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.
