Victor Andrian-Werburg

Victor Franz Freiherr von Andrian-Werburg (17 September 1813 – 25 November 1858) was an Austrian politician, most notably as a member of the Frankfurt Parliament.

Early life and career Andrian was born on 17 September 1813 in Gorizia. He studied jurisprudence in Vienna from 1829 until 1833 and then worked in the Austrian civil service in Venice, Milan, and Vienna. Although typically seen as a liberal because of his "argument that Austrian society could be liberated from the oppressive bureaucratic central state" his intentions seem to recall "more freedom for the landed nobility at the level of local government. This included the landed nobility’s “liberation” from the increasingly onerous and expensive obligations to run the local, patrimonial administration." As he "was increasingly frustrated by his own stifled career."

In 1844, he became a court secretary to the Imperial Chancellery, and behaved as an enlightened politician in the sense of the English aristocracy. However, he left government service in early 1846, adopted a lively interest in various aristocratic movements and, in 1847, published the second part of the above-mentioned work in Hamburg. At the same time, he anonymously wrote tracts displaying the sense of feudal opposition within Austria to the Metternich System of governance.

The National Assembly

Beginning in April 1848, Andrian was sent by the estates of Lower Austria to the Vorparlament at Frankfurt, where he was elected as one of the Committee of Fifty (Fünfzigerausschuss) to direct the various states in electing members to the National Assembly, and was Director of the Central Committee for the Elections. He was elected to the National Assembly representing Wiener Neustadt from the first sitting on 18 May 1848 until 30 March 1849. He belonged to the numerically superior Casino faction. He was elected Vice President of the National Assembly, and was also a member of the Constitution Committee and the Central Election Committee. Andrian was at the head of the deputation that interviewed the Archduke John prior to his election as Reichsverweser or regent of the Provisional Central Power of the German Empire.

At the beginning of August 1848, Andrian was appointed Provisional Envoy in London. While there, he represented the National Assembly on the questions of the Austro-Italian War and the Schleswig-Holstein War as best he could, but was recalled by the Regent when the Austro-German Question came to the fore in Frankfurt. He also traveled to Kremsier to participate in the drafting of the Kremsier constitution for Austria. At the end of January 1849, he returned to Frankfurt.

On the day after the National Assembly voted to elect King Frederick William IV of Prussia to be Emperor of Germany, Andrian resigned (29 March 1849). He had already returned to Vienna in early March to witness the downfall of the Kremsier Constitution and the implementation of the so-called March Constitution.

Later life In 1850, he anonymously published the treatise "Centralization and Decentralization in Austria". However, the neo-absolutism that followed the failed 1848-1849 revolutions was hostile to him, and he was criticized sharply for his earlier work.

Victor Franz von Andrian-Werburg died in Vienna on 25 November 1858 and is buried in Vienna's Central Cemetery.