History
Prehistory and Roman times
In the territories of Austria, the first traces of human
settlement date from the Lower Paleolithic Period (Old Stone
Age). In 1991 a frozen human body dating from the Neolithic
Period (New Stone Age) was discovered at the Hauslabjoch pass in
the Ötztal Alps, on the Italian-Austrian border. At 5,300 years
old, the so-called Iceman, nicknamed Ötzi, was the oldest intact
mummy ever discovered. The archaeological material becomes
richer and more varied for subsequent periods, giving evidence
of several distinct cultures succeeding one another or
coexisting. The Austrian site of Hallstatt gave its name to the
principal culture of the Early Iron Age (c. 1100–450 bc). Celtic
tribes invaded the eastern Alps about 400 bc and eventually
founded the kingdom of Noricum, the first “state” on Austrian
territory known by name. In the west, however, the ancient
Raetian people were able to maintain their seat (see Raetian
language). Then, attracted by the rich iron resources and the
strategic importance of the region, the Romans began to assert
themselves. After an initially peaceful penetration during the
last two centuries bc, Roman troops finally occupied the country
about 15 bc, and the lands as far as the Danube River became
part of the Roman Empire, being allotted to the Roman provinces
of Raetia, Noricum, and Pannonia. (See also ancient Rome.)
The Romans opened up the country by an extensive system of
roads. Among the Roman towns along the Danube, Carnuntum (near
Hainburg) took precedence over Vindobona (Vienna), while
Lauriacum (Lorch; near the confluence of the Enns River and the
Danube) belonged to a later period. Roman municipalities
(municipia) also grew up at Brigantium (Bregenz), Juvavum
(Salzburg), Ovilava (Wels), Virunum (near Klagenfurt), Teurnia
(near Spittal), and Flavia Solva (near Leibnitz). North of the
Danube the Germanic tribes of the Naristi, Marcomanni, and Quadi
settled. Their invasions in ad 166–180 arrested the peaceful
development of the provinces, and, even after their repulse by
the emperor Marcus Aurelius, the country could not regain its
former prosperity. In the 3rd century the Roman frontier
defenses began to be hard-pressed by invasions from the
Alemanni. Finally, in the 5th century, heavy attacks by the Huns
and the eastern Germans put an end to the Roman provincial
defense system on the Danube.
There is archaeological evidence of a Christian cult in this
area from the 4th century, and the biography of St. Severinus by
Eugippius constitutes a unique literary source for the dramatic
events of the second half of the 5th century. At that time
several Germanic tribes (the Rugii, Goths, Heruli, and, later,
Langobardi) settled on Austrian territory. In 488 part of the
harassed Norican population was forced to withdraw to Italy.
Early Middle Ages
Germanic and Slavic settlement
Following the departure of the Langobardi to Italy (568),
further development was determined by the Bavarians in a
struggle with the Slavs, who were invading from the east, and by
the Alemanni, who settled in what is now Vorarlberg. The
Bavarians were under the political influence of the Franks,
whereas the Slavs had Avar rulers. At the time of their greatest
expansion, the Slavs had penetrated as far as Niederösterreich
(Lower Austria), Steiermark (Styria), Kärnten (Carinthia), and
eastern Tirol. After 624 the western Slavs rose against the
Avars under the leadership of the Frankish merchant Samo, whose
short-lived rule may also have extended over the territories of
the eastern Alps. About 700 the Bavarian lands again bordered on
Avar territory, with the lower course of the Enns forming the
approximate frontier. On the death of the Frankish king Dagobert
I (639), the Bavarian dukes from the house of Agilolfing became
virtually independent.
Christianity had survived only here and there among the
remnants of the Roman population when, about 600 and again about
700, Christian missionaries from the west became active, with
the support of the Bavarian dukes. At the end of the 7th
century, St. Rupert, who came from the Rhine, founded the church
of Salzburg. When they were threatened once more by the Avars,
the Alpine Slavs (Karantani) placed themselves (before 750)
under the protection of the Bavarians, whose mission was
extended to them. At the same time, Bavarian settlers penetrated
into the valleys of Kärnten and Steiermark. Charlemagne, emperor
of the neighbouring Franks, however, deposed the Bavarian duke
Tassilo III, wiping out the Bavarian dukedom for a century.
During the following years (791–796), Charlemagne led a number
of attacks against the Avars and destroyed their dominion.
Surviving Avars were made to settle in the eastern part of Lower
Austria between the rivers of Fischa and Leitha, where they soon
disappeared from history, most probably mixing with the native
population.
As was the usual Frankish practice, border provinces (Marken,
or marches) were instituted in the newly won southeastern
territories. The Avar March on the Danube and Lower and Upper
Pannonia and Karantania were to form a border fortification, but
this arrangement soon became less effective because of frequent
disagreements among the nobility. To that unrest was added a
threat from the Bulgarians and from the rulers of Great Moravia
(see Moravia). Nevertheless, the process of Germanization and
Christianization continued, during the course of which the
churches of Salzburg and Passau came into conflict with the
eastern mission, which was led by the Slav apostles Cyril and
Methodius. The Frankish kingdom richly endowed the church and
nobility with new lands, which came to be settled by Bavarian
and Frankish farmers.
In 881 the beginning of incursions by the Magyars led to a
first clash near Vienna. By 906 they had destroyed Great
Moravia, and in 907 near Pressburg (Bratislava, Slvk.) the
Magyars defeated a large Bavarian army that had tried to win
back lost territory. Liutpold of Bavaria as well as Theotmar,
the archbishop of Salzburg, were killed in battle. The Lower
Austrian territories as far as the Enns River, and Steiermark as
far as the Koralpe massif, fell under Magyar domination.
Nevertheless, a certain continuity of German-Slav settlement was
maintained so that, after the victory of the German king Otto I
(later Holy Roman emperor) in 955 and the further repulse of the
Magyars in the 960s, a fresh start could be made. (See also
Germany: History; Holy Roman Empire.)
Early Babenberg period
The first mention of a ruler in the regained territories
east of the Enns is of Burchard, who probably was count
(burgrave) of Regensburg. It appears that he lost his office as
a result of his championship of Henry II the Quarrelsome, duke
of Bavaria. In 976 his successor, Leopold I of the house of
Babenberg, was installed in office. Under Leopold’s rule the
eastern frontier was extended to the Vienna Woods after a war
with the Magyars. Under his successor, Henry I, the country
around Vienna itself must have come into German hands. New
marches were also created in what were later known as Carniola
and Steiermark.
Wars against Hungarians and Moravians occupied the reign
(1018–55) of Margrave (a count who ruled over a march) Adalbert.
Parts of Lower Austria on both sides of the Danube were lost
temporarily; after they were retaken, they became the so-called
Neumark (New March), which for some time enjoyed independence—as
did the Bohemian March to the north of the Babenberg
territories. The position of the Babenbergs was at that time
still a modest one; their territorial rights were no greater
than those of other leading noble families. Their power within
their own official sphere was further diminished by
ecclesiastical immunities (Passau in particular but also
Salzburg, Regensburg, and Freising), with numerous monasteries
owning large territories as well.
Austria was repeatedly drawn into the disputes of the
Investiture Controversy, in which Pope Gregory VII and King
Henry IV (later Holy Roman emperor) fought for control of the
church in Germany. In 1075 Margrave Ernest, who had regained the
Neumark and the Bohemian March for his family, was killed in the
Battle of the Unstrut, fighting on the side of Henry IV against
the rebellious Saxons. Altmann, bishop of Passau, a leader of
church reform and a champion of Gregory VII, influenced the next
Babenberg margrave, Leopold II, to abandon Henry’s cause. As a
result, Henry roused the Bohemian duke Vratislav II against him,
and in 1082 Leopold II was defeated near Mailberg, his
territories north of the Danube devastated. The Babenbergs,
however, managed to survive these setbacks. Meanwhile, the cause
of church reform gained ground, with its centres in the newly
founded monasteries of Göttweig, Lambach, and, in Steiermark,
Admont.
Under Leopold III (1095–1136) the history of the Babenbergs
reached its first culmination point. In the struggle between
emperor and pope, Leopold avoided taking sides until a consensus
had built up among the German princes that it was Emperor Henry
IV who stood in the way of a final settlement. Then Leopold did
not hesitate to side with Henry’s rebellious son, Henry V, in
1106. For this he was rewarded with the hand of Henry V’s sister
Agnes, who had formerly been married to the Hohenstaufen
Frederick I of Swabia. The intermarriage with the reigning
dynasty not only increased Leopold’s reputation but also no
doubt brought him additional power. Leopold was even proposed as
a candidate to the royal throne, but he declined. It was
apparently his intention to concentrate on consolidating his
position in Austria. He was the first Austrian margrave to
describe himself as the holder of territorial principality
(principatus terrae), and during his time Austrian common law
was mentioned for the first time, another proof of the
developing national consciousness.
Leopold’s reputation with the clergy was high, and he was
eventually canonized (1485). He gave generous endowments to
religious communities, establishing the Cistercians at
Heiligenkreuz, and he founded, or at least restored, the
monastery of Klosterneuburg, which he then gave to Augustinian
canons. In Klosterneuburg he built a residence in which he
stayed even after he had acquired Vienna.
On the death of Leopold III, the Babenbergs were drawn into a
conflict between the two leading dynasties of Germany, the
Hohenstaufen and the Welfs; the Babenbergs took the side of the
Hohenstaufen because of their family ties. In 1139 the German
king Conrad III bestowed Bavaria, which he had wrested from the
Welfs, on his half brother, Leopold IV. After the latter’s
untimely death, Henry II Jasomirgott succeeded to the rule of
Austria and Bavaria.
The Holy Roman emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa) tried to put
an end to the quarrel between the Welfs and the Hohenstaufen,
and, in the autumn of 1156 at Regensburg, he arranged a
compromise. Bavaria was restored to the Welf Henry III (the
Lion), duke of Saxony, while the Babenbergs were confirmed in
their rule of Austria, which was made a duchy, and were given
the “three counties,” the actual location of which is disputed.
Also, the obligations of the dukes of Austria toward the empire
were reduced. Their attendance at royal court days was called
for only when court was held in Bavaria, and they were compelled
to participate only in campaigns of the empire that were
directed against Austria’s neighbour—that is, Hungary. Henry II
Jasomirgott and his wife, Theodora, a Byzantine princess, were
granted succession through the female line and the right, in the
event of the premature deaths of their children, to appoint a
candidate for the succession. The Babenbergs also were given the
right of approving the exercise of jurisdiction by other powers
within the new duchy, permitting Henry to exert pressure against
rival internal powers, secular as well as ecclesiastical. The
rights of the duke were laid down by imperial charter
(Privilegium Minus). For centuries, however, Austria continued
to contain territorial dominions not ruled by the duke. Henry
moved his residence to Vienna, where he also founded the
monastery of the “Scottish” (actually Irish) monks.
Later Babenberg period
In 1192 the Babenbergs’ territory was greatly extended
when they won the duchy of Steiermark. In Steiermark the
margraves of the family of the Otakars of Steyr had gradually
asserted themselves—under conditions similar to those of the
Babenbergs—over their rivals, the noble families of the
Eppensteiner, Formbacher, and Aribonen. The most successful
among Steiermark’s margraves was Otakar III (reigned 1130–63).
Then, in 1180, Emperor Frederick I, in the course of a renewed
anti-Welf policy, raised Steiermark to the status of a duchy and
granted it complete independence from Bavaria. A few years later
a treaty of inheritance (Georgenberg; 1186) was concluded
between the dukes Leopold V of Austria (reigned 1177–94), a son
of Henry II Jasomirgott, and Otakar IV of Steiermark, the ailing
last Otakar ruler. When Otakar died in 1192, Leopold succeeded
him, and thus the Babenbergs came into the inheritance.
Except for a short intermission (1194–98), the reigning
Babenberg thereafter ruled both duchies, Austria and Steiermark.
Steiermark then included parts of the Traungau, which eventually
was to become part of Upper Austria, and the province of Pitten,
north of the Semmering Alpine pass, afterward assigned to Lower
Austria. In logical continuation of the Babenberg policy,
Leopold VI (the Glorious) and his successor, Frederick II (the
Warlike), the last representative of the dynasty, extended their
domains farther south, gaining fiefs in Carniola.
Before he inherited the duchy of Steiermark, Leopold V had
taken part in the Third Crusade, during which, on the ramparts
of Acre (modern ʿAkko, Israel), he became involved in a quarrel
with the English king Richard I (the Lion-Heart). Later, on his
return journey to England, Richard tried to make his way through
Austria in disguise but was recognized near Vienna, taken
prisoner, and later handed over to the Holy Roman emperor Henry
VI. England had to pay a heavy ransom, a share of which Leopold
obtained and invested in the foundation, extension, and
fortification of towns as well as in the stamping of a new coin,
the so-called Wiener pfennig. The road connecting Vienna and
Steiermark was improved, and the new town of Wiener Neustadt was
established on its course to protect the newly opened route
across the Semmering.
On Leopold V’s death the Babenberg domains were divided
between his sons for four years, until the death of one of them,
Frederick I, in 1198. His brother Leopold VI, the most
outstanding member of the family, then took over as sole ruler
(1198–1230). This was a time of great prosperity for the
Babenberg countries. In imperial politics Leopold VI again took
sides with the Hohenstaufen, backing Philip of Swabia. In church
matters he was a great supporter of the monasteries, founding a
Cistercian monastery at Lilienfeld (c. 1206). He tried to
concentrate patronage rights over ecclesiastical property in his
own hands and took rigorous action against the heretics (the
Cathari and Waldenses). He participated in several crusades in
Palestine, Egypt, southern France (against the Albigenses), and
Spain (against the Saracens). Leopold VI’s efforts to emancipate
Austria ecclesiastically by creating a separate Austrian
bishopric in Vienna came to naught because of the opposition of
the church in Passau and also in Salzburg; nor did his son
Frederick II succeed in the same matter. Leopold VI played some
role in imperial politics, bringing about the Treaty of San
Germano between the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II and Pope
Gregory IX (1230). He met his death in San Germano (now Cassino,
Italy), and his body was transported to Lilienfeld for burial.
A change came about under the last representative of the
dynasty, Frederick the Warlike, Leopold’s son. His harsh
internal policy and military excursions against neighbouring
lands, together with his opposition to the emperor Frederick II,
led in 1237 to the temporary loss of both Austria and
Steiermark. The crisis, however, was overcome, and fresh
opportunities were about to open for the duke when, on June 15,
1246, he was killed in battle against the Hungarians on the
Leitha River. With him the male line of the family came to an
end.
The political history of Austria from the end of the 10th
century to the middle of the 13th is marked by the establishment
and consolidation of territories. This process was most advanced
in the Babenberg domains but was not confined to them. Dukes
Herman (1144–61) and Bernhard (1202–56) of Kärnten achieved a
comparable status, and Count Albert of Tirol (died 1253) moved
in the same direction. The archbishops of Salzburg strove to
eliminate all secular powers and patrons of their see, but, in
the other territories, secular princes strengthened their rule.
Another milestone of this period was the completion of the
colonization of the Austrian territories. New settlements were
established by clearing the woods and advancing to more remote
mountain areas. Several old and new settlements grew into market
centres and towns and were eventually granted charters. The
colonization movement also affected the ratio of the German to
non-German population. Except for some places in the Alpine
regions, the Slavs were gradually assimilated, and the same held
true of the remnants of the Roman population in Salzburg and
northern Tirol.
The intellectual life of the period deserves mention. The
Babenberg court was famous enough to attract some of the leading
German poets. At the beginning of the 13th century, the saga
known as the Nibelungenlied was written down by an unknown
Austrian. Historical writing flourished in the monasteries. The
era also produced first-rate Romanesque and early Gothic
architecture.
Late Middle Ages
Contest for the Babenberg heritage
Upon the death of Frederick the Warlike, the Babenberg
domains became the political objects of aspiring neighbours. The
emperor and the pope also tried to intervene. Two female
descendants of the Babenbergs, Frederick’s niece Gertrude and
his sister Margaret, were considered to embody the claims to the
heritage. Gertrude married first the Bohemian prince Vladislav
and afterward the margrave Hermann of Baden, who died in 1250.
After Hermann’s death, Otakar II, prince of Bohemia (from 1253
king) and a member of the house of Přemysl, married the widowed
Margaret. Thereupon Hungarian forces intervened. Under the
Treaty of Ofen (1254) Otakar was to rule Austria, while King
Béla IV of Hungary received Steiermark. Troubles in Salzburg,
stemming from a conflict between Bohemia and Hungary, inspired a
rising among Steiermark’s nobles. Otakar intervened and in the
Treaty of Vienna (1260) took over Steiermark as well. The state
of anarchy that prevailed in Germany during this period proved
advantageous to Otakar, who was granted Austria and Steiermark
in fief from Richard, earl of Cornwall, the titular German king.
The grant, however, was only by writ and was invalid according
to German law. During the following years, Otakar’s energetic
rule met with growing opposition among the Austrian nobility. He
introduced foreigners into important official positions, broke
fortresses that had been erected without his consent, and
dissolved his childless marriage with Margaret. Otakar had two
of the opposition leaders, Otto of Meissau and Seifried of
Mahrenberg, executed. The gentry and the inhabitants of the
cities, on the other hand, generally favoured Otakar, who
supported the churches and monasteries. To complete his success,
Otakar gained Kärnten and Carniola, which Ulrich of Spanheim,
duke of Kärnten, willed to him in 1269.
Reverses came only when Count Rudolf IV of the house of
Habsburg was elected German king as Rudolf I on Sept. 29, 1273.
Cautiously but nevertheless energetically, Rudolf set out to
undermine the powerful position Otakar had created for himself.
He challenged the legitimacy of Otakar’s acquisitions and
finally placed the Bohemian king under the ban of the empire. In
1276 Rudolf and his allies invaded Austria, forcing Otakar to do
homage and to renounce his claims to Austria. Two years later,
while trying to recover what he had lost, Otakar was defeated by
the united forces of Rudolf and the Hungarians and was killed on
the battlefield near Dürnkrut (Aug. 26, 1278).
Accession of the Habsburgs
As the German princes had not cared to give Rudolf adequate
support against Otakar, he did not feel bound to them and set
out to acquire the former Babenberg lands for his own house. In
1281 he made his eldest son, Albert (later Albert I, king of
Germany), governor of Austria and Steiermark; on Christmas,
1282, he invested his two sons, Albert and Rudolf II, with
Austria, Steiermark, and Carniola, which they were to rule
jointly and undivided. As the Austrians were not used to being
governed by two sovereigns at the same time, the Treaty of
Rheinfelden (June 1, 1283) provided that Duke Albert should be
the sole ruler. In 1282 Carniola had already been pawned to
Meinhard II of Tirol (of the counts of Gorizia), one of the most
reliable allies of Rudolf who, in 1286, was also invested with
Kärnten.
At first the Habsburg rulers were far from popular in
Austria. Albert’s energetic and relentless rule aroused bad
feeling, and the Swabian entourage that had arrived with the new
dynasty to occupy key positions was despised by native nobles.
There were conflicts with Bavaria, Salzburg, and Hungarian
nobles who violated the Austrian frontier. After the death of
King Rudolf (1291), all the neighbours and rivals of the
Habsburgs and the counts of Gorizia united. Albert, however,
succeeded in negotiating a peace with his most dangerous foes,
the Hungarians and the Bohemians, and he broke the fortresses of
the rebel nobility. Meanwhile, Meinhard II had stifled the
uprising in Kärnten.
In 1292 Albert was passed over in the German election, and
Adolf of Nassau was called to the throne. When Adolf fell out
with the electoral princes, however, they went over to Albert,
who had just subdued another rebellion in Austria. After Adolf
was defeated and killed near Göllheim (1298), Albert had himself
elected a second time. In his Austrian lands Albert’s main
concern was to provide for an effective administration, in which
he was assisted by his privy councillors, most of whom were
foreign. Records were set up to codify the prerogatives and
returns of the ducal property. Eventually Albert did not spare
the church, either. When the Přemysl family died out in 1306,
Albert aspired to the Bohemian throne. He had his eldest son,
Rudolf III, elected Bohemian king, but Rudolf died the following
year. Albert was preparing for a new campaign when he was
murdered by his nephew John and some accomplices in 1308.
On Albert’s death the anti-Habsburg movement flared up again
in Austria, but his sons, Frederick I (the Fair) and Leopold I,
managed to maintain control. Frederick stood for election as
German king (as Frederick III), and for the next several years
the Habsburg countries had to support the cost of the war with
his rival, Louis IV of Bavaria, until 1322, when Frederick was
defeated near Mühldorf. Earlier, another decisive battle had
been lost by the Habsburgs to the Swiss at Morgarten in 1315.
From that time on, the Habsburg domains in the territory south
of the Rhine and Lake Constance began to crumble away. Frederick
the Fair spent his last years in Austria and was buried in the
Carthusian monastery of Mauerbach (1330). He seems to have been
the first of the Habsburgs for whom Austria meant home. From his
time on, Habsburg rule and Habsburg territories were known as
the Austrian domains (dominium Austriae), a term that was
replaced, in the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, by the
new concept of the house of Austria.
After Frederick’s death the Habsburgs were for some time
ruled out as possible candidates for the German throne; but,
under the brothers Albert II and Otto, Habsburg Austria received
its first important accession of territory. In 1335 Kärnten and
Carniola were acquired after the death of Henry of Gorizia,
while, with the help of Luxembourg troops, Henry’s daughter
Margaret Maultasch managed to retain the Tirol. Albert and his
brother Otto had not gotten on too well, but, when Albert came
to rule on his own, he proved to be of sound judgment and keen
on preserving the peace. It was a time of calamities: bad
harvests, floods, earthquakes, and in 1348–49 the plague, which
brought a persecution of the Jews; this was suppressed, however,
by the duke. Albert arranged several tours around his domains to
establish contacts with the populace and to improve
jurisdiction. Two campaigns against the Swiss failed to yield
any spectacular results, but they helped to consolidate the
weakened Habsburg position. At his death in 1358 Albert left
four sons. Though in 1355 a family ordinance had decreed that
all the male members of the family were to rule jointly over the
undivided domains, only the eldest of them, Rudolf, was then fit
to rule. Throughout his short reign (1358–65), Rudolf IV showed
himself extremely energetic and ambitious. He started to rebuild
St. Stephen’s Cathedral in the Gothic style, and he founded the
University of Vienna (1365). With these two projects, he
imitated and rivaled his father-in-law, the Holy Roman emperor
Charles IV, at Prague.
In 1359 Rudolf’s forged charter, the Privilegium Majus, by
which he claimed immense privileges for Austria and its dynasty,
as well as the title of archduke, caused a breach between him
and the emperor Charles IV. Charles was not prepared to accept
the Privilegium Majus to its full extent (although it later was
sanctioned by Frederick III, the Habsburg king of Germany and,
from 1452, Holy Roman emperor, in 1442 and again in 1453). Upon
news of the death of Margaret Maultasch’s son, Duke Meinhard, in
1363, Rudolf prevailed upon Margaret to make over the Tirol to
him. On this occasion the emperor backed the Habsburgs against
the rulers of Bavaria, the Wittelsbachs, and the Tirol thus
passed to the house of Austria.
Division of the Habsburg lands
Rudolf was succeeded in 1365 by his two brothers, Albert III
and Leopold III. After some years of joint rule, however, they
quarreled and in 1379, by the Treaty of Neuberg, partitioned the
family lands. Albert, as the elder brother, received the more
prosperous countries on the Danube (Upper and Lower Austria).
The rest of the widespread domains fell to Leopold (including
Steiermark, Kärnten, Tirol, the old Habsburg countries in the
west, and central Istria). The treaty also contained several
points on mutual wardship, preemption rights, and common titles,
by which some connection between the two lines was to be
preserved.
In 1382 the resourceful duke Leopold took advantage of the
weak position of Venice in its war with Genoa and seized
Trieste, which had broken away from Venice. His efforts to
expand his rule in the west, however, were less successful,
though he seemed lucky enough at first. Envisaging a connection
between the original Habsburg territories in the west and the
new domains in the Tirol, the Habsburgs looked for a foothold in
the region west of the Arlberg (modern Vorarlberg). Neuberg on
the Rhine was won in 1363 and Feldkirch in 1375. Another
important acquisition was the city of Freiburg in the Breisgau
region. But then Leopold came into conflict with the Swiss,
which led to defeat and his death in the Battle of Sempach in
1386. An army of his brother, Albert III, was likewise defeated
in the Battle of Näfels in 1388, and the Habsburgs suffered
heavy territorial losses. Leopold’s sons recognized the wardship
of Albert, who acquired Bludenz and the Montafon Valley west of
the Arlberg in 1394. In his own domains Albert was forced to
check the dynasty of the Schaunbergs (in Upper Austria), who
tried to create an independent domain around Peuerbach and
Eferding. Albert III especially favoured the city of Vienna as
his capital, and it was because of his reorganization that the
university Rudolf IV had founded there was able to survive.
After Albert’s death in 1395, new Habsburg family troubles
arose, differences that the treaties of Hollenburg (1395) and
Vienna (1396) tried to settle. Under the Vienna treaty, the line
of Leopold III split into two branches, resulting in three
complexes of Austrian territories—a state of affairs that was to
reappear in the 16th century. The individual parts came to be
known by the names of Niederösterreich (“Lower Austria,”
comprising modern Lower and Upper Austria), Innerösterreich
(“Inner Austria,” comprising Steiermark, Kärnten, Carniola, and
the Adriatic possessions), and Oberösterreich (“Upper Austria,”
comprising the Tirol and the western domains, known as the
Vorlande, or Vorderösterreich [the Austrian provinces west of
the Arlberg]).
In 1396 the Austrian estates, or diets, were first assembled
to consider the Turkish threat; thereafter they were to play an
important political role in Austria. In them the nobility
usually took the lead, but they also included representatives of
the monasteries, towns, and marketplaces. In the Tirol, in
Vorarlberg, and, at times, in Salzburg, the peasants also sent
their representatives to attend the diets. Because of the
Habsburg partitions and frequent regencies, the estates were
able to gain in importance. They did not obtain the right to
pass laws, but they obstinately insisted on the privilege to
grant taxes and duties.
After the short rule of Albert IV (1395–1404) and a
troublesome tutelary regime (1404–11), Albert V came into his
own, and with him the Danube countries again enjoyed a strong
and energetic rule (1411–39). Albert, however, had married the
daughter of the Holy Roman emperor Sigismund and was thus drawn
into the Hussite religious wars, in the course of which the
Austrian lands north of the Danube were ravaged. In the Austrian
west, Duke Frederick IV of the Tirolean branch lost the Aargau
to the Swiss but was able to assert himself in Tirol against a
rebellion of his nobles.
When Sigismund died, Albert inherited his positions. In 1438
he was elected Hungarian king, with the German (as Albert II)
and the Bohemian crowns to follow later. Albert no doubt had
many of the qualities of a born ruler, but he died prematurely
in 1439 on an unsuccessful campaign against the Turks. Soon
thereafter his widow gave birth to a son and heir, Ladislas
Posthumus, to whom Frederick V of Steiermark, as the senior
member of the house, became guardian. Frederick also had
Sigismund, the son of Frederick IV of Tirol, under his tutelage.
