The Bureaucracy of Honor. The Habsburg Consular Service and the History of Emotions

This is a story about bureaucratic storytelling, about civil servants whose impartiality and professionalism lay at the core of their self-identity and about the emotional richness of the records they kept about their professional lives. The protagonists served as consuls in the Habsburg Monarchy’s large foreign service. The emotions were honor and, most particularly, the rage and astonishment that came after insult. The insults were slurs, slaps, scoldings – over cards, over a cab, over the use of Hungarian – over incidents that now seem trivial but were of mortal importance to the men in these stories. The stories in question explained the legitimacy of the outrage and the necessity of (occasionally life-threatening) actions taken to restore equilibrium. The resolutions ranged from fully satisfactory to personally devastating. The evidence for these stories of insult and satisfaction comes entirely from the bureaucratic archives of the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Through these records, the storytellers transform one gentleman’s personal embarrassment into the business of bureaucracy – a group project, that is, representing a shared commitment to protect the honor of the empire itself.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, Austria-Hungary’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent diplomats and consuls all over the world. Every consulate produced stack upon stack of paper.

Engelbert Deusch called each consulate a Tintenburg or »red-tape factory«, Engelbert Deusch: Die effektiven Konsuln Österreich (-Ungarns) von 1825–1918. Ihre Ausbildung, Arbeitsverhältnisse und Biografien, Wien u. a. 2017, p. 122.

That is the case of the three consuls whose stories are examined here. I read through their files for reasons unconnected to the subject of this essay – each of them had submitted a complaint about the Austrian Lloyd.

The larger book project has not yet been published, but some of the results of the research can be found in Alison Frank: »The Children of the Desert and the Laws of the Sea. Austria, Great Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and the Mediterranean Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century«, in: The American Historical Review 117 (2012), pp. 410–444.

In some ways, the personnel files of Waldemar Czerwenka, Dominik Szathmáry Király, and Maximilian Kutschera are opaque and unrevealing, shorn of personal detail. The files are full of notifications of their arrival at or departure from various posts, acknowledgments of reassignments, requests for reimbursement of expenditures for professional purposes, permission to go on vacation or take leave for mandatory military training, complaints about local inflation and requests for pay raises, assessments of eligibility for promotions, requests to marry, and reviews of eligibility for pensions. Some of these are clearly professional – they involve the appropriate use of funds, the maintenance of necessary staffing levels, the functioning of the office, and the assessment of promotions and raises. Sometimes, they border on the very personal. Processing a lawyer’s request to track down a consul’s income for a paternity suit divulges more about the consul’s past than he might wish.

Josef Zipser, a Viennese attorney, requested Czerwenka’s working address and salary on behalf of Miss Jeanne Hammant, who declared herself to be the mother of his illegitimate child. The Ministry confirmed that Czerwenka was a consular attaché in Shanghai, but refused to provide information about his salary without a court order. Z. 37634/10, 22. 5. 1905.

Yet, despite their ostensible commitment to professionalism and dispassionate reporting of their daily business, the files also offer glimpses of the emotional lives of men in the consular service – the consuls and their colleagues and supervisors. They show, at times, the emotional resonance of the spirit of solidarity that emerged from the common commitment to the consular corps. Consuls were expected to be impartial in their treatment of Habsburg subjects abroad who required their support, intervention, or service; they were expected to embody standards uninflected by emotional engagement. Superiors treated transgressions severely, yet consuls could call on one another’s empathy and support when their misbehaviors were considered understandable responses to emotional challenges they faced in the field. When a consul’s honor was insulted, for example, his colleagues rushed to support his attempts to gain satisfaction. These files doubly undermine the notion of bureaucracy as dry and rational – first by acknowledging consuls’ emotional responses to personal challenges and second by marshaling the bureaucracy’s resources to respond to those challenges. In other words, they blur the boundaries not only between the consul’s personal and professional lives but also between one man’s private affairs and the bureaucracy’s business.

It is tempting to think of honor – especially the honor of a nineteenth century European ›gentleman‹ as the most personal of attributes. It speaks to a man’s outer bearing and his innermost worth. »Honour«, Ute Frevert has written, is »an emotional disposition focusing on a person’s moral and physical integrity«.

Ute Frevert: Emotions in History. Lost and Found, Budapest 2011, p. 45.

Each of these cases involved the bureaucratic processing of a man’s – and indeed an entire consulate’s – response to an insult made while the consul himself was ›of-duty‹. Insult, like marriage or mental health, was a matter of professional relevance. A consul’s honor, to borrow a phrase from Ute Frevert, was »a professional asset of crucial importance«.

