During the Migration Period, the Slavic tribe of the Carantanians migrated into the Alps in the wake of the expansion of their Avar overlords during the 7th century, mixed with the Celto-Romanic population, and established the realm of Carantania, which covered much of eastern and central Austrian territory. In the meantime, the Germanic tribe of the Bavarians had developed in the 5th and 6th century in the west of the country and in Bavaria, while what is today Vorarlberg had been settled by the Alemans.
Carantania, under pressure of the Avars, lost its independence to Bavaria in 745 and became a margraviate. During the following centuries, Bavarian settlers went down the Danube and up the Alps, a process through which Austria was to become the mostly German-speaking country it is today.
The first record showing the name Austria is 996 were it is written as Ostarrîchi, referring to the territory of the Babenberg March
Österreich is derived from Old High German Osterrîche. Oster is related to Old High German ostan, eastern. The meaning of rîche has been lost, but it could be derived from Latin regum and suggest an area reserved to the king, a royal domain
The name "Austria" is a latinization of German Österreich. This has led to much confusion as German öst is "east", but Latin auster is "south". It is first recorded as Austrie marchionibus (Margrave of Austria) on a deed issued by Conrad III to the Klosterneuburg Monastery in 1147. On the Privilegium Minus of 1156, the name of the country is given as marchiam Austriae (March of Austria) and as Austriae ducatum (Duchy of Austria).In English usage, "Austria" is attested since the early 17th century
The Czech and Slovak languages have a peculiar name for Austria. Czech Rakousko and Slovak Rakúsko neither derived from German Österrreich nor from Latin Austria. The Czech name of Rakousko, previously also Rakúsy and later Rakousy, which is still used for the states of Upper and Lower Austria (Horní a Dolní Rakousy), originates in the name of the Austrian castle and town of Raabs an der Thaya near the Czech-Austrian border, formerly also known as Ratgoz or Ratgos
The following centuries were characterized first by the settlement of the country, when forests were cleared and towns and monasteries were founded. In 1156 the Privilegium Minus elevated Austria to the status of a duchy. In 1192, the Babenbergs also acquired the Duchy of Styria through the Georgenberg Pact.The Georgenberg Pact thus was the first step towards the creation of the complex of lands of Austria, which was continued under the Habsburgs during the Late Middle Ages. At that time, the Babenberg Dukes came to be one of the most influential ruling families in the region, peaking in the reign of Leopold VI (1198–1230).
Following the extinction of the Babenbergs in the 13th century, Austria came briefly under the rule of the Czech King Otakar II. Contesting the election of Rudolf I of Habsburg as Emperor, Otakar was defeated and killed by the German King, who took Austria and gave it to his sons in 1278. Austria was ruled by the Habsburgs for the next 640 years
[A new election for the Imperial German throne took place in 1273. But Ottokar was again not the successful candidate. He refused to recognize his victorious rival, Rudolph of Habsburg, and urged the Pope to adopt a similar policy. At a convention of the Reichstag at Frankfurt in 1274, Rudolph decreed that all imperial lands that had changed hands since the death of Emperor Frederick II must be returned to the crown. This would have deprived Ottokar of Styria, Austria, and Carinthia.
In 1276 Rudolph placed Ottokar under the ban of the empire and besieged Vienna. This compelled Otakar in November 1276 to sign a new treaty by which he gave up all claims to Austria and the neighbouring duchies, retaining for himself only Bohemia and Moravia. Ottokar's son Wenceslaus was also betrothed to Rudolph's daughter Judith. It was an uneasy peace. Two years later, the Bohemian king tried to recover his lost lands by force. Ottokar found allies and collected a large army, but he was defeated by Hungarian assistance and killed at the Battle of Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen on the March on 26 August 1278.
]
In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Habsburgs began to accumulate other provinces in the vicinity of the Duchy of Austria, which remained a small Duchy along the Danube, and Styria, which they had acquired from Ottokar alongside with Austria. Carinthia and Carniola came under Habsburg rule in 1335, Tyrol in 1363. These provinces, together, became known as the Habsburg Hereditary Lands
In 1477, the Archduke Maximilian, only son of Emperor Frederick III, married the heiress of Burgundy, thus acquiring most of the Low Countries for the family. His son Philip the Fair married the heiress of Castile and Aragon, and thus acquired Spain and its Italian, African, and New World appendages for the Habsburgs. The Habsburgs' hereditary territories, however, were soon separated from this enormous empire when, in 1520, Emperor Charles V left them to the rule of his brother, Ferdinand.
[Charles the Bold:
he was the last Valois Duke of Burgundy
He embroiled himself successively with with René II, Duke of Lorraine, with whom he disputed the succession of Lorraine, the possession of which had united the two principal portions of Charles's territories— Flanders and the Low Countries and the Duchy and County of Burgundy.
Charles was besieging the city of Nancy, capital of Lorraine, following its successful recapture by the forces of Rene II, Duke of Lorraine in 1476.
Charles invaded the duchy and René was forced to quit Nancy (30 November 1475). He regained the city on 5 October the following year and moved to Switzerland to hire an army of Swiss mercenaries; with this force René defeated Charles at the Battle of Nancy (5 January 1477).
He himself perished in the fight, his naked and disfigured body being discovered some days afterward frozen into the nearby river. Charles' head had been cleft in two by a halberd, multiple lances were lodged in his stomach and loins, and his face had been so badly mutilated by wild animals that only his physician was able to identify him by his long fingernails and the old battle scars on his body.
Charles' battered body was initially buried in Nancy, but in 1550 his great grandson, the Emperor Charles V, ordered it to be moved to the Church of Our Lady in Bruges, next to that of his daughter Mary. In 1562 Philip II of Spain erected a splendid mausoleum in early renaissance style over his tomb, still extant. Excavations in 1979 positively identified the remains of Mary, in a lead coffin, but those of Charles were never found
]
The Habsburg marriages of 1477 and 1496 give rise to a much quoted line of Latin poetry: Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube (Let others make war; you, fortunate Austria, marry).
When Charles is six, his father dies - a shock which deranges his already unstable mother, making her incapable of ruling (history knows her as Joan the Mad). The Habsburg child, Maximilian's grandson, is now the effective heir to Spain.
In 1526, following the Battle of Mohács, in which Ferdinand's brother-in-law Louis II, King of Hungary and Bohemia, was killed, Ferdinand expanded his territories, bringing Bohemia and that part of Hungary not occupied by the Ottomans under his rule. Habsburg expansion into Hungary, however, led to frequent conflicts with the Turks, particularly the so-called Long War of 1593 to 1606.
[The Siege of Vienna in 1529 was the first attempt by the Ottoman Empire, led by Suleiman the Magnificent, to capture the city of Vienna, Austria.
As the Ottomans advanced towards Vienna, the city's population organised an ad-hoc resistance formed from local farmers, peasants and civilians determined to repel the inevitable attack who were supported by a variety of European mercenaries; namely German Landsknecht pikemen and Spanish musketeers sent by Charles V.
The Hofmeister of Austria, Wilhelm von Roggendorf, assumed charge of the defensive garrison, with operational command entrusted to a seventy-year-old German mercenary named Nicholas, Count of Salm, who had distinguished himself at the Battle of Pavia in 1525.Salm arrived in Vienna as head of the mercenary relief force and set about fortifying the three-hundred-year-old walls surrounding St. Stephen's Cathedral, near which he established his headquarters. To ensure the city could withstand a lengthy siege, he blocked the four city gates and reinforced the walls, which in some places were no more than six feet thick, and erected earthen bastions and an inner earthen rampart (A type of defensive wall consisting of a low earthen embankment topped by a parapet or palisade), levelling buildings where necessary to clear room for defences.
]
Austria and the other Habsburg hereditary provinces (and Hungary and Bohemia, as well) were much affected by the Reformation. Although the Habsburg rulers themselves remained Catholic, the provinces themselves largely converted to Lutheranism, which Ferdinand I and his successors, Maximilian II, Rudolf II, and Mathias largely tolerated.
In the late 16th century, however, the Counter-Reformation and the Society of Jesus began to make its influence felt, and the Jesuit-educated Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, who ruled over Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola before becoming Holy Roman Emperor, was energetic in suppressing heresy in the provinces which he ruled.
When, in 1619, he was elected Emperor to succeed his cousin Mathias, the ultra-pious and intransigent Ferdinand II, as he became known, embarked on an energetic attempt to re-Catholicize not only the Hereditary Provinces, but Bohemia and Habsburg Hungary as well as most of Protestant Europe within the Holy Roman Empire. Outside his lands, his reputation for strong headed uncompromising intolerance had triggered the Thirty Years' War in May of 1618 in the polarizing first phase, known as the Revolt in Bohemia.
Some members of the Bohemian aristocracy rebelled following the 1617 election of Ferdinand (Duke of Styria and a Catholic) as King of Bohemia to succeed the aging Emperor Matthias. In 1617, Roman Catholic officials ordered the cessation of construction of some Protestant chapels on land of which the Catholic clergy claimed ownership. Protestants contended the land in question was royal, rather than owned by the Catholic Church, and was thus available for their own use. Protestants interpreted the cessation order as a violation of the right to freedom of religious expression granted in the Letter of Majesty issued by Emperor Rudolf II in 1609. They also feared that the fiercely Catholic Ferdinand would revoke the Protestant rights altogether once he came to the throne.
On May 23, 1618, an assembly of Protestants, led by Count Thurn whom the Emperor had deprived of his post as Castellan of Karlstadt and who, in reaction to an inflammatory letter received from the Emperor's principal adviser, Bishop Klesl, had exhorted his followers to throw the Regents appointed by the Emperor out the window "as is customary", bribed their way into the Prague Castle (the Hradschin) where the Regents were meeting.
The 30 years war was initially fought largely as a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire, although disputes over the internal politics and balance of power within the Empire played a significant part. Gradually, the war developed into a more general conflict involving most of the European powers. In this general phase, the war became more a continuation of the Bourbon–Habsburg rivalry for European political pre-eminence, and in turn led to further warfare between France and the Habsburg powers, and less specifically about religion. Great was the devastation brought about by the war that estimates put the reduction of population in the German states at about 15% to 30%. Much of the destruction of civilian lives and property was caused by the cruelty and greed of mercenary soldiers, many of whom were rich commanders and poor soldiers. One result of the war was the division of Germany into many territories — all of which, despite their membership in the Empire, won de facto sovereignty. This limited the power of the Holy Roman Empire and decentralized German power.
The long reign of Leopold I (1657–1705) saw the culmination of the Austrian conflict with the Turks. Following the successful defense of Vienna in 1683 led by King of Poland John III Sobieski, a series of campaigns resulted in the return of all of Hungary to Austrian control by the Treaty of Carlowitz in 1699. At the same time, Austria was becoming more involved in competition with France in Western Europe, with Austria fighting the French in the Third Dutch War (1672–1679), the War of the League of Augsburg (1688–1697) and finally the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), in which the French and Austrians (along with their British, Dutch and Catalonian allies) fought over the inheritance of the vast territories of the Spanish Habsburgs. Although the French secured control of Spain and its colonies for a grandson of Louis XIV, the Austrians also ended up making significant gains in Western Europe, including the former Spanish Netherlands (now called the Austrian Netherlands, including most of modern Belgium), the Duchy of Milan in Northern Italy, and Naples and Sardinia in Southern Italy. (The latter was traded for Sicily in 1720).
[Battle of Vienna:
The Battle of Vienna (German: Schlacht am Kahlenberg) took place on the 11 and 12 of September 1683 after Vienna had been besieged by the Ottoman Empire for two months. It was a battle of The Holy League versus the Ottoman Empire and fiefdoms of the Ottoman Empire near the Kahlenberg mountain in Vienna. The battle marked the beginning of the political hegemony of the Habsburg dynasty in Central Europe.
The siege itself began on 14 July 1683, by the Ottoman Empire army of approximately 150,000 men. The besieging force was composed of 60 ortas of Janissaries (12,000 men paper strength) with an observation army of c.70,000 men watching the countryside. The decisive battle took place on 11 and 12 September, after the united relief army of approximately 80,000 men had arrived.
It proved most decisive that the Habsburgs and Poland concluded a treaty during this winter in which Leopold would support Sobieski if the Ottomans attacked Kraków; in return, the Polish Army would come to the relief of Vienna, if attacked.
It has been suggested that the battle marked the turning point in the Ottoman–Habsburg wars, the 300-year struggle between the forces of the Central European kingdoms and the Ottoman Empire. Over the sixteen years following the battle, the Habsburgs of Austria gradually occupied and dominated southern Hungary and Transylvania, which had been largely cleared of the Ottoman forces. The battle is also notable for including the largest cavalry charge in history.
The King of Poland Jan III Sobieski prepared a relief expedition to Vienna during the summer of 1683, honoring his obligations to the treaty.
The battle shaped the outcome of the entire war as well. The Ottomans fought on for another 16 years, losing control of Hungary and Transylvania in the process, before finally giving up. The end of the conflict was finalized by the Treaty of Karlowitz.
The battle marked the historic end of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire into Europe .
One legend is that the croissant was invented in Vienna, either in 1683 or during the earlier siege in 1529, to celebrate the defeat of the Ottoman attack of the city, with the shape referring to the crescents on the Ottoman flags. This version of the origin of the croissant is supported by the fact that croissants in French are referred to as Viennoiserie, and the French popular belief that Vienna-born Marie Antoinette introduced the pastry to France in 1770.
After the battle, the Austrians discovered many bags of coffee in the abandoned Ottoman encampment. Using this captured stock, Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki opened the third coffeehouse in Europe and the first in Vienna, where, according to legend, Kulczycki himself added milk and honey to sweeten the bitter coffee, thereby inventing cappuccino.
In honor of Sobieski, the Austrians erected a church atop a hill of Kahlenberg, north of Vienna. The train route from Vienna to Warsaw is also named in Sobieski's honour. The constellation Scutum Sobieskii (Sobieski’s Shield) was named to memorialize the battle. Because Sobieski had entrusted his kingdom to the protection of the Blessed Virgin (Our Lady of Czestochowa) before the battle, Pope Innocent XI commemorated his victory by extending the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, which until then had been celebrated solely in Spain and the Kingdom of Naples, to the universal Church; it is celebrated on 12 September.
]
The later part of the reign of Emperor Charles VI (1711–1740) saw Austria relinquish many of these fairly impressive gains, largely due to Charles's apprehensions at the imminent extinction of the House of Habsburg. Charles was willing to offer concrete advantages in territory and authority in exchange for other powers' worthless recognitions of the Pragmatic Sanction that made his daughter Maria Theresa his heir.
The most notable instance of this was in the War of the Polish Succession whose settlement saw Austria cede Naples and Sicily to the Spanish Infant Don Carlos in exchange for the tiny Duchy of Parma and Spain and France's adherence to the Pragmatic Sanction.
Maria Theresa promulgated financial and educational reforms, with the assistance of Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz and Gottfried van Swieten, promoted commerce and the development of agriculture, and reorganised Austria's ramshackle military, all of which strengthened Austria's international standing. However, she refused to allow religious toleration and contemporary travellers thought her regime was bigoted and superstitious
Like all members of the House of Habsburg, Maria Theresa was a Roman Catholic, and a devout one as well. She believed that religious unity was necessary for a peaceful public life and explicitly rejected the idea of religious toleration. However, she never allowed the Church to interfere with what she considered to be prerogatives of a monarch and kept Rome at arm's length. She controlled the selection of archbishops, bishops and abbots.
Maria Theresa regarded both the Jews and Protestants as dangerous to the state and actively tried to suppress them. The empress was probably the most anti-Semitic monarch of her day, having inherited all traditional prejudices of her ancestors and acquired new ones. This highly personal feature was a product of deep religious devotion and was not kept secret in her time. In 1777, she wrote of the Jews: "I know of no greater plague than this race, which on account of its deceit, usury and avarice is driving my subjects into beggary. Therefore as far as possible, the Jews are to be kept away and avoided."
Maria Theresa left a revitalised empire that influenced the rest of Europe throughout the 19th century. Her descendants followed her example and continued reforming the empire. The acquisition of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria gave the empire an even more multinational character that would ultimately lead to its destruction. Her introduction of compulsory schooling, as a means of Germanisation, eventually triggered the revival of Czech culture
Among other reforms was the Codex Theresianus, begun in 1752 and finished in 1766, that defined civil rights. In 1776, Austria outlawed witch burnings and torture, and, for the first time in Austrian history, took capital punishment off the penal code, as it was replaced with forced labor. It was later reintroduced, but the progressive nature of these reforms remains noted.
Gerard van Swieten, whom Maria Theresa had recruited following the death of her sister, Archduchess Maria Anna, founded the Vienna General Hospital, revamped Austria's educational system and served as the Empress's personal physician.
After calling in van Swieten, Maria Theresa asked him to study the problem of infant mortality in Austria. Following his recommendation, she made a decree that autopsies would be mandatory for all hospital deaths in the city of Graz, Austria's second largest city. This law – still in effect today – combined with the relatively stable population of Graz, resulted in one of the most important and complete autopsy records in the world
Francis I (Francis Stephen; 8 December 1708 – 18 August 1765) was Holy Roman Emperor and Grand Duke of Tuscany, though his wife effectively executed the real power of those positions. With his wife, Maria Theresa, he was the founder of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty. From 1728 until 1737 he was Duke of Lorraine, but lost this title when Lorraine was seized by France in the War of the Polish Succession; he was compensated with Tuscany in the peace treaty that ended that war.
The War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) — also known as King George's War in North America, and incorporating the War of Jenkins' Ear with Spain and two of the three Silesian wars — involved nearly all the powers of Europe, except for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Portuguese Empire and the Ottoman Empire. The war began under the pretext that Maria Theresa of Austria was ineligible to succeed to the Habsburg thrones of her father, Charles VI, because Salic law precluded royal inheritance by a woman, though in reality this was a convenient excuse put forward by Prussia and France to challenge Habsburg power
The war ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. The most enduring military historical interest and importance of the war lies in the struggle of Prussia and the Habsburg monarchs for the region of Silesia. It also re-established Spanish influence in northern Italy, further reversing an Austrian dominance over the Italian peninsula that was achieved at the expense of Spain as a consequence of that country's own war of succession earlier in the 18th century.
For the eight years following the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle that ended the War of the Austrian Succession, Maria Theresa plotted revenge on the Prussians.
On Maria Theresa's death in 1780, she was succeeded by her son Joseph II, already Holy Roman Emperor since Francis I's death in 1765. Joseph was a reformer, and is often considered the foremost example of an eighteenth century enlightened despot. Joseph attempted to bring under control the Roman Catholic Church and the various provincial nobilities of his lands, which led to widespread resistance, especially in Hungary and the Austrian Netherlands, which were used to their traditional liberties.
The latter half of the 18th century (and beginning of the 19th) witnessed a blossoming musical scene never before, and never again, seen in Vienna or Europe. During this time, Gluck, Haydin, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert all lived and worked in Vienna, producing some of the most memorable music ever composed.
Joseph's foreign policy was equally ambitious, and equally unsuccessful. He pursued a policy of alliance with Catherine the Great's Russia, which led to a war with the Ottoman Empire in 1787. Austria's performance in the war was distinctly unimpressive, and the expense involved led to further resistance. By the time of Joseph's death in 1790, all his plans seemed ruined, with both Hungary and the Netherlands in open revolt and the war in the Balkans dragging on and seeming impossible to finish, given Russia's commitment to continuing the war.
Joseph's death proved a boon for Austria, as he was succeeded by his more sensible brother, Leopold II, previously the reforming Grand Duke of Tuscany. Leopold knew when to cut his losses, and soon cut deals with the revolting Netherlanders and Hungarians. He also managed to secure a peace with Turkey in 1791
Leopold's reign also saw the acceleration of the French Revolution. Although Leopold was sympathetic to the revolutionaries, he was also the brother of the French queen Archduchess Maria Antonietta (bort Maria Antonia)
Although Leopold did his best to avoid war with the French, he died in March of 1792. The French declared war on his inexperienced son Francis II a month later, who will became the last Holy Roman Emperor.
[The war with France, which lasted until 1797, proved unsuccessful for Austria. After some brief successes against the utterly disorganized French armies in early 1792, the tide turned, and the French overran the Austrian Netherlands in the last months of 1792.
Under the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), following the War of the Spanish Succession, what was left of the Spanish Netherlands was ceded to Austria and thus became known as the Austrian Netherlands. However, the Austrians themselves generally had little interest in the region (aside from a short-lived attempt by Emperor Charles VI to compete with British and Dutch trade through the Ostend Company), and the fortresses along the border (the Barrier Fortresses) were, by treaty, garrisoned with Dutch troops.
]
Throughout the latter part of the eighteenth century, the principal foreign policy goal of the Habsburg rulers was to exchange the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria, which would round out Habsburg possessions in southern Germany.
After the French Revolution, in 1794 the entire region (including territories that were never under Habsburg rule, like the Bishopric of Liège) was overrun by France ending the existence of this territory as Spanish/Austrian Netherlands. By the terms of the Treaty of Campo Formio of 1797, Austria renounced its claims to the Netherlands and Lombardy, in exchange for which it partitioned the territories of the Republic of Venice with the French.
The Austrian Empire (German: Kaisertum Österreich) was a modern era successor empire, which was centered on what is today's Austria and which officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. This was a reaction to Napoleon Bonaparte's proclamation of the First French Empire in 1804.
When, on 11 August 1804, Francis II assumed the title of first Emperor of Austria, the empire spanned from present-day Italy to present-day Poland and to the Balkans. The multi-national makeup of the empire is illustrated by the fact that its population included Germans, Czechs, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, Italians, Ukrainians, Croats, Slovaks, Serbs, Slovenes and numerous smaller nationalities. The emperor ruled Austria as the namesake, but also held the title of King of Hungary, Bohemia, Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, leading to the Empire's multi-national army being styled the Kaiserlich-königliche Armee (Imperial-Royal Army). The Empire had a centralist structure, although some degree of autonomy was left to Hungary which was ruled by its own Diet, and to Tyrol.
Soon, Napoleon's continuing machinations in Italy, including the annexation of Genoa and Parma, led once again to war in 1805—the War of the Third Coalition, in which Austria, Britain, Russia, and Sweden took on Napoleon. The Austrian forces began the war by invading Bavaria, a key French ally in Germany, but were soon outmaneuvered and forced to surrender by Napoleon at Ulm, before the main Austro-Russian force was defeated at Austerlitz on December 2. By the Treaty of Pressburg, Austria was forced to give up large amounts of territory—Dalmatia to France, Venetia to Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy, the Tyrol to Bavaria, and Austria's various Swabian territories to Baden and Württemberg, although Salzburg, formerly held by Francis's younger brother, the previous Grand Duke of Tuscany, was annexed by Austria as compensation.
The defeat meant the end of the old Holy Roman Empire. Napoleon's satellite states in southern and Western Germany seceded from the Empire in the summer of 1806, forming the Confederation of the Rhine, and a few days later Francis proclaimed the Empire dissolved, and renounced the old imperial crown.
Over the next three years Austria, now led by Philipp Stadion, attempted to maintain peace with France, but the overthrow of the Spanish Bourbons in 1808 was deeply disturbing to the Habsburgs, who rather desperately went to war once again in 1809, this time with no continental allies. Stadion's attempts to generate popular uprisings in Germany were unsuccessful, and the Russians honored their alliance with France, so Austria was once again defeated, although at greater cost than Napoleon, who suffered his first battlefield defeat in this war, at Aspern-Essling, had expected. The terms of the Treaty of Schönbrunn were quite harsh. Austria lost Salzburg to Bavaria, some of its Polish lands to Russia, and its remaining territory on the Adriatic (including much of Carinthia and Styria) to Napoleon's Illyrian Provinces
Klemens von Metternich, the new Austrian foreign minister, aimed to pursue a pro-French policy. The Emperor's daughter, Marie Louise, was married to Napoleon, and Austria contributed an army to Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. With Napoleon's disastrous defeat in Russia at the end of the year, and Prussia's defection to the Russian side at the beginning of 1813, Metternich began slowly to shift his policy. Initially he aimed to mediate a peace between France and its continental enemies, but when it became apparent that Napoleon was not interested in compromise, Austria joined the allies and declared war on France in August 1813. The Austrian intervention was decisive. Napoleon was defeated at Leipzig in October, and forced to withdraw into France itself.
[Metternich was a major figure in the negotiations before and during the Congress of Vienna and is considered both a paragon of foreign-policy management and a major figure in the development of diplomatic praxis.
Metternich was a master of the techniques of diplomacy: for instance, his dispatches were models of diplomatic style. Although they could be excessively moralizing, over-elaborate and verbose, their phrasing was often the result of astute calculation.
Under the control of Metternich, the Austrian Empire entered a period of censorship and a police state in the period between 1815 and 1848 (Biedermaier or Vormärz period). However, both liberalism and nationalism were on the rise, which resulted in the Revolutions of 1848.
]
The Russian army withdrew and retreated past Moscow. Napoleon entered the city, assuming its fall would end the war and Alexander would negotiate peace. However, on orders of the city's governor Feodor Rostopchin, rather than capitulation, Moscow was burned. After a month, concerned about loss of control back in France, Napoleon and his army left.
The French suffered greatly in the course of a ruinous retreat, including from the harshness of the Russian Winter. The Armée had begun as over 400,000 frontline troops, but in the end fewer than 40,000 crossed the Berezina River in November 1812. The Russians had lost 150,000 in battle and hundreds of thousands of civilians.
The Russian campaign had revealed that Napoleon was not invincible, putting an end to his reputation as an undefeated military genius. Napoleon had made many terrible errors in this campaign one of the worst that he refused to quit his campaign in Spain while trying to campaign in Russia. Historian F.G. Hourtoulle perhaps says it best: "One does not make war on two fronts, especially so far apart." In trying to have both he gave up any chance at either. Napoleon had foreseen what it would mean, so he fled back to France quickly before word of the disaster became widespread, allowing him to start raising another army.
