“The Ausgleich (“compromise”) reached with Hungary in 1867 was a major concession for Franz Joseph, and it created the so-called dualist Austria-Hungary that existed until 1918… The arrangement was dualist because it was not federalist. Rather than parceling out the monarchy into a structure in which the Austro-German lands, the Czech lands, Galicia, and Hungary-Croatia would all have roughly equal weight, it was divided simply into two, the Hungarian half and the Austrian half. This latter was not really called “Austria” but rather “Cisleithania,” meaning “beyond the Leitha River,” which was the border between Austria and Hungary. The formal name of the Cisleithanian half was “the countries and realms represented in the Reichsrat,” which gives some indication of the insubstantial basis for common identity of those territories. The governmental link between these two halves was also minimal. Foreign and military policy belonged almost exclusively to Franz Joseph. He retained the power to appoint and dismiss ministers, who thus had only a partial responsibility to parliament, and he could reject laws passed by the Reichsrat. There was a joint financial ministry and tariff regime. But details such as Hungary’s share of the budget could be renegotiated every decade, which led to repeated political conflicts in the years ahead, so dualism’s division of powers was by no means entirely clear. Nearly everything else was separate. There were distinct parliaments for the Cisleithanian and Hungarian halves, and each half had its own administrative, legal, and school systems. The realm was designated as kaiserlich (“imperial”) for the Austrian Empire of Cisleithania and königlich (“royal”) for the Kingdom of Hungary. In practice, dualism meant that the Austro-Germans dominated the other peoples in their half, and the Hungarians the other peoples in theirs. In many ways, Hungary’s weight within the Dual Monarchy only grew after 1867, thanks to economic advances that in turn fed into greater assertiveness on the part of the Magyar elite… Ultimately, even the Austro-Germans and the Hungarians disliked dualism. The former resented Hungarians’ disproportionate weight in the monarchy, while the latter constantly pushed for more autonomy and resisted any changes that would reduce their weight. And virtually all the other national groups detested the arrangement because it unfairly excluded them.”
[1]
“By the summer of 1918 the Habsburg dynasty’s death knell was ringing… Karl presided impotently over the progressive hollowing out of the whole monarchical state until there was almost nothing left that he actually governed. At the end of October the nearly 400-year-old monarchy dissolved in a matter of weeks. Karl issued a proposal for federalization on 16 October, but he and his idea were already irrelevant by that point. Gyula Andrássy, the last foreign minister of Austria-Hungary, said that the implicit logic behind the final, futile moves taken by the leadership was that “so that no one can kill us, we’ll commit suicide.”15 The initiative was instead firmly in the hands of the various national groups. On 18 October Romanians in Hungary called for union with the Kingdom of Romania. On the 21st the Germans of the monarchy declared their right to self-determination. On the 28th the Czech National Council declared independence, and on the 30th the new Czechoslovakia was officially formed. On the 29th the Croatian parliament formally dissolved its connections to Austria and Hungary and pledged to join the new Yugoslav kingdom. On the 31st the Ruthenians in Galicia announced their secession. On 1 November the Hungarians proclaimed their ties to the monarchy ended, followed ten days later by Galicia joining the new Polish republic. As all this was happening, Karl was still working at his desk in Schönbrunn, but the palace was mostly empty. Only a few loyal servants remained, since even his bodyguards had left. Finally on 11 November Karl signed papers that he was “temporarily” giving up his powers. He never formally abdicated but went into exile, first in Switzerland. Karl twice tried to retake the throne in Hungary in 1921, but after these unsuccessful attempts he was removed by the British to Madeira, where he died in 1922.”
