Results for Austria
On this page:
 
Dictionary:

Austria

  (ô'strē-ə) pronunciation
Austria
(Click to enlarge)
Austria
(Mapping Specialists, Ltd.)

A landlocked country of central Europe. Settled by Celtic tribes, the region was conquered (15 B.C.A.D. 10) by the Romans and later (8th century) by Charlemagne, who made it a border state of the Carolingian Empire. In the 13th century, Austria passed to the Hapsburg family and remained the core of their vast holdings until the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918, when Austria became a republic. Annexed by Adolf Hitler in 1938, Austria regained full sovereignty in 1955. Vienna is the capital and the largest city. Population: 8,200,000.

Austrian Aus'tri·an adj. & n.

 

 
 

Country, south-central Europe. Area: 32,383 sq mi (83,871 sq km). Population (2006): 8,263,000. Capital: Vienna. The population is predominantly Austrian. Language: German (official). Religions: Christianity (predominantly Roman Catholic; also Protestant and Orthodox); also Islam. Currency: euro. Much of Austria is covered by Alpine regions, including the eastern Alps, where the country's highest point, the Grossglockner, is found. The Bohemian Forest, a highland region, extends north into the Czech Republic. The lowland region, including the Vienna Basin, lies in the east; it supports mainly agricultural activities. The Danube River and its tributaries drain nearly the entire country. Austria has a developed mixed free-market and government-operated economy based on manufacturing and commerce; tourism is also important. Austria is a republic with two legislative houses. The chief of state is the president, and the head of government is the chancellor. Austria's greatest cultural contribution has been in music (see Haydn, Joseph; Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus; Schubert, Franz; Berg, Alban; Webern, Anton). Major cultural figures in other fields include Oskar Kokoschka in art, Sigmund Freud in psychoanalysis, and Ludwig Wittgenstein in philosophy. Settlement in Austria goes back more than 5,000 years. The Celts invaded c. 400 BC and established the kingdom of Noricum. The Romans arrived after 200 BC and established the provinces of Raetia, Noricum, and Pannonia; prosperity followed, and the population became Romanized. Germanic tribes began invading the area before the fall of Rome in the 5th century AD, after which more Germanic tribes and the Slavs entered the region; they were eventually subdued by Charlemagne, and the area became ethnically Germanic. The distinct political entity that would become Austria emerged in 976 with Leopold I of Babenberg as margrave. In 1278 Rudolf IV of Habsburg (Rudolf I as the king of Germany) conquered the area; Habsburg rule lasted until 1918. While in power, the Habsburgs created a kingdom centred on Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary. The Napoleonic Wars brought about the end of the Habsburg-controlled Holy Roman Empire (1806) and the emergence of the Austrian Empire. The prince von Metternich tried to assure Austrian supremacy among Germanic states, but war with Prussia led Austria to divide the empire into the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. Nationalist sentiment plagued the kingdom, and the assassination of Francis Ferdinand by a Bosnian Serb nationalist in 1914 triggered World War I, which destroyed the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the postwar carving up of Austria-Hungary, Austria became an independent republic. It was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938 (see Anschluss) and joined the Axis powers in World War II. The republic was restored in 1955 after 10 years of Allied occupation. Austria became a full member of the European Union (EU) in 1995. After a half-century of military neutrality, Austria was one of the few members of the EU that was not a member of NATO at the outset of the 21st century.

For more information on Austria, visit Britannica.com.

 

The country's principal contributions to the history of photography were made in the 19th and early 20th centuries, after which, for a long time, it became something of a backwater. The Viennese physicist and mathematician Andreas von Ettingshausen attended the session of the French Academy of Sciences on 19 August 1839 at which Daguerre's process was explained. Afterwards he received personal instruction from Daguerre, took a daguerreotype outfit with him back to Vienna and made sample pictures which were presented to the emperor. He and other enthusiasts belonged to the Fürstenhofrunde, effectively Austria's first photographic society, founded by the painter Karl Schuh. (Later Schuh's Fürstenhof studio became a photo-studio run by Franz and Thomas Streczek, early pioneers of stereoscopic photography.) Members of the Circle made important improvements to Daguerre's process. In particular, Josef Petzval's f/3.6 ‘portrait lens’, subsequently manufactured by Voigtländer, reduced daguerreotype exposures from about fifteen minutes to a few seconds in conjunction with faster plates devised by Franz Kratochwilla and others.

Despite these refinements, however, daguerreotype portraiture did not flourish, because of economic depression in the 1840s, and because aristocratic clients still favoured paintings. It was not until the arrival of the wet-plate process and the carte de visite that portraiture boomed, led by entrepreneurs such as Ludwig Angerer (1827-79) and Emil Rabending (1823-86); between 1859 and 1865 the total number of studios in Vienna surged from 38 to 161. Meanwhile the Imperial Printing Office, which had opened a photographic department under Paul Pretsch (1808-73) in 1850, had begun producing large-format architectural and landscape calotypes, some of which were shown at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. Later Pretsch adopted the wet-plate process for its ability to record finer detail in smaller formats, and between 1857 and 1863 the Office executed an official commission to record Vienna's fortifications prior to their demolition to make way for the city's new boulevard, the Ringstrasse. The year 1861 saw the founding of the Vienna Photographische Gesellschaft, which in 1864 organized Central Europe's first exhibition devoted exclusively to photography; c. 400 cameras and other items and c. 1, 100 photographs were shown, including work by Baldus, Nègre, Poitevin, and Watkins. The Photographische Korrespondenz was founded the same year.

Over the next three-quarters of a century, Austrian citizens produced many more innovations. In the field of photomechanical reproduction, early work by Joseph Berres (1796-1844) and Pretsch was followed by the Czech Karl Klič (or Klietsch) (1841-1926), who in 1879 perfected the photogravure process. Theodor Scheimpflug, in addition to formulating the famous rule relating to camera movements, pioneered advances in aerial photogrammetry and ophthalmic photography. Karl Schinzel (1886-1951) worked on colour processes, and Josef Rheden (d. 1946) on astrophotography. But by far the largest contribution, in a range of fields from sensitometry to instantaneous photography, was by the chemist Josef Maria Eder, who also wrote an authoritative technical history of the medium. Eder also campaigned for an independent research and teaching establishment, which finally opened as the Graphische Lehr-und Versuchsanstalt (Graphic Art Institute) in 1889. Headed by Eder until 1923, and later associated with the pictorialist Rudolf Koppitz, it became, with the Bavarian State Photography School and the Berlin Lette-Verein, one of Europe's leading schools.

The emergence of Austrian pictorialism was preceded by the spread of amateur photography and the foundation, in 1887, of the Vienna Amateur Photographers' Club (later the Vienna Camera Club). At its centre was an informal group, the ‘Vienna Trifolium’, consisting of Hugo Henneberg, Heinrich Kühn, and Hans Watzek (1848-1903). Over a period of about six years, ending with Watzek's death, they criss-crossed Europe making superb coloured gum prints and cultivating links with fellow pictorialists in London, Glasgow, Hamburg, and New York. Some of their work appeared in the Vienna Secession's journal Ver Sacrum. Under Koppitz's leadership, pictorialism in Austria continued to flourish well into the post-war period.