Napoleon was not completely defeated by the disaster in Russia. The following year he raised an army of around 400,000 French troops supported by a quarter of a million French allied troops to contest control of Germany in an even larger campaign. Despite being outnumbered, he won a large victory at the Battle of Dresden (Battle of Leipzig). It was not until the decisive Battle of Nations (Battle of Leipzig) (October 16–19, 1813) that he was finally defeated and afterwards no longer had the troops to stop the Coalition's invasion of France.
Napoleon abdicated on April 3, 1814, and Louis XVIII was restored, soon negotiating a peace treaty with the victorious allies at Paris in June.
In the Treaty of Fontainebleau, the victors exiled him to Elba, an island of 12,000 inhabitants in the Mediterranean, 20 km off the Tuscan coast.
Napoleon escaped from Elba on 26 February 1815. He landed at Golfe-Juan on the French mainland, two days later
In 13 March, the powers at the Congress of Vienna declared Napoleon an outlaw, and four days later Great Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia bound themselves to each put 150,000 men into the field to end his rule.
Napoleon's forces fought the allies, led by Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815. Wellington's army withstood repeated attacks by the French and drove them from the field while the Prussians arrived in force and broke through Napoleon's right flank. Napoleon was defeated
Napoleon was imprisoned and then exiled to the island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean, 2,000 km from any major landmass. He will die there.
After Napoleon's final defeat in 1815, the surviving member states of the defunct Holy Roman Empire joined to form the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund) — a rather loose organization, especially because the two great rivals, the Austrian Empire and the Prussian kingdom, each feared domination by the other.
The defeat at Königgrätz in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 resulted in Austria's exclusion from Germany; the German Confederation was dissolved. The Confederation was dissolved in 1866 after the Austro-Prussian War, and was 'succeeded' in 1866 by the Prussian-dominated North German Confederation. Unlike the German Confederation, the North German Confederation was in fact a true state. Its territory comprised the parts of the German Confederation north of the river Main, plus Prussia's eastern territories and the Duchy of Schleswig, but excluded Austria and the southern German states.
The Austro-Prussian War (in Germany known as German War, Seven Weeks War, Unification War, German Civil War or Fraternal War) was a war fought in 1866 between the German Confederation under the leadership of the Austrian Empire and its German allies on one side and the Kingdom of Prussia with its German allies and Italy on the other, that resulted in Prussian dominance over the German states. In the Italian unification process, this is called the Third Independence War. In English it is also commonly known as the Seven Weeks' War.
The major result of the war was a shift in power among the German states away from Austrian and towards Prussian hegemony, and impetus towards the unification of all of the northern German states in a Kleindeutschland that excluded Austria. It saw the abolition of the German Confederation and its partial replacement by a North German Confederation that excluded Austria and the South German states. The war also resulted in the Italian annexation of the Austrian province of Venetia. Otto von Bismarck will become the Chancellor of the North German Confederation. Bismarck's most important legacy is the unification of Germany. Germany had existed as a collection of hundreds of separate principalities and Free Cities since the formation of the Holy Roman Empire. Over the next hundred years various kings and rulers had tried to unify the German states without success until Bismarck. Largely as a result of Bismarck's efforts, the various German kingdoms were united into a single country. Following unification, Germany became one of the most powerful nations in Europe.
Franz Joseph of Austria accepted Bismarck's terms under the Peace of Prague. Using this to his advantage, Bismarck declared the German Confederation of 1815 null and void, and created a new network of states under Prussian control. Frankfurt-am-Main, Hannover, Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel), Holstein, Nassau, and Schleswig were annexed outright while Hesse-Darmstadt, Mecklenburg, Saxony, the Thuringian duchies, as well as the cities of Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck were combined into a new North German Confederation that governed nominally and was actually controlled by Prussia herself.
For centuries, the Holy Roman Emperors who mostly came from the Habsburg family had nominally ruled all of "Germany" — the Holy Roman Empire. Austria — the personal territory of the Habsburg Emperors — was traditionally considered the leader of the German states, but Prussia was becoming increasingly powerful and by the late 18th century was ranked as one of the great powers of Europe.
Franco-Prussian War: The Spanish throne had been vacant since the Spanish revolution of September 1868, and the Spanish offered the throne to the German prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a Catholic as well as a distant cousin of King Wilhelm of Prussia. Leopold and Wilhelm I were both uninterested, but the wily Bismarck was acutely interested as it was an opportunity to once again best Napoleon III. Bismarck persuaded Leopold's father to accept the offer for his nation, and it was accepted instead by Leopold himself in June 1870. Additional demands made by the French government heightened diplomatic tensions between Paris and Berlin; deliberate or accidental mistranslations of a diplomatic communique, the Ems Telegram, also known as the Ems Dispatch, led to the declaration of war by France. Following further improper translations and misinterpretations of the dispatch in the press, excited crowds in Paris demanded war, just as Bismarck had anticipated. France declared war on 19 July 1870. The Siege of Paris (19 September 1870 – 28 January 1871) brought about the final defeat of the French Army during the Franco-Prussian War. On 18 January 1871 the new German Empire was proclaimed at the Palace of Versailles: Under the leadership of Prussia and Bismarck, Germany had emerged as a nation and as a world power. 39 separate states were united. The kings of Saxony and Bavaria, the princes, dukes and electors, Brunswick, Baden, Hanover, Mecklenburg, Württemberg, Oldenburg, all paid allegiance to the king of Prussia, the Kaiser. With unity there came an extraordinary period of energy and expansion.
The Treaty of Frankfurt, in addition to giving Germany the city of Strasbourg and the fortification at Metz, gave Germany the possession of Alsace and the northern portion of Lorraine (Moselle), both of which (especially Alsace) were home to a majority of ethnic Germans and contained 80% of French iron ore and machine shops.The loss of this territory was a source of resentment in France for years to come, and contributed to public support for World War I, in which France vowed to take back control of Alsace-Lorraine. This revanchism created a permanent state of crisis between Germany and France (French-German enmity), which would be one of the contributing factors leading to World War I. The creation of a unified German Empire ended the "balance of power" that had been created with the Congress of Vienna after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Germany quickly established itself as the main power in continental Europe with one of the most powerful and professional armies in the world. Although Great Britain remained the dominant world power, British involvement in European affairs during the late 19th century was very limited, allowing Germany to exercise great influence over the European mainland.
To appease Hungarian nationalism after the German Confederation was dissolved., Franz Joseph made a deal with Hungarian nobles, which led to the creation of Austria-Hungary through the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. The western half of the realm (Cisleithania) and Hungary (Transleithania) now became two realms with different interior policy, but with a common ruler and a common foreign and military policy.
In October 1873, German Chancellor Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors (German: Dreikaiserbund) between the monarchs of Austria–Hungary, Russia and Germany. This agreement failed because Austria–Hungary and Russia could not agree over Balkan policy, leaving Germany and Austria–Hungary in an alliance formed in 1879, called the Dual Alliance. This was seen as a method of countering Russian influence in the Balkans as the Ottoman Empire continued to weaken.
In 1882, this alliance was expanded to include Italy in what became the Triple Alliance. In 1892, The Franco-Russian Alliance was signed to counteract the force of the Triple Alliance. In 1904, the United Kingdom sealed an alliance with France, the Entente cordiale and in 1907, the United Kingdom and Russia signed the Anglo-Russian Convention. This system of interlocking bilateral agreements formed the Triple Entente
[Elisabeth of Bavaria or Elisabeth Amalie Eugenie (24 December 1837 – 10 September 1898) was Empress of Austria and Queen consort of Hungary as the spouse of Franz Joseph I. As such, she held also the titles Queen consort of Bohemia, Queen consort of Croatia among others. From an early age, she was called “Sisi” by family and friends. While Elisabeth had limited influence on Austro-Hungarian politics, she has become a historical icon. Elisabeth is considered to have been a non-conformist who abhorred conventional court protocol and at the same time a tragic figure; she has inspired filmmakers and theatrical producers alike.
She bore the emperor three children in quick succession: Archduchess Sophie of Austria (1855–1857), Archduchess Gisela of Austria (1856–1932), and the hoped-for crown prince, Rudolf (1858–1889).
In 1857, tragedy struck. Elisabeth, against the advice of the doctors, took her two daughters on a vacation in Hungary. Both girls were ill with diarrhea, but while Gisela recovered quickly, her older sister Sophie succumbed to the disease and died; she was two. Her firstborn's death would haunt Elisabeth for the rest of her life and cause a permanent rift between her and her husband, which would gradually grow wider as their marriage slowly collapsed, Her attempts to modify court etiquette, and her extreme fondness for horsemanship and frequent visits to the imperial riding school, scandalized Austrian society, while her predilection for Hungary and for everything Hungarian offended German sentiment
Elisabeth learned to speak Hungarian fluently and spent more time in Budapest then in Vienna, much to the anger and displeasure of her mother in law and her cohorts in the Viennese Court. Personal blows left heavy marks on the life of Austria's Empress. She lost her daughter, Sophie, in 1857, and her favourite cousin, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, in a tragic fashion. Her brother-in-law, Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico was shot by revolutionaries. She never was able to get over her most terrible tragedy, the suicide of her son, Rudolph. She was also deeply affected by the death of her sister, Duchess Sophie Charlotte in Bavaria who perished in the fire of the Paris Charity Bazaar in 1897. In 1889, Elisabeth's life was shattered by the death of her only son. Thirty-year-old Crown Prince Rudolf and his young lover Baroness Mary Vetsera were found dead. An investigation suggested it was murder-suicide by Rudolf. The scandal was known as the Mayerling Incident, after Rudolf's hunting lodge in Lower Austria, where they were found. After the death of her only son Rudolf, Elisabeth becomes more and more embittered, recedes into her own world, becomes unsociable and inapproachable. From now on she wears black exclusively. It was a shock from which she never really recovered.
She became known not only for her beauty. Newspapers published articles on her fashion sense, diet and exercise regimens, passion for riding sports. She paid extreme attention to her appearance and spent much time preserving her beauty.She often shopped at Budapest fashion house Antal Alter (now Alter és Kiss), which had become very popular with the fashion-crazed crowd.
Elisabeth embarked on a life of travel, and saw little of her offspring. She visited such locations as Madeira, Hungary, England and Corfu. At Corfu, after her son's death, she commissioned the building of a palace which she named the Achilleion, after Homer's hero Achilles in The Iliad. On her imperial steamer "Miramare" Empress Elisabeth travelled through the Mediterranean. Her favourite places were Cap Martin on the French Riviera, where tourism had started only in the second half of the 19th century; Lake Geneva in Switzerland; Bad Ischl in Austria, where the imperial couple would spend the summer; and Corfu. The Empress also visited countries to which no other northern royal went at the time: Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Malta, Greece, Turkey and Egypt. The endless travels became an escape for the Empress from herself and her misery.
On 10 September 1898, in Geneva, Switzerland, Elisabeth, aged 60, was stabbed in the heart with a sharpened file by a young mentally ill anarchist named Luigi Lucheni, in an act of "propaganda of the deed". When attacked, she had been walking along the promenade of Lake Geneva about to board the steamship Genève for Montreux with her lady-of-courtesy, Countess Sztaray. She boarded the ship, unaware of the severity of her condition, fainting twice.Bleeding to death from a puncture wound to the heart, Elisabeth's last words were: "What has happened?". The strong pressure from her corset had contained the bleeding until the garment was removed.
Tourists have visited places made famous by Elisabeth, both in Austria and abroad. Visitors are eager to see the various residences Elisabeth frequented at different points in her life. These include her apartments in the Hofburg and the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna; the imperial villa in Ischl, the Achilleion in Corfu, Greece which she built in 1890, soon after her son's death; and her summer residence in Gödöllo", Hungary.
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In 1878, Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had been cut off from the rest of the Ottoman Empire by the creation of new states in the Balkans. The territory was annexed in 1908 and put under joint rule by the governments of both Austria and Hungary.
Nationalist strife increased during the decades until 1914. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who was the presumed heir of Franz Joseph as Emperor, in Sarajevo by a Serb nationalist group triggered World War I. The defeat of the Central Powers in 1918 resulted in the disintegration of Austria-Hungary. Emperor Karl of Austria, who had ruled since 1916, went into exile.
In 1895 Franz Ferdinand met the Czech Countess Sophie Chotek at a ball in Prague. In 1899, Emperor Franz Joseph agreed to permit Franz Ferdinand to marry Sophie, on condition that the marriage would be morganatic and that their descendants would not have succession rights to the throne
On Sunday, 28 June 1914, at approximately 1:15 pm, Franz Ferdinand and his wife were killed in Sarajevo, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Gavrilo Princip, 19 at the time, a member of Young Bosnia and one of a group of assassins organized by the Black Hand. The event led to a chain of events that eventually triggered World War I with Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia.
The bullet fired by Gavrilo Princip, sometimes referred to as "the bullet that started World War I", is stored as a museum exhibit in the Konopište( Castle near the town of Benešov, Czech Republic.
Before World War II, the war was also known as The Great War, The World War, or The War in Europe.The terms World War I and First World War both became standard (in the United States and Britain respectively) beginning in about 1940 to 1942; prior to that, it was most commonly called The Great War.
The Russian Empire, unwilling to allow Austria–Hungary to eliminate its influence in the Balkans, and in support of its longtime Serb protégés, ordered a partial mobilisation one day later. When the German Empire began to mobilise on 30 July 1914, France, sporting significant animosity over the German conquest of Alsace-Lorraine during the Franco-Prussian War, ordered French mobilisation on 1 August. Germany declared war on Russia on the same day. The United Kingdom declared war on Germany, on 4 August 1914, following an "unsatisfactory reply" to the British ultimatum that Belgium must be kept neutral.
The more immediate cause for the war was tensions over territory in the Balkans. Austria-Hungary competed with Serbia and Russia for territory and influence in the region and they pulled the rest of the Great Powers into the conflict through their various alliances and treaties.
On 28 July, the conflict opened with the Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia, followed by the German invasion of Belgium, Luxembourg and France; and a Russian attack against Germany. After the German march on Paris was brought to a halt, the Western Front settled into a static battle of attrition with a trench line that changed little until 1917. In the East, the Russian army successfully fought against the Austro-Hungarian forces but was forced back by the German army. Additional fronts opened after the Ottoman Empire joined the war in 1914, Italy and Bulgaria in 1915 and Romania in 1916. The Russian Empire collapsed in 1917, and Russia left the war after the October Revolution later that year. After a 1918 German offensive along the western front, United States forces entered the trenches and the Allies drove back the German armies in a series of successful offensives. Germany agreed to a cease-fire on 11 November 1918, later known as Armistice Day. More than 9 million combatants were killed, due largely to great technological advances in firepower without corresponding advances in mobility. It was the second deadliest conflict in Western history. Much of the combat involved trench warfare, where hundreds often died for each yard gained. Many of the deadliest battles in history occurred during the First World War. Such battles include Ypres, the Marne, Cambrai, the Somme, Verdun, and Gallipoli.
At the outbreak of the First World War, the German army (consisting in the West of seven field armies) executed a modified version of the Schlieffen Plan, designed to quickly attack France through neutral Belgium before turning southwards to encircle the French army on the German border. The Germans likewise considered the Russians to be their primary threat. The entire Schlieffen Plan was based on the idea of defeating France as quickly as possible, and then transporting their armies by train to the eastern front.
In the east, only one Field Army defended East Prussia and when Russia attacked in this region it diverted German forces intended for the Western Front. Germany defeated Russia in a series of battles collectively known as the First Battle of Tannenberg (17 August – 2 September), but this diversion exacerbated problems of insufficient speed of advance from rail-heads not foreseen by the German General Staff. The Central Powers were thereby denied a quick victory and forced to fight a war on two fronts. The German army had fought its way into a good defensive position inside France and had permanently incapacitated 230,000 more French and British troops than it had lost itself. Despite this, communications problems and questionable command decisions cost Germany the chance of obtaining an early victory. Early in the war all sides expected the conflict to be a short one.
[The battle was named Battle of Tannenberg at the direct request of Hindenburg. Hindenburg chose Tannenberg because of its historical significance; it was the location where the Teutonic Knights were defeated by the joint forces of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the Battle of Grunwald (referred to in German as Schlacht bei Tannenberg - "Battle of Tannenberg"). German nationalism often invoked the imagery of the Teutonic Knights, especially in the context of territorial conquest from eastern neighbours of Germany and conflict with nations of Slavic origins, who were considered by German nationalists to be of lower development and of inferior culture.
The German historian Heinrich von Treitschke used imagery of the Teutonic Knights to promote pro-German and anti-Polish rhetoric. Such imagery and symbols were adopted by many middle-class Germans who supported German nationalism. However, in spite of these references to the Teutonic Order's history also in the nazi propaganda, the Order itself was abolished in 1938 and its members were persecuted by the German authorities. This occurred mostly due to Hitler's and Himmler's belief, that throughout history, the Catholic military-religious orders, were simply tools of the Holy See and as such constituted a threat to the Nazi regime.A German monument,The Tannenberg Memorial, was completed in 1927. However, it was blown up by Germans during the retreat in January 1945 Hindenburg was originally buried in the central yard or "plaza" of the monument on 7 August 1934.
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The Germans introduced poison gas; it soon became used by both sides, though it never proved decisive in winning a battle. Its effects were brutal, causing slow and painful death, and poison gas became one of the most-feared and best-remembered horrors of the war. Commanders on both sides failed to develop tactics for breaching entrenched positions without heavy casualties.
In time, however, technology began to produce new offensive weapons, such as the tank.Britain and France were its primary users; the Germans employed captured Allied tanks and small numbers of their own design.
On 1 July 1916, the British Army endured the bloodiest day in its history, suffering 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 dead on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Most of the casualties occurred in the first hour of the attack. This battle run between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on either side of the River Somme (Somme means “tranquility” in Celt language) in France.The entire Somme offensive cost the British Army almost half a million men. The original Allied estimate of casualties on the Somme, made at the Chantilly conference on 15 November, was 485,000 British and French casualties versus 630,000 German. Adolf Hitler, then a member of the 6th Bavarian Reserve Division, fought in the Battle of the Somme and was wounded, taking a bullet to the leg on 7 October 1916
Neither side proved able to deliver a decisive blow for the next two years, though protracted German action at Verdun throughout 1916, combined with the bloodletting at the Somme, brought the exhausted French army to the brink of collapse.
Battle of Verdun was fought from 21 February – 18 December 1916 and resulted in 714,231 casualties, 377,231 on the French side and 337,000 on the German one, an average of 70,000 casualties for each of the ten months of the battle. It was the longest and one of the most devastating battles in the First World War and the history of warfare. Verdun was primarily an artillery battle: a total of about 40 million artillery shells were exchanged, leaving behind millions of overlapping shell craters that are still partly visible. In both France and Germany, Verdun has come to represent the horrors of war, like the Battle of the Somme in the British consciousness. The renowned British military historian Major General Julian Thompson has referred to Verdun as "France's Stalingrad".
The Battle of Verdun—also known as the Mincing Machine of Verdun or Meuse Mill—became a symbol of French determination to hold the ground and then roll back the enemy at any human cost.
Faced with Russia, Austria-Hungary could spare only one-third of its army to attack Serbia. After suffering heavy losses, the Austrians briefly occupied the Serbian capital, Belgrade. The Kingdom of Serbia lost 1,100,000 inhabitants during the war (both army and civilian losses), which represented over 27% of its overall population
The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in the war, the secret Ottoman-German Alliance having been signed in August 1914. It threatened Russia's Caucasian territories and Britain's communications with India via the Suez Canal. The British and French opened overseas fronts with the Gallipoli (1915) and Mesopotamian campaigns. In Gallipoli, the Ottoman Empire successfully repelled the British, French and Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs).
On 25 April 1915, a force of British Empire and French troops landed at multiple places along the peninsula. However, some of the landings went wrong and troops were landed in the wrong positions, causing confusion that lost valuable time. To make matters worse, this was followed up by only tentative advances inland. Most of the arriving armies were left on the beaches, which allowed the Ottomans to pour in reinforcements. The battles over the next eight months saw high casualties on both sides due to the exposed terrain, weather and closeness of the front lines. In addition, many casualties resulted from an epidemic of dysentery, caused by poor sanitary conditions. Total Allied deaths were 43,000 British, 15,000 French , 8,700 Australians, 2,700 New Zealanders and 1,370 Indians. Total Turkish deaths were around 60,000.
[The Anzac spirit also tends to capture the idea of an Australian and New Zealand "national character", with the Gallipoli Campaign often described as being the moment of birth of the nationhood of both Australia and New Zealand.
The significance of the Gallipoli Campaign is felt strongly in both New Zealand and Australia. Within popular historiography, the campaign is referred to as both nations' "baptism of fire" and linked to their emergence as independent nations. It has been argued that the campaign proved significant in the emergence of a unique Australian identity following the war, which has been closely linked to popular conceptualisations of the qualities of the soldiers that fought during the campaign, which became embodied in the notion of an "Anzac spirit".
The landing on 25 April is commemorated every year in both countries as "Anzac Day". The first iteration was celebrated unofficially in 1916, at churches in Melbourne, Brisbane and London, before being officially recognised as a public holiday in all Australian states in 1923. The day also became a national holiday in New Zealand in the 1920s.Organised marches by veterans began in 1925, in the same year a service was held on the beach at Gallipoli; two years later the first official dawn service took place at the Sydney Cenotaph. During the 1980s it became popular for Australian and New Zealand tourists to visit Gallipoli to attend the dawn service there and since then thousands have attended services every year.
The Anzac spirit was particularly popularised by Charles Bean, Australia's official war historian. Bean encapsulated the meaning of Anzac in his publication Anzac to Amiens:
Anzac stood, and still stands, for reckless valor in a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship, and endurance that will never own defeat.
For the soldiers at Battle of Gallipoli, Bean argued, life would not have been worth living if they had betrayed the ideal of mateship. Despite the loss at Gallipoli, Australian and New Zealand soldiers were seen to have displayed great courage, endurance, initiative and discipline. The stereotype developed that the Anzac rejected unnecessary restrictions, possessed a sardonic sense of humour, was contemptuous of danger, and proved himself the equal of anyone on the battlefield
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In Mesopotamia, by contrast, after the disastrous Siege of Kut (1915–16), British Imperial forces reorganised and captured Baghdad in March 1917. Further to the west, in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, initial British setbacks were overcome when they captured Jerusalem in December 1917. The Egyptian Expeditionary Force, under Field Marshal Edmund Allenby, broke the Ottoman forces at the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918.
In the First Battle of Ypres (19 October to 22 November 1914), the Allies captured the town from the Germans. The Germans had used tear gas at the Battle of Bolimov on 3 January 1915. Their use of poison gas for the first time on 22 April 1915 marked the beginning of the Second Battle of Ypres, which continued until 25 May 1915. They captured high ground east of the town. The first gas attack occurred against Canadian, British, and French soldiers; including both metropolitan French soldiers as well as Senegalese and Algerian tirailleurs (light infantry) from French Africa. The gas used was chlorine. Mustard gas, also called Yperite from the name of this town, was also used for the first time near Ypres, in the autumn of 1917. Of the battles, the largest, best-known, and most costly in human suffering was the Third Battle of Ypres (21 July to 6 November 1917, also known as the Battle of Passchendaele), in which the British, Canadian, ANZAC, and French forces recaptured the Passchendaele Ridge east of the city at a terrible cost of lives. After months of fighting, this battle resulted in nearly half a million casualties to all sides, and only a few miles of ground won by Allied forces.
British veterans and civilians created in the 1920s a sacred memory of sacrifice in Belgium. The town of Ypres was made the symbol of all Britain was fighting for and was given a holy aura. The Ypres League transformed the horrors of trench warfare into a spiritual quest in which British and imperial troops were purified by their sacrifice. After the war Ypres became a pilgrimage destination for Britons to imagine and share the sufferings of their men and gain a spiritual benefit. The Menin Gate Memorial unveiled on 24 July 1927 to the Missing is a war memorial in Ypres, Belgium dedicated to the British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in the Ypres Salient of World War I and whose graves are unknown. It was chosen to be a memorial as it was the closest gate of the town to the fighting, and so Allied Troops would have marched past it on their way to fight. Actually, most troops passed out of the other gates of Ypres, as the Menin Gate was too dangerous due to shellfire. Its large Hall of Memory contains names on stone panels of 54,896 Commonwealth soldiers who died in the Salient but whose bodies have never been identified or found.
Today, Ypres is a small city in the very western part of Belgium, the so-called Westhoek. Ypres these days has the title of "city of peace" and maintains a close friendship with another town on which war had a profound impact: Hiroshima. Both towns witnessed warfare at its worst: Ypres was one of the first places where chemical warfare was employed, while Hiroshima suffered the debut of nuclear warfare. The countryside around Ypres is featured in the famous poem by Canadian John McCrae, In Flanders Fields:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Following the trench warfare which took place in the poppy fields of Flanders, during the 1st World War, red poppies have become a symbol of remembrance of soldiers who have died during wartime.
Italy had been allied with the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires since 1882 as part of the Triple Alliance. However, the nation had its own designs on Austrian territory in Trentino, Istria and Dalmatia. Rome had a secret 1902 pact with France, effectively nullifying its alliance. In April 1915, Italy joined the Triple Entente and declared war on Austria-Hungary on 23 May. Fifteen months later Italy declared war on Germany.
Romania had been allied with the Central Powers since 1882. When the war began, however, it declared its neutrality, arguing that because Austria-Hungary had itself declared war on Serbia, Romania was under no obligation to join the war. When the Entente Powers promised Romania large territories of eastern Hungary (Transylvania and Banat), that had a large Romanian population, in exchange for Romania’s declaring war on the Central Powers, the Romanian government renounced its neutrality, and on 27 August 1916 the Romanian Army launched an attack against Austria-Hungary, with limited Russian support. As Russia withdrew from the war in late 1917 as a result of the October Revolution, Romania was forced to sign an armistice with the Central Powers on 9 December 1917. Total Romanian deaths from 1914 to 1918, military and civilian, within contemporary borders, were estimated at 748,000.
