Liechtenstein

“ Despite its small size and limited natural resources, Liechtenstein has developed into a prosperous, highly industrialized, free-enterprise economy with a vital service sector and living standards on par with its large European neighbors. Low business taxes - the maximum tax rate is 20% - and easy incorporation rules have induced about 25,000 holding or so-called letter box companies to establish nominal offices in Liechtenstein, providing 30% of state revenues. The country participates in a customs union with Switzerland and uses the Swiss franc as its national currency. ”

“ And so she was married, quite quietly, as befitted her mourning, in the ducal palace at Parma. The ceremony was performed by proxy, the Prince of Liechtenstein representing his royal master, and immediately following it the new archduchess set out for Vienna. It is enough for our remaining purpose to record the whole-heartedness of her reception there by that susceptible young man, her husband, who had only once before in his life seen the face which was now to awaken in him the liveliest emotions of love. ”

“ In Vienna, where at least there is a genuine aristocracy, it would be unthinkable for a Prince Liechtenstein or Schwarzenberg to scream from his box for a ballet in Fidelio.' I believe she also spoke to the Emperor in the same strain, so that he seriously debated whether by police intervention some check could not be put upon the unmannerly conduct of these gentlemen, most of whom, unfortunately, belonged to the Imperial Household. ”

“ There is a considerable amount of transit trade at Feldkirch, which by rail is 11 m. from Buchs (Switzerland) , through the principality of Liechtenstein, 24 m. from Bregenz, and 991/2 m. from Innsbruck by tunnel beneath the Arlberg Pass. The town also possesses numerous industrial establishments, such as factories for cotton-spinning, weaving, bell-founding, dyeing, &c. ”

“ In 1891 these strangely assorted factions became consolidated, and during the elections of that year Prince Liechtenstein came forward as an anti-Semitic candidate and the acknowledged leader of the party. The elections resulted in the return of fifteen anti-Semites to the Reichsrath, chiefly from Vienna.
Although Prince Liechtenstein and the bulk of the Christian 142 Socialists had joined the anti-Semites with the support of the Clerical organ, the Vaterland, the Clerical party as a whole still held aloof from the Jew-baiters. The events of 1892-1895 put an end to their hesitation. ”

“ The winnings were always so much the greater that the first million was reached in a few weeks. “Chance,” opined Aunt Lotti. Self-deception? I now ask myself in this case also. The figures were there, and now plan-making and air-castle building broke out among us in great style. In the neighborhood of Brünn there is a Liechtenstein domain, Eisgrub, with a marvelous 33castle and park; we had seen it once when we were on a picnic. We would buy Eisgrub. Perhaps Prince Liechtenstein would not part with it—well, one can have anything if one only pays a price well above the market value. ”

“ PORTRAIT OF A MAN
(1636)
[Liechtenstein Gallery, Vienna
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
(1636)
The four remaining pictures are portraits; two, forming a pair, a young man and his wife, belonging to Prince Liechtenstein of Vienna; one, a woman, to Mr Byers, Pittsburg, U.S.A.; and also a woman, to Lord Kinnaird. The "Ecce Homo," in the National [Pg 65] Gallery [No. 1400] , must have also been painted that year, if not before, for it is a sketch for the etching of that date. ”

“ Liechtenstein will become a party to the Statute on the date of the deposit with the Secretary-General of the United Nations of an instrument, signed on behalf of the Government of the Principality of Liechtenstein and ratified as may be required by the constitutional law of Liechtenstein, containing: (a) Acceptance of the provisions of the Statute of the International Court of Justice; (b) Acceptance of all the obligations of a Member of the United Nations under Article 94 of the Charter ”