Thus began the long reign of Frederick V (as Holy Roman
emperor he was to become Frederick III). His reign was marked by
almost ceaseless strife with the estates, with his neighbours,
and with his jealous family. When he tried unsuccessfully to
take advantage of a conflict between the Swiss Confederates, the
Tiroleans made Frederick release Duke Sigismund from tutelage
(1446). In 1452, on his return from Rome, where he had been
crowned emperor, his enemies at home and abroad forced him also
to give up Ladislas, who was then the recognized king (as
Ladislas V) of Hungary and Bohemia. The boy king’s policies were
made by Count Ulrich of Cilli. Ulrich was murdered at Belgrade,
Serb., in 1456, however, and a year later King Ladislas died. In
Bohemia and Hungary, national kings came to power. Frederick now
won himself a foothold in the Austrian domains on the Danube and
succeeded in acquiring the rich estates and fiefs of Ulrich.
Burgundian and Spanish marriages
Maximilian I, the son of the emperor Frederick III, was
married to the Burgundian heiress, Mary, at Ghent in 1477. By
that tie to Burgundy, the Habsburgs became involved in long
struggles with France. After Mary’s death (1482), Maximilian,
moreover, met with increasing difficulties in the Burgundian
countries themselves. Meanwhile, another crisis had arisen in
the eastern Habsburg domains. Disagreement about the Bohemian
succession and a political error of Frederick III, who tried to
install the former archbishop of Gran (now Esztergom, Hung.) at
Salzburg, led Matthias I of Hungary to march against Austria.
Vienna was besieged and finally taken by the Hungarians (1485),
as was Wiener Neustadt (1487). The harried Maximilian came into
even greater distress in the Low Countries, where the rebellious
citizens of Brugge put him under arrest (1488). Sigismund, the
Habsburg ruler of the Tirol, who was heavily encumbered by
debts, planned to sell his country to the Bavarians. A complete
breakdown of the house of Habsburg threatened, but Maximilian
was ultimately released. He prevailed upon Sigismund to abdicate
in his favour. In 1490 the Habsburgs were able to take over
Lower Austria. Maximilian even attacked Hungary, but, in the
Treaty of Pressburg (1491), he renounced claims to that country,
though reserving his family’s succession rights.
After the death of his father, Emperor Frederick III,
Maximilian came into a heritage that surpassed the endowments of
all his predecessors. Furthermore, his son, Philip I (the
Handsome), who governed the Low Countries, was betrothed to the
Spanish infanta Juana (later called Joan the Mad), and, through
the unexpected deaths of male members of the Spanish dynasty,
this marriage was to raise the Habsburgs to the throne of Spain.
In the German empire as well as in Austria, Maximilian
introduced sweeping administrative reforms that were the first
steps toward a centralized administration. In 1508 Maximilian
assumed the title of elected emperor, as he was unable to pass
through hostile Venetian territory to go to Rome for his
coronation, and henceforth Rome and the pope had no more say in
the creation of new Holy Roman emperors.
During Maximilian’s last years, eastern politics again came
to the fore. The great crusade he planned against the Turks,
however, never materialized. In 1515 Maximilian arranged a
double marriage between his family and the Jagiellon line that
ruled Bohemia and Hungary, thus reviving earlier Habsburg claims
to these countries. Maximilian’s energetic reign added greatly
to the prestige of the Habsburgs. Thus, his grandson Charles V
was able to prevail against French opposition to inherit the
imperial crown. Charles’s younger brother, Ferdinand I, took
over the rule of the Austrian countries but encountered the
opposition of the estates, which he cruelly suppressed. In the
agreements of Worms (1521) and Brussels (1522), Charles V
formally handed over the Austrian lands to his brother. The
subsequent years of Ferdinand’s reign were troubled by peasant
risings in the Tirol and in Salzburg, which were followed by
similar upheavals in Inner Austria.
In the late medieval period, the Alpine lands were assembled
by the Habsburgs into a monarchical union roughly comprising the
territory of the modern Austrian state. The process of union was
at times intercepted and hindered by the partitions among the
dynasty. When the process was finished, however, the territories
retained their individuality and their own legal codes. During
this period the towns developed and prospered, but in the rural
settlements a backward tendency had set in. Many settlements
were abandoned, especially in Lower Austria. The leading classes
lost interest in rural colonization as they found other and
more-lucrative sources of income. Mining developed, but trade
was impaired by political instability.
Until about 1450 the University of Vienna enjoyed some fame
in the fields of theology and science. The literary culture of
Austria was characterized by remarkable works, among them the
rhyming chronicle of Otakar aus der Geul, the work of the abbot
John of Viktring, the poetry of Oswald of Wolkenstein, and the
works of the theologian and historian Thomas Ebendorfer. From
the middle of the 15th century onward, Austria came under the
influence of Italian humanism.
Reformation and Counter-Reformation
Acquisition of Bohemia
The year 1526 saw the defeat and death of the Jagiellon king
of Hungary and Bohemia, Louis II, who fell in the Battle of
Mohács against the Turks. In view of the treaties of 1491 and
1515, Ferdinand I and the Vienna court envisaged Hungary and
Bohemia and the adjoining countries falling to the Habsburgs.
Thus, the union of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary became the
leading concept of Habsburg politics. After clever diplomatic
overtures, Ferdinand was elected king of Bohemia (Oct. 23,
1526). In Hungary, however, there was a split election; John
(János Zápolya), voivode (governor) of Transylvania, was chosen
by an opposition party, whereupon war broke out between the two
candidates.
Ferdinand’s troops in Hungary would have been in a stronger
position had John not been assisted by the Turks under Süleyman
I, sultan of the Ottoman Empire. In 1529 the Turks advanced as
far as Vienna, which they besieged in vain. Another Turkish
offensive came to a halt at Güns in western Hungary in 1532.
Ferdinand, on the other hand, failed in his attempt to take Ofen
(Hungarian: Buda), where the Turks had entrenched themselves. By
about the middle of the century, the frontiers had become fixed.
Hungary happened to be divided into three parts: the west and
the north remained with the Habsburgs, the central part came
under Turkish rule, and Transylvania and its adjoining territory
were kept by John and his successors. This situation was
anticipated in the truce of 1547 and became formalized in the
Peace of Constantinople (1562).
During a short truce in the fighting against John and the
Turks, Ferdinand started to reorganize Austrian administration.
In 1527 he created new central organs: the Privy Council
(Geheimer Rat), for foreign affairs and dynastic matters; the
Court Council (Hofrat), as the supreme legal authority; the
Court Chancery (Hofkanzlei), which served as the central office
and only later dealt with internal affairs; and the Court
Treasury (Hofkammer), for finance and budgeting. As the Court
Treasury proved inefficient in the financing of the Turkish war,
the Court Council of War (Hofkriegsrat) was established in 1556
to take care of the pay, equipment, and supplies of the troops,
acquiring some influence on military operations as well.
Advance of Protestantism
The Protestant movement gained ground rapidly in Austria.
The nobility in particular turned toward the Lutheran creed. For
generations eminent families provided the protagonists of
Protestantism in the Lower and Inner Austrian territories. The
sons of the nobility were often sent to North German
universities to expose them more fully to Protestant influence.
From 1521, Protestant pamphlets were produced by Austrian
printers. Bans on them, issued from 1523 onward, remained
ineffective.
Among the peasant population, the Anabaptists had a stronger
appeal than the Lutherans. However, as they had no support from
the estates and because of their radicalism, the Anabaptists
were persecuted from the start. In 1528 Balthasar Hubmaier,
their leader in the Danube countries and in southern Moravia,
was burned at the stake in Vienna. In 1536 another Anabaptist,
the Tirolean Jakob Hutter, was burned at the stake in Innsbruck
after he had led many of his followers into Moravia (see
Hutterite). Ferdinand, for his part, advocated religious
reconciliation and looked for means to achieve it, but the
dogmatic viewpoints proved irreconcilable. The Peace of Augsburg
(1555) finally brought some respite in the religious struggles.
Charles V abdicated in 1556, and in 1558 Ferdinand I became
Holy Roman emperor; thus, the leadership of the empire was taken
over by the Austrian (German) line of the Habsburgs. Maximilian
II, the eldest son, followed his father in Bohemia, Hungary, and
the Austrian Danube territories (1564). The next son, Ferdinand,
was endowed with Tirol and the Vorlande; Charles, the youngest
of the brothers, received the Inner Austrian lands and took up
residence in Graz. Maximilian was known for his Protestant
leanings but was bound by a promise he had given his father to
remain true to the Roman Catholic religion. The Protestants were
therefore granted fewer concessions from him than they might
have expected.
Meanwhile, Catholic counteractivity began, with the Jesuits
particularly prominent in Vienna, Graz, and Innsbruck. A new
generation of energetic bishops proved a great asset to the
cause. It was also of some importance that the monasteries,
though they had been deserted by many of their members and were
struggling for existence, had not been secularized. On the
Protestant side, it proved impossible to reconcile the various
reforming movements. Social differences between them, especially
between the nobility and the peasants, also stood in the way of
a united Protestant front. The Counter-Reformation scored its
first successes in Gorizia and Carniola, where Protestantism had
remained insignificant. And, in other parts, official religious
commissions started to replace the Protestant preachers with
Catholic clergymen.
Rudolf II and Matthias
Maximilian’s successor as Holy Roman emperor and as archduke
of Austria, his son Rudolf II (reigned 1576–1612), had been
educated in Spain strictly in the Catholic faith. He had all
Protestants dismissed from court service. The conversion of the
cities and market centres of Lower Austria to Catholicism was
conducted by Melchior Klesl, at that time administrator of the
Vienna see but later to become bishop and cardinal. In Upper
Austria, where the Protestants had their strongest hold, the
situation remained undecided, with the Catholic governor Hans
Jakob Löbl of Greinburg and the Calvinist Georg Erasmus of
Tschernembl leading the opposing religious parties. When the
future emperor Ferdinand II (the son of Charles, the ruler of
Inner Austria) took over in Steiermark, he proved to be the most
resolute advocate of the Counter-Reformation. It was he who
eventually succeeded in uprooting Protestantism, first in Inner
Austria and then in the other Habsburg countries, with the
exception of Hungary and Silesia.
From local skirmishes along the frontier, a long drawn-out
war with the Turks developed (1592–1606). In 1598 Raab (now
Győr, Hung.), which served as a bastion of Vienna, was
temporarily lost; Gran, Veszprém (now in Hungary), and
Stuhlweissenburg (now Székesfehérvár, Hung.) passed several
times from one side to the other. The introduction of the
Counter-Reformation in Hungary, moreover, resulted in a rising
of Protestant elements under István Bocskay. But in 1606 at
Vienna, a peace was concluded between Austria and the Hungarian
estates. At Zsitvatorok another peace was negotiated with the
Turks, who for the first time recognized Austria and the emperor
as an equal partner.
Political disagreements between Emperor Rudolf, who, to an
increasing degree, showed signs of mental derangement, and the
rest of the family led to the so-called Habsburg Brothers
Conflict. Cardinal Klesl in 1607 brought about an agreement
between the younger relatives of the emperor to recognize his
brother Matthias as the head of the family. As the conflicts
with Rudolf persisted, Matthias strove to come to an
understanding with the estates, which were mainly Protestant.
The formation of opposing religious leagues in Germany, the
Protestant Union and the Catholic League, added to the general
confusion.
Matthias advanced into Bohemia, and, in the Treaty of Lieben
(1608), Rudolf conceded to him the rule of Hungary, the Austrian
Danube countries, and Moravia, while Matthias had to give up the
Tirol and the Vorlande to the emperor. In 1609 the estates
received a confirmation of the concessions that Maximilian II
had made to them. The cities were guaranteed only in general
terms that their old privileges should not be interfered with.
At the same time, Rudolf II was forced to grant to Bohemia the
so-called Letter of Majesty, which contained far-reaching
concessions to the Protestants. After a final defeat of Rudolf
in Bohemia in 1611, Matthias was crowned king of Bohemia.
Rudolf’s death in 1612 finally ended the conflict.
After Matthias had been elected emperor, his principal
councillor, Cardinal Klesl, tried in vain to arrange an
agreement with the Protestants in Germany. The ensuing years
were filled with wars in Transylvania, where Gábor Bethlen came
to power. In the Peace of Tyrnau (1615) the emperor had to
recognize Bethlen as prince of Transylvania, and, in the same
year, he extended the truce with the Turks for another 25 years.
In the meantime, war had broken out with Venice (1615–17)
because of the pirating activities of Serb refugees (Uskoken)
established on the Croatian coast. A settlement was reached in
the Peace of Madrid. The situation in Bohemia then reached a
critical point, the religious tensions in the country finding a
vent in the Defenestration of Prague (May 23, 1618), in which
two of the emperor’s regents were thrown from the windows of the
Hradčany Palace.
The Bohemian rising and the victory of the
Counter-Reformation
War became inevitable when Emperor Matthias died in 1619.
Not that he had been master of the situation, but his death
brought Ferdinand II, the most uncompromising Counter-Reformer,
to the head of the house of Habsburg. Ferdinand was hard-pressed
at first, as Bohemian and Moravian troops invaded Austria. A
deputation of the estates of Lower Austria tried to make him
renounce Bohemia in a peace treaty and demanded religious
concessions for themselves, unsuccessfully. The Bohemians were
forced to retreat, and imperial troops advanced into their
country. The Bohemians deposed Ferdinand from the throne of
Bohemia and elected Count Palatine Frederick V in his stead; two
days later, however, Ferdinand II was elected Holy Roman emperor
at Frankfurt (Aug. 28, 1619).
War was the only means of resolving the issue. The conflict
for the Bohemian crown developed into a European war—the
so-called Thirty Years’ War—when Spain, the Bavarian duke
Maximilian I, and the Protestant elector of Saxony entered the
struggle on the side of the emperor. The Upper Austrian estates
rashly joined Frederick V, with the result that their country
was occupied by the army of the Catholic League and afterward
pledged to Bavaria. At the Battle of the White Mountain,
Ferdinand II became master of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia,
while Lusatia was pledged to Saxony. King Frederick fled to the
Netherlands. The leaders of the Bohemian rising were executed,
and other nobles who had compromised themselves lost their
property. Many Protestants left the country. In the new
constitution of 1627, Bohemia and its associated lands became a
hereditary kingdom. The diets were not dissolved entirely, as
the government wanted to make use of their administration, but
their influence was restricted to financial matters.
After the death of Matthias, Ferdinand had also inherited the
Danubian territories. Tirol, however, retained a special status
under a new Habsburg secundogeniture (inheritance by a second
branch of the house). Upper Austria, pledged to Bavaria, was
disturbed by a great peasant rising. The Protestant peasants
were defeated after heavy fighting, and in 1628 the country
passed into the hands of the emperor again.
The Counter-Reformation was vigorously enforced in the
Austrian domains. This led to the mass emigration of
Protestants, including many members of the nobility. Most went
to the Protestant states and to the imperial cities of southern
Germany. After the Bohemian victory the war went favourably for
the emperor, and the Peace of Lübeck (1629) seemed to secure the
hegemony in Germany for the Habsburgs. But in 1629 Ferdinand’s
attempt in the Edict of Restitution (Restitutionsedikt) to
establish religious unity by force throughout the empire
provoked the violent opposition of the Protestants.
Struggle with Sweden and France
July 1630 saw intervention in Germany’s religious strife
from a different quarter—Sweden. In that month the Protestant
Swedish king, Gustav II Adolf, landed on the Baltic coast of
Pomerania. His purpose was to defend the Protestants against
further oppression, to restore the dukes of Mecklenburg, his
relatives, who had been driven from their lands by Ferdinand’s
forces, and perhaps to strengthen Sweden’s strategic position in
the Baltic. In the ensuing conflict, the German city of
Magdeburg was destroyed by fire after it had been taken by the
emperor’s troops under General Johann Tserclaes, Graf (count)
von Tilly (1631). The North German Protestants, who had so far
remained undecided, consequently went over to the Swedes. After
victories in the Battle of Breitenfeld and on the Lech River,
the Swedish troops entered Bavaria.
During the subsequent period of the Thirty Years’ War,
Ferdinand adopted a rigorous and often unrelenting attitude,
though he yielded a little when the Peace of Prague was being
negotiated (1635). His successor, Ferdinand III (1637–57), was
as loyal to Catholicism as his father had been but showed
himself more of a realist. He was not able, however, to prevent
the war from again dragging into Habsburg territory, so in 1645
even Vienna was threatened. The extremist party that had
rejected all concessions lost its influence at the Vienna court,
and two able diplomats, Maximilian, Graf von Trauttmansdorff,
and Isaac Volmar, were entrusted with the representation of a
weakened Austria at the German cities of Münster and Osnabrück,
where extended negotiations were conducted until acceptable
terms could be settled for Austria. In the Peace of Westphalia
(1648), Austria lost its possessions in Alsace, and Lusatia had
to be ceded for good to Saxony.
The peace in many respects marked the beginning of a new
epoch. The Holy Roman Empire from then on was reduced to a loose
union of otherwise independent states, and Habsburg politics
shifted its emphasis, falling back entirely on the political,
military, and financial resources of the hereditary Habsburg
lands, now including also Bohemia. The new central organs and
the administrative bodies of the territories took on much
greater importance than the remaining institutions of the Holy
Roman Empire. The emperor came to rely on a standing army rather
than on troops provided by the German princes.
The heavy drain the religious wars had made on the population
of the Austrian territories was compensated for by immigrants
from the Catholic parts of the empire and by Croatian refugees
from the southeast. The economic position of the peasants on the
whole deteriorated. Many members of the nobility, as well as the
church, acquired new property. In mining, boom and depression
followed quickly upon each other. The loss of many experienced
miners during the Counter-Reformation resulted in difficulties,
but the government took several steps toward improving and
extending the salt mines. In 1625 it founded the Innerberg
Union, under which Steiermark’s iron industry was reorganized.
The emperor also tried to interfere with the trade organizations
of the towns, though without much success. Trade and finance in
the Austrian territories were dominated by foreign capital.
The cultural life of the period was also dominated by the
religious struggle. In the field of education the schools of the
denominational parties rivaled each other. In 1585 a Jesuit
university was founded at Graz, while at Salzburg a Benedictine
university was established (1623). Austrian humanists produced
some outstanding works of poetry and historical writings, and
the sovereigns were great patrons of the arts, but on the whole
this was an epoch dominated by Italian and Western influences.
Austria as a great power
After the Thirty Years’ War, Austrian rulers were
understandably reluctant to enter into another military
conflict. In 1654 Ferdinand IV, the eldest son of the emperor,
died. His brother, the future emperor Leopold I, who had been
destined for a church career, was then considered as heir to the
throne and was recognized as such by Austria, Bohemia, and
Hungary. In Germany, however, difficulties arose when France
declared itself against Leopold. Nevertheless, following the
death of Emperor Ferdinand, Leopold was finally elected (1658)
after having conceded constitutional limitations that restricted
his liberty of action in foreign politics. West German princes
under Johann Philipp von Schönborn, archbishop of Mainz, formed
the French-oriented League of the Rhine. At the same time,
Austria was engaged in the northeast when it intervened in the
war between Sweden and Poland (1658) in order to prevent the
collapse of Poland. There were some military successes, but the
Treaty of Oliva (1660) brought no territorial gains for Austria,
though it stopped the advance of the Swedes in Germany.
During the Thirty Years’ War the Turkish front had been
quiet, but in the 1660s a new war broke out with the Turks
(1663–64) because of a conflict over Transylvania, where a
successor had to be appointed for György II Rákóczi, who had
been killed fighting against the Turks. The Turks conquered the
fortress of Neuhäusel in Slovakia, but the imperial troops
succeeded in throwing them back. The Austrian military success
was not, however, reflected in the terms of the Treaty of
Vasvár: Transylvania was given to Mihály Apafi, a ruler of
pro-Turkish sympathies. A minor territorial concession was also
made to the Turks. The year after the Turkish peace, Tirol and
the Vorlande reverted to Leopold I (1665), and the second period
of the Habsburg partition (1564–1665) came to an end.
In Hungary dissatisfaction with the results of the Turkish
war spread. Not only the Protestants, who were threatened by the
Counter-Reformation, but also many Catholic nobles were alarmed
by Habsburg absolutism. A group of Hungarian nobles and
Steiermark’s Count Hans Erasmus of Tattenbach entered into a
conspiracy. The Austrian government, informed of their
activities, had four of the ringleaders executed—an action that
led to a rising by rebels known as Kuruzen (Crusaders).
In the meantime, the position of the Habsburgs in the west
had again deteriorated. At first, Leopold I’s leading statesmen,
Johann Weikhart, Fürst (prince) von Auersperg (dismissed in
1669), and the president of the Court Council of War, Wenzel
Eusebius, Fürst von Lobkowitz, remained rather passive in view
of the expansionist policies of Louis XIV of France. They also
stayed outside the Triple Alliance of Holland, England, and
Sweden that was concluded in order to ward off the attacks of
Louis against the Spanish Netherlands. When Louis actually
invaded Holland, the emperor finally entered the war, but, in
the ensuing Treaties of Nijmegen (1679), he had to cede Freiburg
im Breisgau to France.
Another and still more menacing danger appeared in the
southeast. After some deliberation the leader of the Hungarian
rebels, Imre Thököli, had asked the Turks for help, whereupon
the grand vizier Kara Mustafa Pasa organized a large Turkish
army and marched it toward Vienna. Habsburg diplomats succeeded
in concluding an alliance between Austria and Poland. Meanwhile,
imperial troops under Charles IV (or V) Leopold, duke of
Lorraine and Bar, tried to hold back the Turks but had to
retreat. From July 17 to Sept. 12, 1683, Vienna was besieged by
the Turks. Deciding against a direct assault, the Turks had
begun to drill tunnels underneath the bastions of the city when
relief columns arrived from Bavaria, Saxony, Franconia, and
Poland. King John III Sobieski of Poland took over the command
of the relieving army, which descended upon the Turks and
dispersed them. The emperor concluded a pact with Poland and the
Venetian republic known as the Holy League. In 1685 Neuhäusel
was won back, and in September 1686 Ofen (Buda) was captured
despite fierce Turkish resistance.
In 1687 the Hungarian diet recognized the hereditary rights
of the male line of the Habsburgs to the Hungarian throne. In
1688 Belgrade, Serb., was conquered, and Transylvania was
secured by imperial troops. Meanwhile, Louis XIV had begun an
offensive against the German Palatinate that grew into the War
of the Grand Alliance. This war meant that no further troops
could be spared for the Turkish war, and in 1690 all recent
conquests in the south, including Belgrade, were lost again. A
victory of the imperial and the allied German troops under
Margrave Louis William I of Baden-Baden near Slankamen, Serb.,
(1691) prevented the Turks from advancing farther, but then the
margrave was ordered to the Rhine front. Eventually Prince
Eugene of Savoy took over the command and gained a decisive
victory over the Turks in the Battle of Zenta (1697). After
another offensive against Bosnia, the Turks finally decided to
negotiate a peace. In the Treaty of Carlowitz (1699) Hungary,
Transylvania, and large parts of Slavonia (now in Croatia) fell
to the Habsburg emperor. Meanwhile, the war in the west,
overshadowed already by the question of the Spanish succession,
had come to an end with the Treaty of Rijswijk (1697).
War of the Spanish Succession
From 1701 to 1714 Austria was involved in hostilities
with France—the War of the Spanish Succession—over the heir to
the Spanish throne. The childless king Charles II of Spain, a
Habsburg, had willed all his possessions to a Bourbon prince—a
grandson of Louis XIV of France. All those who disliked the idea
of a French hegemony in Europe consequently united against the
French. The emperor declared war (1701) and was immediately
supported by Brandenburg-Prussia and Hanover. In the spring of
1702, England and Holland entered the war in the Grand Alliance
against France. Louis XIV was able to win the electoral princes
of Bavaria and Cologne as his allies. At this critical juncture
another Hungarian rising, led by Ferenc II Rákóczi, occurred.
The rebels were prepared to join forces with the enemies of
Austria and for years engaged Austrian troops. The rebels even
threatened Vienna, whose suburbs had to be fortified. In the war
with France, imperial troops fought on four fronts: in Italy, on
the Rhine, in the Spanish Netherlands, and in Spain. Much larger
forces were mobilized than had been customary during the 17th
century, and the financial drain on the imperial treasury was so
heavy that the emperor had to resort to Dutch and English loans.
When Bavaria entered the war on the side of the French, Austria
was in further danger, until the Battle of Blenheim (1704), in
which an English and Austrian army under the duke of Marlborough
and Prince Eugene of Savoy defeated the French and Bavarian
forces.
After a reign of 48 years filled with almost endless
troubles, Emperor Leopold died in 1705. He was succeeded by his
son, Joseph I (reigned 1705–11). In the religious quarrels the
new emperor, an ally of Protestant states, showed great
restraint and allowed himself to be guided mainly by political
motives.
In 1703 Victor Amadeus II, duke of Savoy, who had left the
French to go over to the Habsburgs, found himself in a critical
situation; his capital, Turin, had come under French siege. An
imperial army under Prince Eugene and reinforced by a Prussian
contingent was sent to his aid and succeeded in uniting with the
Savoyan forces and relieving Turin after a victorious battle
(1706). At the beginning of the next year, an agreement was
reached under which the French evacuated northern Italy. The
same year, a smaller imperial army under Wirich, Graf (count)
von Daun, conquered Spanish-ruled southern Italy, but an
invasion of southern France, which the sea powers had
instigated, failed. A quick success, however, fell to the
Austrians in a campaign against the Vatican state over a
conflict between the emperor and the Roman Curia concerning
mutual feudal rights and caused by Pope Clement XI’s rather
pro-French leanings.
The allies were victorious in the Netherlands, winning the
Battle of Oudenaarde and conquering Lille (1708). Paris seemed
within easy reach. The Battle of Malplaquet (1709) was another
victory for the allies, but they had to pay dearly for it. In
the meantime, peace negotiations had foundered. After reverses
in Spain and a political change in England, the alliance itself
was in danger of falling apart. The situation was further
aggravated by the death in 1711 of Emperor Joseph I, who left
only daughters.
At this juncture, liquidation of the Hungarian rising became
possible. Rákóczi, who in 1707 had declared the deposition of
the Habsburgs, began to meet with growing opposition among his
followers. Imperial troops forced Rákóczi to flee to Poland, and
the rebels, who had been promised an amnesty and who were
guaranteed religious liberty, made their peace in 1711. From
then on the Vienna government tried to be more considerate of
Hungary and its aristocracy.
The election of Charles VI as emperor was effected without
any difficulties. The English left the coalition, and after a
military reverse most of the Habsburgs’ allies joined the
treaties of Utrecht (1713–14). In the peace negotiations between
Austria and France that were begun at Rastatt, Ger., Prince
Eugene showed himself an unyielding and successful agent of
Habsburg interests (see Rastatt and Baden, treaties of). Austria
gained the Spanish Netherlands (henceforth known as the Austrian
Netherlands), a territory corresponding approximately to modern
Belgium and Luxembourg. These gains were somewhat impaired,
however, by the Dutch privilege of stationing garrisons in a
number of fortresses. In Italy, Austria received Milan, Mantua,
Mirandola, the continental part of the Kingdom of Naples, and
the isle of Sardinia. The Wittelsbachs of Bavaria regained their
country, but the treaty contained an appendix that provided for
the eventuality of Bavaria’s being exchanged for the
Netherlands. Of its gains, the northern Italian territories were
of the greatest value to Austria; the possession of Naples and
the Netherlands, on the other hand, posed considerable military
and political risks.
