Tags: premonitory dream, assassination of Archduke
Ferdinand, Psychische Studien 1918
Over the weekend, I read a French translation of the dream Bishop Joseph von Lányi claimed to have had in the early hours of 28th June 1914 of the impending assassination of his former Hungarian language pupil, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, at Sarajevo, only a couple of hours later. As a result of the complex web of alliances Europe’s major powers had allowed themselves to get entangled into, this assassination of only two crowned heads (albeit of Europe’s second largest continental empire) started a chain reaction that led to the first world war and caused the deaths of millions of combatants and civilians alike.
I was quite surprised that I had never heard of this dream until last Sunday. The more so as documentaries that had been made for the centenary commemorations of the outbreak of this devastating conflict are still being broadcast on history channels and books released to coincide with the same anniversary are still on display in some bookshops. I therefore decided to find out a little more about this alleged premonitory dream of Msgr Joseph von Lányi, published roughly some three and a half years after the beginning of World War One.
Although I found the version published by Psychische Studien quite early on in the ‘searches’ I performed over the Internet thanks to a reference in an article published by an Mittel Europa scholar*, I came across an English language translation in the public domain only towards the later stages of my probe into the veracity of this dream. It is taken from the work of a French professor, Charles Richet (who was awarded the Nobel prize for medicine in 1913). Entitled Thirty Years of Psychical Research Being A Treatise on Metapsychics, this study looks back on the latter’s real love affair with the paranormal through some of the main phenomena, many of which he personally investigated over that long time span. Published in 1923, the text is no longer under any copyright restrictions (Charles Richet died in 1935), I would assume, and I therefore reproduce it as such:
Another most interesting premonition, for which perhaps fresh documentary proofs are needed, refers to one of the greatest events of contemporary, indeed of all history. It is a premonition relative to the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo, June 28, 1914, for this crime initiated the greater crime of the war, 1914-1918.
Mgr. Joseph de Lanyi, Bishop of Grosswarden, dreamed on the morning of June 28th, at 4 a.m., that he saw on his study table a black-edged letter bearing the arms of the Archduke. M. de Lanyi had been professor of the Hungarian language to the Archduke. In his dream he opened the letter and at its head saw a street into which an alley opened. The Archduke was seated in a motor-car with his wife; facing him was a general, and another officer by the side of the chauffeur. There was a crowd about the car and from the crowd two young men stepped forward and fired on the royal couple. The text of the letter ran, “Your Eminence, dear Dr. Lanyi, my wife and I have been victims of a political crime at Sarajevo. We commend ourselves to your prayers. Sarajevo, June 28, 1914, 4 a.m.”
“Then,” says Mgr. de Lanyi, “I woke up trembling; I saw that the time was 4.30 a.m., and I wrote down my dream, reproducing the characters that had appeared to me in the Archduke's letter. At six, when my servant came, he found me seated at my table, much shaken and telling my rosary. I said at once to him, ‘Call my mother and my host, that I may tell them the dreadful dream I have had.’”
During the day a telegram arrived giving the terrible news.
Such is the letter that Edouard Lanyi, S. J., a professor at Laufkirchen, received from his brother, Mgr. Lanyi. Hearing of this letter, M. Grabinsky made certain enquiries which confirmed all these facts. The results of this enquiry are given in Psychische Studien, 1918, xliv, 324 and 465.
In this premonition all the details are very full and correct, except as to the shots fired. Bombs were really used, and thrown twice. [Paul’s emphasis]
It may, however, be asked why this extraordinary premonition was not published till 1918. It may be surmised also that Mgr. de Lanyi knew that the Archduke would go to Sarajevo and that some danger to him might be apprehended.
387
Granting that it would be absurd to suppose an imposture on the part of Mgr. de Lanyi and his brother, these objections do not seem to me sufficient to warrant a refusal to consider this fine instance of premonition as authentic.
(pp.386-387 of Charles Richet’s Thirty Years of Psychical Research Being A Treatise on Metapsychics, as translated by Stanley de Brath and published by Macmillan in 1923.)
The initial article in Psychische Studien about the dream of Msgr Joseph von Lányi not only raises the most straightforward objection (‘Warum, so fragt man sich, wird dieser erst 31/2 Jahre nach dem Mord von Serajewo veröffentlicht?’) to this story (rightly described as a ‘vaticinium post eventum’) but also provides the names of some of the German-speaking newspapers which wrote about the dream before Psychische Studien. As stated by Charles Richet above, enquiries were made by a certain M. Grabinsky and reported in the July issue of Psychische Studien (same year, on pages 324-325). In addition, in November of the same year, Psychische Studien published a letter by Eduard von Lányi, in which he confirmed the veracity of his brother’s dream (pages 465-468).
However, even though I went through all sections of Psychische Studien quite quickly and even though I have not tried to find any biographical materials about both brothers (for instance, has the autograph letter survived the tumult of the rest of the twentieth century?), I have a feeling that this story is not genuine. Unfortunately, to confirm or disprove my feeling would take up too much time and resources (I would need to go to Vienna or Berlin to be able to read the very first accounts of the dream in those German-speaking newspapers that were the first to publish the story as they are not available online), so I must leave the question of the authenticity of the bishop’s dream open for the time being and I would thus be happy to hear from anybody who would have conclusive evidence as to either of these two possibilities (a genuine story or a hoax).
Links
* ‘A Terrible Dream’ - A Possible Premonition of the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Consequences of Some Unlikely Coincidences, Peter Mulacz, Paranormal Review, 2014
[A link to a similar entry on this website] http://paulzanotelli.ch/blog/paranormal/reading-the-future/dreams/dickens-s-lady-in-red.html