From the late 19th century there was a boom in Austrian photographic publishing, further boosted by the postcard industry from the 1890s. Its subject matter was predictable: landscapes, rural genre, and views of cities like Vienna and Salzburg. In 1887 Vienna's newly founded Museum of Municipal History commissioned the architectural photographer August Stauda (1861-1928) to record historic buildings threatened by redevelopment. Also notable was the use of the camera, as modernisation and immigration gathered pace, to conjure up nostalgic images of a no longer extant - or wholly mythical - ‘Old Vienna’, featuring homespun wiener Typen (cabbies, musicians, washerwomen etc.) often impersonated in contrived studio settings by popular stage performers. Otto Schmidt (b. 1849), Charles Scolik (1853-1928) and the amateur Emil Mayer all contributed to this trend, although Mayer also pioneered unposed street photography. Influenced, perhaps, by the work of Riis and Hine, were documentary images of Viennese poverty and slums, many of them made using magnesium flash, by the amateur Hermann Drawe and the journalist Emil Kläger in 1904. Very different, finally, were the sophisticated society portraits and Wiener Werkstatt fashion studies taken by Dora Kallmus and Arthur Benda at the Atelier d'Ora (f. 1907).

Between the foundation of the First Austrian Republic in 1918 and the country's absorption into Greater Germany in 1938, photography stagnated. Economic troubles and a reduced market led to the closure of many studios. Styles remained conservative, especially by comparison with developments further north, and it was significant that most of Hungary's large and talented band of photographic émigrés settled in Munich, Berlin, or Paris rather than Vienna. Bright spots, however, were the whimsical nude and glamour photography of the Manassé Studio, much of it related to Austria's small but lively film industry; the exploits of the sports photographer Lothar Rübelt; and the historical work of Heinrich Schwarz, notably the exhibition of Hill and Adamson calotypes he organized at Vienna's Belvedere Gallery in 1929.

Not much changed after 1945. Indeed, for several decades Vienna was reputed to be one of Europe's culturally most conservative capitals. The Actionist movement of the 1960s, with its provocative ‘happenings’ - often recorded on photographs and film - involving nudity, body fluids, and sometimes the dismemberment of animal carcases, challenged but did not fundamentally disrupt this situation. Change accelerated in the 1980s, however, and Austria also began to acquire the elements of a modern photographic infrastructure, with salons, galleries, and the establishment of degree-level courses in the capital and elsewhere. In the background was the growing economic importance of cultural tourism and, in tandem, public spending on museums and other facilities. Vienna today is home to …. But from the 1980s Austria began to acquire the elements of a modern photographic infrastructure, with salons, galleries, and a growing number of degree-level courses in both the capital and elsewhere. Vienna today is home to leading journals such as Eikon, Camera Austria, and Fotogeschichte, and is the international headquarters both of the Lomography Movement (founded by two Viennese students in the early 1990s) and, since 2002, of the European Society for the History of Photography. A landmark event was the reopening in 2003, after a long period of renovation, of the Albertina Gallery, with an exhibition that showcased the fine collection of photographs housed there since the 19th century. Other major collections exist at the Army Museum and Vienna Municipal Museum.

— Robin Lenman

Bibliography

  • Starl, T. (ed.), Geschichte der Fotografie in Österreich (2 vols., 1983-5).
  • ‘Fotografie in Österreich im 19. Jahrhundert’, Fotogeschichte, 81, 83 (2001, 2002).
  • Faber, M., and Schröder, K. A. (eds.), Das Auge und der Apparat: Eine Geschichte der Fotografie aus den Sammlungen der Albertina (2003).
  • Starl, T., Lexikon zur Fotografie in Österreich 1839 bis 1945 (2005)
 

Ballets companies are attached to the opera houses of several Austrian cities: Baden bei Wien, Graz, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, Linz, Salzburg, and St Pölten, though until recently their prime function has been performing in operas. Historically, the main centre of dance activity has been Vienna. During the 18th century some of the greatest ballet masters came to the Habsburg court including Hilverding, Angiolini, Noverre, and Viganò, instituting a lively tradition of dramatic ballets at the Kärntnertor Theater (the opera house). Dance was also popular at the city's Theater auf der Wieden with Friedrich Horschelt's fairy-tale ballets and Vienna Children's Ballet drawing enthusiastic crowds, and at the Theater in der Leopoldstadt with Rainoldi's pantomimes. During the first half of the 19th century most of the great Romantic ballerinas performed in the city. In the 1820s Vienna's most renowned dancer, Elssler, came to fame while her rival Taglioni made her Viennese debut in 1822. Productions of many popular ballets were danced including La Sylphide (1836), La Fille du Danube (1839), La Gitana (1840), Giselle (1842), and La Péri (1844). After 1853 P. Taglioni made regular vists as guest choreographer and between 1855 and 1856 August Bournonville was ballet master, staging Napoli in 1856. In 1869 P. Taglioni's Sardanapal was the opening production of the Hofopertheater, the newly built Opera House. Karl Telle was in charge of the ballet company here until 1890, staging productions of Coppélia in 1876 and Sylvia in 1877, although ballet was by this time subservient to opera. He was succeeded by Josef Hassreiter whose first ballet The Fairy Doll (1888) achieved considerable success and is still in the repertory. He reigned until 1920 having choreographed 48 ballets, many to music by Josef Bayer. Between 1922 and 1928 Heinrich Kröller was ballet master staging several ballets to music by Richard Strauss including Couperin Suite (1923), the latter being director of the State Opera. Margarete Wallmann, who had studied with Wigman, directed the Opera Ballet and its school from 1934 to 1939. Erika Hanka was appointed in 1942 and choreographed many ballets based in European modern dance techniques, including Homeric Symphony (mus. T. Berger, 1950) and Medusa (mus. von Einem, 1957). She was, however, instrumental in re-introducing the classical repertoire with Gordon Hamilton's staging of Giselle opening the theatre on 29 Nov. 1955, after the re-opening of the Opera House (it had been destroyed in 1945). Standards rose but after Hanka's death in 1958 there was a disruptively rapid turnover of ballet masters and directors—Parlic (1958-61), Milloss (1961-6 and 1971-4), and Orlikowsky (1966-71). There were, however, two outstanding triumphs: Nureyev's 1964 production of Swan Lake and Grigorovich's 1973 production of Nutcracker. In 1976 Gerhard Brunner became director of the State Opera Ballet and its school and the repertoire expanded to include works by van Manen, Cranko, and Massine. A. Woolliams took over the company's direction in 1994 (from Elena Tchernichova) and continued to expand the modern repertoire with new works by Renato Zernatto and Uwe Scholz. Renato Zanella was appointed director in 1995 and has created several works for the company. Recent principals include K. Healey and T. Solymosi. Other ballet performances take place at the Theater an der Wien and the Volksoper. In Salzburg the ballet company has also expanded its modern repertory under the direction of Peter Breuer (who choreographs some of its works) while the company at Graz has works by Spoerli, Smok, and van Manen in its repertory. There are a small but growing number of independent dance companies, such as Eva-Maria Lerchenberg-Thony's Tanztheater Company in Innsbruck, as well as new moves to encourage the profile of dance, such as the biannual dance festival in Vienna and the Austria Dances festival in Graz. Austria's most important school is the State Opera Ballet School.

 
(ô'strēə) , Ger. Österreich [eastern march], officially Republic of Austria, federal republic (2005 est. pop. 8,185,000), 32,374 sq mi (83,849 sq km), central Europe. It is bounded by Slovenia and Italy (S), Switzerland and Liechtenstein (W), Germany and the Czech Republic (N), and Slovakia and Hungary (E). Its capital and by far its largest city is Vienna.

Land and People

The Alps traverse Austria from west to east and occupy three fourths of the country. The highest peak in Austria is the Grossglockner (12,460 ft/3,798 m) in the Hohe Tauern group. The scenic beauty of Tyrol, the Salzkammergut, Innsbruck, the Austrian Alps, Kärnten, and Salzburg city, and the attractions of Vienna and other cultural centers have made Austria a major European tourist center. The country is drained by the Danube and its tributaries, the Inn, the Enns, the Mürz, and the Mur.

