THE RETURN OF THE PRINCE
Amity Shlaes discovers that
in post-communist central Europe, it is all right to be royal
Prague
'SORRY, all full,' whisper the pale clerks to the businessman from Zaire who hovers longingly at the reception desk. Revolu- tions mean boom business for the fancy hard-currency hotels of the Eastern bloc, particularly those with good telephone connections to the West like the gloomy InterContinental. But when a tall figure with a black moustache moves forward and plants large hands on the counter, the clerks perk up. 'Welcome Prince,' one says and hands over a white, blue and red pin — the symbol of the Czech opposition. 'Wel- come Prince.' echoes the second, and gets down to business. 'You need how many rooms?'
Title counts for a lot these days in chaotic Central Europe. Now that they have set about toppling the old communist idols, citizens in this part of the world are on the hunt for new heroes. The long- suffering intelligentsia are fulfilling some of those roles — writers and economists who spent years behind bars or holding brooms are quickly becoming the new nobility of the revolution. But there is a special hankering in these erstwhile class- less states for the return of genuine nobility — like Prince Karl von Schwarzenberg, the fellow checking in at the InterContinental. Bearers of imperial names who spent many decades getting the castle in the West a new furnace are suddenly finding promin- ence in the territories of the old empire of the double eagle.
To watch the citizens of Prague welcome Prince Karl is to witness the deep connec- tion these people feel for the very ancien regime. It has been more than 60 years since the Schwarzenbergs surrendered their large holdings in Bohemia to the young Czech republic. It has been 40 years since Prince Karl himself, as an 11-year- old, fled into exile with his family from the city's art nouveau railway station. Never- theless, the bellboys who approach the royal Volkswagen Golf still stop and pause before talking to the 'Khnize'. 'I would do anything for him,' says a liveried fellow and carts away the Prince's bag, which bears a green and white American Express label reading 'Prince Schwarzenberg'.
The remaining contents of the Golfs boot are another reason for the Prince's warm reception. Here, next to the blue duffel coat, sit sacks of Czech samizdat which Prince Karl has printed in West Germany and is delivering to still word- hungry Czechs. In recent years the 52-year- old Prince has chaired the international Helsinki Federation, an organisation for human rights groups that monitored and publicised the house-searches and arrests that were routine here until a few 'weeks ago.
Prince Karl's efforts have included the establishment of a documentation centre for Czech dissident literature: to house it he renovated rooms in his own family castle in Franconia, Schwarzenberg. For years his centre provided moral sup-. port and book-binding services to belea- gured Czech playwrights and poets. Such work built tight friendships with those intellectuals — who now, suddenly, control the balance of power in this country. When Prince Karl went out drinking his first night in Prague last Saturday, he went with the man who was to break the government in the next few days, Vaclav Havel.
If Schwarzenberg is the big name in Prague, it is Otto von Habsburg, the would-have-been Holy Roman Emperor, who stirs hearts in Hungary. On a recent trip to the small town of Tolna in southern Hungary, the bespectacled, energetic old man warmed crowds with the words, 'We are capable of great deeds.' Habsburg has
even been asked to run for president of the new Hungary, but has declined — for the moment. Such new prominence represents an odd shift for the noble families of Central Europe, who have spent the past decades doing what most nobles spend most of their time doing: mourning what properties they have lost and working hard to maintain the burdensome part that remains to them. Prince Karl's own tack has been to convert the family's baroque castle in Vienna, Palais Schwarzenberg, into a fancy hotel and banqueting centre. The rent for a half-day's possession of one draughty wing — gold leaf, Rubens paint- ings, cupola and all — is £1,020. Outside the castle, on a dark Friday afternoon, the family Norfolk terriers wander among the covered statues in the castle grounds. Inside the Prince relaxes in his elegantly refurbished bar in a maroon sweater and waves his pipe as friends from the local schickeria — the chic set as they are described in Vienna — depart. Posing for a moment as a dilettante, he pretends to complain to a reporter about all the work his Helsinki projects bring him. Drooping in an armchair, at his Viennese hotel, the dark-browed Prince looks less like a hu- man rights hero than a Central European version of Omar Sharif.
This act — and an act is what it is — doesn't fool sober Czechs for a moment. There has been no call in Prague for Schwarzenberg rule, but citizens do trail the striding prince begging for tips on how to make their worthless crowns conver- tible. When the nation's non-communist authors meet on Sunday morning, they take time off from denouncing the old regime hacks to praise Schwarzenberg's support. Prince Karl for his part sports the pleased and slightly crafty expression of a politician who has been out of power, but now smells change. When a reporter from the BBC's French-language service sticks a tape-recorder under the royal nose, he also drops a few coy phrases such as: 'I'll come back and help, any way I can.'
In the case of dreamy Prague, the political return of a Schwarzenberg whether as economic aide-de-camp to a social democracy or even as a political leader — would probably be a good thing. Only days after the uprisings began here old national differences are already begin- ning to pop up and divert citizens' atten- tion from the hard task they have at hand: turning a third-class country into a first- class one. Czechs and Slovaks have already presented different agendas for reform, and at the writers' conference a Moravian rabbited on about outrages committed against Moravian literature. A little impe- rial order might keep on track the revolu- tion this nation needs.
Miss Shlaes' book about Germany, Echoes of Europe, will be published by Jonathan Cape and Farrar, Straus & Giroux next year.
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