Count Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal

Hochgeboren Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal
Minister Aehrenthal in 1910
Foreign Minister of Austria-Hungary
In office 24 October 1906 – 17 February 1912
Monarch	Franz Joseph I
Preceded by	Agenor Maria Gołuchowski
Succeeded by	Count Leopold Berchtold
Personal details
Born	(1854-09-27)September 27, 1854 Groß Skal (Hrubá Skála), Bohemia, Austrian Empire
Died	17 February 1912(1912-02-17) (aged 57) Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Profession	diplomat

Count Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal (27 September 1854 – 17 February 1912) was an Austrian diplomat. As Imperial Foreign Minister Aehrenthal formulated and executed the formal and complete annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina; and, their integration into the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1908. With the annexation he sought to permanently block in the Balkan south of the Empire the emergence of inter, and intra-ethnic nationalisms amongst the multiplicity of peoples there on the basis their shared religious beliefs, and/or ethnic affiliations.

His actions precipitated an international crisis because he sought to achieve his objectives by negotiation of Russian acceptance of the annexation in exchange for Austrian support for greater Russian access from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean thru the Straits of the Dardanelles (at the expense of Ottoman Imperial interests), which Britain and France would supposedly accept since they had recently become allied with Imperial Russia.

Aehrenthal, seeking to limit objections in Russia to any support for the annexation began secret negotiations with Russian foreign minister Alexander Izvolsky. The annexation ultimately damaged Austro-Russian collaboration on settling Balkan questions. Also, it stirred chauvinist popular emotion in Russia, which felt humiliated in a sphere of vital interest to it.

Born at Groß Skal Castle in Bohemia (present-day Hrubá Skála, Czech Republic), he was the second-born son of Baron (Freiherr) Johann Lexa von Aehrenthal (1817–1898), a large-scale landowner in Groß Skal and Doksany, and his wife Marie, née Countess Thun und Hohenstein. His great-grandfather Johann Anton Lexa (1733-1824), from a rural background in Kralovice, had founded an insurance company in Prague and was ennobled in 1790.

In his lifetime Aehrenthal was often claimed to be of partly Jewish descent. Examples abound. Thus according to German Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, Aehrenthal was the grandson of a certain Lexa, a Jewish grain merchant of Prague ennobled in the nineteenth century under the name of Aehrenthal (literally 'valley of grain') in allusion to his calling; this ostensible Jewish strain led German Emperor Wilhelm II to refer to him less respectfully simply as Lexa in his marginal notes. Aehrenthal's erstwhile collaborator Lützow wrote after falling out with him that Aehrenthal displayed 'semitic cunning'. Aehrenthal however had no Jewish ancestors. The insinuations of Jewish ancestry may have inflamed his profound antisemitism.