he was named major-general by the archduke Charles; and after obtaining the rank of lieutenant-general he was appointed by the emperor governor of the two Galicias. Napoleon offered to restore to him his principality on condition that he adhered to the confederation of the Rhine, but as he refused, it was united to Württemberg. After Napoleon’s fall in 1814 he entered the French service, and in 1815 he held the command of a regiment raised by himself, with which he took part in the Spanish campaign of 1823. In 1827 he was created marshal and peer of France. He died at Lunéville on the 30th of May 1829.

III. Alexander Leopold Franz Emmerich, prince of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst (1794–1849), priest and reputed miracle-worker, was born at Kupferzell, near Waldenburg, on the 17th of August 1794. By his mother, the daughter of an Hungarian nobleman, he was from infancy destined for the church; and she entrusted his early education to the ex-Jesuit Riel. In 1804 he entered the “Theresianum” at Vienna, in 1808 the academy at Bern, in 1810 the archiepiscopal seminary at Vienna, and afterwards he studied at Tyrnau and Ellwangen. He was ordained priest in 1815, and in the following year he went to Rome, where he entered the society of the “Fathers of the Sacred Heart.” Subsequently, at Munich and Bamberg, he was blamed for Jesuit and obscurantist tendencies, but obtained considerable reputation as a preacher. His first so-called miraculous cure was effected, in conjunction with a peasant, Martin Michel, on a princess of Schwarzenberg who had been for some years paralytic. Immediately he acquired such fame as a performer of miraculous cures that multitudes from various countries flocked to partake of the beneficial influence of his supposed supernatural gifts. Ultimately, on account of the interference of the authorities with his operations, he went in 1821 to Vienna and then to Hungary, where he became canon at Grosswardein and in 1844 titular bishop of Sardica. He died at Vöslau near Vienna on the 17th of November 1849. He was the author of a number of ascetic and controversial writings, which were collected and published in one edition by S. Brunner in 1851.

IV. Kraft, prince of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen (1827–1892), soldier and military writer, son of Prince Adolf of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen (1797–1873), was born at Koschentin in Upper Silesia. He was a nephew of the Prince Hohenlohe noticed above, who commanded the Prussians at Jena. Educated with great rigour, owing to the impoverishment of the family estates during the Napoleonic wars, he was sent into the Prussian army, and commissioned to the artillery at the least expensive arm of the service. He joined the Prussian Guard artillery in 1845, and it was soon discovered that he had unusual aptitudes as an artillery officer. For a time his brother officers resented the presence of a prince, until it was found that he made no attempt to use his social position to secure advancement. After serving as a military attaché in Vienna and on the Transylvanian frontier during the Crimean War, he was made a captain on the general staff, and in 1856 personal aide-de-camp to the king, remaining, however, in close touch with the artillery. In 1864, having become in the meanwhile successively major and lieut.-colonel, he resigned the staff appointments to become commander of the new Guard Field Artillery regiment and in the following year he became colonel. In 1866 he saw his first real active service. In the bold advance of the Guard corps on the Austrian right wing at Königgrätz (see Seven Weeks’ War), he led the Guard reserve artillery with the greatest dash and success, and after the short war ended he turned his energies, now fortified by experience, to the better tactical training of the Prussian artillery. In 1868 he was made a major-general and assigned to command the Guard artillery brigade. In this capacity he gained great distinction during the Franco-German war and especially at Gravelotte and Sedan; he was in control of the artillery attack on the fortifications of Paris. In 1873 he was placed in command of an infantry division, and three years later was promoted lieutenant-general. He retired in 1879, was made general of infantry in 1883 and general of artillery in 1889. His military writings were numerous, and amongst them several have become classics. These are Briefe über Artillerie (Eng. trans. Letters on Artillery, 1887); Briefe über Strategie (1877; Eng. trans. Letters on Strategy, 1898); and Gespräche über Reiterei (1887; Eng. trans. Conversations on Cavalry). The Briefe über Infanterie and Briefe über Kavallerie (translated into English, Letters on Infantry, Letters on Cavalry, 1889) are of less importance, though interesting as a reflection of prevailing German ideas. His memoirs (Aus meinem Leben) were prepared in retirement near Dresden, and the first volume (1897) created such a sensation that eight years were allowed to elapse before the publication was continued. Prince Kraft died near Dresden on the 16th of January 1892.  (C. F. A.) 

V. Chlodwig Karl Victor, prince of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst (1819–1901), statesman, was born on the 31st of March 1819 at Schillingsfürst in Bavaria. His father, Prince Franz Joseph (1787–1841), was a Catholic, his mother, Princess Konstanze of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, a Protestant. In accordance with the compromise customary at the time, Prince Chlodwig and his brothers were brought up in the religion of their father, while his sisters followed that of their mother. In spite of the difference of creed the family was very united, and it was to the spirit that rendered this possible that the prince owed his liberal and tolerant point of view, which was to exercise an important influence on his political activity. As the younger son of a cadet line of his house it was necessary for Prince Chlodwig to follow a profession. For a while he thought of obtaining a commission in the British army through the influence of his aunt, Princess Feodora of Hohenlohe-Langenburg (née princess of Leiningen), Queen Victoria’s half-sister. He decided, however, to enter the Prussian diplomatic service. His application to be excused the preliminary steps, which involved several years’ work in subordinate positions in the Prussian civil service, was refused by Frederick William IV., and the prince, with great good sense, decided to sacrifice his pride of rank and to accept the king’s conditions. As auscultator in the courts at Coblenz he acquired a taste for jurisprudence, became a Referendar in September 1843, and after some months of travel in France, Switzerland and Italy went to Potsdam as a civil servant (May 13, 1844). These early years were invaluable, not only as giving him experience of practical affairs but as affording him an insight into the strength and weakness of the Prussian system. The immediate result was to confirm his Liberalism. The Prussian principle of “propagating enlightenment with a stick” did not appeal to him; he “recognized the confusion and want of clear ideas in the highest circles,” the tendency to make agreement with the views of the government the test of loyalty to the state; and he noted in his journal (June 25, 1844) four years before the revolution of ’48, “a slight cause and we shall have a rising.” “The free press,” he notes on another occasion, “is a necessity, progress the condition of the existence of a state.” If he was an ardent advocate of German unity, and saw in Prussia the instrument for its attainment, he was throughout opposed to the “Prussification” of Germany, and ultimately it was he who made the unification of Germany possible by insisting at once on the principle of union with the North German states and at the same time on the preservation of the individuality of the states of the South.

On the 12th of November 1834 the landgrave Viktor Amadeus of Hesse-Rotenburg died, leaving to his nephews, the princes Viktor and Chlodwig Hohenlohe, his allodial estates: the duchy of Ratibor in Silesia, the principality of Corvey in Westphalia, and the lordship of Treffurt in the Prussian governmental district of Erfurt. On the death of Prince Franz Joseph on the 14th of January 1841 it was decided that the principality of Schillingsfürst should pass to the third brother, Philipp Ernst, as the two elder sons, Viktor and Chlodwig, were provided for already under their uncle’s will, the one with the duchy of Ratibor, the other with Corvey and Treffurt. The youngest son, Gustav (b. February 28, 1823), the future cardinal, was destined for the Church. On the death of Prince Philipp Ernst