r/austriahungary

Following on from my intro post, here is my second bake of the empire.

I’ve never eaten these before - it was a fun process to make. I am very much a novice baker so excuse the imperfect finish.

A lot of of the recipes I found called for ready-made punschkrapfen coating - where I live this isn’t available, but I did have a whole bunch of pink ruby chocolate that needed to get used so this version of the dessert has an inauthentic chocolate coating on the outside as opposed to just fondant.

I’ll probably interchange between Austria and Hungary each week, and try to do at least one cake for each of the crown lands of Austria. Hungary is a bit more difficult to carve up in manageable pieces so I may just be a little less structured with that half.
——-

And a little bit about the cake:

Whenever they baked grand tortes, Viennese bakers
ended up with massive piles of leftover cake trimmings and broken sponge edges. Instead of throwing them away, they mashed the crumbs together with chocolate, apricot jam, and a heavy-handed pour of Austrian Inländer rum. They squished that boozy paste between two thin layers of fresh sponge cake, drenched the whole cube in a sticky, hot-pink rum glaze, and turned bakery scraps into a high-end delicacy.

While some tour guides love to claim it dates back to the Ottoman sieges, the pastry really took off around the turn of the 20th century. During the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Vienna’s coffeehouses were the epicenter of art, gossip, and indulgence. The Punschkrapfen fit right in - it was visually loud, intensely sweet, and high-proof enough to give you a buzz before noon. Famous spots like Demel and Sluka couldn’t make them fast enough.

But the best part of its history is how it crossed over into political satire. The Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard famously used the dessert to mock the national psyche, coining a phrase that almost every Austrian knows: "Außen rot, innen braun und immer ein bisserl bsoffen"—red on the outside, brown on the inside, and always a little bit drunk. It’s a sharp jab at people who look like progressives (red) but hold far-right or fascist (brown) views in private. Even today, whenever there’s an election or a messy political coalition, Viennese bakeries will pile Punschkrapfen in their front windows as a silent, sarcastic joke.

The Becker Type M2 20 mm cannon was a German autocannon developed for aircraft use during World War I by Stahlwerke Becker [de]. It was first mass-produced in 1916 and was installed in a variety of aircraft. It was the only German autocannon to see service in the air during the war.

The Becker also served as the pattern for the famous Swiss-built Oerlikon 20 mm cannon, which is in service to this day, and in a later form, was the original inspiration, through the Swiss design after World War I, for the World War II German Luftwaffe's MG FF (Maschinengewehr Flügel Fest, "fixed wing-mount automatic ordnance") 20 mm autocannon design.

The original design was based on the 19 mm Becker cannon cartridge by the Coenders brothers at Stahlwerke Becker of Reinickendorf, Germany.[2][3] Development commenced in 1913 and was therefore already advanced when the War Ministry issued a specification in June 1915 calling for an aircraft cannon of under 37 mm caliber and 70 kg weight capable of firing a 10-round burst. Tests commenced shortly thereafter with the weapon mounted in a Gotha G.I, but proved unsatisfactory. Despite this, the potential of the gun was such that Spandau arsenal was engaged to help develop and fine-tune the design, leading to a production contract for 120 Becker Type M2 guns in June 1916. In addition to the orders for aircraft guns placed with Becker, Spandau and MAN also received a contract to build Becker cannon for the Army. The Spandau works developed the gun further, producing it as the Spandau Type 3 20 mm cannon, which was heavier and had a slower rate of fire at 250/min.

The main types to use the Type M2 were large, twin-engined aircraft, initially of IdFlieg's "G"-class Grossflugzeug category: the Friedrichshafen G.III bomber and AEG G.IVk ground-attack machine. Tests in smaller, single-engined aircraft were not so successful but were carried out extensively through the rest of the war, commencing with an Albatros J.I in December 1917. Due to the gun's operating principles, it could not be synchronised and this posed an immediate problem for its installation in this type of aircraft. The solution adopted after the tests with the Albatros J.I was to mount the gun at an angle to fire downwards. Fitting the gun to a fighter with a pusher configuration was another obvious solution and trials were carried out with an Albatros D.VI. Other intended installations were for an AGO S.I and the Hansa (Caspar) D.I, but these were not carried out before the armistice. Some rigid airships of the Imperial German Navy, such as the most modern Zeppelin L 70 (LZ 112), were armed with the Becker cannon. Total production figures are not known, but were in excess of 539 (111 by Becker and 428 by MAN); 362 were surrendered to the Allies.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becker_Type_M2_20_mm_cannon

Writing about Dalmatia's last most famous visitor before the tragedy of the Great War: Archduke Franz Ferdinand. He and his wife Sophie stepped off their steamer The Dalmat in the port of Metkovic on June 26, 1914. They returned 4 days later in caskets.

So ends the time period that we're exploring in the book. It began in 1778 with Alberto Fortis exploring the natural beauties of a mysterious and ancient land. It ends in 1914 with Franz and Sophie being loaded on to their steamer one last time and leaving Dalmatia for good.

Unimaginable changes to the world followed and we cannot go back. And if you can, you'll need a guide.

TimeTravelToDalmatia.com

Pictured: work on the book, the Archduke and his daughter Sophie, and the assassination in Sarajevo.

fuente: Eurostat

source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/392939136246815168/

A while back I had a fascinating conversation with historian Charles Coulombe in which he analyzes the 5 core points of Christian monarchy, its biblical foundations, and the historical reality of Christendom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCnJf_v82ak

Inspection of later generation of Habsburgs does not show the presence of prognatism well recorded in history before. What made it disappear?