Its nine provinces (Ger. Bundesländer) are Vorarlberg, Tyrol, Salzburg, Carinthia, Styria, Upper Austria, Lower Austria, Burgenland, and Vienna. Over 91% of Austrians are of Germanic ethnic origin, and some 74% are Roman Catholics. German is the official language, but Slovene, Croatian, and Hungarian are also spoken. Since 1945, Austria has received nearly 2 million refugees from the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere in Europe, though many of these continued on to other destinations. There are universities in Vienna, Salzburg, Innsbruck, Graz, Klagenfurt, Leoben, and Krems an der Donau.

Economy

Forestry, cattle raising, and dairying are prevalent throughout the alpine provinces; Vorarlberg has an ancient textile industry. About 3% of the population is employed in mostly small-scale agriculture; the country is nearly self-sufficient in terms of food production. In Upper and Lower Austria and in Burgenland, tillage agriculture predominates: the chief crops are potatoes, sugar beets, fruit, barley, rye, and oats.

Manufacturing is diversified and accounts for over 30% of the gross national product. More than half of the industries are concentrated in the Vienna basin; Linz, Steyr, Graz, Leoben, Innsbruck, and Salzburg are the other chief industrial centers. Many of the country's industries were nationalized after World War II, together with the largest commercial banks. The chief manufactures are machinery, vehicles, iron and steel, communications equipment, chemicals, and paper and wood products. Food processing is also important, and many minerals necessary for industry (graphite, iron, magnesium, copper, zinc, and lignite) are found in Austria. The country also has deposits of crude oil and salt, and is rich in hydroelectric power. In recent years, service industries, including a large banking sector, have become important to Austria's economy, and they now employ some 70% of the nation's workforce. Tourism is also important. The main trading partners are Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the United States.

Government

Austria is governed under the constitution of 1920 as revised in 1929, and has a mixed presidential-parliamentary form of government. The president, who is the head of state, is elected by popular vote for a six-year term and nominates the chancellor (prime minister) and confirms the cabinet. The chancellor, who is head of government, heads the cabinet, which is responsible to the house of representatives (Nationalrat) of parliament. The House of Representatives is popularly elected according to proportional representation. The upper house of parliament, the Senate (Bundesrat), is chosen by the provincial assemblies. Administratively, Austria is divided into nine states.

History

During the past 10 centuries, the term Austria has designated a variety of geographic and political concepts. In its narrowest sense Austria has included only the present-day provinces of Upper and Lower Austria, including Vienna; in its widest meaning the term has covered the far-flung domains of the imperial house of Hapsburg. Its present connotation—German-speaking Austria—dates only from 1918. This article deals mainly with the history of German-speaking Austria. For wider historical background, see Holy Roman Empire; Hapsburg; Austro-Hungarian Monarchy; Hungary; Bohemia; and Netherlands, Austrian and Spanish.

The Rise of Austria

Austria is located at the crossroads of Europe; Vienna is at the gate of the Danubian plain, and the Brenner Pass in W Austria links Germany and Italy. From earliest times Austrian territory has been a thoroughfare, a battleground, and a border area. It was occupied by Celts and Suebi when the Romans conquered (15 B.C.A.D. 10) and divided it among the provinces of Rhaetia, Noricum, and Upper Pannonia. After the 5th cent. A.D., Huns, Ostrogoths, Lombards, and Bavarians overran and devastated the provinces. By c.600, Slavs from the east had occupied all of modern Styria, Lower Austria, and Carinthia.

In 788, Charlemagne conquered the area and set up the first Austrian (i.e., Eastern) March in the present Upper and Lower Austria, to halt the inroads of the Avars. Colonization was encouraged, and Christianity (which had been introduced under the Romans) was again spread energetically. After Charlemagne's death (814) the march soon fell to the Moravians and later to the Magyars, from whom it was taken (955) by Emperor Otto I. Otto reconstituted the march and attached it to Bavaria, but, in 976, Otto II bestowed it as a separate fief on Leopold of Babenberg, founder of the first Austrian dynasty. Emperor Frederick I raised (1156) Austria to a duchy, and, in 1192, Styria also passed under Babenberg rule.

The 11th and 12th cent. saw the height of Austrian feudalism and also witnessed the marked development of towns as the Danube was converted to a great trade route. After the death (1246) of the last Babenberg, King Ottocar II of Bohemia acquired (1251–69) Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola. Fearing his power, the German princes elected (1273) Rudolf of Hapsburg German king. Rudolf I asserted (1282) his royal prerogative to reclaim the four duchies from Ottocar and incorporate them in his domains. After the murder (1308) of Rudolf's son, Albert I, the German princes balked at electing another member of the ambitious family.

Albert's ducal successors enlarged the Hapsburg holdings by acquiring Tyrol (1363) and Trieste (1382) and extended their influence over the ecclesiastic states of Salzburg, Trent, and Brixen (see Bressanone), which, however, remained independent until 1803. Marriage allowed Albert II to be elected German king in 1438. Beginning with Albert II, the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire were always chosen from the Hapsburg dynasty. Despite their vast imperial preoccupations, the emperors always considered German Austria the prized core of their dominions. During the long reign of Frederick III (1440–93), the protracted Hapsburg wars with France began. In 1526, Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary were united under one crown (see Ferdinand I, emperor). In the same year Vienna was besieged for two weeks by troops of the Ottoman Empire under Sulayman the Magnificent, who had made a forceful advance into Europe. The Turkish threat to Austria ebbed and then climaxed again in the second siege of Vienna in 1683.

The patterns of medievalism were weakening in Austria, especially as the money economy spread, and in the 16th cent. the commercial revolution diminished the importance of Austrian trade routes and of the ancient gold and silver mines of Tyrol and Carinthia. Economic and political instability in the 16th cent. precipitated the spread of the Protestant Reformation, which the Hapsburg rulers attempted to counter by nurturing the Counter Reformation. The alliance then formed between church and state continued throughout the history of the monarchy.

The Austrian peasantry, especially in Tyrol, had gained some advantages in the Peasants' War of 1524–26; in general, however, the rising, backed by some Protestants but not by Luther, was defeated. Suppression of Protestantism was at first impossible, and, under Maximilian II, Lutheran nobles were granted considerable toleration. Rudolph II and Matthias pursued policies of partial Catholicization, and, under Ferdinand II, anti-Protestant vigor helped to precipitate the Thirty Years War (1618–48). Protestant Bohemia and Moravia, defeated by the Austrians at the White Mt. (1620), became virtual Austrian provinces. Austria proper remained relatively unscathed in the long holocaust; after the Peace of Westphalia the Hapsburg lands emerged as a distinct empire, whereas the Holy Roman Empire drifted into a mere shadow existence.

The Austrian Empire

The monarchy, although repressive of free speech and worship, was far from absolute; taxation and other powers rested with the provincial estates for a further century. Emperor Charles VI (1711–40), whose dynastic wars had drained the state, secured the succession to the Hapsburg lands for his daughter, Maria Theresa, by means of the pragmatic sanction. Maria Theresa's struggle with Frederick II of Prussia in the War of the Austrian Succession (see Austrian Succession, War of the) and the Seven Years War opened a long struggle for dominance in the German lands.

Except for the loss of Silesia, Maria Theresa held her own. The provincial estates were reduced in power, and an efficient centralized bureaucracy was created; as the nobles were attracted to bureaucratic service their power as a class was weakened. Maria Theresa's husband, Francis I, became Holy Roman emperor in 1745, but his position was largely titular. The major event of Maria Theresa's later reign was the first partition of Poland (1772; see Poland, partitions of); in that transaction and in the third partition (1795) Austria renewed its eastward expansion.

