Proof needed
Sir: One must surely sympathise with Baron von Franckenstein, who feels rightly incensed if William Cash has demeaned a `very ancient European title' with a pair of quotation marks (`One lets it all hang out', 16 October). Your correspondent from California claims that his family was given its baronial title 'in 1670 by the Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire' (Letters, 20 November). With the greatest reluctance, therefore, one has to point out that the 'Austro-Hungarian Empire' did not actual- ly exist in 1670.
Since the seat of Franckenstein lay in the province of Silesia (now in Poland, but in 1670 in the Holy Roman Empire), one sus- pects that the Baron's ancestors may well have been elevated by Leopold I of Habs- burg in his capacity as Holy Roman Emper- or. Less probably, they may have been given the title by the Emperor Francis- Joseph in 1870 (when the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary had just been founded, but when Franckenstein was unfortunately located in Prussia). It is always possible that the von Frankensteins belonged to the crush of Silesian refugees who had fled to Vienna, en route for California, to escape from Frederick the Great.
I fear that the only way out now is for the Baron to publish the full text of the original imperial letters patent. Without that, the sympathies of world opinion are likely to revert to Mr Cash's cautious use of the form 'Baron'.
Norman Davies
School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1
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