"...the judge in charge of the investigation and proceedings [1] was regarded in Austrian legal circles as generally fair and talented - Thomas Schreiber, a sixty-two year old native of Pilsen who spoke three languages fluently, enjoyed the opera, and was known to be a devout Catholic with a rigidly legalistic view of the world and, with it, right and wrong. Though Germans were unfamiliar with Austrian legal ins-and-outs, they were quickly assured by diplomatic personnel in Vienna that Schreiber would get to the facts of the case and mete out genuine justice. It was, perhaps, Schreiber's reputation for honesty and as a great judge that set everyone up so for disappointment just a month later.
Schreiber, who died of a brain hemorrhage in 1922 [2], would maintain for the three years until his death that he conducted a fair trial and that there was no pressure upon him from the government to acquit Stephane Clement on any charges. Nonetheless, it cannot be said that the circumstances in Austria were those conducive to a straightforward trial. Newspapers across Europe declared that the Black Prince of Belgium was the most famous defendant since Martin Luther and before him Jesus Christ; it was anointed as the "Trial of the Century" well before it began. The delayed start of the trial - commencing on January 26th, 1919, rather than its planned beginning nearly three weeks earlier - stemmed from new witnesses coming out of the woodwork with wild claims that overwhelmed Schreiber and his judicial investigators, and it was suggested that a great deal of evidence was poorly collected and documentation lost as they struggled to keep up with it.
In the end, however, Schreiber set his first day of the trial as January 26th, and that was that. Stephane Clement would go on trial for a whole host of charges - murder, first and foremost, but also the stealing of a weapon from a Hofburg guard and the illegal discharge of a weapon upon the Hofburg grounds. (Notably absent in 1919 was any kind of charge of sexual assault, attempted or otherwise). The Trial of the Century had begun...
- The Central European War
"...Stephane Clement, for the first time in his life, presented well in public. To reporters from all over the world crammed in Schreiber's cold, dimly-lit courtroom, the Black Prince was not the degenerate id of the late Belle Epoque but rather a tall, square-jawed young man of only thirty, clean-shaven with thin, combed-over brown hair and intelligent eyes. When he answered questions, he did so politely but without hesitation or any sign of fluster; he looked the judge and prosecutors in the eye, and he never seemed to be playing to the crowd. This, ironically, worked to his benefit - could this be the monster so many had heard rumors of for years? This handsome, kind, well-spoken young prince was the infamous Stephane Clement?
European scholars have fiercely debated the fairness of "Steffie's" trial for close to a century, and little true consensus remains. Most agree that Schreiber, an old-fashioned and no-nonsense judge, had little sympathy or particular regard for Stephane Clement as a man, but that his age and conservative worldview also cut in the Prince's favor. He was quick to doubt accusations of sexual impropriety and severely cabined the ability of Isabella of Croy to testify, demanding that she provide more "evidence" that her encounter with Stephane Clement was indeed forced and unwanted. This instinctive dismissal of a woman's point of view, even a noblewoman like the widow of the Bavarian prince whose slaying lay at the heart of the case, punched a huge hole through the case against the Prince.
Further compounding the issue was the testimony of Ernst Sachs, which once again inspired a thousand conspiracy theories in that he testified that he could not get a good view of Prince Franz from the ground, and that he stumbled onto the fight having already started. That Prince Franz was unarmed seemed to matter little, only that the brawl had been ongoing. Had Stephane Clement stolen the gun off of Sachs' belt? Perhaps, Sachs acknowledged, though there was a chance that the Prince merely knocked the pistol loose from its holster when they fell to the floor together and came away with it; he could not possibly recall, or deign to suggest, that the Belgian defendant had intentionally stripped him of his weapon.