The Indian Army in fact outnumbered the British Army at the beginning of the war. India under British rule contributed greatly to the British war effort by providing men and resources. This was done by the Indian Congress in hope of achieving self-government as India was very much under the control of the British. The United Kingdom disappointed the Indians by not providing self-governance, leading to the Gandhian Era in Indian history.
The United States originally pursued a policy of non-intervention, avoiding conflict while trying to broker a peace. When a German U-boat sank the British liner Lusitania in 1915, with 128 Americans aboard, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson vowed, "America is too proud to fight" and demanded an end to attacks on passenger ships. Germany complied. Wilson unsuccessfully tried to mediate a settlement. He repeatedly warned the U.S. would not tolerate unrestricted submarine warfare, in violation of international law and U.S. ideas of human rights. Wilson was under pressure from former president Theodore Roosevelt, who denounced German acts as "piracy". Germany said Lusitania "carried contraband of war" and also because she "was classed as an auxiliary cruiser" Germany had had a right to destroy her regardless of any passengers aboard.
In January 1917, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. The German Foreign minister, in the Zimmermann Telegram, told Mexico that U.S. entry was likely once unrestricted submarine warfare began, and invited Mexico to join the war as Germany's ally against the United States. In return, the Germans would send Mexico money and help it recover the territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona that Mexico lost during the Mexican-American War 70 years earlier. The Zimmermann Telegram was intercepted and decoded by the British cryptographers of Room 40. The revelation of its contents in the American press on March 1 caused public outrage that contributed to the U.S.'s declaration of war against Germany and its allies on April 6.
The United States had a small army, but, after the passage of the Selective Service Act, it drafted 2.8 million men and by summer 1918 was sending 10,000 fresh soldiers to France every day. In 1917, the U.S. Congress gave U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans when they were drafted to participate in World War I, as part of the Jones Act. Germany had miscalculated, believing it would be many more months before they would arrive and that the arrival could be stopped by U-boats.
In 1917, Emperor Charles I of Austria secretly attempted separate peace negotiations with Clemenceau, with his wife's brother Sixtus in Belgium as an intermediary, without the knowledge of Germany. When the negotiations failed, his attempt was revealed to Germany, a diplomatic catastrophe.
Having suffered over 6 million casualties, Germany moved towards peace. Prince Maximilian of Baden took charge of a new government as Chancellor of Germany to negotiate with the Allies. Telegraphic negotiations with President Wilson began immediately, in the vain hope that better terms would be offered than by the British and French. Instead Wilson demanded the abdication of the Kaiser. There was no resistance when the social democrat Philipp Scheidemann on 9 November declared Germany to be a republic. Imperial Germany was dead; a new Germany had been born: the Weimar Republic
A formal state of war between the two sides persisted for another seven months, until signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on 28 June 1919.
The experiences of the war led to a collective trauma shared by many from all participating countries. The optimism of la belle époque was destroyed and those who fought in the war were referred to as the Lost Generation. For years afterwards, people mourned the dead, the missing, and the many disabled.
Poland reemerged as an independent country, after more than a century. As a "minor Entente nation" and the country with the largest casualties per head the Kingdom of Serbia and its dynasty became the backbone of the new multinational state, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed Yugoslavia). Czechoslovakia became a new nation. Russia became the Soviet Union and lost Finland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, which became independent countries. The Ottoman Empire was soon replaced by Turkey and several other countries in the Middle East.
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The treaty's terms were extremely harsh, as the negotiators at Versailles later pointed out.
Nonetheless, even the payment of this small percentage of the original reparations (132 billion gold Reichsmarks) still placed a significant burden on the German economy. Although the causes of the devastating post-war hyperinflation are complex and disputed, Germans blamed the near-collapse of their economy on the Treaty, and some economists estimated that the reparations accounted for as much as one third of the hyper-inflation
Conservatives, nationalists and ex-military leaders condemned the peace and democratic Weimar politicians, socialists, communists, and Jews were viewed by them with suspicion, due to their supposed extra-national loyalties. It was rumoured that the Jews had not supported the war and had played a role in selling out Germany to its enemies. Those who seemed to benefit from a weakened Germany, and the newly formed Weimar Republic, were regarded as having "stabbed Germany in the back" on the home front, by either opposing German nationalism, instigating unrest and strikes in the critical military industries or profiteering.These theories were given credence by the fact that when Germany surrendered in November 1918, its armies were still on French and Belgian territory. Furthermore, on the Eastern Front, Germany had already won the war against Russia and concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In the West, Germany had seemed to have come close to winning the war with the Spring Offensive earlier in 1918. Its failure was blamed on strikes in the arms industry at a critical moment of the offensive, leaving soldiers with an inadequate supply of materiel. The strikes were regarded by nationalists as having been instigated by traitors, with the Jews taking most of the blame
French historian Raymond Cartier states that millions of Germans in the Sudetenland and in Posen-West Prussia were placed under foreign rule in a hostile environment, where harassment and violation of rights by authorities are documented.
[Sudetenland were settled by ethnic Germans, who were invited by the Bohemian kings — especially by Ottokar II and Wenceslaus II. The border was set by the signing of the Peace of Eger in 1459.
From 1620 (loss of the Bohemian Revolt) onwards, the Habsburgs gradually integrated the Kingdom of Bohemia into their monarchy, and it remained a part of that realm until its dismemberment after World War I. Conflicts between Czech and German nationalists emerged in the 19th century, for instance in the Revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas: while the German-speaking population wanted to participate in the building of a German nation state, the Czech-speaking population insisted on keeping Bohemia out of such plans.
The Czechs rejected the aspirations of the Sudeten Germans and demanded the inclusion of the Sudetenland in their state, despite the presence of more than 90% (as of 1921) ethnic Germans (which led to the presence of 23.4% Germans in all of Czechoslovakia), on the grounds they had always been part of Czech lands. The Treaty of Saint-Germain in 1919 affirmed the inclusion of the German-speaking territories within the Czechoslovakia.
The Czechs thus rejected the aspirations of the Sudeten Germans and demanded the inclusion of the Sudetenland in their state, despite the presence of more than 90% (as of 1921) ethnic Germans (which led to the presence of 23.4% Germans in all of Czechoslovakia), on the grounds they had always been part of Czech lands. The Treaty of Saint-Germain in 1919 affirmed the inclusion of the German-speaking territories within the Czechoslovakia.
The Sudetenland was relegated to Germany between October 1 and October 10, 1938. The Czech part of Czechoslovakia was subsequently invaded by Germany in March 1939, with a portion being annexed and the remainder turned into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Slovak part declared its independence from Czechoslovakia, becoming the Slovak Republic (Slovak State), a satellite state and ally of Nazi Germany.
After the end of World War II, the Potsdam Conference in 1945 determined that Sudeten Germans would have to leave Czechoslovakia (see Expulsion of Germans after World War II). As a consequence of the immense hostility against all Germans that had grown within Czechoslovakia due to Nazi behaviour, the overwhelming majority of Germans were expelled (while the relevant Czechoslovak legislation provided for the remaining Germans who were able to prove their anti-Nazi affiliation). The number of expelled Germans in the early phase (spring-summer 1945) is estimated to be around 500,000 people. The remaining Germans were allowed to stay in Czechoslovakia. Some German refugees from Czechoslovakia are represented by the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft.
]
The defeat of the Central Powers in 1918 resulted in the disintegration of Austria-Hungary. Emperor Karl of Austria, who had ruled since 1916, went into exile.
[The Austro-Hungarian Empire was wracked by inner turmoil in the final years of the war, with much tension between ethnic groups. As part of his Fourteen Points, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson demanded that the Empire allow for autonomy and self-determination of its peoples. In response, Karl (Charles) agreed to reconvene the Imperial Parliament and allow for the creation of a confederation with each national group exercising self-governance. However, the ethnic groups fought for full autonomy as separate nations, as they were now determined to become independent from Vienna at the earliest possible moment.
Secretary of State Robert Lansing replied four days later that the Allies were now committed to the causes of the Czechs, Slovaks and South Slavs. Therefore, autonomy for the nationalities was no longer enough. In fact, a Czechoslovak provisional government had joined the Allies on 14 October, and the South Slav national council had opted to join Serbia in forming a large South Slav state.
On 11 November 1918—the same day as the armistice ending the war between allies and Germany—Charles issued a carefully worded proclamation in which he recognized the Austrian people's right to determine the form of the state and "relinquish(ed) every participation in the administration of the State.
Although it has widely been cited as an "abdication", that word was never mentioned in either proclamation.Indeed, he deliberately avoided using the word abdication in the hope that the people of either Austria or Hungary would vote to recall him.
Instead, on 12 November, the day after he issued his proclamation, the independent Republic of German Austria was proclaimed, followed by the proclamation of the Hungarian Democratic Republic on 16 November.
Encouraged by Hungarian royalists ("legitimists"), Charles sought twice in 1921 to reclaim the throne of Hungary, but failed largely because Hungary's regent, Miklós Horthy (the last admiral of the Austro-Hungarian Navy), refused to support him. Horthy's failure to support Charles' restoration attempts is often described as "treasonous" by royalists.
Determined to prevent a third restoration attempt, the Council of Allied Powers had agreed on Madeira would be their destination for exile because it was isolated in the Atlantic and easily guarded.
Charles would not leave Madeira again. On 9 March 1922 he caught a cold walking into town and developed bronchitis which subsequently progressed to severe pneumonia. Having suffered two heart attacks he died of respiratory failure on 1 April
]
On 12 November 1918, Austria became a republic called German Austria. The newly formed Austrian parliament asked for union with Germany. Article 2 of its provisional constitution stated: Deutschösterreich ist ein Bestandteil der Deutschen Republik (German Austria is part of the German Republic). Plebiscites in the countries of Tyrol and Salzburg 1919–21 yielded majorities of 98 and 99% in favour of a unification with Germany. It was feared that small Austria was not economically viable. In the end France and Italy prevented the merger, and demanded the construction of an independent Austria that had to remain autonomous for at least 20 years.
In 1919, the state of German Austria was dissolved by the Treaty of Saint Germain, which ceded German-populated regions in Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia, German-populated southern part of Tyrol (now the province of Bolzano-Bozen) to Italy and a portion of southern land to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed Yugoslavia). The treaty angered the German population in Austria who claimed that it violated the Fourteen Points laid out by United States President Woodrow Wilson during peace talks, specifically the right to "self-determination" of all nations. In total, it lost land to Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania, and Italy. Burgenland, then a part of Hungary, was awarded to Austria.
The Treaty of Saint Germain included a provision that prohibited political or economic union with Germany and forced the country to change its name from the "Republic of German Austria" to the "Republic of Austria," i.e. the First Republic.
Austria never did have to pay reparations because allied commissions determined that the country could not afford to pay. It was also the only defeated country to acquire additional territory as part of border adjustments: the Burgenland, a small land tract to the east that despite its German-speaking majority had belonged to Hungary.
On 20 October 1920, a plebiscite in the Austrian state of Carinthia was held in which the population chose to remain a part of Austria, rejecting the territorial claims of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to the state. The German-speaking parts of western Hungary, now christened Burgenland, joined Austria as a new state in 1921, with the exception of the city of Sopron, whose population decided in a referendum (which is sometimes considered by Austrians to have been rigged) to remain with Hungary.
After 1920, Austria's government was dominated by the Christian Social Party which retained close ties to the Roman Catholic Church. The party's first Chancellor, Ignaz Seipel, attempted to forge a political alliance between wealthy industrialists and the Roman Catholic Church. Despite the nation having a steady political party in power, the politics of the nation were fractious and violent, with both left-wing (Republikanischer Schutzbund) and right-wing (Heimwehr) political paramilitary forces clashing with each other.
The violence in Austria continued to escalate until the early 1930s when Engelbert Dollfuß became Chancellor. Engelbert Dollfuß of the Christian Social Party became Chancellor in 1932.
The Austrofascist movement's origin lies in the Korneuburg Oath, a declaration released by the Christian Social paramilitary organization Heimwehr on 18 May 1930. The declaration condemned both "Marxist class struggle" and "liberal-capitalistic economical structures" and also explicitly rejected "the Western democratic parliamentary system and the [multi]-party state".
Ideologically, Austrofascism was partly based on a fusion of Italian fascism, as expounded by Giovanni Gentile, and Austria's Political Catholicism.
Chancellor Dolfuss was killed in July 1934, during an attempt by Austria's National Socialist Party to topple the regime and proclaim a Nazi government under Ambassador to Rome Anton Rintelen. Dollfuss was assassinated on July 25, 1934 by ten Austrian Nazis (Paul Hudl, Franz Holzweber, Otto Planetta and others) of Regiment 89 who entered the Chancellery building and shot him in an attempted coup d'état, the July Putsch. The assassination of Dollfuss was accompanied by Nazi uprisings in many regions in Austria, resulting in further deaths. In Carinthia a large contingent of northern German Nazis tried to grab power but were subdued by the loyalist Heimwehr units. Mussolini mobilized a part of the Italian army on the Austrian border and threatened Hitler with war in the event of a German invasion of Austria to thwart the putsch.
Dollfuss always stressed the similarity of the regimes of Hitler in Germany and Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union, and was convinced that Austrofascism and Italian fascism could counter totalitarian national socialism and communism in Europe.
Austria's national identity had strong Catholic elements that were incorporated into the movement, by way of clerical authoritarian tendencies not found in Nazism. Both Engelbert Dollfuss and his successor, Kurt Schuschnigg, turned to Austria's other fascist neighbour, Italy, for inspiration and support. The statist corporatism often referred to as Austrofascism bore more resemblance to Italian Fascism than German National Socialism. Benito Mussolini was able to support the independent aspirations of the Austrian dictatorship until his need for German support in Ethiopia (see Second Italo-Abyssinian War) led him into a client relationship with Berlin that began with the 1937 Berlin–Rome Axis.
Schuschnigg desperately sought support for Austrian independence in the hours following the ultimatum. Realizing that neither France nor the UK was willing to take steps, he resigned as chancellor that evening. In the radio broadcast in which he announced his resignation, he argued that he accepted the changes and allowed the Nazis to take over the government 'to avoid the shedding of fraternal blood [Bruderblut]'.
Schuschnigg maintained the ban on pro-Hitlerite activities in Austria, but was forced to resign on 11 March 1938 following a demand by Hitler for power-sharing with pro-German circles. Following Schuschnigg's resignation, German troops occupied Austria with no resistance.
Although the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of St. Germain had explicitly forbidden the unification of Austria and Germany, the native Austrian Hitler was striving to annex Austria during the late 1930s, which was fiercely resisted by the Austrian Schuschnigg dictatorship. When the conflict was escalating in early 1938, Chancellor Schuschnigg announced a plebiscite on the issue on March 9, which was to take place on 13 March. On 12 March, German troops entered Austria, who met celebrating crowds, in order to install Nazi puppet Arthur Seyss-Inquart as Chancellor. With a Nazi administration already in place and the country integrated into the Third Reich as so-called Ostmark, a referendum on 10 April approved of the annexation with a majority of 99.73%. This referendum is, however, believed by many observers and historians to have been rigged.
Hitler's travel through Austria became a triumphal tour that climaxed in Vienna, on 2 April 1938, when around 200,000 Austrians gathered on the Heldenplatz (Square of Heroes) to hear Hitler proclaim the Austrian Anschluss
The Anschluss was given immediate effect by legislative act on 13 March, subject to ratification by a plebiscite. Austria became the province of Ostmark, and Seyss-Inquart was appointed governor. The plebiscite was held on 10 April and officially recorded a support of 99.73% of the voters.
The moderate reaction to the Anschluss (the United States issued a similar statement) was a result of the British appeasement foreign policy strategy. Hitler appeared to conclude that he could use more aggressive tactics in his roadmap to expand the Third Reich, as he would later in annexing the Sudetenland.
After World War II, many Austrians sought comfort in the idea of Austria as "the Nazis' first victim". Although the Nazi party was promptly banned, Austria did not have the same thorough process of de-Nazification at the top of government which was imposed on Germany for a time. Austria refused to pay compensation to Nazi victims and from 1970 onwards refused to investigate Austrian citizens who were senior Nazis.
This view of the events of 1938 has deep roots in the 10 years of Allied occupation and the struggle to regain Austrian sovereignty: the victim theory played an essential role in the negotiations on the Austrian State Treaty with the Soviets im 1955, and by pointing to the Moscow Declaration, Austrian politicians heavily relied on it to achieve a solution for Austria different from the division of Germany into separate Eastern and Western states. The state treaty, alongside the subsequent Austrian declaration of permanent neutrality, marked important milestones for the solidification of Austria's independent national identity during the course of the following decades.
Austria would benefit from the Marshall Plan but economic recovery was very slow—as a result of the State's 10 year political overseeing by the Allied Powers.
Unlike the First Republic, which had been characterized by sometimes violent conflict between the different political groups, the Second Republic became a stable democracy. The two largest leading parties, the Christian-conservative Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) remained in a coalition led by the ÖVP until 1966.
The ÖVP-SPÖ coalition ended in 1966, when the ÖVP gained a majority in parliament. However, it lost it in 1970, when SPÖ leader Bruno Kreisky formed a minority government tolerated by the FPÖ. In the elections of 1971, 1975 and 1979 he obtained an absolute majority. The 70s were then seen as a time of liberal reforms in social policy. Today, the economic policies of the Kreisky era are often criticized, as the accumulation of a large national debt began, and non-profitable nationalized industries were strongly subsidized.
In September 1986, in a confrontation between the German-national and liberal wings, Jörg Haider became leader of the FPÖ. Chancellor Vranitzky rescinded the coalition pact between FPÖ and SPÖ, and after new elections, entered into a coalition with the ÖVP, which was then led by Alois Mock.
The SPÖ–ÖVP coalition persisted until 1999. Austria joined the European Union in 1995 (Video of the signing in 1994), and Austria was set on the track towards joining the Eurozone, when it was established in 1999.
In 1999, the ÖVP fell back to third place behind the FPÖ in the elections. Even though ÖVP chairman and Vice Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel had announced that his party would go into opposition in that case, he entered into a coalition with the FPÖ – with himself as chancellor – in early 2000 under considerable national and international protest. Jörg Haider resigned as FPÖ chairman, but retained his post as governor of Carinthia but kept substantial influence within the FPÖ
In 2002, disputes within the FPÖ resulting from losses in state elections caused the resignation of several FPÖ government members and a collapse of the government. Wolfgang Schüssel's ÖVP emerged as the winner of the subsequent election, ending up in first place for the first time since 1966. The FPÖ lost more than half of its voters, but reentered the coalition with the ÖVP. Despite the new coalition, the voter support for the FPÖ continued to dwindle in all most all local and state elections.
On 1 October 2006 the SPÖ won a head on head elections and negotiated a grand coalition with the ÖVP. This coalition started its term on 11 January 2007 with Alfred Gusenbauer as Chancellor of Austria.
The grand coalition headed by Alfred Gusenbauer collapsed in the early summer of 2008 over disagreements about the country's EU policy. The early elections held on September 28 resulted in extensive losses for the two ruling parties and corresponding gains for Heinz-Christian Strache's FPÖ and Jörg Haider's BZÖ (the Green Party was relegated to the 5th position). Nevertheless, SPÖ and ÖVP renewed their coalition under the leadership of the new SPÖ party chairman Werner Faymann. In 2008 Jörg Haider died in a car accident and was succeeded as BZÖ party chairman by Herbert Scheibner and as governor of Carinthia by Gerhard Dörfler.
Some other notable Austrians:
- Herbert von Karajan (German pronunciation: 5 April 1908 – 16 July 1989) was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor
- Gustav Mahler (German pronunciation: 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was a late-Romantic Austrian-Bohemian Jewish composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation.
- Ferdinand Porsche (3 September 1875 – 30 January 1951) was an Austrian automotive engineer and honorary Doctor of Engineering. He is best known for creating the first hybrid vehicle (gasoline-electric), the Volkswagen Beetle (actually based on Czech car Tatra), and the Mercedes-Benz SS/SSK, as well as the first of many Porsche automobiles. Ferdinand Porsche was born to German-speaking parents in Maffersdorf (Czech: Vratislavice nad Nisou), northern Bohemia, during the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today in the Czech Republic.
- Daniel Swarovski (24 October 1862, Georgenthal bei Gablonz (Czech: Jir(etín pod Bukovou; not Sankt Georgenthal (Czech: Jir(etín pod Jedlovou)), Bohemia (now Czech Republic) - 23 January 1956, Wattens) was an Austrian glass cutter and jeweller born in Bohemia.
- John von Neumann (December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian American mathematician who made major contributions to a vast range of fields, In 1955, von Neumann was diagnosed with what was either bone or pancreatic cancer.[Von Neumann died a-year-and-a-half later. While at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., he invited a Roman Catholic priest, Father Anselm Strittmatter, O.S.B., to visit him for consultation. This move shocked some of von Neumann's friends in view of his reputation as an agnostic. Von Neumann, however, is reported to have said in explanation that Pascal had a point, referring to Pascal's wager.Father Strittmatter administered the last Sacraments to him
- Oskar Schindler (28 April 1908 – 9 October 1974) was an ethnic German industrialist born in Svitavy, Moravia. He is credited with saving over 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories, which were located in what is now Poland and the Czech Republic respectively. He is the subject of the novel Schindler's Ark by Australian winning novel novelist Thomas Keneally, and the film based on it, Schindler's List.
- Josef von Sternberg (29 May 1894 – 22 December 1969) was an Austrian-American film director.
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[Life of Mozart:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 - 5 December 1791) was born at 9 Getreidegasse in Salzburg. His father Leopold Mozart, a native of Augsburg, was a minor composer and an experienced teacher. His elder sister was Maria Anna (1751–1829), nicknamed "Nannerl". When Nannerl was seven, she began keyboard lessons with her father while her three-year-old brother looked on.
In his early years, Mozart's father was his only teacher. Along with music, he taught his children languages and academic subjects.
During Mozart's youth, his family made several European journeys in which he and Nannerl performed as child prodigies. These began with an exhibition, in 1762, at the court of the Prince-elector Maximilian III of Bavaria in Munich, and at the Imperial Court in Vienna and Prague. A long concert tour spanning three and a half years followed, taking the family to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, The Hague, again to Paris, and back home via Zurich, Donaueschingen, and Munich
After one year in Salzburg, Leopold and Mozart set off for Italy, leaving Mozart's mother and sister at home. This travel lasted from December 1769 to March 1771. In Milan, Mozart wrote the opera Mitridate, re di Ponto (1770), which was performed with success. This led to further opera commissions.
After finally returning with his father from Italy on 13 March 1773, Mozart was employed as a court musician by the ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. The composer had a great number of friends and admirers in Salzburg and had the opportunity to work in many genres.
It was in Salzburg where Mozart composed one of most famous symphonies, Symphony No. 25 (October 1773).
In August 1777, Mozart resigned his Salzburg position and, on 23 September, ventured out once more in search of employment, with visits to Augsburg, Mannheim, Paris, and Munich. Mozart became acquainted with members of the famous orchestra in Mannheim, the best in Europe at the time. He also fell in love with Aloysia Weber, one of four daughters in a musical family.
There were prospects of employment in Mannheim, but they came to nothing,and Mozart left for Paris on 14 March 1778 to continue his search. Among the better known works that Mozart wrote on the Paris journey are the A minor piano sonata K. 310/300d and the "Paris" Symphony (no. 31); these were performed in Paris on 12 and 18 June 1778.
Opera Idomeneo by Mozart and librettist Giambattista Varesco was commissioned in 1780 by Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria for a court carnival. Idomeneo was Mozart's first mature opera. With it he demonstrated a mastery of orchestral color, accompanied recitatives, and melodic line.
In 1781, Mozart decided to settle in Vienna as a freelance performer and composer. Mozart's new career in Vienna began well. He performed often as a pianist, notably in a competition before the Emperor with Muzio Clementi on 24 December 1781, and he soon "had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna".
He also prospered as a composer, and in 1782 completed the opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail ("The Abduction from the Seraglio"), which premiered on 16 July 1782 and achieved a huge success. The work was soon being performed "throughout German-speaking Europe", and fully established Mozart's reputation as a composer.
Mozart moved in with the Weber family, who had moved to Vienna from Mannheim. The father, Fridolin, had died, and the Webers were now taking in lodgers to make ends meet. Aloysia, who had earlier rejected Mozart's suit, was now married to the actor and artist Joseph Lange. Mozart's interest shifted to the third Weber daughter, Constanze. The courtship did not go entirely smoothly; surviving correspondence indicates that Mozart and Constanze briefly separated in April 1782. Mozart faced a very difficult task in getting his father's permission for the marriage. The couple were finally married on 4 August 1782 in St. Stephen's Cathedral, the day before his father's consent arrived in the mail.
The couple had six children, of whom only two survived infancy:
Karl Thomas Mozart (21 September 1784 – 31 October 1858)
Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (26 July 1791 – 29 July 1844)
From 1782 to 1785 Mozart mounted concerts with himself as soloist, presenting three or four new piano concertos in each season. Since space in the theaters was scarce, he booked unconventional venues: a large room in the Trattnerhof (an apartment building), and the ballroom of the Mehlgrube (a restaurant). The concerts were very popular, and the concertos he premiered at them are still firm fixtures in the repertoire. In 1783 Mozart composed The Piano Sonata No. 11 . The last movement of this piece, "Alla Turca", popularly known as the "Turkish March", is often heard on its own and is one of Mozart's best-known piano pieces; it was Mozart himself who titled the rondo "Alla Turca". It imitates the sound of Turkish Janissary bands, the music of which was much in vogue at that time.
Mozart met Joseph Haydn in Vienna around 1784, and the two composers became friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn and are judged to be a response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. Haydn in 1785 told Mozart's father: "I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition."
On 14 December 1784, Mozart became a Freemason, admitted to the lodge Zur Wohltätigkeit ("Beneficence"). Freemasonry played an important role in the remainder of Mozart's life: he attended meetings, a number of his friends were Masons, and on various occasions he composed Masonic music.
