ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the development of such authority relationships and probes their psychological, habitual effects. This contrast is of course not meant to imply that Austria as a system knew nothing of pride and honour. This would be as dubious as portraying England as a society free of all courtly flattery and subservience: Christopher Sykes has produced an impressive portrait of his uncle, who had the misfortune to be helpless in the face of the ‘practical jokes’1 of his merciless master Edward (heir to the throne and later King Edward VIII of
England) (cf. Sykes 1986: 27-8). The English code of proud detachment is, however, more deeply and broadly diffused throughout English society than was the aristocratic and Estates-based concept of honour in middle-and lower-class Austria.