[2]
[1]: (Curtis 2013: 284-286) Curtis, Benjamin. 2013. The Habsburgs: The History of a Dynasty. London; New York: Bloomsbury. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/TRKUBP92
[2]: (Curtis 2013: 304-305) Curtis, Benjamin. 2013. The Habsburgs: The History of a Dynasty. London; New York: Bloomsbury. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/TRKUBP92
| present | 1867 CE 1918 CE |
| Year Range | Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (at_austro_hungarian_emp) was in: |
|---|
levels. [1] [2] [3] : 1. Capital city :: 2. Major cities ::: 3. Towns :::: 4. Villages ::::: 5. Hamlets
[1]: Curtis 2013: 101, 167. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/TRKUBP92.
[2]: ‘Austria-Hungary’. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/47VQW2IL.
[3]: Judson 2016: 402. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/BN5TQZBW.
levels. [1] [2] : 1. Pope :: 2. Archbishops ::: 3. Prince bishops :::: 4. Bishops ::::: 5. Abbots :::::: 6. Chaplains
[1]: ‘Austria-Hungary’. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/47VQW2IL.
[2]: Judson 2016: 334. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/BN5TQZBW.
levels. The following military levels are taken from Rothenburg’s work on the Austrian army during the reign of Franz Joseph I (r.1848-1916). [1] : 1. The Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary (dual title) :: General/flag Officers : 1. Feldmarschall :: 2. Generaloberst ::: 3. General der Waffengattung ::::4. Feldmarschall-Leutnant :::::5. Generalmajor :::::: Field/senior Officers :::::: 6. Oberst ::::::: 7. Oberstleutnant :::::::: 8. Major ::::::::: Junior Officers ::::::::: 9. Hauptmann / Rittmeister :::::::::: 10. Oberleutnant ::::::::::: 11. Leutnant :::::::::::: Senior NCO :::::::::::: 12. Stabsfeldwebel ::::::::::::: 13. Feldwebel :::::::::::::: Junior NCO :::::::::::::: 14. Zugsführer ::::::::::::::: 15. Korporal :::::::::::::::: 16. Gefreiter ::::::::::::::::: Private ::::::::::::::::: 17. Infanterist
[1]: (Rothenberg 1976: 80-90) Rothenberg, Gunther Erich. 1976. The Army of Francis Joseph. Purdue University Press. http://archive.org/details/armyoffrancisjos00gunt. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/7KIJ2E3J
“The structure of civil-service compensation was then further modified by the Liberals in early 1873, when the (Adolf) Auersperg Cabinet introduced a major bill to create eleven rank classes (Rangklassen) and systematic promotion opportunities based on length of service, along with salary increases that in some cases amounted to 30% to 40%, including various additional supplements.” [1] “During the investigations of the Administrative Reform Commission in 1910–11, Guido von Haerdtl reported that civil-service salary expenses had increased nearly 200 per cent between 1890 and 1911, largely owing to additional staff hiring.” [2] “At the same time the Emperor continued to ennoble military officers and bourgeois civil servants with patents of minor nobility (Dienstadel) that were essentially career awards. Between 1804 and 1918 the Emperor approved 8,931 ennoblements, including 2,157 to civil servants and over 4,000 to military officers. From 1848 to 1918, 84% of the grants of nobility went to bourgeois for longstanding public or military service.” [3]
[1]: (Boyer 2022: 131) Boyer, John W. 2022. Austria, 1867–1955. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/CG3P4KKD
[2]: (Boyer 2022: 132) Boyer, John W. 2022. Austria, 1867–1955. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/CG3P4KKD
[3]: (Boyer 2022: 417) Boyer, John W. 2022. Austria, 1867–1955. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/CG3P4KKD
“Both of the mainline German parties, Deutscher Nationalverband and the Christian Socials, realized that the only meaningful route to constitutional revision would be through a renewal of their pre-war political alliance. In March 1916 the Nationalverband published its program, entitled Der Standpunkt des Deutschen Nationalverbandes zur Neuordnung der Dinge in Österreich. It combined vituperative rhetoric against the Slavs (‘the state must be released from the unbearable Slavic hegemony’) with detailed practical suggestions, including proposals for laws establishing German as the inner language of service and communication (innere Amts- und Verkehrssprache) in all courts and administrative instances; regulations specifying that graduates in all state universities, including the Czech university in Prague, had to pass one of their state examinations in German; and, along with a general reform of the civil service, the creation of language-specific regional administrative areas in Bohemia that were synonymous with the longstanding German demand for linguistically demarcated Kreise.” [1]
[1]: (Boyer 2022: 517-518) Boyer, John W. 2022. Austria, 1867–1955. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/CG3P4KKD
