DLA016-0071  Translation

 

 

Vienna

 

 

11.Nov. [probably 1924][1]

 

 

Dear Friend,

As requested I am sending you in a separate envelope the outline of my article. Please return this to me as quickly as possible together with the photos you promised me so that I can send it on to the Nación in Buenos Aires soonest. With my letter I am also sending you a copy of the Nación with my dispatch about the meeting with King George at yours.

 

Thank you and Mrs. Laszlo[2] very much for your letters which were waiting for me in Vienna. My stay in Wiesbaden lasted until the end of October. I lived very comfortably as a guest of old friends in their pretty villa. Especially interesting for me there were the frequent meetings with Countess Merenberg, daughter of Tsar Alexander II.[3]

 

I was very pleased about the interesting experience of your dear boy in Oxford. I hope that being together with the young Crown Prince of Norway is not going to make a courtier out of him.[4] The Norwegians are a very democratic and pacifistically minded farming people and their future king will also have to be democratic and peace loving.

A few days ago I attended a big soirée of the Ambassador of the Soviet Union. There I met the Swedish Chargé d’Affaires Reuterswärd and his very pretty wife, who talked about London, Hampstead and Fitzjohns Avenue where they once lived. In connection with this I heard that you knew them too.

 

Life here has become pretty unpleasant and very expensive. For a change, the railway workers are staging a big strike so that there are no trains arriving or leaving here.

 

[Page 2]

 

I imagine you must be very pleased about your old friend and supporter Austen Chamberlain becoming Foreign Minister.[5] The only one of your new ministers that I know personally is Colonial Secretary Amery.[6] In earlier years when he was a young journalist and correspondent for the ‘Manchester Guardian’ he occasionally came to Vienna and used to come and see me.

In your letter you mention that Count Mensdorff[7] had been a guest at Lord Rosebery’s. I am rather taken aback by this as I thought the ancient Lord Rosebery had withdrawn completely from this world and lived like a hermit.[8] At least this is what I had read in the papers.

 

With my warmest greetings I remain in lasting friendship | Your devoted

S. Münz

Editorial Note:

Sigmund Münz (1859-1934), Austrian journalist and writer; for biographical notes see [6377].

 

 

AG (summary)

03/2009

&

LV (translation)

21/04/2021

[1] The letter probably dates to 1924, compare with DLA016-0064, letter from Sigmund Münz to de László, 12 October 1924

[2] Mrs Philip de László, née Lucy Madeleine Guinness (1870-1950) [11474]

[3] Countess Georg von Merenberg, née Princess Olga Alexandrovna Yurievskaia, a morganatic daughter of Czar Alexander II (1873-1925)

[4] King Olav V of Norway, né Prince Alexander of Denmark (1903-1991) studied economics and international law at Balliol College, Oxford. According to an article in the Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette of 26 September 1924, he was due to arrive in Oxford on 10 October 1924.

[5] Following the 1924 United Kingdom general election, Austen Chamberlain (1863-1937) [3797] became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Stanley Baldwin's Second Government (1924-29).

[6] Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett Amery (1873-1955), Colonial Secretary in Baldwin's Second Government

[7] Count Albert von Mensdorff-Pouilly-Dietrichstein (1861-1945) [110975]

[8] Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, 1st Earl of Midlothian (1847-1929). If this letter does, indeed, date to 1924 (see fn 1 above), Lord Rosebery would have been seventy-seven years old at the time.