costs to construct the Tegetthoff-class battleships were enormous by the standards of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. While the , , and the Radetzky-class battleships cost the navy roughly 18, 26, and 40 million Kronen per ship, each ship of the Tegetthoff class was projected to cost over 60 million Kronen. Under the previous budgets for 1907 and 1908, the navy had been allocated some 63.4 and 73.4 million Kronen, which at the time was considered an inflated budget due to the construction of two Radetzkys. Montecuccoli worried that the general public and the legislatures in Vienna and Budapest would reject the need for the expensive ships, especially so soon after the political crisis in Budapest. The dramatic increase in spending meant that in 1909 the navy spent some 100.4 million Kronen, a huge sum at the time. This was done in order to rush the completion of the Radetzky-class battleships, though the looming construction of four dreadnoughts meant the Austro-Hungarian Navy would likely have to ask the government for a yearly budget much higher than 100 million Kronen. In order to guarantee funding for the ships from the Rothschild family in Austria, who owned the Witkowitz Ironworks, the Creditanstalt Bank, and had significant assets in both the Škoda Works and the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino, Archduke Franz Ferdinand personally courted Albert Salomon Anselm von Rothschild in order to obtain his family's monetary support until the government could buy the ships. Budget negotiations and passage The budgets providing funding for the Tegetthoff class were finally approved after two meetings of the Austrian Reichsrat and the Diet of Hungary in October and November 1910, with opposition being rejected as the Italian Navy had laid down another three battleships during the summer. The retroactive passage of the 1910 budget and the passage of the 1911 budget was secured between December and March with little opposition. István Tisza, who had won Hungary's 1910 Parliamentary election but instead chose to allow a government to form under Károly Khuen-Héderváry, secured passage of the budgets with his large parliamentary majority. This was done after it was agreed the contract for the battleship which would eventually become Szent István was to be awarded to the Ganz-Danubius shipyard in Fiume. Tisza's political allies were likewise won over with bribes such as being appointed to the board of directors of the Adria Line. Securing passage of the budgets in the Austrian Reichsrat