"He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."  Thomas Jefferson

  "There is nothing more frightening than active ignorance." -- Goethe

"The search for truth is never wrong.  The only sin is to lack the courage to follow where truth leads." -- Duke

"He alone deserves to be remembered by his children who treasures up and preserves the memory of his fathers." -- Edmund Burke

AUSTRIA  

Evidence of man in the area covering present-day Austria dates back to around 8000 BC and possibly as far back as 50,000 BC.  They were nomadic tribes of the Early Stone Age who survived by hunting and gathering.  Around 5000 BC agriculture and stock raising began to supplement the hunting.  More importantly, the region became an important economic source through the development of salt-mining.  Salt mines have been in operation for thousands of years in the region.

By 2300 BC the Indo-Europeans migrated into Europe.  These were the ancestors of the Germanic peoples that settled in northern and central Germany, the Baltic and Slavic peoples in the east, and the Celts in the south and west.  The Germanic migrations began into Austria around 2200 BC.

Around 1300 BC, an Illyrian tribe named the Norici, settled along the eastern side of the Alps.  They were of Indo-European stock.  They were the ancestors of modern Albania and include the Dalmatians and Pannonians.

The Greeks established cities on the coast in the 7th and 6th centuries BC, and in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, Macedonian kings conquered parts of Illyria.  The last Illyrian kingdom was organized in the 3rd century BC with the capital at Scodra (now Shkodër, Albania).  Their piracy put the Illyrians in conflict with Rome, which waged two victorious wars against them in 228 and 219 BC.

After Dalmatia seceded from the Illyrian kingdom, the Romans conquered Scodra and established, in 168 BC, a colony there that they named Illyricum. Gradually, Dalmatia was conquered (78-77 BC) and finally added to Illyricum; then, by 35-34 BC the southern areas of the former kingdom of Illyria were added, and, in 9 BC, Pannonia in the north. After an Illyrian revolt in AD 6-9, Illyricum was divided into the provinces of Pannonia and Dalmatia. In the 4th century AD, the name Illyricum was given to a large Roman prefecture that included the former colony as well as a large area north of the Adriatic Sea and much of the Balkan Peninsula. Under Rome the region prospered, and many roads and towns were built; Diocletian and several other emperors came from Dalmatia. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, the region of ancient Illyria became part of the Byzantine Empire

Starting in 450 BC Celts came to dominate the area of present-day Austria through control of the salt trade and later the copper and iron trades.  The Celts established the first stable state structure in the area, which the Romans called Noricum.  Their burials were by covering with cairns of stones and the period was that of the beginning of urbanization, new industry and new artistic traditions.  The Germanic tribes who came in contact with the Celts absorbed much of the Celtic culture and eventually displaced them.

In 15 BC the Romans invaded and divided the territory of present-day Austria into three provinces: Rhaetia (Vorarlberg and Tirol), Noricum (Salzburg, Carinthia, Styria, Upper and Lower Austria), and Pannonia Superior (the Vienna basin, Burgenland, and half of Hungary).  The western uplands region between the upper Rhine River, the lower course of the Inn River, and the Bavarian and subalpine plateau was known as Rhaetia, an area which also included parts of modern-day Germany and Switzerland. The plains region in the east and southeast was known as Pannonia, and included areas in present-day Hungary and Slovenia.  One of the first Roman military posts in the region was Vindobona (now Vienna), which was located on the site of a Celtic settlement on the edge of the Eastern Alps and on an arm of the Danube.

The Germanic tribes began entering the area around 166 AD.  These tribes included the Goths, Rugians, Lombards, Vandals, Ostrogoths and Huns.  The Alamanni were another tribe that entered the area.

By the 2nd century BC, Germanic peoples had already occupied northern Germany and southern Scandinavia.  The first clash between the Germanic peoples and the neighboring Romans was in the 2nd century BC, when the Cimbri and Teutons invaded Gaul and were defeated in present-day Provence, France by the Roman General Gaius Marius (101-102 BC).  By this period, however, much of Germany was occupied by such Germanic tribes as the Suevi, Cherusci, and others.  When the Romans in turn attempted to conquer the area east of the Rhine River early in the 1st century, they were defeated by the Cherusci chief Arminius (Hermann).

During the 3rd century, more migrations caused a crisis within the empire, as Goths, Alamanni, and Franks penetrated German borders.  The movement stopped temporarily in the late 3rd century during the reigns of the emperors Diocletian and Constantine the Great, but it resumed under pressure from the non-Germanic Huns, who came out of Central Asia in the 4th century.  By the 5th century, the Germans occupied the whole Western Roman Empire.

Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Franks, Lombards, & other Germanic tribes overran what was left of the Roman Empire by the 5th century AD.  It was out of this period of chaos and motion that emerged a people that settled into central Europe - a people called the Baioarii, the Bavarians.

The Bavarians settled into the area of present-day Bavaria and northern Austria in the late 5th and early 6th centuries AD.  They would become the dominating influence in the region.  They lived in Bohemia and took no part in the numerous invasions of the Roman provinces by other German tribes.  But by the end of the 5th century the Bavarians abandoned their Bohemian homeland and headed southwest, forming the Kingdom of Bavaria.

The earliest Bavarian duke in the historical record is Theodon I, who lived between 420-511 AD.  He was followed by his son, Theodon II, who died in 537. Over the next few hundred years the Bavarians would wage a constant battle with the Franks for right to self-rule.  Under Charles Martel the Franks would gain the upper hand, but it would not last.

It was probably during the reign of Garibaldi II - during the Frankish reign of King Dagobert - that the oldest existing sections of the Bavarian Lawbook, the Lex Baiowariorum, were composed.  Although written in Latin, the spirit of the document is purely Teutonic, with many Bavarian and Frankish words used to express non-Roman concepts.  The oldest sections of the code focus mainly on weregelds - i.e., monetary compensations for killing or bodily injury.  The meticulous precision with which these weregeld laws were calculated, and the apparent lack of moral disapproval for the violent acts themselves, reflect a pre-Christian sensibility common to most early Germanic peoples.  For example, six shillings was the proper compensation for cutting off a freedman's thumb, three shillings for his first or little finger, and two shillings for the middle fingers.  Compensations for slaves were proportionately lower.  Interestingly, the double weregeld allowed for women reflected the Bavarian view of a woman's defenselessness.  This double weregeld also applied to visiting pilgrims and travellers for the same reason (Lex Baiowariorum, tituli IV, V, and VI, summarized in Leeper 73-74).

Tassilo III, who reigned from 748-794, was perhaps the greatest of the later Bavarian dukes, and would be remembered as the last of the Agilolfing dukes.  Born in 741, the year his father founded the monastary at Niederaltaich, Tassilo III was as much a patron of learning and religion as he was a dynamic, autocratic ruler who forged a sense of Bavarian independence and patriotism, through his opposition to Charlemagne, that has lasted through to the present day.

The Magyars arrived in the Danubian region in 862, a Finno-Ugric people who form the ethnic core of the Hungarian nation.  Within fifty years, the Magyars had seized the Hungarian plain, conquered Moravia and the eastern Danubian marches of the Carolingian Empire, and penetrated deep into Frankish territory.  A reorganization of the German portion of the Carolingian Empire in the first half of the tenth century enabled the Germans to rally their forces and defeat a Magyar invasion force at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955.  This new and essentially German empire became known as the Holy Roman Empire and eventually regained much of the territory lost to the Magyars.  Nevertheless, the Magyars' continuing military strength and their conversion to Christianity during the reign of King Stephen (from 997-1038) enabled Hungary to become a legitimate member of Christian Europe and check German expansion to the east.

Upon the extinction of the Carolingian dynasty, Arnulf, son of Leopold, claimed the position of a sovereign prince.  This involved him in war with Henry I the Saxon, King of Germany, whose partly successful attempt to conquer Arnulf was completed by Otto I.  After the deposition of Eberhard I, the elder son of Duke Arnulf, in 939, Bavaria no longer had native-born rulers.  Bavarians would be ruled by Saxons, Franconians, and members of the Welf family who ruled as vassals of the king with the title of duke.  Not until Emperor Frederick I, in 1180, rewarded Otto of Wittelsbach for his courage by granting him Bavaria did a genuine Bavarian ascend the throne of his fathers.  Otto and his energetic successors laid the foundation of the future importance of Bavaria.

After Otto the Great was elected German king in 936, a new era in the development of present-day Austria began.  Many historians believe that in is Otto rather than Charlemagne who must be regarded as the real "founder" of Austria.  In August 955, he achieved a great victory over the Magyars on the Lechfeld, freed Bavaria from their presence, and refounded the East Mark for the defense of his kingdom.  By 976, his son, the emperor Otto II, entrusted the government of this mark to Leopold, a member of the family of Babenberg.  Under the Babenbergs, its administration was conducted with vigor and success.  Leopold and his descendants ruled Austria until the extinction of the family in 1246.  By their skill and foresight, they raised the mark to an important place among the German states.

In the final years of the reign of Emperor Otto the Great (936-973), a small margravate roughly corresponding to the present-day province of Lower Austria was formed within what was then considered to be Bavaria.  In 976, Emperor Otto II installed Leopold of Bavaria as Margrave of that region.