Places of worship; libraries; museums; theatres; cafes; clubs; schools; universities. “The abbey of Melk, some 80 kilometers west of Vienna, was the high point of church construction. Boasting a dazzlingly gilded church, it is an overpowering assertion of Austrian Baroque Catholicism. Karl himself added to Vienna’s palace complex, including the building of the Spanish Riding School, and the Hofburg’s impressive library. But closer to his heart was his project to turn the abbey of Klosterneuburg into his own version of El Escorial, a new monastery-palace for the dynasty to replace the one lost in Castile.” [1] “Other organizations brought new local and regional newspapers into being, newspapers that for the first time reported local events along with international or court news. And more often than not, the middle classes were reading and discussing the contents of those newspapers not simply in their own Biedermeier parlors or drawing rooms, but also in a growing numbers of public sites (clubs, cafés, and restaurants) where social and civic life increasingly took place. Each of these diverse institutions— the museum, the library, the newspaper, the club, the café— had its roots in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, but only in the first half of the nineteenth century did their numbers proliferate significantly, and not simply in the few large cities of the empire like Vienna, Prague, or Milan. As smaller towns grew in size, the character of public life there gradually changed as well. In the late eighteenth century the Austrian Freemason Johann Pezzl had already observed that cafés not only were associated with urban life, but ‘as everyone knows, are considered nowadays to be one of the indispensable requirements of every large town.’ “ [2] “By 1910 there were 22,386 primary schools in the Austrian half of the dual monarchy and 16,455 in Hungary. Increasing numbers of people— especially rural youth— actively sought and gained a degree of social mobility through the pursuit of education beyond primary school. This did not necessarily mean education in high schools or technical colleges or universities; instead, they often enrolled in short preparatory courses that offered training in basic secretarial skills, such as typing, filing, and stenography, which enabled candidates to access a range of new low-level white- collar jobs.” [3] “In the first half of the eighteenth century a theater devoted mainly to the performance of Italian operas and another one for German plays were established under the sponsorship of Count Franz A. Sporck. In 1783 the German National Theater was opened under the sponsorship of Count Francis Nostitz. Here in 1787 Don Giovanni was performed for the first time with Mozart himself conducting. A few years later this theater was dubbed the Theater of the Bohemian Estates or the Estates National Theater. As in Vienna, Punch and Judy shows were performed until the 1770’s. An official, though still only interim Czech National Theater, was opened in 1862.” [4]
[1]: (Curtis 2013: 213) Curtis, Benjamin. 2013. The Habsburgs: The History of a Dynasty. London; New York: Bloomsbury. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/TRKUBP92
[2]: (Judson 2016: 141) Judson, Pieter M. 2016. The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Cambridge, USA; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/BN5TQZBW
[3]: (Judson 2016: 335) Judson, Pieter M. 2016. The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Cambridge, USA; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/BN5TQZBW
[4]: (Kann 1974: 386) Kann, Robert A. 1974. A History of the Habsburg Empire 1526-1918. Los Angeles: University of California Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/RP3JD4UV
Present since previous polity. “Industry and trade in cities like Brünn / Brno, Pest, and Trieste / Trst also benefited from new links created by Austria’s growing transportation infrastructure, which in turn stimulated increased economic growth. New highway projects, canals, river regulation, and mountain pass systems produced a rapid increase in continental transport and trade, as well as cutting the time it took to travel between economically linked destinations, often by over 50 percent. Between 1815 and 1848 the state constructed 2,240 kilometers (almost 1,400 miles) of roads, while local town governments or noble landowners added another 46,400 (28,830 miles) of privately funded roads.” [1] Roads were present, built and maintained throughout the period. [2]
[1]: (Judson 2016: 114-115) Judson, Pieter M. 2016. The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Cambridge, USA; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/BN5TQZBW
[2]: Curtis 2013: 22, 48. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/TRKUBP92.