Frevert: Emotions, p. 44.

In reading these files, I was struck by the juxtaposition between the emotionally familiar and the emotionally foreign. Historians are trained to expect emotions to be variable across time. The consuls’ files show a concern with honor and ideas about the appropriate ways to respond to insult that are hard to relate to today. »Honour«, as Ute Frevert argues, is »a lost emotion, or, to be more precise, a disposition whose emotional power has more or less vanished«.

Frevert: Emotions, p. 10, pp. 64–65. »Honor no longer plays much part in our thinking«. Frank Stewart: Honor, Chicago 2010, p. 9.

I am, however, also struck by the limits to this nearly unimaginable world of honor obsession – that is, by the traces of a very easily imaginable reluctance to die over a few words uttered in irritation over a game of cards. The consuls were willing to risk their lives to protect their honor. But they were not indifferent to life or death; this is where their peers in the consulate played such a critical role. »It is neither the bullet nor the sword that kill«, noted the infamous nineteenth century wit, Alphonse Karr, »it is the seconds!«

»Çe ne sont ni les balles ni les épées qui tuent: çe sont les témoins«. Charles du Verger de Saint-Thomas: Nouveau Code du Duel. Histoire, Legislation, Droit Contemporain, Paris 1879, p. 206. Istvan Deák offers a slightly different translation, Istvan Deák: Beyond Nationalism. A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Oficer Corps, 1848–1918, New York ²2010, p. 135.

Austro-Hungarian consuls belonged to two different, overlapping »honor worlds«, each with its own codes of conduct. Piskur’s Consularwesen and Malfatti’s Handbuch des österreichisch-ungarischen Konsularwesens, in multiple editions, laid out regulations and expectations. Consuls, however, were also often reserve officers and had a responsibility to protect the corporate honor of the officer corps.

A career officer was a »man of honor by profession« (Ehren-Mann aus Profession), Ute Frevert, »Der ›Louis‹ - oder was den Mann zum Manne macht: Assessor Ernst Borchert sucht seine Satisfaktion«, in: Uwe Schultz (ed.): Das Duell: der tödliche Kampf um die Ehre, Frankfurt am Main 1996, p. 400.

The officer’s social pressure to demand satisfaction when insulted and to accept a challenge, if offered, was documented in literature, in the press, in military personnel files. There is no doubt that a man of honor who refused to respond with the appropriate degree of outrage to an insult put his career at risk.

Deák’s study of the officer corps offers examples of officers being compelled »to overreact to all manner of insults and slights« and to take extreme and violent measures to protect their honor. Deák, Beyond Nationalism, pp. 126–138.

The openness with which consular officials reported that they had recommended dueling to their subordinates, served as seconds, helped to arrange duels, overseen the production of ›rules of engagement‹ for duels, and warned their subordinates of the consequences of not dueling is revealing. Dueling in Austria, remember, was illegal according to civilian and military law.

Deák: Beyond Nationalism, p. 130. The emperor once refused the appeal of a nobleman who wanted to return to Austria after a few months of self-imposed exile after killing his opponent in a duel – not because the man had broken the law but because he had openly sided with Prussia during the Austro-Prussian war of 1866. Vortrag des (Ungarischen) Justizministers über das Ah. Bezeichnete Gesuch des wegen Zweikampfes mit dem Grafen Nemeš und Tödtung des Letzteren steckbrieflich verfolgten und flüchtig gewordenen Karl Fürsten Lichnowsky um Ag. Gestattung der straffreien Rückkehr nach Österreich, 15. 9. 1867, No. 1367, summary, No. 3569, 17. 9. 1867. Thanks to Susanne Bauda for drawing this case to my attention.

Wherever they traveled, Austro-Hungarian consuls brought this honor world with them. In 1904, there were 493 Austro-Hungarian consulates, with locations on every inhabited continent.

»Consulates« here includes general consulates, consulates, vice consulates, and agencies, both those staffed by career civil servants and those headed by »honorary« consuls, vice consuls, etc. Deusch: Effektiven Konsuln, p. 21.

Most consuls were highly educated.

Of the 617 »career« consuls profiled in Deusch’s recent encyclopedic account, 272 graduated from the Oriental (Consular) Academy and 227 had university degrees. Deusch: Effektiven Konsuln, p. 9.

Expertise, however, was no substitute for high birth, and, as in other European empires, consuls did not enjoy the status of diplomats or aristocrats.

