Austria (German: Österreich), officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The capital city is the city of Vienna on the Danube River.
Settled in prehistoric times, the central European land that is now Austria was occupied in pre-Roman times by various Celtic tribes. The Celtic kingdom of Noricum was claimed by the Roman Empire and made a province. After the fall of the Roman Empire, of which most of Austria was part (all parts south of the Danube), the area was invaded by Bavarians, Slavs and Avars. Charlemagne conquered the area in 788 and encouraged colonization and Christianity. As part of Eastern Francia, the core areas that now encompass Austria were bequeathed to the house of Babenberg. The area was known as the marchia Orientalis and was given to Leopold of Babenberg in 976.
The first record showing the name Austria is from 996 where it is written as Ostarrîchi, referring to the territory of the Babenberg March. The term Ostmark is not historically ascertained and appears to be a translation of marchia orientalis that came up only much later.
The following centuries were characterized by the settlement of the country. In 1156 the Privilegium Minus elevated Austria to the status of a duchy. In 1192, the Babenbergs also acquired the Duchy of Styria.
With the death of Frederick II in 1246, the line of the Babenbergers went extinct. Otakar II of Bohemia effectively controlled the duchies of Austria, Styria and Carinthia after that. His reign came to an end with his defeat at Dürnkrut at the hand of Rudolf I of Germany in 1278. Thereafter, until World War I, Austria's history was largely that of its ruling dynasty, the Habsburgs.
Rise of The Habsburgs
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Habsburgs began to accumulate other provinces in the vicinity of the Duchy of Austria. In 1438, Duke Albert V of Austria was chosen as the successor to his father-in-law, Emperor Sigismund. Although Albert himself only reigned for a year, from then on, every emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was a Habsburg, with only one exception.
The Habsburgs began also to accumulate lands far from the Hereditary Lands. In 1477, Archduke Maximilian, only son of Emperor Frederick III, married the heiress Maria of Burgundy, thus acquiring most of the Low Countries for the family. His son Philip the Fair married the heiress of Castile and Aragon, and thus acquired Spain and its Italian, African, and New World appendages for the Habsburgs.
In 1526, following the Battle of Mohács, Austrian rulers expanded their territories, bringing Bohemia and the part of Hungary not occupied by the Ottomans under their rule. Ottoman expansion into Hungary led to frequent conflicts between the two powers, particularly evident in the so-called Long War of 1593 to 1606.
Austria as a European Power
The long reign of Leopold I (1657–1705) saw the culmination of the Austrian conflict with the Turks. Following the successful defense of Vienna in 1683, a series of campaigns resulted in the return of all of Hungary to Austrian control by the Treaty of Carlowitz in 1699. The later part of the reign of Emperor Charles VI (1711–1740) saw Austria relinquish many of these fairly impressive gains, largely due to Charles's apprehensions at the imminent extinction of the House of Habsburg. Charles was willing to offer concrete advantages in territory and authority in exchange for other powers' worthless recognitions of the Pragmatic Sanction that made his daughter Maria Theresa his heir. With the rise of Prussia the Austrian–Prussian dualism began in Germany.
Austria became engaged in the war with Revolutionary France, which lasted until 1797 and at the beginning proved unsuccessful for Austria. Defeats against Napoleon meant the end of the old Holy Roman Empire in 1806. Just two years before the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, in 1804 the Empire of Austria was founded, which was transformed in 1867 into the dual-monarchy Austria-Hungary. However, in 1814 Austria was part of the Allied forces invading France and conquering it. Following the Napoleonic wars Austria emerged from the Congress of Vienna in 1815 as one of three of the continent's dominant powers (together with Russia and Prussia). In 1815 the German Confederation, (German) Deutscher Bund was founded under the presidency of Austria. Austria and Prussia were the leading powers of the German Confederation. Its central institution was the Bundesversammlung in Frankfurt. Because of unsolved social, political and national conflicts some of the German inhabitants took part in the 1848 revolution to create a unified Germany. The Frankfurt Parliament in the St. Paul's Church elected the arch duke Johann of Habsburg as a Reichsverweser, an administrator of the German Empire. For a new German empire would have been possible three options: a Greater Germany Großdeutschland with the German-speaking territories of the Habsburg Empire, a Greater Austrian solution, Großösterreich, the German Confederation with the whole Habsurgian territories, and a smaller German solution, Kleindeutsche the German Confederation without Austria at all. As Austria was not willing to relinquish its German-speaking territories to what would become the German Empire of 1848 the parliament offered the crown to the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Austria grew out of Germany, Prussia grew in. In 1864 Austria and Prussia fought together against Denmark, to free the independent duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. Austria and Prussia could not agree on a solution to the administration of Schleswig and Holstein, which led to the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Austria, together with most of the other German states, was defeated by Prussia in the battle of Königgrätz in Bohemia. Austria had to leave the Germanic Confederation and subsequently no longer took part in German politics. After 1871, it was one of two Empires: the German Empire to the north and Austria-Hungary to the south.
