By Will Dabbs, MD
Love is at once ethereal and diaphanous while remaining inimitably powerful. We struggle even to define it, yet we go to the most extraordinary extremes to secure and preserve those with whom we share its bonds. This is what makes hostage-taking such a vile, heartless, despicable thing. It weaponizes something that should simply be left pure and unspoiled.
Love has inspired ballads beyond counting. It is simultaneously consuming and distracting. It is so oft mistaken for lust…with predictably disastrous results. Love shapes the affairs of both nations and men. In the case of Austrian General Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf, it also resulted in a certain planetary hemoclysm.
The Man
Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf entered the world in November of 1852 in Penzing, Austria. His father, Franz Xaver Conrad, was a Colonel of Hussars originally from Moravia. The younger von Hotzendorf was himself a born soldier.
Conrad began his career as a lieutenant in a Jager battalion. He rapidly ascended the ranks via several influential staff and command positions. He taught at the Austrian war college and was popular with his students. In November of 1906, Archduke Franz Ferdinand appointed him Chief of Staff of the Austro-Hungarian military.
Conrad married his wife Wilhelmine le Beau in 1886. She bore him four sons but succumbed to cancer in 1905. Conrad already had a predisposition to melancholia. The death of his wife threatened to overwhelm him.
The Woman
In 1900 whilst serving as a brigade commander in Trieste, von Hotzendorf met an Italian woman 28 years his junior named Virginia von Reininghaus. Virginia went by Gina. She was a noble by birth who was married to affluent Austrian businessman Hans von Reininghaus. Seven years later, von Hotzendorf—only two years out from the death of his wife and still in the throes of depression—was invited to a dinner party at the Viennese home of Baron Victor von Kalchberg. He almost didn’t go. As luck would have it, however, he found himself seated next to Gina.
Conrad was 55 to Gina’s 27. She already had six children. The aristocratic Austrian officer left the event driven mad as a box of frogs. He could think of little else.
Conrad made his intentions known a few days later in a letter. In it, he wrote, “I am namelessly in love with you and want you to become my wife!” Gina, for her part, was having none of this. However, Conrad was nothing if not persistent.
The Campaign
The man ultimately penned 3,000 love letters, some more than 60 pages long. He didn’t actually mail any of them. Gina read them after his death. It is hard to imagine how he found time to be a general. Over time, however, their illicit relationship became more corporeal—if you get my meaning. With marriage the only way to drag their union out into the light, Conrad began scheming.
At this time and in this place, divorce was a really big deal. For Gina to divorce Herr Reininghaus and wed the good general, the couple would have to secure the blessings of both the Hapsburg Emperor as well as Viennese society. Conrad became convinced that the only way to do both was to successfully prosecute a war and return a national hero. As a result, he threw himself into the fine art of warmongering with the same verve he had previously reserved for creating Gina’s soppy missives.
On 25 separate occasions, General Von Hotzendorf beseeched his government and his emperor to allow him to march on Serbia. Each time, the political leadership demurred, opting for diplomacy to solve their incessant geopolitical squabbles. Then Gavrilo Princip murdered Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie on a hot day in Sarajevo, and everything changed. Conrad tried once more and was granted the mandate he had so vigorously sought. War was his for the prosecuting.
Practicalities
In actual practice, Von Hotzendorf turned out to be quite the lousy general. Five months into the conflict, he had presided over 957,000 Austro-Hungarian casualties—189,000 dead, 490,000 wounded, and 278,000 missing or prisoners of war. Counted among the fallen was one of his own sons. Pre-existing treaties and alliances kicked in, and World War I ultimately ensued.
A German general subsequently likened the alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary to being “shackled to a corpse.” History came to know Von Hotzendorf as the “Architect of the Apocalypse.” By war’s end in 1918, some 20 million souls had been lost, to include another of Conrad’s sons. However, he did finally get his woman.
Gina’s husband finally grew weary of his wife’s extramarital distractions and offered her a divorce in 1915. She subsequently agreed to marry the defeated general. Doing so required Gina to convert to Protestantism and be formally adopted by Hungarian Lieutenant-Field Marshal Ernst Kárász so as to secure Hungarian citizenship. Despite the sordid nature of their courtship, she remained steadfastly by his side until his death in 1925 at the age of 72. Love indeed conquers all…
