History of Austria Hungry

When the Austrian Empire ended with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise in 1867 the Austrio-Hungarian Empire was born. And even though it didn't last long it's important to America because of the enormous numbers of immigrants that poured into the United States from the area comprising the area of Austria and Hungary. Even though Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria was crowned King of Hungary a separate parliament was established in Budapest with powers to enact laws for the lands of the Hungarian crown which would preserve the political dominance of the Hungarian nobility.

Franz Joseph I

Tomb of Franz Joseph, his wife Elizabeth and son Rudolph

Austro-Hungarian forces occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina in August 1878, sanctioned by the Treaty of Berlin. To counter Russia's interests in the Balkans, an alliance was concluded with Germany in October of 1879 and Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed in October of 1908.

Franz Ferdinand, nephew to Franz Joseph, became heir to the throne due to the deaths of Franz Joseph's brother and only son. On June 28, 1914, Franz Ferdinand visited the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. Bosnian Serb militants ambushed his convoy and assassinated him and his wife Sophie. Serbia had recently gained a significant amount of territory in the Second Balkan War of 1913. This caused a lot of distress in government circles in Vienna and Budapest. Some members of the government wanted to confront the resurgent Serbian nation. The leadership of Austria-Hungary, especially Count Leopold von Berchtold, backed by its ally Germany, decided to confront Serbia militarily before it could incite a revolt. They presented a list of ten demands expecting Serbia would never accept and were surprised when Serbia accepted nine. Austria-Hungary declared war.

Archduke Francis Ferdinand

Francis Ferdinand and his family

Over the course of July and August 1914 these events caused the start of World War I. Russia mobilized in support of Serbia. General Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf was the Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff during the war. He divided the army in two, the smaller part attacked Serbia while the larger part fought against the massive Russian army. Serbia was a disaster and by the end of the year the Austro-Hungarian Army had taken no territory and had lost 227,000 men out of a total force of 450,000.

May of 1915 Italy joined the Allies and attacked Austria-Hungary. The Italian front would last for the next three and a half years. Later in 1915 the Austro-Hungarian Army, in conjunction with the German and Bulgarian armies, conquered Serbia.

In 1916 the Russians, recognizing the numerical inferiority of the Austro-Hungarian Army, focused their attacks on them. The Austrian armies lost about one million men and never recovered. The huge losses of men and material inflicted on the Russians during the offensive contributed greatly to their communist revolution of 1917. Germany took on more and more of the leadership of the war and the Austro-Hungarian empire had become more and more dependent on German assistance.

The Allied powers of the British Empire, France, Italy and the United States were obviously going to win the war. President Woodrow Wilson of the United States, as one of his Fourteen Points, demanded that the nationalities of the empire have opportunity to autonomous development. On October 14, 1918 Foreign Minister Baron Istvan Burian von Rajecz asked for an armistice based on the Fourteen Points. Two days later Karl I issued a proclamation transforming Austria into a federal union of four components, German, Czech, South Slav and Ukranian. The Poles were granted full independence.

Karl I

Last Habsburg ruler

Nephew of the Assassinated Archduke

Karl I

House of Habsburg

But it was for naught. Four days later Secretary of State Robert Lansing said autonomy was no longer enough and that Washington would no longer deal on the basis of the Fourteen Points. The Czechoslovak provisional government had joined the Allies and the leaders of the South Slav community had declared in favor of uniting with Serbia. That was the end of Austria-Hungary. Defeat in the war was imminent. Czechoslovakia declared independence on October 28. On October 29 the southern Slav area declared the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. The Hungarian government terminated the personal union with Austria on October 31, officially dissolving the Austro-Hungarian state.

The last Habsburg emperor-king, Karl I, issued a statement on November 11. He renounced the right to participate in Austrian affairs of state. But he did not abdicate.

Some Austro-Hungarian lands were also ceded to Romania, Ukraine and Italy. Liechtenstein formed a customs and defense union with Switzerland.

The following present-day countries and parts of countries were located within the boundaries of Austria-Hungary when the empire was dissolved:

Other parts of Europe had been part of the Habsburg monarchy once but left it even before its dissolution in 1918.

Saint Charles Church, Vienna, Austria

Habsburg Castle

While the state of Austria wasn't known until 1918, Austrian immigration can rightly be seen as the immigration of Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Slovenian, Serbian and Croatian peoples as well as other national and ethnic groups.

The earliest documented German Austrian settler in America were about 50 Protestant families from Salzburg who arrived in the colony of Georgia in 1734. They established the settlement of Ebenezer near Savannah and one of them, Johann Adam Treutlen, became the first elected governor of the new state of Georgia.

Fewer than 1000 Austrians were listed in official surveys by 1850. Those who did come settled in Illinois and Iowa and were supported by 100 to 200 Catholic priests sent from both Germany and Austria to oversee the settlers' religious training and education. Tyroleans provided further early immigration. Mostly peasants, they came to the new world in search of land. The 1848 revolutions in Austria saw a group called Forty-eighters who were anticlerical, antislavery, free-thinking, well-educated liberals...and mostly Jewish. Most of the Forty-eighters became abolitionists in America and joined the new Republican party. It has been conjectured that their votes helped Abraham Lincoln win the 1860 presidential election.

Between the years 1861 and 1910 all the inhabitants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are classified together for immigration statistics. During these decades immigration swelled, with estimates of German-speaking Austrians in the United States reaching 275,000 by 1900. During the years 1901-1910 alone over 2.1 million Austrian citizens arrived to become one of the ten most populous immigrant groups in the United States.

The first Austrian immigrants tended to settle in the urbanized centers of the northeastern United States, especially New York City, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. California and Florida also have large concentrations of Austrian immigrants.

Between 1820 and 1920 around 3,700,000 Austrian-Hungarians immigrated to the United States, the fourth largest immigrant group from any country.