ABSTRACT
The question of regional as opposed to national identity takes a completely different character when dealing with an Austrian region whose short period of membership began as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century. Austria was to be compensated for the loss of Tyrol; therefore Salzburg and Berchtesgaden were made part of Austria. History shows that the political and judicial union of the land of Tyrol with Austria over the course of centuries resulted in large degree from the personal entanglement with the Habsburg dynasty. The Austrian state saw itself confronted instead by a political as well as a historiographic process of establishing national identities in the respective heterogeneous parts. The most important group among the citizens of the city of Salzburg, the merchants, saw the negative economic consequences for them quite clearly though, and their potential pro-Austrian feelings were limited by hard-boiled facts.
