A Hungarian Josephinist, Orientalist, and Bibliophile: Count Karl Reviczky, 1737–1793. (15th April 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: O'Sullivan, Michael
• Is Part Of: Austrian history yearbook. Volume 45(2014)
• Page Start: 61
• Page End: 88
• Publication Date: 2014-04-15
• Subjects: Austria -- History -- Periodicals; 943.6
• DOI: 10.1017/S0067237813000611
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0067-2378

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="text-abstract"> <title> <x content-type="archive" xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <p>A<sc>mid the preparations for the abortive</sc> R<sc>usso-</sc>O<sc>ttoman peace talks</sc> at Fokschan in April 1772, Anton Wenzel Kaunitz instructed the Austrian <italic>Internuntius</italic> in Istanbul, Franz Maria Thugut, to elect a colleague to accompany him to the congress. Kaunitz, eager to maintain Austria's unique relationship with both belligerent parties, suggested two young orientalists, Bernhard von Jenisch and the Hungarian noble Karl Reviczky as suitable companions. In character with many thirty-somethings in the Habsburg bureaucracy in the 1770s, Thugut, Jenisch, and Reviczky were fluent in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish and possessed an exceptional knowledge of Ottoman affairs. As members of the Austrian embassy to the Ottoman Porte, they had each spent long sojourns in Istanbul. The recruitment and education of such men had been one of Kaunitz's priorities since the 1750s. Thugut knew both candidates well, especially Jenisch, an old chum since their student days at the Oriental Academy in Vienna. Despite Reviczky's recent successes as a translator of an Ottoman treatise on government and some <italic>ghazals</italic> by the Persian poet Hafez, Thugut did not share Kaunitz's esteem for the young noble, explaining that Reviczky "is as ingenious as he is faint-hearted; he turns pale at the mere mention of plague and would take objection to travel over the channel with sharp winds."</p> </abstract>