Background
Istvan von Rajecz was born in Stampfen, near Pressburg, on January 16, 1851, to an ancient aristocratic Hungarian family.
Istvan von Rajecz was born in Stampfen, near Pressburg, on January 16, 1851, to an ancient aristocratic Hungarian family.
After initial diplomatic appointments to Alexandria, Bucharest, Belgrade, and Sofia, Burian from 1882 to 1886 headed the Consulate General in Moscow. Thereafter he was envoy to Sofia (1887-1895), Stuttgart (1896), and Athens (1897). From 1903 to 1912, Burian served as Austro-Hungarian joint minister of finance. After the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, Burian administered these territories with a mild hand and attempted to provide Serbs with a greater voice in the imperial administration, which merely earned him the wrath of fellow bureaucrats.
From January 1915 to December 1916, Burian served as foreign minister under his fellow Hungarian, Count Istvan Tisza. Burian attempted to preserve Austro-Hungarian dominance at least in the war against Serbia, which drew from General Conrad von Hotzendorf the sarcastic rejoinder: ''But with what?" In fact, Burian was powerless to prevent the entries into the war on the side of the Entente of Italy (May 1915) and Rumania (August 1916); however, he did manage to gain Bulgaria (October 1915) for the Central Powers. Count Burian's opposition to Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare, his willingness to restore the independence of Belgium as the price of a general peace settlement, and his insistence that Austria-Hungary be paramount in Poland in the future quickly earned him the opposition of German military leaders. Burian returned to his former duties as joint minister of finance, which better suited his serious, legalistic, and unimaginative nature.
However, on April 18, 1918, he returned to the Ballplatz as foreign minister, but the empire's deteriorating military situation provided Burian little opportunity to seek an honorable end to the war. His public appeal to President Woodrow Wilson for an end to the war on September 14 went unheeded, and rather than attempt a separate peace with the Entente, Count Burian resigned his post on October 24, 1918.