A French consular manual from 1850 lamented, »The consular institution, which affects the greatest commercial interests, is still today, among all the branches of public administration in France, the one which is the least known, consequently the least appreciated, the most neglected«, Louis-Joseph-Auguste de Moreüil: Manuel des agents consulaires français et étrangers, Paris 1850, p. 3, cited in Mathieu Jestin: »Building a Local Administration Abroad. The French Consulate in Salonica in the Nineteenth Century«, in: Administory 2 (2018), p. 68, online: https://doi.org/10.2478/ADHI-2018-0016(4 9. 2018). Desmond C. M. Platt’s history of British consuls since 1825 holds an argument about their status in its very title; he lists markers of the symbolic and material inferiority of consuls on page 2. Desmond C. M. Platt: The Cinderella Service. British Consuls since 1825, New York 1971.

By the late nineteenth century, European powers like the Habsburg Monarchy had highly developed bureaucracies staffed by career civil servants. True to type, consular officials were expected to be competent and impartial, in Max Weber’s oft-quoted formulation, »functionaries who have specialized training and who by constant practice increase their expertise«.

Max Weber: »The Technical Superiority of Bureaucratic Organization over Administration by Notables«, in: Guenther Roth / Claus Wittich (ed.): Max Weber: Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, Berkeley, CA 1978, p. 975.

But consular officials were not automatons. As representatives of the imperial-royal government, they had to be dispassionate, yes, but they were also expected to use discretion, to care for their charges with feeling. As not only ›advisors, protectors, and intermediaries‹, but in some countries also judges for Austrian and Hungarian nationals, they represented the Imperial-Royal government. »Their important position«, the author of an 1862 manual on the Austrian Consular Service explained, »as discriminating correspondents [einsichtsvoller Berichterstatter] and as intellectually agile [geistig lebendiges] agents of state power« required »peculiar« forms of »preparation«.

Piskur: Consularwesen, p. 38.

The archival record leaves little doubt: Dominik Szathmáry Király was a difficult man. One superior complained about his »headstrong and disagreeable disposition«.

»rechthaberisches und unverträgliches Wesen«, Belgrade, 9. 11. 1888, Z CXXX/9443 [MdA] Z. 27706/10 Pr 11.XI.1888.

In February 1886, Szathmáry Király was still a young man – just barely 29 and not quite six years into his service in the consular corps. He was a reserve lieutenant and a vice consul with experience in Trieste, Shkodër (Scutari, Albania), and Pljevlja (Montenegro) behind him and had been serving in Galați, Romania, for three years. One cold winter morning, Szathmáry Király was approached in his office by Robert Matsek, a reserve corporal (Unterjäger, the lowest rank of Unteroffizier, or non-commissioned officer [NCO]) who was traveling abroad as the mechanical assistant of a panorama owner and needed to report his presence in the area. When Szathmáry Király had trouble finding the relevant stamp in Matsek’s military pass, Matsek reached across the vice consul’s desk

On the importance of the physical layout of the office in accentuating the bureaucrat’s privileged position, see Becker: »Sprachvollzug«, p. 10.

Szathmáry Király’s own statement regarding his altercation with Matsek concedes his heightened state of emotional agitation. Even after Matsek reached »under [his] nose« (unter meiner Nase

For an analysis of the importance of the nose, specifically, to a Southern gentleman’s honor, see Kenneth P. Greenberg: »The Nose, the Lie, and the Duel in the Antebellum South«, in: American Historical Review 95 (1990), pp. 57–74.

This, predictably did not help Matsek regain his own composure, and as he stamped and banged on the table, Szathmáry Király confessed, he »was carried away by a surge of emotion and slapped him twice in quick succession« (ließ mich in meiner Aufwallung hinreißen, demselben rasch zwei Ohrfeigen zu versetzen). It did not take long for Szathmáry Király to regain his lost composure; he calmed down as Matsek tussled with the guard sent to expel him from the consulate. Szathmáry Király, a native speaker of Hungarian himself, heard Matsek speaking Hungarian and »realizing that I had insulted the man«, he politely invited Matsek back into the office, this time switching from German to their shared language in order to appear more sympathetic. Matsek, however, did not deign to acknowledge their common tongue and replied »roughly« in German that he would not come in. Szathmáry Király knew he was wrong to »assault the man physically« and reported his mistake to his superior in the consulate. In the written report that he submitted as part of the disciplinary inquiry, he noted, »I sincerely regret that I wronged Matsek and insulted him; but I regret still more – and beg you to permit me to express my genuine feelings in this regard – that through this incident I injured the esteem and dignity of my office«.

