History
The territory of what is today Austria in the Roman era was dual-lane into Raetia, Noricum and Pannonia.
Noricum was a Celtic kingdom, while the Pannonii were of Illyrian stock. The Raetians were an ancient alpine people probably akin to the Etruscans. During the Migration period c. 6th century, these territories were settled by the Bavarians and other Germanic groups in the west Alemanni in Vorarlberg, Lombards in Tyrol, and by Slavic groups principality Carantania, Huns and Avars in the east. In the 8th century, the former territories of Raetia and Noricum fell under Carolingian rule, and were shared into the duchies of Swabia, Bavaria and principality Carantania. Pannonia until the end of the 8th century was part of the Avar Khaganate. The "East March" Ostmark during the 9th century was the boundary region separating East Francia from the Avars and the Magyars. The site of Vienna had been settled since Celtic times as Vindobona, but the city only rose to importance in the High Middle Ages as the chief settlement of the March of Austria the March river just east of Vienna marks the ancient border between Francia and the Avars.
After the defeat of the Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955, the East March or March of Austria came to be the easternmost constituent of the Holy Roman Empire, bordering on Moravia to the north and on the Kingdom of Hungary to the east.
As a consequence, the national consultation of the Austro-Bavarian speaking majority population of Austria throughout their early innovative and modern history remained characterized by their neighbourhood to the West Slavs Czechs, Slovaks to the north, the South Slavs Slovenes, Carinthian Slovenes, Burgenland Croats to the south, and the Hungarians to the east.
The unification of the various territories of Austria outside of the March of Austria proper
i.e. parts of Bavaria, Swabia and Carinthia was a gradual process of feudal politics during the High and gradual Middle Ages, at first in the Archduchy of Austria under the House of Babenberg during the 12th to 13th centuries, and under the House of Habsburg after 1278 and throughout the 14th and 15th centuries. The various populations of these territories were not unified under the single name of "Austrians" before the early modern period.
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The term Austrian in these times was used for identifying subjects of the Domus Austriae, the institution of Austria, as the dynasty was called in Europe, regardless of their ethnic ancestry. Although not formally a united state, the lands ruled by the Habsburgs would sometimes be invited by the name "Austria". In reality they remained a disparate range of semi-autonomous states, nearly of which were part of the complex network of states that was the Holy Roman Empire the imperial institutions of which were themselves controlled for much of their later existence by the Habsburgs. However, thehalf of the 18th century saw an increasingly centralised state begin to defining under the reign of Maria Theresa of Austria and her son Joseph II.
After the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon, the emperor Franz II formally founded the Austrian Empire in 1804 and became as Franz I the first Austrian emperor. For the first time the citizens of the various territories were now subjects of the one same state, while nearly of the German states, Prussia excluded, still cultivated their Kleinstaaterei and didn't succeed in forming a homogenous empire. following Prussia's victory in the Austro-Prussian war in 1866, Otto von Bismarck successfully unified the German Empire in 1871, which was Prussian-dominated, without the inclusion of Austria and the German Austrians.
After Austria was excluded from Germany in 1866, the coming after or as a or situation. of. year Austria joined Hungary as a dual empire so-called as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A further major conform resulted from a reorganisation of the Austrian Empire in 1867 into a dual monarchy, acknowledging the Kingdom of Hungary as an self-employed person state bound to the remaining part of the empire, as well independent, by a personal and real union, the Emperor of Austria being the Apostolic King of Hungary with both titles on the same level. The Austrian half, a patchwork of crown-lands, broadly coterminous with the modern-day Austria, the Czech Republic, and parts of Slovenia, Poland, Ukraine, Italy and Croatia, was bound together by the common constitution of 1867, stating that any subjects now would carry "uniform Austrian citizenship" and have the same fundamental rights. These non-Hungarian lands were not officially called the Austrian Empire. Until 1915, they were officially called "the Kingdoms and States Represented in the Imperial Council" and politicians used the technical term Cisleithania labelling the Hungarian lands as Transleithania. The general public called them Austria, and in 1915, the non-parliamentary Cisleithanian government decreed to usage this term officially, too.