Joseph II, who succeeded her, impetuously carried forward the reforms which his mother had cautiously begun. His attempts to further centralize and Germanize his scattered and disparate dominions met stubborn resistance; his project to consolidate his state by exchanging the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria was balked by Frederick II. An exemplar of “benevolent despotism” and a disciple of the Enlightenment, Joseph also decreed a series of revolutionary agrarian, fiscal, religious, and judicial reforms; however, opposition, especially from among the clergy and the landowners, forced his successor, Leopold II, to rescind many of them. In Joseph's reign the Austrian bourgeoisie began to emerge as a social and cultural force. Music and architecture (see Vienna) flourished in 18th-century Austria, and modern Austrian literature (see German literature) emerged early in the 19th cent.

In the reign of Francis II, Austria was drawn (1792) into war with revolutionary France (see French Revolutionary Wars) and with Napoleon I. The treaties of Campo Formio (1797) and Lunéville (1801) preluded the dissolution (1806) of the Holy Roman Empire, and in 1804, Francis II took the title “Francis I, emperor of Austria.” His rout at Austerlitz (1805) led to the severe Treaty of Pressburg (see Pressburg, Treaty of).

An upsurge of patriotism resulted in the renewal of war with Napoleon in 1809; Austria's defeat at Wagram led to the even more humiliating Peace of Schönbrunn (see under Schönbrunn). Austria was forced to side with Napoleon in the Russian campaign of 1812, but in 1813 it again joined the coalition against Napoleon; an Austrian, Prince Karl Philipp von Schwarzenberg, headed the allied forces. The Congress of Vienna (1814–15; see Vienna, Congress of) did not restore to Austria its former possessions in the Netherlands and in Baden but awarded it Lombardy, Venetia, Istria, and Dalmatia.

As the leading power of both the German Confederation and the Holy Alliance, Austria under the ministry of Metternich dominated European politics. Conservatism and the repression of nationalistic strivings characterized the age. Nevertheless, the Metternich period was one of great cultural achievement, particularly in music and literature.

The revolutions of 1848 shook the Hapsburg empire but ultimately failed because of the conflicting economic goals of the middle and lower classes and because of the conflicting nationalist aspirations that set the revolutionary movements of Germans, Slavs, Hungarians, and Italians against each other. Revolts were at first successful throughout the empire (see Risorgimento; Galicia; Bohemia; Hungary); in Vienna the revolutionists drove out Metternich (Mar., 1848). Emperor Ferdinand granted (April) a liberal constitution, which a constituent assembly replaced (July) with a more democratic one. After a new outbreak Vienna was bombarded, and the revolutionists were punished by troops under General Windischgrätz. Prince Felix zu Schwarzenberg became premier and engineered the abdication of Ferdinand in favor of Francis Joseph.

Absolutism returned with the dissolution of the constituent assembly. Austrian leadership in Germany was reasserted at the Convention of Olmütz in 1850. Alexander Bach intensified (1852–59) Schwarzenberg's centralizing policy, thus heightening national tensions within the empire. But economic prosperity was promoted by the lowering of internal tariff barriers, and several reforms dating from 1848 were upheld, notably the complete abolition of feudal dues.

The military and political weakness of the empire was demonstrated by the Austrian loss of Lombardy in the Italian War of 1859. Attempts to solve the nationalities problem—the “October Diploma” (1860), which created a central legislature and gave increased powers to the provincial assemblies of nobles, and the “February Patent,” which transferred many of these powers to the central legislature—failed. Prussia seized the opportunity to drive Austria out of Germany. After involving Austria in the war over Schleswig-Holstein in 1864, Bismarck found an easy pretext for attacking. Overwhelmingly defeated by Prussia at Sadová (or Sadowa; also know as the battle of Königgrätz) in 1866 (see Austro-Prussian War), Austria was forced to cede Venetia to Italy. With this debacle Austria's political role in Germany came to an end.

A reorganization of the government of the empire became inevitable, and in 1867 a compromise (Ger. Ausgleich) with Hungarian moderate nationalists established a dual state, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. But the realm, a land of diverse peoples ruled by a German-Magyar minority, increasingly became an anachronism in a nationalistic age. Failure to provide a satisfactory status for the other nationalities, notably the Slavs, played a major role in bringing about World War I. Important developments in Austrian society during this period were the continued irresponsibility of the nobility and the backwardness of the peasantry, the growth of a socialist working class, widespread anti-Semitism stimulated by the large-scale movement to Austria of poor Jews from the eastern provinces, and extraordinary cultural creativity in Vienna.

The disastrous course of the war led to the breakup of the monarchy in 1918. Charles I renounced power; after a peaceful revolution staged by the Socialist and Pan-German parties, German Austria was proclaimed (Nov. 12) a republic and a part of Greater Germany.

Modern Austria

The Treaty of Saint-Germain (1919) fixed the present Austrian borders and forbade (as did the Treaty of Versailles) any political or economic union (Ger. Anschluss) with Germany. This left Austria a small country with some 7 million inhabitants, one third of whom lived in a single large city (Vienna) that had been geared to be the financial and industrial hub of a large state. The Dual Monarchy had been virtually self-sufficient economically; its breakup and the consequent erection of tariff walls deprived Austria of raw materials, food, and markets. In the postwar period, starvation and influenza exacted a heavy toll, especially in Vienna. These ills were followed by currency inflation, ended only in 1924 by means of League of Nations aid, following upon chronic unemployment, financial scandals and crises, and growing political unrest.

“Red” Vienna, under the moderate socialist government of Karl Seitz, became increasingly opposed by the “Black” (i.e., clericalist) rural faction, which won the elections of 1921. The cabinet of Social Democrat Karl Renner was succeeded by Christian Socialist and Pan-German coalitions under Schober, Seipel, and others. Unrest culminated, in 1927, in violent riots in Vienna; two rival private militias—the Heimwehr of the monarchist leader E. R. von Starhemberg and the Schutzbund of the socialists—posed a threat to the authority of the state. Economic crisis loomed again in the late 1920s. National Socialism, feeding in part on anti-Semitism, gained rapidly and soon absorbed the Pan-German party.

Engelbert Dollfuss, who became chancellor in 1932, though irreconcilably opposed to Anschluss and to National Socialism, tended increasingly toward corporative fascism and relied heavily on Italian support. His stern suppression of the socialists precipitated a serious revolt (1934), which was bloodily suppressed by the army. Soon afterward a totalitarian state was set up, and all independent political parties were outlawed. In July, 1934, the National Socialists assassinated Dollfuss but failed to seize the government.

Kurt von Schuschnigg succeeded Dollfuss. German pressure on Austria increased; Schuschnigg was forced to legalize the operations of the National Socialists and to appoint members of that party to cabinet posts. Schuschnigg planned a last-minute effort to avoid Anschluss by holding a plebiscite, but Hitler forced him to resign. In Mar., 1938, Austria was occupied by German troops and became part of the Reich. Arthur Seyss-Inquart became the Nazi governor.

In 1943, the Allies agreed to reestablish an independent Austria at the end of World War II. In 1945, Austria was conquered by Soviet and American troops, and a provisional government was set up under Karl Renner. The pre-Dollfuss constitution was restored with revisions; the country was divided into separate occupation zones, each controlled by an Allied power.