»Ich bedauere aufrichtig, daß ich Matsek Unrecht gethan und denselben beleidigt habe, ich bedauere aber noch mehr, und bitte mir gestatten zu wollen, diesbezüglich meine aufrichtigen Gefühlen Ausdruck zu geben, daß ich durch diesen Vorfall das Ansehen und die Würde meiner amtlichen Stellung verletzt habe« (emphasis in original).

In evaluating his misconduct, the Commission noted as aggravating the fact that Szathmáry Király had carried out the misdeed »in office and while performing his official duties«. As mitigating, however, the Commission considered Szathmáry Király’s »agitation« (Aufregung), his »violent emotions« (heftige Gemüthsbewegung) and his sincere regret.

Carl von Boleslawski: 20. 3. 1886, No. 16/res, »In Betreff des Untersuchungs-Angelegenheit gegen den hieramts in Verwendung stehenden k. u. k. Vice-Consul Herrn von Szathmáry Király. »Protocol«, 4. 3. 1886.

Szathmáry Király’s disciplinary transfer to Bucharest, if it taught him anything, did not teach him how to control his feelings. Nor was that really what he was expected to do. Szathmáry Király’s transfer might lead one to believe the Habsburg foreign service held true to the expectation, apparently prevalent in Britain, that a gentleman »avoids what the French call scenes – occasions of exhibition, in which the vulgar delight. He of course has feelings, but he never exhibits any to the world«.

J. Millar, The Gentleman’s Handbook of Etiquette, cited in Vincent: Culture of Secrecy, p. 40.

Szathmáry Király approached the wagon and said, in French, »Pardon, Monsieur, this wagon has been occupied for me, as you saw«.

»Pardon, Monsieur, la voiture était occupée pour moi, comme vous l’avez vu«. Report 1/res, from Ritter von Heidler-Egeregg, Bucharest, to MdA, Wien, 9. 1. 1887, Attachment »F«, Szathmáry Király’s statement. Henceforth »Szathmáry Király, January 1887 Statement«.

Free to move, Szathmáry Király approached the wagon and said to the major, again in French, »Monsieur, you owe me satisfaction, I ask that you give me your name«. The major replied, »I will not give you satisfaction, I will not tell you my name«.

»Monsieur, vous me devez satisfaction, je vous prie, donnez-moi votre nom« and »Je ne vous donne pas de satisfaction, je ne vous dis pas mon nom«. Szathmáry Király, January 1887 Statement. Ute Frevert analyzes a duel between a Prussian civil servant (an assessor in Königsberg) and a lieutenant, in 1896, and finds that the lieutenant was remarkably reluctant to respond to the civil servant’s increasingly pointed insults – the civil servant, who felt himself insulted first by the lieutenant, was eager for the duel and the lieutenant was not (»um diese Anerkennung, deren höchster Ausdruck der Zweikampf war, kämpfte der Assessor mit allen Mitteln«). Frevert says this is because a duel with an officer as an opportunity to gain social status – that is, to cement his own status as a man of honor and thus »ebenbürtig« with the lieutenant. The lieutenant, in contrast, had nothing to gain. Szathmáry Király may have had so much trouble extracting a duel from the major not because the major did not care about his own honor but because he did not immediately recognize in Szathmáry Király, in mufti, as an equal. This implicit distinction could not be allowed to stand. Frevert: »Der ›Louis‹«, p. 401.

Yet, it turns out that the protocols in question were not those governing the behavior of civil servants but those stipulating the responsibilities and prerogatives of gentlemen. Karl Heidler Freiherr (Baron) von Egeregg, the chargé d’affaires and highest-ranking diplomat in the Austro-Hungarian legation in Bucharest, provided Szathmáry Király every imaginable assistance in his effort to secure satisfaction. Heidler personally approached the Romanian Minister of War to uncover the identity of the renegade major. The minister not only provided his name – Major Lazaresco – but placed him in arrest within his garrison. At Heidler’s insistence, Szathmáry Király chose as his seconds Consul General Alexander Ritter von Suzzara and a Romanian who »belonged to the first society locally«.

For a brief biography of Suzzara, see Deusch: Die effektiven Konsuln, pp. 642–643.

This case generated dozens and dozens of pages of documents, now preserved in the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv. Heidler sent a report about the incident to Vienna with six attachments: a) the seconds’ documentation of the rules of engagement for a planned duel to resolve the matter; b) the seconds’ official report after the duel occurred; c) a statement made by the omnibus driver, a witness; d) the result of an investigation by another employee of the consulate; e) the general consul’s description of the duel; and f) Szathmáry Király’s report. Then, there were telegrams, inquiries, responses, and explanations – nearly 60 pages in all. It was a matter that required the attention of the entire leadership of the legation and supervisors back in Vienna. The open issue was not to manage diplomatic relations with Romania – Romanian authorities had eagerly assisted by identifying and arresting the major and even the gendarme who had grabbed Szathmáry Király by the collar – but rather to safeguard Szathmáry Király’s honor. Both states shared an understanding of who had violated a code of conduct that was, from their perspective, universal in its applicability to gentlemen. In the general consul’s words, »it was our unanimous opinion that the matter called for, indeed, in consideration of Mr. von Szathmáry’s character as an officer as well as the violent nature of the insult, absolutely required, a resolution with weapons«. That such a resolution was illegal did not make its open discussion in the Ministry’s records any less advisable.