Problem of the Austrian succession
The extinction of the Spanish line of the Habsburgs and the
fact that the emperor Charles VI was the last male member of
that house posed serious problems for the Habsburg territories,
which, at the beginning of the 18th century, were held together
mainly by the person of the sovereign, notwithstanding the fact
that there were some institutions of central administration. A
settlement was made in the form of a family ordinance. On April
19, 1713, Charles VI issued a decree, according to which the
Habsburg lands should remain an integral, undivided whole. In
the event of the Habsburgs’ becoming extinct in the male line,
the daughters of Charles or their descendants or, in default of
any descendants of Charles, the daughters of Joseph I and their
descendants and, after them, all other female members of the
house, should be eligible for the succession. As the son that
was born to the emperor in 1716 died after a few months and only
daughters were born to him after that (Maria Theresa, 1717;
Maria Anna, 1718; Maria Amalia, 1724), this Pragmatic Sanction
(a term used to characterize a pronouncement by a sovereign on a
matter of prime importance) became of great significance.
Austrian diplomacy in the last decades of Charles’s reign was
directed toward securing acceptance of the Pragmatic Sanction
from all the European powers. It was published in 1720 and by
1722 had been recognized by the estates of all the Habsburg
countries. Even the unanimous consent of the Hungarian diet was
eventually obtained.
New conflicts with the Turks and the Bourbons
During the War of the Spanish Succession, the Ottoman Empire
had remained neutral toward Austria. But the Turks had attacked
the possessions of the Venetians on the Peloponnese and on the
Ionian Islands. Austria tried to intervene and finally declared
war. Prince Eugene defeated the Turks near the fortress of
Peterwardein (Petrovaradin, now part of Novi Sad, Serb.) and
conquered the strong bastion of Temesvár (now Timisoara, Rom.)
in 1716. In the summer campaign of 1717, Belgrade again came
into the hands of the imperial troops after a battle was won
against a Turkish relief army. In the Treaty of Passarowitz
(1718), a frontier line was agreed upon that corresponded to the
de facto situation. The Turks had to cede to the Austrians the
Banat region, the Turkish part of Syrmia (Srem, now part of
Vojvodina, Serb.), Walachia Minor as far as the Olt (Aluta)
River, northern Serbia, Belgrade, and a strip of land along the
frontier in northern Bosnia. A favourable trade agreement was
also concluded.
During the Turkish war another crisis emerged. The Spanish
minister Giulio Alberoni tried to initiate a policy of expansion
in Italy. When Spanish troops landed in Sardinia and Sicily, the
emperor formed an alliance with Great Britain and France, later
joined by the Dutch Republic (the Quadruple Alliance). After the
English defeated the Spanish fleet, Madrid recalled its troops
from the disputed territories. Austria received the more
prosperous Sicily in exchange for Sardinia, which fell to Savoy.
Charles then agreed to recognize the Spanish Bourbons. The gains
from the Quadruple Alliance plus those of the Treaty of
Passarowitz gave the Habsburgs the largest territory they were
ever to rule. Their domains were far from unified, however, with
the individual provinces showing a wide national, economic,
cultural, and constitutional diversity.
Trading interests soon interfered with the empire’s alliance
with the maritime powers of Britain and the Dutch Republic. At
first the attempts of the Ostend Company, which was backed by
Charles VI, to enter into trade with India were quite
successful. Because of the antipathy of the maritime powers,
however, it seemed advisable to find an alternative to trade
with Dutch and British colonial markets in the vast
transatlantic empire of Spain. In 1725 Charles entered into an
alliance with Spain, whereupon France, Great Britain, and
Prussia formed a rival alliance. But soon after Russia was won
over to the Habsburg cause, Prussia changed sides. As the
outbreak of a European war seemed imminent, attempts were made
at the Congress of Soissons to relax political tensions. Spain
abruptly changed its alliances and concluded a treaty (1729)
with England and France, the Dutch Republic joining later. When
Russia also began to waver, Prince Eugene tried to fall back on
the traditional alliance with the maritime powers. After
prolonged and difficult negotiations, Britain in 1731 accepted
the Pragmatic Sanction, the emperor in return giving a promise
not to marry his daughter Maria Theresa, the Habsburg heiress,
to a prince who was himself heir to important domains. Austria
finally dissolved the Ostend Company, having already suspended
its charter in 1727. Charles VI then invested a great deal of
energy in his endeavours to secure the recognition and the
guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction in the German diet. In this
he was opposed by Bavaria and the elector of Saxony, but Austria
finally obtained the guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction at the
Regensburg Diet (1732).
The question of the Polish succession led to a revival of the
Austrian conflict with the Bourbon countries. Austria, with
Prussia and Russia, favoured Augustus III of Saxony, the son of
the deceased king, whereas France backed Stanisław I (Stanisław
Leszczyński). On the military intervention of Russia in Poland,
the Bourbons attacked Austria. The issue came to be mixed up
with the problem of Lorraine; France dreaded that, on the
impending marriage of Maria Theresa to Francis Stephen, duke of
Lorraine, the latter’s domains would be united with Austria’s,
and French plans for the acquisition of Lorraine would be
thwarted. France, Sardinia, and Spain simultaneously opened the
war against Austria in 1733 (see Polish Succession, War of the).
Prince Eugene, who was now aged, was able only to prevent a
major success of the enemy on the Rhine. On the Italian front
the Habsburgs fared even worse. The Battle of Parma ended
undecided, but the Austrians were finally beaten near Guastalla
in northern Italy. The small Austrian force that was stationed
in southern Italy was unable to resist the Spanish attack, and
Sicily and Naples were occupied by the Spaniards. In 1735 a
Russian relieving corps reinforced the Habsburg front on the
Rhine, and in northern Italy there were also a few successful
operations of some local importance.
Direct contacts between Austria and France eventually led to
the preliminary Peace of Vienna (Oct. 3, 1735). Austria lost
Naples and Sicily, which fell to a secondary branch of the
Bourbons, and had to cede a tract of territory in Lombardy to
Sardinia. As some compensation, Austria received Parma and
Piacenza. Francis Stephen of Lorraine was promised Tuscany but
had to renounce his hereditary duchy. On these conditions,
France agreed to recognize the Pragmatic Sanction. The final
peace was then concluded at Vienna in 1738.
Prince Eugene had died during the War of the Polish
Succession. It soon proved disastrous that a successor of
similar capacity was not found. During the second Turkish war of
Charles VI (1737–39), Austria joined in the Turkish-Russian
conflict but without coordination of military operations. The
Austrians, furthermore, underrated the Turkish forces and were
themselves reduced by epidemics. The fortress of Niš, Serb., was
taken but was lost again soon afterward. Peace negotiations
conducted at Nemirov, Ukr., were broken off, and the war went
on. The Austrians lost another battle at Grocka, Serb. Again
peace negotiations were launched, in the course of which the
larger part of the gains of the Peace of Passarowitz were lost.
More disquieting even than the territorial losses was the loss
in prestige. The epoch that had seen the rise of Austria to a
great power thus ended with reverses.
Social, economic, and cultural trends in the Baroque period
The Thirty Years’ War and the Turkish wars had resulted in
the devastation of large parts of the country and in great
losses among the population, which suffered further reduction
during the plague years of 1679 and 1713. The territories that
had been wrested from the Turks had to be resettled
systematically by German and other immigrants. The initiative
for resettlement projects came from the official bureaucracy,
the settlements being concentrated mainly in the south of
Hungary. During the period of religious conflicts, many
Protestants had been exiled, but, in the 18th century,
Protestants often were transported to the various underpopulated
parts of the empire.
In the industrial and commercial fields, mercantilist ideas,
encouraged by the government, were prominent from the 1660s. The
situation of the peasantry was thoroughly unfavourable.
Tentative measures in the reigns of Leopold I and Charles VI to
protect the peasants had little effect. Certain “model
industries” (mostly textile factories) were established but were
only partly successful. The economic policy of the absolutist
state also resulted in strong interference with trade
organizations. The guilds were suppressed or at least debarred
from the new manufactures.
Trade was encouraged but yielded only small gains for the
state. Industrial and commercial undertakings were managed in
part directly by the state but largely through privileged
corporations or private persons. Of some importance were the
first (1667) and the second (1719) Oriental trading companies
and the Ostend Company (1722). Trade in the Mediterranean was
also intensified. Promising colonial ventures in India were
discontinued for political reasons, however, in the middle of
the 18th century. Under Charles VI new roads came to be planned
and built on a large scale.
The state was in permanent want of money. This was a period
of perpetual war as well as great economic investments, both
entailing excessive strain on state finances. At first the
government resorted to rich bankers such as Samuel Oppenheimer
and his successor Samson Wertheimer for funds. Soon, however, it
attempted to establish state-controlled banking firms. The Banco
del Giro, founded in Vienna in 1703, quickly failed, but the
Vienna Stadtbanco of 1705 managed to survive; the
Universalbancalität of 1715 was liquidated after a short period
of operation.
After the victory of the Counter-Reformation, education was
almost exclusively in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church.
The grammar schools of the religious orders, especially of the
Jesuits and the Benedictines, set a very high standard for the
most part. In 1677 another university was established at
Innsbruck, the theological school of which was to acquire some
fame. Historical writing flourished, the most outstanding works
being those of two Benedictine brothers, Bernard and Hieronymus
Pez; Gottfried Bessel, abbot of Göttweig; and Leopold I’s
official historiographer, the Jesuit Franz Wagner. The Austrian
Jesuits were famous for their scientific and geographic
researches, most notably the exploration of China.
Among the achievements of Baroque poetry, mention should be
made of Wolf Helmhart of Hohberg, whose works offer interesting
insights into the life of the nobility, and of Katharina of
Greiffenberg. The theatre of the Baroque was remarkable for the
splendour of its decorations and the ingenuity of its stage
machinery. The plays produced ranged from the elaborate Italian
opera to the blunt humour of the popular play. Music attained an
especially high standard, encouraged by three emperors who were
themselves composers (Ferdinand III, Leopold I, and Joseph I).
Charles VI was also a skillful musician, and he engaged the
services of Johann Joseph Fux, who came from eastern Steiermark
and developed into an important composer and teacher.
Austrian Baroque culture is most clearly revealed by the
splendours of its architecture. At first the field was dominated
by the Italians, but soon native architects stepped forth.
Preeminent among them was Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach
(whose works included the first plan of the Schloss Schönbrunn
in Vienna, Karls Church in Vienna, and Kollegien Church in
Salzburg) and his son Josef Emanuel Fischer von Erlach (who
designed the Hof Library, in Vienna). They were rivaled by Jakob
Prandtauer (whose works included monasteries in Herzogenburg and
Melk) and especially by Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt (who
designed the Schwarzenberg and Belvedere palaces in Vienna,
Peters Church in Vienna, and the monastery of Göttweig). Among
native sculptors, Georg Raphael Donner was the first in rank and
quality of work. Fresco painting was best represented by Johann
Michael Rottmayr from Salzburg, Daniel Gran from Vienna, and
Paul Troger from the Tirolean Pustertal valley. (See also
Baroque period.)
Erich Zöllner
Reinhold F. Wagnleitner
From the accession of Maria Theresa to the
Congress of Vienna
War of the Austrian Succession, 1740–48
In October 1740 the Holy Roman emperor Charles VI, the last
male Habsburg ruler, died and was succeeded by his daughter
Maria Theresa, the young wife of the grand duke of Tuscany,
Francis Stephen of Lorraine. Although no woman had ever served
as Habsburg ruler, most assumed at the time that the succession
would pose few problems because of Charles VI’s diligent efforts
to gain recognition for her. He had established a reasonably
unified order of succession for all the lands under Habsburg
rule (the Pragmatic Sanction) and, by making broad concessions
to foreign powers and to the diets of the crown lands, had
secured recognition of this act from most of the important
constitutional units inside and outside the Habsburg lands. When
he died, he had no reason to expect anything less than a smooth
transition for his daughter.
The challenge to that transition came from a surprising
source—the kingdom of Prussia. For the previous 40 years,
Prussia had been a fairly loyal supporter of the Habsburgs,
especially in matters related to the Holy Roman Empire and in
matters involving Poland. The Prussian king Frederick William I
(reigned 1713–40) had created perhaps the most proficient, if
not the largest, army in Europe but had displayed no eagerness
to use it except in the service of the empire, and then only
reluctantly. But Frederick William had died about five months
before Charles VI, and his son and heir, Frederick II (later
called the Great), had no reluctance to use his father’s finely
honed armed force. In December 1740 Frederick II invaded the
Habsburg province of Silesia and thereby threatened not only to
conquer the wealthiest of the Habsburg lands but also to
challenge Maria Theresa’s right to rule the rest of them, a
challenge soon joined by other powers.
As Maria Theresa prepared to meet these threats, she found
that the resources left by her father were meagre indeed. The
War of the Polish Succession and the war against the Turks from
1737 to 1739 had drained the monarchy’s financial and military
resources and spread irresolution and doubt among its senior
officials. The army sent forth to meet Frederick suffered defeat
in the Battle of Mollwitz in April 1741. This defeat prompted
the formation of an alliance of France, Bavaria, and Spain,
joined later by Saxony and eventually by Prussia itself, to
dismember the Habsburg monarchy. Faced by this serious threat,
Maria Theresa called together her father’s experienced advisers
and asked them what she should do. Most argued that resistance
was hopeless and recommended that she make the necessary
sacrifices in order to reach as quick an accommodation with her
enemies as possible, a policy endorsed by her husband. This
counsel offended Maria Theresa, who regarded it as defeatism;
commenting on this period later, she described it as finding
herself “without money, without credit, without an army, without
experience, and finally without advice.”
Maria Theresa had no intention of surrendering. She resolved
to drive off her enemies and then to create a government that
would never again suffer the humiliation she experienced at her
accession. To begin, she reached a settlement with Frederick,
ceding to him Silesia by the treaties of Breslau and Berlin in
June and July 1742. She did so only to focus resistance on the
French and Bavarians, who in late November 1741 had occupied
Upper Austria and Bohemia, including the Bohemian capital,
Prague. In the wake of these conquests by anti-Habsburg forces,
in January 1742 the electors of the Holy Roman Empire rejected
the candidacy of Maria Theresa’s husband and chose as emperor
Charles Albert of Bavaria (called Charles VII as emperor), the
only non-Habsburg to serve in that capacity from 1438 to the
empire’s demise in 1806. Perhaps as a portent of his unhappy
reign as emperor, on the day of Charles Albert’s coronation in
Frankfurt, Habsburg forces occupied his Bavarian capital of
Munich, which they held until shortly before his death three
years later.
The War of the Austrian Succession, as this conflict is
called, continued until 1748. It rather quickly became a
struggle of two alliance systems, with primarily France,
Bavaria, Spain, and Prussia on one side and Austria, Great
Britain, and the Dutch Republic on the other. Saxony and
Sardinia began the war as members of the first alliance and
later switched to the second. Russia joined Austria in a
defensive accord in 1746, primarily to prevent Prussia from
reentering the war after it had concluded the Treaty of Dresden
with Austria in 1745.
The Treaty of Dresden and the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in
1748 brought the various parts of the war to an end. Austria had
to return some minor principalities in Italy to the Spanish
Bourbons until such time as the Bourbon lines there became
extinct and had to agree to a small frontier rectification in
favour of Piedmont-Sardinia, but neither of these adjustments
was of great consequence. For Austria the most serious loss was
Silesia, which Maria Theresa found necessary to cede to Prussia
first in 1742 and again in 1745. Losing Silesia opened the way
to the rise of Prussia as the most serious rival of the
Habsburgs in Germany. It also meant a considerable decrease in
the proportion of Germans living within Habsburg lands, with
important consequences in the rise of the national problem in
the following century. Although as part of the cession Frederick
II agreed to recognize the election of Francis Stephen of
Lorraine as Holy Roman emperor Francis I in 1745, Maria Theresa
never forgave his “rape” of Silesia; at the war’s conclusion she
immediately undertook preparations first to deter Frederick from
coveting more of her lands and then to take Silesia back. (See
also Silesian Wars.)
Perhaps the most important result of the war for Austria,
however, was the very fact that the monarchy was not
dismembered. Nor did it become a satellite state under the
tutelage of other great powers. The outcome of the War of the
Austrian Succession, except for the loss of Silesia, was a
genuine defensive victory that proved to the world that Austria
represented more than an agglomeration of lands under the same
rule, acquired by wars and marriage contracts. In the two
centuries since Ferdinand I had become king in Bohemia, Hungary,
and Croatia, as well as regent in the so-called hereditary
lands, a certain cohesion between the major historical units had
been clearly established.
First reforms, 1748–56
Maria Theresa determined from the outset of her reign that
the Habsburg monarchy would never again be perceived as too weak
to defend itself. Consequently, even while the war was under way
she had been studying reforms, and when it ended she immediately
began implementing them. First and foremost was reform of the
army. Maria Theresa proposed establishing an effective standing
army of 110,000 men—60,000 more than in her father’s day and
30,000 more than the Prussian peacetime army of Frederick
William I. She also tried to encourage her nobility to take a
greater interest in serving in the officer corps, creating a
school for officers called the Theresianum at Wiener Neustadt
and introducing military orders as rewards for good service.
Maria Theresa realized, however, that no military reform
would be effective without financial reform, and in this area
she achieved her greatest accomplishments. Before Maria Theresa
came to the throne, Habsburg finances were to a great extent
based on the contributions offered by each of the monarchy’s
crown lands, or provinces. The crown lands were governed by
estates sitting in diets (parliamentary bodies made up of
representatives of the nobility, the church, and the towns).
These bodies negotiated annually with the ruler regarding the
amount of taxes (i.e., the contribution) that each crown land
would pay to the central government. Following the advice of
Friedrich Wilhelm, Graf (count) von Haugwitz, a Silesian who had
fled the Prussians in 1741, Maria Theresa proposed negotiating
with each diet only every 10 years, setting the amount to be
collected annually for an entire decade. The estates were
generally not happy with the proposal, but she made certain that
each agreed to it in one form or another. The results were a
steady income upon which reliable budgets could be based and an
erosion in the power of the diets—which, although never
abolished, lost much of the influence they had held in the past.
Following the military and financial reforms came other
changes, generally in administrative matters. Although these
reforms were subjected to many modifications and changes
throughout Maria Theresa’s reign and after, the result was a
government far more centralized than it had ever been before.
Seven Years’ War, 1756–63
While Maria Theresa and her advisers focused on internal
reform, her new state chancellor, Wenzel Anton, Graf (count) von
Kaunitz (subsequently Fürst [prince] von Kaunitz-Rietberg and
Maria Theresa’s most important adviser until her death in 1780),
laid the diplomatic preparations for the reconquest of Silesia.
The result in 1756 was the “reversal of alliances,” a treaty
system intended to isolate Prussia. With the two sets of
irreconcilable enemies being France and Great Britain on the one
hand and Prussia and Austria on the other, the reversal refers
to Austria abandoning Great Britain as an ally in favour of
France, and Prussia abandoning France as an ally in favour of
Great Britain. However, it may be argued that the switch was
made possible by Empress Elizabeth of Russia’s determination to
do in Frederick II, and Frederick’s seeking out Great Britain to
intercept a Russo-British accord. In any case, when war erupted
in 1756, Austria, France, and Russia seemed to have formed an
alliance that Prussia, with only Britain as a friend, could
never resist.
The ensuing conflict was the Seven Years’ War, the great war
of the mid-18th century. Undoubtedly, its most important result
occurred not on the European Continent but in Europe’s colonial
empires, where British forces decisively defeated the French,
paving the way for British control of Canada and the eventual
domination of India. On the Continent, Austria, France, and
Russia could never bring their united strength to bear
effectively on Prussia. Prussia fended off all its enemies by
exploiting its economic and human resources about as well as any
18th-century power could, by taking advantage of internal lines,
and by virtue of Frederick II’s military genius. But it did so
at considerable cost. In October 1760 a Russian force reached
Berlin, and by 1761 Frederick himself was so discouraged that he
was contemplating abdication as the only way to salvage his
beleaguered state.
Although it was not obvious at the time, for all intents and
purposes the war ended with the death of Empress Elizabeth in
January 1762. Her successor, Peter III, worshipped Frederick II
and was determined not only to end Russia’s war against Prussia
but also to join Prussia in fighting against Austria and France.
Before he could implement such a radical change in policy,
however, he was deposed by conspirators supporting his wife,
Catherine II (later called the Great), and their policy was
simply to end the war. With Russia out of the conflict and
France defeated throughout the world, Maria Theresa and her
advisers could see no alternative but to negotiate a settlement
with Prussia based on the status quo ante (Treaty of
Hubertusburg, 1763), meaning that once again Prussia retained
Silesia.
Reforms, 1763–80
Maria Theresa’s second period of reform was more important
than the first, because it carried with it elements of
centralization and change that were portents of the kind of
government, society, and economy that would emerge in the 19th
century and mature in the 20th. As modern as some of these
elements were, the government that introduced them was not
thinking of long-range goals but was dealing with immediate
problems, the most important being recovery from the Seven
Years’ War. The area requiring urgent attention was finance. The
cost of the Seven Years’ War had added so much debt to the
treasury that, for the remainder of Maria Theresa’s reign,
servicing that debt while providing for the costs of defense and
governmental operations became the obsession of many of her
advisers.
Financial need led Maria Theresa and her statesmen into other
fields. All realized that financial recovery to a great extent
depended on an improved economy, and they introduced a number of
measures to make it better. Foreign workers and artisans with
skills in the manufacture of various articles were recruited
from the Low Countries, the Italian lands, and Germany and
settled throughout the monarchy. Farmers came from western
Europe for settlement in some of the more remote lands of the
monarchy that had been badly depopulated, mainly in southern and
eastern Hungary. Some important sectors of the economy, such as
textiles and iron making, were freed from guild restrictions.
And in 1775 the government created a customs union out of most
of the crown lands of the monarchy, excluding some of the
peripheral lands and the kingdom of Hungary, which was not
joined to Austria in a customs union until 1851.
The basically mercantilist policy of Charles VI’s reign and
earlier was revised in line with the influence of physiocratic
and so-called populationist theories (see physiocrat).
Thenceforward human labour, and not precious metal, was
gradually to become the yardstick of national wealth. This led,
on the one hand, to restrictions on emigration and, on the
other, to an easing of some imports that were not considered
competitive with domestic industries.
Financial and economic reforms also had an impact upon
society. Maria Theresa’s government was fully aware that most
taxes came from society’s lower elements, and so it was eager to
make certain that those lower elements had the wherewithal to
bear their burden. In 1767 she imposed a law on Hungary
regulating the rights and duties of the serfs and their lords
with the intent of bettering the condition of the peasants,
which was not good at all. This law suffered somewhat because
the lords themselves were responsible for implementing it, but
it was later codified into the Hungarian statutes in 1790–91 and
remained the basic law regarding the status of the serfs until
their final emancipation in 1848. In response to a serf revolt
in 1774 protesting not only oppression but also hunger, Maria
Theresa issued a law in Bohemia in 1775 that restricted the
aristocratic practice of exploiting the work obligations of the
peasantry. She also had plans drawn up to change the dues of the
peasantry from various forms of service to a strictly
rent-paying system. Such a system was introduced on lands owned
by the crown, but she did not enforce its extension to privately
held lands. (See also serfdom.)
Maria Theresa also introduced a system of public education.
The motivation for this reform came from concern both that the
Roman Catholic Church in Austria was no longer maintaining
public morality properly and that certain changes in the
18th-century economy required that Austria provide a
better-educated work force. It is often assumed that the great
mass of the people in Austria at this time were serfs working on
the lords’ lands, owing various work and money dues, and
thus—while suffering oppression—at least forming a fairly stable
society. In fact, by the late 18th century the vast majority of
the rural population was made up of cottars, gardeners, and
lodgers who owed minimal feudal duties and who depended on
nonagricultural occupations for their survival. These people
represented a proto-industrial work force, but they also
represented an ignorant and potentially ill-disciplined rural
population. Compulsory education was a method of instilling a
good work ethic and a sense of morality in them. In 1774 Maria
Theresa issued the General School Regulation for the Austrian
lands, establishing a system of elementary schools, secondary
schools, and normal schools to train teachers. The
implementation of this regulation was difficult owing to a lack
of teachers, resistance on the part of lords and peasants alike,
and a shortage of funds. Despite these obstacles, however, 500
such schools had opened by 1780.
Foreign affairs, 1763–80
The great change in Maria Theresa’s foreign policy after
1763 was her reconciliation to the loss of Silesia. Although as
a result Maria Theresa and her advisers focused their attention
for the most part on domestic affairs, a few foreign matters
offered the monarchy opportunities for territorial gain and in
two cases carried the threat of renewed warfare. In 1768 the old
matter of the fate of the Ottoman Empire appeared again, this
time in the form of a Russo-Turkish war and the possibility that
Russia would not simply defeat the now-decaying Ottoman state
but would replace it as the Habsburg neighbour in the southeast,
a condition the Habsburgs wanted to prevent even at great cost.
By 1771 Kaunitz was so fearful that this possibility was
becoming a probability that he recommended that Austria form an
alliance with the Turks to fight the Russians, an idea resisted
by Maria Theresa, who still regarded the Turks as infidel
predators in Europe. (See also Russo-Turkish wars.)
The threat of war diminished, however, owing to the
intervention of Frederick II, who suggested as a solution to the
crisis the annexation of Polish territory by the three great
eastern European powers and the maintenance of the Ottoman
Empire in its entirety in Europe. Austria agreed to this
suggestion, although Maria Theresa herself did so most
reluctantly. She believed that the difficulties she had had at
the beginning of her reign had been brought on by the refusal of
the European powers to respect the territorial integrity of
their fellows and that, by agreeing to the partition of Poland,
she was in fact endorsing the same kind of cynical, parasitical
policy that had caused her such grief and that she had regarded
as so heinous in 1741. However, as Kaunitz warned her, refusal
to take part would not only continue the threat of war but also
weaken the monarchy relative to its two powerful neighbours, who
had no compunction about adding land and taxpayers to their
rolls while Austria received nothing. Consequently, in 1772,
Austria, Prussia, and Russia participated in the First Partition
of Poland, which added the Polish province of Galicia to the
monarchy. (See also Poland, Partitions of.)
In 1775, following the initiative of Joseph II, Maria
Theresa’s son, who had joined her as coruler after the death of
her husband, the monarchy wrested the province of Bukovina from
the Turks. The province served as a convenient connection
between Galicia and Transylvania.
In 1778 one of Kaunitz’s initiatives, to trade the distant
Austrian Netherlands for nearby Bavaria, led to a third war with
Prussia. This War of the Bavarian Succession, however, featured
virtually no military contact between the two powers, because
Maria Theresa, who for a time had left most of the policy making
to her chancellor and her son, intervened directly with her old
enemy Frederick II and concluded with him the Treaty of Teschen.
The treaty resulted in a few minor territorial
adjustments—especially the addition of Bavarian territories east
of the Inn River to Upper Austria—but above all in the canceling
of the proposed swap of the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria.
Early reign of Joseph II, 1780–85
Maria Theresa died in 1780 and was followed by Joseph II.
The problem of succession had caused Maria Theresa considerable
grief in her early years, and she had vowed to create not only
governmental institutions to protect her lands but familial ones
as well, most notably by making certain that there would never
again be a shortage of Habsburgs to rule the monarchy (after her
marriage, the official name of the family changed from Habsburg
to Habsburg-Lorraine). She gave birth to 16 children, the oldest
male being Joseph. Upon the death of Francis I in 1765, Joseph
had become emperor and co-regent, but Maria Theresa kept most of
the authority in her hands, a condition that led to frequent
clashes between the strong-willed mother and the strong-willed
son.