Around the end of 1785, Mozart moved away from keyboard writing and began his famous operatic collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. 1786 saw the successful premiere of The Marriage of Figaro in Vienna. For many, this is the greatest opera ever written. The 29-year-old Mozart struck gold here, setting da Ponte’s words to music of profound humanity. Based on Beaumarchais’s play, the opera uses comedy and pathos to highlight aristocratic power, a hot topic on the eve of the French Revolution. The Marriage of Figaro continues the plot of The Barber of Seville several years later, and recounts a single "day of madness" (la folle giornata) in the palace of Count Almaviva near Seville, Spain.
Its reception in Prague later in the year was even warmer, and this led to a second collaboration with Da Ponte: the opera Don Giovanni, which premiered in October 1787 to acclaim in Prague, and also met with success in Vienna in 1788. The two are among Mozart's most important works and are mainstays of the operatic repertoire today, though at their premieres their musical complexity caused difficulty for both listeners and performers. These developments were not witnessed by Mozart's father, who had died on 28 May 1787.
Opera Don Giovanni was based on the legends of Don Juan, a fictional libertine and seducer. Evidence suggests that "El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra" (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest) by Tirso de Molina is the first written version of the Don Juan legend. Don Juan is portrayed as a wealthy, seductive libertine who devotes his life to seducing women, taking great pride in his ability to seduce women of all ages and stations in life. His life is also punctuated with violence and gambling, and in many interpretations (Tirso, Espronceda, Zorrilla), he kills Don Gonzalo, the father of a girl he has seduced, Doña Ana. This leads to the famous last supper scene, whereby Don Juan invites the dead father to dinner. The ending depends on which version of the legend one is reading. Don Giovanni is currently tenth on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide. It has also proved a fruitful subject for writers and philosophers.
In 1787 the young Ludwig van Beethoven spent several weeks in Vienna, hoping to study with Mozart. No reliable records survive to indicate whether the two composers ever met. In 1787 Mozart composed one of his most famous pieces, Eine kleine Nachtmusik (Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major). The serenade was completed in Vienna on 10 August 1787, around the time Mozart was working on the second act of his opera Don Giovanni. It is not known why it was composed. The work was not published until about 1827, long after Mozart's death.
Toward the end of the decade 1780's decade, Mozart's circumstances worsened. Around 1786 he had ceased to appear frequently in public concerts, and his income shrank. This was a difficult time for musicians in Vienna because of the Austro-Turkish War, and both the general level of prosperity and the ability of the aristocracy to support music had declined. Around this time, Mozart made long journeys hoping to improve his fortunes: to Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin in the spring of 1789, and to Frankfurt, Mannheim, and other German cities in 1790. The trips produced only isolated success and did not relieve the family's financial distress.
Mozart's last year was, until his final illness struck, a time of great productivity—and by some accounts, one of personal recovery. He composed a great deal, including some of his most admired works: the opera The Magic Flute; the final piano concerto No. 27 (K. 595 in B-flat); the Clarinet Concerto K. 622; the last in his great series of string quintets (K. 614 in E-flat); the motet Ave verum corpus K. 618; and the unfinished Requiem K. 626.
The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) is noted for its prominent Masonic elements; Schikaneder and Mozart were Masons and lodge brothers, as was Ignaz Alberti, engraver and printer of the first libretto (see: Mozart and Freemasonry). The opera is also influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, and can be regarded as an allegory advocating enlightened absolutism. The Queen of the Night represents a dangerous form of obscurantism or, according to some, the anti-Masonic Empress Maria Theresa. Her antagonist Sarastro symbolises the enlightened sovereign who rules according to principles based on reason, wisdom, and nature. The story itself portrays the education of mankind, progressing from chaos through religious superstition to rationalistic enlightenment, by means of trial (Tamino) and error (Papageno), ultimately to make "the Earth a heavenly kingdom, and mortals like the gods". ("Dann ist die Erd' ein Himmelreich, und Sterbliche den Göttern gleich." This couplet is sung in the finales to both acts.). Since its premiere, The Magic Flute has always been one of the most beloved works in the operatic repertoire, and is presently the fourth most frequently performed opera world wide.
Mozart's financial situation, a source of extreme anxiety in 1790, finally began to improve. Although the evidence is inconclusive, it appears that wealthy patrons in Hungary and Amsterdam pledged annuities to Mozart in return for the occasional composition. Mozart fell ill while in Prague for the 6 September 1791 premiere of his opera La clemenza di Tito, written in that same year on commission for the Emperor's coronation festivities. He continued his professional functions for some time, and conducted the premiere of The Magic Flute on 30 September. His health deteriorated on 20 November, at which point he became bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting.
Mozart died in his home on 5 December 1791 (aged 35) at 1:00 am. The cause of Mozart's death cannot be known with certainty. Sophie, his wife's sister, recalled, "I cannot possibly describe the boundless misery of his faithful wife as she threw herself on her knees and implored succour from the Almighty for His aid. She could not tear herself away from him, beg her as I did."
Researchers have posited at least 118 causes of death. One of the most widely accepted hypotheses is that Mozart died of acute rheumatic fever. Mozart's modest funeral did not reflect his standing with the public as a composer: memorial services and concerts in Vienna and Prague were well-attended. Indeed, in the period immediately after his death, his reputation rose substantially: He was raised a Roman Catholic and remained a member of the Church throughout his life.
The common belief that Mozart was buried in a pauper's grave is also without foundation. The "common grave" referred to above is a term for a grave belonging to a citizen not of the aristocracy. It was an individual grave, not a communal grave.
Following her husband's death, Constanze recovered from her despair and addressed the task of providing financial security for her family; the Mozarts had two young children, and Mozart had died with outstanding debts. She successfully appealed to the Emperor (11 December 1791) for a widow's pension due to her as a result of Mozart's service to the Emperor as a part-time chamber composer. Additionally, she organized a series of concerts of Mozart's music and the publication of many of her husband's works. As a result, Constanze became financially secure over time.
]
[Life of Beethoven:
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptized 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven is acknowledged as one of the giants of classical music; occasionally he is referred to as one of the "three Bs" (along with Bach and Brahms) who epitomise that tradition. He was also a pivotal figure in the transition from the 18th century musical classicism to 19th century romanticism, and his influence on subsequent generations of composers was profound. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best known compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 concertos for piano, 32 piano sonatas, and 16 string quartets.
Beethoven was the grandson of Lodewijk van Beethoven (1712–73), a musician who came from Mechelen in present-day Belgium who moved at the age of twenty to Bonn. Beethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn. There is no authentic record of the date of his birth; however, the registry of his baptism, in a Roman Catholic service at the Parish of St. Regius on 17 December 1770, survives
Beethoven's first music teacher was his father. Some time after 1779, Beethoven began his studies with his most important teacher in Bonn, Christian Gottlob Neefe, who was appointed the Court's Organist in that year. Neefe taught Beethoven composition, and by March 1783 had helped him write his first published composition
In March 1787 Beethoven traveled to Vienna (possibly at another's expense) for the first time, apparently in the hope of studying with Mozart. The details of their relationship are uncertain, including whether or not they actually met.After just two weeks Beethoven learned that his mother was severely ill, and returned home. His mother died shortly thereafter, and the father lapsed deeper into alcoholism. As a result, Beethoven became responsible for the care of his two younger brothers, and he spent the next five years in Bonn. In 1789 Beethoven obtained a legal order by which half of his father's salary was paid directly to him for support of the family. He also contributed further to the family's income by playing viola in the court orchestra. Beethoven was probably first introduced to Joseph Haydn in late 1790, when the latter was traveling to London and stopped in Bonn around Christmas time. They met in Bonn on Haydn's return trip from London to Vienna in July 1792, and it is likely that arrangements were made at that time for Beethoven to study with the old master. With the Elector's help, Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792.
By 1793, he had established a reputation in Vienna as a piano virtuoso, but he apparently withheld works from publication so that their publication in 1795 would have greater impact. Beethoven composed his first six string quartets (Op. 18) between 1798 and 1800 (commissioned by, and dedicated to, Prince Lobkowitz). They were published in 1801. With premieres of his First and Second Symphonies in 1800 and 1803, Beethoven became regarded as one of the most important of a generation of young composers following Haydn and Mozart.
In May 1799, Beethoven taught piano to the daughters of Hungarian Countess Anna Brunsvik. During this time, Beethoven fell in love with the younger daughter Josephine who has therefore been identified as one of the more likely candidates for the addressee of his letter to the "Immortal Beloved" (in 1812). Shortly after these lessons, Josephine was married to Count Josef Deym. Beethoven was a regular visitor at their house, continuing to teach Josephine, and playing at parties and concerts. Her marriage was by all accounts happy (despite initial financial problems), and the couple had four children.
Beethoven's business dealings with publishers also began to improve in 1802 when his brother Carl, who had previously assisted him casually, began to assume a larger role in the management of his affairs. In addition to negotiating higher prices for recently composed works, Carl also began selling some of Beethoven's earlier unpublished works.
In his Early period, Beethoven's work was strongly influenced by his predecessors Haydn and Mozart. He also explored new directions and gradually expanded the scope and ambition of his work.
Around 1796, by the age of 26, Beethoven began to lose his hearing. He suffered from a severe form of tinnitus, a "ringing" in his ears that made it hard for him to hear music; he also avoided conversation. The cause of Beethoven's deafness is unknown, but it has variously been attributed to typhus, auto-immune disorders (such as systemic lupus erythematosus), and even his habit of immersing his head in cold water to stay awake. As early as 1801, Beethoven wrote to friends describing his symptoms and the difficulties they caused in both professional and social settings (although it is likely some of his close friends were already aware of the problems). Beethoven, on the advice of his doctor, lived in the small Austrian town of Heiligenstadt, just outside Vienna, from April to October 1802 in an attempt to come to terms with his condition. There he wrote his Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter to his brothers which records his thoughts of suicide due to his growing deafness and records his resolution to continue living for and through his art.Over time, his hearing loss became profound: there is a well-attested story that, at the end of the premiere of his Ninth Symphony, he had to be turned around to see the tumultuous applause of the audience; hearing nothing, he wept.
The Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor "Quasi una fantasia", Op. 27, No. 2, popularly known as the Moonlight Sonata, is a piano sonata by Ludwig van Beethoven. Completed in 1801 and dedicated in 1802 to his pupil, Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, it is one of Beethoven's most popular compositions for the piano.
The Symphony No. 5 in C minor of Ludwig van Beethoven, Op. 67, was written in 1804–1808. It is one of the most popular and best-known compositions in classical music, and one of the most frequently played symphonies. Beethoven was in his mid-thirties during this time; his personal life was troubled by increasing deafness. In the world at large, the period was marked by the Napoleonic Wars, political turmoil in Austria, and the occupation of Vienna by Napoleon's troops in 1805
His relationship with Josephine Brunsvik deepened after the death in 1804 of her aristocratic first husband, the Count Joseph Deym. Beethoven wrote Josephine 15 passionate love letters from late 1804 to around 1809/10. Although his feelings were obviously reciprocated, Josephine was forced by her family to withdraw from him in 1807. She cited her "duty" and the fact that she would have lost the custodianship of her aristocratic children had she married a commoner. After Josephine married Baron von Stackelberg in 1810, Beethoven may have proposed unsuccessfully to Therese Malfatti, the supposed dedicatee of "Für Elise"; his status as a commoner may again have interfered with those plans. Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor (WoO 59 and Bia 515) for solo piano, commonly known as "Für Elise" , is one of Ludwig van Beethoven's most popular compositions. The score was not published until 1867, 40 years after the composer's death in 1827. The discoverer of the piece, Ludwig Nohl, affirmed that the original autographed manuscript, now lost, was dated 27 April 1810. It is not certain who "Elise" was. Max Unger suggested that Ludwig Nohl may have transcribed the title incorrectly and the original work may have been named "Für Therese", a reference to Therese Malfatti von Rohrenbach zu Dezza (1792–1851). She was a friend and student of Beethoven's to whom he proposed in 1810, though she turned him down to marry the Austrian nobleman and state official Wilhelm von Droßdik in 1816.
Beethoven was attracted to the ideals of the Enlightenment. In 1804, when Napoleon's imperial ambitions became clear, Beethoven took hold of the title page of his Third Symphony and scratched the name Bonaparte out so violently that he made a hole in the paper. During May 1809, when the attacking forces of Napoleon bombarded Vienna, according to Ferdinand Ries, Beethoven, very worried that the noise would destroy what remained of his hearing, hid in the basement of his brother's house, covering his ears with pillows.
In early 1813 Beethoven apparently went through a difficult emotional period, and his compositional output dropped. His personal appearance degraded—it had generally been neat—as did his manners in public, especially when dining. Beethoven took care of his brother (who was suffering from tuberculosis) and his family.
Beethoven was finally motivated to begin significant composition again in June 1813, when news arrived of the defeat of one of Napoleon's armies at Vitoria, Spain, by a coalition of forces under the Duke of Wellington. This news stimulated him to write the battle symphony known as Wellington's Victory. The work was a popular hit, probably because of its programmatic style, which was entertaining and easy to understand.
By 1814 however, Beethoven was almost totally deaf, and when a group of visitors saw him play a loud arpeggio of thundering bass notes at his piano remarking, "Ist es nicht schön?" (Is it not beautiful?), they felt deep sympathy considering his courage and sense of humor (he lost the ability to hear higher frequencies first). Between 1815 and 1817 Beethoven's output dropped again. Beethoven attributed part of this to a lengthy illness (he called it an "inflammatory fever") that afflicted him for more than a year, starting in October 1816. The illness and death of his brother Carl from tuberculosis may also have played a role. During the years of custody of his newphew Karl that followed, Beethoven attempted to ensure that Karl lived to the highest moral standards. Beethoven had an overbearing manner and frequently interfered in his nephew's life.
Beethoven began a renewed study of older music, including works by J. S. Bach and Handel, that were then being published in the first attempts at complete editions. He composed the overture The Consecration of the House, which was the first work to attempt to incorporate these influences. A new style emerged, now called his "Late period". He returned to the keyboard to compose his first piano sonatas in almost a decade: the works of the Late period are commonly held to include the last five piano sonatas and the Diabelli Variations, the last two sonatas for cello and piano, the late string quartets (see below), and two works for very large forces: the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony (Among critics, it is almost universally considered to be among Beethoven's greatest works, and is considered by some to be the greatest piece of music ever written). Beethoven was almost completely deaf when he composed his ninth symphony, which was completed in 1824.
Beethoven then turned to writing the string quartets for Golitsin. This series of quartets, known as the "Late Quartets," went far beyond what musicians or audiences were ready for at that time. Opinion has changed considerably from the time of their first bewildered reception: their forms and ideas inspired musicians and composers including Richard Wagner and Béla Bartók, and continue to do so.
Beethoven wrote the last quartets amidst failing health. In April 1825 he was bedridden, and remained ill for about a month. Beethoven newphew, Karl, attempted suicide on 31 July 1826 by shooting himself in the head. He survived and was brought to his mother's house, where he recuperated. He and Beethoven were reconciled, but Karl insisted on joining the army and last saw Beethoven in early 1827.
In December 1826, illness struck again, with episodes of vomiting and diarrhea that nearly ended his life
Beethoven was bedridden for most of his remaining months, and many friends came to visit. He died on 26 March 1827 at the age of 56 during a thunderstorm. His friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner, who was present at the time, said that there was a peal of thunder at the moment of death. An autopsy revealed significant liver damage, which may have been due to heavy alcohol consumption
Beethoven's funeral procession on 29 March 1827 was attended by an estimated 20,000 Viennese citizens. Franz Schubert, who died the following year and was buried next to Beethoven, was one of the torchbearers.
Beethoven was buried in a dedicated grave in the Währing cemetery, north-west of Vienna, after a requiem mass at the church of the Holy Trinity (Dreifaltigkeitskirche). His remains were exhumed for study in 1862, and moved in 1888 to Vienna's Zentralfriedhof.
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Franz Joseph Haydn (1732 – 1809), known as Joseph Haydn, was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms. He was also instrumental in the development of the piano trio and in the evolution of sonata form.
Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria, a village that at that time stood on the border with Hungary. His father was Mathias Haydn, a wheelwright who also served as "Marktrichter", an office akin to village mayor. Haydn's mother Maria, née Koller, had previously worked as a cook in the palace of Count Harrach, the presiding aristocrat of Rohrau. Neither parent could read music; however, Mathias was an enthusiastic folk musician, who during the journeyman period of his career had taught himself to play the harp. According to Haydn's later reminiscences, his childhood family was extremely musical, and frequently sang together and with their neighbors.
Haydn's parents had noticed that their son was musically gifted and knew that in Rohrau he would have no chance to obtain serious musical training. It was for this reason that they accepted a proposal from their relative Johann Matthias Frankh, the schoolmaster and choirmaster in Hainburg, that Haydn be apprenticed to Frankh in his home to train as a musician.
In 1739 he was brought to the attention of Georg von Reutter, the director of music in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, who happened to be visiting Hainburg and was looking for new choirboys. Haydn successfully auditioned with Reutter, and after several months of further training moved to Vienna (1740), where he worked for the next nine years as a chorister.
By 1749, Haydn had matured physically to the point that he was no longer able to sing high choral parts. Haydn immediately began his pursuit of a career as a freelance musician.
During this arduous time, Haydn worked at many different jobs: as a music teacher, as a street serenader,and eventually, in 1752, as valet–accompanist for the Italian composer Nicola Porpora, from whom he later said he learned "the true fundamentals of composition". Between 1754 and 1756 Haydn also worked freelance for the court in Vienna. He was among several musicians who were paid for services as supplementary musicians at balls given for the imperial children during carnival season, and as supplementary singers in the imperial chapel (the Hofkapelle) in Lent and Holy Week.
As his skills increased, Haydn began to acquire a public reputation,Haydn eventually obtained aristocratic patronage, crucial for the career of a composer in his day. In 1756, Baron Carl Josef Fürnberg employed Haydn at his country estate, Weinzierl, where the composer wrote his first string quartets. Fürnberg later recommended Haydn to Count Morzin, who, in 1757, became his first full-time employer.
Haydn's job title under Count Morzin was Kapellmeister, that is, music director. He led the count's small orchestra and wrote his first symphonies for this ensemble. In 1760, with the security of a Kapellmeister position, Haydn married. His wife was the former Maria Anna Aloysia Apollonia Keller (1729–1800), the sister of Therese (b. 1733), with whom Haydn had previously been in love.
Count Morzin soon suffered financial reverses that forced him to dismiss his musical establishment, but Haydn was quickly offered a similar job (1761) by Prince Paul Anton, head of the immensely wealthy Esterházy family. Haydn's job title was only Vice-Kapellmeister, but he was immediately placed in charge of most of the Esterházy musical establishment, with the old Kapellmeister, Gregor Werner, retaining authority only for church music. When Werner died in 1766, Haydn was elevated to full Kapellmeister.
The Cello Concerto No. 1 in C Major, Hob. VIIb/1, by Joseph Haydn was composed around 1761-65 for longtime friend Joseph Franz Weigl, then the principal cellist of Prince Nicolaus's Esterházy Orchestra. The work was presumed lost until 1961, when musicologist Oldřich Pulkert discovered a copy of the score at the Prague National Museum. Though some doubts have been raised about the authenticity of the work, most experts believe that Haydn did compose this concerto.
The little F Major Quartet Op. 3. No. 5 composed in 1764 contains a movement that has become one of the All-Time Hits of Classical Music: the second movement, Andante cantabile, from which the Quartet gets its nickname "Serenade".
During the nearly thirty years that Haydn worked at the Esterházy court, he produced a flood of compositions, and his musical style continued to develop. 1779 was a watershed year for Haydn, as his contract was renegotiated: whereas previously all his compositions were the property of the Esterházy family, he now was permitted to write for others and sell his work to publishers. Haydn soon shifted his emphasis in composition to reflect this (fewer operas, and more quartets and symphonies) and he negotiated with multiple publishers, both Austrian and foreign.
The new publication campaign resulted in the composition of a great number of new string quartets (the six-quartet sets of Op. 33, 50, 54/55, and 64). Haydn also composed in response to commissions from abroad: the Paris symphonies (1785–1786) and the original orchestral version of The Seven Last Words of Christ (1786), a commission from Cadiz, Spain.
The remoteness of Esterháza, which was farther from Vienna than Eisenstadt, led Haydn gradually to feel more isolated and lonely. He longed to visit Vienna because of his friendships there.
Another friend in Vienna was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whom Haydn had met sometime around 1784. According to later testimony by Michael Kelly and others, the two composers occasionally played in string quartets together. Haydn was hugely impressed with Mozart's work and praised it unstintingly to others. Mozart evidently returned the esteem, as seen in his dedication of a set of six quartets, now called the "Haydn" quartets, to his friend.
Sonata in E Flat major, Hob XVI/49, can be said to embody both the Viennese keyboard style. Written in 1789, it is one of his last piano sonatas and is quite representative of works composed in his late period. Of this piece, the section Adagio e cantabile is famous in a movie scene from Interview with the Vampire.
In 1790, Prince Nikolaus died and was succeeded as prince by his son Anton. Following a trend of the time, Anton sought to economize by dismissing most of the court musicians. Since Anton had little need of Haydn's services, he was willing to let him travel, and the composer accepted a lucrative offer from Johann Peter Salomon, a German impresario, to visit England and conduct new symphonies with a large orchestra.
The visit (1791–92), along with a repeat visit (1794–95), was a huge success. Audiences flocked to Haydn's concerts; he augmented his fame and made large profits, thus becoming financially secure. He received the Doctor Honoris causa in the University of Oxford. Charles Burney reviewed the first concert thus: "Haydn himself presided at the piano-forte; and the sight of that renowned composer so electrified the audience, as to excite an attention and a pleasure superior to any that had ever been caused by instrumental music in England."
While traveling to London in 1790, Haydn had met the young Ludwig van Beethoven in his native city of Bonn. On Haydn's return, Beethoven came to Vienna and during the time up to the second London visit was Haydn's pupil.
Haydn wrote the symphony Symphony No. 94 in G major (Hoboken 1/94) in 1794 in London for a concert series he gave during the first of his visits to England (1791–1792).
The Piano Sonata No. 52 in E-flat major, Hob. XVI/52, L. 62, was written in 1794 by Joseph Haydn. This is the last of Haydn's piano sonatas, and is widely considered his greatest. It has been the subject of extensive analysis by preeminent musicological figures such as Heinrich Schenker and Sir Donald Tovey, largely because of its expansive length, unusual harmonies and interesting development.
Haydn returned to Vienna in 1795. Prince Anton had died, and his successor Nikolaus II proposed that the Esterházy musical establishment be revived with Haydn serving again as Kapellmeister. Haydn took up the position, though only on a part-time basis. He spent his summers with the Esterházys in Eisenstadt, and over the course of several years wrote six masses for them. Anton Weidinger was an Austrian trumpet virtuoso in the classical era.
But by this time Haydn had become a public figure in Vienna. He spent most of his time in his own home, a large house in the suburb of Windmühle.
Joseph Haydn's Concerto per il Clarino, (Hob.: VIIe/1) (Trumpet Concerto in E flat major) was written in 1796, when he was 64 years old, for his long-time friend Anton Weidinger.
During the later years of this successful period Haydn faced incipient old age and fluctuating health, and he had to struggle to complete his final works. By about 1802, his condition had declined to the point that he became physically unable to compose.
During his illness, Haydn often found solace by sitting at the piano and playing Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, which he had composed himself as a patriotic gesture in 1797. This melody was later used for the Austrian and German national anthems. This piece was originally written as an anthem to Francis II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and later of Austria. Haydn's tune has since been widely employed in other contexts: in works of classical music, in Christian hymns, in alma maters, and as the tune of the Deutschlandlied, the national anthem of Germany. Long after Haydn's death, his melody was used as the tune of Hoffmann von Fallersleben's Das Lied der Deutschen (1841). The third stanza of the poem ("Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit"), sung to the melody, is currently the national anthem of Germany.
The Missa in Angustiis ("Mass for troubled times") or "Nelson Mass" (Hob. XXII:11), is one of fourteen masses written by Joseph Haydn. It is one of the six masses written near the end of his life which are now seen as a culmination of Haydn's liturgical composition. Haydn's chief biographer, H. C. Robbins Landon, has written that this mass "is arguably Haydn's greatest single composition". This mass, written in 1798, is one of the six late masses by Haydn for the Esterhazy family
Though in 1798, when he wrote this Mass, Haydn's reputation was at its peak, his world was in turmoil. Napoleon had won four major battles with Austria in less than a year. The previous year, in early 1797, his armies had crossed the Alps and threatened Vienna itself. In May 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt to destroy Britain's trade routes to the East. The summer of 1798 was therefore a terrifying time for Austria, and when Haydn finished this Mass, his own title, in the catalogue of his works, was "Missa in Angustiis" or "Mass for Troubled Times". What Haydn did not know when he wrote the Mass, but what he and his audience heard (perhaps on the very day of the first performance September 15), was that on Aug. 1, Napoleon had been dealt a stunning defeat in the Battle of the Nile by British forces led by Admiral Horatio Nelson. Because of this coincidence, the Mass gradually acquired the nickname "Lord Nelson Mass". For Haydn, writing the Mass in the late summer of 1798, the mood in Eisenstadt was one of foreboding, to the point of terror, and this is what we hear as the great work opens: Haydn chose to write the opening movement in D minor.
A final triumph occurred on 27 March 1808, when a performance of The Creation was organized in Haydn's honor. The very frail composer was brought into the hall on an armchair to the sound of trumpets and drums, and was greeted by Beethoven, by Salieri (who led the performance), and by other musicians and members of the aristocracy – many of whom probably sensed that they were saying goodbye to the elderly composer. Haydn was both moved and exhausted by the experience, and had to depart at intermission
Haydn lived on for another year. He died, aged 77, at the end of May 1809, shortly after an attack on Vienna by the French army under Napoleon. Among his last words was his attempt to calm and reassure his servants when cannon shot fell in the neighborhood: "My children, have no fear, for where Haydn is, no harm can fall." Two weeks later, a memorial service was held in the Schottenkirche on 15 June 1809, at which Mozart's Requiem was performed.