In the voluminous official correspondence about Szathmáry Király’s dispute with Lazaresco, attention repeatedly turns to the former’s emotional state. Unlike following the incident with Matsek, Szathmáry Király’s agitation was treated with empathy and understanding rather than criticism and discipline. Szathmáry Király himself confessed that he was »very unpleasantly affected« (sehr unangenehm betroffen) by the major’s initial refusal to leave the carriage; »I was beside myself« (außer mir), he wrote, when the major refused to state his name and accept Szathmáry Király’s challenge. Heidler was pleased to report that »from the moment of the challenge on, the behavior of both Mr. v. Szathmáry and Major Lazaresco and his seconds was completely correct and in every way exemplary«. Szathmáry Király received the satisfaction he demanded – not only through the duel but also through the apology that Lazaresco offered, as honor required, only after he had stood and taken the shots aimed in his direction.

According to Ute Frevert, waiting to apologize until after the duel was expected of men of honor. Frevert: »Der ›Louis‹«, pp. 392–3 93.

The resolution of this incident was thus entirely satisfactory. Consul General Suzzara declared after the duel that »Mr. von Száthmary’s honor is, once again, spotless«.

Suzzara’s report, Attachment »E«.

Szathmáry Király’s colleagues provided him with countless forms of support. He himself had been unable even to ascertain the name of the man who had insulted him; Heidler used his professional connections to identify the assailant. He had been unable to persuade Lazaresco to accept his challenge; his seconds quickly and efficiently scheduled a duel under conditions that would give it a »serious character, if not the murderous one that Mr. von Száthmary [sic] himself had desired«.

Suzzara’s report.

The extent to which Szathmáry Király peers rallied to his defense is, at first blush, surprising. It is, after all, the threat of losing one’s honor in the opinion of one’s peers that makes demanding satisfaction so important. In Ute Frevert’s words, »Violating [a man of honor’s] integrity brought disgrace on the person who had been offended. Above all, it meant lowering and shaming him in front of an audience of peers. Those peers were concerned about the offence and demanded a vigorous reaction. A man who failed to react in an appropriate way, who shied away from calling the offender to account, was judged a coward«.

Frevert: Emotions, p. 46. Emphasis added.

Waldemar Roderich Czerwenka was in many ways Szathmáry Király’s opposite. A successful and highly competent consular official, he was recognized by his superiors for »precision, conscientiousness, and factual solidity« – a model bureaucrat. His route to the relatively comfortable status of consul, a title he obtained in 1912 at age 32, began with education, not birth.

Waldemar Czerwenka was born on 09. 11. 1880 in Piatra in Moldavia, but his family had relocated to Czernowitz by the time he was baptized nine months later. His father, Karl Czerwenka, was the local Factory Manager for the Joint-Stock Company for Lumber and Steam Sawmills and was stationed in Czernowitz most likely in connection with the construction of the Lemberg-Czernowitz-Jassy Eisenbahn. Baptismal record, 19. 8. 1881. Karl Böhmerle (ed.): Centralblatt für das gesammte Forstwesen 18 (1892), Wien 1892, p. 385.

The son of a sawmill factory manager, Waldemar Czerwenka attended a German-language school in Czernowitz; graduated from the Consular Academy in Vienna; and entered the consular service on 15 October 1904, when he was 24 years old.

C. Tumlirz: Jahresbericht des Ober-Gymnasiums in Czernowitz, Czernowitz 1894, p. 57.

Other records in Czerwenka’s file provide insight into what exactly the young consular attaché thought »living according to his station« required. Czerwenka was 25, unmarried (although he had already been accused of fathering an illegitimate child, back in Vienna), and needed a respite from the maladies that had afflicted him since his arrival in Shanghai. He played bridge in the Shanghai Club nearly every day.

Bridge habit: Kobr’s Bericht, 5. 4. 1907. Beilage ad Bericht No. 11 Res, Shanghai, 5. 4. 1907.

