評論
打印
Obitury;Otto von Habsburg；
訃告；奧托·馮·哈布斯堡大公；
Archduke Otto von Habsburg, son of the last Austro-Hungarian emperor, died on July 4th, aged 98.
奧托·馮·哈布斯堡大公，奧匈帝國末代皇帝之子于7月4日逝世，享年98歲。
If only his great-uncle had died earlier. Franz Joseph I was a masterful ruler of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but his 86 years brought rigidity when the times called for reform. This doomed the noble legacy that his great-nephew (full name Franz Josef Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xavier Felix Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius) could have inherited. He remembered the old man, as well as the coronation of his father Charles in December 1916. It was a short and gloomy reign, in a botched war that left Europe’s most successful multinational state, the 11-nation monarchy run from Vienna and Budapest, beyond saving. The four-year-old—first crown prince and then uncrowned pretender—served nine decades longer, with brains and charm.
要是他那個偉大的叔叔去的早點就好了。Franz Joseph I是奧匈帝國的一位優秀的統治者，只是當那個被稱為改革的時代來臨時，他86年歲月所帶來的就只能算是頑固保守。這就注定他的侄子（全名Franz Josef Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xavier Felix Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius）會繼承這個“崇高”的使命。他記得叔叔，也記得父親在1916年12月的加冕禮。那是一個短暫而陰暗的朝代，在那場你爭我奪的戰爭里，歐洲最強盛的多民族政府，從Vienna到Budapest，橫跨11個民族的君主制國家未能幸免于難。這位4歲被加冕，之后就無緣皇冠的皇儲，以他的智慧和人格魅力生活了九十多年。
Not that people were grateful, especially at first. A gallant British officer helped the royals escape from Austria, a turbulent and shrunken republic with no taste for the finery of the past. The other realm, Hungary, was nominally a monarchy but run by a regent (who, absurdly in a land-locked country, was styled admiral). Exiled in Spain at a threadbare and tiny court, the young Otto was schooled for the empty throne: he was fluent in Croatian, English, French, German, Hungarian and Spanish. And Latin, too—he was perhaps the last politician in Europe able to conduct business in that language.
那個人其實也并不偉大，起碼在最初是這樣。皇室在一位勇敢的英國官員的幫助下逃離了奧地利，這個動蕩的、日益縮小的共和國已沒有了舊時的優雅品位。而另一個王國，匈牙利，則由攝政者（在一個內陸國家，荒謬地落實典型的海軍將領作風）統治，成為了一個君主制的空殼。他們一家被一個又舊又小的西班牙法庭宣判驅逐出境。那會兒小奧托還被教育著要成為帝國繼承人，他能講一口流利的克羅地亞語、英語、法語、德語、匈牙利語和西班牙語。當然還有拉丁語——他也許是歐洲最后一個能用拉丁語辦事的政治家。
In 1922 he became the head of the House of Habsburg: “Your Majesty” to legitimists, and by the Grace of God “Emperor of Austria; King of Hungary and Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia and Lodomeria; King of Jerusalem, etc; Archduke of Austria; Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow; Duke of Lorraine, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and Bukowina; Grand Prince of Transylvania; Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Silesia, Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Guastalla, Auschwitz and Zator, Teschen, Friaul, Dubrovnik and Zadar; Princely Count of Habsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, Gorizia and Gradisca; Prince of Trento and Brixen; Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia”. His other titles were more minor.
1922年他成為了Habsburg家族的掌門人：正統王朝派的“陛下”，受上帝保佑的“奧地利的皇帝；匈牙利，波西米亞，達爾瑪提亞，克羅地亞，撕拉沃尼亞，加利西亞，羅的梅里亞，耶路撒冷的國王等；奧地利大公；托斯卡納及克拉科大公；洛林，薩爾茨堡，薩利亞，克恩騰，卡尼奧拉及布科維納公爵；特蘭西瓦尼亞大公；摩拉維亞伯爵；西里西亞，摩德納，帕爾馬，皮亞琴察，Guastalla，奧斯維辛及Zator， Teschen，Friaul，拉古扎和薩拉的公爵；哈普斯堡及蒂羅爾，Kyburg，Gorizia及 Gradisca皇室；特蘭托及Brixen王子；上、下盧薩蒂亞伯爵”。還有其他級別更低的頭銜。
The Nazis sought his help, hoping for some stardust from a real ex-empire to give lustre to their gimcrack one. But the prince detested them, having slogged his way through “Mein Kampf”. As a student in Berlin, he irked Hitler by refusing to meet him. In 1938, as Austria’s leaders quailed before the Anschluss, the Habsburgs’ scion offered to return and rally resistance. Luckily, he didn’t get there. The Nazis ordered him to be shot on sight.
