SCHWARZENBERG, FAMIGLIA. — Noble family originating in Franconia, from the same stock as the counts of Seinsheim.
In the sixteenth century ADAM (1584–1641) acquired renown as minister to the electors Giorgio Guglielmo and Federico Guglielmo of Brandenburg during the Thirty Years’ War. The S. received the title of counts in 1599 and of princes of the Empire in 1670. They subsequently acquired extensive estates in Styria and Bohemia. Among the members of the family, the following deserve particular mention: KARL PHILIPP (1771–1820), who fought first against the Turks and later against the French; in 1813, with the rank of field marshal, he commanded the anti-Napoleonic forces at the Battle of Leipzig and entered Paris in 1814.
FELIX, Austrian statesman and diplomat, born at Krumau (Bohemia) on 2 October 1800, died in Vienna on 5 April 1852.
He abandoned his military career in 1824 to enter the diplomatic service. He was attached to the missions in St Petersburg, London, Paris, and Berlin, and then, in 1839, became minister plenipotentiary in Turin, where he energetically safeguarded imperial interests and repeatedly found himself in conflict with Solaro della Margherita. Minister in Naples from 1846 to 1848, after the outbreak of the Revolution he served in command of a brigade of the imperial forces engaged in northern Italy. Following the Viennese disturbances of October 1848, he was entrusted with forming a new ministry; as a trusted adviser to the new emperor Francesco Giuseppe, he restored with an iron hand order in the monarchy, which had been undermined by the demands of the various nationalities. In Germany he raised the prestige of the Habsburgs in opposition to Prussia’s aspirations to establish itself as the hegemonic power of the Bund; in Bohemia he silenced every expression of inadequacy; in Hungary he brought the Magyar war of independence to an end with the help of Tsar Nicola I; finally, in Italy, after refusing every mediation by foreign powers, he reasserted Austrian hegemony by force of arms. He also encouraged President Bonaparte to send an expeditionary force to Rome to put an end to the Mazzinian Republic and restore the Pontiff there. Nor was he opposed to the idea of bringing the entire Habsburg Empire into the German Confederation, but, faced with the difficulties encountered, he did not pursue II. The S.’s sudden death deprived the Emperor of his most perceptive adviser in domestic and foreign policy.
FRIEDRICH, cardinal, born in Vienna on 6 April 1809, died there on 27 March 1885, brother of Prince Felix and cousin of Prince Karl Philipp. Ordained a priest in 1833, he was a canon of the metropolitan church of Vienna. Archbishop of Salzburg from 1 February 1836, he was made a cardinal by Gregory XVI on 24 January 1842. On 20 May he was transferred to the archbishopric of Prague. In 1848 he presided over the conference of German bishops at Würzburg, and the following year he convened the entire episcopate of the Habsburg Empire in Vienna, where a memorandum was drawn up and submitted to the governmental authorities for the reorganization of relations between Church and State. In this way the Concordat of 1855 was prepared, whose practical implementation in Bohemia the S. pursued with particular zeal. After the war of 1866, however, the good harmony between Church and State gradually disappeared, chiefly as a result of the ascendancy of liberal tendencies. As a member of the House of Lords, in 1868 the S. opposed the law on civil marriage, and in his speech of 20 March he pointed out that this proposal, by removing any religious character from marriage and the family, not only called into question the obligations arising from canon law but abolished the obligations themselves, thereby constituting a threat to the freedom of the Church.
At the First Vatican Council he belonged to the group of bishops who considered the definition of papal infallibility ill-advised because of the repercussions it might have in political circles; together with them, he left Rome before the solemn proclamation. He published the relevant constitution in his diocese on 12 January 1871.