Gustav Adolf Groß · 1917
This file is a single official letter. Dated Vienna, 10 December 1917, it records Gustav Adolf Groß’s formal thanks to an unnamed general for handling a request concerning “die Enthebung des Julius Abele.” Its scope is narrow, but its significance lies in the bureaucratic and social form of wartime political communication: parliamentary authority addresses military authority through deference, gratitude, and institutional decorum.
The letter begins by locating the writer within the hierarchy of Cisleithanian representative politics:
Der Präsident des Abgeordnetenhauses des Reichsrates.
English translation: The President of the House of Deputies of the Imperial Council.
This opening is not incidental. Groß writes not merely as a private petitioner but as the president of the Abgeordnetenhaus of the Reichsrat, and the letter’s authority depends on that institutional position. Yet the rhetoric that follows is carefully deferential rather than commanding:
Hochgeehrter Herr General!
English translation: Highly esteemed General!
The main sentence contains the whole practical substance of the document. Groß thanks the general for the “rasche und freundliche Erledigung” of the request, emphasizing both administrative speed and personal courtesy:
Für die rasche und freundliche Erledigung des Ansuchens betreffend die Enthebung des Julius Abele erlaube ich mir Euer Hochwohlgeboren meinen verbindlichsten Dank auszusprechen.
English translation: For the prompt and gracious handling of the petition concerning the release from duty of Julius Abele, I take the liberty of expressing to Your Honor my most obliging thanks.
The letter’s central “argument,” insofar as an official note of thanks has one, is that the matter has been satisfactorily resolved through cooperative action across institutional lines. Its conceptual move is to convert an administrative intervention into a relationship of obligation and respect: the general’s response is framed as efficient, benevolent, and worthy of formal acknowledgment. The formulaic closing—“Mit vorzüglicher Hochachtung,” followed by “ergebenst”—reinforces the tone of ceremonial submission even while the sender’s office gives the communication political weight. The document is therefore relevant less for narrative detail about Julius Abele than for what it reveals about the etiquette, hierarchy, and interdependence of civil parliamentary and military authorities in late imperial Austria during the First World War.
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