At the card table, Czerwenka often encountered another Austrian, Theodore Bume, who, according to Czerwenka’s colleague in the consulate, was generally known for his »loud and explosive demeanor«. Bume frequently criticized Czerwenka’s style of play, even calling him a »silly fool«. Since Bume’s choleric temper was well known to lead him to frequent outbursts, those who knew him believed they were »not intended as insults« and Czerwenka and Bume were initially on a »friendly footing« despite friction at the card table. With time, however, Czerwenka became more aggrieved. In early September 1906, Czerwenka went so far as to declare in front of other persons that he was not inclined to play at the same table as Bume – a declaration that Bume initially took as a joke. Even when, on the following day, Bume saw that Czerwenka was absolutely serious, he neither demanded ›satisfaction‹ nor requested an explanation. The two men silently avoided each other not only at bridge but altogether. If Bume approached a game in progress, when the rubber was over, instead of drawing cards to see who would have to make room for him, as was customary, Czerwenka would simply stand up and leave.

At about five o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday, 25 November 1906 – just two weeks after Czerwenka’s 26^th birthday, Bume entered the game room and found that there was only one game in progress and that Czerwenka was seated at the table. Bume indicated his intention to join the game, but to his surprise, Czerwenka did not immediately leave. Instead, Czerwenka participated in a drawing of cards to see which current player would make room. Bume, »in the presence of multiple other persons«, cried out »This is insolence of the highest order!« and – allegedly – threatened »Watch out, I’ll box your ears!«

»Das ist eine Frechheit in der höchsten Potenz« and »Passen Sie Auf, Sie werden eine Ohrfeige kriegen«. Ad 37098/10; Abschrift Nr. 2345/1906; Urteil des Generalkonsulates Shanghai.

On the following day, in front of three other members of the club, the insulted Czerwenka challenged Bume to a duel.

Normally, the challenge and the negotiations over weapons would have been carried out by seconds. The description of these events comes from Vice Consul Kobr’s report; Kobr does not mention any seconds and refers only to Czerwenka and Bume. For the two men to have directly debated the use of swords or pistols would have been highly irregular – indeed, according to an interview with István Deák (26. 6. 2018), unheard of.

With no other option, Czerwenka filed a complaint against Bume in the consular court.

Austria–Hungary was one of 18 or so foreign powers that had treaties establishing concessions in China, including the right of citizens of those foreign powers to be tried under the jurisdiction of their home country. Although Great Britain and the United States had independent court systems in China, both operating out of Shanghai, Austria–Hungary was one of many countries that operated consular courts and relied on the staff of the consulates, with or without any legal training to speak of, to preside over those courts. F.E. Hinckley, »Extraterritoriality in China«, in: The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 39/1 (1912), p. 97f.; Malfatti: Handbuch, pp. 475, 504. On the political philosophy about international relations that undergirded instructions for the functioning of these courts, see Holly Case: »The Quiet Revolution. Consuls and the International System in the Nineteenth Century«, in: Timothy Snyder / Katherine Younger (ed.): The Balkans as Europe. 1821–1914, Rochester, NY 2018, pp. 114–115.

Not surprisingly, given Bume’s behavior during the hearing, the judge was inclined to believe Czerwenka’s account of the events and found Bume guilty of violating §496 of the State law, which banned »Übertretungen gegen die Sicherheit der Ehre«, by using the phrase »This is insolence of the highest order« and of making threats that suggested his intention to follow up with assault, although it was not definitively proved that he used the specific phrase »Watch out, I’ll box your ears«. He was sentenced to three days of arrest, a sentence in the middle of the spectrum of possibility. The judge declined to impose the most serious sanction since »although admittedly in the rooms of a Club the expectation of decent behavior is imposed on every man«, the Club still did not earn the expectation of the kind of reverential behavior that pertained to a church. A further mitigating circumstance was that Bume’s outburst had occurred in a moment of »violent emotion« (heftige Gemütsbewegung). »The intense excitability and sensibility of the accused, his violent emotions, and his previously spotless moral conduct were all considered as mitigating circumstances«. On the other hand, however, the defendant’s behavior during the hearing only underscored the accusations against him – outbursts such as »fictional misrepresentations!« constituted an aggravating circumstance.

Bume had as little respect for the decision of the consular court as he did for the consular attaché. A Hungarian newspaper covering the story noted with amusement that Bume filed an appeal with the consular appellate court in Constantinople and simultaneously sent all the files related to the entire affair, showing the lieutenant’s »retreat« (Retirade) from a duel by sword to the Dragoner regiment where Czerwenka was a reserve officer.

