German in Austria

Austria has always retained an independence from the rest of the Germanspeaking area. The first recorded instance of the name Ostarrîchi for the Margraviate of 976, the central territory of the Eastern March established by Charlemagne, is in 996. It was a much smaller area than the modern state, consisting of an area stretching along the Danube eastwards from the Enns to the Wienerwald near Tulln. From 976 to 1246 it was ruled over by the Babenberg Margraves, who moved their capital eastwards from Melk to Klosterneuburg and finally to Vienna in 1156, when the territory became a Dukedom. The Babenbergs expanded their territory by inheriting Styria (Steiermark) in 1192. After the male Babenberg line died out their possessions were ruled by Ottokar II of Bohemia, who was defeated in 1278 at the battle of Marchfeld by Rudolf of Habsburg, who, as Rudolf I, founded the Habsburg dynasty which ruled Austria until 1918. The Habsburgs also became titular heads of the Holy Roman Empire. Territorial growth continued throughout the next centuries: in 1335 Carinthia (Kärnten) and Carniola (Krain), the latter now being part of Slovenia, were acquired; in 1363 Margarethe Maultasch handed West and South Tyrol over to the Habsburgs; between 1363 and 1523 various lordships in Vorarlberg were purchased by the Habsburgs and in 1500 the Habsburgs acquired East Tyrol and the northeastern parts of North Tyrol around Kufstein and Kitzbühel. In 1491 the Habsburgs established the hereditary right to the crowns of their northern and eastern neighbours, Bohemia and Hungary, which they obtained in 1526. The real Habsburg control of the southern and eastern parts of the Hungarian kingdom began in the eighteenth century, when in the Peace of Karlowitz in 1699 (Sremski Karlovci near Novi Sad) Austria gained Transylvania (Siebenbürgen), now part of Romania, Slavonia and Croatia from the Turks. This treaty established the full geographic extent of the Habsburg monarchy in eastern Europe with its accompanying multilingual and ethnic groupings. In the west of the country the Bavarian Innviertel became part of Austria in 1779 and in 1805 the Electoral

Principality of Salzburg, secularized from a Prince Bishopric in 1803, was exchanged by Ferdinand of Tuscany, a Habsburg relative, for that of Würzburg. After the defeat of Austria at Austerlitz in 1805 Napoleon made fundamental changes in the map of the states which comprised German-speaking Europe. In 1805 at the treaty of Preßburg (Bratislava) Bavaria and Württemberg became kingdoms and Baden became a grand duchy. In the territorial re-arrangements that followed, Austria lost Venetia to the King of Italy, Tyrol, Vorarlberg to Bavaria and parts of present-day Baden-Württemberg (Vorderösterreich) to Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden. On 11 August 1804 the last Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II, assumed the title Emperor of Austria as Francis I and on 6 August 1806 he renounced his claim to the Holy Roman Empire. In the renewed war with Napoleon in 1808 Austria was first victorious but finally defeated and in the Peace of Schönbrunn lost Salzburg and parts of Upper Austria to Bavaria while East Tyrol, Carinthia, Carniola, Croatia, Istria and Dalmatia were united to form the ‘Illyrian Provinces’ ruled by France. After the defeat of Napoleon the Congress of Vienna in 1815 returned Lombardy and Venetia to Austria, which also received Salzburg, Tyrol back from Bavaria and the French ‘Illyrian Provinces’. Austria has therefore been a separate political unit from Germany for a long time and was already a fully fledged state when in the nineteenth century a united Germany was merely a dream. Indeed, after the Austro-Prussian war of 1866 Austria distanced itself from any thought of a larger German state and in 1867 the dual monarchy of Austro-Hungary was established. This separateness shows itself, as we shall see, in many independent linguistic developments, retentions and innovations. During the last half of the nineteenth century Austria lost most of its Italian-speaking area, Lombardy (1859) and Venetia (1866), to the newly emerging independent unified Italian state. The greatest territorial losses, however, occurred after 1918, when the last Emperor, Charles I, abdicated and the First Republic of Austria was set up. In the treaty of St Germain-en-Laye (1919) this newly founded state lost all the non-German speaking parts: Istria, Trieste and Dalmatia went to Italy, while the new states of Yugoslavia, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were founded. Transylvania became part of the new state of Romania. The most controversial loss was that of the South Tyrol to Italy, the biggest loss of a German-speaking territory. This is something which still has repercussions today. German-speaking areas lost in the east included the small areas of Wieselburg (Mason), Ödenburg (Sopron) and Güns (Köszeg) to the new Hungary, while the German-speaking area of western Hungary came to Austria and was called Burgenland. The First Republic lasted until 1933-4, when it was followed by a dictatorship. Austria, the Ostmark as the National Socialists called it, then became briefly part of a larger German state from 1938, the time of the Anschlu (annexation), until 1945. During that time it was referred as the Alp and Danube gaus (Alpen-und Donaugaue). After 1945 it was occupied by the Allies and the Second Republic was set up, a federal republic, consisting of nine federal states, or Länder (see Map 3.1). The Allies

withdrew in 1955 after the signing of the Staatsvertrag which established Austria as a neutral state.