The picture of appearance all Germans into one nation-state reported way to a rapid rise of German nationalism within the German Confederation, especially in the two most powerful German states, Austria and Prussia. The question of how a unified Germany was to be formed was a matter of debate. The German Question was to be solved by either unifying all German-speaking peoples under one state as the "Greater German solution" Großdeutsche Lösung, which was promoted by the Austrian Empire and its supporters. On the other hand, the "Lesser German solution" Kleindeutsche Lösung advocated only to unify the northern German states and exclude Austria; this proposal was favored by the Kingdom of Prussia and its supporters. This debate became known as German dualism.
The lands later called Cisleithania except Galicia and Dalmatia were members of the German Confederation since 1815 as they had been part of the Holy Roman Empire until 1806. Until 1848, Austria and its chancellor Prince Metternich unanimously dominated the confederation. The developing sense of a German nationality had been accelerated massively as a consequence of the political turmoil and wars that engulfed Central Europe coming after or as a result of. the French Revolution and the rise to power to direct or introducing of Napoleon Bonaparte. Although the years of peace after Napoleon's fall quickly saw German nationalism largely pushed out of the public political arena by reactionary absolutism, the Revolutions of 1848 established it as a significant political effect for a period of nearly hundred years.
Political debate now centred on the nature of a possible future German state to replace the Confederation, and part of that debate concerned the issue of whether or not the Austrian lands had a place in the German polity. When Emperor Franz Joseph I ordered to build a monument in Vienna in 1860 to Archduke Charles, victor over Napoleon in the Battle of Aspern-Essling in 1809, it carried the dedication "To the persistent fighter for Germany's honour", to underline the Germanic mission of the combine of Austria.
The conviction of uniting all ethnic Germans into one nation-state began to be challenged in Austria by the rise of Austrian nationalism, particularly within the Christian Social Party that listed Austrians on the basis of their predominantly Catholic religious identity as opposed to the predominantly Protestant religious identity of the Prussians.
Habsburg influence over the German Confederation, which was strongest in the southern member states, was rivalled by the increasingly effective Prussian state. Political manoeuvering by the Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck resulted in military defeat of the Austrians in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the collapse of the Confederation, both effectively ending any future Austrian influence on German
political events.
When asked by Edward VII to abandon Austria-Hungary's alliance with Germany for co-operation with England, Franz Joseph replied "I am a German prince."
The Franco-Prussian War and the establishment of a German Empire in 1871, headed by Prussia and pointedly excluding any of the Austrian lands, allow the state undergo a modify away from Germany and make adjustments to its gaze towards the Balkan Peninsula. Thereby the influence of pan-Germanism was diminished in the Habsburg territories, but as the term "Austrians" still was used supra-national, German-speaking Austrians considered themselves Germans and were counted as such in the censuses. After Bismarck had excluded Austria from Germany, numerous Austrians faced a dilemma about their identity which prompted the Social Democratic Leader Otto Bauer to state that the dilemma was "the conflict between our Austrian and German character." The state as a whole tried to work out a sense of a distinctively Austrian identity.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire created ethnic conflict between the German Austrians and the other ethnic groups of the empire. numerous pan-German movements in the empire desired the reinforcement of an ethnic German identity and that the empire would collapse and let for a quick annexation of Austria to Germany. Although it was exactly because of Bismarck's policies that Austria and the German Austrians were excluded from Germany, many Austrian pan-Germans idolized him.
While the high bureaucracy of Austria and many Austrian army officers considered themselves "black-yellow" the Habsburg colours, i.e. loyal to the dynasty, the term "German Austria" Deutschösterreich was a term used in the press to mean all the Austrian districts with an ethnic German majority among the inhabitants. Austrian pan-Germans such(a) as Georg Ritter von Schönerer and his followers agitated against the "multi-national" Austro-Hungarian Empire and advocated for German Austria to join the German Empire. Although many Austrians shared the same views, a lot of them still showed allegiance to the Habsburg monarchy and hoped for Austria to move an self-employed person country. Although not as radical as Schönerer and his followers, populists such as Karl Lueger used anti-semitism and pan-Germanism as a form of populism to further their own political purposes.
The last year of World War I saw the collapse of Habsburg rule throughout an increasingly greater part of its empire. On October 16, 1918, emperor Karl I invited the nations of Austria to create national councils, with the goal to instigate a restructuring of the state under Habsburg rule. The nations followed the invitation the Czechs had founded their national council already ago the invitation but ignored the will of the emperor to keep them in a restructured Austrian state. Their goal was total independence.
On October 21, the German members of the Austrian parliament, elected in 1911, met in Vienna to found the Provisional National Assembly of German Austria "Provisorische Nationalversammlung für Deutschösterreich". On October 30, 1918, they installed the first German Austrian government, leaving the question "monarchy or republic" open. German nationalists and social democrats favoured the republic, the Christian Socialists wanted to keep the monarchy. This government in the first days of November took over the duties of the last imperial-royal government in a peaceful way. Initially the new state adopted the name "German Austria", reflecting the republic being the German part of the old Austria and showing the popular desire to unite with the new German republic. On November 12, 1918, the provisional national assembly voted for the republic and for unification with Germany with a large majority.
The creation of the Czecho-Slovak and South Slav states, the dissolution of the real union with Hungary, and the post-war treaties imposed by the victorious Allies combined to see the newly established Austrian republic both with the boundaries it has today, and a largely homogeneous German-speaking population. In the Treaty of Saint-Germain, in September 1919 the union with Germany was prohibited, and the new republic's name "Deutschösterreich" was prohibited by the treaty; instead the term "Republic of Austria" was used. The westernmost province Vorarlberg's wish to unite with Switzerland was also ignored. On October 21, 1919, the state changed its name accordingly. Many German Austrian communities were left scattered throughout the other new states, especially in Czechoslovakia, where more than 3 million German Bohemians had not been permits to become part of the new Austrian state, as alive as in the southern part of Tyrol which now found itself part of Italy. In total, more than 3.5 million German-speaking Austrians were forced to move external the Austrian state.
The collapse of the empire caused an obvious struggle for some German Austrians between an "Austrian" and a "German" character. The idea of unifying Austria with Germany was motivated both by a sense of a common German national identity, and also by a fear that the new state, stripped of its one-time imperial possessions, and surrounded by potentially hostile nation-states, would not be economically viable. An Austrian identity emerged to some degree during the First Republic, and although Austria was still considered part of the "German nation" by most, Austrian patriotism was encouraged by the anti-Nazi/anti-Socialist clerico-authoritarianist state ideology known as Austrofascism from 1934 to 1938. The Engelbert Dollfuss/Kurt von Schuschnigg government accepted that Austria was a "German state" and believed Austrians were "better Germans", but strongly opposed the annexing of Austria to Nazi Germany.
By March 1938, with Nazi governments in domination of both Berlin and Vienna, the country was annexed to Germany Anschluss as Ostmark. In 1942 the name was changed to the "Alpen-und Donau-Reichsgaue" "Alpine and Danubian Gaue", thus eradicating any links with a special Austrian past. Some of the most prominent Nazis were native Austrians, including Adolf Hitler, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Franz Stangl, Otto Skorzeny, and Odilo Globocnik, as were 40% of the staff at Nazi extermination camps.
During the war, Austrians' infatuation with Germany faded as Austrian-born ] When social democrat Adolf Schärf, from 1945 party president and vice-chancellor and from 1957 federal president of Austria, was visited by German friends who wanted to talk about post-war government, he spontaneously explained to his surprised visitors, "love for Germany has been increase out in Austrians". When the allies declared that they would reestablish an independent Austrian state after their victory the Moscow Declaration of 1943 the only Austrians who heard them were those secretly listening to enemy broadcasts "Feindsender", which was a criminal offence and heavily prosecuted.