Schwarzenberg, Family

SCHWARZENBERG, FAMILY. - Noble family originating from Franconia, of the same stock as the counts of Seinsheim.

In the 16th century ADAM (1584-1641) acquired renown, as minister of the electors George William and Frederick William 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 great estates in Styria and in Bohemia. Among the members of the family the following are particularly remembered: KARL PHILIPP (1771-1820), who fought first against the Turks, then against the French; in 1813, with the rank of field marshal, he was commander of the anti-Napoleonic forces at the battle of Leipzig and entered Paris in 1814.

FELIX, Austrian statesman and diplomat, b. at Krumau (Bohemia) on 2 Oct. 1800, d. at Vienna on 5 Apr. 1852.

He abandoned his military career in 1824 in order to enter the diplomatic service. He was attaché at St. Petersburg, London, Paris and Berlin, then in 1839 minister plenipotentiary at Turin, where he safeguarded imperial interests with particular energy and found himself several times in conflict with Solaro della Margherita. Minister at Naples from 1846 to 1848, after the outbreak of the Revolution he served at the head of a brigade of the imperial forces engaged in northern Italy. Following the Viennese riots of Oct. 1848 he was charged with forming a new ministry; a trusted adviser of the new emperor Francis Joseph, he restored order with an iron hand in the monarchy, which had been compromised by the demands of the individual nationalities. In Germany he raised the prestige of the Habsburgs in the face of Prussia's aspirations to constitute itself as the hegemonic power of the Bund; in Bohemia he silenced any expression of inadequacy; in Hungary he put an end, with the help of Tsar Nicholas I, to the Magyar war of independence; in Italy finally, after refusing any mediation by foreign powers, he reaffirmed Austrian hegemony by force of arms. He further encouraged President Bonaparte to send an expeditionary corps to Rome in order to put an end to the Mazzinian Republic and restore the Pontiff there. He was not averse to the idea of bringing the whole Habsburg Empire into the German confederation, but in the face of the difficulties encountered he did not insist upon it. The sudden death of S. deprived the Emperor of his most acute adviser in domestic and foreign policy.

FRIEDRICH, cardinal, b. at Vienna on 6 Apr. 1809, d. there on 27 March 1885, brother of Prince Felix and cousin of Prince Karl Philipp. Ordained priest in 1833, he was a canon of the metropolitan church of Vienna. Archbishop of Salzburg on 1 Feb. 1836, he was created cardinal by Gregory XVI on 24 Jan. 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 convoked at Vienna the whole episcopate of the Habsburg Empire, where a memorial was drawn up, submitted to the government authorities, for the reorganization of relations between Church and State. In this way the Concordat of 1855 was prepared, to whose practical implementation in Bohemia S. devoted particular zeal. After the war of 1866, however, the good harmony between Church and State lapsed, chiefly because of the ascendancy of liberal tendencies. As a member of the House of Lords, S. opposed in 1868 the law on civil marriage and in his speech of 20 March pointed out that such a bill, by removing any religious sanction from marriage and the family, not only called into question the obligations deriving from canon law but abolished those obligations themselves, constituting a threat to the freedom of the Church.

At the Vatican Council he was part of the group of bishops who considered the definition of papal infallibility inopportune because of the repercussions it could have in political circles; and with them he left Rome before the solemn proclamation. He published the relevant constitution in his diocese on 12 Jan. 1871.