Haydn was a devout Catholic who often turned to his rosary when he had trouble composing, a practice that he usually found to be effective. He normally began the manuscript of each composition with "in nomine Domini" ("in the name of the Lord") and ended with "Laus Deo" ("praise be to God").
Haydn was short in stature, perhaps as a result of having been underfed throughout most of his youth. He was not handsome, and like many in his day he was a survivor of smallpox, his face being pitted with the scars of this disease.His biographer Dies wrote, "he couldn't understand how it happened that in his life he had been loved by many a pretty woman. 'They couldn't have been led to it by my beauty'"
His nose, large and aquiline, was disfigured by polypus, which he suffered from for much of his adult life. This was an agonizing and debilitating disease in the 18th century, and at times it prevented him from writing music
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Carantania, under pressure of the Avars, lost its independence to Bavaria in 745 and became a margraviate. During the following centuries, Bavarian settlers went down the Danube and up the Alps, a process through which Austria was to become the mostly German-speaking country it is today.
The first record showing the name Austria is 996 were it is written as Ostarrîchi, referring to the territory of the Babenberg March
Österreich is derived from Old High German Osterrîche. Oster is related to Old High German ostan, eastern. The meaning of rîche has been lost, but it could be derived from Latin regum and suggest an area reserved to the king, a royal domain
The name "Austria" is a latinization of German Österreich. This has led to much confusion as German öst is "east", but Latin auster is "south". It is first recorded as Austrie marchionibus (Margrave of Austria) on a deed issued by Conrad III to the Klosterneuburg Monastery in 1147. On the Privilegium Minus of 1156, the name of the country is given as marchiam Austriae (March of Austria) and as Austriae ducatum (Duchy of Austria).In English usage, "Austria" is attested since the early 17th century
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| Klosterneuburg Monastery |
The Czech and Slovak languages have a peculiar name for Austria. Czech Rakousko and Slovak Rakúsko neither derived from German Österrreich nor from Latin Austria. The Czech name of Rakousko, previously also Rakúsy and later Rakousy, which is still used for the states of Upper and Lower Austria (Horní a Dolní Rakousy), originates in the name of the Austrian castle and town of Raabs an der Thaya near the Czech-Austrian border, formerly also known as Ratgoz or Ratgos
The following centuries were characterized first by the settlement of the country, when forests were cleared and towns and monasteries were founded. In 1156 the Privilegium Minus elevated Austria to the status of a duchy. In 1192, the Babenbergs also acquired the Duchy of Styria through the Georgenberg Pact.The Georgenberg Pact thus was the first step towards the creation of the complex of lands of Austria, which was continued under the Habsburgs during the Late Middle Ages. At that time, the Babenberg Dukes came to be one of the most influential ruling families in the region, peaking in the reign of Leopold VI (1198–1230).
Following the extinction of the Babenbergs in the 13th century, Austria came briefly under the rule of the Czech King Otakar II. Contesting the election of Rudolf I of Habsburg as Emperor, Otakar was defeated and killed by the German King, who took Austria and gave it to his sons in 1278. Austria was ruled by the Habsburgs for the next 640 years
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| King Otakar II defeated in battle |
[A new election for the Imperial German throne took place in 1273. But Ottokar was again not the successful candidate. He refused to recognize his victorious rival, Rudolph of Habsburg, and urged the Pope to adopt a similar policy. At a convention of the Reichstag at Frankfurt in 1274, Rudolph decreed that all imperial lands that had changed hands since the death of Emperor Frederick II must be returned to the crown. This would have deprived Ottokar of Styria, Austria, and Carinthia.
In 1276 Rudolph placed Ottokar under the ban of the empire and besieged Vienna. This compelled Otakar in November 1276 to sign a new treaty by which he gave up all claims to Austria and the neighbouring duchies, retaining for himself only Bohemia and Moravia. Ottokar's son Wenceslaus was also betrothed to Rudolph's daughter Judith. It was an uneasy peace. Two years later, the Bohemian king tried to recover his lost lands by force. Ottokar found allies and collected a large army, but he was defeated by Hungarian assistance and killed at the Battle of Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen on the March on 26 August 1278.
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In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Habsburgs began to accumulate other provinces in the vicinity of the Duchy of Austria, which remained a small Duchy along the Danube, and Styria, which they had acquired from Ottokar alongside with Austria. Carinthia and Carniola came under Habsburg rule in 1335, Tyrol in 1363. These provinces, together, became known as the Habsburg Hereditary Lands
In 1477, the Archduke Maximilian, only son of Emperor Frederick III, married the heiress of Burgundy, thus acquiring most of the Low Countries for the family. His son Philip the Fair married the heiress of Castile and Aragon, and thus acquired Spain and its Italian, African, and New World appendages for the Habsburgs. The Habsburgs' hereditary territories, however, were soon separated from this enormous empire when, in 1520, Emperor Charles V left them to the rule of his brother, Ferdinand.
[Charles the Bold:
he was the last Valois Duke of Burgundy
He embroiled himself successively with with René II, Duke of Lorraine, with whom he disputed the succession of Lorraine, the possession of which had united the two principal portions of Charles's territories— Flanders and the Low Countries and the Duchy and County of Burgundy.
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| The House of Valois-Burgundy 1465-1477 |
Charles was besieging the city of Nancy, capital of Lorraine, following its successful recapture by the forces of Rene II, Duke of Lorraine in 1476.
Charles invaded the duchy and René was forced to quit Nancy (30 November 1475). He regained the city on 5 October the following year and moved to Switzerland to hire an army of Swiss mercenaries; with this force René defeated Charles at the Battle of Nancy (5 January 1477).
He himself perished in the fight, his naked and disfigured body being discovered some days afterward frozen into the nearby river. Charles' head had been cleft in two by a halberd, multiple lances were lodged in his stomach and loins, and his face had been so badly mutilated by wild animals that only his physician was able to identify him by his long fingernails and the old battle scars on his body.
Charles' battered body was initially buried in Nancy, but in 1550 his great grandson, the Emperor Charles V, ordered it to be moved to the Church of Our Lady in Bruges, next to that of his daughter Mary. In 1562 Philip II of Spain erected a splendid mausoleum in early renaissance style over his tomb, still extant. Excavations in 1979 positively identified the remains of Mary, in a lead coffin, but those of Charles were never found
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The Habsburg marriages of 1477 and 1496 give rise to a much quoted line of Latin poetry: Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube (Let others make war; you, fortunate Austria, marry).
When Charles is six, his father dies - a shock which deranges his already unstable mother, making her incapable of ruling (history knows her as Joan the Mad). The Habsburg child, Maximilian's grandson, is now the effective heir to Spain.
In 1526, following the Battle of Mohács, in which Ferdinand's brother-in-law Louis II, King of Hungary and Bohemia, was killed, Ferdinand expanded his territories, bringing Bohemia and that part of Hungary not occupied by the Ottomans under his rule. Habsburg expansion into Hungary, however, led to frequent conflicts with the Turks, particularly the so-called Long War of 1593 to 1606.
[The Siege of Vienna in 1529 was the first attempt by the Ottoman Empire, led by Suleiman the Magnificent, to capture the city of Vienna, Austria.
As the Ottomans advanced towards Vienna, the city's population organised an ad-hoc resistance formed from local farmers, peasants and civilians determined to repel the inevitable attack who were supported by a variety of European mercenaries; namely German Landsknecht pikemen and Spanish musketeers sent by Charles V.
The Hofmeister of Austria, Wilhelm von Roggendorf, assumed charge of the defensive garrison, with operational command entrusted to a seventy-year-old German mercenary named Nicholas, Count of Salm, who had distinguished himself at the Battle of Pavia in 1525.Salm arrived in Vienna as head of the mercenary relief force and set about fortifying the three-hundred-year-old walls surrounding St. Stephen's Cathedral, near which he established his headquarters. To ensure the city could withstand a lengthy siege, he blocked the four city gates and reinforced the walls, which in some places were no more than six feet thick, and erected earthen bastions and an inner earthen rampart (A type of defensive wall consisting of a low earthen embankment topped by a parapet or palisade), levelling buildings where necessary to clear room for defences.
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Austria and the other Habsburg hereditary provinces (and Hungary and Bohemia, as well) were much affected by the Reformation. Although the Habsburg rulers themselves remained Catholic, the provinces themselves largely converted to Lutheranism, which Ferdinand I and his successors, Maximilian II, Rudolf II, and Mathias largely tolerated.
In the late 16th century, however, the Counter-Reformation and the Society of Jesus began to make its influence felt, and the Jesuit-educated Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, who ruled over Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola before becoming Holy Roman Emperor, was energetic in suppressing heresy in the provinces which he ruled.
When, in 1619, he was elected Emperor to succeed his cousin Mathias, the ultra-pious and intransigent Ferdinand II, as he became known, embarked on an energetic attempt to re-Catholicize not only the Hereditary Provinces, but Bohemia and Habsburg Hungary as well as most of Protestant Europe within the Holy Roman Empire. Outside his lands, his reputation for strong headed uncompromising intolerance had triggered the Thirty Years' War in May of 1618 in the polarizing first phase, known as the Revolt in Bohemia.
Some members of the Bohemian aristocracy rebelled following the 1617 election of Ferdinand (Duke of Styria and a Catholic) as King of Bohemia to succeed the aging Emperor Matthias. In 1617, Roman Catholic officials ordered the cessation of construction of some Protestant chapels on land of which the Catholic clergy claimed ownership. Protestants contended the land in question was royal, rather than owned by the Catholic Church, and was thus available for their own use. Protestants interpreted the cessation order as a violation of the right to freedom of religious expression granted in the Letter of Majesty issued by Emperor Rudolf II in 1609. They also feared that the fiercely Catholic Ferdinand would revoke the Protestant rights altogether once he came to the throne.
On May 23, 1618, an assembly of Protestants, led by Count Thurn whom the Emperor had deprived of his post as Castellan of Karlstadt and who, in reaction to an inflammatory letter received from the Emperor's principal adviser, Bishop Klesl, had exhorted his followers to throw the Regents appointed by the Emperor out the window "as is customary", bribed their way into the Prague Castle (the Hradschin) where the Regents were meeting.
The 30 years war was initially fought largely as a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire, although disputes over the internal politics and balance of power within the Empire played a significant part. Gradually, the war developed into a more general conflict involving most of the European powers. In this general phase, the war became more a continuation of the Bourbon–Habsburg rivalry for European political pre-eminence, and in turn led to further warfare between France and the Habsburg powers, and less specifically about religion. Great was the devastation brought about by the war that estimates put the reduction of population in the German states at about 15% to 30%. Much of the destruction of civilian lives and property was caused by the cruelty and greed of mercenary soldiers, many of whom were rich commanders and poor soldiers. One result of the war was the division of Germany into many territories — all of which, despite their membership in the Empire, won de facto sovereignty. This limited the power of the Holy Roman Empire and decentralized German power.
The long reign of Leopold I (1657–1705) saw the culmination of the Austrian conflict with the Turks. Following the successful defense of Vienna in 1683 led by King of Poland John III Sobieski, a series of campaigns resulted in the return of all of Hungary to Austrian control by the Treaty of Carlowitz in 1699. At the same time, Austria was becoming more involved in competition with France in Western Europe, with Austria fighting the French in the Third Dutch War (1672–1679), the War of the League of Augsburg (1688–1697) and finally the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), in which the French and Austrians (along with their British, Dutch and Catalonian allies) fought over the inheritance of the vast territories of the Spanish Habsburgs. Although the French secured control of Spain and its colonies for a grandson of Louis XIV, the Austrians also ended up making significant gains in Western Europe, including the former Spanish Netherlands (now called the Austrian Netherlands, including most of modern Belgium), the Duchy of Milan in Northern Italy, and Naples and Sardinia in Southern Italy. (The latter was traded for Sicily in 1720).
[Battle of Vienna:
The Battle of Vienna (German: Schlacht am Kahlenberg) took place on the 11 and 12 of September 1683 after Vienna had been besieged by the Ottoman Empire for two months. It was a battle of The Holy League versus the Ottoman Empire and fiefdoms of the Ottoman Empire near the Kahlenberg mountain in Vienna. The battle marked the beginning of the political hegemony of the Habsburg dynasty in Central Europe.
The siege itself began on 14 July 1683, by the Ottoman Empire army of approximately 150,000 men. The besieging force was composed of 60 ortas of Janissaries (12,000 men paper strength) with an observation army of c.70,000 men watching the countryside. The decisive battle took place on 11 and 12 September, after the united relief army of approximately 80,000 men had arrived.
It proved most decisive that the Habsburgs and Poland concluded a treaty during this winter in which Leopold would support Sobieski if the Ottomans attacked Kraków; in return, the Polish Army would come to the relief of Vienna, if attacked.
It has been suggested that the battle marked the turning point in the Ottoman–Habsburg wars, the 300-year struggle between the forces of the Central European kingdoms and the Ottoman Empire. Over the sixteen years following the battle, the Habsburgs of Austria gradually occupied and dominated southern Hungary and Transylvania, which had been largely cleared of the Ottoman forces. The battle is also notable for including the largest cavalry charge in history.
The King of Poland Jan III Sobieski prepared a relief expedition to Vienna during the summer of 1683, honoring his obligations to the treaty.
The battle shaped the outcome of the entire war as well. The Ottomans fought on for another 16 years, losing control of Hungary and Transylvania in the process, before finally giving up. The end of the conflict was finalized by the Treaty of Karlowitz.
The battle marked the historic end of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire into Europe .
One legend is that the croissant was invented in Vienna, either in 1683 or during the earlier siege in 1529, to celebrate the defeat of the Ottoman attack of the city, with the shape referring to the crescents on the Ottoman flags. This version of the origin of the croissant is supported by the fact that croissants in French are referred to as Viennoiserie, and the French popular belief that Vienna-born Marie Antoinette introduced the pastry to France in 1770.
After the battle, the Austrians discovered many bags of coffee in the abandoned Ottoman encampment. Using this captured stock, Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki opened the third coffeehouse in Europe and the first in Vienna, where, according to legend, Kulczycki himself added milk and honey to sweeten the bitter coffee, thereby inventing cappuccino.
In honor of Sobieski, the Austrians erected a church atop a hill of Kahlenberg, north of Vienna. The train route from Vienna to Warsaw is also named in Sobieski's honour. The constellation Scutum Sobieskii (Sobieski’s Shield) was named to memorialize the battle. Because Sobieski had entrusted his kingdom to the protection of the Blessed Virgin (Our Lady of Czestochowa) before the battle, Pope Innocent XI commemorated his victory by extending the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, which until then had been celebrated solely in Spain and the Kingdom of Naples, to the universal Church; it is celebrated on 12 September.
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| hill of Kahlenberg |
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The later part of the reign of Emperor Charles VI (1711–1740) saw Austria relinquish many of these fairly impressive gains, largely due to Charles's apprehensions at the imminent extinction of the House of Habsburg. Charles was willing to offer concrete advantages in territory and authority in exchange for other powers' worthless recognitions of the Pragmatic Sanction that made his daughter Maria Theresa his heir.
The most notable instance of this was in the War of the Polish Succession whose settlement saw Austria cede Naples and Sicily to the Spanish Infant Don Carlos in exchange for the tiny Duchy of Parma and Spain and France's adherence to the Pragmatic Sanction.
Maria Theresa promulgated financial and educational reforms, with the assistance of Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz and Gottfried van Swieten, promoted commerce and the development of agriculture, and reorganised Austria's ramshackle military, all of which strengthened Austria's international standing. However, she refused to allow religious toleration and contemporary travellers thought her regime was bigoted and superstitious
Like all members of the House of Habsburg, Maria Theresa was a Roman Catholic, and a devout one as well. She believed that religious unity was necessary for a peaceful public life and explicitly rejected the idea of religious toleration. However, she never allowed the Church to interfere with what she considered to be prerogatives of a monarch and kept Rome at arm's length. She controlled the selection of archbishops, bishops and abbots.
Maria Theresa regarded both the Jews and Protestants as dangerous to the state and actively tried to suppress them. The empress was probably the most anti-Semitic monarch of her day, having inherited all traditional prejudices of her ancestors and acquired new ones. This highly personal feature was a product of deep religious devotion and was not kept secret in her time. In 1777, she wrote of the Jews: "I know of no greater plague than this race, which on account of its deceit, usury and avarice is driving my subjects into beggary. Therefore as far as possible, the Jews are to be kept away and avoided."
Maria Theresa left a revitalised empire that influenced the rest of Europe throughout the 19th century. Her descendants followed her example and continued reforming the empire. The acquisition of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria gave the empire an even more multinational character that would ultimately lead to its destruction. Her introduction of compulsory schooling, as a means of Germanisation, eventually triggered the revival of Czech culture
Among other reforms was the Codex Theresianus, begun in 1752 and finished in 1766, that defined civil rights. In 1776, Austria outlawed witch burnings and torture, and, for the first time in Austrian history, took capital punishment off the penal code, as it was replaced with forced labor. It was later reintroduced, but the progressive nature of these reforms remains noted.
Gerard van Swieten, whom Maria Theresa had recruited following the death of her sister, Archduchess Maria Anna, founded the Vienna General Hospital, revamped Austria's educational system and served as the Empress's personal physician.
After calling in van Swieten, Maria Theresa asked him to study the problem of infant mortality in Austria. Following his recommendation, she made a decree that autopsies would be mandatory for all hospital deaths in the city of Graz, Austria's second largest city. This law – still in effect today – combined with the relatively stable population of Graz, resulted in one of the most important and complete autopsy records in the world
Francis I (Francis Stephen; 8 December 1708 – 18 August 1765) was Holy Roman Emperor and Grand Duke of Tuscany, though his wife effectively executed the real power of those positions. With his wife, Maria Theresa, he was the founder of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty. From 1728 until 1737 he was Duke of Lorraine, but lost this title when Lorraine was seized by France in the War of the Polish Succession; he was compensated with Tuscany in the peace treaty that ended that war.
The War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) — also known as King George's War in North America, and incorporating the War of Jenkins' Ear with Spain and two of the three Silesian wars — involved nearly all the powers of Europe, except for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Portuguese Empire and the Ottoman Empire. The war began under the pretext that Maria Theresa of Austria was ineligible to succeed to the Habsburg thrones of her father, Charles VI, because Salic law precluded royal inheritance by a woman, though in reality this was a convenient excuse put forward by Prussia and France to challenge Habsburg power
The war ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. The most enduring military historical interest and importance of the war lies in the struggle of Prussia and the Habsburg monarchs for the region of Silesia. It also re-established Spanish influence in northern Italy, further reversing an Austrian dominance over the Italian peninsula that was achieved at the expense of Spain as a consequence of that country's own war of succession earlier in the 18th century.
For the eight years following the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle that ended the War of the Austrian Succession, Maria Theresa plotted revenge on the Prussians.
On Maria Theresa's death in 1780, she was succeeded by her son Joseph II, already Holy Roman Emperor since Francis I's death in 1765. Joseph was a reformer, and is often considered the foremost example of an eighteenth century enlightened despot. Joseph attempted to bring under control the Roman Catholic Church and the various provincial nobilities of his lands, which led to widespread resistance, especially in Hungary and the Austrian Netherlands, which were used to their traditional liberties.
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| Joseph II |
The latter half of the 18th century (and beginning of the 19th) witnessed a blossoming musical scene never before, and never again, seen in Vienna or Europe. During this time, Gluck, Haydin, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert all lived and worked in Vienna, producing some of the most memorable music ever composed.
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| Haydin, Mozart,Beethoven |
Joseph's foreign policy was equally ambitious, and equally unsuccessful. He pursued a policy of alliance with Catherine the Great's Russia, which led to a war with the Ottoman Empire in 1787. Austria's performance in the war was distinctly unimpressive, and the expense involved led to further resistance. By the time of Joseph's death in 1790, all his plans seemed ruined, with both Hungary and the Netherlands in open revolt and the war in the Balkans dragging on and seeming impossible to finish, given Russia's commitment to continuing the war.
Joseph's death proved a boon for Austria, as he was succeeded by his more sensible brother, Leopold II, previously the reforming Grand Duke of Tuscany. Leopold knew when to cut his losses, and soon cut deals with the revolting Netherlanders and Hungarians. He also managed to secure a peace with Turkey in 1791
Leopold's reign also saw the acceleration of the French Revolution. Although Leopold was sympathetic to the revolutionaries, he was also the brother of the French queen Archduchess Maria Antonietta (bort Maria Antonia)
Although Leopold did his best to avoid war with the French, he died in March of 1792. The French declared war on his inexperienced son Francis II a month later, who will became the last Holy Roman Emperor.
[The war with France, which lasted until 1797, proved unsuccessful for Austria. After some brief successes against the utterly disorganized French armies in early 1792, the tide turned, and the French overran the Austrian Netherlands in the last months of 1792.
Under the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), following the War of the Spanish Succession, what was left of the Spanish Netherlands was ceded to Austria and thus became known as the Austrian Netherlands. However, the Austrians themselves generally had little interest in the region (aside from a short-lived attempt by Emperor Charles VI to compete with British and Dutch trade through the Ostend Company), and the fortresses along the border (the Barrier Fortresses) were, by treaty, garrisoned with Dutch troops.
]
Throughout the latter part of the eighteenth century, the principal foreign policy goal of the Habsburg rulers was to exchange the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria, which would round out Habsburg possessions in southern Germany.
After the French Revolution, in 1794 the entire region (including territories that were never under Habsburg rule, like the Bishopric of Liège) was overrun by France ending the existence of this territory as Spanish/Austrian Netherlands. By the terms of the Treaty of Campo Formio of 1797, Austria renounced its claims to the Netherlands and Lombardy, in exchange for which it partitioned the territories of the Republic of Venice with the French.
The Austrian Empire (German: Kaisertum Österreich) was a modern era successor empire, which was centered on what is today's Austria and which officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. This was a reaction to Napoleon Bonaparte's proclamation of the First French Empire in 1804.
When, on 11 August 1804, Francis II assumed the title of first Emperor of Austria, the empire spanned from present-day Italy to present-day Poland and to the Balkans. The multi-national makeup of the empire is illustrated by the fact that its population included Germans, Czechs, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, Italians, Ukrainians, Croats, Slovaks, Serbs, Slovenes and numerous smaller nationalities. The emperor ruled Austria as the namesake, but also held the title of King of Hungary, Bohemia, Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, leading to the Empire's multi-national army being styled the Kaiserlich-königliche Armee (Imperial-Royal Army). The Empire had a centralist structure, although some degree of autonomy was left to Hungary which was ruled by its own Diet, and to Tyrol.
Soon, Napoleon's continuing machinations in Italy, including the annexation of Genoa and Parma, led once again to war in 1805—the War of the Third Coalition, in which Austria, Britain, Russia, and Sweden took on Napoleon. The Austrian forces began the war by invading Bavaria, a key French ally in Germany, but were soon outmaneuvered and forced to surrender by Napoleon at Ulm, before the main Austro-Russian force was defeated at Austerlitz on December 2. By the Treaty of Pressburg, Austria was forced to give up large amounts of territory—Dalmatia to France, Venetia to Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy, the Tyrol to Bavaria, and Austria's various Swabian territories to Baden and Württemberg, although Salzburg, formerly held by Francis's younger brother, the previous Grand Duke of Tuscany, was annexed by Austria as compensation.
The defeat meant the end of the old Holy Roman Empire. Napoleon's satellite states in southern and Western Germany seceded from the Empire in the summer of 1806, forming the Confederation of the Rhine, and a few days later Francis proclaimed the Empire dissolved, and renounced the old imperial crown.
Over the next three years Austria, now led by Philipp Stadion, attempted to maintain peace with France, but the overthrow of the Spanish Bourbons in 1808 was deeply disturbing to the Habsburgs, who rather desperately went to war once again in 1809, this time with no continental allies. Stadion's attempts to generate popular uprisings in Germany were unsuccessful, and the Russians honored their alliance with France, so Austria was once again defeated, although at greater cost than Napoleon, who suffered his first battlefield defeat in this war, at Aspern-Essling, had expected. The terms of the Treaty of Schönbrunn were quite harsh. Austria lost Salzburg to Bavaria, some of its Polish lands to Russia, and its remaining territory on the Adriatic (including much of Carinthia and Styria) to Napoleon's Illyrian Provinces
Klemens von Metternich, the new Austrian foreign minister, aimed to pursue a pro-French policy. The Emperor's daughter, Marie Louise, was married to Napoleon, and Austria contributed an army to Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. With Napoleon's disastrous defeat in Russia at the end of the year, and Prussia's defection to the Russian side at the beginning of 1813, Metternich began slowly to shift his policy. Initially he aimed to mediate a peace between France and its continental enemies, but when it became apparent that Napoleon was not interested in compromise, Austria joined the allies and declared war on France in August 1813. The Austrian intervention was decisive. Napoleon was defeated at Leipzig in October, and forced to withdraw into France itself.
[Metternich was a major figure in the negotiations before and during the Congress of Vienna and is considered both a paragon of foreign-policy management and a major figure in the development of diplomatic praxis.
Metternich was a master of the techniques of diplomacy: for instance, his dispatches were models of diplomatic style. Although they could be excessively moralizing, over-elaborate and verbose, their phrasing was often the result of astute calculation.
Under the control of Metternich, the Austrian Empire entered a period of censorship and a police state in the period between 1815 and 1848 (Biedermaier or Vormärz period). However, both liberalism and nationalism were on the rise, which resulted in the Revolutions of 1848.
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The Russian army withdrew and retreated past Moscow. Napoleon entered the city, assuming its fall would end the war and Alexander would negotiate peace. However, on orders of the city's governor Feodor Rostopchin, rather than capitulation, Moscow was burned. After a month, concerned about loss of control back in France, Napoleon and his army left.