納粹尋求他的幫助，希望從一個真正的舊帝國那里獲得榮耀，為他們自己的小玩意增光。但是奧托憎惡他們，埋首于他自己的“我的戰場”。作為一名在柏林上學的學生，因為拒絕見希特勒而惹惱了他。1938年，奧地利的領導者在納粹德國吞并奧地利時畏縮了，哈普斯堡皇室提議奧托回去，大家集結起來一起抵抗。幸虧他沒去，納粹下令對他就地處決。
At Roosevelt’s invitation he spent the war years in America, where he plotted vainly to get Hungary to dump the Nazis, and more successfully to help Austria shed its image as Hitler’s poodle. But post-war Austria stayed nervy and vengeful, declaring him an “enemy of the republic”. He could visit only in 1966, five years after reluctantly renouncing his claim to the throne, becoming—there and there only—humble Mr Habsburg-Lothringen. He found his compatriots’ post-imperial neuroses a tempting target for his jokes. Told of an Austria-Hungary football match, he asked impishly: “Who are we playing?”
應羅斯福的邀請，戰爭期間奧托移居美國，在那里他徒勞的幫助匈牙利擺脫納粹，然而有比較成功地幫奧地利褪去了“希特勒的卷毛小狗”的形象。不過戰后奧地利依然焦慮并圖謀報復，稱他為“共和國的敵人”。直到1966年，在他不情愿地宣布放棄王位五年后，才得以重訪故土，成為（也只有在那里）謙遜的哈普斯堡－洛林先生。發現他那些前帝國的子孫們貌似因為他而被人們笑話。聽說在一場奧地利對匈牙利的足球賽中，他曾孩子氣地問道“我們算奧地利還是匈牙利那邊的？”
Exiled monarchs mostly find it hard to keep their dignity: absurdity, and a court full of creeps and fantasists, are never far away. That was not the Habsburg style: his family maintained cordial relations with Europe’s other émigré royals, but his business was more serious. First he had to restore the family fortune on the lecture circuit, which well rewarded his erudition and wit. He brought up seven children (five glamorous daughters, then two much-awaited sons) with his wife Princess Regina at a lakeside villa in Bavaria. Real politics followed: “opium”, as he fondly called it. He became a member of the European Parliament in 1979 when that body was just a talking shop, seeing it as a harbinger of bigger things to come.
大多數被流放的君主難以保守他們的尊嚴：總會有那么個無禮的，渺小而又天真的法庭在那里等待著他們。但這不是哈普斯堡的風格：他的家族仍和其他歐洲皇室保持著密切的聯系，只是他的事業來的更為重要。首先他得從循環講座中把家庭財富掙回來，而這多虧了他的博學和智慧。他和妻子——Regina公主住在巴伐利亞湖邊的別墅，育有7個孩子（5個漂亮的女兒和2個年幼的兒子）。真正的政治生涯從“鴉片”開始，正如他所熱衷稱呼的那樣，對政治上癮了。1979年成為了歐洲議會的一員，那會兒這個組織還只是個耍耍嘴皮子的地方，他們將他的加入視為天降大任的一個預兆。
A family history going back to the eighth century helped him see the continent’s destiny in grand terms, with the European Union a wider and better version of the Holy Roman Empire (his family had headed that lamented outfit until history caught up with it in 1806). He was no fan of the Brussels bureaucracy, but promoted the integration his name epitomised: common culture, open borders and, above all, no more wars. Only the meanest Austrians remained uncharmed.
有個能追溯到8世紀的家族史使奧托能從宏觀上看出歐洲大陸的命運：歐盟是個比神圣羅馬帝國（他的家族曾統治著那個令人遺憾的帝國直至1806年被歷史淘汰）更好，更寬泛的形式。他不是布魯塞爾官僚作風的追隨者，但仍提議將他的名字視為大陸融合的縮影：共同的文化，開放的邊疆，還有最重要的——不再有戰爭。只有最不入流的奧地利人才抱著歷史不放。
Putting the clock back
讓我們把時鐘的指針往回撥
His glory days came late, in 1989, when what had seemed a sentimental preoccupation with Mitteleuropa—merely a meteorological term, cynics sniffed—was suddenly practical politics. A lifetime foe of the communist usurpers in eastern Europe, he plotted with reformist politicians in Budapest to stage a symbolic cross-border Austro-Hungarian picnic in the summer of 1989, breaching the Iron Curtain for ever. Once drenched with blood and tears, the division of Europe was washed away with tea and lemonade. Some of his fans wished he had run as the first president of a free Hungary, providing a way back from the disastrous turning taken 70 years before. Sadly, his modesty prevailed. He concentrated instead on lobbying for speedy and generous expansion of the EU to the east, most recently Croatia.
1989年，他總算迎來了屬于他的榮耀，當時原本被視為文藝的中歐（憤世嫉俗者對其嗤之以鼻，這個詞幾乎已成為了一個氣象數語）突然就有了實際的政治意義。一生仇視東歐的共產主義篡奪者，他在布達佩斯與革命派政治家秘密謀劃，于1989年夏上演了具有象征性的范歐野餐計劃，徹底粉碎了鐵幕。一旦浸染了血淚，歐洲分裂主義就被茶和檸檬汽水沖走了。奧托的一些崇拜者希望能由他成為匈牙利自由后的第一位總統，就好像回到了70年前，一切災難還未開始時。只是，他的謙遜占了上峰，轉而投身于游說讓歐盟快速而優雅地向東延伸，最近已拓展到了克羅地亞。
He died a happy man, right about almost everything, if usually too early.
他死的明目，幾乎在所有事情上都是正確的，只是還太早了點。