Economic recovery was hindered by the decline of trade between Western and Eastern Europe and by the division into zones. Austria was formally recognized by the Western powers in 1946, but because of Soviet disagreement with the West over reparations, the occupation continued. On May 15, 1955, a formal treaty between Great Britain, France, the United States, the USSR, and Austria restored full sovereignty to the country. The treaty prohibited the possession of major offensive weapons and required Austria to pay heavy reparations to the USSR. Austria proclaimed its perpetual neutrality. In 1955 it was admitted to the United Nations.

By the 1960s unprecedented prosperity had been attained. Austria had joined the European Free Trade Association in 1959, but association with the European Economic Community (Common Market) was held back by Soviet opposition. Politically, a nearly equal balance of power between the conservative People's party and the Socialist party resulted in successive coalition cabinets until 1966, when the People's party won a clear majority. They were ousted by the Socialists in the 1970 elections, and Bruno Kreisky became chancellor. A long-standing dispute with Italy over the German-speaking population of the Trentino–Alto Adige region of Italy was dealt with in a treaty ratified in 1971.

In 1983 the Socialist government fell, and the Socialists were forced to form a coalition with the far-right Freedom party. Austria captured world attention in 1986 when former UN secretary-general Kurt Waldheim was elected president despite allegations that he had been involved in atrocities as a German army staff officer in the Balkans during World War II. Also in 1986 the Socialists (subsequently the Social Democrats) and the People's party again joined together in a “grand coalition,” with Social Democrat Franz Vranitzky as chancellor; it retained control of the government through the 1990s.

Austria began a partial privatization of state-owned industries in the late 1980s and entered the European Union (EU) in 1995. Waldheim was succeeded as president in 1992 by Thomas Klestil, the candidate of the People's party; Klestil was reelected in 1998. In 1997, Chancellor Vranitzky resigned and was replaced by Social Democrat Viktor Klima.

In the Oct., 1999, elections, the People's party placed third, just barely behind the far-right Freedom party, whose leader, Jörg Haider, was criticized as demagogic and nativist. The electoral results complicated the formation of a stable new government, which was only achieved in Feb., 2000, when Wolfgang Schüssel of the People's party became chancellor of a People's party–Freedom party coalition. Austria was quickly ostracized by other EU nations because of the Freedom party's participation in the government, and Haider—who had not joined the government—subsequently resigned as party leader. The sanctions imposed by the EU came to be regarded as threatening by smaller EU countries, however, and on the recommendation of an EU fact-finding commission they were lifted in Sept., 2000. Feuding within the Freedom party led to the collapse of the government two years later.

Elections in Nov., 2002, were a major setback for the Freedom party, which was a distant third, while the People's party won a plurality. Despite the collapse of their coalition several months before, the People's party again formed (Feb., 2003) a government with the Freedom party, with Schüssel as chancellor. A little more than a year later, in Apr., 2004, Heinz Fischer, a Social Democrat, was elected president; his victory, the first by a Social Democrat since 1986, was regarded as a sign of voter unhappiness with the government. A split in the Freedom party led party leader Haider to form (2005) the Alliance for Austria's Future and exclude extremist Freedom party members, and the Alliance replaced the Freedom party in the government. In the Oct., 2006, parliamentary elections the Social Democrats won the largest number of seats, besting the People's party, but Social Democratic leader Alfred Gusenbauer needed to form a coalition in order to govern, and by the end of 2006 he had not succeeded in doing so. The Freedom party finished third in the voting, while Haider's Alliance finished fifth, after the Greens. In Jan., 2007, the Social Democratic and People's parties formed a coalition government with Gusenbauer as chancellor.

Bibliography

See R. A. Kann, The Multinational Empire: Nationalism and National Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848–1918 (1950, repr. 1970); V. L. Tapie, The Rise and Fall of the Habsburg Monarchy (tr. 1971); K. Waldheim, The Austrian Example (tr. 1973); E. Wangermann, The Austrian Achievement, 1700–1800 (1973); W. M. Johnston, The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History, 1848–1938 (1976); K. Steiner et al., ed., Modern Austria (1981); B. Head, State and Economy in Australia (1983); B. Jelavich, Modern Austria: Empire and Republic, 1815–1986 (1987); M. A. Sully, A Contemporary History of Austria (1990).


 
Psychoanalysis: Austria

The history of psychoanalysis in Austria is practically indistinguishable from that of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society until the end of the Second World War. The group known as the Wednesday Psychological Society, which met regularly after 1902 in Freud's apartment, later renamed itself the Wiener psychoanalytische Vereinigung (Vienna Psychoanalytic Society) and was admitted as a regional group into the International Psychoanalytical Association, which had just been founded. In 1911, following the defection of its first president, Alfred Adler, Freud assumed the presidency. When Carl Gustav Jung and the members of the Zurich society left the psychoanalytic movement, Vienna became the sole center of influence.

After a period of inactivity caused by the First World War, the society resumed its activities and, with its youngest members playing an important role, quickly established a treatment facility in 1922 and a training institute in 1924. Only in 1936, after years of migration, was the Vienna society able to take possession of the premises at Berggasse 7, where it was housed along with its training institute, treatment facility, and publishing house.

Between 1934 and 1938 Austria developed politically into an authoritarian Catholic state. Although most members of the society had shown themselves to be sympathetic to the Social-Democrats, its administration made a conscious decision to abstain from politics. On March 14, 1938, the day after German troops entered Austria and after a number of analysts had already left the country, the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society held its last meeting. Members unanimously decided that those who felt threatened should leave Austria, and that the society's headquarters would be transferred to wherever Freud happened to be. With the exception of Alfred Winterstein and August Aichhorn, the 68 active and honorary members and approximately 36 candidates left the city. Freud left with his family on June 4, 1938. Between 1938 and 1945 a branch of the Deutsches Reichsinstitut für psychologische Forschung und Psychotherapie (State Institute for Research in Psychology and Psychotherapy), directed first by Aichhorn and then by Begsattel, was established in Vienna. Under Aichhorn's presidency a group of analysts and psychologists attempted to free themselves of the command of the Reichsinstitut. In 1944 this secret group had 14 training candidates, 7 of whom later became psychoanalysts.

Following the fall of National Socialism and the end of the Second World War, Austrian analysts did two things during the period of reconstruction: first, they reconstructed the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and got it readmitted to the International Psychoanalytical Association, and second, they attempted to bring into the fold analysts and organizations that, under the title of depth psychology, held orientations considered marginal or unorthodox.

The inauguration of the new Vienna Psychoanalytic Society took place in 1946, with August Aichhorn as president. With assistance from Anna Freud, international recognition followed shortly, although it would take decades before the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society made any significant contact with the world psychoanalytic movement. After Aichhorn's death in 1949, Alfred Winterstein became the new president, a post he held until 1957. Under the direction of Wilhelm Solms-Rödelheim, the society continued to grow. The 1971 International Psychoanalytic Congress, held in Vienna, helped solidify the society's renewed links to international psychoanalysis.

Meanwhile, the Austrian and international student movement grew, and there was renewed interest in psychoanalysis generally. The Sigmund Freud Gesellschaft (Sigmund Freud Society), founded in 1968, together with the sociopsychiatrist Hans Strotzka and the cofounder of the Sigmund Freud Society Harald Leupold-Löwenthal, did much to make psychoanalysis better known to the population at large. Hans Hoff, professor of psychiatry, also helped establish this receptive climate.

Between 1972 and 1974 the presidents of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society included Alois Becker, Harald Leupold-Löwenthal, Peter Schuster, Wolfgang Berner, and Wilhelm Burian. Krista Placheta became president in 1998. As of 2005, Christine Diercks was president of the society.