The French suffered greatly in the course of a ruinous retreat, including from the harshness of the Russian Winter. The Armée had begun as over 400,000 frontline troops, but in the end fewer than 40,000 crossed the Berezina River in November 1812. The Russians had lost 150,000 in battle and hundreds of thousands of civilians.
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| Napoleon's Reterat from Moscow 1812, by Illarion Pryanishnikov |
The Russian campaign had revealed that Napoleon was not invincible, putting an end to his reputation as an undefeated military genius. Napoleon had made many terrible errors in this campaign one of the worst that he refused to quit his campaign in Spain while trying to campaign in Russia. Historian F.G. Hourtoulle perhaps says it best: "One does not make war on two fronts, especially so far apart." In trying to have both he gave up any chance at either. Napoleon had foreseen what it would mean, so he fled back to France quickly before word of the disaster became widespread, allowing him to start raising another army.
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| 'Campagne de France' by Ernest Meissonier_Meissonier |
Napoleon abdicated on April 3, 1814, and Louis XVIII was restored, soon negotiating a peace treaty with the victorious allies at Paris in June.
In the Treaty of Fontainebleau, the victors exiled him to Elba, an island of 12,000 inhabitants in the Mediterranean, 20 km off the Tuscan coast.
Napoleon escaped from Elba on 26 February 1815. He landed at Golfe-Juan on the French mainland, two days later
In 13 March, the powers at the Congress of Vienna declared Napoleon an outlaw, and four days later Great Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia bound themselves to each put 150,000 men into the field to end his rule.
Napoleon's forces fought the allies, led by Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815. Wellington's army withstood repeated attacks by the French and drove them from the field while the Prussians arrived in force and broke through Napoleon's right flank. Napoleon was defeated
Napoleon was imprisoned and then exiled to the island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean, 2,000 km from any major landmass. He will die there.
After Napoleon's final defeat in 1815, the surviving member states of the defunct Holy Roman Empire joined to form the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund) — a rather loose organization, especially because the two great rivals, the Austrian Empire and the Prussian kingdom, each feared domination by the other.
The defeat at Königgrätz in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 resulted in Austria's exclusion from Germany; the German Confederation was dissolved. The Confederation was dissolved in 1866 after the Austro-Prussian War, and was 'succeeded' in 1866 by the Prussian-dominated North German Confederation. Unlike the German Confederation, the North German Confederation was in fact a true state. Its territory comprised the parts of the German Confederation north of the river Main, plus Prussia's eastern territories and the Duchy of Schleswig, but excluded Austria and the southern German states.
The Austro-Prussian War (in Germany known as German War, Seven Weeks War, Unification War, German Civil War or Fraternal War) was a war fought in 1866 between the German Confederation under the leadership of the Austrian Empire and its German allies on one side and the Kingdom of Prussia with its German allies and Italy on the other, that resulted in Prussian dominance over the German states. In the Italian unification process, this is called the Third Independence War. In English it is also commonly known as the Seven Weeks' War.
The major result of the war was a shift in power among the German states away from Austrian and towards Prussian hegemony, and impetus towards the unification of all of the northern German states in a Kleindeutschland that excluded Austria. It saw the abolition of the German Confederation and its partial replacement by a North German Confederation that excluded Austria and the South German states. The war also resulted in the Italian annexation of the Austrian province of Venetia. Otto von Bismarck will become the Chancellor of the North German Confederation. Bismarck's most important legacy is the unification of Germany. Germany had existed as a collection of hundreds of separate principalities and Free Cities since the formation of the Holy Roman Empire. Over the next hundred years various kings and rulers had tried to unify the German states without success until Bismarck. Largely as a result of Bismarck's efforts, the various German kingdoms were united into a single country. Following unification, Germany became one of the most powerful nations in Europe.
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| Otto von Bismarck |
Franz Joseph of Austria accepted Bismarck's terms under the Peace of Prague. Using this to his advantage, Bismarck declared the German Confederation of 1815 null and void, and created a new network of states under Prussian control. Frankfurt-am-Main, Hannover, Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel), Holstein, Nassau, and Schleswig were annexed outright while Hesse-Darmstadt, Mecklenburg, Saxony, the Thuringian duchies, as well as the cities of Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck were combined into a new North German Confederation that governed nominally and was actually controlled by Prussia herself.
For centuries, the Holy Roman Emperors who mostly came from the Habsburg family had nominally ruled all of "Germany" — the Holy Roman Empire. Austria — the personal territory of the Habsburg Emperors — was traditionally considered the leader of the German states, but Prussia was becoming increasingly powerful and by the late 18th century was ranked as one of the great powers of Europe.
Franco-Prussian War: The Spanish throne had been vacant since the Spanish revolution of September 1868, and the Spanish offered the throne to the German prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a Catholic as well as a distant cousin of King Wilhelm of Prussia. Leopold and Wilhelm I were both uninterested, but the wily Bismarck was acutely interested as it was an opportunity to once again best Napoleon III. Bismarck persuaded Leopold's father to accept the offer for his nation, and it was accepted instead by Leopold himself in June 1870. Additional demands made by the French government heightened diplomatic tensions between Paris and Berlin; deliberate or accidental mistranslations of a diplomatic communique, the Ems Telegram, also known as the Ems Dispatch, led to the declaration of war by France. Following further improper translations and misinterpretations of the dispatch in the press, excited crowds in Paris demanded war, just as Bismarck had anticipated. France declared war on 19 July 1870. The Siege of Paris (19 September 1870 – 28 January 1871) brought about the final defeat of the French Army during the Franco-Prussian War. On 18 January 1871 the new German Empire was proclaimed at the Palace of Versailles: Under the leadership of Prussia and Bismarck, Germany had emerged as a nation and as a world power. 39 separate states were united. The kings of Saxony and Bavaria, the princes, dukes and electors, Brunswick, Baden, Hanover, Mecklenburg, Württemberg, Oldenburg, all paid allegiance to the king of Prussia, the Kaiser. With unity there came an extraordinary period of energy and expansion.
The Treaty of Frankfurt, in addition to giving Germany the city of Strasbourg and the fortification at Metz, gave Germany the possession of Alsace and the northern portion of Lorraine (Moselle), both of which (especially Alsace) were home to a majority of ethnic Germans and contained 80% of French iron ore and machine shops.The loss of this territory was a source of resentment in France for years to come, and contributed to public support for World War I, in which France vowed to take back control of Alsace-Lorraine. This revanchism created a permanent state of crisis between Germany and France (French-German enmity), which would be one of the contributing factors leading to World War I. The creation of a unified German Empire ended the "balance of power" that had been created with the Congress of Vienna after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Germany quickly established itself as the main power in continental Europe with one of the most powerful and professional armies in the world. Although Great Britain remained the dominant world power, British involvement in European affairs during the late 19th century was very limited, allowing Germany to exercise great influence over the European mainland.
To appease Hungarian nationalism after the German Confederation was dissolved., Franz Joseph made a deal with Hungarian nobles, which led to the creation of Austria-Hungary through the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. The western half of the realm (Cisleithania) and Hungary (Transleithania) now became two realms with different interior policy, but with a common ruler and a common foreign and military policy.
In October 1873, German Chancellor Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors (German: Dreikaiserbund) between the monarchs of Austria–Hungary, Russia and Germany. This agreement failed because Austria–Hungary and Russia could not agree over Balkan policy, leaving Germany and Austria–Hungary in an alliance formed in 1879, called the Dual Alliance. This was seen as a method of countering Russian influence in the Balkans as the Ottoman Empire continued to weaken.
In 1882, this alliance was expanded to include Italy in what became the Triple Alliance. In 1892, The Franco-Russian Alliance was signed to counteract the force of the Triple Alliance. In 1904, the United Kingdom sealed an alliance with France, the Entente cordiale and in 1907, the United Kingdom and Russia signed the Anglo-Russian Convention. This system of interlocking bilateral agreements formed the Triple Entente
[Elisabeth of Bavaria or Elisabeth Amalie Eugenie (24 December 1837 – 10 September 1898) was Empress of Austria and Queen consort of Hungary as the spouse of Franz Joseph I. As such, she held also the titles Queen consort of Bohemia, Queen consort of Croatia among others. From an early age, she was called “Sisi” by family and friends. While Elisabeth had limited influence on Austro-Hungarian politics, she has become a historical icon. Elisabeth is considered to have been a non-conformist who abhorred conventional court protocol and at the same time a tragic figure; she has inspired filmmakers and theatrical producers alike.
She bore the emperor three children in quick succession: Archduchess Sophie of Austria (1855–1857), Archduchess Gisela of Austria (1856–1932), and the hoped-for crown prince, Rudolf (1858–1889).
In 1857, tragedy struck. Elisabeth, against the advice of the doctors, took her two daughters on a vacation in Hungary. Both girls were ill with diarrhea, but while Gisela recovered quickly, her older sister Sophie succumbed to the disease and died; she was two. Her firstborn's death would haunt Elisabeth for the rest of her life and cause a permanent rift between her and her husband, which would gradually grow wider as their marriage slowly collapsed, Her attempts to modify court etiquette, and her extreme fondness for horsemanship and frequent visits to the imperial riding school, scandalized Austrian society, while her predilection for Hungary and for everything Hungarian offended German sentiment
Elisabeth learned to speak Hungarian fluently and spent more time in Budapest then in Vienna, much to the anger and displeasure of her mother in law and her cohorts in the Viennese Court. Personal blows left heavy marks on the life of Austria's Empress. She lost her daughter, Sophie, in 1857, and her favourite cousin, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, in a tragic fashion. Her brother-in-law, Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico was shot by revolutionaries. She never was able to get over her most terrible tragedy, the suicide of her son, Rudolph. She was also deeply affected by the death of her sister, Duchess Sophie Charlotte in Bavaria who perished in the fire of the Paris Charity Bazaar in 1897. In 1889, Elisabeth's life was shattered by the death of her only son. Thirty-year-old Crown Prince Rudolf and his young lover Baroness Mary Vetsera were found dead. An investigation suggested it was murder-suicide by Rudolf. The scandal was known as the Mayerling Incident, after Rudolf's hunting lodge in Lower Austria, where they were found. After the death of her only son Rudolf, Elisabeth becomes more and more embittered, recedes into her own world, becomes unsociable and inapproachable. From now on she wears black exclusively. It was a shock from which she never really recovered.
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| Hunting lodge and Carmelites church at Mayerling |
She became known not only for her beauty. Newspapers published articles on her fashion sense, diet and exercise regimens, passion for riding sports. She paid extreme attention to her appearance and spent much time preserving her beauty.She often shopped at Budapest fashion house Antal Alter (now Alter és Kiss), which had become very popular with the fashion-crazed crowd.
Elisabeth embarked on a life of travel, and saw little of her offspring. She visited such locations as Madeira, Hungary, England and Corfu. At Corfu, after her son's death, she commissioned the building of a palace which she named the Achilleion, after Homer's hero Achilles in The Iliad. On her imperial steamer "Miramare" Empress Elisabeth travelled through the Mediterranean. Her favourite places were Cap Martin on the French Riviera, where tourism had started only in the second half of the 19th century; Lake Geneva in Switzerland; Bad Ischl in Austria, where the imperial couple would spend the summer; and Corfu. The Empress also visited countries to which no other northern royal went at the time: Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Malta, Greece, Turkey and Egypt. The endless travels became an escape for the Empress from herself and her misery.
On 10 September 1898, in Geneva, Switzerland, Elisabeth, aged 60, was stabbed in the heart with a sharpened file by a young mentally ill anarchist named Luigi Lucheni, in an act of "propaganda of the deed". When attacked, she had been walking along the promenade of Lake Geneva about to board the steamship Genève for Montreux with her lady-of-courtesy, Countess Sztaray. She boarded the ship, unaware of the severity of her condition, fainting twice.Bleeding to death from a puncture wound to the heart, Elisabeth's last words were: "What has happened?". The strong pressure from her corset had contained the bleeding until the garment was removed.
Tourists have visited places made famous by Elisabeth, both in Austria and abroad. Visitors are eager to see the various residences Elisabeth frequented at different points in her life. These include her apartments in the Hofburg and the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna; the imperial villa in Ischl, the Achilleion in Corfu, Greece which she built in 1890, soon after her son's death; and her summer residence in Gödöllo", Hungary.
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In 1878, Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had been cut off from the rest of the Ottoman Empire by the creation of new states in the Balkans. The territory was annexed in 1908 and put under joint rule by the governments of both Austria and Hungary.
Nationalist strife increased during the decades until 1914. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who was the presumed heir of Franz Joseph as Emperor, in Sarajevo by a Serb nationalist group triggered World War I. The defeat of the Central Powers in 1918 resulted in the disintegration of Austria-Hungary. Emperor Karl of Austria, who had ruled since 1916, went into exile.
In 1895 Franz Ferdinand met the Czech Countess Sophie Chotek at a ball in Prague. In 1899, Emperor Franz Joseph agreed to permit Franz Ferdinand to marry Sophie, on condition that the marriage would be morganatic and that their descendants would not have succession rights to the throne
On Sunday, 28 June 1914, at approximately 1:15 pm, Franz Ferdinand and his wife were killed in Sarajevo, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Gavrilo Princip, 19 at the time, a member of Young Bosnia and one of a group of assassins organized by the Black Hand. The event led to a chain of events that eventually triggered World War I with Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia.
The bullet fired by Gavrilo Princip, sometimes referred to as "the bullet that started World War I", is stored as a museum exhibit in the Konopište( Castle near the town of Benešov, Czech Republic.
Before World War II, the war was also known as The Great War, The World War, or The War in Europe.The terms World War I and First World War both became standard (in the United States and Britain respectively) beginning in about 1940 to 1942; prior to that, it was most commonly called The Great War.
The Russian Empire, unwilling to allow Austria–Hungary to eliminate its influence in the Balkans, and in support of its longtime Serb protégés, ordered a partial mobilisation one day later. When the German Empire began to mobilise on 30 July 1914, France, sporting significant animosity over the German conquest of Alsace-Lorraine during the Franco-Prussian War, ordered French mobilisation on 1 August. Germany declared war on Russia on the same day. The United Kingdom declared war on Germany, on 4 August 1914, following an "unsatisfactory reply" to the British ultimatum that Belgium must be kept neutral.
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| European military alliances shortly after outbreak of war |
The more immediate cause for the war was tensions over territory in the Balkans. Austria-Hungary competed with Serbia and Russia for territory and influence in the region and they pulled the rest of the Great Powers into the conflict through their various alliances and treaties.
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| "The Chain of Friendship", an American cartoon from 1914 depicting the web of alliances, captioned, "If Austria attacks Serbia, Russia will fall upon Austria, Germany upon Russia, and France and England upon Germany." |
On 28 July, the conflict opened with the Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia, followed by the German invasion of Belgium, Luxembourg and France; and a Russian attack against Germany. After the German march on Paris was brought to a halt, the Western Front settled into a static battle of attrition with a trench line that changed little until 1917. In the East, the Russian army successfully fought against the Austro-Hungarian forces but was forced back by the German army. Additional fronts opened after the Ottoman Empire joined the war in 1914, Italy and Bulgaria in 1915 and Romania in 1916. The Russian Empire collapsed in 1917, and Russia left the war after the October Revolution later that year. After a 1918 German offensive along the western front, United States forces entered the trenches and the Allies drove back the German armies in a series of successful offensives. Germany agreed to a cease-fire on 11 November 1918, later known as Armistice Day. More than 9 million combatants were killed, due largely to great technological advances in firepower without corresponding advances in mobility. It was the second deadliest conflict in Western history. Much of the combat involved trench warfare, where hundreds often died for each yard gained. Many of the deadliest battles in history occurred during the First World War. Such battles include Ypres, the Marne, Cambrai, the Somme, Verdun, and Gallipoli.
At the outbreak of the First World War, the German army (consisting in the West of seven field armies) executed a modified version of the Schlieffen Plan, designed to quickly attack France through neutral Belgium before turning southwards to encircle the French army on the German border. The Germans likewise considered the Russians to be their primary threat. The entire Schlieffen Plan was based on the idea of defeating France as quickly as possible, and then transporting their armies by train to the eastern front.
In the east, only one Field Army defended East Prussia and when Russia attacked in this region it diverted German forces intended for the Western Front. Germany defeated Russia in a series of battles collectively known as the First Battle of Tannenberg (17 August – 2 September), but this diversion exacerbated problems of insufficient speed of advance from rail-heads not foreseen by the German General Staff. The Central Powers were thereby denied a quick victory and forced to fight a war on two fronts. The German army had fought its way into a good defensive position inside France and had permanently incapacitated 230,000 more French and British troops than it had lost itself. Despite this, communications problems and questionable command decisions cost Germany the chance of obtaining an early victory. Early in the war all sides expected the conflict to be a short one.
[The battle was named Battle of Tannenberg at the direct request of Hindenburg. Hindenburg chose Tannenberg because of its historical significance; it was the location where the Teutonic Knights were defeated by the joint forces of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the Battle of Grunwald (referred to in German as Schlacht bei Tannenberg - "Battle of Tannenberg"). German nationalism often invoked the imagery of the Teutonic Knights, especially in the context of territorial conquest from eastern neighbours of Germany and conflict with nations of Slavic origins, who were considered by German nationalists to be of lower development and of inferior culture.
The German historian Heinrich von Treitschke used imagery of the Teutonic Knights to promote pro-German and anti-Polish rhetoric. Such imagery and symbols were adopted by many middle-class Germans who supported German nationalism. However, in spite of these references to the Teutonic Order's history also in the nazi propaganda, the Order itself was abolished in 1938 and its members were persecuted by the German authorities. This occurred mostly due to Hitler's and Himmler's belief, that throughout history, the Catholic military-religious orders, were simply tools of the Holy See and as such constituted a threat to the Nazi regime.A German monument,The Tannenberg Memorial, was completed in 1927. However, it was blown up by Germans during the retreat in January 1945 Hindenburg was originally buried in the central yard or "plaza" of the monument on 7 August 1934.
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The Germans introduced poison gas; it soon became used by both sides, though it never proved decisive in winning a battle. Its effects were brutal, causing slow and painful death, and poison gas became one of the most-feared and best-remembered horrors of the war. Commanders on both sides failed to develop tactics for breaching entrenched positions without heavy casualties.
In time, however, technology began to produce new offensive weapons, such as the tank.Britain and France were its primary users; the Germans employed captured Allied tanks and small numbers of their own design.
On 1 July 1916, the British Army endured the bloodiest day in its history, suffering 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 dead on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Most of the casualties occurred in the first hour of the attack. This battle run between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on either side of the River Somme (Somme means “tranquility” in Celt language) in France.The entire Somme offensive cost the British Army almost half a million men. The original Allied estimate of casualties on the Somme, made at the Chantilly conference on 15 November, was 485,000 British and French casualties versus 630,000 German. Adolf Hitler, then a member of the 6th Bavarian Reserve Division, fought in the Battle of the Somme and was wounded, taking a bullet to the leg on 7 October 1916
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| This memorial to the New Zealand Division stands on high ground between High and Delville Woods on the 1916 battlefield of the Somme |
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| River Somme |
Battle of Verdun was fought from 21 February – 18 December 1916 and resulted in 714,231 casualties, 377,231 on the French side and 337,000 on the German one, an average of 70,000 casualties for each of the ten months of the battle. It was the longest and one of the most devastating battles in the First World War and the history of warfare. Verdun was primarily an artillery battle: a total of about 40 million artillery shells were exchanged, leaving behind millions of overlapping shell craters that are still partly visible. In both France and Germany, Verdun has come to represent the horrors of war, like the Battle of the Somme in the British consciousness. The renowned British military historian Major General Julian Thompson has referred to Verdun as "France's Stalingrad".
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| Remains from the WWI Battle of Verdun |
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| The Douaumont ossuary (French: L'ossuaire de Douaumont) is a memorial containing the remains of soldiers who died on the battlefield during the Battle of Verdun in World War I. It is located in Douaumont, France, within the Verdun battlefield. |
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| Verdun, The Somme and Ypres located in the map |
The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in the war, the secret Ottoman-German Alliance having been signed in August 1914. It threatened Russia's Caucasian territories and Britain's communications with India via the Suez Canal. The British and French opened overseas fronts with the Gallipoli (1915) and Mesopotamian campaigns. In Gallipoli, the Ottoman Empire successfully repelled the British, French and Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs).
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| Gallipoli landings |
[The Anzac spirit also tends to capture the idea of an Australian and New Zealand "national character", with the Gallipoli Campaign often described as being the moment of birth of the nationhood of both Australia and New Zealand.
The significance of the Gallipoli Campaign is felt strongly in both New Zealand and Australia. Within popular historiography, the campaign is referred to as both nations' "baptism of fire" and linked to their emergence as independent nations. It has been argued that the campaign proved significant in the emergence of a unique Australian identity following the war, which has been closely linked to popular conceptualisations of the qualities of the soldiers that fought during the campaign, which became embodied in the notion of an "Anzac spirit".
The landing on 25 April is commemorated every year in both countries as "Anzac Day". The first iteration was celebrated unofficially in 1916, at churches in Melbourne, Brisbane and London, before being officially recognised as a public holiday in all Australian states in 1923. The day also became a national holiday in New Zealand in the 1920s.Organised marches by veterans began in 1925, in the same year a service was held on the beach at Gallipoli; two years later the first official dawn service took place at the Sydney Cenotaph. During the 1980s it became popular for Australian and New Zealand tourists to visit Gallipoli to attend the dawn service there and since then thousands have attended services every year.
The Anzac spirit was particularly popularised by Charles Bean, Australia's official war historian. Bean encapsulated the meaning of Anzac in his publication Anzac to Amiens:
Anzac stood, and still stands, for reckless valor in a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship, and endurance that will never own defeat.
For the soldiers at Battle of Gallipoli, Bean argued, life would not have been worth living if they had betrayed the ideal of mateship. Despite the loss at Gallipoli, Australian and New Zealand soldiers were seen to have displayed great courage, endurance, initiative and discipline. The stereotype developed that the Anzac rejected unnecessary restrictions, possessed a sardonic sense of humour, was contemptuous of danger, and proved himself the equal of anyone on the battlefield
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In Mesopotamia, by contrast, after the disastrous Siege of Kut (1915–16), British Imperial forces reorganised and captured Baghdad in March 1917. Further to the west, in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, initial British setbacks were overcome when they captured Jerusalem in December 1917. The Egyptian Expeditionary Force, under Field Marshal Edmund Allenby, broke the Ottoman forces at the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918.
In the First Battle of Ypres (19 October to 22 November 1914), the Allies captured the town from the Germans. The Germans had used tear gas at the Battle of Bolimov on 3 January 1915. Their use of poison gas for the first time on 22 April 1915 marked the beginning of the Second Battle of Ypres, which continued until 25 May 1915. They captured high ground east of the town. The first gas attack occurred against Canadian, British, and French soldiers; including both metropolitan French soldiers as well as Senegalese and Algerian tirailleurs (light infantry) from French Africa. The gas used was chlorine. Mustard gas, also called Yperite from the name of this town, was also used for the first time near Ypres, in the autumn of 1917. Of the battles, the largest, best-known, and most costly in human suffering was the Third Battle of Ypres (21 July to 6 November 1917, also known as the Battle of Passchendaele), in which the British, Canadian, ANZAC, and French forces recaptured the Passchendaele Ridge east of the city at a terrible cost of lives. After months of fighting, this battle resulted in nearly half a million casualties to all sides, and only a few miles of ground won by Allied forces.
British veterans and civilians created in the 1920s a sacred memory of sacrifice in Belgium. The town of Ypres was made the symbol of all Britain was fighting for and was given a holy aura. The Ypres League transformed the horrors of trench warfare into a spiritual quest in which British and imperial troops were purified by their sacrifice. After the war Ypres became a pilgrimage destination for Britons to imagine and share the sufferings of their men and gain a spiritual benefit. The Menin Gate Memorial unveiled on 24 July 1927 to the Missing is a war memorial in Ypres, Belgium dedicated to the British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in the Ypres Salient of World War I and whose graves are unknown. It was chosen to be a memorial as it was the closest gate of the town to the fighting, and so Allied Troops would have marched past it on their way to fight. Actually, most troops passed out of the other gates of Ypres, as the Menin Gate was too dangerous due to shellfire. Its large Hall of Memory contains names on stone panels of 54,896 Commonwealth soldiers who died in the Salient but whose bodies have never been identified or found.
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| Menin Gate |
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Following the trench warfare which took place in the poppy fields of Flanders, during the 1st World War, red poppies have become a symbol of remembrance of soldiers who have died during wartime.
Italy had been allied with the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires since 1882 as part of the Triple Alliance. However, the nation had its own designs on Austrian territory in Trentino, Istria and Dalmatia. Rome had a secret 1902 pact with France, effectively nullifying its alliance. In April 1915, Italy joined the Triple Entente and declared war on Austria-Hungary on 23 May. Fifteen months later Italy declared war on Germany.
Romania had been allied with the Central Powers since 1882. When the war began, however, it declared its neutrality, arguing that because Austria-Hungary had itself declared war on Serbia, Romania was under no obligation to join the war. When the Entente Powers promised Romania large territories of eastern Hungary (Transylvania and Banat), that had a large Romanian population, in exchange for Romania’s declaring war on the Central Powers, the Romanian government renounced its neutrality, and on 27 August 1916 the Romanian Army launched an attack against Austria-Hungary, with limited Russian support. As Russia withdrew from the war in late 1917 as a result of the October Revolution, Romania was forced to sign an armistice with the Central Powers on 9 December 1917. Total Romanian deaths from 1914 to 1918, military and civilian, within contemporary borders, were estimated at 748,000.
The Indian Army in fact outnumbered the British Army at the beginning of the war. India under British rule contributed greatly to the British war effort by providing men and resources. This was done by the Indian Congress in hope of achieving self-government as India was very much under the control of the British. The United Kingdom disappointed the Indians by not providing self-governance, leading to the Gandhian Era in Indian history.
