Austria Notes

Austria

Contents

• Past questions

• Quotes

  • Government

  • Nationalities

• Illustrations

  • Austria-Hungary in 1914

  • Timeline of ministers

• Chronology

  • Events

• The Austrian Empire

  • Nature

  • Constitution

  • Foreign policy

• Politics

  • Nationalism

  • Origins

  • The fall of the Bach System

  • The October Diploma

  • The February Patent

  • The Ministry of Counts

  • The Ausgleich

  • Austria-Hungary

  • Taaffe

• The national question

  • Language

  • Education

  • Solutions: animosity

  • Solutions: toleration

  • Solutions: personal autonomy

  • An imperial culture

  • The military

  • The Jews

  • Nationalism and economics

  • Nationalism and democracy

• German nationalism

  • Origins

  • Opposition

• Magyar nationalism

  • Origins

  • Politics

  • The Ausgleich

  • The army crisis

  • Culture

• Czech nationalism

  • Origins

  • Politics

  • Administration

  • Culture

  • Education

• Slovak nationalism

  • Origins

  • Education

• Slovene nationalism

  • Origins

  • Education

• Croat nationalism

  • Origins

  • Politics

  • Culture

  • Education

• Italian nationalism

  • Politics

  • Education

  • Irredentism

• Serbian nationalism

  • Origins

  • Politics

• Romanian nationalism

  • Origins

  • Administration

  • Education

• Ruthenian nationalism

  • Origins

  • Politics

  • Education

• Polish nationalism

  • Origins

  • Politics

  • Education

Past questions

• Were non-elites in the Habsburg Empire ‘indifferent to nationalist appeals’ (T ZAHRA)?

  • Trinity 2013

• How successfully did the Habsburg Empire manage the national question?

  • Tutorial essay

• How successfully did Habsburg governments solve ethnic tensions?

  • Trinity 2012

• Why did the Austro-Hungarian Empire achieve no compromise (Ausgleich) with the Slavs?

  • Trinity 2011

• In what ways did the Compromise of 1867 affect the non-dominant nationalities within the Austro-Hungarian Empire?

  • Trinity 2010

• How much did internal national conflicts block attempts to reform the Austro-Hungarian Empire?

  • Trinity 2009

• Did fiscal problems outweigh nationality conflicts in the difficulties facing the Austro-Hungarian Empire?

  • Trinity 2008

• Did the Compromise of 1867 strengthen Hungary at Austria’s expense?

  • Trinity 2007

• How much did national conflicts block attempts to reform the Austro-Hungarian Empire?

  • Trinity 2006

• Did the Ausgleich thwart later attempts to reform the Austro-Hungarian Empire?

  • Trinity 2005

Quotes

Government

• “The Emperor of Austria has many ministers; but when he wants something done, he has to do it himself.”

  • Otto von Bismarck.

• ‘[I]t was proposed to dismember the Habsburg Empire and to hand over the fragments to the landed nobility in exchange for the assurance that the nobility would preserve the Empire from liberalism’.

  • AJP Taylor on the October Diploma of 1860.

• ‘[T]he decision taken in 1861 was the doom of stability and peace in central Europe’.

  • AJP Taylor on the February Patent.

• “I hate this war; for, whether we win or whether we lose, it will no longer be the old Austria.”

  • Count Maurice Esterházy.

• “The Balkans are not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.”

  • Otto von Bismarck.

• ‘Austria, in its last twenty years of existence, survived only in its vast body of state servants.’

  • Taylor.

• “Ideally, one would die for him to music, and preferably to the music of the Radetzky March.”

  • Carl-Joseph, Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March.

• “[T]he boundless catastrophe that would destroy himself, the regiment, the army, the state, the whole world”.

  • Lieutenant Trotta on the death of the Emperor, Roth.

• ‘It was generally recognised that Austria was torn far too much by internal conflict to allow for evolutionary reforms of the centralistic system.’

  • Robert A Kann.

• Austria was ‘a desperately sick patient’.

  • Kann.

• ‘After Badeni the dynasty was content to guard its own coffin.’

  • Taylor.

Nationalities

• The “Hungarian rock surrounded by the Teutonic-Slavic sea”.

  • The poet Mihály Vörösmarty.

• “We must admit that by ourselves we are not a great state.”

  • Francis Déak.

• The constitution of Hungary was “forfeit in law and abolished in fact.”

  • Anton von Schmerling, August 1861.

• ‘The Hungarian was yet to be born who would accept the Slavs and Romanians as equals.’

  • AJP Taylor on 1866.

• “[T]he Slavs are not fit to govern, they must be ruled”.

  • Count Julius Andrássy.

• “What is certain is that he was neither a Czech nor a German… For this reason, Count Taaffe was to a certain degree objective and unbiased with regard to national strivings”.

  • A journalist.

• “None of the various nationalities is to obtain decisive predominance”.

  • Count Eduard Taaffe.

• National movements ‘competed with each other over which was more Habsburg-loyal’.

  • Jeremy King on Budweis.

• Czech they ‘arrogantly considered to be the inferior language of a small people’.

  • Robert A Kann.

• That “irredentism in our country… will cease immediately if our Slavs are given a comfortable, fair and good life”.

  • Archduke Franz-Ferdinand to Foreign Minister Count Leopold Berchtold, 1^st February 1913

• “Be tough! The Czech skull is impervious to reason, but it is susceptible to blows.”

  • Theodor Mommsen during the Badeni crisis.

• “Our citizens of the non-Magyar tongue must… become accustomed to the fact that they belong to the community of a nation-state, of a state which is not a conglomerate of various races”.

  • Stephen Tisza, Hungarian PM in 1913.

Illustrations

Austria-Hungary in 1914

Timeline of ministers

Chronology

Events

1846 – Rising of Polish nobility in Galicia

1849 – Revolutionary Hungary dethrones the Habsburgs

1850 – Martin Hattala’s Slovak grammar

July 1859 – End of the Franco-Austrian War; end of Bach System; Austria loses Lombardy

October 1860 – October Diploma

December 1860 – Fall of Goluchowski

February 1861 – February Patent

August 1861 – Abolition of Hungarian constitution

1862 – Provisional Czech National Theatre opened

1863 – Prussia rejects Austrian inclusion in the Zollverein; Czech deputies leave the Reichsrat

1865 – Schmerling summons Croat and Hungarian Diets

July 1865 – Schmerling dismissed

1866 – Austro-Prussian War; loss of Venetia

December 1866 – Croat delegation...

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