Hübner, Joseph Alexander, Count of

HÜBNER, JOSEPH ALEXANDER, conte di. - Austrian diplomat, b. 26 Nov. 1811 in Vienna, d. there 30 July 1892. Having entered the State Chancellery in 1835, he was attached to the Austrian legation in Lisbon (1841-44), consul in Leipzig in 1844, and in 1848 was given the task of directing the diplomatic chancellery of Archduke Ranieri, viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia. Taken prisoner by the provisional Milanese government, he returned to Vienna in the autumn of the same year and became the right-hand man of Prince von Schwarzenberg for questions of foreign policy.

Sent to Paris in March 1849, first as chargé d'affaires, he was subsequently minister plenipotentiary and ambassador there. Minister of police in Aug. 1859, he resigned two months later because of differences over domestic policy with Minister Goluchowski. Representative of Austria at 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 vast learning, Count von H. left autobiographical writings: Ein Jahr meines Lebens; Neun Jahre der Erinnerungen eines österreichischen Botschafters in Paris 1851-59 (2 vols., edited by his son, Berlin 1904); a work on Sixtus V: Sixte-Quint, d'après des correspondances diplomatiques (3 vols., Paris 1870; Italian trans. Rome 1887), and various writings on the journeys he made around the world after being placed on the retired list.

Silvio Furlani