The United States originally pursued a policy of non-intervention, avoiding conflict while trying to broker a peace. When a German U-boat sank the British liner Lusitania in 1915, with 128 Americans aboard, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson vowed, "America is too proud to fight" and demanded an end to attacks on passenger ships. Germany complied. Wilson unsuccessfully tried to mediate a settlement. He repeatedly warned the U.S. would not tolerate unrestricted submarine warfare, in violation of international law and U.S. ideas of human rights. Wilson was under pressure from former president Theodore Roosevelt, who denounced German acts as "piracy". Germany said Lusitania "carried contraband of war" and also because she "was classed as an auxiliary cruiser" Germany had had a right to destroy her regardless of any passengers aboard.
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| The sinking of the Lusitania |
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| Zimmermann Telegram |
The United States had a small army, but, after the passage of the Selective Service Act, it drafted 2.8 million men and by summer 1918 was sending 10,000 fresh soldiers to France every day. In 1917, the U.S. Congress gave U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans when they were drafted to participate in World War I, as part of the Jones Act. Germany had miscalculated, believing it would be many more months before they would arrive and that the arrival could be stopped by U-boats.
In 1917, Emperor Charles I of Austria secretly attempted separate peace negotiations with Clemenceau, with his wife's brother Sixtus in Belgium as an intermediary, without the knowledge of Germany. When the negotiations failed, his attempt was revealed to Germany, a diplomatic catastrophe.
Having suffered over 6 million casualties, Germany moved towards peace. Prince Maximilian of Baden took charge of a new government as Chancellor of Germany to negotiate with the Allies. Telegraphic negotiations with President Wilson began immediately, in the vain hope that better terms would be offered than by the British and French. Instead Wilson demanded the abdication of the Kaiser. There was no resistance when the social democrat Philipp Scheidemann on 9 November declared Germany to be a republic. Imperial Germany was dead; a new Germany had been born: the Weimar Republic
A formal state of war between the two sides persisted for another seven months, until signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on 28 June 1919.
The experiences of the war led to a collective trauma shared by many from all participating countries. The optimism of la belle époque was destroyed and those who fought in the war were referred to as the Lost Generation. For years afterwards, people mourned the dead, the missing, and the many disabled.
Poland reemerged as an independent country, after more than a century. As a "minor Entente nation" and the country with the largest casualties per head the Kingdom of Serbia and its dynasty became the backbone of the new multinational state, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed Yugoslavia). Czechoslovakia became a new nation. Russia became the Soviet Union and lost Finland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, which became independent countries. The Ottoman Empire was soon replaced by Turkey and several other countries in the Middle East.
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The treaty's terms were extremely harsh, as the negotiators at Versailles later pointed out.
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| Signing of the treaty of Versailles |
Nonetheless, even the payment of this small percentage of the original reparations (132 billion gold Reichsmarks) still placed a significant burden on the German economy. Although the causes of the devastating post-war hyperinflation are complex and disputed, Germans blamed the near-collapse of their economy on the Treaty, and some economists estimated that the reparations accounted for as much as one third of the hyper-inflation
Conservatives, nationalists and ex-military leaders condemned the peace and democratic Weimar politicians, socialists, communists, and Jews were viewed by them with suspicion, due to their supposed extra-national loyalties. It was rumoured that the Jews had not supported the war and had played a role in selling out Germany to its enemies. Those who seemed to benefit from a weakened Germany, and the newly formed Weimar Republic, were regarded as having "stabbed Germany in the back" on the home front, by either opposing German nationalism, instigating unrest and strikes in the critical military industries or profiteering.These theories were given credence by the fact that when Germany surrendered in November 1918, its armies were still on French and Belgian territory. Furthermore, on the Eastern Front, Germany had already won the war against Russia and concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In the West, Germany had seemed to have come close to winning the war with the Spring Offensive earlier in 1918. Its failure was blamed on strikes in the arms industry at a critical moment of the offensive, leaving soldiers with an inadequate supply of materiel. The strikes were regarded by nationalists as having been instigated by traitors, with the Jews taking most of the blame
French historian Raymond Cartier states that millions of Germans in the Sudetenland and in Posen-West Prussia were placed under foreign rule in a hostile environment, where harassment and violation of rights by authorities are documented.
[Sudetenland were settled by ethnic Germans, who were invited by the Bohemian kings — especially by Ottokar II and Wenceslaus II. The border was set by the signing of the Peace of Eger in 1459.
From 1620 (loss of the Bohemian Revolt) onwards, the Habsburgs gradually integrated the Kingdom of Bohemia into their monarchy, and it remained a part of that realm until its dismemberment after World War I. Conflicts between Czech and German nationalists emerged in the 19th century, for instance in the Revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas: while the German-speaking population wanted to participate in the building of a German nation state, the Czech-speaking population insisted on keeping Bohemia out of such plans.
The Czechs rejected the aspirations of the Sudeten Germans and demanded the inclusion of the Sudetenland in their state, despite the presence of more than 90% (as of 1921) ethnic Germans (which led to the presence of 23.4% Germans in all of Czechoslovakia), on the grounds they had always been part of Czech lands. The Treaty of Saint-Germain in 1919 affirmed the inclusion of the German-speaking territories within the Czechoslovakia.
The Czechs thus rejected the aspirations of the Sudeten Germans and demanded the inclusion of the Sudetenland in their state, despite the presence of more than 90% (as of 1921) ethnic Germans (which led to the presence of 23.4% Germans in all of Czechoslovakia), on the grounds they had always been part of Czech lands. The Treaty of Saint-Germain in 1919 affirmed the inclusion of the German-speaking territories within the Czechoslovakia.
The Sudetenland was relegated to Germany between October 1 and October 10, 1938. The Czech part of Czechoslovakia was subsequently invaded by Germany in March 1939, with a portion being annexed and the remainder turned into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Slovak part declared its independence from Czechoslovakia, becoming the Slovak Republic (Slovak State), a satellite state and ally of Nazi Germany.
After the end of World War II, the Potsdam Conference in 1945 determined that Sudeten Germans would have to leave Czechoslovakia (see Expulsion of Germans after World War II). As a consequence of the immense hostility against all Germans that had grown within Czechoslovakia due to Nazi behaviour, the overwhelming majority of Germans were expelled (while the relevant Czechoslovak legislation provided for the remaining Germans who were able to prove their anti-Nazi affiliation). The number of expelled Germans in the early phase (spring-summer 1945) is estimated to be around 500,000 people. The remaining Germans were allowed to stay in Czechoslovakia. Some German refugees from Czechoslovakia are represented by the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft.
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The defeat of the Central Powers in 1918 resulted in the disintegration of Austria-Hungary. Emperor Karl of Austria, who had ruled since 1916, went into exile.
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| Emperor Karl of Austria |
[The Austro-Hungarian Empire was wracked by inner turmoil in the final years of the war, with much tension between ethnic groups. As part of his Fourteen Points, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson demanded that the Empire allow for autonomy and self-determination of its peoples. In response, Karl (Charles) agreed to reconvene the Imperial Parliament and allow for the creation of a confederation with each national group exercising self-governance. However, the ethnic groups fought for full autonomy as separate nations, as they were now determined to become independent from Vienna at the earliest possible moment.
Secretary of State Robert Lansing replied four days later that the Allies were now committed to the causes of the Czechs, Slovaks and South Slavs. Therefore, autonomy for the nationalities was no longer enough. In fact, a Czechoslovak provisional government had joined the Allies on 14 October, and the South Slav national council had opted to join Serbia in forming a large South Slav state.
On 11 November 1918—the same day as the armistice ending the war between allies and Germany—Charles issued a carefully worded proclamation in which he recognized the Austrian people's right to determine the form of the state and "relinquish(ed) every participation in the administration of the State.
Although it has widely been cited as an "abdication", that word was never mentioned in either proclamation.Indeed, he deliberately avoided using the word abdication in the hope that the people of either Austria or Hungary would vote to recall him.
Instead, on 12 November, the day after he issued his proclamation, the independent Republic of German Austria was proclaimed, followed by the proclamation of the Hungarian Democratic Republic on 16 November.
Encouraged by Hungarian royalists ("legitimists"), Charles sought twice in 1921 to reclaim the throne of Hungary, but failed largely because Hungary's regent, Miklós Horthy (the last admiral of the Austro-Hungarian Navy), refused to support him. Horthy's failure to support Charles' restoration attempts is often described as "treasonous" by royalists.
Determined to prevent a third restoration attempt, the Council of Allied Powers had agreed on Madeira would be their destination for exile because it was isolated in the Atlantic and easily guarded.
Charles would not leave Madeira again. On 9 March 1922 he caught a cold walking into town and developed bronchitis which subsequently progressed to severe pneumonia. Having suffered two heart attacks he died of respiratory failure on 1 April
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On 12 November 1918, Austria became a republic called German Austria. The newly formed Austrian parliament asked for union with Germany. Article 2 of its provisional constitution stated: Deutschösterreich ist ein Bestandteil der Deutschen Republik (German Austria is part of the German Republic). Plebiscites in the countries of Tyrol and Salzburg 1919–21 yielded majorities of 98 and 99% in favour of a unification with Germany. It was feared that small Austria was not economically viable. In the end France and Italy prevented the merger, and demanded the construction of an independent Austria that had to remain autonomous for at least 20 years.
In 1919, the state of German Austria was dissolved by the Treaty of Saint Germain, which ceded German-populated regions in Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia, German-populated southern part of Tyrol (now the province of Bolzano-Bozen) to Italy and a portion of southern land to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed Yugoslavia). The treaty angered the German population in Austria who claimed that it violated the Fourteen Points laid out by United States President Woodrow Wilson during peace talks, specifically the right to "self-determination" of all nations. In total, it lost land to Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania, and Italy. Burgenland, then a part of Hungary, was awarded to Austria.
The Treaty of Saint Germain included a provision that prohibited political or economic union with Germany and forced the country to change its name from the "Republic of German Austria" to the "Republic of Austria," i.e. the First Republic.
Austria never did have to pay reparations because allied commissions determined that the country could not afford to pay. It was also the only defeated country to acquire additional territory as part of border adjustments: the Burgenland, a small land tract to the east that despite its German-speaking majority had belonged to Hungary.
On 20 October 1920, a plebiscite in the Austrian state of Carinthia was held in which the population chose to remain a part of Austria, rejecting the territorial claims of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to the state. The German-speaking parts of western Hungary, now christened Burgenland, joined Austria as a new state in 1921, with the exception of the city of Sopron, whose population decided in a referendum (which is sometimes considered by Austrians to have been rigged) to remain with Hungary.
After 1920, Austria's government was dominated by the Christian Social Party which retained close ties to the Roman Catholic Church. The party's first Chancellor, Ignaz Seipel, attempted to forge a political alliance between wealthy industrialists and the Roman Catholic Church. Despite the nation having a steady political party in power, the politics of the nation were fractious and violent, with both left-wing (Republikanischer Schutzbund) and right-wing (Heimwehr) political paramilitary forces clashing with each other.
The violence in Austria continued to escalate until the early 1930s when Engelbert Dollfuß became Chancellor. Engelbert Dollfuß of the Christian Social Party became Chancellor in 1932.
The Austrofascist movement's origin lies in the Korneuburg Oath, a declaration released by the Christian Social paramilitary organization Heimwehr on 18 May 1930. The declaration condemned both "Marxist class struggle" and "liberal-capitalistic economical structures" and also explicitly rejected "the Western democratic parliamentary system and the [multi]-party state".
Ideologically, Austrofascism was partly based on a fusion of Italian fascism, as expounded by Giovanni Gentile, and Austria's Political Catholicism.
Chancellor Dolfuss was killed in July 1934, during an attempt by Austria's National Socialist Party to topple the regime and proclaim a Nazi government under Ambassador to Rome Anton Rintelen. Dollfuss was assassinated on July 25, 1934 by ten Austrian Nazis (Paul Hudl, Franz Holzweber, Otto Planetta and others) of Regiment 89 who entered the Chancellery building and shot him in an attempted coup d'état, the July Putsch. The assassination of Dollfuss was accompanied by Nazi uprisings in many regions in Austria, resulting in further deaths. In Carinthia a large contingent of northern German Nazis tried to grab power but were subdued by the loyalist Heimwehr units. Mussolini mobilized a part of the Italian army on the Austrian border and threatened Hitler with war in the event of a German invasion of Austria to thwart the putsch.
Dollfuss always stressed the similarity of the regimes of Hitler in Germany and Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union, and was convinced that Austrofascism and Italian fascism could counter totalitarian national socialism and communism in Europe.
Austria's national identity had strong Catholic elements that were incorporated into the movement, by way of clerical authoritarian tendencies not found in Nazism. Both Engelbert Dollfuss and his successor, Kurt Schuschnigg, turned to Austria's other fascist neighbour, Italy, for inspiration and support. The statist corporatism often referred to as Austrofascism bore more resemblance to Italian Fascism than German National Socialism. Benito Mussolini was able to support the independent aspirations of the Austrian dictatorship until his need for German support in Ethiopia (see Second Italo-Abyssinian War) led him into a client relationship with Berlin that began with the 1937 Berlin–Rome Axis.
Schuschnigg desperately sought support for Austrian independence in the hours following the ultimatum. Realizing that neither France nor the UK was willing to take steps, he resigned as chancellor that evening. In the radio broadcast in which he announced his resignation, he argued that he accepted the changes and allowed the Nazis to take over the government 'to avoid the shedding of fraternal blood [Bruderblut]'.
Schuschnigg maintained the ban on pro-Hitlerite activities in Austria, but was forced to resign on 11 March 1938 following a demand by Hitler for power-sharing with pro-German circles. Following Schuschnigg's resignation, German troops occupied Austria with no resistance.
Although the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of St. Germain had explicitly forbidden the unification of Austria and Germany, the native Austrian Hitler was striving to annex Austria during the late 1930s, which was fiercely resisted by the Austrian Schuschnigg dictatorship. When the conflict was escalating in early 1938, Chancellor Schuschnigg announced a plebiscite on the issue on March 9, which was to take place on 13 March. On 12 March, German troops entered Austria, who met celebrating crowds, in order to install Nazi puppet Arthur Seyss-Inquart as Chancellor. With a Nazi administration already in place and the country integrated into the Third Reich as so-called Ostmark, a referendum on 10 April approved of the annexation with a majority of 99.73%. This referendum is, however, believed by many observers and historians to have been rigged.
Hitler's travel through Austria became a triumphal tour that climaxed in Vienna, on 2 April 1938, when around 200,000 Austrians gathered on the Heldenplatz (Square of Heroes) to hear Hitler proclaim the Austrian Anschluss
The Anschluss was given immediate effect by legislative act on 13 March, subject to ratification by a plebiscite. Austria became the province of Ostmark, and Seyss-Inquart was appointed governor. The plebiscite was held on 10 April and officially recorded a support of 99.73% of the voters.
The moderate reaction to the Anschluss (the United States issued a similar statement) was a result of the British appeasement foreign policy strategy. Hitler appeared to conclude that he could use more aggressive tactics in his roadmap to expand the Third Reich, as he would later in annexing the Sudetenland.
After World War II, many Austrians sought comfort in the idea of Austria as "the Nazis' first victim". Although the Nazi party was promptly banned, Austria did not have the same thorough process of de-Nazification at the top of government which was imposed on Germany for a time. Austria refused to pay compensation to Nazi victims and from 1970 onwards refused to investigate Austrian citizens who were senior Nazis.
This view of the events of 1938 has deep roots in the 10 years of Allied occupation and the struggle to regain Austrian sovereignty: the victim theory played an essential role in the negotiations on the Austrian State Treaty with the Soviets im 1955, and by pointing to the Moscow Declaration, Austrian politicians heavily relied on it to achieve a solution for Austria different from the division of Germany into separate Eastern and Western states. The state treaty, alongside the subsequent Austrian declaration of permanent neutrality, marked important milestones for the solidification of Austria's independent national identity during the course of the following decades.
Austria would benefit from the Marshall Plan but economic recovery was very slow—as a result of the State's 10 year political overseeing by the Allied Powers.
Unlike the First Republic, which had been characterized by sometimes violent conflict between the different political groups, the Second Republic became a stable democracy. The two largest leading parties, the Christian-conservative Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) remained in a coalition led by the ÖVP until 1966.
The ÖVP-SPÖ coalition ended in 1966, when the ÖVP gained a majority in parliament. However, it lost it in 1970, when SPÖ leader Bruno Kreisky formed a minority government tolerated by the FPÖ. In the elections of 1971, 1975 and 1979 he obtained an absolute majority. The 70s were then seen as a time of liberal reforms in social policy. Today, the economic policies of the Kreisky era are often criticized, as the accumulation of a large national debt began, and non-profitable nationalized industries were strongly subsidized.
In September 1986, in a confrontation between the German-national and liberal wings, Jörg Haider became leader of the FPÖ. Chancellor Vranitzky rescinded the coalition pact between FPÖ and SPÖ, and after new elections, entered into a coalition with the ÖVP, which was then led by Alois Mock.
The SPÖ–ÖVP coalition persisted until 1999. Austria joined the European Union in 1995 (Video of the signing in 1994), and Austria was set on the track towards joining the Eurozone, when it was established in 1999.
In 1999, the ÖVP fell back to third place behind the FPÖ in the elections. Even though ÖVP chairman and Vice Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel had announced that his party would go into opposition in that case, he entered into a coalition with the FPÖ – with himself as chancellor – in early 2000 under considerable national and international protest. Jörg Haider resigned as FPÖ chairman, but retained his post as governor of Carinthia but kept substantial influence within the FPÖ
In 2002, disputes within the FPÖ resulting from losses in state elections caused the resignation of several FPÖ government members and a collapse of the government. Wolfgang Schüssel's ÖVP emerged as the winner of the subsequent election, ending up in first place for the first time since 1966. The FPÖ lost more than half of its voters, but reentered the coalition with the ÖVP. Despite the new coalition, the voter support for the FPÖ continued to dwindle in all most all local and state elections.
On 1 October 2006 the SPÖ won a head on head elections and negotiated a grand coalition with the ÖVP. This coalition started its term on 11 January 2007 with Alfred Gusenbauer as Chancellor of Austria.
The grand coalition headed by Alfred Gusenbauer collapsed in the early summer of 2008 over disagreements about the country's EU policy. The early elections held on September 28 resulted in extensive losses for the two ruling parties and corresponding gains for Heinz-Christian Strache's FPÖ and Jörg Haider's BZÖ (the Green Party was relegated to the 5th position). Nevertheless, SPÖ and ÖVP renewed their coalition under the leadership of the new SPÖ party chairman Werner Faymann. In 2008 Jörg Haider died in a car accident and was succeeded as BZÖ party chairman by Herbert Scheibner and as governor of Carinthia by Gerhard Dörfler.
Some other notable Austrians:
- Herbert von Karajan (German pronunciation: 5 April 1908 – 16 July 1989) was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor
- Gustav Mahler (German pronunciation: 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was a late-Romantic Austrian-Bohemian Jewish composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation.
- Ferdinand Porsche (3 September 1875 – 30 January 1951) was an Austrian automotive engineer and honorary Doctor of Engineering. He is best known for creating the first hybrid vehicle (gasoline-electric), the Volkswagen Beetle (actually based on Czech car Tatra), and the Mercedes-Benz SS/SSK, as well as the first of many Porsche automobiles. Ferdinand Porsche was born to German-speaking parents in Maffersdorf (Czech: Vratislavice nad Nisou), northern Bohemia, during the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today in the Czech Republic.
- Daniel Swarovski (24 October 1862, Georgenthal bei Gablonz (Czech: Jir(etín pod Bukovou; not Sankt Georgenthal (Czech: Jir(etín pod Jedlovou)), Bohemia (now Czech Republic) - 23 January 1956, Wattens) was an Austrian glass cutter and jeweller born in Bohemia.
- John von Neumann (December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian American mathematician who made major contributions to a vast range of fields, In 1955, von Neumann was diagnosed with what was either bone or pancreatic cancer.[Von Neumann died a-year-and-a-half later. While at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., he invited a Roman Catholic priest, Father Anselm Strittmatter, O.S.B., to visit him for consultation. This move shocked some of von Neumann's friends in view of his reputation as an agnostic. Von Neumann, however, is reported to have said in explanation that Pascal had a point, referring to Pascal's wager.Father Strittmatter administered the last Sacraments to him
- Oskar Schindler (28 April 1908 – 9 October 1974) was an ethnic German industrialist born in Svitavy, Moravia. He is credited with saving over 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories, which were located in what is now Poland and the Czech Republic respectively. He is the subject of the novel Schindler's Ark by Australian winning novel novelist Thomas Keneally, and the film based on it, Schindler's List.
- Josef von Sternberg (29 May 1894 – 22 December 1969) was an Austrian-American film director.
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[Life of Mozart:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 - 5 December 1791) was born at 9 Getreidegasse in Salzburg. His father Leopold Mozart, a native of Augsburg, was a minor composer and an experienced teacher. His elder sister was Maria Anna (1751–1829), nicknamed "Nannerl". When Nannerl was seven, she began keyboard lessons with her father while her three-year-old brother looked on.
In his early years, Mozart's father was his only teacher. Along with music, he taught his children languages and academic subjects.
During Mozart's youth, his family made several European journeys in which he and Nannerl performed as child prodigies. These began with an exhibition, in 1762, at the court of the Prince-elector Maximilian III of Bavaria in Munich, and at the Imperial Court in Vienna and Prague. A long concert tour spanning three and a half years followed, taking the family to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, The Hague, again to Paris, and back home via Zurich, Donaueschingen, and Munich
After one year in Salzburg, Leopold and Mozart set off for Italy, leaving Mozart's mother and sister at home. This travel lasted from December 1769 to March 1771. In Milan, Mozart wrote the opera Mitridate, re di Ponto (1770), which was performed with success. This led to further opera commissions.
After finally returning with his father from Italy on 13 March 1773, Mozart was employed as a court musician by the ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. The composer had a great number of friends and admirers in Salzburg and had the opportunity to work in many genres.
It was in Salzburg where Mozart composed one of most famous symphonies, Symphony No. 25 (October 1773).
In August 1777, Mozart resigned his Salzburg position and, on 23 September, ventured out once more in search of employment, with visits to Augsburg, Mannheim, Paris, and Munich. Mozart became acquainted with members of the famous orchestra in Mannheim, the best in Europe at the time. He also fell in love with Aloysia Weber, one of four daughters in a musical family.
There were prospects of employment in Mannheim, but they came to nothing,and Mozart left for Paris on 14 March 1778 to continue his search. Among the better known works that Mozart wrote on the Paris journey are the A minor piano sonata K. 310/300d and the "Paris" Symphony (no. 31); these were performed in Paris on 12 and 18 June 1778.
Opera Idomeneo by Mozart and librettist Giambattista Varesco was commissioned in 1780 by Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria for a court carnival. Idomeneo was Mozart's first mature opera. With it he demonstrated a mastery of orchestral color, accompanied recitatives, and melodic line.
In 1781, Mozart decided to settle in Vienna as a freelance performer and composer. Mozart's new career in Vienna began well. He performed often as a pianist, notably in a competition before the Emperor with Muzio Clementi on 24 December 1781, and he soon "had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna".
He also prospered as a composer, and in 1782 completed the opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail ("The Abduction from the Seraglio"), which premiered on 16 July 1782 and achieved a huge success. The work was soon being performed "throughout German-speaking Europe", and fully established Mozart's reputation as a composer.
Mozart moved in with the Weber family, who had moved to Vienna from Mannheim. The father, Fridolin, had died, and the Webers were now taking in lodgers to make ends meet. Aloysia, who had earlier rejected Mozart's suit, was now married to the actor and artist Joseph Lange. Mozart's interest shifted to the third Weber daughter, Constanze. The courtship did not go entirely smoothly; surviving correspondence indicates that Mozart and Constanze briefly separated in April 1782. Mozart faced a very difficult task in getting his father's permission for the marriage. The couple were finally married on 4 August 1782 in St. Stephen's Cathedral, the day before his father's consent arrived in the mail.
The couple had six children, of whom only two survived infancy:
Karl Thomas Mozart (21 September 1784 – 31 October 1858)
Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (26 July 1791 – 29 July 1844)
From 1782 to 1785 Mozart mounted concerts with himself as soloist, presenting three or four new piano concertos in each season. Since space in the theaters was scarce, he booked unconventional venues: a large room in the Trattnerhof (an apartment building), and the ballroom of the Mehlgrube (a restaurant). The concerts were very popular, and the concertos he premiered at them are still firm fixtures in the repertoire. In 1783 Mozart composed The Piano Sonata No. 11 . The last movement of this piece, "Alla Turca", popularly known as the "Turkish March", is often heard on its own and is one of Mozart's best-known piano pieces; it was Mozart himself who titled the rondo "Alla Turca". It imitates the sound of Turkish Janissary bands, the music of which was much in vogue at that time.
Mozart met Joseph Haydn in Vienna around 1784, and the two composers became friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn and are judged to be a response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. Haydn in 1785 told Mozart's father: "I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition."
On 14 December 1784, Mozart became a Freemason, admitted to the lodge Zur Wohltätigkeit ("Beneficence"). Freemasonry played an important role in the remainder of Mozart's life: he attended meetings, a number of his friends were Masons, and on various occasions he composed Masonic music.
Around the end of 1785, Mozart moved away from keyboard writing and began his famous operatic collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. 1786 saw the successful premiere of The Marriage of Figaro in Vienna. For many, this is the greatest opera ever written. The 29-year-old Mozart struck gold here, setting da Ponte’s words to music of profound humanity. Based on Beaumarchais’s play, the opera uses comedy and pathos to highlight aristocratic power, a hot topic on the eve of the French Revolution. The Marriage of Figaro continues the plot of The Barber of Seville several years later, and recounts a single "day of madness" (la folle giornata) in the palace of Count Almaviva near Seville, Spain.
