History of Austria

Introduction to History of Austria

When the Romans conquered the region that is now Austria about 14 B.C., it was inhabited by Celts. Germanic tribes beyond the Danube River attacked the area frequently during the Roman era. In the fourth century the Germans, driven westward by the Huns, began settling on the south side of the river and taking over the Roman provinces.

The Franks gained dominance over the rest of the Germans and over the Slavs who had crossed the Danube late in the sixth century. To hold off attacks of the barbarian Avars, Charlemagne, king of the Franks (771–814), set up a military district, the Ostmark, in the southern half of the present province of Lower Austria.

In the late ninth century, when Frankish power had weakened, the district was over-run by northern Slavs and Magyars (Hungarians). In 955 the German king (later Holy Roman Emperor) Otto the Great defeated the Magyars and restored the Ostmark. Many German colonists were settled in it, and in 976 it was placed under the House of Babenberg. The boundaries were extended east and north by conquest, and Vienna became the capital.

Early Growth Under the Hapsburgs

In 1156 Austria was made a duchy within the Holy Roman Empire. It held sovereignty over Upper Austria and Styria by the time the Babenberg line died out in 1246. Austria fell briefly under the rule of Bohemia, but in 1278 it was seized by Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph of Hapsburg to be the property of his family. From that time Austria was the center of the expanding Hapsburg domains. Soon Carinthia, Carniola, Tyrol, part of Istria, and Trieste were annexed to it.

The throne of Germany and the Holy Roman emperorship became hereditary in the Hapsburg family in 1438, and in 1453 Austria, as the seat of the Hapsburgs, was made an archduchy. The Hungarians conquered a large portion of Austria in 1485–87, but Archduke (later Emperor) Maximilian drove them out in 1490. He increased both the power of the monarchy and the territorial extent of his domain. The empire was divided by his grandson Charles V. He gave Austria co his brother Ferdinand; his son, Philip, received Spain and the Netherlands. Ferdinand in 1526 established sovereignty over Bohemia and western Hungary, after the king of those countries had been killed in battle against the invading Turks.

The Austrian Empire

Austria, by the 17th century the leading German state and a major power in Europe, was almost constantly at war. In the Thirty Years' War, 1618–48, the Hapsburgs lost the authority they had exercised as Holy Roman emperors over the other German states. There were many campaigns against the Turks, who were finally driven from Hungary in 1699. The Hungarian throne had already in 1687 been made hereditary in the Austrian branch of the Hapsburgs. In the War of the Spanish Succession, 1701–14, Austria failed to gain control of Spain after the Spanish Hapsburg line had died out, but gained the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium) and territory in Italy.

The War of the Polish Succession, 1733–35, increased Austria's Italian holdings. In 1740 Charles VI's daughter Maria Theresa succeeded to the throne. Her right to the throne was challenged by three rival claimants, and Frederick the Great of Prussia took advantage of the situation by offering to aid her in exchange for the Austrian possession of Silesia. When she refused, he seized Silesia, beginning the War of the Austrian Succession. ( When the war ended, Maria Theresa was recognized as the rightful ruler but Frederick retained Silesia.

Determined to regain Silesia, Maria Theresa negotiated alliances with Russia (in 1755) and France (in 1756) with the idea of going to war against Prussia. Meanwhile, Frederick forged an agreement for political and financial help for Prussia from Great Britain. He invaded Saxony in 1756, setting off the Seven Years' War. When the war ended in 1763, Maria Theresa had failed to regain Silesia and Prussia was recognized as a power equal to Austria.

Maria Theresa worked to offset the loss of Silesia throughout the rest of her reign. She annexed eastern Galicia in the First Partition of Poland in 1772 and acquired Bucovina from Turkey in 1774.

The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

The French Revolution began in 1789. Emperor Francis II, alarmed for the safety of his sister, the French queen, and fearful that revolution might spread to Hapsburg territories, became involved in war with France in 1792. This conflict continued, with brief interludes of peace, until Napoleon's final defeat in 1815. In opposing Napoleon, Austria became allied with two of its former enemies—Great Britain and Prussia—and with Russia.

Meanwhile, in 1795 Austria received the remainder of Galicia in the Third Partition of Poland. By the Treaty of Campo Formio, signed by Austria and France in 1797, Austria surrendered Belgium but gained territory on the Adriatic Sea. As Napoleon extended French conquests, Francis began to fear that he might dissolve the Holy Roman Empire. To make sure that he would retain his status as an emperor, Francis took the title Emperor of Austria in 1804.

