Stanzl, Werner Venedig unterm Doppeladler. Zwischen Arrangement und Kolonialismus

In "Venice under the Double Eagle", journalist and documentary filmmaker Werner Stanzl questions Austria's role as an occupier and its rule over neighbouring states. He documents the other major European powers' criticism of this colonialism. Powers that themselves ruled brutally over colonies, but overseas, what made the big difference for them... The author provides an insight into the seven decades that Austrians and Venetians spent partly in a marriage of convenience, partly in a master and servant relationship. He describes the catastrophic consequences of the eruption of the Tambora volcano in faraway Indonesia as the negative highlights of this cohabitation. Years without a summer with total crop failures and famines, against which the always cash-strapped Viennese court had to fail as a helper. So why bow to the Austrians, the Venetians asked themselves as a logical consequence. The eruption of the volcano was followed by the outbreak of revolutions in 1848, perhaps the bloodiest of which was in Vienna. The Venetians misinterpreted the event as an opportunity for liberation in Italy's Risorgimento. The 19-year-old Emperor Franz Josef behaved like a warlord and had his extended arm, Radetzky, cut everything down. The peace of the cemetery on bayonets and the advent of tourism thanks to the southern railway helped them through their last years together before the Austrians also lost Venice in the German-German war against Prussia. The Serenissima goes to the new Kingdom of Italy, allied with Prussia, and the real hero of the Risorgimento is Otto von Bismarck.