“ Finding then that the Austrians and Prussians were once more contemplating a junction, he sent an answer to the letter of the Allied sovereigns, but it was addressed only to the Emperor of Austria, and its tenor was to persuade the Emperor to make a separate peace. "Only gain the Austrians," he had said to Caulaincourt, on sending him to Châtillon, "and the mischief is at an end." The Emperor sent Prince Wenceslaus of Liechtenstein to Napoleon's headquarters, and it was agreed that a conference should be held at Lusigny, between him and Count Flahault, on the 24th of February. ”

“ In the 17th century some half-dozen more principalities were created, of which that of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen (1697) survives as a sovereign house. The 18th century increased their number, and of the princely houses of this period those of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt (1710) , Waldeck (1712) and Reuss, elder branch (1778) , have preserved their sovereignty. Of the other sovereign “ princes ” in Germany, Reuss, cadet branch, obtained the title in 1806, Schaumburg-Lippe in 1807. Outside the German Empire the prince of Liechtenstein, whose title dates from 1608, still remains sovereign. ”

“ Liechtenstein claims l,606 square miles of Czech territory confiscated
from its royal family in 1918; Sudeten German claims for restitution
of property confiscated in connection with their expulsion after World
War II versus the Czech Republic claims that restitution does not
proceed before February 1948 when the Communists seized power;
unresolved property issues with Slovakia over redistribution of
property of the former Czechoslovak federal government
Climate:
temperate; cool summers ”

“ History of Austria, Liechtenstein, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia is a classification used by the Library of Congress Classification system under Class D -- History, General and Old World. This article describes subclass DB.
Contents DB
1-3150..........History of Austria. Liechtenstein. Hungary. Czechoslovakia 1-879..........Austria. Austro-Hungarian Empire 1-20.5..........General 21-27.5..........Description and travel 29-34.5..........Antiquities. Social life and customs. Ethnography 35-99.2..........History 35-40.5..........General 42-49..........Military, naval, and political history. ”

“ The stamp duties are very heavy; there are land and house taxes, and a personal tax. It is to be expected, that the people should wish for a diminution of their burdens, but Liege is the only place I have visited in the countries lately relinquished by France, where the separation seems to be generally regretted. I found that the Prussian government, was by no means popular, on the left bank of the Rhine, and that an union with either Austria or Bavaria, was much wished for in those provinces, whose future destiny remains to be decided at the Congress of Vienna. ”

“ I knew Austria too well not to be aware that a return to the policy of Prince Felix Schwarzenberg or Count Moritz Esterhazy was inconceivable there. Little as the Slavs there love us, just as little do they wish to return into a German Empire even with a Habsburg-Lorraine emperor at its head. ”

“ A half hour more, and the throng thins again, the country opens, and here you are, in front of the palace of Liechstenstein, the first noble of Austria. A modern building, of beautiful and light architecture, rises from its clustering trees: servants in handsome livery hang about the gates and lean against the pillars of the portico, and with an explanation from my lying valet, who evidently makes me out an ambassador at least, by the ceremony with which I am received, a grey servitor makes his appearance and opens the immense glass door leading from the side of the court. ”

“ Austria needs our protection in war, as in peace, and has no other support. Her dependence on us is based on political, national, and economic considerations, and is the greater the more intimate our relations with Russia are. The Bosnian crisis taught us this. Since the days of Count Beust no Vienna Minister has adopted such a self-confident attitude towards us as Count Aehrenthal during the later years of his life. If German policy is conducted on right lines, cultivating relations with Russia, Austria-Hungary is our vassal and dependent on us, even without an alliance or recompense ”

“ They are striving for a federation in Austria on national lines, a state of things which would have even less chance of being realised within the German Empire than under the Double Eagle. The Germans of Austria, however, acknowledge Berlin as the centre of German Might and Culture, and are well aware that Austria can never again be the leading Power. They wish for as intimate a connection with the German [Pg 9] Empire as possible, not for an anti-German policy. ”