The appellate consular court in Constantinople was less impressed by the severity of Bume’s misbehavior, finding it impossible to prove that Bume had made a threat »loudly and in order to be heard by others«.

The president of the imperial-royal (k. k.) Austrian and Royal Hungarian Consular Superior Court in Constantinople was Stephan Kvassay v. Kvassó und Brogyan. Malfatti: Handbuch, p. 478; Hof- und Staats-Handbuch der österreichischen-ungarischen Monarchie für das Jahr 1907, Wien 1907, p. 269.

Czerwenka’s reaction to the appellate court’s decision is not recorded, but it can hardly have been a happy one. Taking a man to court was not, according to the standards of the time, a satisfactory alternative to resolution by duel.

Frevert provides examples of men who insisted on dueling even after a court case had been won. »It was not enough to take the offender to court and have him convicted for slander and libel«. Frevert: Emotions, pp. 45, 47. Andrew Jackson asked van Buren to pardon a man who had been arrested for assaulting him, following the advice of his mother, »indict no man for assault and battery, or sue him for slander« because those injuries could only be repaired by an attack on the body of the injurer. Greenberg: »The Nose«, p. 73.

The Pesti Hirlap expected this incident to end Czerwenka’s career, but it did not. Nor did he lose his officer’s commission.

Career officers in the army often suffered from their lack of skill in sword-fighting, compared with nationalist student fraternities, and as a result, the army condoned the substitution of smooth-bore pistols for swords in duels, even though the former were far more deadly. Deák: Beyond Nationalism, p. 134.

If Szathmáry Király was an arrogant, belligerent hothead and Czerwenka was a humorless, punctilious expert, then Maximilian Kutschera was a quixotic and unstable but dedicated romantic. Kutschera was born on 19 December 1851 in Vienna. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1870, he served as a Linienschiffsleutnant in the active navy. He became the shipping director for Bosnia and Herzegovina before asking to be transferred to the consular corps in December 1895. He was reliable, had a »highly respectable disposition« (hochanständige Gesinnung) and »excellent character traits« (vorzüglichen Charactereigenschaften). He was earnest and zealous, well-versed in matters nautical and technical and fluent in German, Italian, French, and English and could speak, although not write, Bosnian.

Kutschera’s moral integrity earned frequent praise in his personnel file. He showed, throughout his career, a keen awareness of questions of honor. In May 1899, for example, while stationed as a vice consul in Hong Kong, he warned of a coming day when captains approaching the port of Hong Kong would fire seven cannon shots in his honor, since he was a vice consul, rather than the nine shots to which he was entitled due to his rank in the Navy – a prospect, he warned, that would »make his social position completely untenable« and would have consequences for the empire. »That the monarchy’s highest-ranking career official in [Hong Kong] ranks, at official and even social occasions, below the consuls of even the most insignificant states, most of whom arrived later, and some of whom are not very respected, has an unpleasant effect and undermines the prestige of the monarchy«.

Kutschera, 8. 5. 1899, Z. 33809/10 pr 13.VI.1899.

On 2 September 1906, when Kutschera was 55 years old and had been placed in charge of the consulate in Constanța, he sent an ominous telegram to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. »Insulted on street by Gradisteanu, President of National League of Transylvania, whereby spectators took part, this evening. Police Chief promised Prefect thorough investigation and satisfaction. Report follows«. The following day, he submitted a full report. As was his habit, he had been taking his dinner in the Hotel Carol, where he lived, when a man (who he only later learned was Peter Gradisteanu) had begun loudly berating a waiter for daring to speak (with an older woman and her daughter, seated at a table near the consul) Hungarian in the middle of Romania. Gradisteanu stormed out of the restaurant, and Kutschera approached the »ladies« to ask if they required »protection«, for which they thanked him.

Later in the evening, Kutschera, together with a Hungarian shipping agent, strolled along the boulevard »where all the world promenades at that hour« and passed by Gradisteanu, who was seated on a bench, several times. Although Kutschera and his companion spoke Hungarian as they passed Gradisteanu, the latter did not object, which Kutschera took to mean »that the courage of his conviction was only applied vis à vis defenseless ladies«. Kutschera’s obligation, as a man of honor, was to protect such defenseless ladies.

Deák: »Chivalry«, p. 8.