In 1986 the society moved to new offices at Gonzagagasse 11. As of 1988 the society had seventy members and approximately a hundred candidates, more than the number of members in the former Vienna society. With the post-1968 generation of psychoanalysts came a relaxation of the older, authoritarian climate of discussion and a broader range of issues. Two central themes for the society in the 1980s were anti-Semitism inside and outside the field of psychoanalysis and its history during and after the war. In addition, the society held debates on the relation between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. These discussions led to a training seminar on psychoanalytic psychotherapy, which became an integral part of the general training program.

In 1989, at the annual meeting of the Vienna society, the assembled members voted, by a margin of one vote, to join the Dachverband für Psychotherapie (a supervisory organization), and later it voted to join the Psychotherapiebeirat (Psychotherapy Advisory Committee). In 1993 the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society was legally recognized as a training organization for psychotherapy and was a leader in this field.

From 1945 Igor Caruso, an important representative of the various groups associated with psychoanalysis, worked to make psychotherapy more accessible to a greater portion of the population. During the years following the war, he and the discussion circle of which he was a member succeeded in creating a psychoanalytic organization that remained in operation for a number decades. Known as theÖsterreichische Arbeitskreise für Tiefenpsychologie (Austrian Working Group on Depth Psychology) and later renamed the Österreichische Arbeitskreise für Psychanalyse (Austrian Working Group on Psychoanalysis), it initiated throughout the country a series of teaching and clinical initiatives that were Freudian in orientation.

In 1947 Caruso created the Wiener Arbeitskreise für Tiefenpsychologie (Vienna Working Group on Depth Psychology), an autonomous scientific community composed primarily of physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, and theologians, most of whom were close in age. The first candidates were trained privately and without any specific professional requirements, since the group defined itself primarily as a venue for scientific discussion. For this reason an increasing number of members of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society participated in these discussions, although some of them found the intellectual climate overly imbued with Catholicism. Because of the working group's unorthodox approach, the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society was forced to define strict boundaries between the two organizations at the start of the 1950s. These boundaries may have led the Vienna working group, whose training guidelines were largely those used by psychoanalytic societies having a strictly Freudian orientation, to introduce a more formal and systematic structure for itself. The Vienna working group and the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society differed in ideological orientation. In place of psychological analysis, the Vienna working group aimed at an existential synthesis in the form of a universal humanity, blended different trends in depth psychology, and harked to Jung rather than Freud.

With the 1952 publication of Caruso's book Psycho-analyse und Synthese der Existenz (Existential Psychology: From Analysis to Synthesis, 1964), the working group's program became more focused. After 1953 there were no explicit references to Jung's depth psychology and increasingly specific references to psychoanalysis. "Psychoanalysis" was initially understood in its technical sense, and the human aspect inherent in Freudian theory and its offshoots was enlarged in the direction of a personal psychoanalysis.

Caruso's book was translated into six languages, and thus served to spread his ideas internationally, especially in South America, where his ideas where well received. In fact, a number of South American candidates received their training in Vienna. Another example of cross-border activity is the 1954 Brussels symposium on the "Psychology of the Individual," attended by some forty psychoanalysts from several European countries. Presenters included Jacques Lacan, who gave a talk on the internal dialectics of the person in the theory and technique of psychoanalysis. As a result of his talk, Lacan became a corresponding member of the Vienna Working Group on Depth Psychology, a status he maintained until his death.

Theoretically, the working group focused on the concept of symbols and attempted to find a connection between Freudian ego psychology and personal philosophical concepts. There were increasing interdisciplinary attempts to bridge psychiatry, ethology, sociology, group dynamics (especially that of Raoul Schindler), and psychoanalysis. This expansion resulted in the founding, in Innsbruck in 1958, of the International Secretariat of the Working Groups on Depth Psychology, which was replaced in 1966 by the Internationale Föderation der Arbeitskreise für Tiefenpsychologie (International Federation of Working Groups on Depth Psychology) because of the growing number of participant associations.

During the 1960s different attempts to found a second world association, independent of the orthodox International Psychoanalytical Association, were made at the instigation of the German Psychoanalytic Association. Caruso and his working groups rebuffed these attempts in spite of the number of exchanges and conferences within the Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft psychoanalytischer Gesellschaften (Inter-national Working Group of Psychoanalytic Societies), founded in 1962 in Amsterdam. At this time the theoretical orientation of the working groups moved further and further away from fundamental theological concepts of Catholicism. There were increasing references to the Freudian foundations of psychoanalysis and greater emphasis on the psychosociological aspects of the field, which resulted from a growing interest in thinkers like G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, and Herbert Marcuse. In 1972, when Caruso obtained the psychology chair at the University of Salzburg, a number of circles and working groups were formed outside Vienna, and these helped spread awareness of psychoanalysis throughout Austria. In addition to the Linz Circle, created in 1958, these included groups for the study of depth psychology launched in Graz and Linz in 1973 and in Salzburg in 1974, followed by the foundation of the Austrian Society for the Study of Child Psychoanalysis in Salzburg in 1976.

This gathering trend toward orthodoxy found concrete expression when the Vienna Working Group on Depth Psychology renamed itself the Vienna Working Group on Psychoanalysis in 1988. Shortly thereafter all the other depth psychology groups followed its example. Until 1992 these groups were all governed by the Directorate of Austrian Working Groups, which was replaced in 1992 by the Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft der Arbeitskreise für Psychoanalyse inÖsterreich (Scientific Society of Working Groups for Psychoanalysis in Austria). This society produced the journal Texte: Psychoanalyse,Ästhetik, Kulturkritik, the only (quarterly) Austrian journal on psychoanalysis, edited by E. List, Johannes Ranefeld, G. F. Zeilinger, and August Ruhs. Because the society met IPA standards, which the working groups had followed since 1970, it asked to be admitted to the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1997, with Ranefeld as president. A commission of inquiry was established in October 1998.

Between 1985 and 1990 an interdisciplinary group of Viennese scientists, in collaboration with the Institut culturel français, organized a two-year international seminar entitled "Psychoanalysis and Structuralism: Freud and Lacan," which included some of the best known representatives of the Lacan school. This resulted in the formation of the Neue wiener Gruppe/Lacan-Schule, composed of an "aesthetic" section (under the direction of Walter Seitter) and a "clinical" section (under the direction of August Ruhs). It organized regular interdisciplinary conferences, usually followed by one or more publications.

In 1984 a group of students founded the Werkstatt für Psychoanalyse und Gesellschaftskritik (Workshop on Psychoanalysis and Social Criticism) in Salzburg. Until 1996 the organization refused to accept any form of orthodoxy or dogmatism and insisted on maintaining a political focus. The Werkblatt, the organization's publication, is still published, although the organization itself no longer exists.

In 1967 Eric Pakesch, a student of Caruso, created a chair of medical psychology and psychotherapy in the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz . At the suggestion of Hans Strotzka, a popular psychoanalyst and sociopsychiatrist, the Institute of Depth Psychology and Psychotherapy was founded in 1971 within the School of Medicine of the University of Vienna. It was intended to house psychoanalysis along with the other generally recognized schools of psychotherapy in a single facility. Eventually, psychoanalysis became its primary focus, and in the current university depth psychology clinic, run by Marianne Springer-Kremser, all practitioners use psychoanalysis or depth psychology, with the exception of one practitioner who uses systemic family therapy. A psychoanalytic focus can also be found at the university institutes of medical psychology (and psychotherapy) in the universities of Graz, Innsbruck, and Vienna (directed by W. Pieringer, G. Schüssler, and G. Sonneck, respectively). The Psychology Institute of the University of Klagenfurt, under the direction of Professor J. Menschik-Bendele, also has a strong psychoanalytic orientation.