When Joseph became sole ruler, he was determined to implement
his own policies. One was broadening church reform. Joseph’s
role as church reformer has been the subject of considerable
debate. In Austrian history the term Josephinism generally means
subjecting the Roman Catholic Church in the Habsburg lands to
service for the state, but the origins and extent of such
subjection have generated controversy. Both Maria Theresa and
Joseph were devoutly Roman Catholic, but both also believed in
firm state control of ecclesiastical matters outside of the
strictly religious sphere. To improve the economy, Maria Theresa
ordered restrictions on religious holidays and prohibited the
taking of ecclesiastic vows before the 24th birthday. She
insisted that clerics be subject to the jurisdiction of the
state in nonecclesiastical matters and that the acquisition of
land by the church be controlled by the government. She took
action against the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), but only in 1774,
after the pope had ordered its suppression.
Joseph’s most radical measures in church matters were the
Edict of Toleration (1781) and his monastic reforms. The edict
and the legislation attached to it gave Lutherans, Calvinists,
and Orthodox Christians near equality with Roman Catholics and
gave Jews the right to enter various trades as well as
permission to study at universities. In this respect, the
difference between Joseph and his mother was fundamental. While
Maria Theresa regarded Protestants as heretics and Jews as the
embodiment of the Antichrist, Joseph respected other Christian
denominations, believed Jews did good service for the state, and
had at least entertained the thought of an Austrian church
independent of Rome.
As to the monasteries, Joseph held that institutions not
engaged in useful work for the community—above all agriculture,
care of the sick, and education—should be dissolved.
Consequently, about a third of the Austrian monasteries ceased
to exist, their former members being ordered to learn skills
adapted to secular life. The property of the dissolved
institutions was used to pay for the upkeep of parishes and to
finance the establishment of new parishes.
Control of church discipline and church property were further
tightened by Joseph; seminaries for the training of the clergy
were secularized. He even tried, without success, to simplify
the Roman Catholic liturgy. Many of his religious policies were
discontinued in the reaction that followed, but the Edict of
Toleration and the monastic reforms remained.
Another of Joseph’s famous reforms was the abolition of
serfdom, which was not quite a total abolition but certainly
changed considerably the status of the peasants. In November
1781 he issued a decree allowing any peasant to move away from
his village, to engage in any trade of his choosing, and to wed
whomever he wished, all without asking permission of his lord.
Labour service required of a peasant’s children was abolished,
except for orphans. Initially these new freedoms applied only to
the lands of the Bohemian crown, but over the next few years
they were applied to the other Austrian lands and in 1785 to
Hungary, the land that had been exempt from most reforms in the
Theresian period. Joseph issued decrees providing for peasant
appeals to the central government for redress of grievances;
this was to make certain that the feudal courts, controlled by
the lords, could not sabotage these reforms by issuing decisions
against peasants who wanted to exercise their new rights. Such
changes were preludes to Joseph’s most daring reform, a
proclamation in 1789 that all land, whether held by nobleman or
commoner, would be taxed at the same rate of 12 2/9 percent of
its appraised value and that all dues and services paid by a
peasant to his lord would now be commuted to a cash payment not
to exceed 17 2/9 percent of the peasant’s production.
To muster popular support for these and other reforms, Joseph
II in 1781 also substantially eased official censorship, which
had been a characteristic of Theresian rule that had undergone a
good bit of criticism even in the 18th century. His immediate
purpose was to generate support for his religious policies by
unleashing those popular writers eager to condemn Roman Catholic
clericalism and especially the pope, and for the first few years
he was not disappointed. These very writers soon began to find
fault with Joseph’s policies, however, and the emperor began to
respond in ways that reduced considerably the initial
liberalization. Censorship was reimposed, and in 1786 he issued
secret instructions to the police to concentrate their attention
on monitoring public opinion at all levels of society. By 1789
the police reports contained almost exclusively news on
agitators and potential unrest.
Late reign of Joseph II, 1785–90
Toward the end of Joseph’s reign, there was indeed
increasing dissatisfaction. Religious elements were unhappy with
many of his reforms, and both lords and peasants were
apprehensive about what his agricultural changes would mean for
their future. Moreover, a few other policies had inspired
resistance. In 1784 he informed the Hungarian government that
its official language, Latin, was not effective for modern
government and, since Hungarian was spoken by only part of the
population of that kingdom, that the language of government from
then on would be German. That language would be used in the
central offices immediately, in the county offices after one
year, and in the local offices after three. Government
employment and even membership in the Hungarian Diet would be
open to German speakers only. Although it was designed to
facilitate administration, many Hungarians interpreted this
language ruling to be a threat to their entire culture and spoke
out enthusiastically against it. To add to the Hungarians’
horror, Joseph refused to submit to a coronation in Hungary lest
he have to swear to uphold laws that he did not wish to, and
then he had the sacred crown of the kingdom moved to Vienna.
By 1787 resistance to Joseph and his government was
intensifying. One Habsburg possession that had escaped reforms
during the reign of Maria Theresa and Joseph was the Austrian
Netherlands, which ruled itself under its own laws. In January
and March 1787 Joseph simply swept away the constitution of the
Austrian Netherlands and announced that from then on it would be
ruled according to absolutist principles, just like the other
provinces of the monarchy. Resistance simmered in the Austrian
Netherlands until 1789, when it boiled over into open revolt,
forcing the administration there to flee to safety in the duchy
of Luxembourg. By that time there also were rumours of rebellion
in Hungary and in Galicia, and for a period it appeared as if
revolution might erupt in many parts of the monarchy.
Joseph’s reforms might not have generated as much opposition
had it not been for his foreign policy. Joseph was not
especially aggressive in foreign affairs, but he did follow the
anti-Prussian advice of his and his mother’s old chancellor,
Kaunitz, and that advice ended in misfortune. Kaunitz firmly
believed that Austria could check Prussia only with the help of
Russia. Consequently, in 1781 he and Joseph negotiated with
Catherine the Great a pact that provided for Russian help for
Austria in case of war with Prussia. In exchange, Austria
promised to help Russia in case of war with the Ottoman Empire.
Confident of her diplomatic and military strength, Catherine
then engaged in a series of provocations toward the Turks that
resulted in 1787 in a declaration of war by the sultan. Although
Joseph had no real desire to participate in this war, his treaty
obligations with Russia required him to do so. At first the war
went poorly. In 1788 the Austrians waited for the Russians to
take the offensive in Romanian lands—which they failed to
do—only to be themselves attacked by the Turks and sent
scurrying north from the Danube in an effort to reconsolidate
their lines. Joseph himself was present on this campaign, which
did no one any good. He could not inspire his officers to be
more aggressive, and he became quite ill, so much so that he
returned to Vienna in late 1788 in an effort to recover. The
campaign in 1789 went much better, resulting in the Austrian
conquest of the important fortress of Belgrade at the confluence
of the Sava and Danube rivers and in a joint Austro-Russian
offensive in Moldavia and Walachia that drove the Turks all the
way to the Danube.
But by this time all the unfortunate consequences of Joseph’s
domestic and foreign policies were bearing down on him. The war
itself caused an outpouring of popular agitation against his
foreign policy, the people of the Austrian Netherlands rose in
outright revolution, and reports of trouble in Galicia
increased. Finally, it was Hungary that broke Joseph’s spirit.
In 1788 he had to convoke the old county assemblies to ask for
recruits and supplies to fight the war. The noblemen who made up
these assemblies replied with protests and demands that the old
constitution be restored and that Joseph submit to coronation in
the traditional Hungarian manner. Even the Hungarian
chancellery, the ministry in the central government in charge of
Hungarian affairs, recommended that Joseph yield to these wishes
of his constituents.
Faced with these difficulties, Joseph revoked many of the
reforms that he had enacted earlier. In a letter of January 1790
he emphasized his good intentions in enacting his new laws in
Hungary and then revoked all of them except the Edict of
Toleration, the laws related to the status of peasants, and the
monastic reforms. He agreed to call the Hungarian Diet—but not
too soon, given the dangerous international situation—and he
consented to return the crown to Hungary and to his own
coronation as that country’s king. The crowning never came to
pass, however, for Joseph died the following month.
Conflicts with revolutionary France, 1790–1805
Joseph was succeeded by his younger brother, Leopold II.
Leopold’s reign (1790–92) was a short one, which many believe
was quite unfortunate for the Habsburg monarchy because, had he
lived, he might have been able to salvage many of Joseph’s
reforms. In addition, evidence indicates that he planned to
introduce a measure of popular representation into the Habsburg
government that might have given the monarchy greater stability
as it encountered the challenges of industrialization,
nationalism, liberalism, and democracy that became increasingly
compelling in the next century.
Prior to his accession, Leopold had gained a considerable
reputation as an enlightened prince of the Italian state of
Tuscany, a land ruled directly by Maria Theresa’s husband and
then passed to the second Habsburg son (secundogeniture). When
he became emperor, Leopold saw as his primary task ending the
war with the Turks as quickly as possible. That, he believed,
would relieve a great deal of the strain in domestic matters so
that he could slowly implement a reform program of his own.
By the time of Leopold’s accession, the Turkish war had
become somewhat complicated—not in a military sense but in a
diplomatic one. In 1788 Prussia and Great Britain had formed a
coalition to put pressure on Austria and Russia to conclude the
war with little or no compensation. This pressure carried with
it the threat of war if the two eastern empires did not comply.
In 1789 Joseph had wanted to reach such an agreement, but he
could not convince Kaunitz to do so, and Kaunitz still had great
influence. Leopold, however, did not hesitate to cast aside the
old chancellor’s advice. Two weeks after he reached Vienna,
Leopold notified the king of Prussia that he sought an
accommodation based on the status quo ante, an accommodation
reached in April 1790. The war was effectively over, although
peace with the Turks was not concluded until August 1791 (Treaty
of Sistova). (See also Jassy, Treaty of.)
Initially Leopold accepted the cancellation of many of
Joseph’s reforms and the increasing authority of the secret
police under the guidance of Johann Anton, Graf (count) Pergen.
But soon the new emperor began to twist this apparent reaction
into something far more progressive. In 1790 and 1791 there came
to him a number of petitions from the lower classes of society
demanding redress of various grievances. Leopold welcomed these
petitions and began to cite them as reasons for introducing some
changes in the nature of government, including providing greater
representation for the lower orders in the provincial diets and
placing the police under the rule of the law, a proposal that
caused Pergen to resign. In fact, Leopold adopted a proposal of
Joseph von Sonnenfels, an official often considered the leading
enlightened political theorist in the monarchy, to make the
police a service institution rather than an instrument of
control. He put them in charge of local health measures and
authorized them to settle minor disputes so that people would
not have to go to law courts with petty arguments.
Apparently, in early 1792 Leopold was beginning to take steps
to extend representation in the provincial diets to virtually
all classes in society. Clearly he did not intend to establish a
constitutional monarchy, but he believed that, by drawing the
nonprivileged classes into the government, he could check the
resistance of the privileged classes and at the same time create
a constituency that would support an improved kind of
enlightened absolutism. Whatever he had in mind, however, did
not come to pass, for he died prematurely on March 1, 1792.
Succeeding Leopold was his much less able but longer-lived
eldest son, Francis II (known as Holy Roman Emperor Francis II
until 1806 and as Francis I, emperor of Austria, from 1804 to
1835). Francis’s foremost problem was significantly different
from those that had faced his father and uncle. The domestic
situation was settled again, but foreign matters had become
increasingly perilous owing to events in France. The French
Revolution had erupted in the summer of 1789, and the initial
Austrian policy had been essentially to leave France alone.
Indeed, Leopold had at first made some approving remarks about
the changes in France, and Kaunitz had noted that at least
France would not be a serious force in international affairs for
some time. The event that changed these passive responses was
the flight to Varennes, when King Louis XVI and his wife,
Marie-Antoinette (the youngest daughter of Maria Theresa and
therefore sister of Joseph and Leopold and aunt of Francis),
fled Paris in June 1791 for the safety of the Austrian
Netherlands. They reached the French border town of Varennes,
where they were recognized and placed under arrest; later they
were returned to Paris.
The flight to Varennes proved to monarchical Europe that,
despite protestations to the contrary, the French king did not
approve the course of the revolution and in fact had become a
prisoner of it. As a result, Leopold and King Frederick William
II of Prussia issued a joint declaration (the Declaration of
Pillnitz, August 1791) expressing concern about the developments
in France. The French government, now acting without the king,
interpreted this declaration as a threat to its sovereignty and
responded with a series of provocations—answered in kind by
Austria and Prussia—that led to a French declaration of war on
Austria in April 1792.
The declaration of war inaugurated a period of 23 years of
almost continuous conflict (or preparation for conflict) between
Austria and France (see French revolutionary and Napoleonic
wars). During that time Austria and France fought five wars for
a total of 14 years, and Austria lost all of them but the last.
At one time (1809–12), Austria was stripped of all its Italian
possessions, the Austrian Netherlands, its western German lands,
its access to the Adriatic Sea, and the portion of Poland that
it had acquired in the Third Partition in 1795 (see Poland,
Partitions of). In 1804 Francis added to his titles that of
emperor of Austria, but he did so because he anticipated being
stripped of his most venerated title of Holy Roman emperor,
which he indeed was in 1806 at the insistence of Napoleon I (who
had had himself declared emperor of France in 1804). French
armies occupied Vienna twice, and in 1810 the Habsburgs had to
endure the indignity of giving the hand of one of Francis’s
daughters, Marie-Louise, to Napoleon in marriage.
For the first two wars, that of the First Coalition (1792–97)
and that of the Second Coalition (1799–1800), Austrian policy
was guided by Franz Maria, Freiherr (baron) von Thugut, the only
commoner to reach the rank of minister of foreign affairs in the
history of the Habsburg monarchy. Thugut was an experienced
diplomat and knew France very well, and he was convinced that
the French Revolution represented a threat to the traditional
European powers less in ideological terms than in terms of pure
military might. He believed that the revolution had somehow
reinvigorated an almost moribund French state and had
resurrected its military power to a surprising—and
dangerous—degree. Therefore, he looked upon the war against
Revolutionary, and later Napoleonic, France as akin to the wars
against France in the time of Louis XIV. In other words, what
was required was a coalition of the great and small European
powers to resist what was fundamentally French aggression.
Regardless of his interpretation of the France he was
fighting, his efforts ended in failure. In the War of the First
Coalition, both Prussia and Spain dropped out in 1795, and for
the next two years Austria carried the brunt of the struggle
with some help from Britain. In 1797 serious defeats at the
hands of the young Napoleon Bonaparte in Italy forced Austria to
seek peace. By the Treaty of Campo Formio (October 1797),
Austria gave up the Austrian Netherlands and Lombardy but
acquired much of Venice.
Thugut was convinced that war would begin again soon, and for
the next one he secured Russia as an ally. The War of the Second
Coalition began in 1799 when Bonaparte was in Egypt and the
French government was in crisis, and it looked for a time as if
the Austro-Russian forces would win. However, a terrible defeat
inflicted upon the coalition in Switzerland, followed by
recrimination and blame heaped upon each ally by the other,
resulted in Russia’s leaving the alliance as the campaign of
1799 ended. Thugut convinced Francis to continue the struggle,
which ended in significant Austrian defeats at Marengo in Italy
and at Hohenlinden in Germany in 1800 and in the ouster of
Thugut himself in early 1801. Austria sued for peace, which came
in the Treaty of Lunéville (February 1801), by which Austria
agreed to the cession of the left bank of the Rhine to France
(originally a provision of the Treaty of Campo Formio) and
recognized French domination of the Austrian Netherlands,
Switzerland, and Italy.
From 1801 to 1805, the Austrian government again focused on
internal reform, especially in finances. The ongoing wars had
cost a great deal of money, and the debt had risen to an
astonishing degree. However, most of the expenses of the wars
had been paid for by printing paper money, massive amounts of
which were in circulation by 1801. Most merchants had accepted
this paper money at face value during much of the 1790s, and
there is evidence that some of it was invested in technology and
industry, suggesting that Austria enjoyed at this time its first
hint of industrial revolution. Unfortunately, by 1801 merchants
were doubting the value of the currency they received, and
inflation assumed serious proportions. From 1801 to 1805 many
proposals were advanced to reduce the debt and curb inflation,
but none succeeded in doing so.
The other major area of reform was military, and here hope
for success seemed higher because the genuine Austrian military
hero of the time, Archduke Charles, brother of the emperor,
undertook the task of improving the armed forces. He reduced the
time of service for all ranks, curbed harsh disciplinary
measures, and introduced a number of administrative changes. Yet
he firmly believed that an army of long-serving and well-drilled
enlisted men was the key to success, and he did not advocate the
introduction of the draft that had led to such an incredible
increase in the size of the French armies since 1794.
Conflicts with Napoleonic France
When the Austrians took the field against the French in
1805, the army was still inadequately equipped, insufficiently
trained, under strength, and indifferently led. The war itself
had come about owing to miscalculations by the foreign
ministers, who firmly believed that an alliance with Russia in
late 1804 would deter rather than encourage Napoleon from
attacking either of the eastern empires. Napoleon had gathered
his major force along the French Atlantic coast for a possible
invasion of Great Britain, and the Austrian statesmen believed
that, even should they receive news that Napoleon was marching
east, the Austrian and Russian armies could easily unite before
he could bring his forces to central Europe.
They were wrong. In one of his most brilliant strategic
moves, Napoleon marched his army quickly into Germany (and not
into Italy, where the Austrians had anticipated he would go and
where Archduke Charles had collected the largest Habsburg
force). Napoleon surrounded an Austrian army at the city of Ulm,
compelled it to surrender (see Ulm, Battle of), and advanced to
Vienna itself, which he took in November 1805. He then moved
into Moravia, to Vienna’s northeast, where he met a remnant of
the Austrian army and the oncoming Russians. He defeated both at
the famous Battle of Austerlitz on Dec. 2, 1805. Austria
concluded peace immediately (Treaty of Pressburg, Dec. 26,
1805), while Russia continued the war. In this treaty Austria
gave up Venice to Napoleon’s Italian kingdom, Tirol to Bavaria,
and a number of other lands to Napoleon’s clients. It did
receive the former archbishopric of Salzburg (secularized in
1803); however, this territory would come under French
administration (1809–10) and then Bavarian rule (1810–15) before
finally becoming a permanent part of Austria after the
Napoleonic Wars.
The next period of peace, 1806–09, again saw Austrian
preparations for war, this time directed by a Rhineland German
in Habsburg service, Johann Philipp, Graf (count) von Stadion.
Like others before him, Stadion believed that Austria could not
make any long-term accommodation with Napoleon because he
represented a mortal danger to monarchical Europe. He believed
also that Napoleon could be defeated only by large armies, which
he regarded as the secret to France’s success. He thus proposed
that the Austrians raise large armies, but he knew that the
monarchy could not finance increases in the kind of armies that
it had used in the past. Therefore, he proposed to supplement
the regular troops with trained reserves and militia.
Stadion also realized, however, that, while costing less than
long-serving regulars, reserves and militiamen needed reasons to
fight. Consequently, he initiated martial appeals of various
kinds tailored to various elements of society. The most famous
of these was an appeal to nationalism, especially German
nationalism. Some scholars point out the irony that the first
official appeals to modern German nationalism came from the
Habsburg government, which would be the primary foe of German
nationalism in the 19th century and in some ways the victim of
it in the 20th. But the Habsburg government under Stadion’s
direction did not limit its appeals to German nationalism to
inspire its militia. It issued calls to patriotism, love of the
emperor, provincialism, and xenophobia, plus appeals to Czechs,
Slovenes, Hungarians, and Poles. Often the inspirational appeals
to non-Germans were simply translations of the appeals to
Germans with the appropriate words replaced with references to
the correct national group.
In any case, it was for naught. Inspired by the popular
resistance of the Spanish people to Napoleon, Stadion appealed
to his own people in 1809 to go to war. The declaration came in
April, and the French army occupied Vienna in May. However, on
May 21–22, at Aspern, across the Danube from Vienna, Archduke
Charles and the regular Austrian army inflicted the first defeat
Napoleon was to suffer on the field of battle. They did not take
advantage of it, however; Napoleon regrouped and defeated
Archduke Charles in July in the Battle of Wagram, just a few
miles from Aspern. At the Treaty of Schönbrunn (October 1809),
the monarchy surrendered considerably more territory but at
least remained in existence.
After 1809, foreign policy and to some extent domestic policy
passed into the hands of Klemens, Graf von Metternich (later
given the title of Fürst [prince]), who would steer the
monarchy’s ship of state for the next 40 years. Unlike his
predecessors in charge of foreign policy, Metternich believed
that the only hope for the continued existence of the monarchy
was to seek accommodation with Napoleon. It was he who arranged
the marriage of Marie-Louise, and it was he who convinced
Francis to send troops to take part in Napoleon’s invasion of
Russia in 1812.
Even when Napoleon suffered his thunderous defeat in Russia,
Metternich was by no means eager to join his former allies in
pursuing the defeated French. The main reason was that by this
time Metternich had come to the conclusion that the key to the
future security of the monarchy was not the restoration of the
Europe of 1789 but rather the creation of an effective balance
of power among the great European states. In his view, a
completely victorious Russia would be just as great a threat to
Austria as a completely victorious France. His goal was to
arrange an agreement between Russia and Napoleonic France that
would establish each one as a counterweight to the other while
restoring an independent Habsburg monarchy and Prussia between
them. Metternich sought this goal through the first half of
1813, but Napoleon would agree to no concessions. So in August
1813, Austria formally declared war on France.
In the ensuing War of Liberation, Austria assumed the leading
role. It provided the greatest number of troops to the allied
forces, in addition to their commander, Karl Philipp, Fürst zu
Schwarzenberg, and his brilliant staff officer, Joseph, Graf
Radetzky. Metternich, however, never sought to vanquish Napoleon
utterly, because he still distrusted Russian ambition as much as
he did that of the French. He could never convince Napoleon to
accept his views, however, and Austria in the end took part in
Napoleon’s defeat and exile to the island of Elba in 1814.
In September 1814 the congress to conclude the quarter
century of war gathered in Vienna under Metternich’s
chairmanship. In terms of territory, Metternich gladly
relinquished claims to the old Austrian Netherlands and the
various Habsburg possessions in Germany for a consolidated
monarchy at the centre of Europe. Austria regained its lands on
the Adriatic and in the area that is now Austria, which it had
previously lost, and it won considerable territory in Italy,
including Lombardy, Venetia, Tuscany, and Modena.
But in Germany Metternich worked his greatest magic. He had
no intention of restoring the old Holy Roman Empire but wished
to create instead a system that could defend itself against both
France and Russia and keep Prussia under control. His solution
was the German Confederation, a body comprising 35 states and 4
free cities, with Austria assuming the presidency. Such an
institution, in Metternich’s eyes, would give Austria far more
influence in Germany than it had had under the old Holy Roman
Empire.
While Metternich arranged central Europe as best he could,
the four victorious powers—Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Great
Britain—pledged to maintain the peace settlement, thereby
establishing what is known as the Concert of Europe. Moreover,
each monarch in Europe pledged allegiance to a Christian union
of love, peace, and charity. This “Holy Alliance” was the
brainchild of Alexander I of Russia; Metternich knew that it was
little more than sentiment, but he welcomed it as a statement he
could exploit to persuade other monarchs to do his bidding. With
the end of the Congress of Vienna, Metternich became the
“coachman of Europe” and would remain so for some time.
The Age of Metternich, 1815–48
The 33 years after the end of the Napoleonic Wars are
called in Austria—and to some extent in all of Europe—the Age of
Metternich. The chief characteristics of this age are the onset
of the Industrial Revolution, an intensification of social
problems brought on by economic cycles of boom and bust, an
increasingly mobile population, more demands for popular
participation in government, and the rising tide of nationalism,
all watched over by governments intent upon preserving the
social, political, and international status quo.
Metternich was the symbol of those forces eager to preserve
the status quo. In the debate about his policies, some have
argued that Metternich was little more than an oppressive,
reactionary but opportunistic statesman, eager to snuff out
sparks of revolution and liberalism wherever he could detect
them. Moreover, his much vaunted direction of the other powers
in preserving the European order was really a mask for
maintaining Habsburg influence in international affairs far out
of proportion to the power that the monarchy actually possessed.
Others contend that Metternich was one of the first
philosophical conservatives, basing his social and political
policies on coherent principles of orderly and cautious change
in the context of good government and his diplomatic policies on
maintaining stability by convincing the great powers of their
mutual interests in preserving the European order as it then
existed.
In international affairs, Metternich’s Concert of Europe did
not last long. Within a few years after the Congress of Vienna,
it had become clear that the five great powers simply did not
have sufficiently similar interests or goals to cooperate on
every issue that came before them. After European congresses at
Troppau, Laibach, and Verona (1820–22) granted permission to
Austria to deal with revolutions in Italy and to France to do
the same in Spain, Britain announced its withdrawal from the
Concert of Europe, proclaiming that it wanted no more to do with
the conservative Continental powers. Likewise, a revolution in
France in 1830 weakened that country’s link to Metternich’s
system, and he even had trouble with Russia, which was greatly
upset by Ottoman persecution of Orthodox Christians during the
movement for Greek independence (1821–30). (See also Troppau,
Congress of; Laibach, Congress of; Verona, Congress of; July
Revolution; Greek Independence, War of.)
In domestic matters, Metternich may have desired good
government, but his reputation as an oppressor gained
considerable credence after 1815. Protests against conservative
policies by a gathering of German students (at the Wartburg
Festival) in 1817 and the assassination of a conservative
playwright (August von Kotzebue) in 1819 led, under Metternich’s
guidance, to the German Confederation’s adopting the Carlsbad
Decrees, a set of laws placing German and Austrian universities
under strict control. Harsh censorship was imposed, and a
commission was established at Mainz to investigate all student
societies for subversives. Teachers, writers, and students
suspected of liberal views were blacklisted throughout Germany
and Austria. In 1824 the German Federal Diet renewed these
provisions for an indefinite period and in 1832 and 1833
expanded them at Metternich’s behest.
Metternich’s name was also equated with suppressing
liberalism and radicalism in Italy. In 1821 Austrian troops put
down risings in Naples and Piedmont; in 1831 rebellions in
Parma, Modena, and the Papal States likewise ended in
suppression by Austrian soldiers. The Austrian regime became the
nemesis of the Carbonari and Young Italy, two movements
associated with Italian nationalism and republicanism that were
enormously popular among educated Italians.
Whereas Metternich’s name is often equated with oppression,
he in fact was not eager to impose harsh and unrelenting rule in
his own state or in others. Metternich believed that the best
government was absolutism but that it was best because it
guaranteed equal justice and fair administration for all. In the
Habsburg monarchy and in the Italian governments he saved from
revolution, he advocated reforms that would provide good
government for the people. In many places his appeals went
unheeded—in the Papal States, for example—and even in Austria
his influence in domestic affairs weakened considerably as time
went on. In 1826 Emperor Francis appointed Franz Anton, Graf
(count) von Kolowrat, minister of state, and he steadily reduced
Metternich’s influence in internal policy. In 1835 Francis died
and was succeeded by his son Ferdinand, whose feeblemindedness
necessitated the creation of a “state conference” to rule the
monarchy. It consisted of two of Ferdinand’s uncles and his
brother, along with Kolowrat and Metternich, as permanent
members. High policy tended to drift, because the two archdukes
were nonentities and Kolowrat and Metternich were usually at
odds with one another.
