HistoryMemes.com

Making Sense of History

Austro-Hungarian Empire: A Visual History

Get My 10 Best History Memes:

Visual history of an empire

The Habsburg dual monarchy: eleven nationalities, two parliaments, one elderly emperor, and the assassination that started the First World War.

Existed
1867 to 1918
Duration
51 years
Existed
1867 to 1918
Area
About 676,000 km2 (1914)
Population
About 52 million (1914)
Capitals
Vienna and Budapest
Emperor
Franz Joseph I (1848 to 1916), Charles I (1916 to 1918)

Austria-Hungary was created by the Compromise (Ausgleich) of 1867 after Austria's defeat by Prussia, splitting the Habsburg empire into Austrian and Hungarian halves under Franz Joseph, who reigned from 1848 to 1916. Covering 676,000 km2 with 52 million people of a dozen nationalities, it was Europe's second largest state and a centre of science, music and modernism in Vienna, Budapest and Prague. Its annexation of Bosnia in 1908 and the murder of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 triggered the war that destroyed it; it dissolved into successor states in October-November 1918.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Austro-Hungarian Empire. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

8001000120014001600180020002200Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867 to 1918)Open: Holy Roman EmpireHoly Roman Empire (800 to 1806)Open: Ottoman EmpireOttoman Empire (1299 to 1922)Open: British EmpireBritish Empire (1583 to 1997)Open: Russian EmpireRussian Empire (1721 to 1917)Open: Wars of Italian Unification (Risorgimento)Wars of Italian Unification (Risorgimento) (1848 to 1871)Open: Wars of German UnificationWars of German Unification (1864 to 1871)Open: Franco-Prussian WarFranco-Prussian War (1870 to 1871)Open: Italian EmpireItalian Empire (1882 to 1947)Open: Balkan WarsBalkan Wars (1912 to 1913)Open: World War IWorld War I (1914 to 1918)Open: Nazi GermanyNazi Germany (1933 to 1945)Open: Yugoslav WarsYugoslav Wars (1991 to 2001)

Population by nationality, 1910 census

By language of daily use; Jews were counted under other languages.

03.757.511.2515Germans: 1212GermansHungarians: 1010HungariansCzechs: 6.46.4CzechsPoles: 55PolesUkrainians: 44UkrainiansRomanians: 3.23.2RomaniansCroats: 2.62.6CroatsSerbs: 22SerbsSlovaks: 22SlovaksSlovenes: 1.31.3SlovenesItalians: 0.80.8Italiansmillions

Timeline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire

  1. 1866
    KoniggratzAustria loses to Prussia.
  2. 1867
    AusgleichThe dual monarchy created.
  3. 1878
    Bosnia occupied
  4. 1889
    Mayerling
  5. 1908
    Bosnia annexed
  6. 1914
    Sarajevo28 June; war in August.
  7. 1916
    Franz Joseph dies
  8. 1918
    Empire dissolves
  9. 1920
    Treaty of Trianon

The Compromise

After Koniggratz (1866) expelled Austria from Germany, Franz Joseph bought Hungarian loyalty by making Hungary a co-equal kingdom with its own parliament and government, sharing only the monarch, foreign policy, army and finance. Germans dominated Austria, Magyars dominated Hungary, and Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Croats, Serbs, Slovaks, Romanians, Slovenes and Italians pressed for their own rights with growing frustration.

Fin-de-siecle Vienna

The empire industrialised, built railways and made Vienna a city of two million with the Ringstrasse, Freud, Mahler, Klimt, Wittgenstein and Schoenberg. Budapest boomed. Universal male suffrage came to Austria in 1907, though the Reichsrat was paralysed by nationalist obstruction. Personal tragedy shadowed the throne: Crown Prince Rudolf's suicide at Mayerling (1889) and Empress Elisabeth's assassination (1898).

Sarajevo and collapse

Austria annexed Bosnia in 1908, enraging Serbia. On 28 June 1914 Gavrilo Princip shot Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo; Vienna's ultimatum to Serbia, backed by Germany, set off the July Crisis and the war. Austria-Hungary's armies suffered catastrophic losses in Galicia and Serbia and depended on Germany. Franz Joseph died in 1916; Charles I sought peace in vain. In October 1918 Czechs, South Slavs, Poles and Hungarians declared independence, and Charles renounced power on 11 November.

The Treaties of Saint-Germain and Trianon (1919-1920) reduced Austria and Hungary to small republics and created or enlarged Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania and Italy at their expense.

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

Wars of the same era and region

8 surprising things about the Austro-Hungarian Empire

  1. Franz Joseph reigned for 68 years, the third-longest of any European monarch, and outlived his son, brother, wife and nephew.
  2. The empire's army gave commands in German but had to operate in eleven languages; each regiment's language depended on its recruits.
  3. The Austro-Hungarian navy's most famous officer was Georg von Trapp of The Sound of Music.
  4. Franz Ferdinand's car survives in Vienna's military museum, still bearing the registration A III 118, which some read as Armistice 11-11-18.
  5. Vienna in 1913 was home simultaneously to Hitler, Stalin, Trotsky, Tito and Freud.
  6. The 1908 annexation of Bosnia was legally the transfer of a territory Austria had administered since 1878.
  7. Emperor Charles I never abdicated; he 'renounced participation in the affairs of state' and was later beatified.
  8. The empire had two of everything: two parliaments, two prime ministers, two capital cities, and a joint ministry meeting alternately in each.

Sources

Back to all empires and wars