Legislation on psychoanalysis instituted in 1992 had important repercussions for the field of psychoanalysis in Austria, for it drastically reduced the autonomy of psychoanalytic societies in their training activities and therapeutic practices. Psychoanalysis became recognized as equivalent to other therapeutic practices, so it had to comply with the general training program for psychotherapists. Before becoming a psychoanalyst, candidates had to complete a two-year program required for all forms of psychotherapy. Since health insurance recognized only some psychoanalytic treatments and reimbursement was partial, the five principal Viennese psychoanalytic and depth-psychology associations decided to create a parent organization in 1997 to make special agreements with insurers for long-term psychoanalytic treatment. For the first time in the history of psychoanalysis in Austria, member and nonmember associations of the International Psychoanalytical Association worked together in an organization to promote their mutual interest. Thanks to the concerted efforts of these societies, the Viennese municipal health service began to offer analyses for fifty citizens, without restriction as to duration or the frequency of treatment. Sixty years after Vienna's Ambulatorium shut down under Nazi administration, this treatment center reopened in 1999 and represented another sign of reawakened interest in psychoanalysis. Finally, plans for the Wiener Arbeitskreis für Psychaonalyse to join the IPA moved forward when it was granted study group status in 2003.

Another important parent organization for psychoanalysis is the Sigmund Freud Society and Sigmund Freud Museum at Berggasse 19 in Vienna. The society, founded in November 1968 with the help of Anna Freud, succeeded in creating a museum where Freud had his consulting room. In addition to supporting research into the history of psychoanalysis and its founders, the society holds discussions on important contemporary clinical, sociocultural, and therapeutic issues in a spirit of interdisciplinary cooperation. Harold Leupold-Löwentahal, president of the Society from 1976 to 1998, was succeeded by Johannes Schülein, who presided until 2003, and Dieter Bogner. The library, with 25,000 volumes, represents one of the major collections of its kind in Europe and includes archives with over 50,000 records of all kind. Since 1997, at the instigation of American artist Josef Kosuth and Austrian art dealer Peter Pakesch, the Sigmund Freud Society has acquired a collection that demonstrates the influence of psychoanalysis on contemporary art. In 2003, under director Inge Scholz-Strasser—albeit against the wishes of many Viennese psychoanalysts—the museum turned into a private foundation. This event led to a noticeable coolness between the administration and the city's psychoanalytic societies.

Bibliography

Caruso, Igor A. (1964). Existential psychology: from analysis to synthesis (Eva Krapf, Trans.). New York: Herder and Herder. (Original work published 1952)

Huber, Wolfgang. (1977). Psychoanalyse inÖsterreich seit 1933. Vienna: Geyer.

Parth, Walter. (1998). Vergangenheit, die fortwirkt. Texte: Psychoanalyse,Ästhetik, Kulturkritik, 2, 61-75.

Reichmayr, Johannes. (1994). Spurensuche in der Geschichte der Psychoanalyse. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer.

—AUGUST RUHS

 

A geographic term used to describe the two "archduchies" of Austria above and below the Enns River, "Austria" is also applied to all of the hereditary possessions of the German Habsburgs that were situated along the southeastern flank of the Holy Roman Empire. In addition, it is a political term for the diverse dynastic conglomerate ruled by the "House of Austria," including Bohemia and Hungary.

Origins

This larger conglomeration of states, or Gesamtstaat, was formed during the lifetime of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (ruled 1493–1519), who forged a series of fortuitous dynastic alliances with the heiresses of Burgundy (1477), Spain (1496), and Hungary-Bohemia (1515). Maximilian's elder grandson succeeded him as Emperor Charles V (ruled 1519–1556) and ceded the Austrian lands to his brother Ferdinand, who was elected king of Bohemia (1526) and Hungary (1527) following the last Jagellon king's death after the Ottoman victory at Mohács (1526). His eventual election as Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I (ruled 1558–1564) completed a division of the Habsburg dominions that left the dynasty's Burgundian, Spanish, Italian, and vast American possessions in the hands of a "Spanish" branch ruled by Charles and his heirs, while a succession of "Austrian" Habsburg emperors ruled the largely contiguous Austro-Hungarian-Bohemian conglomerate.

Contemporaries attributed the dynasty's success to Maximilian's marriage policies, immortalized by the words "Let the strong fight wars. Thou, happy Austria, marry. What Mars bestows on others, Venus gives to thee!" But the key factor behind these alliances lay in the widespread appreciation of the Habsburgs' role as a useful counterpoise to the dual threats posed by the Ottomans in the east and France in the west.

Lands and Peoples

The monarchy was linguistically and confessionally diverse. Whereas German dominated the Austrian lands (with Slovene and Italian spoken in the south), it was a close second to Czech in the Bohemian lands, and, in Magyar-speaking Hungary, prevailed only in the towns. Moreover, the reconquest and resettlement of the Hungarian plain and Transylvania that began in the late seventeenth century added many South Slavs and Romanians. The acquisition of the formerly Spanish Netherlands and Italy (1714) added French, Flemish, and Italian, much as the annexation of Galicia (1772) and Bukovina (1775) contributed large numbers of Poles, Ukrainians, and Yiddish-speaking Jews. Whereas this linguistic kaleidoscope changed little over the centuries, the Reformation brought major changes in religion. By the mid-sixteenth century, Protestants constituted a majority in most areas of Habsburg domination. Catholicism reasserted itself during the Counter-Reformation, however, which left a 10–15 percent Lutheran minority in the Austrian and Bohemian lands, while Hungary split evenly between Catholics and a mix of Calvinist Magyars, Orthodox South Slavs, and German Lutherans.

The Austrian economy struck a balance between the prevailing agriculture (and animal husbandry in the Hungarian plain), substantial mining throughout the Alps and Carpathians, and industrial production in Bohemia, Upper Austria, and later in the Austrian Netherlands and northern Italian lands.

Government

Although the Habsburgs valued the imperial title and always visualized themselves as German princes, their inability to assert full sovereignty within the Holy Roman Empire gradually induced them to focus attention on developing their hereditary German (Austrian and Bohemian) lands, while treating Hungary more like a colony, at least until the eighteenth century. Beginning with Ferdinand I, the Habsburgs gradually coopted imperial institutions such as the Aulic Council (Reichshofrat), or shifted functions to competing bodies, including an exchequer (Hofkammer), war council (Hofkriegsrat), and "Austrian" chancery. They were less innovative in dealing with the Estates. Having acquired the Bohemian and Hungarian lands by inheritance and election, the Habsburgs were at pains to respect their corporate privileges and autonomy. Not to do so risked passive resistance or outright rebellion, which could be assisted by foreign adversaries. As a result, the prevailing political culture favored reaching consensus with the Estates on major issues, a policy that helped sustain the Habsburg dominions' separate cultural, linguistic, and constitutional development.

