Austro-Hungarian Monarchy & the Long 19th Century

Under Maria Theresa (1740–1780) and her son Joseph II., Austria was modernized: compulsory schooling, abolition of serfdom, tolerance patent for Protestants and Jews. Maria Theresa — mother of 16 children, including the unfortunate Marie Antoinette — ruled for 40 years with a mixture of toughness and pragmatism, making her perhaps the most significant ruler in Europe.

The Napoleonic Wars repeatedly humiliated Austria. After the defeat at Austerlitz (1805), Franz II. dissolved the Holy Roman Empire and became Franz I. Emperor of the new Austrian Empire. His chancellor Metternich orchestrated the Congress of Vienna (1814/15), which reorganized Europe after Napoleon — and made Vienna the center of European diplomacy. The famous formula: "The congress dances, but does not progress."

The Revolution of 1848 shook the monarchy. In Vienna, Budapest, and Prague, citizens demanded a constitution, freedom of the press, and national self-determination. Emperor Ferdinand I. abdicated, and the 18-year-old Franz Joseph I. ascended the throne — and would reign for 68 years, until 1916.

After the defeat against Prussia at Königgrätz (1866), Franz Joseph had to grant the Hungarians extensive autonomy: The Compromise of 1867 created the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy (K.u.K.). This multi-ethnic empire — with Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Croats, Slovenes, Serbs, Romanians, Italians, and Ukrainians — was a fascinating experiment in multicultural coexistence, culturally brilliant but politically suffering from growing nationalism.

The Vienna of the turn of the century became one of the most creative places in human history: Freud founded psychoanalysis, Klimt and Schiele revolutionized art, Mahler and Schönberg music, Wittgenstein philosophy, Loos architecture. In the coffee houses, geniuses sat table to table — a cultural density never seen again.