“ No court, no nobility, no barracks there!—nothing but church, school, and hospital, things that are of no account to me. I didn't want to remain in Switzerland, with inaccessible heights before my eyes; it's oppressive, and for that reason, here on the Rhine it's cozy and homelike. Germany is and will be the only land for free men. Here one pays his tax, and is let alone. No one has any claim, and in his position the nobleman is liable to no interference. ”

“ Whether it was that the Austrians, having less faith in the solidarity of their Empire and the staying powers of their mixed population, and greater misgivings about the issue of the war, were naturally more pessimistic and more apt to magnify than to underrate the dangers with which a European conflict threatened them, or that they had received unwelcome tidings of a like nature from an independent source, I am unable to determine. I know, however, that Prince Lichnowsky’s own mind was made up during that colloquy with Sir Edward Grey.148 And he made no mystery of it. ”

“ But a glance at the map shows that, whereas previously Germany enjoyed by alliance with Austria political control eastwards to the Carpathians and Balkans and economic control to the Ægean and Black Sea, now Germany is barricaded on the east at its national frontier by strong national States; and by union with German-Austria would receive an extension of its [219] own national frontier not eastward but southward. The effect of union with Austria would be to add to Germany not another East Prussia or Silesia, but another Baden or Bavaria. ”

“ Austria became more than ever a hated and dreaded power, not merely to the States of Sweden, Denmark, Holland, and England, but to Catholic France herself, then ruled by that able and ambitious statesman Cardinal Richelieu, before whose tomb in an after age the czar Peter bowed in earnest homage from the recollection and admiration of his transcendent labors in behalf of absolutism. Even Richelieu, a prince of the Church and the persecutor of the Huguenots, was alarmed at the encroachments of Austria, and intrigued with Protestant princes to undermine her dangerous ascendency. ”

“ The Government’s Programme is, Austria—the Austria which has grown during a glorious historic .development, and which has, during this war, become convinced of its indestructible forces, the Austria which is preparing to be a powerful factor in the future economic and social development of the world—Austria, the venerable, proud and eternal fortress of her peoples. The Government could never, never tolerate rash hands being laid upon her proved foundations. ”

“ Now I think it may be said that from Austria eastward across South-Eastern Europe and Asia, from Vienna to Pekin, the general form of government is not national but imperial. Every government is holding together a number of different groups, all jealous of each other, all of whom would fall apart and probably fight among themselves, if they were not kept under by one ruler over them. ”

“ LICHTENBERG, formerly a small German principality on the west bank of the Rhine, enclosed by the Nahe, the Blies and the Glan, now belonging to the government district of Trier, Prussian Rhine province. The principality was constructed of parts of the electorate of Trier, of Nassau-Saarbrücken and other districts, and lay between Rhenish Bavaria and the old Prussian province of the Rhine. ”

“ This mutual engagement between leader and people—their hearts filled with the sacredness of the [Pg 250] moment, and their voices swelling into one grand roll—is almost overwhelming in its touching simplicity and fervour. That the custom has maintained itself with but minor changes through so many centuries answers for the admirable stability of the people, and the suitableness of the régime itself.
The common tie that bound together the thirteen autonomous states into one was the Diet or Tagsatzung. It met at one or other of the chief towns—Zurich, Lucerne, Bern, Baden, and so forth. ”

“ Trieste must go with Austria and Salzburg, and the Northern Tyrol and Styria and Carinthia no doubt; but it is not difficult to show that Austria would actually be strengthened by giving up the Southern Tyrol, where the Italian people, or at least the Italian language, is gaining ground day by day. There really seems very little left of the integrity of the Austrian Empire at the conclusion of our survey of its constituent parts. Matters do not look much better if we turn to Trans-Leithania. ”

“ We could also have considered the question of the reduction of armaments, and need no longer have troubled ourselves about Austrian complications. Then Austria would have become the vassal of the German Empire, without any alliance—and especially without our seeking her good graces, a proceeding ultimately leading to war for the liberation of Poland and the destruction of Serbia, although German interest demanded the exact contrary. ”