Is your first language English? All he’s stating there is that for example a Pole speaking German wasn’t a German.
Okay, well I can’t view that book, but I can cite, reference and quote Taylor from the book he wrote about the Habsburg Monarchy he wrote.
Joseph II had no doubt as to the character erf' his Empire: it was to be a German state. He said: “I am Emperor of the German Reich; therefore all the other states which I possess are provinces of it.
[…]
From the battle of the White Mountain until the time of Maria Theresa “Austria” was embodied in the territorial aristocracy, the “Magnates.” These, even when German, thought of themselves as Austrians, not as Germans, just as the Prussian nobility regarded themselves solely as Prussians.
[…]
The tie which made the bureaucracy German was more
than culture. The bureaucrats, often by origin, always by employment, were town-dwellers; and the towns of the Habsburg Monarchy were all German in character.
[…]
In so far as the old Empire had a national character,
that character had been German. The Holy Roman Empire was universally, though loosely, called “German Emperor” and the Empire had been known since the fifteenth century as the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Between 1806 and 1815 no Germany existed; after 1815 the German subjects of the Habsburgs were once more members of the “German Confederation”. Moreover the culture of the Empire was everywhere German, apart fiom the cosmopolitan culture of the court; the universities were German; it was plausible to argue later that German was the Austrian “language of state. Even representative government, the classical liberal demand, would strengthen the German position. The Germans, though only one-third of the population, paid two-thirds of the direct taxes; and an individual German paid in taxes twice as much as a Czech or an Italian, nearly five times as much as a Pole, and seven times as much as a Croat or Serb.
Therefore a restricted suffrage based on taxation, which was the universal liberal programme, would return a parliament predominantly German in character. The Germans found themselves in a dilemma only when nationalism developed into the demand for a unitary national state. Some took the extreme course of advocating the overthrow of the Habsburgs in favour of national Germany; others the course, equally extreme, of proposing the merging into national Germany of all the Habsburg lands, including even Hungary. Most, however, supposed that Germany would follow the boundary of the German Confederation; this included the Czechs and Slovenes, but not Hungary. This hope was defeated in 1866: the Germans of Austria were excluded from national Germany, and the conflict of loyalties began. But now the Germans could not turn so easily against the Habsburgs. The other nationalities of the Empire had begun to voice their claims, claims directed against the Germans rather than against the Emperor. The break-up of the Habsburg Empire might bring to the Germans something they desired — inclusion in the German national state. It might instead bring something much worse — the loss of their privileged position in lands that were traditionally theirs. Thus the Germans remained to the end torn in their loyalties: certainly not unreservedly “Austrian” like the great landowners and the great capitalists, but at the same time hoping that the Empire might still be transformed into an Empire “for them.”
[…]
The old title had been a sham, felt as such even by the Habsburgs; the German Confederation, created in 1815, was a closer union than the decayed Empire, and Austria, as the presiding Power, had still the principal say in German affairs. Austria did not renounce the headship of Germany in 1815. Rather the reverse: she asserted her German character and, though she accepted Prussia as a second Great Power in Germany, this partnership was one in which Prussia did the work and Austria eiyoyed the distinction.
[…]
The Vienna liberals assumed that the Empire was a German state which would play the chief part in a new liberal Germany, and they pressed as strongly for elections to the German national assembly in Frankfurt as for a Constituent Assembly in Austria. The abortive constitution of April 25, which mentioned the provinces only as agencies for bringing local grievances to the attention of the central government, was a crude expression of this German view. It was revealed even more strikingly in the proposals of the “central committee of the Estates,” which sat from April 10 to April preparing for the Estates General which never met. The Committee was attended only by members from the Diets of the German provinces — high bureaucrats of Vienna and enlightened German nobles who had led the agitation against Mettemich; in short, the most moderate and experienced Austrian Germans of their day. These Germans recognised the claims of the other historic nations: Hungary, they proposed, should be muted to the Empire only by a personal tie; Lombardy-Venetia should be surrendered to an Italian national state; Galicia should be given autonomy, in anticipation of the restoration of Poland. The remainder of the Empire was to be a unitary German state, a member of the German Confederation, and held together by German culture. This programme assumed the twilight of the dynasty, and the Germans of the official class retreated from it as the dynasty recovered. Still, they had revealed an outlook common to all the Germans of the Monarchy; were the dynasty to fail, they would go with Greater German nationalism, not into a federation with the non-historic peoples. The only difference between the various groups of Germans was in timing: the radicals turned against the dynasty in 1848, the bulk of the Germans believed that there was still some life in it.
[…]
The more moderate Germans wished to belong to Germany, but wished also to preserve the Imperial unity which made it grander to be an Austrian than to be a Bavarian or a Saxon : they wished, that is, to have in Austria all the advantages of being German and yet to have in Germany all the advantages of being Austrian.
[…]
The Habsburgs seemed to have become the standard-bearers of Greater Germany. This won oYer not merely the Austrian Germans, but many Germans from outside Austria as well. Between 1861 and 1866 moderate liberals in Germany occasionally looked to Prussia, as likely to achieve some modest practical result; the former radicals of 1848 became supporters of Austria.