Its reception in Prague later in the year was even warmer, and this led to a second collaboration with Da Ponte: the opera Don Giovanni, which premiered in October 1787 to acclaim in Prague, and also met with success in Vienna in 1788. The two are among Mozart's most important works and are mainstays of the operatic repertoire today, though at their premieres their musical complexity caused difficulty for both listeners and performers. These developments were not witnessed by Mozart's father, who had died on 28 May 1787.
Opera Don Giovanni was based on the legends of Don Juan, a fictional libertine and seducer. Evidence suggests that "El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra" (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest) by Tirso de Molina is the first written version of the Don Juan legend. Don Juan is portrayed as a wealthy, seductive libertine who devotes his life to seducing women, taking great pride in his ability to seduce women of all ages and stations in life. His life is also punctuated with violence and gambling, and in many interpretations (Tirso, Espronceda, Zorrilla), he kills Don Gonzalo, the father of a girl he has seduced, Doña Ana. This leads to the famous last supper scene, whereby Don Juan invites the dead father to dinner. The ending depends on which version of the legend one is reading. Don Giovanni is currently tenth on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide. It has also proved a fruitful subject for writers and philosophers.
In 1787 the young Ludwig van Beethoven spent several weeks in Vienna, hoping to study with Mozart. No reliable records survive to indicate whether the two composers ever met. In 1787 Mozart composed one of his most famous pieces, Eine kleine Nachtmusik (Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major). The serenade was completed in Vienna on 10 August 1787, around the time Mozart was working on the second act of his opera Don Giovanni. It is not known why it was composed. The work was not published until about 1827, long after Mozart's death.
Toward the end of the decade 1780's decade, Mozart's circumstances worsened. Around 1786 he had ceased to appear frequently in public concerts, and his income shrank. This was a difficult time for musicians in Vienna because of the Austro-Turkish War, and both the general level of prosperity and the ability of the aristocracy to support music had declined. Around this time, Mozart made long journeys hoping to improve his fortunes: to Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin in the spring of 1789, and to Frankfurt, Mannheim, and other German cities in 1790. The trips produced only isolated success and did not relieve the family's financial distress.
Mozart's last year was, until his final illness struck, a time of great productivity—and by some accounts, one of personal recovery. He composed a great deal, including some of his most admired works: the opera The Magic Flute; the final piano concerto No. 27 (K. 595 in B-flat); the Clarinet Concerto K. 622; the last in his great series of string quintets (K. 614 in E-flat); the motet Ave verum corpus K. 618; and the unfinished Requiem K. 626.
The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) is noted for its prominent Masonic elements; Schikaneder and Mozart were Masons and lodge brothers, as was Ignaz Alberti, engraver and printer of the first libretto (see: Mozart and Freemasonry). The opera is also influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, and can be regarded as an allegory advocating enlightened absolutism. The Queen of the Night represents a dangerous form of obscurantism or, according to some, the anti-Masonic Empress Maria Theresa. Her antagonist Sarastro symbolises the enlightened sovereign who rules according to principles based on reason, wisdom, and nature. The story itself portrays the education of mankind, progressing from chaos through religious superstition to rationalistic enlightenment, by means of trial (Tamino) and error (Papageno), ultimately to make "the Earth a heavenly kingdom, and mortals like the gods". ("Dann ist die Erd' ein Himmelreich, und Sterbliche den Göttern gleich." This couplet is sung in the finales to both acts.). Since its premiere, The Magic Flute has always been one of the most beloved works in the operatic repertoire, and is presently the fourth most frequently performed opera world wide.
Mozart's financial situation, a source of extreme anxiety in 1790, finally began to improve. Although the evidence is inconclusive, it appears that wealthy patrons in Hungary and Amsterdam pledged annuities to Mozart in return for the occasional composition. Mozart fell ill while in Prague for the 6 September 1791 premiere of his opera La clemenza di Tito, written in that same year on commission for the Emperor's coronation festivities. He continued his professional functions for some time, and conducted the premiere of The Magic Flute on 30 September. His health deteriorated on 20 November, at which point he became bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting.
Mozart died in his home on 5 December 1791 (aged 35) at 1:00 am. The cause of Mozart's death cannot be known with certainty. Sophie, his wife's sister, recalled, "I cannot possibly describe the boundless misery of his faithful wife as she threw herself on her knees and implored succour from the Almighty for His aid. She could not tear herself away from him, beg her as I did."
Researchers have posited at least 118 causes of death. One of the most widely accepted hypotheses is that Mozart died of acute rheumatic fever. Mozart's modest funeral did not reflect his standing with the public as a composer: memorial services and concerts in Vienna and Prague were well-attended. Indeed, in the period immediately after his death, his reputation rose substantially: He was raised a Roman Catholic and remained a member of the Church throughout his life.
The common belief that Mozart was buried in a pauper's grave is also without foundation. The "common grave" referred to above is a term for a grave belonging to a citizen not of the aristocracy. It was an individual grave, not a communal grave.
Following her husband's death, Constanze recovered from her despair and addressed the task of providing financial security for her family; the Mozarts had two young children, and Mozart had died with outstanding debts. She successfully appealed to the Emperor (11 December 1791) for a widow's pension due to her as a result of Mozart's service to the Emperor as a part-time chamber composer. Additionally, she organized a series of concerts of Mozart's music and the publication of many of her husband's works. As a result, Constanze became financially secure over time.
]
[Life of Beethoven:
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptized 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven is acknowledged as one of the giants of classical music; occasionally he is referred to as one of the "three Bs" (along with Bach and Brahms) who epitomise that tradition. He was also a pivotal figure in the transition from the 18th century musical classicism to 19th century romanticism, and his influence on subsequent generations of composers was profound. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best known compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 concertos for piano, 32 piano sonatas, and 16 string quartets.
Beethoven was the grandson of Lodewijk van Beethoven (1712–73), a musician who came from Mechelen in present-day Belgium who moved at the age of twenty to Bonn. Beethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn. There is no authentic record of the date of his birth; however, the registry of his baptism, in a Roman Catholic service at the Parish of St. Regius on 17 December 1770, survives
Beethoven's first music teacher was his father. Some time after 1779, Beethoven began his studies with his most important teacher in Bonn, Christian Gottlob Neefe, who was appointed the Court's Organist in that year. Neefe taught Beethoven composition, and by March 1783 had helped him write his first published composition
In March 1787 Beethoven traveled to Vienna (possibly at another's expense) for the first time, apparently in the hope of studying with Mozart. The details of their relationship are uncertain, including whether or not they actually met.After just two weeks Beethoven learned that his mother was severely ill, and returned home. His mother died shortly thereafter, and the father lapsed deeper into alcoholism. As a result, Beethoven became responsible for the care of his two younger brothers, and he spent the next five years in Bonn. In 1789 Beethoven obtained a legal order by which half of his father's salary was paid directly to him for support of the family. He also contributed further to the family's income by playing viola in the court orchestra. Beethoven was probably first introduced to Joseph Haydn in late 1790, when the latter was traveling to London and stopped in Bonn around Christmas time. They met in Bonn on Haydn's return trip from London to Vienna in July 1792, and it is likely that arrangements were made at that time for Beethoven to study with the old master. With the Elector's help, Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792.
By 1793, he had established a reputation in Vienna as a piano virtuoso, but he apparently withheld works from publication so that their publication in 1795 would have greater impact. Beethoven composed his first six string quartets (Op. 18) between 1798 and 1800 (commissioned by, and dedicated to, Prince Lobkowitz). They were published in 1801. With premieres of his First and Second Symphonies in 1800 and 1803, Beethoven became regarded as one of the most important of a generation of young composers following Haydn and Mozart.
In May 1799, Beethoven taught piano to the daughters of Hungarian Countess Anna Brunsvik. During this time, Beethoven fell in love with the younger daughter Josephine who has therefore been identified as one of the more likely candidates for the addressee of his letter to the "Immortal Beloved" (in 1812). Shortly after these lessons, Josephine was married to Count Josef Deym. Beethoven was a regular visitor at their house, continuing to teach Josephine, and playing at parties and concerts. Her marriage was by all accounts happy (despite initial financial problems), and the couple had four children.
Beethoven's business dealings with publishers also began to improve in 1802 when his brother Carl, who had previously assisted him casually, began to assume a larger role in the management of his affairs. In addition to negotiating higher prices for recently composed works, Carl also began selling some of Beethoven's earlier unpublished works.
In his Early period, Beethoven's work was strongly influenced by his predecessors Haydn and Mozart. He also explored new directions and gradually expanded the scope and ambition of his work.
Around 1796, by the age of 26, Beethoven began to lose his hearing. He suffered from a severe form of tinnitus, a "ringing" in his ears that made it hard for him to hear music; he also avoided conversation. The cause of Beethoven's deafness is unknown, but it has variously been attributed to typhus, auto-immune disorders (such as systemic lupus erythematosus), and even his habit of immersing his head in cold water to stay awake. As early as 1801, Beethoven wrote to friends describing his symptoms and the difficulties they caused in both professional and social settings (although it is likely some of his close friends were already aware of the problems). Beethoven, on the advice of his doctor, lived in the small Austrian town of Heiligenstadt, just outside Vienna, from April to October 1802 in an attempt to come to terms with his condition. There he wrote his Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter to his brothers which records his thoughts of suicide due to his growing deafness and records his resolution to continue living for and through his art.Over time, his hearing loss became profound: there is a well-attested story that, at the end of the premiere of his Ninth Symphony, he had to be turned around to see the tumultuous applause of the audience; hearing nothing, he wept.
The Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor "Quasi una fantasia", Op. 27, No. 2, popularly known as the Moonlight Sonata, is a piano sonata by Ludwig van Beethoven. Completed in 1801 and dedicated in 1802 to his pupil, Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, it is one of Beethoven's most popular compositions for the piano.
The Symphony No. 5 in C minor of Ludwig van Beethoven, Op. 67, was written in 1804–1808. It is one of the most popular and best-known compositions in classical music, and one of the most frequently played symphonies. Beethoven was in his mid-thirties during this time; his personal life was troubled by increasing deafness. In the world at large, the period was marked by the Napoleonic Wars, political turmoil in Austria, and the occupation of Vienna by Napoleon's troops in 1805
His relationship with Josephine Brunsvik deepened after the death in 1804 of her aristocratic first husband, the Count Joseph Deym. Beethoven wrote Josephine 15 passionate love letters from late 1804 to around 1809/10. Although his feelings were obviously reciprocated, Josephine was forced by her family to withdraw from him in 1807. She cited her "duty" and the fact that she would have lost the custodianship of her aristocratic children had she married a commoner. After Josephine married Baron von Stackelberg in 1810, Beethoven may have proposed unsuccessfully to Therese Malfatti, the supposed dedicatee of "Für Elise"; his status as a commoner may again have interfered with those plans. Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor (WoO 59 and Bia 515) for solo piano, commonly known as "Für Elise" , is one of Ludwig van Beethoven's most popular compositions. The score was not published until 1867, 40 years after the composer's death in 1827. The discoverer of the piece, Ludwig Nohl, affirmed that the original autographed manuscript, now lost, was dated 27 April 1810. It is not certain who "Elise" was. Max Unger suggested that Ludwig Nohl may have transcribed the title incorrectly and the original work may have been named "Für Therese", a reference to Therese Malfatti von Rohrenbach zu Dezza (1792–1851). She was a friend and student of Beethoven's to whom he proposed in 1810, though she turned him down to marry the Austrian nobleman and state official Wilhelm von Droßdik in 1816.
Beethoven was attracted to the ideals of the Enlightenment. In 1804, when Napoleon's imperial ambitions became clear, Beethoven took hold of the title page of his Third Symphony and scratched the name Bonaparte out so violently that he made a hole in the paper. During May 1809, when the attacking forces of Napoleon bombarded Vienna, according to Ferdinand Ries, Beethoven, very worried that the noise would destroy what remained of his hearing, hid in the basement of his brother's house, covering his ears with pillows.
In early 1813 Beethoven apparently went through a difficult emotional period, and his compositional output dropped. His personal appearance degraded—it had generally been neat—as did his manners in public, especially when dining. Beethoven took care of his brother (who was suffering from tuberculosis) and his family.
Beethoven was finally motivated to begin significant composition again in June 1813, when news arrived of the defeat of one of Napoleon's armies at Vitoria, Spain, by a coalition of forces under the Duke of Wellington. This news stimulated him to write the battle symphony known as Wellington's Victory. The work was a popular hit, probably because of its programmatic style, which was entertaining and easy to understand.
By 1814 however, Beethoven was almost totally deaf, and when a group of visitors saw him play a loud arpeggio of thundering bass notes at his piano remarking, "Ist es nicht schön?" (Is it not beautiful?), they felt deep sympathy considering his courage and sense of humor (he lost the ability to hear higher frequencies first). Between 1815 and 1817 Beethoven's output dropped again. Beethoven attributed part of this to a lengthy illness (he called it an "inflammatory fever") that afflicted him for more than a year, starting in October 1816. The illness and death of his brother Carl from tuberculosis may also have played a role. During the years of custody of his newphew Karl that followed, Beethoven attempted to ensure that Karl lived to the highest moral standards. Beethoven had an overbearing manner and frequently interfered in his nephew's life.
Beethoven began a renewed study of older music, including works by J. S. Bach and Handel, that were then being published in the first attempts at complete editions. He composed the overture The Consecration of the House, which was the first work to attempt to incorporate these influences. A new style emerged, now called his "Late period". He returned to the keyboard to compose his first piano sonatas in almost a decade: the works of the Late period are commonly held to include the last five piano sonatas and the Diabelli Variations, the last two sonatas for cello and piano, the late string quartets (see below), and two works for very large forces: the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony (Among critics, it is almost universally considered to be among Beethoven's greatest works, and is considered by some to be the greatest piece of music ever written). Beethoven was almost completely deaf when he composed his ninth symphony, which was completed in 1824.
Beethoven then turned to writing the string quartets for Golitsin. This series of quartets, known as the "Late Quartets," went far beyond what musicians or audiences were ready for at that time. Opinion has changed considerably from the time of their first bewildered reception: their forms and ideas inspired musicians and composers including Richard Wagner and Béla Bartók, and continue to do so.
Beethoven wrote the last quartets amidst failing health. In April 1825 he was bedridden, and remained ill for about a month. Beethoven newphew, Karl, attempted suicide on 31 July 1826 by shooting himself in the head. He survived and was brought to his mother's house, where he recuperated. He and Beethoven were reconciled, but Karl insisted on joining the army and last saw Beethoven in early 1827.
In December 1826, illness struck again, with episodes of vomiting and diarrhea that nearly ended his life
Beethoven was bedridden for most of his remaining months, and many friends came to visit. He died on 26 March 1827 at the age of 56 during a thunderstorm. His friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner, who was present at the time, said that there was a peal of thunder at the moment of death. An autopsy revealed significant liver damage, which may have been due to heavy alcohol consumption
Beethoven's funeral procession on 29 March 1827 was attended by an estimated 20,000 Viennese citizens. Franz Schubert, who died the following year and was buried next to Beethoven, was one of the torchbearers.
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| Beethoven's funeral as depicted by Franz Stöber (1795–1858) |
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[
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732 – 1809), known as Joseph Haydn, was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms. He was also instrumental in the development of the piano trio and in the evolution of sonata form.
Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria, a village that at that time stood on the border with Hungary. His father was Mathias Haydn, a wheelwright who also served as "Marktrichter", an office akin to village mayor. Haydn's mother Maria, née Koller, had previously worked as a cook in the palace of Count Harrach, the presiding aristocrat of Rohrau. Neither parent could read music; however, Mathias was an enthusiastic folk musician, who during the journeyman period of his career had taught himself to play the harp. According to Haydn's later reminiscences, his childhood family was extremely musical, and frequently sang together and with their neighbors.
Haydn's parents had noticed that their son was musically gifted and knew that in Rohrau he would have no chance to obtain serious musical training. It was for this reason that they accepted a proposal from their relative Johann Matthias Frankh, the schoolmaster and choirmaster in Hainburg, that Haydn be apprenticed to Frankh in his home to train as a musician.
In 1739 he was brought to the attention of Georg von Reutter, the director of music in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, who happened to be visiting Hainburg and was looking for new choirboys. Haydn successfully auditioned with Reutter, and after several months of further training moved to Vienna (1740), where he worked for the next nine years as a chorister.
By 1749, Haydn had matured physically to the point that he was no longer able to sing high choral parts. Haydn immediately began his pursuit of a career as a freelance musician.
During this arduous time, Haydn worked at many different jobs: as a music teacher, as a street serenader,and eventually, in 1752, as valet–accompanist for the Italian composer Nicola Porpora, from whom he later said he learned "the true fundamentals of composition". Between 1754 and 1756 Haydn also worked freelance for the court in Vienna. He was among several musicians who were paid for services as supplementary musicians at balls given for the imperial children during carnival season, and as supplementary singers in the imperial chapel (the Hofkapelle) in Lent and Holy Week.
As his skills increased, Haydn began to acquire a public reputation,Haydn eventually obtained aristocratic patronage, crucial for the career of a composer in his day. In 1756, Baron Carl Josef Fürnberg employed Haydn at his country estate, Weinzierl, where the composer wrote his first string quartets. Fürnberg later recommended Haydn to Count Morzin, who, in 1757, became his first full-time employer.
Haydn's job title under Count Morzin was Kapellmeister, that is, music director. He led the count's small orchestra and wrote his first symphonies for this ensemble. In 1760, with the security of a Kapellmeister position, Haydn married. His wife was the former Maria Anna Aloysia Apollonia Keller (1729–1800), the sister of Therese (b. 1733), with whom Haydn had previously been in love.
Count Morzin soon suffered financial reverses that forced him to dismiss his musical establishment, but Haydn was quickly offered a similar job (1761) by Prince Paul Anton, head of the immensely wealthy Esterházy family. Haydn's job title was only Vice-Kapellmeister, but he was immediately placed in charge of most of the Esterházy musical establishment, with the old Kapellmeister, Gregor Werner, retaining authority only for church music. When Werner died in 1766, Haydn was elevated to full Kapellmeister.
The Cello Concerto No. 1 in C Major, Hob. VIIb/1, by Joseph Haydn was composed around 1761-65 for longtime friend Joseph Franz Weigl, then the principal cellist of Prince Nicolaus's Esterházy Orchestra. The work was presumed lost until 1961, when musicologist Oldřich Pulkert discovered a copy of the score at the Prague National Museum. Though some doubts have been raised about the authenticity of the work, most experts believe that Haydn did compose this concerto.
The little F Major Quartet Op. 3. No. 5 composed in 1764 contains a movement that has become one of the All-Time Hits of Classical Music: the second movement, Andante cantabile, from which the Quartet gets its nickname "Serenade".
During the nearly thirty years that Haydn worked at the Esterházy court, he produced a flood of compositions, and his musical style continued to develop. 1779 was a watershed year for Haydn, as his contract was renegotiated: whereas previously all his compositions were the property of the Esterházy family, he now was permitted to write for others and sell his work to publishers. Haydn soon shifted his emphasis in composition to reflect this (fewer operas, and more quartets and symphonies) and he negotiated with multiple publishers, both Austrian and foreign.
The new publication campaign resulted in the composition of a great number of new string quartets (the six-quartet sets of Op. 33, 50, 54/55, and 64). Haydn also composed in response to commissions from abroad: the Paris symphonies (1785–1786) and the original orchestral version of The Seven Last Words of Christ (1786), a commission from Cadiz, Spain.
The remoteness of Esterháza, which was farther from Vienna than Eisenstadt, led Haydn gradually to feel more isolated and lonely. He longed to visit Vienna because of his friendships there.
Another friend in Vienna was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whom Haydn had met sometime around 1784. According to later testimony by Michael Kelly and others, the two composers occasionally played in string quartets together. Haydn was hugely impressed with Mozart's work and praised it unstintingly to others. Mozart evidently returned the esteem, as seen in his dedication of a set of six quartets, now called the "Haydn" quartets, to his friend.
Sonata in E Flat major, Hob XVI/49, can be said to embody both the Viennese keyboard style. Written in 1789, it is one of his last piano sonatas and is quite representative of works composed in his late period. Of this piece, the section Adagio e cantabile is famous in a movie scene from Interview with the Vampire.
In 1790, Prince Nikolaus died and was succeeded as prince by his son Anton. Following a trend of the time, Anton sought to economize by dismissing most of the court musicians. Since Anton had little need of Haydn's services, he was willing to let him travel, and the composer accepted a lucrative offer from Johann Peter Salomon, a German impresario, to visit England and conduct new symphonies with a large orchestra.
The visit (1791–92), along with a repeat visit (1794–95), was a huge success. Audiences flocked to Haydn's concerts; he augmented his fame and made large profits, thus becoming financially secure. He received the Doctor Honoris causa in the University of Oxford. Charles Burney reviewed the first concert thus: "Haydn himself presided at the piano-forte; and the sight of that renowned composer so electrified the audience, as to excite an attention and a pleasure superior to any that had ever been caused by instrumental music in England."
While traveling to London in 1790, Haydn had met the young Ludwig van Beethoven in his native city of Bonn. On Haydn's return, Beethoven came to Vienna and during the time up to the second London visit was Haydn's pupil.
Haydn wrote the symphony Symphony No. 94 in G major (Hoboken 1/94) in 1794 in London for a concert series he gave during the first of his visits to England (1791–1792).
The Piano Sonata No. 52 in E-flat major, Hob. XVI/52, L. 62, was written in 1794 by Joseph Haydn. This is the last of Haydn's piano sonatas, and is widely considered his greatest. It has been the subject of extensive analysis by preeminent musicological figures such as Heinrich Schenker and Sir Donald Tovey, largely because of its expansive length, unusual harmonies and interesting development.
Haydn returned to Vienna in 1795. Prince Anton had died, and his successor Nikolaus II proposed that the Esterházy musical establishment be revived with Haydn serving again as Kapellmeister. Haydn took up the position, though only on a part-time basis. He spent his summers with the Esterházys in Eisenstadt, and over the course of several years wrote six masses for them. Anton Weidinger was an Austrian trumpet virtuoso in the classical era.
But by this time Haydn had become a public figure in Vienna. He spent most of his time in his own home, a large house in the suburb of Windmühle.
Joseph Haydn's Concerto per il Clarino, (Hob.: VIIe/1) (Trumpet Concerto in E flat major) was written in 1796, when he was 64 years old, for his long-time friend Anton Weidinger.
During the later years of this successful period Haydn faced incipient old age and fluctuating health, and he had to struggle to complete his final works. By about 1802, his condition had declined to the point that he became physically unable to compose.
During his illness, Haydn often found solace by sitting at the piano and playing Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, which he had composed himself as a patriotic gesture in 1797. This melody was later used for the Austrian and German national anthems. This piece was originally written as an anthem to Francis II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and later of Austria. Haydn's tune has since been widely employed in other contexts: in works of classical music, in Christian hymns, in alma maters, and as the tune of the Deutschlandlied, the national anthem of Germany. Long after Haydn's death, his melody was used as the tune of Hoffmann von Fallersleben's Das Lied der Deutschen (1841). The third stanza of the poem ("Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit"), sung to the melody, is currently the national anthem of Germany.
The Missa in Angustiis ("Mass for troubled times") or "Nelson Mass" (Hob. XXII:11), is one of fourteen masses written by Joseph Haydn. It is one of the six masses written near the end of his life which are now seen as a culmination of Haydn's liturgical composition. Haydn's chief biographer, H. C. Robbins Landon, has written that this mass "is arguably Haydn's greatest single composition". This mass, written in 1798, is one of the six late masses by Haydn for the Esterhazy family
Though in 1798, when he wrote this Mass, Haydn's reputation was at its peak, his world was in turmoil. Napoleon had won four major battles with Austria in less than a year. The previous year, in early 1797, his armies had crossed the Alps and threatened Vienna itself. In May 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt to destroy Britain's trade routes to the East. The summer of 1798 was therefore a terrifying time for Austria, and when Haydn finished this Mass, his own title, in the catalogue of his works, was "Missa in Angustiis" or "Mass for Troubled Times". What Haydn did not know when he wrote the Mass, but what he and his audience heard (perhaps on the very day of the first performance September 15), was that on Aug. 1, Napoleon had been dealt a stunning defeat in the Battle of the Nile by British forces led by Admiral Horatio Nelson. Because of this coincidence, the Mass gradually acquired the nickname "Lord Nelson Mass". For Haydn, writing the Mass in the late summer of 1798, the mood in Eisenstadt was one of foreboding, to the point of terror, and this is what we hear as the great work opens: Haydn chose to write the opening movement in D minor.
A final triumph occurred on 27 March 1808, when a performance of The Creation was organized in Haydn's honor. The very frail composer was brought into the hall on an armchair to the sound of trumpets and drums, and was greeted by Beethoven, by Salieri (who led the performance), and by other musicians and members of the aristocracy – many of whom probably sensed that they were saying goodbye to the elderly composer. Haydn was both moved and exhausted by the experience, and had to depart at intermission
Haydn lived on for another year. He died, aged 77, at the end of May 1809, shortly after an attack on Vienna by the French army under Napoleon. Among his last words was his attempt to calm and reassure his servants when cannon shot fell in the neighborhood: "My children, have no fear, for where Haydn is, no harm can fall." Two weeks later, a memorial service was held in the Schottenkirche on 15 June 1809, at which Mozart's Requiem was performed.
Haydn was a devout Catholic who often turned to his rosary when he had trouble composing, a practice that he usually found to be effective. He normally began the manuscript of each composition with "in nomine Domini" ("in the name of the Lord") and ended with "Laus Deo" ("praise be to God").
Haydn was short in stature, perhaps as a result of having been underfed throughout most of his youth. He was not handsome, and like many in his day he was a survivor of smallpox, his face being pitted with the scars of this disease.His biographer Dies wrote, "he couldn't understand how it happened that in his life he had been loved by many a pretty woman. 'They couldn't have been led to it by my beauty'"
His nose, large and aquiline, was disfigured by polypus, which he suffered from for much of his adult life. This was an agonizing and debilitating disease in the 18th century, and at times it prevented him from writing music
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