Ein Diener seiner Herren

The biography of Gustavus G. Zertfi (1820-1892) is the first analytical introduction to the Habsburg secret service in the 1850s and 1860s through the case study of a secret agent. By strange coincidence, it is also a major contribution to the. beginnings. of modem Japanese historiography as Zerffi's The Science of History provided the first basic text for Japanese scholars on modem European history and historians after the Meiji revolution of 1868. Though. probably the most formidable. secret agent in the ."neo-absolutistic" Habsburg Empire of the mid-19th century, G. G. Zerffi was an obscure and relatively little known figure in his own time. Over a period. of close to 16. years, Zerffi sent some 2,000 numbered intelligent reports to the Habsburg government in Vienna from Serbia, the Ottoman Empire, Paris, and, mainly, from London (1849-1865). The. biography serves as an introduction to all the available secret reports by Zerffi collected from Austrian and, to a smaller extent, Russian archives, publishing them in the Get-man original as an appendix of his work. Through the life and activities. of one particular figure the book opens up. several chapters of 19th century Europe, B