Paul III Anton, Prince Esterházy

Paul III. Anton Esterházy de Galantha ( born March 10, 1786 in Vienna, † May 21, 1866 in Regensburg ) was a diplomat and Hungarian statesman in the service of the Habsburgs.

Life

Paul III. Anton joined the diplomatic service of the Empire of Austria, which included the Kingdom of Hungary among others. As an imperial-royal chamberlain, he received access to the major personalities of the time. So he corresponded frequently with a friendly State Chancellor Prince Klemens Metternich and Prime Minister Prince Felix Schwarzenberg. As k.k. Minister to the Netherlands and then in the UK, he acquired knowledge and experience in international diplomacy.

1833 his father died, Nicholas II, Paul III. Anton was now Heir. He let his opponent in the Hungarian parliament believe that he would now give up the diplomacy, but remained until 1842 as an envoy in London.

Back in Vienna and now in office of a Hungarian minister at the imperial court of Vienna, he wanted to appease the angry and striving for independence of Hungary, but the anti-Habsburg climate became stronger. When the situation came to a head in 1848 and the March Revolution broke out, the prince was in a great dilemma. On the one hand he wanted to act for the benefit of his home country of Hungary and on the other hand nevertheless continue to keep the Habsburgs loyalty.

Both were at the same time but then not possible. So he decided, like many of his ancestors, for the side of the Habsburgs and thus against the political current in his homeland. He resigned from his position as a Hungarian minister back. As a result, Paul III lived. Anton outside Hungary. The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, he did not live.

Shortly before his death, primogeniture was practically insolvent because the torn with his predecessors into debt had overwhelmed the family fortune. Franz Joseph I gave 1865 a compulsory settlement ( sequestration ), which until 1898 held the remote respective Heir of asset management.

His son Nicholas III. became his successor as Heir.