A Habsburg in Europe
Edward Marston
West Berlin The third name on the Bavarian CSU's list of candidates for the European Parliament is somehow familiar. It is Franz Joseph Otto von Habsburg. The erstwhile heir to the thrones of Austria and Hungary has been registered as a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany under that name since last summer. (In Austria — more punctilious in its republicanism — he is officially plain Otto Habsburg.) His federal citizenship was made possible by the local government of Upper Bavaria, which will be his 'constituency' if he is elected in June.
Dr Otto von Habsburg is a small, precise, active man with a well-trimmed moustache and a well-controlled manner. He wears Tracht — the national costume common to Austria and Bavaria — and sits in a tiny office in an anonymous apartment block in Munich. His court is a couple of secretaries and a press officer with the physiognomy and diction of a Franconian peasant. He himself speaks perfect English. In private conversation he is moderate and diplomatic — refusing, for example, to be drawn on the relative merits of Mrs Thatcher and Mr Heath. These qualities are the products of a royal education in the Twenties. Although her husband lost both his thrones in November 1918 the forceful Empress Zita brought up her eldest son to be a king and emperor. Benedictine monks schooled him in six languages.
As an active member of the PanEuropean Union since the mid-Thirties he has a sophisticated blueprint for a conservative Europe. This would not merely be Western Europe. Ideally, it would stretch to the frontiers of Russia. It would be a Christian Europe. It would guarantee certain basic freedoms within its frontiers: economic freedom, the freedom of expression, the freedom of minorities. It would as far as possible be decentralised in its administrative structure. The aim is a federation — 'But that is as it were the first floor. Before that we must build the ground floor, which is a confederation.' The well-used metaphor rolls easily off his 13ngue. If the whole plan sounds remarkably like a revised standard version of the Austro-Hungarian empire, this is perhaps not surprising.
Nor is his fervent hostility to Communism. The Soviet threat is ubiquitous in his world view. He has even maintained that the Ayatollah Khomeini receives his instructions from Moscow — via the Italian Communist leader Signor Berlinguer. 'Naturally Eurocommunism comes without force or threats of force,' he declared the other day, 'why should a housebreaker clamber up the wall when the owner opens the front door to him?' The comparison between Soviet imperialism and Nazi aggression is close to his heart. Just as Hitler could have been halted by decisive action at the time of the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, so the Soviets could have been decisively rebuffed in Hungary in 1956. The Anschluss has its parallel in the building of the Berlin Wall, and in the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Otto von Habsburg's historical sweep is Churchillian. And Churchill is a hero. (When they first met, the good doctor drank exclusively port throughout the luncheon — because he understood that Churchill liked people who liked port.) But where is the Churchill for the Seventies who will stand up against the latter-day appeasers? Otto von Habsburg's answer explains much of the opprobrium which has accompanied his entry into West German politics. It is Franz Josef Strauss, the extreme right-wing leader of the CSU, whom he sees as the great man in the wilderness. He illustrates the Bavarian leader's Churchillian qualities with an anecdote. After a characteristic beer tent rally Strauss was approached by a little old lady. 'Herr Strauss', she quavered, 'I should just like you to know that I pray every night that you will become Chancellor."Madam', replied Franz Josef, 'Pray rather that the time will never come when I am called on to be Chancellor.' The leader in times of crisis, perhaps of war — it is not reassuring that Herr Strauss sees himself in this light.
Furthermore Dr Habsburg has suggested what the crisis might be. In the event of nuclear blackmail by terrorists, he argued in a controversial article last year, the Federal Republic should suspend its democracy for (say) nine months in favour of a dictatorship. He justified this wild proposal to me as follows. His concern is that terrorism raises new possibilities which are not covered by the Constitution. He wants a Constitution which covers all eventualities. 'You see,' he explained, 'the Constitution is like this' — describing a large circle with his arm — 'and once you get outside it' — an alarming upward jab of the right arm — difficult to get back in.' I didn't entirely see. After all, a Constitution is not a magic circle.
One can see why Chancellor Schmidt has spoken of Otto von Habsburg's 'amazing degree of political immaturity'. The Chancellor went on to describe him as 'a bad visiting card for Europe'. This judgment is too harsh. The good doctor may be dangerous as a doorman for Franz Josef Strauss. But he is probably rather a good European visiting card. For a start he is i11 . no possible sense a fascist. He is sut generis, an eccentric arch-conservative, a joker in the ideological pack. It is as neurotic to believe that he will threaten the fabric of European democracy as it is to believe that a few Communists ('enemies of the constitution') in the public service will destroy West Germany's democracy. Some of his European ideas are sensible and interesting. He is an eloquent advocate of single-member constituencies, arguing that some degree of identification, however slight, with an individual representative Is better than none at all. Certainly most of the more than one million inhabitants of his 'constituency' know who their representative will be. He will bring some colour into what could be a rather colourless body. And his claim to the title of a born European' is unique.
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