[…]
The Austrian Germans were absorbed in the German prob-
lem; they had neither time nor understanding for the problem of the Austrian Empire.
[…]
Old Austria committed
a brainless suicide; and Bismarck went to war in order to
impose on Austria a decision which her rulers were incapable of making for themselves. The Austrian ministers feared victory as much as defeat; for victory would compel Austria to become without reserve the leading German power and so cause the eclipse of the cosmopolitan Austrian nobility.
[…]
By the Peace
of Prague (August 23, 1866), Austria lost Venetia and was
excluded from Germany; she remained a Great Power.
The Austria which emerged from the war of 18 66 was created by Bismarck as much as the Austria which emerged from the Napoleonic Wars was created by Metternich: created, that is, not in its internal balance, but in its significance as a Great Power. Metternich’s Austria was a European necessity; Bismarck’s Austria was a German necessity, or rather a Prussian necessity. It was the essential barrier against Greater Germany, against the Pan-German programme which would swamp the Prussian Junkers. And since many others were opposed to Greater Germany, Austria was welcome for them.
[…]
The Germans still hoped that the Habsburg Empire would further German cultural and economic supremacy in south-eastern Europe, or at any rate within the Empire. This did not fit so easily into Bismarck’s system. Bismarck could not allow the revival of German Austrian strength and therewith a renewed danger of the “Empire of seventy millions”; on the other hand, he could not allow the Austrian Empire to lose its German character and so become eligible as the ally of France or even of Russia. In fact, Bismarck wished to preserve Austria as she was in 1866 — defeated, but still German; and the suspended animation of Austrian politics in the age of Dualism was largely the result of German needs.
[…]
Napoleon III and Francis Joseph met at Salzburg; Beust attempted to mediate between Italy and France over the question of Rome; and Austria was paraded as a German state, for the sake of feeling in Germany. This was a barren pretence. Beust sought German support against Prussia, but the object dearest to German liberalism was the unification of Germany, and that was being achieved by Prussia. The Germans in Austria were ready to take part in the pretence, since it guaranteed their privileged position in Austria; and, besides, they wished to restore the connection with Germany which had been broken in 1866.
[…]
The Linz programme sought to return to the heroic age of
German supremacy. Like the radicals of 1848, these radicals had no difficulty in recognising the claims of the “ historic nations.’ Galicia was to become a separate unit under Polish rule; Dalmatia to be handed over to its tiny Italian minority; with a parody of the October revolution, the Linz radicals would agree to Personal Union with Hungary, or even add Galicia and Dalmatia to Hungary, in return for Magyar support of the Germans in Austria. Again, as in 1848, the Austrian Germans invoked German backing: Imperial Germany was to intervene and to compel the dynasty to transform Austria into a unitary German state as the price of continuing the Austro-German alliance. Finally, as in 1849 if not in 1848, the Linz radicals were not sincere in their concessions even to Hungary: once Austria had become a German state, Germany and the German Austrians would support the dynasty in overthrowing the compromise with Hungary. Thus, stripped of its radical phrases, the Linz programme proposed to return to the system of Schmerling, with Bismarck as its guarantor instead of its enemy. When the Linz radicals called on Germany for support, they confessed that the German Austrians had neither the strength nor the cultural superiority to maintain their monopoly in Austria. They assumed, too, that the German Austrians had voluntarily renounced the German national state, that Germany would come to their assistance at the first call, and that therefore they should be rewarded for not destroying the Habsburg Empire. These assumptions were false. The German Austrians had not renounced Germany; they had been deliberately excluded from Germany by Bismarck, and he had no intention of seconding their ambitions, still less of destroying Austria-Hungary. Bismarck feared Greater Germany, which would be beyond the power of the Prussian Junkers to master; and he feared, too, a blatant German hegemony in Europe, which would provoke a European coalition in resistance. The maintenance of an independent Austria-Hungary was the central point of Bismarck’s policy: independent, certainly, of Russia or of France, but independent, too, at any rate in appearance, of Germany. As a consequence, it was in his interest to minimise the German character of Austria-Hungary. After all, he knew that he could always assert German control if it were necessary. The Linz programme invited him to assert German control unnecessarily and was therefore without attraction.
[…]
Francis Joseph did not accept the revolutionary part so
generously offered to him by Renner and Bauer. He was the sole survivor of old Austria, and, despite his resentment at defeat, knew that the events of 1866 could not be undone. Bismarck’s moderation, not Habsburg strength, had allowed the Habsburg Monarchy to survive; and Little German policy was the basis for the limited national freedom which the peoples of the Habsburg Monarchy enjoyed. Their destinies were determined at Berlin, not at Vienna; and once the German rulers gave up their resistance to Greater Germany, the Habsburg Empire became useless to its peoples. Germany would never allow the restoration of the Habsburg Monarchy as a truly independent Power; this would be to renounce the fruits of the victory at Sadova.
A. J. P. Taylor,