On November 1, 966 , the German Emperor Otto III transferred the title for a small stretch of land located in Neuhofen - in present-day Lower Austria - to ecclesiastical authorities. It was called Ostarrichi from the Old High German ostar, meaning east, and richi or reich, meaning domain or realm.    Osterreich - Austria.

From the late 13th century the rise of Austria is linked with the rise of the House of Habsburg.  From 1438 until 1806 (except for 1742-1745), the archdukes of Austria held the title of Holy Roman emperor.

During the reign of Emperor Maximilian I from 1486 to 1519, the Habsburg empire became a great power, with its territory expanding significantly because of several advantageous marriages.  Maximilian's own marriage to Mary of Bourgogne brought a large part of that territory into the empire.  He also arranged the marriage of his son Philip (later Philip I of Castile) to Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand V and Isabella I - thus establishing the Habsburg claim to Spain and its possessions in Italy and the Americas.  Philip's son Ferdinand I married into the ruling house of Bohemia and Hungary and became king of Bohemia in 1524.  Ferdinand's brother Charles had become Holy Roman emperor as Charles V after the death of Maximilian in 1519.  It was under Charles' rule that the Habsburg inheritances were effectually combined - i.e., the Habsburg hereditary lands in Austria, the Low Countries, and Spain and its possessions.  The extent of the Habsburg empire, however, proved impossible for one monarch to rule.  In 1521 and again in 1522, Charles gave Ferdinand lands in Austria and part of Germany.  Division of the Habsburg dynasty into Spanish and Austrian branches was completed when Charles abdicated in 1556 as king of Spain, in favor of his son Philip II and, in 1558, as Holy Roman emperor in favor of his brother Ferdinand.

Called the Great Founder of the House of Austria, Rudolf I was the first Habsburg to come to power in Austria, and his ascension to the throne in 1273 marked the beginning of over 600 years of Habsburg rule in Europe.  Born on May 1, 1218 at the ancient castle of Limburgh in Brisgau in the Alsace region, Rudolf was the son of Albert IV and Countess Heilwige of Kiburg.  He was presented at the baptismal font by Emperor Frederic II.

Frederick III, Holy Roman emperor (1440-1493), and as Frederick IV, king of Germany (1440-1486). The son of Ernest of Habsburg, duke of Steiermark (Styria) and Kärnten (Carinthia), Frederick was elected Holy Roman emperor and king of Germany in 1440 and crowned by the pope in Rome in 1452, the last time an emperor was crowned in that city. Because he had sacrificed the liberty of the German church in order to secure papal support, he incurred the disfavor of the German princes. Frederick was an incapable ruler who ignored revolts and failed to defend the Habsburg domains against invasion. Nevertheless, by marrying his son and successor, Maximilian, to Mary of Bourgogne in 1477, he increased the wealth and power of his dynasty.

Ferdinand II, Holy Roman emperor (1619-1637), king of Bohemia (1617-1619), and king of Hungary (1621-1625). He was born in Graz, Austria, the grandson of Emperor Ferdinand I, and was educated by Jesuits, from whom he acquired a deep antipathy toward Protestantism. In 1618, in protest against Ferdinand's efforts to restore Catholicism, Bohemian rebels threw two of Ferdinand's ministers out of a window. This incident, known as the Defenestration of Prague, was the immediate cause of the Thirty Years' War.

By 1627 Ferdinand had outlawed all religions but Roman Catholicism and had banished the Protestant laity and clergy from Bohemia. In 1629 the Edict of Restitution empowered the Roman Catholic church to recover all property seized by Protestants since the Treaty of Passau had imposed a religious settlement on Germany in 1552.

The anti-Habsburg rebellions reflected the rising tensions between Catholics and Protestants in the early 1600s. Proponents of the Counter-Reformation, often operating under Habsburg protection, were reaping the fruits of a generation of work: monastic life was reviving, Catholic intellectual life was regaining confidence, and prominent figures were returning to the Catholic Church. As a result, Protestants were increasingly on the defensive. The German princes split into two military camps based on religious affiliation: the Evangelical Union and the Catholic League.

In August 1619, a Bohemian diet elected as king the Protestant elector-prince of the Palatinate, Frederick V, and the conclave of elector-princes elected Ferdinand II (r. 1619-37) Holy Roman Emperor. On November 8, 1620, a force combining troops from the Catholic League and the imperial army decisively defeated Frederick V's largely mercenary force at the Battle of White Mountain. Throughout the 1620s, the combined imperial and Catholic forces maintained the offensive in Germany, enabling Ferdinand to establish his authority in the Hereditary Lands, Bohemia, and Hungary.