A dozen or so witnesses were brought in to testify to Stephane Clement's character, including various functionaries, minor Austrian nobility, and the charges d'affaires of the Belgian embassy. Police investigators testified as to the Prince's answers in interrogation and his "apparent state of mind" when he had been apprehended at his apartment; the testimony seemed to elide that he had been frantically packing his bags to flee the city when he had been caught, and no follow-up on this question was asked. Doubts were raised as to whether Stephane Clement had been drunk at the time of the shooting; Sachs recalled "the scent of brandy," as did Isabella, but the police report stated that he was "sober as a priest."
The huge gaggle of reporters forced Schrieber to, after ten days of testimony, impose a closed court. This, in combination with the tone of the reporting in how it cast the testimony, only further fueled German impressions that the fix was in. This was not the trial of an accused rapist who had gunned down a fellow prince in cold blood anymore but an exploration of a poor, frightened, put-upon man who apparently stood wrongfully and dishonorably accused. It was becoming increasingly clear which direction the wind was blowing, and the mounting anger in German government circles was now nigh-unstoppable..."
- The Black Prince of Belgium: The Dark and Turbulent Life of Stephane Clement
"...the Hofburg was further offended by a diplomatic memorandum circulated to the Foreign Office by Jagow on February 5th which strongly implied two things: one, that Germany expected a "pre-determined" verdict, as Berchtold put it, and second, that this expectation carried with it a Germany "right of unilateralism," in which Germany was permitted, at times of her choosing, to unilaterally interfere in the judicial and perhaps even political proceedings of member states as a form of diplomatic liberum veto. Comments made by Jagow in late December had already suggested German sympathy for Hungarian nationalists in Swiss exile, and put together it was not hard for Ferdinand to draw a line between Germany's increasing support for the Green Magyar cause and their expectation of demanding a guilty verdict in the trial of Stephane Clement. Essentially how the Hofburg understood Jagow's memorandum was an unprecedented demand of interference in Austrian internal affairs that, on its own, served as an effective declaration of war.
Ironically, this was not exactly how Jagow or Berlin had intended for it to be perceived, but it had been sloppily drafted and made overlong rather than concise, and thus the stage was set for the fateful verdict read out on February 25th, 1919, four months and one day after the Hofburg killing. To the surprise of nobody who had followed the trial the past several weeks, Stephane Clement was acquitted on the counts of murder and of the theft of a weapon, while he was found guilty of illegally discharging a weapon inside the Hofburg; he had never been charged with attempted rape or battery upon Isabella to begin with. For the one guilty verdict he did receive, Stephane Clement was banned from Austrian territory permanently after paying a small indemnity, but otherwise was free to go.
Ferdinand's reaction was, essentially, one of "good riddance" - he had already disliked Stephane Clement enormously and detested him after the Hofburg Affair, and to "see the back of him" was a conclusion to the matter he could support. However, with Schreiber's verdict, events were now out of Ferdinand's hands. German newspapers openly and angrily declared that the case had been rigged to acquit the Belgian and there was even a small riot in Munich over the news. Making matters worse, and playing directly into the conspiratorial thinking of Germans, the French and Belgians openly celebrated the acquittal, with church bells ringing all over both countries and Prime Minister Poincare going so far as to make a speech "in honor of this day" to the Corps Legislatif on February 27th. On the 28th, Stephane Clement was released from prison, upon the receipt of his indemnity by the Austrian court, paid on his behalf by his father from Brussels. He was quickly ferried to the train station with all haste and put on a train to Switzerland; the sight of Austrian soldiers hurrying the acquitted through the city was perceived, perhaps not incorrectly, as helping him flee. Germany could now not be sated - and critically for the function of the Iron Triangle, the Jagow Memorandum's demands and Germany's outrage over the outcome of the Trial of the Century could reasonably be perceived as German aggression towards Austria..."
- Ferdinand: The Last Emperor
[1] Austria, like almost all continental Europe, is not a common law system and thus does not have an adversarial justice system where the judge serves as a referee between defense and prosecution. Very crucially, civil law systems do not have juries, and case law is generally not as important as statutory law.
[2] Suspicious timing, to say the least
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