While Metternich and his colleagues focused most of their
attention on political activity, the monarchy was by no means
standing still in economic and social matters. By the 1820s
Austria was experiencing its first sustained industrial
development. While many have regarded Austria’s exclusion from
the Zollverein, the German customs union created by Prussia in
the 1820s and ’30s, as permanently retarding Austria’s economic
advancement, in fact, by the 1840s, Austrian production of pig
iron, coal, cotton textiles, woolens, and foodstuffs was growing
at a faster rate than that of the Zollverein. Advocates of
political liberalism may have suffered at this time, but those
of economic liberalism were gaining ground. After Francis’s
death in 1835, practically all restrictions on new enterprises,
especially those engaged in commerce, were lifted.
Most people still lived on the land, but even there changes
were under way. As growing cities created markets for more and
more agricultural goods, producers began to focus on agriculture
for profit instead of for subsistence. Along with industrial
crops such as sugar beets and flax, old crops such as wheat,
vegetables, wine, and livestock were grown more and more for the
commercial market. The social impact of these changes in
agriculture became starkly apparent in 1848, when the final
abolition of serfdom was encouraged by some of the landholding
nobility, who were relying more and more on wage labour to work
their estates and no longer wanted the obligations associated
with having serfs.
Aiding these new economic efforts were the beginnings of an
Austrian infrastructure of railroads and water transport. The
first railroad on the European Continent appeared between Linz
(Austria) and Budweis (now Ceské Budejovice, Cz.Rep.); it was a
horse-drawn railway between the Danube and the Moldau (Vltava)
rivers, which in fact was a connection between the Danube and
the Elbe river systems. In 1836 work began on a steam railway
heading north from Vienna, and by 1848 the monarchy contained
more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of track. Canals were not a
feature of Habsburg transportation because of poor terrain, but
steam navigation began on the Danube in 1830 and expanded
quickly.
Revolution and counterrevolution, 1848–59
The year 1848 was a time of European-wide revolution. A
general disgust with conservative domestic policies, an urge for
more freedoms and greater popular participation in government,
rising nationalism, social problems brought on by the Industrial
Revolution, and increasing hunger caused by harvest failures in
the mid-1840s all contributed to growing unrest, which the
Habsburg monarchy did not escape. In February 1848, Paris, the
archetype of revolution at that time, rose against its
government, and within weeks many major cities in Europe did the
same, including Vienna. (See 1848, Revolutions of.)
As in much of Europe, the revolution of 1848 in the Habsburg
monarchy may be divided into the three categories of social,
democratic-liberal, and national, but outside Vienna the
national aspect of the revolution fairly soon overshadowed the
other two. On March 13, upon receiving news of the Paris rising,
crowds of people, mostly students and members of liberal clubs,
demonstrated in Vienna for basic freedoms and a liberalization
of the regime. As happened in many cities in this fateful year,
troops were called out to quell the crowds, shots were fired,
and serious clashes occurred between the authorities and the
people. The government had no wish to antagonize the crowds
further and so dismissed Metternich, who was the symbol of
repression, and promised to issue a constitution.
From that beginning to the end of October 1848, Vienna ebbed
and flowed between revolution and counterrevolution, with one
element or another gaining influence over the others. In mid-May
the Habsburgs and their government became so concerned about the
way matters were going that they fled Vienna, although they did
return in August when it appeared that more-conservative
elements were asserting control. The emperor issued a
constitution in April providing for an elected legislature, but
when the legislature met in June it rejected this constitution
in favour of one that promised to be more democratic. As the
legislature debated various issues over the summer and autumn,
the Habsburgs and their advisers regrouped both their confidence
and their might, and on October 31 the army retook Vienna and
executed a number of the city’s radical leaders. By this time
the legislature had removed itself to Kremsier (now Kromeríz,
Cz.Rep.) in the province of Moravia, where it continued to work
on a constitution. It finished its work there, issued its
document, and was promptly overruled and then dismissed by the
emperor.
Although the assembly in the end did not create a working
constitution for Austria, it did issue one piece of legislation
that had long-lasting influence: it fully emancipated the
peasantry. The conservative regime that followed kept and
implemented this law.
In other parts of the monarchy, the revolution of 1848 passed
quickly through a liberal-democratic to a national phase, and in
no place was this more evident or more serious than in Hungary.
Joseph II’s effort to incorporate Hungary more fully into the
monarchy, along with the early 19th century’s rising national
awareness throughout Europe, had a profound impact upon the
aristocratic Hungarians who held sway in the country. Modern
nationalism made them even more intent on preserving their
cultural traditions and on continuing their political domination
of the land. Consequently, after 1815 the Hungarian nobility
engaged in a number of activities to strengthen the Hungarian
national spirit, demanding the use of Hungarian rather than
Latin as the language of government and undertaking serious
efforts to develop the country economically. The revolution in
Paris and then the one in Vienna in March 1848 galvanized the
Hungarian Diet. Under the leadership of a young lawyer and
journalist named Lajos Kossuth, the Hungarian Diet demanded of
the sovereign sweeping reforms, including civil liberties and
far greater autonomy for the Hungarian government, which would
from then on meet in Pest (Buda and Pest were separate cities
until 1873, when they officially merged under the name
Budapest). Under great pressure from liberal elements in Vienna,
the emperor acceded to these wishes, and the Hungarian
legislators immediately undertook creating a new constitution
for their land.
This new constitution became known as the March Laws (or
April Laws) and was really the work of Kossuth. The March Laws
provided for a popularly elected lower house of deputies,
freedom for the “received religions” (i.e., excluding Jews),
freedom of the press, peasant emancipation, and equality before
the law. As the Hungarians set up their new national government
based on these principles, they encountered from some of the
minority nationalities living in their land the kind of
resistance they had offered the Austrians. A characteristic of
the new regime was an intense pride in being Hungarian, but the
population in the Hungarian portion of the Habsburg monarchy was
60 percent non-Hungarian. And in 1848 all the talk about freedom
and constitutions and protection of one’s language and culture
had inspired many of these people as well. But Kossuth and his
colleagues had no intention of weakening the Hungarian nature of
their new regime; indeed, they made knowledge of Hungarian a
qualification for membership in parliament and for participation
in government. In other words, the new government seemed as
unsympathetic to the demands and hopes of its Serbian, Croatian,
Slovak, and Romanian populations as Vienna had been to the
demands of the Hungarians.
In March 1848 the Habsburgs made an appointment that would
lead to war with the Hungarians; they selected as governor of
Croatia Josip, Graf (count) Jelačić, well known for his devotion
to the monarchy, for his dislike of the “lawyers’ clique” in
Pest, and for his ability to hold the South Slavs in the
southern portion of the monarchy loyal to the crown. Jelačić did
not disappoint Vienna. One of his first acts was to reject all
authority over Croatia by the new Hungarian government, to
refuse all efforts by that government to introduce Hungarian as
a language of administration, and to order his bureaucrats to
return unopened all official mail from Pest. He also began
negotiations with the leadership of the Serbs to resist
Hungarian rule together.
From April to September 1848 the Hungarian government dealt
with its minority nations and with the government in Austria on
even terms, but then relations began to deteriorate. The return
of the Habsburgs to Vienna in August, the more conservative turn
in the government there that the return reflected, and Austrian
military victories in Italy in July prompted the Habsburg
government to demand greater concessions from the Hungarians. In
September, military action against Hungary by Jelačić and his
Croats prompted the Hungarian government to turn power over to
Kossuth and the Committee of National Defense, which immediately
took measures to defend the country. What then emerged was open
warfare between regular Habsburg forces and Jelačić on the one
hand and the Hungarians on the other.
The war was a bloody affair, with each side dominating at one
time or another. In April 1849 the Hungarian government
proclaimed its total independence from the Habsburgs, and in
that same month the Austrian government requested military aid
from Russia, an act that was to haunt it for years to come.
Finally, in August 1849, the Hungarian army surrendered, and the
land was put firmly under Austrian rule. Kossuth fled to the
Ottoman Empire, and from there for years he traveled the world
denouncing Habsburg oppression. In Hungary itself many rebel
officers were imprisoned, and a number were executed.
A second serious national rising occurred in Italy. Since
1815 many Italians had looked upon the Habsburgs as foreign
occupiers or oppressors, so when news of revolution reached
their lands, the banner of revolt went up in many places,
especially Milan and Venice. Outside the Habsburg lands, liberal
uprisings also swept Rome and Naples. In Habsburg Italy,
however, war came swiftly. In late March, answering a plea from
the Milanese, the kingdom of Sardinia, the only Italian state
with a native monarch, declared war on the emperor and marched
into his lands.
The Habsburg government in Austria was initially willing to
make concessions to Sardinia, but it was strongly discouraged
from doing so by its military commander in Italy, the old but
highly respected and talented Field Marshal Radetzky, who had
been the Austrian chief of staff in the war against Napoleon in
1813–14. In July 1848 Radetzky proved the value of his advice by
defeating the Sardinians at Custoza, a victory that helped
restore confidence to the Habsburg government as it faced so
many enemies. Radetzky reimposed Habsburg rule in Milan and
Venice, and in March 1849 he defeated the Sardinians once again
when they invaded Austria’s Italian possessions.
Besides the Hungarians and the Italians, the Slavic peoples
of the monarchy also responded to the revolutionary surge,
although with less violence than the other two. In June 1848 a
Pan-Slav congress met in Prague to hammer out a set of
principles that all Slavic peoples could endorse (see
Pan-Slavism). The organizer of the conference was the great
Czech historian František Palacký (most of the delegates were
Czech), who not only had called for the cooperation of the
Habsburg Slavs but also had endorsed the Habsburg monarchy as
the most reasonable political formation to protect the peoples
of central Europe. Upon being asked by the Germans to declare
himself favourably disposed to their desire for national unity,
he responded that he could not do so because it would weaken the
Habsburg state. And in that reply he wrote his famous words:
“Truly, if it were not that Austria had long existed, it would
be necessary, in the interest of Europe, in the interest of
humanity itself, to create it.”
Unfortunately, the Pan-Slav congress met in a highly charged
atmosphere, as young inhabitants of Prague likewise had been
influenced by revolutions elsewhere and had taken to the
streets. In the commotion, a stray bullet killed the wife of
Field Marshal Alfred, Fürst (prince) zu Windischgrätz, the
commander of the forces in Prague. Enraged, Windischgrätz seized
the city, dispersed the congress, and established martial law
throughout the province of Bohemia.
The Germans themselves also experienced a certain degree of
national fervour, but in their case it was part of a general
German yearning for national unification. Responding to calls
for a meeting of national unity, in May 1848 delegates from all
the German states met at Frankfurt to discuss a constitution for
a united Germany. Made up primarily of the commercial and
professional classes, this body was indeed distinguished and was
looked upon by the German princes as an important gathering. To
prove its respect for tradition, the Frankfurt parliament
selected the emperor’s uncle, Archduke Johann, as head of a
provisional executive power and in September selected another
Austrian, Anton, Ritter (knight) von Schmerling, as prime
minister.
Despite this deference to Austria’s prominent men, a major
question the parliament addressed was whether to include Austria
in the new Germany. Those who favoured doing so argued that a
new Germany could accept the German-speaking provinces of the
monarchy but not the non-German lands (the Grossdeutsch, or
large German, position). Those against contended that the
Austrian monarchy could never divide itself along ethnic lines
and so favoured the exclusion of Austria altogether (the
Kleindeutsch, or small German, position). Implicit in the latter
position was that the new Germany would be greatly influenced if
not dominated by Prussia, by far the most important German state
next to Austria. In October 1848 the delegates agreed to invite
the Austrian German lands to become part of the new Germany, but
only if they were disconnected from non-German territory. This
so-called compromise was really a victory for the Kleindeutsch
supporters, who knew that the Austrian government would reject
the invitation because it would never willfully break the
monarchy apart.
In the end neither position prevailed, because the Frankfurt
parliament was unable to unify Germany. All the German states
finally rejected its proposals, and in April 1849 it dissolved.
Nonetheless, it had created the impression that, when the new
Germany did emerge, it would do so under the aegis of Prussia
and with the exclusion of Austria.
Neoabsolutist era, 1849–60
All things considered, the revolution across the empire
had not accomplished much. Absolutism seemed firmly entrenched,
and the political clock seemed to have been set back to the 18th
century. And yet a regime so badly shaken as Austria’s could not
hope to rule unchallenged in the future. The unresolved social,
constitutional, and national issues became more intense, and new
changes were soon in the offing.
The period 1849–60 is called the Neoabsolutist era because it
was the last effort by an Austrian emperor to provide good
government by relying solely on bureaucratic effectiveness. In
doing so, it was the legitimate descendant of the governments of
Joseph II and Metternich. The emperor in this case was Francis
Joseph, who in December 1848 had succeeded at the age of 18 to
the throne in a deal engineered by Felix, Fürst (prince) zu
Schwarzenberg, an able and iron-willed opponent of the 1848
revolutionaries and a proponent of strong central government.
Francis Joseph had not been the heir, but Schwarzenberg
contended that too many promises to revolutionaries had been
made in the name of Ferdinand and the true heir, Francis
Joseph’s father, Francis Charles, and so only his son could rule
without making compromises. Francis Joseph thus became emperor
and ruled for the next 68 years, dying in the midst of World War
I at the age of 86.
Under Francis Joseph and Schwarzenberg, order was restored.
Schwarzenberg died in 1852, and the new regime passed largely to
the direction of Alexander, Freiherr (baron) von Bach, minister
of the interior and a competent bureaucrat. Despite its
reputation as a repressive instrument, Bach’s government was not
without positive accomplishments. It established a unified
customs territory for the whole monarchy (including Hungary),
composed a code for trades and crafts, completed the task of
serf emancipation, and introduced improvements in universities
and secondary schools. In this period, economic growth continued
its slow but steady pace, which had characterized the monarchy
before 1848 and would continue to do so after 1860.
The regime’s policies on other matters were more typically
reactionary. Freedom of the press as well as jury and public
trials were abandoned, corporal punishment by police orders
restored, and internal surveillance increased. The observation
of the liberal reformer Adolf Fischhof that the regime rested on
the support of a standing army of soldiers, a kneeling army of
worshippers, and a crawling army of informants was exaggerated
but not entirely unfounded. One of the more backward
developments was the concordat reached with the papacy that gave
the church jurisdiction in marriage questions, partial control
of censorship, and oversight of elementary and secondary
education. Priests entrusted with religious education in the
schools had the authority to see to it that instruction in any
field, be it history or physics, did not conflict with the
church’s teachings.
The neoabsolutist regime came to an end because of its
foreign policy. In the mid-1850s the matter that dominated the
foreign offices of the European states was the Crimean War, a
struggle that pitted an alliance system of Britain, France, the
Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia against Russia.
Since the mid-18th century, Austrian statesmen had generally
agreed that it was better to have as the monarchy’s southeastern
neighbour a weak Ottoman Empire than any strong power—especially
Russia. So, in this war the monarchy declared its neutrality but
also insisted that Russia not advance into the Ottoman provinces
of Moldavia and Walachia, which lay to the east of the Austrian
Empire. This policy had two deleterious results: it alienated
Russia, which had helped the monarchy put down the Hungarian
revolution, and it did not befriend France, which would in 1859
support Sardinia in its war of Italian unification against the
Austrians.
It was the Austro-Italian war of 1859 that humiliated Austria
and ended Bach’s system. First securing support from Napoleon
III of France, Sardinia provoked a woefully unprepared Austria
into war and then invited France to come to the Italian
kingdom’s assistance. The Austrians suffered two major defeats
at Magenta and Solferino and concluded peace. The monarchy gave
up Lombardy and kept Venetia, but, more important, it lost its
influence in Italy. The Habsburgs had no say in the events of
1860 and 1861 that led to the proclamation of a unified Italy
under the rule of the kings of Sardinia. (See also
Risorgimento.)
Constitutional experimentation, 1860–67
Internally, the defeats in Italy convinced Francis Joseph
that neoabsolutism had failed. Clamour for economic, political,
and even military rejuvenation became irresistible. In March
1860 Francis Joseph ordered that the Reichsrat, an empirewide,
purely advisory council of state, be enlarged by the addition of
38 members proposed by the provincial diets and selected by the
crown. Its main task was to advise the emperor on the
composition of a new constitution. The body divided into two
groups rather quickly. One, made up mostly of German-speaking
delegates, wished to create a strong central parliament and to
continue to restrict the power of the provincial governments.
The other, made up of conservative federalists who were largely
Hungarian, Czech, and Polish nobles, wished to weaken the
central government and give considerable power to the provinces.
The emperor sided with the federalists, who persuaded him to
accept their position mainly with historical and not ethnic
arguments, and he proclaimed by decree a constitution called the
October Diploma (1860). The constitution established a central
parliament of 100 members and gave it advisory authority in
matters of finance, commerce, and industry. Authority in other
internal matters was assigned to the provinces. Foreign policy
and military issues remained the domain of the emperor.
No one was happy with the October Diploma. The German
centralists opposed it for giving too much authority to the
provinces, and the federalists, particularly the Hungarians,
opposed it for not restoring fully the old rights and privileges
of the crown lands. Faced with such opposition, Francis Joseph
abandoned the Diploma and four months later issued the February
Patent (1861), officially a revision of the Diploma. This
document provided for a bicameral system: an empirewide house of
representatives composed of delegates from the diets and a house
of lords consisting partly of hereditary members and partly of
men of special distinction appointed for life. Furthermore, a
separate parliamentary body for the non-Hungarian lands was
established.
The February Patent restored much authority to the central
government and so made the centralists happier, but it only
antagonized further the federalists, now led enthusiastically by
the Hungarians. Resistance was so great that by 1865 the
constitution was considered unworkable, and Francis Joseph began
negotiations with the Hungarians to revise it. In the meantime,
a form of government by bureaucracy ran the country.
These constitutional issues received a significant jolt by
another failure of Habsburg foreign policy. After the
disbandment of the Frankfurt National Assembly in 1849, the
German Confederation founded in 1815 had resumed its work, but
the question of German unification had not gone away. In 1862
this issue gained an unlikely champion in the appointment of
Otto von Bismarck as prime minister of Prussia and later
chancellor of the German Empire. Bismarck was a Prussian patriot
and a loyal subject of his king. While definitely not a German
nationalist, he was determined to extend Prussia’s power and
authority into the German lands, and he knew that Prussia could
expand its influence in Germany only at Austria’s expense. From
1862 to 1866 he conducted a remarkably deft foreign policy that
succeeded in isolating Austria from possible allies in Europe.
By exploiting issues in the German Confederation, Bismarck
was able in 1866 to force Austria into a position that could
only be resolved by war. The conflict is known as the Seven
Weeks’ War or the Austro-Prussian War. On July 3, 1866, the two
armies clashed in this struggle’s only major Austro-Prussian
battle, the Battle of Königgrätz, or Sadowa as it is known in
Austrian histories. Although the battle was hard fought on both
sides, the arrival of an extra Prussian force toward the end of
the day decided it in favour of Prussia. Afterward, peace came
quickly, because neither side wanted the war to continue. As
Austria had been excluded from the future of Italy in 1859, so
it was now excluded from the future of Germany. The German
Confederation came to an end, and Prussia was allowed a free
hand in reorganizing northern Germany as it wished (see North
German Confederation). Moreover, Italy had joined Prussia
against Austria and, although defeated on land and sea, received
Venetia, Austria’s last possession in Italy, for its loyalty.
Internally, the war meant that the government had to reach a
constitutional arrangement for the remainder of its possessions.
Karl A. Roider, Jr.
Reinhold F. Wagnleitner
Austria-Hungary, 1867–1918
Ausgleich of 1867
The economic consequences of the defeat in the war of 1866
made it imperative that the constitutional reorganization of the
Habsburg monarchy, under discussion since 1859, be brought to an
early and successful conclusion. Personnel changes facilitated
the solution of the Hungarian crisis. Friedrich Ferdinand,
Freiherr (baron) von Beust (later Graf [count] von Beust), who
had been prime minister of Saxony, took charge of Habsburg
affairs, first as foreign minister (from October 1866) and then
as chancellor (from February 1867). By abandoning the claim that
Hungary be simply an Austrian province, he induced Emperor
Francis Joseph to recognize the negotiations with the Hungarian
politicians (Ferenc Deák and Gyula, Gróf [count] Andrássy) as a
purely dynastic affair, excluding non-Hungarians from the
discussion. On Feb. 17, 1867, Francis Joseph restored the
Hungarian constitution. A ministry responsible to the Hungarian
Diet was formed under Andrássy, and in May 1867 the diet
approved Law XII, legalizing what became known as the Ausgleich
(“Compromise”). This was a compromise between the Hungarian
nation and the dynasty, not between Hungary and the rest of the
empire, and it is symptomatic of the Hungarian attitude that led
Hungarians to refer to Francis Joseph and his successor as their
king and never their emperor.
In addition to regulating the constitutional relations
between the king and the Hungarian nation, Law XII accepted the
unity of the Habsburg lands for purposes of conducting certain
economic and foreign affairs in common. The compromise was thus
the logical result of an attempt to blend traditional
constitutional rights with the demands of modern administration.
In December 1867 the section of the Reichsrat representing the
non-Hungarian lands of the Habsburg empire (known as the engerer
Reichsrat) approved the compromise. Though after 1867 the
Habsburg monarchy was popularly referred to as the Dual
Monarchy, the constitutional framework was actually tripartite,
comprising the common agencies for economics and foreign
affairs, the agencies of the kingdom of Hungary, and the
agencies of the rest of the Habsburg lands—commonly but
incorrectly called “Austria.” (The official title for these
provinces remained “the kingdoms and lands represented in the
Reichsrat” until 1915, when the term “Austria” was officially
adopted for them.)
Under the Ausgleich, both parts of the Habsburg monarchy were
constitutionally autonomous, each having its own government and
a parliament composed of an appointed upper and an elected lower
house. The “common monarchy” consisted of the emperor and his
court, the minister for foreign affairs, and the minister of
war. There was no common prime minister and no common cabinet.
Common affairs were to be considered at the “delegations,”
annual meetings of representatives from the two parliaments. For
economic and financial cooperation, there was to be a customs
union and a sharing of accounts, which was to be revised every
10 years. (This decennial discussion of financial quotas became
one of the main sources of conflict between the Hungarian and
Austrian governments.) There would be no common citizenship, but
such matters as weights, measures, coinage, and postal service
were to be uniform in both areas. There soon developed the
so-called gemeinsamer Ministerrat, a kind of crown council in
which the common ministers of foreign affairs and war and the
prime ministers of both governments met under the presidency of
the monarch. The common ministers were responsible to the crown
only, but they reported annually to the delegations.
The Ausgleich for all practical purposes set up a personal
union between the lands of the Hungarian crown and the western
lands of the Habsburgs. The Hungarian success inspired similar
movements for the restoration of states’ rights in Bohemia and
Galicia. But the monarch, who only reluctantly had given in to
Hungarian demands, was unwilling to discontinue the centralist
policy in the rest of his empire. Public opinion and parliament
in Austria were dominated by German bourgeois liberals who
opposed the federalization of Austria. As a prize for their
cooperation in compromising with the Hungarians, the German
liberals were allowed to amend the 1861 constitution known as
the February Patent; the Fundamental Laws, which were adopted in
December 1867 and became known as the December constitution,
lasted until 1918. These laws granted equality before the law
and freedom of press, speech, and assembly; they also protected
the interests of the various nationalities, stating that
all nationalities in the state enjoy equal rights, and each
one has an inalienable right to the preservation and cultivation
of its nationality and language. The equal rights of all
languages in local use are guaranteed by the state in schools,
administration, and public life.
The authority of parliament was also recognized. Such
provisions, however, were more a promise than a reality.
Although parliament, for instance, did theoretically have the
power to deal with all varieties of matters, it was, in any
case, not a fully representative parliament (suffrage was
restricted, and it was tied to property provisions until 1907).
In addition, the king was authorized to govern without
parliament in the event that the assembly should prove unable to
work. Austrian affairs from 1867 to 1918 were, in fact,
determined more by bureaucratic measures than by political
initiative; traditions dating from the reign of Joseph II,
rather than capitalist interests, characterized the Austrian
liberals.
Domestic affairs, 1867–73
After the December constitution had been sanctioned, Francis
Joseph appointed a new cabinet, which was named the “bourgeois
ministry” by the press because most of its members came from the
German middle class (though the prime minister belonged to the
Austrian high aristocracy). In 1868 and 1869 this ministry was
able to enact several liberal reforms, undoing parts of the
concordat of 1855 between Austria and the papacy. Civil marriage
was restored; compulsory secular education was established; and
interconfessional relations were regulated, in spite of a strong
protest from the Roman Catholic Church. In 1870 the Austrian
government used the promulgation of the dogma of papal
infallibility as pretext for the total abrogation of the
concordat.
The progressive legislation of the bourgeois cabinet stood in
sharp contrast to its inability to cope with the demands of the
non-German nationalities. In 1868 the Czechs and the Poles
issued declarations demanding a constitutional status analogous
to that of the Hungarians. The government in Vienna did give the
Poles in Galicia a considerable amount of self-government, which
was later used to Polonize the Ruthenian minority. In 1871 a
ministry for Galician affairs was set up, and the Poles remained
the staunchest supporters of the Austrian government well into
World War I.
The bourgeois ministry was split into a liberal-centralist
and a conservative-federalist faction; its members could not
reach an agreement on policies to be adopted. The liberal
members of the cabinet opposed Czech demands; the conservatives
were willing to consider them. Francis Joseph, indignant because
of the anticlerical policy of the liberals, dismissed his prime
minister, Karl, Fürst (prince) von Auersperg, in 1868 and
replaced him with the conservative Eduard, Graf (count) von
Taaffe, his boyhood friend. A period of indecision nevertheless
persisted. The emperor wavered between the liberals, whose
anticlericalism and parliamentarianism he disliked but with whom
he sympathized in their centralist, German-oriented policy, and
the conservatives, whose political legislation he favoured but
who aroused his fears by their demands for federalization.
Neither Taaffe nor his successors Leopold Hasner, Ritter
(knight) von Artha (1870), and Alfred, Graf Potocki (1870–71),
could solve the Czech problem.
The Franco-German War of 1870–71 temporarily diverted public
attention from the Czech demands. Opinion was divided strictly
along lines of nationality: Austro-Germans celebrated the
victories of the Prussian army, whereas the Slavs were decidedly
pro-French. The Austrian government remained neutral because
conflicting international interests had blocked Austro-French
negotiations (which had culminated in a meeting of Francis
Joseph and French emperor Napoleon III at Salzburg in 1867). The
victory of Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck and the
establishment of the German Empire under the leadership of the
Prussian king gave finality to the results of the 1866
Austro-Prussian War. Austria was definitely excluded from the
German scene, and a reorientation of dynastic interests seemed a
logical consequence. Francis Joseph decided to explore the
possibility of satisfying the Czechs with some measure of
federalism. On Feb. 5, 1871, he appointed as prime minister Karl
Siegmund, Graf von Hohenwart, a staunch clericalist. The driving
mind in Hohenwart’s cabinet was the minister of commerce, Albert
Schäffle, an economist whose socialism may not have appealed to
the emperor but whose federalism did.
