Once and Again A Central Influence in European Affairs

To a great extent, Austria and the Hapsburgs are a 600-year historical identity. In 1276 the Auslander king Otaker II fell in battle and the German king Rudolph I became the first to rule Austria in the Hapsburg line It was a dynasty that would continue in virtually uninterrupted power for 600 years. (The exceptions were a five-year stint by the Hungarian King, Mathias Corvinus in the 1400s and conquests by Napoleon in 1805 and 1809.) The family tree would also spread its influence by placing second-sons and nephews on royal thrones (and daughters in royal bedchambers) all over Europe. And the church, too, was importantly influenced by several bishops and archbishops who sometimes took family dinners with the Emperor.

In the years 1589 and again in1683 the seemingly inexorable tide of Muslim conquest stopped at the gates of Vienna. After the latter defeat, Eugene of Savoy took the offensive and drove them out of greater Hungary as well. The dreams of the Crusader knights would never be realized, nor even those of the captured Byzantine Church, but at least, from the borders of the Hapsburgs’ empire westward, Europe would remain Christian.

In 1679 the Bubonic Plague struck Austria with a vengeance, leaving almost a third of the population of Vienna dead and the countryside hardly better off. As was the case in much of Western Europe, however, the sudden drop in population combined with important advances in technology to create a very robust economy and the rise of the merchant class. So, the 1700s saw a surge in building, replacing largely undistinguished Medieval structures with the Renaissance-Baroque style buildings we see today.

Among the most memorable features of Vienna are the magnificent concentric boulevards at the heart of the city. They came to be, not by inspired planning but, rather, serendipity. The inner Ringstrasse was built along the course of the medieval inner city wall and the outer ring, Gurtel, along the course of the wall built around the suburbs, in response to the threat of the Turks.

In 1740 there came an important first in the culture when Charles VI left no male heir and his daughter, Maria Theresa became empress. She proved to be a chronic overachiever, and a much beloved monarch. Among her accomplishments were major reforms in public education, in the courts and in the army. She also freed the university from what had become stifling church control and took important steps toward modernizing the economy.

Of course, throughout these times, music and Austria, especially Vienna, are inseparable. The list of those who at one time or another made Vienna their home includes: Gluck  Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Bruckner, Wolf, Mahler, Strauss….. Austria nurtured composers of great symphonies, chamber music, opera and operetta – and, of course, the waltz. Later, important figures in literature and the pioneers of modern architecture also emerged, along with innovators in medicine and the new science called mentalism at first, then psychiatry.

Sadly, Austria did not become a truly modern industrial state to the extent achieved by England, France and Germany, and the empire came to be known as “the sick man of Europe” at the turn of the century. With political dissention growing in her Balkan states, Communist insurgents on the rise in Hungary and the economy in general in shambles, Austria stumbled into the conflict that became World War I.

She suffered badly in the war and in the aftermath in which the empire was dismembered. Worse times were to come with the Great Depression, National Socialism, Nazism and the union with Germany under Hitler. Russian bombing and artillery fire damaged as many as a quarter of the building in Vienna before the German army declared it an open city and retreated westward. Though it was "liberated" by the Soviets and dominated by them for a time, Austria was never fully integrated into the Soviet system and became free again in 1955.