Metternich Audiobook By Wolfram Siemann, Daniel Steuer - translator cover art

Metternich

Strategist and Visionary

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Metternich

By: Wolfram Siemann, Daniel Steuer - translator
Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
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Metternich has a reputation as the epitome of reactionary conservatism. Historians treat him as the archenemy of progress, a ruthless aristocrat who used his power as the dominant European statesman of the first half of the nineteenth century to stifle liberalism, suppress national independence, and oppose the dreams of social change that inspired the revolutionaries of 1848. Wolfram Siemann paints a fundamentally new image of the man who shaped Europe for over four decades. He reveals Metternich as more modern and his career much more forward-looking than we have ever recognized.

Clemens von Metternich emerged from the horrors of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Siemann shows, committed above all to the preservation of peace. That often required him, as the Austrian Empire's foreign minister and chancellor, to back authority. He was, as Henry Kissinger has observed, the father of realpolitik. But short of compromising on his overarching goal Metternich aimed to accommodate liberalism and nationalism as much as possible. Siemann draws on previously unexamined archives to bring this multilayered and dazzling man to life.

©2019 the President and Fellows of Harvard College (P)2022 Tantor Austria & Hungary Europe Historical Politicians Politics & Activism Politics & Government World Colonial Period Middle Ages Imperialism Soviet Union War Interwar Period Latin America Biography Socialism Refugee Russia Self-Determination Military Royalty
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Excellent writing to narration. Perfect last words for the book by the great arbiter and figure of history

Outstanding in all ways

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Remarkably deep view into the details of a remarkable life that had an outsized impact on European history.

Very intensely researched

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Deeply rooted in freshly accessed sources.
Some phases of history are glaciated by the polemics of the time. Metternich’s career is one.
This book effects a tremendous thaw. All future scholarship will have to contend with it.

Superb and informative

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Very interesting and detailed. This book gave me a wonderful insight on historical events and the shaping of European nations from an absolute fantastic perspective. Metternick is a fascinating figure and was at incredibly pivotal moments in history. So far ahead of his time that the later mockery of his contemporaries is expected. Well written and excellently performed.

wonderful if you love history

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Reads like a textbook, and somehow takes an interesting statesman living in the most interesting of times, and turns the story into a dull slog.

Dull

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I am several hours in and had to push myself to get this far. Unfortunately I can’t find the motivation to continue, the 14 generations of history and details about his station in life, I’m so bored and none of this is what I was interested in hearing about the icon of “RealPolitik”.

Like listening to your teacher read a textbook

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