Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, of which the capital Vienna is the most populous city and state. Austria is bordered by Germany to the northwest, the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia to the northeast, Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The country occupies an area of and has a population of about 9.2 million.
The area of today's Austria has been inhabited since at least the Paleolithic period. Around 400 BC, it was inhabited by the Celts and then annexed by the Romans in the late 1st century BC. Christianization in the region began in the 4th and 5th centuries, during the late Roman period, followed by the arrival of numerous Germanic tribes during the Migration Period.
Austria as a state emerged from the remnants of the Eastern and Hungarian March at the end of the first millennium, first as a frontier march of the Holy Roman Empire. It then developed into a Duchy in 1156, and was made an Archduchy in 1453. Being the heartland of the Habsburg monarchy since the late 13th century, Austria was a major imperial power in Central Europe for centuries and, from the 16th century, Vienna also served as the Holy Roman Empire's administrative capital. The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806, two years after Austria had established its own empire, which became a great power and one of the largest states in Europe. The empire's defeat in wars and the loss of territories in the 1860s paved the way for the establishment of Austria-Hungary in 1867.
After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, Emperor Franz Joseph declared war on Serbia, which rapidly escalated into World War I. The empire's defeat and subsequent collapse led to the proclamation of the Republic of German-Austria in 1918 and the First Austrian Republic in 1919. During the interwar period, anti-parliamentarian sentiments culminated in the formation of an Austrofascist dictatorship under Engelbert Dollfuss in 1934. A year before the outbreak of World War II, Austria was annexed into Nazi Germany by Adolf Hitler, and it became a sub-national division. After its liberation in 1945 and a decade of Allied occupation, the country regained its sovereignty and declared its perpetual neutrality in 1955.
Austria is a semi-presidential representative democracy with a popularly elected president as head of state and a chancellor as head of government and chief executive. Austria has the 13th highest nominal GDP per capita with high standards of living. The country has been a member of the United Nations since 1955Jelavich 267 and of the European Union since 1995. It hosts the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and is a founding member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Interpol. It also signed the Schengen Agreement in 1995, and adopted the euro currency in 1999.
Etymology
The native name for Austria, , derives from the Old High German , which meant "eastern realm", can be also translated as "eastern empire" or "eastern kingdom", and which first appeared in the "Ostarrîchi document" of 996. This word is probably a translation of Medieval Latin into a local (Bavarian) dialect.
Austria was a prefecture of Bavaria created in 976. The word "Austria" is a Latinisation of the German name and was first recorded in the 12th century. At the time, the Danube basin of Austria (Upper and Lower Austria) was the easternmost extent of Bavaria.
History
Prehistory and antiquity
During the pre-Roman era, the region of what is now Austria was settled by various Celtic tribes and had served as the core of the Hallstatt culture by the 6th century BC. The city of Hallstatt has the oldest archaeological evidence of the Celts in Europe.
The Celtic Kingdom of Noricum that included most of modern Austria and parts of modern Slovenia was conquered by the Roman Empire in 16 BC and made a province called Noricum which lasted until 476. The regions of today's Austria which were not located within the province of Noricum were divided between the Roman provinces of Pannonia, which encompassed parts of eastern Austria, and Raetia, which encompassed the areas of present-day Vorarlberg and Tyrol.
Present-day Petronell-Carnuntum in eastern Austria was an important army camp turned capital city in what became known as the Pannonia Superior. Carnuntum was home to 50,000 people for nearly 400 years.
Middle Ages After the fall of the Roman Empire, the area was first invaded by the Germanic Rugii which made this region part of their "Rugiland". In 487, most of modern Austria was conquered by Odoacer, a barbarian soldier and statesman from the Middle Danube, which incorporated most of today's Austria in his Kingdom of Italy. By 493, it was conquered by the Germanic Ostrogoths which created their own kingdom, the Ostrogothic Kingdom. Following the Kingdom's fall the area was invaded by the Alemanni, Baiuvarii, Slavs, and Avars.
After Charlemagne, king of the Franks, defeated the Avars in the late eighth century, he established frontier marches that became centres of Bavarian settlement and Christianisation, expanding German influence in the Danube Valley and the Alps.Johnson 19 In 976, Emperor Otto II appointed Leopold I of the House of Babenberg as margrave of the marchia Orientalis, a territory within the German kingdom that would form the core of modern Austria.Johnson 20–21
The earliest written record of the name Austria dates to 996, where it appears as Ostarrîchi in reference to the territory of the Babenberg March. In 1156, the Privilegium Minus elevated Austria to the status of a duchy. In 1192, the Babenbergs also acquired the Duchy of Styria. With the death of Frederick II in 1246, the line of the Babenbergs was extinguished.Johnson 21
As a result, Ottokar II of Bohemia effectively assumed control of the duchies of Austria, Styria, and Carinthia. His reign came to an end with his defeat at Dürnkrut at the hands of Rudolph I of Germany in 1278.Lonnie Johnson 23 Thereafter, until World War I, Austria's history was largely that of its ruling dynasty, the Habsburgs.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Habsburgs began to expand their domains by acquiring additional provinces around the Duchy of Austria. In 1438, Duke Albert V of Austria was chosen as the successor to his father-in-law, Emperor Sigismund. Although Albert himself only reigned for a year, henceforth every emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was a Habsburg, with only one exception.
