Between Vienna, St Petersburg, and Warsaw: August Lobkowitz in Galicia, 1826-32

This article analyses the relationships between Austrian imperial bureaucrats and the Polish elites in Habsburg Galicia during the 1820s and 1830s. Its main focus is on Prince August Lobkowitz, who was the governor of Austrian Galicia between 1826 and 1832. Even though he was a representative of the German Habsburg dynasty, with family roots in the Bohemian aristocracy, Lobkowitz switched allegiances in Galicia and declared himself a Pole. Against the instruction of his senior colleagues in Vienna, he supported the idea of an independent Poland as a buffer state between the Habsburg monarchy and the Russian Empire. Between 1828 and 1831, he maintained close contacts with Polish politicians - both in Galicia and in the Russian empire - and promised them Austrian support in the event of a Polish uprising against Russian rule. The article seeks to challenge the historiographical stereotype of a uniform Austrian bureaucracy that enforced its will upon the largely non-German elites in the Habsburg provinces.