In 1805 Austria suffered two disastrous defeats, at Ulm and Austerlitz, and in December signed the Treaty of Pressburg, giving up a great deal of Austrian territory. In compensation, Napoleon allowed Austria to annex Salzburg, formerly an independent archbishopric. In 1806 the Holy Roman Empire was abolished.

After Napoleon's first abdication the leading nations of Europe met in 1814 at the Congress of Vienna to plan a permanent territorial settlement in Europe. They created the German Confederation, a loose union of 39 small German countries, with the presidency to be held permanently by Austrian representatives. Austria recovered most of the territory it had lost to Napoleon, and members of the Hapsburg family were seated on the thrones of Tuscany, Modena, and Parma. Austria joined with Russia, Prussia, and Great Britain in the Quadruple Alliance to preserve the settlements of the Congress of Vienna.

Nationalism In the Empire

Throughout Europe in the 19th century there was a movement toward political independence by-groups of people who shared a common language and culture but who did not have their own political states. This spirit of nationalism was a threat to the Hapsburg empire, since the empire was made up of people of many nationalities.

Though German-speaking people formed a majority in some parts of Austria, they were only a minority in the empire. They received special consideration at the expense of the other nationalities because the House of Hapsburg was German. The second largest national group in the empire was the Magyars, or Hungarians, who dreamed of reestablishing the independence of their kingdom.

Other national groups in the empire also resented being governed by the German minority. Each area, however, contained not one, but several, nationalities, who hated each other as bitterly as they did the Germans. In Hungary the Magyars quarreled with the Romanians and Slavs, in Galicia the Poles quarreled with the Ukrainians. This lack of common bonds among the peoples of the empire allowed the Hapsburg monarchs to retain power.

Between 1820 and 1831 there were a number of nationalistic and democratic revolutions in Europe. Under Austrian leadership the Quadruple Alliance managed to quell most of them. Austria also tried to suppress nationalism and the desire for German unification throughout the Germanies. However, it was unable to prevent the Germanies from developing closer ties under the leadership of Prussia.

In 1835 Ferdinand I became emperor after the death of his father, Francis. In 1848 a new wave of revolutions swept through Europe, striking hardest at the Austrian empire. In Vienna revolutionaries forced the powerful foreign minister, Prince Clemens von Metternich, from office. Hungary and Bohemia established independent governments. In Italy, the Austrian possessions and the small Hapsburg states threw off Austrian domination. Representatives of the small countries of the German Confederation met at the free city of Frankfurt, intending to create a union not dominated by Austria. Ferdinand, too weak to control the disorder, abdicated in favor of his nephew, who became Francis Joseph I.

However, none of these revolutions was successful for long. Francis Joseph I reestablished order in Vienna. In Hungary and Bohemia the revolutionary governments were weakened by the quarrels of various nationalities. The Hungarians refused to grant equal citizenship to the Slavs and Romanians; the Bohemian Poles and Germans fought each other bitterly. Austria crushed these rebellions and also the Italian revolts. At the Frankfurt Assembly the German states were unable to find a basis for union by democratic methods. When the Prussian monarch, Frederick William IV, attempted to lead a German unification movement, the Austrian government ordered him, in a highly insulting fashion, to cease his efforts.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire

In 1859 and 1860, during the period of Italian unification, the Austrian-dominated areas of Modena, Tuscany, and Lombardy were absorbed into the new Italian state. In 1866 Austria lost its leadership of the Germanies. Prussia defeated Austria in the Seven Weeks' War (a dispute over the control of Schleswig and Holstein) and abolished the German Confederation in favor of a North German Confederation from which Austria was excluded. (The new confederation became the German Empire.) Austria also lost Venetia, which it had gained in the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797.

Deprived of influence in the Germanies and in Italy, Emperor Francis Joseph I attempted to strengthen his hold on the non-German parts of his empire. In 1867 he reached an agreement with Hungarian leaders who desired greater autonomy for Hungary. This agreement, known as the Ausgleich , established the Austro-Hungarian Empire, also often called Austria-Hungary and the Dual Monarchy.

Hungary was made a semi-independent nation, ruled by its own government, but with the Austrian emperor as its king. Purely domestic affairs in the two nations were handled by the separate governments, but foreign affairs, finance, and the military were jointly controlled. Just as the German-speaking Austrians denied the other nationalities a voice in their government, so the Hungarians refused to share any power with the national minorities in Hungary.