The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, the Ausgleich, provided for a dual sovereignty, the empire of Austria and the kingdom of Hungary, under Franz Joseph I, who ruled until his death on 21 November 1916. The German-Hungarian rule of this diverse empire, which included, various Slav groups such as Poles, Ukrainians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Serbs and Croats, as well as large Italian and Romanian communities. As a result, ruling Austria-Hungary became increasingly difficult in an age of emerging nationalist movements. Yet the central government tried its best to be accommodating in some respects; minorities were entitled to schools in their own language, for example.
World War I and its aftermath
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 by Gavrilo Princip (a member of the Serbian nationalist group the Black Hand) was the immediate cause of World War I, leading to the downfall and the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. War left the country in political chaos and economic ruin, the Central Powers (being Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany and Turkey) having been defeated in 1918. The Empire was broken up - Austria, with most of the German-speaking parts became a republic (see Treaty of Saint-Germain) and the remaining subordinate territories became independent states. However, many German Austrians found themselves living in the newly-established Czechoslovakia, and Austria was deprived of half of the Tyrol, which was awarded to Italy as a prize for entering the war on the Allied side. It has sustained this loss to the present day and this has been a source of friction with Italy.
Between 1918 and 1919, it was officially known as the Republic of German Austria (Republik Deutschösterreich). After the Entente powers forbade German Austria to unite with Germany, they also forbade the name; it was therefore changed to the Republic of Austria. The monarchy was dissolved in 1919 and a parliamentary democracy was set up under the constitution of 10 November 1920.
In the autumn of 1922, Austria was granted an international loan supervised by the League of Nations. The purpose of the loan was to avert bankruptcy, stabilize the currency, and improve its general economic condition. With the granting of the loan, Austria passed from an independent state to the control exercised by the League of Nations. At the time, the real ruler of Austria became the League, through its commissioner in Vienna. The commissioner was a Dutchman not formally part of the Austrian government. Austria had fallen under an international receivership, which had not been seen openly since Lord Croner became the financial adviser to the bankrupt Khedivial Government of Egypt a little less than half a century earlier.
Austrofascism and the Third Reich
The First Austrian Republic, lasted until 1933 when Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss dissolved parliament and established an autocratic regime tending towards Italian fascism, (Austrofascism) in order, partly, to check the power of Nazis who were still advocating union with Germany. The two big parties at this time —the Social Democrats and the Conservatives— had paramilitary armies, which fought each other. The "Heimwehr" (later integrated into the "Vaterländische Front"), the paramilitary arm of the Conservative party supported Dollfuss's Fascist regime; the "Republikanischer Schutzbund," was the military arm of the Social Democrats which was outlawed in 1933 but still existed underground - civil war was to break out.
After the Austrian Civil War in February 1934, several members of the Schutzbund were executed, the Social Democratic party was outlawed and many of its members were imprisoned or emigrated. In May of that year the Fascists introduced a new constitution ("Maiverfassung") which cemented Dollfuss's power but on 25 July he was assassinated in a Nazi coup attempt.
His successor Kurt Schuschnigg, struggled to keep Austria independent (even a restoration of the Habsburgs was contemplated) but on 12 March 1938 German troops occupied the country and established a plebiscite confirming union with Germany. Hitler, himself a native of Austria who had lost Austrian citizenship in 1925, proclaimed its Anschluss with Germany, incorporating it to the Third Reich. Austria thus ceased to exist as an independent state; the Nazis called it Ostmark until 1942 when it was again renamed Alpen-Donau-Reichsgaue.
Just before the collapse of the Third Reich, the defeat of Germany and the end of the war in 1945, Karl Renner, astutely set up a Provisional Government in Vienna in April of that year, with the tacit approval of the Soviet forces, and declared Austria's secession from the Third Reich.
After the defeat of Germany, Allied Occupation
Much like Germany, Austria, too, was divided into a British, a French, a Soviet and an American Zone and governed by the Allied Commission for Austria. Largely owing to Karl Renner's action on April 27th in setting up a Provisional Government, however, there was a subtle difference in the treatment of Austria by the Allies. The Austrian Government was recognized and tolerated by the Four Powers. Austria, in general, was treated like it had been originally invaded by Germany and liberated by the Allies.
Although the Eastern part of Austria, including the greater Vienna area, lay in the Soviet Zone, the capital itself was equally divided into four occupational zones. Outside of Vienna, however, travel across zone borders, in particular leaving or entering the Soviet zone, was difficult and time-consuming if possible at all. During the time of the Berlin Air Lift, Soviet military pressure was increased further, but could be successfully overcome by skillful military, political and diplomatic influence on the part of the other Allies.
On 15 May 1955 Austria regained full independence by concluding the Austrian State Treaty with the Four Occupying Powers. On 26 October 1955 Austria was declared "permanently neutral" by act of Parliament, which it remains to this day.
