The Red Prince: The Fall of a Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Europe

by TimothySnyder (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $13.77

  Wilhelm von Habsburg wore the uniform of an Austrian officer, the court regalia of a Habsburg archduke, the simple suit of a Parisian exile, the decorations of the Order of the Golden Fleece and, every so often, a dress. He spoke the Italian of his archduke mother, the German of his archduke father, the English of his British royal friends, the Polish of the country his father wished to rule and the Ukrainian of the land Wilhelm wished to rule himself. Timothy Snyder's masterful biography is not only a reconstruction of the life of this extraordinary man - a man who remained loyal to his Ukrainian dreams even after the country's dissolution in 1921- but also charts the final collapse of the ancien regime in Europe and the rise of a new world order.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2008

  $19.59

  This is the first ever biography of the extraordinarily colourful Archduke Wilhelm von Habsburg (1895-1947). Tattooed, bisexual, crossdressing, multilingual, he was a major - and symbolic - figure in 20th-century European culture and politics. Born into one of the great European dynasties with every expectation of a glittering future, instead he became a playboy in Paris during the 1930s and died - a spy for Britain - under interrogation in a Soviet prison. The arc of Wilhelm's life therefore describes the dying fall of the ancient regime - the Europe of his birth bears very little resemblance to that of his death.Operating largely in inter-war Europe, Wilhelm is like a Le Carre character - a prisoner of private impulses that drove him to a doomed secret war. To the history of the Second World War the book adds a detailed discussion of Hitler's confrontation with a particular object of his loathing - the Habsburg family. A major subject of the book is Soviet communism and it's effect on the individual; cf Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate and A Writer at War. This is a book of exceptional brilliance and originality - it cites documents from 20 archives and in 12 languages; each chapter title is a different colour.