From the standpoint of the Austro-Hungarian ambassador, in whose lap all this eventually landed, it was a sticky case, complicated by the fact that Kutschera was actually the one who had insulted Gradisteanu, not the other way around. Kutschera had publicly called Gradisteanu a coward, hours after an incident Gradisteanu may not have either remembered or realized that Kutschera witnessed. Gradisteanu was 70 years old and a Romanian nationalist; it would have been easy enough to declare that he was incapable of giving satisfaction. Kutschera, however, was widely praised in the Hungarian press as a »martyr for his sacrifice on behalf of the Hungarian language«. There was no chance that the matter would quietly fade away. Some resolution was required. Knowing full well that Kutschera was in the wrong and eager to have his honor protected so that he could remain in his post, the ambassador advised him to demand satisfaction of Gradisteanu – and reported that advice (to break the law) to the Ministry. As eager as the ambassador was to protect Kutschera, however, he could not advise the Ministry to commend him for his actions in defense of the Hungarian ladies. »It is undeniable that Kutschera’s intent to hold Gradisteanu responsible for his abuses towards the waiter was commendable, but the way in which he took him to task was so ineptly chosen, that both Kutschera and the Romanian government are in an embarrassing position«. Where so many men were determined to help Kutschera defend his honor, a solution was quickly found: Gradisteanu had spread the rumor that he had hit Kutschera, whereas Kutschera claimed to have parried the blow; Kutschera could use this slanderous claim as justification for sending seconds to challenge Gradisteanu. Their sworn statement that Gradisteanu refused to provide satisfaction was submitted to the Austro-Hungarian embassy in Bucharest. This, Kutschera’s friends hoped, was enough to prove that Gradisteanu was not satisfaktionsfähig after all – and that, as a consequence, the duel that had failed to materialize was not really required. Unfortunately for Kutschera, this was not particularly convincing.

Kutschera’s colleagues, friends, and supervisors had done everything they could to support him. They had protected him from physical assault. They had taken his part despite their knowledge that he had waited far too long to confront Gradisteanu. They had joined him in searching for excuses to explain his behavior. They had challenged Gradisteanu when that seemed most favorable to Kutschera’s reputation and called him satisfaktionsunfähig, incapable of satisfaction, when that seemed more favorable. But however they tried to describe the incident to themselves and to others, however many Hungarian newspaper articles celebrated Kutschera’s patriotism and bravery, there had been no duel, there had been no apology, there was no satisfaction.

Kutschera was undone. Lajos/Ludwig Thallóczy, a Balkan expert, archivist, and administrator in the Finance Ministry (whose exact relationship to Kutschera remains unexplained), reported to the Section Head in the Ministry (Ludwig von Callenberg) that Kutschera »finds himself in a profoundly nervous, agitated condition«, adding that he must be recalled to Vienna: »I myself am a key witness that Kutschera is truly ill«. The ambassador, Szápary, added that Kutschera’s condition throughout his entire time in Constanza had been abnormal – taking him back to a time five years earlier when Kutschera had suffered a »shock to the nerves« in Shanghai. Kutschera had been miraculously cured of the »disruption to his nervous system« during a sea voyage, when his steamer hit a typhoon en route to Japan. Ever since the incident with Gradisteanu, however, he had suffered a relapse: »whether the incident with Gradisteanu is the cause or the consequence of his relapse eludes my judgment«. Kutschera’s private letters and his behavior during the ambassador’s visit left no doubt: he suffered from some »psychic ailment«. Kutschera reported that »feelings of anxiety begin near his heart, rise to his head, everything goes black and he is not in control of his actions«. Although they did what they could, Kutschera’s colleagues and superiors could not do enough to restore his equilibrium. His mistake was not severe enough to be dismissed as dishonorable. Whether Kutschera’s mental instability was the reason he had allowed himself to be humiliated by Gradisteanu or his humiliation had caused his mental instability did not matter. Either way, his career was finished. By the summer of 1907, less than a year after the fateful evening on the promenade in Constanta, he had retired at the age of 56.

Trying to estimate, even roughly, the number of duels that were actually fought in nineteenth-century Central Europe would be a fool’s errand.

»Because of their enforced secrecy, no one knows their number even approximately«. Deák: »Chivalry«, p. 12. McAleer does estimate that only about one percent of duels fought in Austria-Hungary were fatal. Kevin McAleer: Dueling. The Cult of Honor in Fin-de-Siècle Germany, Princeton 1994, p. 224, Fn. 43.

Ute Frevert’s comment about the bourgeoisie in general applies particularly to the civil service: »That citizens sought to settle their disputes or conflicts of interests by use of force did not seem to fit into the concept of bourgeois society acting in a rational and disciplined manner«.

Ute Frevert: »The Taming of the Noble Rufian. Male Violence and Dueling in Early Modern and Modern Germany«, in: Pieter Spierenburg (ed.): Men and Violence. Gender, Honor, and Rituals in Modern Europe and America, Columbus, OH 1998, pp. 37–63, at p. 48.