Austria

The very fact that Austria (German Österreich) exists as an independent nation today is an "accident" of history. Austria began as just one of the many different German feudal states that made up the Holy Roman Empire. Culturally and linguistically, the Austrians and Bavarians go together much better than say, the Saxons and Swabians. But because of the power of the Habsburgs through the centuries, and the complicated politics of the 19th century, Felix Austria never joined the other German states (not until 1936 at least, but that's another story), and instead controlled a multi-ethnic empire of its own in Central and Souther Europe.

The name Austria is itself a Latinization of the German Österreich (roughly meaning "eastern realm", and has been used since the Middle Ages in Latin, and in English since at least the 17th century. It has nothing to do with Latin auster, which means "south." This is also the name of the country used in various other European and non-European languages.

The lands making up modern-day Austria were firmly under Roman control from about the end of the first century BC onwards. They were included in the provinces of Noricum, Raetia, Vindelicia, and Pannonia, though mostly Noricum. Noricum was an independent kingdom for a while, but was incorporated as a province in 16 BC. The inhabitants were the Norici, named for the city of Noreia, whose exact location is as of yet unknown. They were a warlike, probably Celtic people living in a loose tribal confederation.

Then all hell broke loose: the Völkerwanderung. Following the dissolution of the Roman Empire, various tribes carved out portions of the former empire, setting up typically short-lived and warring states all over central Europe. The alpine regions that would become Austria were overrun in the 7th century by Slavs who established a realm known as Carantania (the predecessor of Carinthia) in modern southeast Austria and Slovenia; Alamanni took control of the Voralberg region in the Alps, and in the 5th and 6th century, the Bavarians (not yet wearing lederhosen and eating pretzels) extended their territory eastwards. There were also some joyriding Avars in the mix. By the mid-8th, Carantania came under the control of Bavaria, which itself became a duchy in the Carolingian Empire. Bavarians continued to settle along the Danube and in the Alps, which is why Austria is today a German-speaking country (though the displacement of Romance-speakers in the Alps was not complete until perhaps the 17th century).

Those were crazy times, and no one was writing anything down anyway, if anybody could write. But what is known, and well-documented, is that in 976, the Saxon Emperor Otto II set about restructuring the Duchy of Bavaria after a revolt, establishing new marks, or borderlands. The emperor granted a marcha orientalis, or "eastern mark" (modern German Ostmark) to Leopold of Babenberg, who became the first margrave of Austria. At this time, the march corresponded roughly to modern Lower Austria (Niederösterreich).


Though the official name of the new march was an unassuming, boring Latin term describing exactly what it was, the local yokels, speaking Old High German (OHG), called it Ostarrîchi, first recorded in 996 in a deed granting some lands in "the territory known in the vernacular as Ostrarrîchi" to the bishop of Freising. The name is the predecessor to today's Österreich and Austria. The ostar- part is related, though not identical to OHG ōstan, "eastern," and the second element is rihhi, which meant "realm" or "domain" (though the modern Reich has a meaning closer to "empire"). In the following centuries, the variants Osterrîche and Marcha Osterriche also appear.

Austria first appears in the 12th century as a Latin approximation of the OHG name. The "Privigelium Minus," the document granted by Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa) raising Babenberg Austria to the status of duchy, refers to the marchiam Austriae being made into Austriae ducatum. Thus the Duchy of Austria entered history as an independent entity.

RISE OF THE HABSBURGS

In 1278, the Swabian count Rudolph of Habsburg took control of the duchies of Austria and Styria (Steiermark), beginning a dynastic reign that was to last almost 650 years. By 1335, the duchy of Carinthia (Kärnten) and the march of Carniola (Krain) were included in the hereditary lands of the Habsburgs. The County of Tyrol was added in 1363. Although Austria proper included only the region around Vienna, these "Habsburg hereditary lands" came to be referred to as "Austria," and formed the core of the modern state (and most of Slovenia, too).

In 1359, Duke Rudolph IV the Founder (der Stifter), came up with a document known as the "Privilegium Maius," which elevated Austria to archduchy (Erzherzogtum). This was Austria's answer to the Golden Bull of 1356, issued by the Bohemian Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV of the House of Luxembourg, who were major rivals of the Habsburgs. The Golden Bull established the constitutional system of the Holy Roman Empire by naming the seven Prince-Electors (Kurfürsten), conspicuously leaving out Austria. The Privilegium Maius was composed of five deeds, some of which were supposedly issued by Julius Caesar and Nero to the Kingdom of Noricum. The documents gave the Habsburgs a status equal to the Prince Electors, and certain privileges, such as inheritance by primogeniture (including inseparability of the territories) and the right to display certain symbols of rule.