As a first step toward conciliation with the Czechs, the
cabinet dissolved parliament and the provincial diets. When the
Bohemian elections improved the federalist position, Hohenwart
proceeded to deal directly with the Czechs, copying in certain
measure the method used to conclude the compromise with Hungary.
Secret talks with the Czech leaders František Ladislav Rieger
and František Palacký led Francis Joseph to issue an imperial
rescript on Sept. 12, 1871, promising the Czechs recognition of
their ancient rights and showing his willingness to take the
coronation oath. The Czechs answered this rescript on Oct. 10,
1871, by submitting a constitutional program of 18 articles,
called the Fundamental Articles. According to this program,
Bohemian affairs should be regulated along the principles of the
Hungarian compromise, raising Bohemia to a status equal to
Hungary. With this, Hohenwart, who had been up against violent
German opposition from the first day of his appointment, aroused
Hungarian resistance, too. Andrássy, fearing that the Czech
program could incite minority groups in Hungary, convinced
Francis Joseph that the stability of the Habsburg monarchy was
endangered by the Czech program. On Oct. 27, 1871, Hohenwart was
dismissed, and Francis Joseph returned the government to the
hands of the German liberals.
The new Austrian prime minister, Adolf, Fürst von Auersperg,
entrusted the key ministries of his cabinet to university
professors and lawyers. The “ministry of doctors,” as it was
nicknamed, concentrated on legal and administrative reform and
tried to strengthen German control in parliament. After the
dismissal of Hohenwart, the Czechs turned to passive resistance,
withdrawing from the Bohemian diet and again abstaining from
attendance at the parliament in Vienna. This gave the government
the chance to weaken the federalist position by introducing a
bill for electoral reform. Instead of the existing modus,
whereby the diets selected the deputies that were sent to
parliament, the new bill set up electoral districts, each of
which was to elect one deputy directly to the Reichsrat. The new
system, however, preserved the old division of the electorate
into curiae (socioeconomic classes), making parliament in this
way a representation of German bourgeois interests.
The political victory of German capitalism took place at the
very moment of a severe economic crisis. The opening of the
Vienna International Exhibition of 1873 was seen as a
manifestation of the material progress and economic achievements
of the Habsburg monarchy. The so-called Gründerjahre, or years
of expansive commercial enterprise during the late 1860s and
early 1870s, however, were characterized not only by railroad
and industrial expansion and the growth of the capital cities of
Vienna and Budapest but also by reckless speculation. Warning
signs of an imminent crisis were disregarded, and in May 1873,
soon after the opening of the exhibition, the stock market
collapsed.
The ensuing depression forced the government to abandon some
liberal bourgeois principles. The state took over the railroads
and instituted public-works projects in an attempt to alleviate
popular distress. The government survived the crisis, however,
and German liberal political rule continued for five more years.
German liberalism would pass into eclipse not because of
economic or domestic crisis but as a consequence of its
opposition to foreign expansion.
A far-reaching consequence of the stock market crash of 1873
was the permeation of anti-Semitism into Austrian politics. Jews
were accused of being responsible for the speculative stock
market activities, even though official investigations proved
that many elements of the population, including some ministers
and aristocrats, had participated in the Gründungsfieber, or
“speculative fever,” and the attendant scandals.
International relations: the Balkan orientation
After his appointment as foreign minister on Nov. 14, 1871,
Andrássy conducted the foreign affairs of Austria-Hungary with
the intention of preserving the status quo. Discarding the
anti-Bismarck bias of his predecessor, Beust, he sought the
friendship of the German Empire in order to strengthen his
position in a possible confrontation with Russia over problems
in the Balkans. The Dreikaiserbund (Three Emperors’ League) of
1873, by which Francis Joseph and the German and Russian
emperors agreed to work together for peace, gave expression to
this policy and made a change of the status quo in the Balkans
dependent on German consent.
The continuing decline of Ottoman power encouraged the Balkan
nations in their opposition to Turkish rule, and in 1875 there
were revolts and upheavals. Andrássy failed to induce the
Ottoman government to adopt a reform program, and by 1876
Russian intervention seemed imminent. Russia offered to join
with Austria-Hungary in partitioning the Balkans between them,
but Andrássy believed that Austria-Hungary was a “saturated
state” unable to cope with more nationalities and lands, and for
a time he resisted the offer. He was aware, however, that Russia
could not be restrained altogether; thus, through Bismarck’s
mediation, there were concluded two secret agreements, at
Reichstadt (now Zákupy, Cz.Rep.) in July 1876 and at Budapest in
January 1877, whereby Russia gave up its plans for a “great
partition” and settled for the territory of Bessarabia and, in
return, acquiesced in Austria-Hungary’s acquiring Bosnia and
Herzegovina. Austria-Hungary and Russia agreed to refrain from
intervention for the time being, and it was only when
great-power mediation proved unable to settle the conflict
between Serbia and the Ottoman Empire that Russia declared war
on the Ottoman Empire in April 1877, after having again secured
Austro-Hungarian neutrality (see Russo-Turkish wars).
In February 1878, with the war won, the Russians did not
content themselves with Bessarabia and, in the Treaty of San
Stefano, violated Austria-Hungary’s Balkan interests by creating
a large independent Bulgaria. Having Great Britain as an ally in
his opposition to the Russian advance in southeastern Europe and
Bismarck as an “honest broker,” Andrássy managed at the Congress
of Berlin in July 1878 to force Russia to retreat from its
excessive demands. Bulgaria was broken up again, Serbian
independence was guaranteed, Russia retained Bessarabia, and
Austria-Hungary was allowed to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Military occupation of those two provinces turned out to be more
than the expected mere formality. It took 150,000 Habsburg
troops and several weeks of fighting before the lands were under
Habsburg authority. Since no agreement could be reached on
whether the newly acquired lands should aggrandize the Hungarian
or the Austrian part of the monarchy, they were placed under the
jurisdiction of the common Habsburg ministry of finance.
Domestic affairs, 1879–1908
Political realignment
The German liberals had opposed the Balkan policy of
Andrássy, and, out of fear that the Slav element in the monarchy
would be strengthened by the addition of a new Slav population,
they voted against the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina—in
this way withdrawing support from the government. When Prime
Minister Auersperg resigned, the era of German liberal
predominance came to an end. In 1879, the same year in which the
so-called Dual Alliance with the German Empire bound the
Habsburg monarchy to Germany’s foreign policy, the reappointment
of Taaffe as Austrian prime minister signified a reorientation
in domestic affairs. From 1879 onward, the German element in the
Habsburg monarchy was on the defensive, fighting stubborn and
senseless rearguard actions against the Slav drive for political
and national equality.
Taaffe first tried to form a cabinet above parties. It was to
include even the liberal Karl, Lord von Stremayr, who had
presided over a caretaker government after Auersperg’s
resignation. The situation in parliament decisively changed when
Taaffe persuaded the Czechs in 1879 to give up their boycott.
Taaffe then governed with the support of a conservative
coalition, including Slavs, German aristocrats, and clericals,
which gave itself the name of the Iron Ring. In April 1880,
language ordinances were issued that made Czech and German equal
languages in the “outer [public] services” in Bohemia and
Moravia. In 1882 the University of Prague was divided, giving
the Czechs a national university. In the same year, an electoral
reform reduced the tax requirement for the right to vote from 10
to 5 florins, thus enfranchising the more prosperous Czech
peasants and weakening the hold of the German middle class.
Despite the conservative character of the government,
political life in the Habsburg monarchy underwent a decisive
change during the Taaffe period. The traditional party lineup
decomposed, and new alignments and parties formed that were
essentially radical and aggressive. From 1890 well into the
1920s, political life in Austria was dominated by three
movements that originated in the 1880s: Pan-Germanism, Christian
Socialism, and Democratic Socialism.
In German Austria, especially in Vienna, moderate liberals
were increasingly challenged by extremist groups—notably German
nationalists. In 1882 their “Linz program” proposed the
restoration of German dominance in Austrian affairs by detaching
Galicia, Bukovina, and Dalmatia from the monarchy, by reducing
relations with Hungary to a purely personal union under the
monarch, and by establishing a customs union and other close
ties with the German Empire. This Pan-Germanic program found its
chief protagonist in Georg, Ritter (knight) von Schönerer, a
deputy to the Reichsrat, who also introduced a note of
anti-Semitism into German nationalism. Although his version of
extreme chauvinism and racialism never attracted more than a
small number of followers, in a modified and moderate way
Pan-Germanism and anti-Semitism became the ideological support
of the bureaucracy and officer corps; though these elements did
not favour union with Germany, they did feel that the Habsburg
monarchy had the task of bringing German culture to the
“inferior” non-German nationalities.
While Schönerer and Pan-Germanism appealed to the educated
classes, Karl Lueger transformed the Christian Socialism of
Karl, Freiherr (baron) von Voegelsang, into a political
organization that appealed to small shopkeepers, artisans,
tradesmen, and lower bourgeois circles of Vienna and the
surrounding countryside. The workers’ movement, formerly a
concern of welfare and adult-education societies, also
transformed itself into a political party. Although workers’
movements had been weakened in Austria by personal rivalries and
government persecution, in 1889 at a conference in Hainfeld,
Victor Adler managed to unite the competing Marxist groups into
the Social Democratic Party (see Marxism).
Taaffe continued to seek compromises between nationalities
that were becoming increasingly radical in their demands. The
Slav orientation of the Taaffe cabinet did not satisfy the
Czechs, for example, but rather encouraged a mood of
belligerence; because the moderate Old Czechs failed to live up
to radical demands, the nationalistic Young Czechs were able to
gain support from the electorate. In 1890 Taaffe tried to
negotiate an agreement between the Old Czechs and the German
liberals, whereby Bohemia would be divided for administrative
and judicial purposes along lines of nationality, but he was
balked by the more chauvinistic Young Czechs and German
nationalists, and his efforts led to riots in Prague in 1893.
When Emil Steinbach joined Taaffe’s cabinet as minister of
finance in 1891, he encouraged Taaffe and the emperor to try
electoral reform as an instrument of breaking nationalist
opposition. It was hoped that, by extending the franchise,
nationalistic antagonism could be allayed and the growing unrest
among urban workers could be placated. On Oct. 10, 1893, the
government introduced a suffrage bill that would have given the
vote to virtually every literate adult male (while preserving
the traditional system of voting in curiae). Conservative groups
of all nationalities joined forces against this bill, and, under
pressure from the Hungarian government, Taaffe had to resign on
Nov. 11, 1893.
Though failing in political matters, the cabinet had
introduced some economic reforms. Between 1888 and 1892 a system
of cooperative banks for farmers was organized, the taxation
system was revised, Austrian currency was stabilized by a return
to the gold standard, and the florin was replaced by the crown,
which remained the Austrian currency until 1924. The Taaffe
government is also remembered for social-reform legislation; the
laws of 1884 fixed the maximum working day at 11 hours, outlawed
the employment of children under 12, required a Sunday rest day
for workers, and set up compulsory insurance against accidents
and sickness.
Political turmoil
The franchise question continued to dominate Austrian
domestic affairs and became closely welded to the nationality
conflicts. The next Austrian prime minister, Alfred, Fürst
(prince) zu Windischgrätz (grandson of the Windischgrätz who
seized Prague in 1848), sought to win the support of parliament
by forming a cabinet in which the clerical conservatives, the
Poles, and the German liberals were represented. They were
united, however, only in opposition to universal suffrage. Each
minister defended his national cause, and the ministry was torn
by ceaseless conflict. The end came in June 1895, when the
government fulfilled an old promise and introduced Slovene
classes into the grammar school at Cilli (now Celje, Slvn.) in
Steiermark. Because the school had been exclusively German, this
was regarded as a grave blow to the German cause, and the German
liberals resigned, forcing Windischgrätz himself to resign.
Embittered by the conduct of the German liberals, Francis
Joseph on October 2 entrusted the task of solving Austria’s
problems to a Polish aristocrat, Kasimir Felix, Graf (count) von
Badeni, known as a “strong man” for the high-handed way in which
he had acted as governor of Galicia. Little noticed at the time,
the appointment of Badeni as Austrian prime minister symbolized
the breakdown of German control over the Habsburg monarchy. For
the first time in Habsburg history, Germans controlled none of
the key positions of government. Not only the prime minister but
also the finance minister (Leo, Ritter [knight] von Biliński)
and the foreign minister (Agenor, Graf Gołuchowski, who had
succeeded Gusztáv Siegmund, Graf Kálnoky von Köröspatak, in May
1895) came from the Polish part of the empire.
Badeni managed to induce parliament to accept a compromise
franchise bill that introduced qualified universal male suffrage
but preserved the system of class voting (a fifth curia was even
added). The shortcomings of the new system enraged the parties
representing the masses of the population. By 1897, however,
elections held on the basis of the new suffrage had strengthened
the radical elements in the Reichsrat; the Young Czechs, for
instance, had completely overwhelmed the conservative Old
Czechs.
In the 1870s and ’80s, decisive economic changes with
far-reaching social consequences had occurred in the Habsburg
lands. Though remaining primarily agrarian, they had undergone
an industrialization that had resulted in an unprecedented
growth of urban centres. Vienna, which had about 430,000
inhabitants in 1851, had become a metropolis of 1,800,000 by the
turn of the 20th century, and this phenomenon was paralleled in
other areas, especially in Bohemia, which had become the
industrial centre of the western part of the Habsburg lands.
These socioeconomic developments naturally began to affect
politics. From 1890 on, the advance of the Social Democrats and
the Christian Socialists caused considerable tension in Vienna.
In October 1894 the Social Democrats held their first impressive
orderly mass demonstration in the capital, and the communal
elections of 1895 made the Christian Socialists the strongest
party in Vienna, ending the long liberal rule. When the emperor
refused to confirm Karl Lueger, the popular leader of the
Christian Socialists, as mayor of Vienna, there were
demonstrations and protests. Not until Lueger was elected mayor
for the fifth time did Francis Joseph agree to confirm him, in
April 1897.
Counting on support from the Slav and conservative parties in
parliament, Badeni dared to take up the Bohemian-language
question again. In April 1897 he issued a famous language
ordinance that introduced Czech as a language equal to German
even in the “inner service”—i.e., for communications within
government departments. This decision meant that civil servants
in Bohemia and Moravia would have to be able to speak and write
Czech as well as German. Since many Germans refused to learn
Czech, the ordinance put them at a definite disadvantage in
Bohemia’s administration. The publication of the ordinance
provoked violent German reactions: university professors signed
resolutions of protest, mass meetings incited the public, and
German deputies in the Reichsrat began to obstruct all
legislative activities. The protest reached its climax in
November 1897, when parliamentary sessions turned into bedlam,
and popular protests against Badeni led to street
demonstrations. The mass protest was not restricted to Vienna.
It was even worse in some German towns in Bohemia; in Graz,
clashes between soldiers and the masses ended in the death of
one demonstrator.
To pacify the public, Francis Joseph gave in; on Nov. 28,
1897, he dismissed Badeni and asked Paul, Freiherr (baron)
Gautsch von Frankenthurn, a former minister of education, to
form a government out of the German parties of parliament.
Gautsch’s attempts to appease the Germans ran into obstruction
from the Czechs. The scene of violence shifted from Vienna to
Prague and from the Reichsrat to the Bohemian diet. In March
1898 Gautsch was replaced by the former governor of Bohemia,
Franz Anton, Fürst zu Thun und Hohenstein, who failed within a
year. Of his successors neither Manfred, Graf Clary und
Aldringen, who formally revoked the Badeni language ordinance,
nor Heinrich Wittek, who headed a short-lived cabinet of a few
weeks, managed to solve the nationality problem.
On Jan. 18, 1900, Francis Joseph asked Ernest von Koerber, a
former minister of the interior, to form a new cabinet. Koerber
was the only commoner to be appointed prime minister by Francis
Joseph. As a leading bureaucrat, he formed his ministry from the
ranks of other bureaucrats, concentrating in subsequent years on
the administration of public affairs and economic programs
rather than trying to deal with political problems. First by
imperial decree and then, after some political bargaining, by
consent of parliament, Koerber carried through a program of
economic expansion, social legislation, and administrative
reform; among his reforms was the liberation of the press from
government and police control. By devious politicking, he
managed to keep government activities free from national strife,
but he could not prevent national emotions from becoming more
and more extremist. The national conflict came to be fought over
educational matters, and in the final years of Koerber’s
government the desire for national universities aroused the
sentiments of Italians, Slovenes, and Ruthenians—turning the
traditional Czech-German conflict into a multinational one. In
December 1904 Koerber’s various maneuverings faltered, and he
was driven from office by a combination of parties.
The political climate in Austria was further complicated by
the worsening of relations between the emperor and the Hungarian
government. Hungarian separatists had agitated for the
separation of the Habsburg army, and when Francis Joseph used an
address to the troops at Chłopy (now in Poland) in 1903 for an
unequivocal reaffirmation of the common and unified character of
his army, a controversy developed that had repercussions in the
Austrian half of the Dual Monarchy. The plan to use universal
suffrage—for which popular demand had strongly increased since
the Russian Revolution of 1905—to break the opposition in
Hungary actually furthered the cause of political democracy in
Austria.
Electoral reform
Gautsch, who had been reappointed as prime minister, oversaw
a bill that would instate universal franchise in Austria. This
first bill, introduced to parliament in February 1906, ran into
the opposition of the middle-class and conservative parties that
still controlled parliament. Nevertheless, imperial interest and
popular pressure—the Social Democrats had organized mass rallies
to support the bill—combined to overcome parliamentary
opposition. After Gautsch resigned in March 1906 and his
successor, Conrad, Fürst (prince) von Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst,
failed to master the situation, Max Wladimir, Freiherr (baron)
von Beck (Austrian prime minister from June 1906), managed to
carry the bill through parliament. In January 1907 Francis
Joseph sanctioned the law, which gave the vote to every male
over age 23 and abolished the curiae.
The returns of the election of 1907 made the Germans
inescapably a minority in parliament, with 233 members, though
they certainly remained the strongest national group. (The
Czechs could count on 107 seats, the Poles 82, the Ruthenians
33, the Slovenes 24, the Italians 19, the Serbs and Croats 13,
and the Romanians 5.) Universal suffrage also brought the
expected decline of the chauvinistic parties. The Young Czechs
and the Pan-Germans were reduced to small factions without
parliamentary influence, while the Christian Socialists and the
Social Democrats returned as the two strongest parties out of
more than 30 represented in parliament; the socialist delegation
in the Austrian parliament was, in fact, larger than in any
other country. The Austrian constitution, however, did not force
the emperor to form his government according to the composition
of the parliament. Neither the Social Democrats nor the
Christian Socialists acquired any significant influence on the
shaping of Austrian government affairs.
Beck remained in office and satisfied the Christian
Socialists with some concessions but for the most part based his
policy on the support of the conservative parties. In 1905 the
diet of Moravia had succeeded in finding a compromise between
German and Czech national demands, and it was hoped that a
similar compromise could be achieved for Bohemia. But, within a
short time, national conflicts got the upper hand again, and
parliamentary debate and public opinion were once more excited
by national strife. In 1908, however, international
complications diverted attention from domestic affairs.
Foreign policy, 1878–1908
The occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878 had
reasserted Habsburg interests in Balkan affairs. Facing the
possibility of conflict with Russia in this area,
Austria-Hungary had looked for an ally, with the result that in
1879 Austria-Hungary and the German Empire had joined in the
Dual Alliance, by which the two sovereigns promised each other
support in the case of Russian aggression. The signing of the
Dual Alliance was Andrássy’s last act as foreign minister, but
the alliance survived as the main element in the international
position of the Habsburg monarchy until the last day of the
empire. Under Andrássy’s successors, Habsburg foreign policy
continued its conservative course.
In 1881 an alliance with Serbia, which after the Congress of
Berlin (1878) had turned to Austria-Hungary for protection, made
this Balkan state a satellite of the Habsburg monarchy. The
Three Emperors’ League (comprising Russia, Germany, and
Austria-Hungary) of the same year brought Russian recognition of
Habsburg predominance in the western part of the Balkan
Peninsula. The signatories of this alliance promised to consult
one another on any changes in the status quo in the Ottoman
Empire, and, while Russia was given assurances that its position
regarding Bulgaria and the Straits (the Dardanelles, the Sea of
Marmara, and the Bosporus) would be recognized, Austria-Hungary
received from Russia the promise that there would be no
objection to a possible annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in
the future.
The Three Emperors’ League was an important element in the
structure of alliances that German chancellor Bismarck set up to
stabilize Europe. Having decided to rely on Austria-Hungary as
the fundamental partner in international affairs, Bismarck had
to try to neutralize all the areas in which the Habsburg
monarchy might be drawn into a conflict. It was essential to
avoid being involved in a controversy at an inopportune moment
and in a region of little interest to Germany. Bismarck
therefore attempted to lessen the possibility of a conflict
between Austria-Hungary and Russia by making them partners in
the Three Emperors’ League. And when, in 1882, Italy approached
Germany to find a partner in its anti-French policy, Bismarck
used the opportunity to neutralize another European trouble
spot. He told the Italian foreign minister that the road to
Berlin led through Vienna, with the result that the Triple
Alliance (comprising Italy, Germany, and Austria-Hungary) was
signed in May 1882. It was primarily a defensive treaty against
a French attack on Italy or Germany. It further stated that, in
the event of any signatory coming to war with another power, the
partners of the alliance would remain neutral. The treaty did
not settle the problems still existing between the Habsburg
monarchy and the Italian kingdom, but for Bismarck it sufficed
that they were neutralized.
In 1883 Bismarck acted again to reduce the danger of war in
“Europe’s backyard” by arranging a defensive agreement between
Austria-Hungary and Romania. The Triple Alliance and the
Romanian Alliance not only strengthened the international status
quo but also gave security to the internal order of the Habsburg
monarchy by weakening the irredentist movements in Transylvania
and the Italian parts of Austria-Hungary. (See also
Irredentist.)
The deterioration of German-French relations in the following
years convinced Bismarck of the indispensability of the Triple
Alliance, and he made every effort to force Vienna to renew the
alliance in 1887. By threatening to withdraw protection against
Russian aggression, Bismarck forced the Austro-Hungarian foreign
minister Kálnoky to consent to his demands, but there can be no
doubt that Austria-Hungary was impeded in its national interests
by having to adapt its foreign policy to the German and Italian
demand for the isolation of France. Although Kálnoky succeeded
during the negotiations in avoiding any new obligation in
western Europe, he was less successful in defending
more-immediate Austrian interests. He managed to evade the
Italian request for the support of an active Italian colonial
policy, but he was unable to keep Italy out of involvement in
Balkan affairs. It might be that, in view of his own
conservative and defensive policy, he saw an advantage in having
Italy as a third partner in the maintenance of the status quo
against possible Russian expansion. At any rate, it was on
Kálnoky’s initiative that the original Italian demand for a
declaration in favour of the status quo along the Ottoman coasts
and the Adriatic and Aegean seas was extended to the interior of
the Balkan Peninsula. On top of this, Kálnoky granted the
Italians the right to ask for compensation in case of any change
in the territorial status quo without defining this term. In a
certain way, all the differences and clashes between Austrian
and Italian Balkan policy in the first decade of the 20th
century can be traced to the introduction of this clause (later
formulated in Article VII of the treaty) at the renewal of 1887.
In the same year, Bismarck built around the Triple Alliance a
system of alliances and agreements that amounted to complete
isolation of France and obliged the major European powers to
guarantee the status quo along the borders of the Ottoman
Empire. The First and Second Mediterranean Agreements of 1887
joined Great Britain to the powers (Austria-Hungary and Italy)
interested in blocking Russia from the Straits and enabled
Kálnoky to abandon direct agreements with Russia. The Three
Emperors’ League of 1881 was allowed to expire, and
Austria-Hungary was thus left without any formal understanding
with Russia. Gołuchowski, who followed Kálnoky as foreign
minister in 1895, decided that direct relations with Russia
should be renewed. In April 1897 Francis Joseph and Gołuchowski
visited St. Petersburg. The agreements signed as a result of
this initiative aimed to exclude Italy from Balkan affairs and
sought to entrust preservation of the Balkan order to the
bilateral cooperation of the two eastern monarchies rather than
to a multilateral alliance system. Thus, the final years of the
19th century were marked by a change from static continental
policy to a more dynamic world policy, and the ensuing mobility
in international relations reduced the value of the Triple
Alliance.
The Austro-Russian agreements of 1897 came to bear in 1903,
when a major revolt occurred in Macedonia. After a meeting
between Tsar Nicholas II and Francis Joseph in October 1903,
their foreign ministers drafted a reform program for the Ottoman
Empire. A mutual neutrality agreement was added in 1904, leaving
Austria-Hungary a free hand in the event of a conflict with
Italy and enabling Russia to turn and face Japan (see
Russo-Japanese War).
Explicitly excluded from the agreement with Russia were
Balkan conflicts. When King Alexander of Serbia was assassinated
in a military revolt in 1903 and the Obrenović dynasty was
replaced by the Karadjordjević, Serbian relations with the
Habsburg monarchy deteriorated. The Serbs adopted an
expansionist policy of unifying all South Slavs in the Serbian
kingdom, and, in order to block a Serbian advance, the Habsburg
monarchy applied economic pressure. In 1906 all livestock
imports from Serbia into Austria-Hungary were prohibited. This
conflict, the so-called Pig War, did not crush Serbia but rather
pushed it into the Russian camp.
When, in 1906, Gołuchowski was replaced as foreign minister
by the former ambassador to St. Petersburg, Alois, Graf (count)
Lexa von Aehrenthal, a turning point in Austrian foreign policy
was signaled. Aehrenthal made a belated effort to free
Austria-Hungary from its submission to German interests and to
engage in a dynamic Balkan policy. A first step was his proposal
for the construction of a railroad through the Sandžak of Novi
Pazar, a strip of land that separated Serbia from Montenegro.
The combined Russian and Serbian opposition forced Aehrenthal to
abandon the project temporarily and made it clear that any
advance in the Balkans would probably result in war with Serbia
and perhaps with Russia as well.
The danger of such a conflict arose within a short time. In
July 1908, after a revolution in the Ottoman Empire, the Young
Turk movement announced the reform of the Ottoman constitution.
Afraid that this constitutional change could undermine the
Habsburg position in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which nominally
were still under Ottoman suzerainty, Aehrenthal decided to use
the opportunity to fortify the Austro-Hungarian position in the
Balkan Peninsula. In September 1908 he met with the Russian
foreign minister, Aleksandr, Count Izvolsky, and secured, so he
thought, Russian approval of the proposed annexation in return
for Austria’s support in having the Straits opened to Russian
warships. On Oct. 6, 1908, the annexation was announced,
immediately bringing a violent reaction from Serbia. When
Izvolsky found that his plans for the Straits were opposed by
Great Britain and France, he retracted his tentative support of
Austria and supported the Serbian position. The situation became
serious, and for a while war seemed imminent. Franz, Freiherr
(baron) Conrad von Hötzendorf, the chief of the general staff of
the Habsburg monarchy, who had long advocated preventive war,
pushed for an aggressive move, but Aehrenthal had apparently
never planned more than going to the brink of war. In March 1909
a German ultimatum forced the Russians to withdraw their support
from Serbia, and, since the Turkish government had agreed to the
annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in return for a monetary
compensation, Serbia also had to come to terms with the Habsburg
monarchy. The Bosnian crisis was settled, but the Serbs felt
their national pride deeply wounded and continued to stir unrest
in the South Slav provinces of the Habsburg monarchy.
