Cisleithania

Cisleithania (German: Cisleithanien, Hungarian: Ciszlajtánia, Czech: Předlitavsko) was a name of the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary, the Dual Monarchy created in 1867 and dissolved in 1918. The name was used by politicians and bureaucrats, but it had no official status. The Cisleithanian lands continued to constitute the Empire of Austria, but the latter term was rarely used after 1867, to avoid confusion with the era before 1867, when Hungary had been part of that empire). The somewhat cumbersome official name was "Die im Reichsrat vertretenen Königreiche und Länder" ("The Kingdoms and States represented in the Imperial Council"). In general the country was just called Austria, this term only replacing the former official name in 1915.

The Cisleithanian capital was Vienna. The territory had a population of 28,571,900 in 1910 and reached from the Duchy of Bukowina (today parts of Ukraine and Romania) to the Kingdom of Dalmatia (today part of Croatia).

The Latin name Cisleithania derives from the Leitha river^[1] - most of its territory lay west (or on "this" side, from an Austrian perspective) of it. Transleithania, the lands of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Dual Monarchy, lay to the east across the Leitha river.

Provinces

Cisleithania consisted of 15 crownlands which had representatives in the Reichsrat (Cisleithanian parliament):

Austria–Hungary:
Cisleithania (Empire of Austria): 1. Bohemia, 2. Bukovina, 3. Carinthia, 4. Carniola, 5. Dalmatia, 6. Galicia, 7. Küstenland, 8. Lower Austria, 9. Moravia, 10. Salzburg, 11. Silesia, 12. Styria, 13. Tyrol, 14. Upper Austria, 15. Vorarlberg;
Transleithania (Kingdom of Hungary): 16. Hungary proper 17. Croatia-Slavonia;
Austrian-Hungarian Condominium: 18. Bosnia and Herzegovina

Politics

Each crownland had a regional assembly, the Landtag, which sent representatives to the Reichsrat until 1873, when direct election of the Reichsrat was introduced with suffrage for male bourgeois. Equal, direct, secret and universal suffrage for men was introduced in 1907. The Landtag enacted provincial laws (Landesgesetze) on matters of regional and mostly minor importance.

In the Reichsrat (with 353 members in 1873 and 516 in 1907) was played out a nationalist struggle between Germans and the Slavs of the Empire, especially the Czechs. At first Germans dominated, but the Slavs gained a majority after an 1907 electoral reform which abolished class-based suffrage.

For representation in matters relevant to the whole of Austria-Hungary (foreign affairs, defence and the financing thereof) the Reichsrat appointed a delegation of 60 members to discuss these matters jointly with an Hungarian delegation of the same size and to come to a common conclusion on the recommendation of the responsible common minister.

Politics were frequently paralysed because of the tensions between different nationalities. When Czech obstruction at the Reichsrat prevented the parliament from working, Emperor Franz Joseph had to rule autocratically through imperial decrees. The Reichsrat was prorogued in March 1914 and did not meet again until May 1917, after the accession of Karl I in 1916.

Ethnic composition of the population (1910)

See also

• Austria-Hungary
• Transleithania

References

Source

• Allgemeines Verzeichnis der Ortsgemeinden und Ortschaften Österreichs nach den Ergebnissen der Volkszählung vom 31. Dezember 1910 (ed. by K.K. Statistische Zentralkommission, Vienna, 1915) (the latest Austrian gazetteer, register of political communities, giving the results of the 1910 census)

External links

• www.cisleithanien.eu