The Privilegium Maius was a forgery, and was recognized as such even at the time. Charles IV, not amused, rejected the power play and refused to recognize the Habsburg claims. Rudolph never used the title archduke for himself, though his great nephew who carried the awesome name of Ernest the Iron (no relation to the Jim Varney character who went to camp) did call himself archduke. In 1453, Emperor Frederick III, himself a Habsburg, was able to use his office to confirm the document. Frederick also introduced the cryptic "A.E.I.O.U." motto used by the family for centuries.


The Habsburg archdukes were, for all intents and purposes, equal to kings, and Austria and the Habsburgs became one and the same, as the documents gave the family a "new legitimacy" to rule in Austria. In any event, the Holy Roman Emperor would be a Habsburg until 1740, when the Habsburg male line died out. The House of Habsburg-Lorraine would take over in 1745. Along the way, the Habsburgs would accumulate other titles, notably King of Bohemia and King of Hungary, resulting in a vast Central European empire with Austria at the center.



AUSTRIAN EMPIRE / AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

When Napoleon Bonaparte upset the old order in Europe, this meant the end of the Holy Roman Empire as it had existed for centuries. In 1803, the Imperial Diet (Reichstag) passed the Reichsdeputationshaupschluss, which was intended to reorganize the Empire, consolidating smaller territories into larger ones and secularizing most of the clerical states. This eliminated many of Austria's smaller allies, and when Napoleon declared himself Emperor of France in 1804, Francis I, already Holy Roman Emperor, granted himself the new title of Emperor of Austria.

The Holy Roman Empire itself ended when Napoleon defeated the Third Coalition at the Battle of Austerlitz. The resulting Treaty of Pressburg forced Austria to give up most of its territory in Germany, Italy, and the Balkans. In 1806, Napoleon's satellite states in German seceded from the Empire to form the Confederation of the Rhine, and Francis I renounced the imperial crown after proclaiming the Holy Roman Empire dissolved. The old empire was gone, but the Austrian Empire remained, and it included Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia, among other lands.

The Austrian Empire spent most of the 19th century trying to unify all of the German-speaking peoples under one state (Großdeutschland), but this never happened, and this is why Germany and Austria are two different countries today. Instead, Prussia gained the upper hand in 1866, ensuring that Austria would have no part in any future German state. Modern Germany is actually the descendant of the Prussian-dominated Kleindeutschland unification scheme.

After being excluded from Germany, Austria focused its attention eastwards an inwards. The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 established the "Dual Monarchy," in which the empire was divided into two equal realms under one monarch, Franz Joseph I. Hungary and Austria would have distinct interior policies, but a common foreign and military policy.



MODERN AUSTRIA

One of the most important results of the First World War was the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918. Emperor Charles I went into exile, and the empire broke apart into its constituent national ethnic groups. It was at this time that the borders (more or less) of modern Austria were formed from the core Habsburg lands, though ethnic Germans remained within the borders of Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland) and Italy (South Tyrol). The state was at first called German Austria (Deutschösterreich), and its parliament was strongly in favor of union with Germany, fearing the economic prospects of a small Austria.

But the Treaty of Saint Germain, the 1919 peace treaty between the Allies and Austria, contained provisions that barred any possibility of economic or political union of Austria with Germany. It also prohibited the name "German Austria," so the new state was called the Republic of Austria (Republik Österreich), also known as the First Republic.


The First Republic lasted until 1934, when the single-party Federal State of Austria (called the Ständestaat, for the Stände, "estates"), with a quasi-fascist regime led by the Fatherland Front party. Although Nazi sympathies were officially opposed by the government, the Austrian National Socialist Party was able to seize power and pave the way for Hitler's Anschluss, or annexation of Austria into the Third Reich. As a part of the Nazi Germany, Austria became the province of Ostmark, the modern German translation of marcha orientalis.

After World War II, Austria was occupied by the Allied Forces for ten years. In 1955, the modern Republic of Austria was born. The Second Republic has remained an independent (well, whatever that means in modern Europe) and neutral nation, somewhat ambivalent about its Habsburg past.

OTHER LANGUAGES

Most languages, including English, use the Latin name Austria, or a variant of it, like Hungarian Ausztria, Turkish Avusturya, Slovenian Avstrija, Croatian Austrija, etc. All Germanic languages besides English have translation of Österreich: Dutch Oostenrijk, Danish Østrig, Swedish Österrike, Icelandic Austurríki. Finnish also has a translation: Itävalta.

The modern French name is Autriche, which is a corrupted version of the German name. The French name is also the source of اتریش (Otrîsh) in modern Farsi and other Central Asian languages.

The names for Austria in Czech and Slovak are Rakousko and Rakúsko, respectively. This form derives from the town and castle of Raabs an der Thaya, known as Rakous in Czech. Originally the name referred simply to the medieval county of Raabs, but later to all of Austria.

Finally, the Arabic name deserves attention. النمسا (an-Nimsā) derives from the Slavic word for Germans, nemtsy (see Germany).