The Habsburg Restoration: Hungary in 1921
Béla Menczer describes how the last Austrian Emperor strove to regain one of his family’s Kingdoms.
Just over fifty years ago, in April, then again in October, 1921, Charles of Habsburg-Lorraine, the last Monarch of Austria and Hungary, made two unsuccessful attempts to regain his Hungarian throne. The move was prompted by the belief of many Hungarians that their country could return to normal, and even to some of her past greatness, through the re-establishment of legal continuity after the hard trials of the lost war and the subsequent revolution and counter-revolution.
The collapse of Béla Kun’s Soviet-type government was complete by August 1st, 1919. The transition was fairly smooth and bloodless, owing much to the moderate Socialist People’s Commissars’ negotiations in Vienna with General Sir Thomas Cunningham, the head of the Inter-allied Armistice Commission in the territory of the former Austria-Hungary.
A purely Social-Democrat government took over the offices of state, while Kun and his companions sought refuge in Austria, a few hours after their resignation. The main personality of the new government was Professor Peter Agoston, a well-known lawyer and sociologist, close to the British Fabians in his ideas.
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