Last years of peace
Conflicts of nationality
The annexation crisis had repercussions among the other Slav
nationalities in the monarchy. For several years Czechs had been
attracted by the Pan-Slav movement, and in July 1908 a Pan-Slav
congress was held in Prague (see Pan-Slavism). During the
diplomatic crisis of the following winter, the Czechs
unabashedly took the side of the Serbs, and, on the day of the
60th anniversary of Francis Joseph’s accession to the throne,
martial law had to be declared in Prague. National strife broke
out all over the monarchy, and parliamentary activities were all
but blocked by filibustering and the riotous activities of the
deputies. Austrian prime minister Beck had resigned in November
1908; his successor, Richard, Freiherr (baron) von Bienerth,
after having accomplished little with a cabinet of civil
servants, tried to appease the nationalities by including
Landsmannminister (national representatives) in his cabinet
(February 1909).
Obstruction in parliament continued. The Germans, in control
of the government and the central administration, continued to
assign to the monarchy the role of an outpost of German culture;
the Slavs increasingly wanted to make Austria the home of Slav
national aspirations. The Czech agrarian leader František Udržal
stated in parliament: “We wish to save the Austrian parliament
from utter ruin, but we wish to save it for the Slavs of
Austria, who form two-thirds of the population.” A population
census taken in 1910 more or less confirmed the Slav claim: out
of the 28,324,940 inhabitants of the western half of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, nearly 36 percent regarded themselves
as Germans, whereas more than 60 percent regarded themselves as
Slavs—nearly 18 percent as Poles, about 13 percent as
Ruthenians, about 23 percent as Czechs or Slovaks, nearly 5
percent as Slovenes, and almost 3 percent as Serbs or Croats.
(Less than 3 percent identified themselves as Italians.) Slav
predominance was weakened by the attitude of the Poles, who
remained loyal to the central government, allowing the national
conflict to assume the character of a primarily Czech-German
quarrel.
Even the Social Democratic Party could not overcome
nationalist antagonism. In 1899, at the party congress at Brünn
(now Brno, Cz.Rep.), the Social Democrats had presented a
national reform program based on democratic federalism, which
would have granted the right of national decisions to
territorial units formed on a basis of nationality. Karl Renner
and Otto Bauer, who later became leaders of German-Austrian
socialism, drafted various programs for the solution of the
nationality problem in books published between 1900 and 1910.
But these efforts could not prevent the socialists from
splitting along national lines too, and in 1910 the Czech
socialists declared themselves independent of the Social
Democratic Party.
Party rivalries
Such national differences weakened the socialist position in
the elections of 1911. More than 50 parties had competed in the
campaign, and, since the German nationalist parties had allied
in the Deutscher Nationalverband (German National League), they
managed to return to parliament as the strongest single party,
gaining 104 seats out of 516. The Christian Socialists, weakened
by personal rivalry, suffered heavy losses, winning only 76
seats. The Social Democrats received 44 seats and the Czech
Social Democrats 24. The Czech parties were badly divided, with
those representing the Czech middle class gaining 64 seats.
Prime Minister Bienerth found himself unable to form a workable
ministry, and he was replaced by Gautsch, reappointed for the
third and final time, who tried to reconcile the Germans and the
Czechs.
For a while negotiations seemed quite successful, but
extremist incidents deadlocked the talks, and the Gautsch
cabinet was replaced by a new ministry headed by Karl, Graf
(count) von Stürgkh, in November 1911. Unable to deal with the
nationality problem in a parliamentarian fashion, Stürgkh
repeatedly suspended the Reichsrat. It was characteristic of the
general political climate in Europe that Stürgkh had to
concentrate his legislative program on the improvement of
Austrian armament, for international crises overshadowed the
nationality conflict.
Conflict with Serbia
Since the Bosnian crisis of 1908–09, Austrian diplomats had
been convinced that war with Serbia was bound to come.
Aehrenthal died in February 1912, at a moment when an
Italian-Turkish conflict over Tripoli (now in Libya) had
provoked anti-Turkish sentiment in the Balkan states (see
Italo-Turkish War). Leopold, Graf (count) von Berchtold, who
directed Austro-Hungarian foreign policy from 1912 on, did not
have the qualities required in such a critical period.
Aehrenthal had been able to silence the warmongering activities
of Conrad, the Habsburg chief of staff who continued to advocate
preventive war against Italy and Serbia, but Berchtold yielded
to the aggressive policies of the military and the younger
members of his ministry. During the Balkan Wars (1912–13),
fought by the Balkan states over the remnants of the Ottoman
Empire, Austria-Hungary twice tried to force Serbia to withdraw
from positions gained by threatening it with an ultimatum. In
February and October 1913, military action against Serbia was
contemplated, but in both instances neither Italy nor Germany
was willing to guarantee support. Austria-Hungary ultimately had
to acquiesce in Serbia’s territorial gains. But by supporting
Bulgaria’s claims against Serbia, Austria-Hungary also had
alienated Romania, which had shown resentment against the
Habsburg monarchy because of the treatment of non-Hungarian
nationalities in Hungary. Romania thus joined Italy and Serbia
in support of irredentist movements inside the Habsburg
monarchy. By 1914, leading government circles in Vienna were
convinced that offensive action against the foreign protagonists
of irredentist claims was essential to the integrity of the
empire.
In June 1914 Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir of Francis
Joseph, participated in army maneuvers in the provinces of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, disregarding warnings that his visit
would arouse considerable hostility. When Francis Ferdinand and
his wife were assassinated by the Bosnian Serb nationalist
Gavrilo Princip at Sarajevo (Bos.-Her.) on June 28, 1914, the
Austro-Hungarian foreign office decided to use the opportunity
for a final reckoning with the Serbian danger. The support of
Germany was sought and received, and the Austro-Hungarian
foreign office drafted an ultimatum putting the responsibility
for the assassination on the Serbian government and demanding
full satisfaction. The attitude of the foreign office was shared
by Conrad and the Austrian prime minister, Stürgkh, but it was
opposed by the Hungarian prime minister, István, Count Tisza,
who wanted an assurance that a military move against Serbia
would not result in territorial acquisitions and thus increase
the Serb element in the monarchy. His demand satisfied, Tisza
joined the advocates of war.
In ministerial meetings on July 15 and 19, a deliberately
provocative ultimatum was drafted in words that supposedly
excluded the possibility of acceptance by Serbia. The ultimatum
was handed to the Serbian government on July 23. The Serbian
answer, handed in on time on July 25, was declared insufficient,
though Serbia had agreed to all Austro-Hungarian demands except
for two that, in effect, entailed constitutional changes in the
Serbian government. These demands were that certain unnamed
Serbian officials be dismissed at the whim of Austria-Hungary
and that Austro-Hungarian officials participate, on Serbian
soil, in the suppression of organizations hostile to
Austria-Hungary and in the judicial proceedings against their
members. In its reply, the Serbian government pointed out that
such demands were unprecedented in relations between sovereign
states, but it nevertheless agreed to submit the matter to the
international Permanent Court of Arbitration or to the
arbitration of the Great Powers (comprising France, Germany,
Great Britain, and Russia, in addition to Austria). On receiving
this reply, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador left Belgrade
(Serb.), severing diplomatic relations between the two
countries.
Foreign Minister Berchtold and his government were clearly
determined to make war on Serbia, regardless of the fact that
such action might result in war between the Great Powers. While
the European governments frantically tried to offer compromise
solutions, Austria decided on a fait accompli. On July 28, 1914,
Berchtold asked Francis Joseph to sign the declaration of war,
informing him that
it cannot be excluded that the [Triple] Entente powers
[Russia, France, and Great Britain] might make another move to
bring about a peaceful settlement of the conflict unless a
declaration of war establishes a fait accompli [eine klare
Situation geschaffen].
In the meantime, the German government had taken control of
the situation. Placing German strategic and national plans over
Austro-Hungarian interests, Germany changed the Balkan conflict
into a continental war by declaring war against Russia and
France.
World War I
The German declaration of war subordinated the
Austro-Serbian conflict to the German aim of settling its own
rivalries with France and Russia. According to the terms of the
military agreement between Germany and Austria-Hungary, the
Austro-Hungarian army had to abandon plans to conquer Serbia and
instead protect the German invasion of France against Russian
intervention. The setbacks that the Austrian army suffered in
1914 and 1915 can be attributed to a large extent to the fact
that Austria-Hungary became a military satellite of Germany from
the first day of the war, though it cannot be denied that the
Austrian high command proved to be quite incompetent. The
Austro-Hungarian chief of staff, Conrad, had clamoured for
preventive war since 1906, but, when he received his chance in
July 1914, it turned out that the Austrian army had no plans for
an expeditious offensive. Similarly, after Italy entered the war
on the side of the Allied Powers in May 1915, Conrad was
unprepared. The fact that only after the Germans had taken
command could the Russian front be stabilized did little to
enhance the prestige of the Austrian government.
In July 1914 parliament was out of session, and the Austrian
prime minister, Stürgkh, refused to convene it. This and the
military censorship established immediately after the outbreak
of the war concealed the discontent of the non-German
population. While German public opinion in Austria had welcomed
the war enthusiastically, and while some Polish leaders
supported the war out of anti-Russian feeling, the Czech
population openly showed its animosity. The Czech leader Tomáš
Masaryk, who had been one of the most prominent spokesmen of the
Czech cause, emigrated to western Europe in protest. Karel
Kramář, who had supported the Pan-Slav idea, was tried for high
treason and found guilty on the basis of shaky evidence. German
nationalism was riding high, but in fact the German Austrians
had little influence left. In military matters they were
practically reduced to executing Germany’s orders; in economic
affairs the Hungarians, who controlled the food supply, had the
decisive influence. The Hungarian prime minister, Tisza, who had
opposed the war in July 1914, became the strongman of the
empire. On his advice Foreign Minister Berchtold was dismissed
in January 1915, and the foreign office was again entrusted to a
Hungarian, István, Count Burián. But Burián failed to keep Italy
and Romania out of the war. German attempts to pacify the two
states by concessions were unsuccessful because Francis Joseph
was unwilling to cede any territory in response to the
irredentist demands of the two nations. How little the outward
calm in the Habsburg lands corresponded to the sentiment of the
population became apparent when Stürgkh was assassinated in
October 1916 by Friedrich Adler, the pacifist son of Victor
Adler, the leader of Austrian socialism. Francis Joseph made
Koerber prime minister once again, but Koerber had no chance to
develop a program of his own.
On Nov. 21, 1916, Francis Joseph died, leaving the throne and
the shaky empire to his 29-year-old grandnephew, Charles (I),
who had had little preparation for his task until he became heir
apparent on the death of Francis Ferdinand. Full of the best
intentions, Charles set out to save the monarchy by searching
for peace in foreign affairs and by recognizing the rights of
the empire’s non-German and non-Hungarian nationalities. Charles
relied heavily on the advice of politicians who had had the
confidence of Francis Ferdinand. He dismissed Koerber in
December 1916 and made Heinrich, Graf (count) von Clam-Martinic,
a Czech aristocrat, prime minister. At the foreign office he
replaced Burián with Ottokar, Count Czernin.
When parliament was reconvened in May 1917, it became
manifest how far internal disintegration of the Habsburg
monarchy had progressed. Parliament again became the stage of
unrelenting national conflicts. Finding so little support from
the Czech side, Charles turned back to the German element, and
in June 1917 he made Ernst von Seidler, once his tutor in
administrative and international law, prime minister. Although
he tried to appease the Czechs, the stubborn insistence of the
Germans not to yield any of their prerogatives made reform of
the empire impossible.
At the same time, various moves to get Austria-Hungary out of
the war ended in failure. After a U.S. offer of general
mediation had miscarried in December 1916, Charles tried through
secret channels to deal directly with the Triple Entente powers.
In the spring of 1917 an exchange of peace feelers took place
through the mediation of his brother-in-law, Sixtus, Fürst
(prince) von Bourbon-Parma, but Italy’s unwillingness to abandon
some of the concessions granted to it in the 1915 Treaty of
London (by which Italy joined the Allies) made these talks
abortive. Similarly, negotiations with Allied representatives
carried on in Switzerland brought no results.
Since the Austro-Hungarian government was unable to extricate
itself from the Dual Alliance, which tied Austria-Hungary to
Germany, France and England ceased to have regard for the
integrity of the Habsburg monarchy. Furthermore, the
revolutionary events in Russia in 1917 and the entry of the
United States into the war introduced a new, ideological element
into Allied policy toward the German-led coalition known as the
Central Powers. The German-directed governments represented an
authoritarian system of government, and national agitation in
the Habsburg lands assumed the character of a democratic
liberation movement, winning the sympathies of western European
and American public opinion. From early 1918 the Allied
governments began to officially promote the activities of the
émigrés from Austria, foremost among them the Czech leader
Masaryk, and in April 1918 the Congress of Oppressed
Nationalities was organized in Rome.
But the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy cannot be ascribed
to the Allied policy of supporting the independence claims of
the Habsburg nationalities, which was only a belated adjustment
to the changed conditions within Austria-Hungary. From the
summer of 1917, the activities of the nationalist movements
within the empire made the situation increasingly untenable. Two
days before U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson proclaimed his Fourteen
Points—one of which demanded the reorganization of the Habsburg
monarchy in accordance with the principles of national
autonomy—the Czechs demanded outright independence (Jan. 6,
1918). Within a month Polish and South Slav deputies, together
with the Czechs, presented to the Reichsrat a program demanding
the establishment of independent constituent assemblies for
nationally homogeneous areas.
End of the Habsburg empire
As World War I raged and the national independence
movement reached its final stage, another destabilizing
development manifested itself. From 1915 on, the supply
situation had worsened increasingly, and by January 1918 there
were dangerous shortages, especially of food. Prompted by the
difficult food situation and inspired by the Bolshevik victory
in Russia (see Russian Revolution of 1917), a strike movement
developed in the Habsburg lands. Demands for more bread and a
demand for peace were combined with nationalist claims resulting
in open opposition to the government. The strikes among the
civilian population were followed by mutinies in the army and
navy. In January and February 1918 the army and the government
succeeded in suppressing the social unrest and antiwar
demonstrations. But, from the same date, the national opposition
movement gathered momentum.
The hopes that the government soon placed on peace
settlements with the eastern states were not fulfilled. The
treaties of Brest-Litovsk with Ukraine (signed in February 1918)
and with Soviet Russia (March 3, 1918) as well as the Treaty of
Bucharest, which established peace with Romania (May 7, 1918),
did not alleviate the supply situation and irritated the Poles
because of certain provisions of the Ukrainian settlement.
In April 1918 Czernin was replaced as foreign minister by
Burián. This change resulted from the conflict between Czernin
and Charles over the desirability and possibility of Austria’s
concluding a separate peace with the Allies. When Charles’s
secret overtures to the Allies in 1917 were revealed by French
premier Georges Clemenceau, the Germans were outraged, and
Czernin was dismissed on their orders. Burián returned to the
foreign office on April 16 and immediately reported to the
German high command at Spa (Belg.), where he and Charles had to
assure the German emperor, William II, of their unchanging
loyalty. While this act of submission satisfied the German
Austrians, it further incensed the Slav opposition.
In May 1918 a Slav national celebration in Prague
demonstrated the strength of the independence movements. But
Charles and the German elements in the central government were
still not aware of the extent of the disintegration. In July
1918 Prime Minister Seidler resigned, and his successor, Max
Hussarek, Freiherr (baron) von Heinlein, began a belated effort
to reorganize the Habsburg monarchy. Hussarek’s efforts to
federalize the empire in the moment of imminent military defeat
unintentionally turned out to provide the basis for the formal
liquidation of the Habsburg monarchy. On Oct. 16, 1918, Charles
issued a manifesto announcing the transformation of Austria into
a federal union of four components: German, Czech, South Slav,
and Ukrainian. The Poles were to be free to join a Polish state,
and the port of Trieste was to be given a special status. The
lands of the Hungarian crown were to be excepted from this
program.
Within a few days, national councils were established in all
the provinces of the empire, and for all practical purposes they
acted as national governments. The Poles proclaimed the union of
all Poles in a unified state and declared their independence at
Warsaw on Oct. 7, 1918; the South Slavs advocated union with
Serbia; and on Oct. 28, 1918, the Czechs proclaimed the
establishment of an independent republic. The dissolution of the
Habsburg monarchy was thus consummated by the end of October
1918—that is, before the war actually ended.
It was impossible for the country to survive another winter
of hostilities, and on Sept. 14, 1918, Burián published an
appeal to all belligerents to discuss the possibilities of
ending the war. When this move was opposed by the Germans as
well as by the Allies, Burián tried for a separate peace
settlement for Austria-Hungary. On Oct. 14, 1918, he sent a note
to President Wilson asking for an armistice on the basis of the
Fourteen Points. On October 18 the U.S. secretary of state,
Robert Lansing, replied that, in view of the political
development of the preceding months and, especially, in view of
the fact that the new country of Czechoslovakia had been
recognized as being at war with the Central Powers, the U.S.
government was unable to deal on the basis of the Fourteen
Points anymore. On October 27 Gyula, Gróf (Count) Andrássy (the
son of the former foreign minister Andrássy), who had replaced
Burián three days before as foreign minister, sent a new note to
Wilson; in asking for an armistice, he declared full adherence
to the statements set forth in the U.S. note of October 18, thus
explicitly recognizing the existence of an independent
Czechoslovak state. From this moment, it remained only to
liquidate the war.
On October 22 Heinrich Lammasch, a renowned authority in the
field of international law and a respected pacifist, formed a
new cabinet. He hoped to save the Habsburg monarchy by drawing
up a federative structure. Instead, however, he found himself
charged with the task of supervising the dissolution of the
empire and bringing about an orderly transfer of power. The
government could not influence events outside Vienna any longer,
and from October 30 it was even challenged in the central
agencies by the German-Austrian state council.
Hostilities were ended by an armistice signed on Nov. 3,
1918. The Austro-Hungarian high command, which had blundered
into the war unprepared in 1914, did little better at its
conclusion. Owing to inaccuracies in the wording of the
documents, more than 300,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers were
taken prisoner by the Italian army.
For some days, the government hoped that, in spite of the
secession of the Slav areas, the Habsburg dynasty could survive
in the remaining lands. But even the German Austrians had lost
faith in the Habsburgs, and, with revolutionary agitation on the
rise and republican passion widespread, Charles adhered to the
advice of Lammasch and decided to waive his rights to exercise
political authority. On Nov. 11, 1918, he issued a proclamation
acknowledging “in advance the decision to be taken by German
Austria” and stating that he relinquished all part in the
administration of the state. The declaration of November 11
marks the formal dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy.
First Republic and the Anschluss
Early postwar years
On Oct. 21, 1918, the 210 German members of the Reichsrat of
Austria formed themselves into the National Assembly for
German-Austria, and on October 30 they proclaimed this an
independent state under the direction of the State Council
(Staatsrat), composed of the leaders of the three main parties
(Social Democrats, Christian Socialists, and German
Nationalists) and other elected members. Revolutionary
disturbances in Vienna and, more important, the news of the
declaration of a republic in Germany forced the State Council on
the republican path (see The Weimar Republic, 1918–33). On
November 12, the day after Charles’s abdication, the National
Assembly resolved unanimously that “German-Austria is a
democratic republic” and also that “German-Austria is a
component part of the German republic.” Under the title of
chancellor, the socialist Renner became head of a coalition
government, with Bauer, the acknowledged spokesman of the left
wing of the Social Democrats, as foreign secretary. On November
22 the territory of the republic was further defined: the
National Assembly claimed for the new state all the Habsburg
lands in which a majority of the population was German. It also
claimed the German areas of Bohemia and Moravia.
From the first day, the republic was faced with the
disastrous heritage of the war. Four years of war effort and the
breakup of the Habsburg empire had brought economic exhaustion
and chaos. The resulting social distress and poverty inspired
revolutionary activities, making bolshevism appear the greatest
danger to the new republic, especially after a Soviet republic
was established in Hungary at the end of March 1919. The
Austrian Social Democrats were determined to resist bolshevism
with their own forces without making an alliance (as the German
Social Democrats did) with the old order. The Volkswehr
(People’s Guard) was organized and was twice effective (April 17
and June 15) against communist attempts at a putsch. Bauer and
fellow socialist leader Friedrich Adler staked their popularity
on defeating the communist agitation in the workers’ and
soldiers’ councils, which had been set up on the Soviet model.
By mid-1919, political and social order was restored on
parliamentary lines, and the Communist Party relapsed into
insignificance.
More dangerous was the tendency of the Länder (states) to
break away from Vienna or to claim almost complete independence.
Though the principal motive of this was reluctance to send food
supplies to Vienna, it also represented a genuine social,
political, and ideological conflict: the administration of the
industrialized capital was socialist controlled, while the
states, being predominantly agrarian, remained conservative and
faithful to the Roman Catholic tradition. This difference was
aggravated by the fact that the Habsburg monarchy had been the
only bond between the German Austrian lands; with the abdication
of the emperor, no symbol of loyalty common to all states
remained. Vorarlberg voted for union with Switzerland in May
1919, and Tirol also attempted to secede.
In February 1919, elections for a constitutional assembly
were held. The Social Democrats were returned as the largest
single party, with 69 seats. The Christian Socialists won 63 and
the German Nationalists 26. When this assembly met (March 4), it
had to make wide concessions to federalism in order to appease
the states. In exchange, Vienna was elevated to the rank of a
state, and the mayor was made the equivalent of a state
governor. This proviso subsequently enabled socialist-controlled
Vienna to pursue an autonomous policy, even though the
Bundesregierung (“federal government”) was controlled by the
conservative parties from 1920 to 1934.
The constituent assembly also settled the constitution of the
federal republic (Oct. 1, 1920). The State Council was
abolished, and a bicameral legislative assembly, the
Bundesversammlung, was established. The Bundesrat (upper house)
was to exercise only a suspensive veto and was to be elected
roughly in proportion to the population in each state. This
represented a defeat for the federal elements in the states,
which had wanted the Bundesrat to exercise an absolute veto and
to be composed of equal numbers of members from each state. The
Nationalrat (lower house) was to be elected by universal
suffrage on a basis of proportional representation. The
Bundesversammlung in full session elected the president of the
republic for a four-year term, but the federal government, with
the chancellor at its head, was elected in the Nationalrat on a
motion submitted by its principal committee; this committee was
itself representative of the proportions of the parties in the
house.
The foreign policy of Bauer and the representatives of the
major political parties had insisted firmly on Anschluss
(“union”) with Germany, and, as late as 1921, unauthorized
plebiscites held in the western provinces returned overwhelming
majorities in favour of the union. But Article 88 of the Treaty
of Saint-Germain (1919), signed by Austria and the Allied
Powers, forbade Anschluss without the consent of the League of
Nations and stipulated that the republic should cease to call
itself Deutschösterreich (German-Austria); it became the
Republik Österreich (Republic of Austria). The Austrian claim
for the German-speaking areas of Bohemia and Moravia was denied
by the Saint-Germain peace conference, and Austria also had to
recognize the frontiers of Czechoslovakia along slightly
rectified historical administrative lines. On Austria’s southern
frontier, the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and
Slovenes threatened armed invasion until it was decided that the
border question should be settled by a plebiscite, which, on
Oct. 10, 1920, returned a majority of 59 percent in favour of
Austria. The German-speaking districts of western Hungary were
to be ceded to Austria outright, but Austria, in the face of
Hungarian resistance, was obliged to hold a plebiscite. The area
of Sopron was finally restored to Hungary.
After the elections of February 1919, Renner had formed
another coalition government; however, following a government
crisis in the summer of 1920, a caretaker cabinet under the
Christian Socialist Michael Mayr was formed. This was the
government that prepared the draft of the constitution and
introduced it into parliament. After its approval, new elections
were held on Oct. 17, 1920. The Christian Socialists were
returned as the strongest party, gaining 82 seats, while the
Social Democrats were reduced to 66 and the German Nationalists
to 20. Mayr formed a cabinet composed of Christian Socialists;
the Social Democrats went into opposition and never returned to
the government during the First Republic.
This political division hardened, and no decisive change took
place during the following years. The system of proportional
representation combined with the ideological background of
Austrian parties made oscillations of political allegiance
unlikely. Of the two mass parties, the Social Democrats had an
unshakable majority in Vienna (in which about a third of the
republic’s population lived), while the Christian Socialists had
an equally secure majority among the Roman Catholic peasants and
the conservative classes, the latter consisting largely of army
officers, landowners, and big businesses. The urban middle
classes, hostile to both workers and peasants, became German
Nationalists. But German nationalism was not limited to the
middle classes. Many workers and peasants felt themselves to be
Germans and responded to the national appeal.
Economic reconstruction and political strife
The main task of the nonsocialist governments in power from
the autumn of 1920 was to restore financial and economic
stability. Between 1919 and 1921 Austria’s urban population
lived largely on relief from the United States and Great
Britain, and, although production improved, distress was
heightened by inflation that threatened financial collapse in
1922. In October 1922 the chancellor, Ignaz Seipel, secured a
large loan through the League of Nations, enabling Austrian
finances to be stabilized. In return, Austria had to undertake
to remain independent for at least 20 years. The controller
general appointed by the League of Nations reported in December
1925 that the Austrian budget had been balanced satisfactorily,
and in March 1926 international financial supervision was
withdrawn.
Seipel’s success in October 1922 gave Austria some years of
stability and made economic reconstruction and relative
prosperity possible. In socialist-controlled Vienna, an
ambitious program of working-class housing, health schemes, and
adult education was carried out under the leadership of Karl
Seitz, Hugo Breitner, and Julius Tandler. “Red Vienna” thus
acquired a unique reputation in Europe.
In 1920 all three major parties spoke in democratic terms.
Despite democratic rhetoric, however, preparations for civil war
had never been abandoned. The Christian Socialists, led by
Seipel, a believer in strong government, were convinced that
they had to protect the existing social order against a Marxist
revolution. In the provinces, reactionary forces known as the
Heimwehr (Home Defense Force)—originally formed for defense
against Slavs invading from the south or against marauding
soldiers returning from service in World War I—gradually
acquired fascist tendencies (see fascism). The Social Democrats,
who felt that their social-reform program was endangered, had
their own armed force, the Schutzbund (Defense League),
descended from the People’s Guard of 1918.
The Schutzbund and the reactionary forces regularly
demonstrated against each other. In 1927, in the course of a
clash between members of the Schutzbund and reactionary forces
at Schattendorf, an old man and a child were accidentally shot
by reactionaries. When the latter were acquitted by a Vienna
jury on July 14, the Social Democrats called for a mass
demonstration, which got out of hand and ended in the burning
down of the ministry of justice. In fighting between the police
and the demonstrators, almost 100 people were killed and many
more were wounded. The Social Democrats then launched a general
strike, but it was called off after four days. Seipel had
violently asserted the government’s authority, and the balance
between socialist and nonsocialist forces in Austria was never
secure after this decisive date.
The Christian Socialists, pressed increasingly by the
Heimwehr, began to take the offensive against the Social
Democrats. Wilhelm Miklas, a leading Christian Socialist, was
elected president in 1928, successor to the nonparty Michael
Hainisch, who had been in office since December 1920. There were
repeated attempts to revise the constitution, principally with
the object of strengthening the power of the executive. After
protracted negotiations, a compromise was reached late in 1929.