Present since previous polity. “In Hungary, several projects increased the navigability of the Danube and Tisza Rivers. By the 1830s a Danube Steamship Society offered regular service between Vienna and Pest. In 1847 the society’s fleet of forty- one ships transported over 900,000 passengers. In the 1830s a new Adriatic shipping line created the first regular link between Trieste / Trst and the coastal towns of Dalmatia and Ottoman Mediterranean ports like Constantinople, Alexandria, and Salonica.” [1]
[1]: (Judson 2016: 115) Judson, Pieter M. 2016. The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Cambridge, USA; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/BN5TQZBW
Present since previous polity. “Industry and trade in cities like Brünn / Brno, Pest, and Trieste / Trst also benefited from new links created by Austria’s growing transportation infrastructure, which in turn stimulated increased economic growth. New highway projects, canals, river regulation, and mountain pass systems produced a rapid increase in continental transport and trade, as well as cutting the time it took to travel between economically linked destinations, often by over 50 percent.” [1]
[1]: (Judson 2016: 114-115) Judson, Pieter M. 2016. The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Cambridge, USA; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/BN5TQZBW
Animal enclosures and stables, farms and private land, palace enclosures, city walls etc.
Newspapers; magazines; academic journals; literary reviews; periodicals; almanacs. “Greater numbers of people in the 1830s and 1840s participated in policy debates thanks also to a rapid rise in literacy rates and to the dizzying increase in newspapers and magazines. Although heavily censored by the regime, these publications nevertheless promoted interregional discussions about many economic and social issues. While Hungary’s first newspaper had appeared in 1705 (in Latin) and its first German language newspaper in 1764, the first Hungarian- language newspaper debuted in 1780, followed by a Slovak- language newspaper in 1783… The spectrum of publications included scientific and academic journals, literary reviews, specialty journals in fields ranging from medicine to agriculture, almanacs, and fashion magazines. Some were published monthly or weekly, a few appeared as many as four times a week, and most appeared in the rapidly expanding town of Pest. In 1847, 103 of a total of 191 newspapers, periodicals, and magazines published in Hungary, appeared in Pest alone while another eighteen appeared across the Danube in Buda. Th ese numbers both reflected and produced a vibrant urban public culture of discussion and debate in these towns in the 1840s.” [1] >
[1]: (Judson 2016: 145-146) Judson, Pieter M. 2016. The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Cambridge, USA; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/BN5TQZBW
Gold; silver; copper. “Important for the financial structure of all Habsburg lands was the mining of ores, primarily silver and copper. The mines of the Erzgebirge in northwestern Bohemia, in Central and southern Bohemia, in the High and Low Tatra of Hungary in present-day Slovakia, and at an earlier time in Tyrol played an important role. Gold-mining, as for instance in Rauris (Salzburg), was never of major significance.” [1] “Finally, in early March 1878, a deal was reached and the Abgeordnetenhaus passed the new tariff rates with 145 to 60 votes. The final tariff provisions included modest increases in thirty-seven industrial categories, along with across-the-board increases in the rates for textiles, and payments were now required on the basis of gold rather than silver, which had the effect of increasing the value of the rates by 15%.” [2]
[1]: (Kann 1974: 120) Kann, Robert A. 1974. A History of the Habsburg Empire 1526-1918. Los Angeles: University of California Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/RP3JD4UV
[2]: (Boyer 2022: 176) Boyer, John W. 2022. Austria, 1867–1955. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/CG3P4KKD