Equating Protestantism with disloyalty, Ferdinand imposed religious restrictions throughout the Hereditary Lands. In 1627 he implemented a long-planned decree to make Bohemia a one-confession state: Protestants were given six months to convert or leave the country. In the face of a strong Hungarian nationalist movement headed by the Calvinist prince of Transylvania, however, Ferdinand could maintain his hold on Royal Hungary only by confirming guarantees of religious freedom.

Foreign intervention by Denmark, Sweden, and France kept Ferdinand from bringing the war to a conclusion through military power and also frustrated his efforts in the mid-1630s to reach a compromise with the Protestant German princes. The subsequent military campaigns of the Thirty Years' War, however, only marginally affected those portions of the Habsburg territories that are part of modern Austria.

The Thirty Years' War was finally ended in 1648 by the Peace of Westphalia. The treaty guaranteed the religious and political constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, giving the German princes the sovereign right to settle the religious question in their respective territories. France also achieved its main war aim because the costly war and the concessions to the princes effectively stopped the Habsburgs from transforming the Holy Roman Empire into an absolutist state under their direction. Nonetheless, in their own lands, the Habsburgs enjoyed greater political and religious control than before the war: they had gained loyal new followers from among the nobles by redistributing estates confiscated from rebels, and they were free to enforce religious conformity, which they did based on the model applied earlier in Bohemia.

The Turkish threat, which included unsuccessful sieges of Vienna in 1529 and in 1683, prompted Poland, Venice, and Russia to join the Habsburg Empire in repelling the Turks. In the late 1690s, command of the imperial forces was entrusted to Prince Eugene of Savoy. Under his leadership, Habsburg forces won control of all but a small portion of Hungary by 1699.

With the end of the Turkish threat, the arts and culture experienced a surge. Splendid edifices such as Schloss Schönbrunn (World Cultural Heritage) or the Salzburger Dom were built. Under the rule of Empress Maria Theresia (1717-1780) the Habsburg holdings were reformed and united. Following Maria Theresa's death in 1780, her son Joseph II, one of the so-called enlightened monarchs, continued the reforms along the lines pursued by his mother.

The French revolution in 1789 and the rise of Napoleon, who secured French possession of many Austrian territories, proved to be a major threat to the Habsburgs. During the Congress of Vienna (1814/15), held with the purpose of redrawing the continent's political map after Napoleon’s defeat, Austrian Chancellor Metternich tried to reconsolidate Austrian power. In 1848 the French philosophy of middle-class revolution reached Austria, but the rebellion was promptly squashed, and Emperor Franz I and Metternich responded by cutting down civil liberties and introducing a strict censorship. As a result the people retreated to their houses, concentrated on the domestic and the non-political; social life came to a halt. The second part of the Biedermeier period was marked by a growing urbanization and industrialization that lead to a new urban middle class. People started to meet again, and the arts were cherished.

In the end the Emperor Franz I was eventually pressured to abdicate in favor of his nephew Emperor Franz Joseph I, whose 68-year reign was one of Austria’s longest. Together with his wife Elisabeth, the legendary "Sisi", he shaped the image of the Austrian imperial rule. Under his rule Vienna became of the Europe’s most important metropolises and the center of a multinational state extending from Hungary to North Italy and deep into southern Europe.  It was during this time that the Austrian-Hungary Empire was born.  Click here for more information. 

The Austria-Hungary empire ended with the end of World War I.  The assassination of the Austrian archduke and heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, June of 1914 in Sarajevo, thrust the world into that conflict when Austria declared war against Serbia.

To get a full account of the history of this time, see our  page
 

Emperor Franz Joseph dies in 1916 and after the end of the war in 1918 the first Republic of Austria was established, ending the 640-year old Habsburg dynasty. The young republic suffered massive inflation, unemployment, and near economic collapse. In 1933, the weak coalition government between the Christian-Social and the Social-Democratic parties gave way when Engelbert Dollfuss became Chancellor in 1932 as head of a right-wing coalition government, designed to tackle the problems caused by the Depression. In July of 1934 Dollfuss was shot and killed by eight Austrian Nazis in an attempted coup.

On March 12, 1938, German troops enter Austria and the country was incorporated into the German Reich ruled by Adolf Hitler. After the end of World War II in 1945, Austria was restored to its 1937 frontiers and occupied by the victorious allies – the USA, the Soviet Union, the UK, and France – for a decade.

On May 15, 1955, the Austrian State Treaty was ratified, with Austria declaring its permanent neutrality. Thanks to its location near the “Iron Curtain”, Austria soon developed into a nerve center between the West and the East. After the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the 1968 Prague Spring Invasion, Austria grants asylum to the refugees. Austria is also host country of many international organizations (UNO, OPEC) as well as host of many important conference and summit meetings. The Iron Curtain fell in 1989/90; in 1995 Austria becomes a member of the European Union.
 

For more information see http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/attoc.html

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