Background
He was born at Lettowitz, in Moravia, on the 29th of December 1832, of an old Transylvanian family which had held countly rank in Hungary from the 17th century.
He was born at Lettowitz, in Moravia, on the 29th of December 1832, of an old Transylvanian family which had held countly rank in Hungary from the 17th century.
After spending some years in a hussar regiment, in 1854 he entered the diplomatic service without giving up his connexion with the army, in which he reached the rank of general in 1879. He was for the ten years 1860 to 1870 secretary of embassy at London, and then, after serving at Rome and Copenhagen, was in 1880 appointed ambassador at St Petersburg. His success in Russia procured for him, on the death of Baron v. Haymerle in 1881, the appointment of minister of foreign affairs for Austria-Hungary, a post which he held for fourteen years. Essentially a diplomatist, he took little or no part in the vexed internal affairs of the Dual Monarchy, and he came little before the public except at the annual statement on foreign affairs before the Delegations.
In 1895 a case of clerical interference in the internal affairs of Hungary by the nuncio Antonio Agliardi aroused a strong protest in the Hungarian parliament, and consequent differences between Dezső Bánffy, the Hungarian minister, and the minister for foreign affairs led to Kálnoky's resignation.
Though he kept aloof from the Clerical party, Kálnoky was a strong Catholic; and his sympathy for the difficulties of the Church caused adverse comment in Italy.
His Russophile policy as a diplomatist caused some adverse criticism in Hungary. His friendliness for Russia did not, however, prevent him from strengthening the position of Austria as against Russia in the Balkan Peninsula by the establishment later of a closer political and commercial understanding with Serbia and Romania.