On Dec. 7, 1929, a series of constitutional amendments gave
increased powers to the president. Of particular importance were
the rights to appoint ministers and issue emergency decrees. But
Vienna maintained its autonomy, and the democratic principle was
preserved against the far-reaching authoritarian demands of the
Heimwehr. In the elections of November 1930, the Social
Democrats were returned as the largest single party, with 72
seats. The Christian Socialists held 66, the German Nationalists
19, and the Heimwehr, now posing as a fascist party on the
Italian model, 8.
These political events were overshadowed by the great world
economic crisis (see Great Depression). Though the Social
Democratic Party’s leaders believed that the crisis should be
met by the orthodox means of deflation and spending cuts, they
were resolved not to be compromised by supporting these measures
and refused to enter a coalition government. On the other hand,
in October 1931 they acquiesced in suspending the election of
the president by direct popular vote, as had been provided by
the constitution of 1929, and agreed to the reelection of
President Miklas by parliament. The government, meanwhile, led
by Chancellors Johann Schober (1929–30) and Otto Ender
(1930–31), was driven to desperate devices to stave off
collapse. Schober, leader of the middle-class German
Nationalists, launched a project for a customs union with
Germany in March 1931; this provoked violent opposition from
France and the alliance of the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia,
Yugoslavia, and Romania) and was subsequently condemned by a
majority of the Permanent Court of International Justice at The
Hague. The bankruptcy in May 1931 of the Creditanstalt, the
country’s most influential banking house, brought Austria close
to financial and economic disaster. This, together with the rise
of the National Socialists in Germany, resulted in considerable
support being given to the Nazis in Austria (see National
Socialism; Nazi Party). Provincial elections in 1932 showed that
the Nazis were draining off votes from the conservative parties.
The Nationalists began to demand a general election, and this
demand was taken up by the Social Democrats, who saw a chance of
winning a majority in parliament.
Authoritarianism: Dollfuss and Schuschnigg
After the election, when Engelbert Dollfuss came to form a
Christian Socialist government on May 20, 1932, he could count
on a majority of only one vote. Chancellor Dollfuss belonged to
a new generation that had been educated in the conservative
conviction that the Western form of parliamentary government had
been forced upon the central Europeans as a result of military
defeat and socialist revolution and that the political and
social order could be restored only by the establishment of some
kind of strong authority. The leaders of the Christian Socialist
Party found themselves under attack from two ideological
enemies, the Marxists and the Nazis, who apparently threatened
the very basis of the conservative order. In reaction, Dollfuss
determined to replace parliamentary government with an
authoritarian system. The opportunity to do this came in March
1933, when, during a debate on a minor bill, an argument arose
over alleged irregularities in the voting procedure. The
president of the Nationalrat resigned, the two vice presidents
followed his example, and Dollfuss declared that parliament had
proved unworkable. It never met again in full, and Dollfuss
governed thereafter by emergency decree.
By this time (spring of 1933), Adolf Hitler was in power in
Germany, and Nazi propaganda for the incorporation of Austria
was greatly increased. Dollfuss turned to fascist Italy and
authoritarian Hungary for help, as he was convinced that British
and French aid would be ineffective. This shift in foreign
policy also can be attributed to the fact that Dollfuss had to
rely ever more strongly on the help of the pro-fascist Heimwehr
to stay in power.
The Social Democrats were subjected to increasing provocation
and on Feb. 12, 1934, took to arms. Civil war followed. After
four days of fighting, Dollfuss and the Heimwehr were
victorious. The Social Democratic Party was declared illegal and
driven underground. In the course of the same year, all
political parties were abolished except the Fatherland Front
(Vaterländische Front), which Dollfuss had founded in 1933 to
unite all conservative groups. In April 1934 the rump of the
parliament was brought together and accepted an authoritarian
constitution. The executive was given complete control over the
legislative branch of government; the elected assemblies
disappeared and were replaced by advisory bodies, appointed in a
complicated and futile fashion. The rights of man guaranteed
under the democratic constitution also were swept away (see
human rights). “Republic” was removed from the official name of
the country, which became merely the Federal State of Austria.
On July 25, 1934, a group of Nazis seized the chancellery and
attempted to proclaim a government. Dollfuss, whom they had
taken prisoner, was murdered. The plan, however, miscarried: the
Nazis in the chancellery were compelled to surrender, and their
leaders were executed; a Nazi rising in Steiermark was
suppressed; and Hitler, faced with the mobilization of an
Italian army on the Brenner Pass, repudiated his Austrian
followers. Franz von Papen was sent as German ambassador to
reduce Austria by other means.
Kurt von Schuschnigg, who became chancellor on the death of
Dollfuss, was a man of gentler personality and of less-violent
political passions. His administration of the authoritarian
constitution was in the easygoing Austrian fashion, less
oppressive than in Italy and Germany. Schuschnigg had a mild
preference for restoring the Habsburgs, but he shrank from the
international complications this would involve. The regime
drifted on without popular favour, weakened by the personal
rivalries and ambitions of its leaders and sustained only by a
guarantee from Italy. The temporary accord of Great Britain,
France, and Italy in the Stresa Front (April 1935) seemed to
promise new security, but the Italo-Ethiopian War soon destroyed
the unity of the Western powers, and Austria’s isolation was
complete when Hitler and Italian leader Benito Mussolini allied
themselves in 1936.
Schuschnigg had to negotiate a compromise with Germany, which
was signed on July 11, 1936; Germany promised to respect
Austrian sovereignty, and in return Austria acknowledged itself
“a German state.” The agreement left Austria open to Nazi
infiltration. In January 1938 the Austrian police discovered a
new Nazi conspiracy. Schuschnigg hoped to defeat this by a
meeting with Hitler, but at Berchtesgaden, Ger., where Hitler
received him on Feb. 12, 1938, Schuschnigg was faced with
threats of military intervention in support of the Austrian
Nazis. He had to agree to give them a general amnesty and to
include some leading Nazis in his cabinet; the Ministry of the
Interior had to be entrusted to Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the
spokesman of Austrian Nazis. The open agitation of the Nazis
threatened to destroy the government’s authority, and
confidential contacts in the European capitals brought
Schuschnigg to realize that he could not count on the support of
the western European powers. He therefore resolved to challenge
Hitler alone. On March 9 he announced that a plebiscite would be
held on March 13 to decide in favour of Austrian independence.
Anschluss and World War II
Though the Austrian crisis had taken him unaware, Hitler
acted with energy and speed. Mussolini’s neutrality was assured,
there was a ministerial crisis in France, and the British
government had made it known for some time that it would not
oppose the union of Austria with Germany. On March 11, 1938, two
peremptory demands were made for the postponement of the
plebiscite and for the resignation of Schuschnigg. Schuschnigg
gave way, and German troops, accompanied by Hitler himself,
entered Austria on March 12. A Nazi government in Austria,
headed by Seyss-Inquart, was established; it collaborated with
Hitler in proclaiming the Anschluss on March 13.
France and Great Britain protested against the methods used
by Hitler but accepted the fait accompli. The United States
followed the British and French policy of appeasement, and the
Soviet Union demanded only that the West should stop further
German aggression and that the Anschluss should be handled by
the League of Nations. The government of Mexico was the only one
that did not accept the Anschluss. A questionable plebiscite on
April 10, held throughout greater Germany, recorded a vote of
more than 99 percent in favour of Hitler.
Austria was completely absorbed into Germany. Any official
memory of Austrian existence was destroyed and suppressed.
Austria was renamed Ostmark (Eastern March); Upper and Lower
Austria became Upper and Lower Danube. Immediately after the
invasion, the Nazis arrested many leaders of the anti-Nazi
Austrian political parties and a great number of political
opponents, particularly communists and socialists. Many
Austrians, especially those of Jewish origin, were forced into
exile.
The Viennese events during Kristallnacht—a short but
devastating period of pogroms against Jewish people and property
throughout Germany on Nov. 9–10, 1938—proved that anti-Semitism
was more virulent and violent in Austria than in most other
German areas. A significant percentage of the Jews killed were
in Vienna, where dozens of synagogues and hundreds of Jewish
shops and apartments were destroyed and plundered. The
degradation of the Austrian Jewish community—including the
widespread threats against Jews’ lives, the destruction or
“Aryanization” (forcible confiscation) of Jewish property, and
the exiling of Austrian, mostly Viennese, Jews—became known as
the Viennese model (Wiener Modell), on which the Nazis based
their later expulsion of Jews from all of Germany and
German-occupied countries.
By the time World War II began in 1939, more than 100,000
Jews—roughly half of all Austrian Jews—had left Austria. When
the fighting ceased, more than 65,000 Austrian Jews had
perished, many of them in extermination camps. Jews were not the
only victims of Nazi persecution. Thousands of Roma (Gypsies)
also were deported or murdered, and tens of thousands of
Austrians with mental or physical disabilities were killed, most
of them at Hartheim Castle, a so-called euthanasia centre near
Linz.
Austrians were overrepresented not only in the system of
terror against Jews but also on the battlefields. During the
course of the war, hundreds of thousands of Austrians fought as
German soldiers; a substantial number of Austrians served in the
SS, the elite military corps of the Nazi Party. By the end of
the war, approximately 250,000 Austrians had been killed or were
missing in action. An even greater number of Austrians were held
as prisoners of war, many of them for years in camps in the
Soviet Union. In addition, more than 20,000 Austrians were
killed in U.S. and British bombing raids.
As increasing numbers of Austrian men were enlisted in the
German army, the resultant lack of workers, together with the
tremendous buildup of the armament industries, brought
compulsory labour on a massive scale to Austria. Foreign workers
from many European countries were forced to work in industry as
well as agriculture during the war, as were many thousands of
concentration-camp inmates, most of them from the Mauthausen
concentration camp, near Linz, or one of its satellite camps.
(About half of the approximately 200,000 prisoners in these
camps—many of them Russian soldiers—died.)
While the great majority of Austrians were not Nazis, popular
support for Germany’s wartime policies remained strong until the
later phases of the war. The Austrian resistance was small,
though it was by no means negligible. Left-wing resistance
groups (mostly communists, with a smaller number of socialists)
dominated, but conservative resisters (mainly Christian
Socialists and monarchists) were active as well. During the war,
tens of thousands of Austrians were arrested for political
reasons; many of them died in concentration camps or prisons,
and about 2,700 were executed. Additionally, a number of
Austrians fought as Allied soldiers against the German army.
The resistance movement was hampered by the political
antagonism that had weakened the First Republic of Austria
between the two World Wars. This political divide was so deep
and bitter that it blocked cooperation between Austrian émigrés
and between the various resistance groups that had formed inside
the country. Nevertheless, the possibility of reestablishing an
independent Austria after the war was far from dead.
After the outbreak of the war, the Allied governments began
to reconsider their attitude toward the Anschluss. In December
1941 Soviet premier Joseph Stalin informed the British that the
U.S.S.R. would regard the restoration of an independent Austrian
republic as an essential part of the postwar order in central
Europe. In October 1943, at a meeting in Moscow of the foreign
ministers of Great Britain, the U.S.S.R., and the United States,
a declaration was published that declared the Anschluss null and
void and pledged the Allies to restore Austrian independence; it
also reminded the Austrians that they had to make an effort to
rid themselves of the German yoke. Though the British prime
minister, Winston Churchill, continued to make proposals for
setting up a central European federation comprising the former
Habsburg lands and even southern Germany, the European Advisory
Commission in London assumed that Austria would return to
sovereignty within the borders of 1937.
When Soviet troops liberated Vienna on April 13, 1945,
representatives from the resistance movement and the former
political parties were allowed to organize and to set up a free
provisional government. Though Austria was once again an
independent republic, the future looked more than bleak. Much of
the infrastructure of Austrian cities had been damaged or
destroyed, and the country emerged from the war as one of the
poorest in Europe.
Second Republic
Allied occupation
On April 27, 1945, former chancellor Karl Renner set up a
provisional government composed of Social Democrats, Christian
Socialists, and Communists and proclaimed the reestablishment of
Austria as a democratic republic. The Western powers, afraid
that the Renner government might be an instrument of communist
expansion, withheld full recognition until the autumn of 1945.
Because of similar suspicions, agreement on the division of
Austrian zones of Allied occupation was delayed until July 1945.
Shortly before the Potsdam Conference (which stipulated that
Austria would not have to pay reparations but assigned the
German foreign assets of eastern Austria to the U.S.S.R.),
control machinery was set up for the administration of Austria,
giving supreme political and administrative powers to the
military commanders of the four occupying armies (U.S., British,
French, and Soviet). In September 1945 a conference of
representatives of all states extended the authority of the
Renner government to all parts of Austria.
A general election held in November 1945, in which former
Nazis were excluded from voting, returned 85 members of the
Austrian People’s Party (corresponding to the Christian
Socialists of the prewar period), 76 Socialists (corresponding
to the Social Democrats and Revolutionary Socialists), and 4
Communists. Renner was elected president of the republic;
Leopold Figl, leader of the Austrian People’s Party, became
chancellor of a coalition cabinet. As the coalition government
was formed in proportion to the parties’ strength in parliament,
the Austrian People’s Party and the Socialists were the sole
partners. This principle of proportional representation,
originally introduced in 1919, was to be an important factor in
Austrian political life after 1945.
The government decided not to draft a new constitution but to
return to the constitution of 1920, as amended by the laws of
1929. In June 1946 the control agreement of July 1945 regulating
the machinery of Allied political supervision was modified by
restricting Allied interference essentially to constitutional
matters. Denazification laws passed in 1946 and 1947 eliminated
Nazi influence from the public life of Austria.
From 1945 to 1952 Austria had to struggle for survival. After
liberation from Nazi rule, the country faced complete economic
chaos. Aid provided by the United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration and, from 1948, support given by
the United States under the Marshall Plan made survival
possible. Heavy industry and banking were nationalized in 1946,
and, by a series of wage-price agreements, the government tried
to control inflation. Interference by military commanders in
political and economic affairs in the Soviet zone of occupation
caused a considerable migration of capital and industry from
Vienna and Niederösterreich to the formerly purely agricultural
western states. This brought about a far-reaching transformation
of the economic and social structure.
In 1949 former Nazis were allowed to participate in the
general election. The Union of Independents (later renamed the
Freedom Party), corresponding to the former German Nationalist
group but free from ideological ties, won 16 seats in
parliament. In subsequent elections (1953, 1956, 1959, 1962),
the relationship of this party with the two main parties (the
Austrian People’s Party and the Socialists) remained stable.
After Renner died (Dec. 31, 1950), Theodor Körner, the Socialist
mayor of Vienna, was elected president by direct popular vote.
He was succeeded in 1957 by the leader of the Socialist Party,
Adolf Schärf, who was followed in 1965 by Franz Jonas, former
mayor of Vienna, and in 1974 by Rudolf Kirchschläger, former
minister of foreign affairs.
The influence of the Socialists in the coalition government,
which had been relatively strong under Figl’s chancellorship,
was reduced when the Austrian People’s Party replaced Figl with
Julius Raab in the spring of 1953 and had Reinhard Kamitz
appointed minister of finance. The subsequent economic
reconstruction and the advance to a prosperity unknown to
Austrians since the years before World War I is generally
identified with the so-called Raab-Kamitz course, which was
based on a modified free-market economy. The nationalized steel
industry, electric power plants, and oil fields, together with
the privately owned lumber and textile industries and the
tourist traffic, were the major economic assets. The Austrian
economy came to be dominated to a disproportionate extent by a
trend toward the service sector because of the importance of
tourism, which transformed the economic and social character of
the rural Alpine areas. In addition, a heavy burden had been
removed from the economy in 1953, when the Soviet government
declared that it would pay its own occupation costs (as the
United States had done since 1947). Thereupon, the British and
the French followed suit.
The Berlin conference of the foreign ministers of France,
Great Britain, the U.S.S.R., and the United States in January
1954 raised Austrian hopes for the conclusion of a peace treaty.
For the first time, Austria was admitted as an equal conference
partner, but the failure of the foreign ministers to agree on
the future of Germany again prejudiced Austria’s chances. The
Soviet government was not prepared to forgo the strategic
advantages of maintaining forces in Austria as long as Germany
was not “neutralized.” In February 1955, however, the Soviet
government suddenly extended an invitation to the Austrian
government for bilateral negotiations. An Austrian delegation
visited Moscow in April 1955, and an agreement was reached by
which the Soviet government declared itself ready to restore
full Austrian sovereignty and to evacuate its occupation troops
in return for an Austrian promise to declare the country
permanently neutral.
Restoration of sovereignty
The State Treaty—signed in Vienna on May 15, 1955, by
representatives of the four occupying powers and
Austria—formally reestablished the Austrian republic in its
pre-1938 frontiers as a “sovereign, independent, and democratic
state.” It prohibited Anschluss between Austria and Germany as
well as the restoration of the Habsburgs. It also guaranteed the
rights of the Slovene and Croatian minorities in Kärnten,
Steiermark, and Burgenland. Great Britain, the United States,
and France relinquished to Austria all property, rights, and
interests held or claimed by them as former German assets or war
booty. The U.S.S.R., however, obtained tangible payment for the
restoration of Austrian freedom. This included $150 million for
the confiscated former German enterprises, which Austria bought
back from the Administration of Soviet Property in Austria; $2
million for the confiscated German assets of the First Danube
Steamshipping Company; and 10 million metric tons of crude oil
as the price of Austrian oil fields and refineries that had been
Soviet war booty.
The treaty came into force on July 27, 1955, and by October
25 all occupation forces were withdrawn. On October 26 a
constitutional law of perpetual Austrian neutrality was
promulgated. The Austrian government had never left any doubts
that the pledge to neutrality could be interpreted only as a
military one and never as an ideological one. Throughout the
Soviet occupation, the Austrians had proved their anticommunist
attitude, and the spontaneous reaction of the Austrian people
during the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in
1956 demonstrated their sympathy with Western democratic ideas
(see Hungary: The Revolution of 1956). Austria preserved
political stability; changes in the personal and ideological
structure of the government and political parties were effected
without major political crisis.
Austria became a member of the United Nations in 1955 and of
the Council of Europe in 1956. Major problems in foreign
relations were the conflict with Italy over Südtirol (southern
Tirol; now part of the Italian Trentino–Alto Adige region) and
the problem of association with the European Economic Community
(EEC; later renamed the European Community). During the Paris
Peace Conference of 1946, an agreement had been signed
guaranteeing the rights of the German-speaking population of
Südtirol, a region that Italy had obtained after World War I.
The Austrian government, claiming that the Italians had not
lived up to their obligations, initiated bilateral talks. In the
early 1960s, acts of terrorism committed by German-speaking
chauvinists interfered with the progress of the negotiations,
but in 1969 agreement was finally reached on implementing the
guarantees provided in the agreement of 1946. In 1958 Austria
joined the European Free Trade Association, but a special
arrangement with the EEC, accompanied by prudent dealings with
the communist neighbours, maintained Austria’s status as a
neutral nation. In that capacity, Austria provided for large
numbers of refugees from eastern Europe; it also functioned as a
transit link for Jewish émigrés from the U.S.S.R.
From 1962, disagreement over economic problems generated
friction between the coalition parties. The annual budget led to
grave disunity in the coalition, and in the autumn of 1965 the
government resigned and called new elections. The elections,
held on March 6, 1966, brought a setback for the Socialist
Party, and the Austrian People’s Party was returned to
parliament with an absolute majority. Negotiations for a new
coalition government failed. The Socialists, led by a former
foreign minister, Bruno Kreisky, went into opposition, and Josef
Klaus formed the first one-party cabinet of the Second Republic.
Contrary to widespread misgivings, the political stability of
the country was not disturbed, and parliament was given new
vigour and influence.
In ensuing provincial elections, the Socialist Party
demonstrated recovery from the setback of 1966, and in the
national elections of 1970 the Socialists managed to win a
plurality of votes, becoming the strongest party in parliament,
with 81 seats, though falling short of a majority. After
negotiations for a new coalition cabinet failed, in May 1970
Kreisky was appointed chancellor, and he formed the country’s
first all-Socialist cabinet. Sensing increased support for the
Socialists, he called for new elections in October 1971, which
gave his party a clear majority of 93 seats. In the subsequent
elections of 1975 and 1979, Austrian voters demonstrated their
approval of Kreisky’s policy of moderate social reform and
economic stability by returning the Socialist Party to
parliament in increasing strength: the elections of May 1979
gave the Socialists 95 seats, while the Austrian People’s Party,
continually weakened by regional animosities and leadership
squabbles, received 77 seats and the Freedom Party 11.
The stability of Austrian politics in the 1970s was
paralleled by an equally stable economy: besides having an
elaborate system of social security and health insurance,
Austrians enjoyed an unbroken prosperity with one of the lowest
rates of unemployment in Europe. The Kreisky governments carried
through a host of reform programs, among which the
reorganization of the legal code under the minister of justice
Christian Broda had truly historic dimensions.
Fritz Fellner
Reinhold F. Wagnleitner
In 1978 Kreisky suffered his first defeat when a majority
voted against the opening of a nuclear power plant. The late
1970s also witnessed the first of a series of scandals, many of
them related to the technocratic wing of the Socialist Party.
This wing centred around Kreisky’s minister of finance and
political heir-apparent, Hannes Androsch. In particular, the
dubious link between Androsch’s tax-consulting firm and the
contractors building Vienna’s new general hospital began a
series of setbacks for the Socialist Party; these were
aggravated by the troubles of the nationalized industries.
The scandals that plagued Austria in the 1980s overshadowed
the considerable reforms enacted by the Kreisky government.
Voters grew increasingly dissatisfied with a stagnant
sociopolitical system in which all important decisions were made
behind closed doors by the interest groups represented in the
“Social Partnership” (i.e., the chambers of industry, trade, and
agriculture and the labour unions). A growing environmental
awareness intensified voter frustration.
After the Socialist Party lost its absolute majority in 1983,
Kreisky resigned, and the Socialists, under Chancellor Fred
Sinowatz, entered into a coalition with the Freedom Party. The
coalition stumbled from one scandal to another until it was
finally brought down by the election of Kurt Waldheim, who was
alleged to have been a Nazi war criminal, as president in 1986.
Although an international historians’ commission found no
evidence that Waldheim had personally committed war crimes, it
proved his indirect complicity. With Waldheim’s insistence that
he had only done his duty, the domestic political intrigue, the
not-altogether-hidden anti-Semitism of some of his supporters,
and the U.S. government’s decision to place Waldheim on its
watch list of undesirable aliens, the incident undermined
Austria’s domestic consensus more than any other event since
1945.
After the Waldheim debacle, Sinowatz resigned as chancellor,
and the Socialist Party under Franz Vranitzky called for new
elections, which resulted in a grand coalition of the Socialist
and Austrian People’s parties. This government introduced
partially successful budgetary and tax reforms and a
privatization scheme for the nationalized industries. These
reforms promoted the economic growth and social stability of the
late 1980s. However, more scandals (notably the Noricum affair,
involving the illegal sale of arms to Iran by a state-owned
company), division within the Austrian People’s Party, and the
public’s continued dissatisfaction with backroom deals weakened
support for the coalition, while the environmentalist Greens (in
parliament since 1986) and the Freedom Party enjoyed growing
appeal.
In the 1990 elections the Socialists avoided disaster only
through a combination of Vranitzky’s popularity and the weakness
of the Austrian People’s Party. The reshaped coalition of the
Socialist Party (renamed the Social Democratic Party in 1991)
and the Austrian People’s Party faced new problems that were
largely due to the dramatically changed international situation:
Austria’s application for membership in the EEC (which, renamed
the European Community, became a part of the European Union [EU]
in 1993) renewed heated debates over domestic repercussions and
over membership’s compatibility with neutrality. The latter
issue was raised again in connection with the breakdown of the
Warsaw Pact and the turmoil in Yugoslavia. In 1990 the Austrian
government unilaterally revoked some of the provisions of the
1955 State Treaty governing Austria’s neutrality. During the
Persian Gulf War in 1991, in a controversial decision the
government permitted air-transit rights to Allied planes and the
transportation of U.S. salvage tanks through Austrian territory.
With the end of the Cold War and the opening of Austria’s
eastern borders, the country was faced with an explosive
increase of refugees (particularly from the Balkans) and
immigrants (especially from Turkey). Many Austrians blamed the
now-suffering Austrian economy on the influx of newcomers. In
the early 1990s, heavy industry struggled, national debt rose,
and unemployment reached a 40-year high. Popular discontent was
reflected at the polls, as the right-wing Freedom Party and
smaller opposition parties made gains against the ruling
coalition.
Reinhold F. Wagnleitner
Austria in the European Union
In a historic referendum in June 1994, Austrian voters
indicated their desire to join the EU, and in January 1995
Austria became a member. The following year, Austrians
commemorated 1,000 years of common history. The festivities
highlighted Austria’s stature in Europe historically, while the
country’s increased regional cooperation underscored its current
role in newly restructured Europe.
The Austrian economy, however, was not yet ready to meet EU
criteria for financial stability. Further austerity measures
were launched as Austria prepared to adopt the single European
currency, the euro. In 1999 the majority of EU members began to
replace their national currency with the euro, and by 2002
Austria, with its economy once again among the strongest in
Europe, retired the schilling.
Meanwhile, the ongoing concern about immigration paralleled
fears of foreign (particularly German) ownership of Austrian
businesses, especially as Austria began privatizing more
state-owned operations. Reflective of these fears was the
ascendancy of Freedom Party leader Jörg Haider, whose extreme
brand of conservatism regularly drew international censure but
whose party narrowly eclipsed the Austrian People’s Party in the
parliamentary elections of 1999. By 2000 the People’s Party had
deserted the weakened Social Democratic Party to form a
right-of-centre coalition government with the Freedom Party. The
participation of the Freedom Party in the government brought
condemnation from both the Austrian left and the international
community, and the EU imposed sanctions on Austria. This move
backfired within the country, where the governing parties
mobilized patriotic support by portraying Austria as the victim
of an international conspiracy. By the end of 2000 the EU had
withdrawn its sanctions.
The government was buoyed by a surging economy, but the
Freedom Party, inexperienced in matters of state and beset by
internal turmoil, stumbled in the 2002 elections. Its losses
were primarily the gains of the Austrian People’s Party, which
became the largest party for the first time in 36 years. But
rather than renewing its traditional partnership with the Social
Democrats, it again formed a coalition with the Freedom Party in
2003.
The Freedom Party splintered in 2005 as Haider and other
leaders left to form a new party, the Alliance for the Future of
Austria. The split followed a period of especially acrimonious
fighting between moderate members and hard-liners over the
party’s direction. The Alliance for the Future of Austria
replaced the Freedom Party as the junior partner in the
coalition government.
In 2006 the Social Democrats won an unexpected victory in the
parliamentary elections, narrowly defeating the Austrian
People’s Party. In January 2007 those two parties formed a
coalition government, with Alfred Gusenbauer of the Social
Democrats as chancellor. However, the unpopularity of
Gusenbauer, who was perceived as an ineffective leader, as well
as disputes over social policy, soon weakened the coalition. It
collapsed in July 2008 following the withdrawal of the People’s
Party. Parliamentary elections held that September—the first in
which 16- and 17-year-olds were allowed to vote—resulted in a
narrow win for the Social Democrats over the People’s Party.
However, the Freedom Party and the Alliance for the Future of
Austria enjoyed a resurgence: combined votes for the two
right-wing parties exceeded those for the People’s Party.
Nevertheless, the Social Democrats and the People’s Party agreed
to form a new coalition government, excluding the far right, in
November 2008.
Ed.