The Habsburgs also began to accumulate territory far from the hereditary lands. In 1477, Archduke Maximilian, only son of Emperor Frederick III, married the heiress Maria of Burgundy, thus acquiring most of the Netherlands for the family.Lonnie Johnson 25Brook-Shepherd 11 In 1496, his son Philip the Fair married Joanna the Mad, the heiress of Castile and Aragon, thus acquiring Spain and its Italian, African, Asian, and New World appendages for the Habsburgs.
In 1526, following the Battle of Mohács, Bohemia and the part of Hungary not occupied by the Ottomans came under Austrian rule.Lonnie Johnson 26 Ottoman expansion into Hungary led to frequent conflicts between the two empires, particularly evident in the Long War of 1593 to 1606. The Turks made incursions into Styria nearly 20 times," The Catholic encyclopedia". Charles George Herbermann (1913). Robert Appleton company. of which some are cited as "burning, pillaging, and taking thousands of slaves"."Bentley's miscellany ". Charles Dickens, William Harrison Ainsworth, Albert Smith (1853). In late September 1529, Suleiman the Magnificent launched the first siege of Vienna, which unsuccessfully ended, according to Ottoman historians, with the snowfalls of an early beginning winter.
17th and 18th centuries
During the long reign of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor following the successful defence of Vienna against the Turks in 1683, under the command of the King of Poland John III Sobieski,Lonnie Johnson 26–28 the Great Turkish War resulted in most of Hungary being controlled by Austria. This arrangement was formalized in the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699.
Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor relinquished many of the gains the empire made in the previous years. He enjoyed the imminent extinction of the House of Habsburg. Charles VI was willing to offer concrete advantages in territory and authority in exchange for recognition of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713. Therefore, his daughter Maria Theresa was recognized as his heir. With the rise of Prussia, the Austria–Prussia rivalry began in Germany. Austria participated, together with Prussia and Russia, in the first and the third of the three Partitions of Poland in 1772 and 1795 respectively.
19th century
Austria engaged in war with Revolutionary France, as part of the First and Second Coalitions, and subsequently in the Napoleonic Wars. From 1792 to 1801, the Austrians had suffered 754,700 casualties.Clodfelter The Hapsburg rulers of Austria and the Holy Roman Empire suffered successive defeats at the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte. To protect their status as an imperial dynasty after Napoleon proclaimed the French Empire, the Empire of Austria was founded in 1804,Lonnie Johnson 34 and to prevent Napoleon from claiming their previous Imperial throne, the Holy Roman Empire was abolished in 1806. In 1814, Austria was part of the coalition of Allied forces that invaded France and brought to an end the Napoleonic Wars.
The Austrian Empire emerged from the Congress of Vienna in 1815 as one of the continent's four dominant powers and a recognized great power. The same year, the German Confederation () was founded under the presidency of Austria. Because of unresolved social, political, and national conflicts, the German lands were shaken by the 1848 revolutions aiming to create a unified Germany.Johnson 36
The possibilities for a unified Germany were: a Greater Germany or a Greater Austria or a German Confederation without Austria at all. In 1864, Austria and Prussia fought together against Denmark and secured the independence from Denmark of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. As they could not agree on how the two duchies should be administered, though they fought the Austro-Prussian War in 1866. Defeated by Prussia in the Battle of Königgrätz, Austria had to leave the German Confederation and no longer took part in German politics.Lonnie Johnson 55Schulze 233 As Austria's Habsburg monarchy was not willing to join its German-speaking territory to the German Empire of 1871, and relinquish its non-German-speaking territories, the crown of the newly formed empire was offered to the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV.
To settle issues lingering from the suppressed Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, the Ausgleich, provided for a dual sovereignty, the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary, under Franz Joseph I.Lonnie Johnson 59 The Austrian-Hungarian rule of this diverse empire included various groups, including Germans, Hungarians, Croats, Czechs, Poles, Rusyns, Serbs, Slovaks, Slovenes, and Ukrainians, as well as large Italian and Romanian communities.
As a result, ruling Austria-Hungary became increasingly difficult in an age of emerging nationalist movements, requiring considerable reliance on an expanded secret police. Yet, the government of Austria tried its best to be accommodating in some respects: for example, the Reichsgesetzblatt, publishing the laws and ordinances of Cisleithania, was issued in eight languages; and all national groups were entitled to schools in their own language and to the use of their mother tongue at state offices.