Individual Rulers

Given the contrived construction of this central European Gesamtstaat, its common historical development owed much to the policies of individual rulers. Ferdinand I and his son Maximilian II (ruled 1564–1576) spent much of their reigns resisting the Ottoman seizure of most of Hungary, while attempting to peacefully accommodate the aspirations of the empire's emerging Protestant majority. The Spanish-educated sons of Maximilian II, Rudolf II (ruled 1576–1612) and Matthias (ruled 1612–1619), cautiously embraced the Counter-Reformation, which led to widespread armed resistance, most notably in Bohemia, where the Defenestration of Prague sparked the beginning of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). After Ferdinand II (ruled 1620–1637) and his foreign allies had crushed the Bohemian revolt at White Mountain (1620), he purged much of the kingdom's nobility and constitution to enhance royal authority. Systematic Catholicization was carried out there and in the Austrian lands by him and his son, Ferdinand III (ruled 1637–1657), even as they reluctantly accepted religious compromise in the rest of Germany. Leopold I (ruled 1658–1705) completed the process of creating a mutually reliant, trilateral ruling elite of crown, church, and nobility that found artistic expression in the flamboyant Austrian baroque. Catholic religious persecution, principally by Hungary's magnates, led to a major rebellion that was soon assisted by a massive Ottoman invasion and siege of Vienna (1683). The city was delivered by an Austro-German-Polish relief force commanded by Poland's King John III Sobieski (1629–1696), which crushed the Ottomans at the battle of Kahlenberg. Leopold followed up the city's relief by reconquering Hungary at the head of a Holy League (1684–1699). Hungary was also enjoined to revise its constitution in 1687, eliminating the electoral kingship and the nobility's right to resist royal authority (jus resistendi). Although Leopold reaffirmed Protestant religious freedom, renewed persecution and heavy wartime taxation inspired the Rákóczi Revolt (1703–1711). Joseph I (ruled 1705–1711) eventually pacified the country militarily while granting generous terms in the 1711 treaty at Szatmár that essentially defined Hungary's status for the next two centuries. The martial exploits of Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736) permitted Joseph to salvage the Italian and Dutch possessions from the dynasty's extinct senior line in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) and enabled his brother Charles VI (ruled 1711–1740) to round off Hungary's frontiers with the acquisition of the Banat of Temesvár after another Turkish war (1716–1718). With the male line facing extinction, Charles issued the Pragmatic Sanction (1713), which established the monarchy's indivisibility and the right of female succession. His daughter Empress Maria Theresa (ruled 1740–1780) withstood a concerted attempt at partition in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748) but lost the rich Bohemian crownland of Silesia to Prussia. A vain attempt to reconquer it in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) was sandwiched between two great reform periods that marked the monarchy's transition from the ideology of the Counter-Reformation to a more rational governmental system based on the prevailing German fiscal-administrative science of cameralism and select European Enlightenment ideas. Attempts by Joseph II (ruled 1765–1790) to carry out more sweeping changes without the Estates' consent led to widespread resistance that his brother, Leopold II (ruled 1790–1792), quelled by repealing his most radical reforms. Nonetheless, a generation of political and cultural reform had prepared the Habsburg Monarchy for the ensuing tumult caused by the French Revolution. Indeed, the early modern period had witnessed the emergence and consolidation of both the House of Austria and the territorial conglomerate (Gesamtstaat) that it governed as major components of the European world.

Bibliography

Blanning, T. C. W. Joseph II. London and New York, 1994.

Evans, R. J. W. The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550– 1700: An Interpretation. Oxford and New York, 1979.

Fichtner, Paula. Emperor Maximilian II. New Haven, 2001.

——. Ferdinand I of Austria: The Politics of Dynasticism in the Age of the Reformation. New York, 1982.

Ingrao, Charles. The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618–1815. 2nd ed. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 2000.

——. In Quest and Crisis: Emperor Joseph I and the Habsburg Monarchy. West Lafayette, Ind., 1979.

Macartney, C. A. Maria Theresa and the House of Austria. London, 1969.

Mc Kay, Derek. Prince Eugene of Savoy. London, 1977.

Spielman, John P. Leopold I of Austria. New Brunswick, N.J., 1977.

—CHARLES INGRAO

 
Geography: Austria

Mountainous republic in central Europe, bordered by Germany and the former Czechoslovakia to the north, Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. Its capital and largest city is Vienna.

  • Under the Hapsburg dynasty (1278-1918), Austria maintained control of the Holy Roman Empire and became a leading player in European politics.
  • After losing control of the German portions of the Holy Roman Empire in the nineteenth century, Austria joined with Hungary to create the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918). Allied with Germany, Bulgaria, and Turkey in World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was devastated by the war.
  • Austria was occupied by Nazi forces in 1938 and annexed by Adolf Hitler to Germany. It was reestablished as a republic in 1945 but remained occupied by four Allied powers until it declared neutrality in 1955.
  • The picturesque Tyrol region, in the western part of the country, is a favorite year-round tourist spot.

 
Dialing Code: Austria
Austria

The international dialing code for Austria is:   43


 
Maps: Austria

 
Local Time: Austria

Local Time: Jul 19, 8:42 PM

 
Currency: Austria
Austria - Euro



 
Statistics: Austria
Click to enlarge

Introduction

Background:Once the center of power for the large Austro-Hungarian Empire, Austria was reduced to a small republic after its defeat in World War I. Following annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938 and subsequent occupation by the victorious Allies in 1945, Austria's status remained unclear for a decade. A State Treaty signed in 1955 ended the occupation, recognized Austria's independence, and forbade unification with Germany. A constitutional law that same year declared the country's "perpetual neutrality" as a condition for Soviet military withdrawal. The Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 and Austria's entry into the European Union in 1995 have altered the meaning of this neutrality. A prosperous, democratic country, Austria entered the EU Economic Monetary Union in 1999.

Geography

Location:Central Europe, north of Italy and Slovenia
Geographic coordinates:47 20 N, 13 20 E
Map references:Europe
Area:total: 83,870 sq km
land: 82,444 sq km
water: 1,426 sq km
Area - comparative:slightly smaller than Maine
Land boundaries:total: 2,562 km
border countries: Czech Republic 362 km, Germany 784 km, Hungary 366 km, Italy 430 km, Liechtenstein 35 km, Slovakia 91 km, Slovenia 330 km, Switzerland 164 km
Coastline:0 km (landlocked)
Maritime claims:none (landlocked)
Climate:temperate; continental, cloudy; cold winters with frequent rain and some snow in lowlands and snow in mountains; moderate summers with occasional showers
Terrain:in the west and south mostly mountains (Alps); along the eastern and northern margins mostly flat or gently sloping
Elevation extremes:lowest point: Neusiedler See 115 m
highest point: Grossglockner 3,798 m
Natural resources:oil, coal, lignite, timber, iron ore, copper, zinc, antimony, magnesite, tungsten, graphite, salt, hydropower
Land use:arable land: 16.59%
permanent crops: 0.85%
other: 82.56% (2005)
Irrigated land:40 sq km (2003)
Natural hazards:landslides; avalanches; earthquakes
Environment - current issues:some forest degradation caused by air and soil pollution; soil pollution results from the use of agricultural chemicals; air pollution results from emissions by coal- and oil-fired power stations and industrial plants and from trucks transiting Austria between northern and southern Europe
Environment - international agreements:party to: Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Air Pollution-Persistent Organic Pollutants, Air Pollution-Sulfur 85, Air Pollution-Sulphur 94, Air Pollution-Volatile Organic Compounds, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands, Whaling
signed, but not ratified: none of the selected agreements
Geography - note:landlocked; strategic location at the crossroads of central Europe with many easily traversable Alpine passes and valleys; major river is the Danube; population is concentrated on eastern lowlands because of steep slopes, poor soils, and low temperatures elsewhere

People

Population:8,199,783 (July 2007 est.)
Age structure:0-14 years: 15.1% (male 633,375/female 603,459)
15-64 years: 67.5% (male 2,781,291/female 2,749,539)
65 years and over: 17.5% (male 585,747/female 846,372) (2007 est.)
Median age:total: 41.3 years
male: 40.2 years
female: 42.4 years (2007 est.)
Population growth rate:0.077% (2007 est.)
Birth rate:8.69 births/1,000 population (2007 est.)
Death rate:9.84 deaths/1,000 population (2007 est.)
Net migration rate:1.91 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2007 est.)
Sex ratio:at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.05 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.012 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.692 male(s)/female
total population: 0.953 male(s)/female (2007 est.)
Infant mortality rate: