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For another, Verdi’s composition of the opera was set against the tension and outbreak of the Austro-Prussian war, which threatened his home as well as his homeland.

In addition, as Mr. Beller-McKenna notes, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 may have complicated matters for Brahms, a German living in Vienna who was not yet won over to the victorious Prussian cause.

Like all years, it was a potpourri of past and future: it was the year of the long-forgotten Austro-Prussian War between two ageing empires that have long since crumbled, but also the year that the Royal Aeronautical Society was founded, and that Alfred Nobel invented dynamite.

Between 1000 C.E. and 1945, the longest period of uninterrupted peace in Europe was a 51-year stretch between the battle of Waterloo and the Austro-Prussian war.

The session was interrupted by the outbreak of the Austro-Prussian War, but not before a 919 committee had been formed to draft the new constitution.