Count Julius Andrássy
Bela Menczer introduces the role of an Hungarian at the Congress of Berlin.
When Disraeli brought home ‘Peace with Honour’ from the Berlin Congress in 1878, the name most quoted in the British press next to his own—Lord Beaconsfield by then, but still Disraeli for the world—and that of Bismarck was Count Julius Andrassy, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister. ‘The brilliant second’ he was called. Was he ‘second’ to Bismarck, or to Disraeli? Did he serve Austria-Hungary as well as he served his two great partners, or was he too exclusively Hungarian to serve Austria, as some of his critics thought? Historians are not agreed upon this; but the reader may judge for himself.