HÜBNER, JOSEPH ALEXANDER, Count. — Austrian diplomat, born on 26 November 1811 in Vienna, died there on 30 July 1892. Having entered the State Chancellery in 1835, he was attached to the Austrian legation in Lisbon (1841–44), became consul in Leipzig in 1844, and in 1848 was charged with directing the Diplomatic Chancellery of Archduke Ranieri, viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia. Taken prisoner by the Milanese provisional government, he returned to Vienna in the autumn of that same year and became Prince Schwarzenberg’s right-hand man in matters of foreign policy.
Sent to Paris in March 1849, at first as chargé d’affaires, he subsequently served there as minister plenipotentiary and ambassador. Minister of Police in August 1859, he resigned two months later because of disagreements with Minister Goluchovski over domestic policy. Representative of Austria to the Holy See (1865–67), he left the post when the Vienna government began the diplomatic and political action that was to lead to the denunciation of the Concordat of 1855. A man of broad learning, Count H. left autobiographical writings: Ein Jahr meines Lebens; Neun Jahre der Erinnerungen eines österreichischen Botschofters in Paris 1851-59 (2 vols., edited by his son, Berlin 1904); a work on Sixtus V: Sixte-quin, d'après des correspondances diplomatiques (3 vols., Paris 1870; Italian version, Rome 1887); and various writings on the journeys around the world that he undertook after his retirement.