Events Leading to World War I

In 1878 at the Congress of Berlin after the Russo-Turkish War, Austria received control of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The majority of the inhabitants of this province, however, were of Serbian nationality and wished to be united with Serbia. Russia and Italy also objected to Austrian control of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Fear of Russia led Austria-Hungary to conclude an alliance with Germany (1879). In 1882 Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Germany brought Italy into the alliance. This German-sponsored alliance alarmed England, France, and Russia. These three nations entered into a number of counteralliances, leading ultimately to the Triple Entente, completed in 1907.In 1914 the heir to the Hapsburg empire, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and his wife visited Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. The royal couple was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. Austria-Hungary, secure in the knowledge of German support, declared war upon Serbia. Because of the complicated system of alliances among the various European powers, Austria's declaration of war led rapidly to a general war in Europe–World War I.

The First Austrian Republic

World War I ended in defeat for Austria-Hungary and its allies. It also marked the end of the Hapsburg empire. In the final months of the war, the various national groups set up independent governments. When an armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, only the German-speaking provinces at the heart of the empire were left to Austria. On that day Charles, who had become emperor after Francis Joseph's death in 1916, vacated the throne, and Austria became a republic. The treaties ending the war established the non-German-speaking areas as independent nations to be permanently separated from Austria.

The new republic faced terrible problems. Its trade was ruined, its money worthless, and its people starving. Most Austrians wanted an Anschluss (union) with Germany to improve Austria's economic situation. However, the nations that had won the war refused to allow a union that might contribute to a rebirth of German power.

Within the republic of Austria two political parties developed—the Social Democrats and the Christian Socialists. In general, the Social Democrats were supported by the labor unions and the people of Vienna, while the Christian Socialists were supported by the peasants and the Roman Catholic Church. The two parties were violently antagonistic; each at times tried by unscrupulous methods to destroy the other. By 1932, however, the leaders of both parties agreed to oppose the National Socialist (Nazi) movement, which Adolf Hitler was attempting to introduce from Germany into Austria.

In 1932 the Christian Socialist Engelbert Dollfuss became chancellor. Despite the opposition to Nazism by the country's political leaders, sympathy for Hitler—who was Austrian-born and who espoused Anschluss —was growing rapidly among the Austrian people. Fearing that the Nazi movement would overturn the government, Dollfuss in 1933 suspended the constitution and dissolved all political parties, making himself dictator.

Dollfuss was assassinated in 1934 by Austrian Nazis. Kurt von Schuschnigg took his place as chancellor and dictator and was able temporarily to withstand German pressure for Anschluss , but in 1938 he was forced to give in to Hitler. When World War II began in 1939, Austria fought as an integral part of Germany.

The Second Austrian Republic

After Germany was defeated in 1945, Austria was again declared a republic, but it was not independent. The United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union divided the country into four zones, each occupied by one of the four Allied powers.

The second republic suffered from postwar economic chaos, much as the first republic had after World War I. With foreign aid, especially from the Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program), Austria's economy recovered from the effects of World War II. In 1955 the armies of the occupying powers withdrew, and the four zones were reunited into one fully independent nation. Austria agreed that it would not seek union with Germany and that it would be neutral in its foreign policy.

Austria became a member of the United Nations in 1956. Although its traditional orientation was toward Western Europe, Austria continued to maintain friendly relations with the Soviet bloc. Because of its neutrality and its strategic location between East and West, Austria eventually became an international diplomatic center. Headquarters of several United Nations organizations were established in Vienna.

Throughout the 1960's, Austria had one of the fastest-growing economies in Europe, and living standards rose greatly. Austria joined the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in 1960. Austria's ties with western Europe were strengthened in 1973 when EFTA allied with what is now the European Union to lower trade barriers. Meanwhile, in 1971 the Socialist party won control of the government with the first absolute majority in the parliament of any party since the founding of the republic. The party experienced setbacks in 1978 and 1980 when its proposal to construct Austria's first nuclear power plant was defeated first in a national referendum and then in parliament. In 1983 the party lost its majority and a coalition government was formed.

In 1986 Kurt Waldheim was elected president of Austria. The Austrian elections received worldwide attention because of allegations that Waldheim had committed war crimes during World War II. He served as president until 1992. Meanwhile in 1989, because of democratic revolutions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, Austria's borders with those nations, closed for nearly 40 years, were reopened. In 1995 Austria became a member of the European Union. The far-right Freedom Party joined Austria's coalition government in 2000. In response, the countries of the European Union imposed diplomatic sanctions for several months.

In elections in 2002, the Freedom Party entered into a coalition government led by the People's Party. The Social Democratic Party, led by Alfred Gusenbauer, won elections in 2006. In January 2007, the Social Democratic Party and the People's Party formed a coalition government, and Gusenbauer became chancellor.