Georg Ritter von Schönerer (17 July 1842 – 14 August 1921) was an Austrian landowner and politician of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A major exponent of pan-Germanism and German nationalism in Austria as well as a radical opponent of political Catholicism and a fierce antisemite, Schönerer exerted much influence on the young Adolf Hitler. He was known for a generation as the most radical pan-German nationalist in Austria. Life and career Early life Schönerer was born in Vienna as Georg Heinrich Schönerer; his father, the wealthy railroad pioneer Matthias Schönerer (1807–1881), an employee of the House of Rothschild, was knighted (adding the hereditary title of Ritter, "Knight", and the nobiliary particle of von) by Emperor Franz Joseph in 1860. His wife was a great-granddaughter of R. Samuel Löb Kohen, who died at Pohořelice in 1832. He had a younger sister, Alexandrine, later director of the Theater an der Wien, who strongly rejected her brother's politics. From 1861, Georg studied agronomy at the universities of Tübingen, Hohenheim and Magyaróvár (Ungarisch-Altenburg, today a campus of the University of West Hungary). He then conducted the business affairs of his father's estate at Rosenau near Zwettl in the rural Waldviertel region of Lower Austria, where he became known as a generous patriarch of the local peasants and great benefactor. Shaken by Austria's defeat in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, the dissolution of the German Confederation, and the foundation of the German Empire in 1871, Schönerer became a political activist and ardent admirer of the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. He wrote passionately admiring letters to Bismarck, and continued doing so even after Bismarck made clear that he rejected any sort of Austro-German nationalism and would not allow Austria's pan-Germans to jeopardize the Dual Alliance. Entering parliament During the Panic of 1873, Schönerer was elected to Cisleithanian Austria’s Imperial Council as a liberal representative, but became a more and more extreme and vocal German nationalist as his career progressed. He became widely known for his oratory and was considered a firebrand in Parliament. He broke with his party three years later, agitating against "Jewish" capitalism, against the Catholic Imperial House of Habsburg, and against the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, which he condemned as a betrayal of ethnic German interests. In a speech, he said, "More and more, and ever more loudly, one can hear