Why isn’t Austria a part of Germany?
Well for a long time Austria was technically just one among many, many German states, but together,
along with a few other regions, they all made up the Holy Roman Empire. Sort of Germany 1.0.
From the mid-15th century until the Empire’s dissolution the Holy Roman Emperor and the
Archduke of Austria were the same person (except for a quick break between 1742 and 1765).
That fact, combined with Austria’s ruling house, the von Habsburgs’,
control over other lands outside of the Empire, notably, the Kingdom of Hungary,
made Austria the most powerful of all the German states and they dominated the region for over
three hundred years. But as time went on the title “Holy Roman Emperor” came to be much more about
prestige than anything else and by the mid-1700’s the member states of the Holy Roman Empire were
free to act in pretty much any manner they saw fit. Including waging war against the Austrians.
Between 1740 and 1763 Frederick the Great’s Kingdom of Prussia (which wasn’t really a
part of the Empire, but the Prussians also ruled over the electorate of Brandenburg, which was)
invaded Austria three times and seized the province of Silesia. Their victory ended Austrian
domination over Germany and for the next century Prussia and Austria competed with each other,
with the Austrians trying to reclaim their waning influence and the Prussians trying to destroy the
bits of it that were left. But as they fought over whether the Prussian Kings or the Habsburg Holy
Roman Emperors would rule Germany, revolution ended monarchy outright, for a little while at
least, to the west of Germany, in France. That didn’t last long though and in 1804 Napoleon
Bonaparte restored monarchy to France and declared himself to be Emperor of the French.
In response, Francis II, the Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria, not wanting to be seen
as an equal to some upstart Frenchman, declared himself Emperor of Austria in addition to his
Holy Roman title. But in late 1805 Napoleon defeated Francis II and his ally the Russian
Emperor Alexander I at the battle of Austerlitz which allowed him to bring most of Germany
under his influence, by setting up a French puppet state, the Confederation of the Rhine.
That caused a little bit of panic in the Austrian court and there was a real fear
there that Napoleon would crown himself Holy Roman Emperor and force Francis and Austria to
accept him as their superior. So, in 1806, Francis II abdicated as Holy Roman Emperor
and simultaneously dissolved the Empire entirely, though importantly he remained Emperor of Austria.
Napoleon was eventually defeated and in 1815 the Congress of Vienna redrew the map of Europe,
establishing a new geopolitical order. To replace the old Holy Roman Empire a loosely-organized
German Confederation, which included all of the German states was declared with the
Emperor of Austria as its President. But the various peoples of the German states,
especially political liberals, were becoming more and more interested in the idea of a
unified Germany; a German Empire, rather than the decentralized confederation.
There were two schools of thought on how best to achieve unification: the Greater German Solution,
supported by Austria and the Lesser German Solution, supported by Prussia.
Oddly enough each plan would’ve given most of the
power within a unified Germany to the state that supported it. Go figure.
The key difference between the two solutions was whether or not the Austrian Empire should be
included within the new Germany. Austria thought they should be, Prussia under Chancellor Otto von
Bismarck, thought they shouldn’t. But that wasn’t because the Austrians were somehow not German
enough; Bavaria which is culturally very similar to Austria, became a part of Germany just fine.
The main issue was that the Austrian Empire ruled over a whole lot more people
than just the Austrians. In fact, they made up well under half of the population.
While the German nationalists arguing for unification in Prussia
and elsewhere in northern Germany wanted their new state to be, well, made up of Germans,
and so they weren’t interested in owning territory with majority populations of other cultures.
In 1848 revolutionaries, mostly intellectuals, students, and the working class attempted to
crown the Prussian King, Friedrich Wilhelm IV Emperor of Germany, but he refused a title
offered to him by his political rivals. He also wasn’t very keen on the liberal reforms,
including freedom of speech and the press, demanded by the revolutionaries. They were
put down by 1849 and the issue of German unification went unresolved for another 15 years,
until Prussia and Austria jointly seized Danish Schleswig-Holstein, which had a mostly
ethnic German population. In 1866, two years later, Bismarck’s Prussia turned against
Austria and began the Austro-Prussian War, which quickly ended with a massive Prussian victory.
The German Confederation, headed by Austria, which had lasted since Napoleon’s defeat,
was destroyed by the Prussians and in its place they created the North German Confederation,
centered around themselves. In 1871 after another war, this time against France,
the Prussians implemented the Lesser German Solution in full and formed the German Empire,
with all of the German states as their subjects, except, as Bismarck had planned, for Austria.
So Austria didn’t become a part of the German Empire because it already ruled over an Empire
of its own and the leader of the unifying Germans, Prussia, was Austria’s fierce rival.
But 45 years later the German Empire and the newly reformed Austro-Hungarian Empire (the Austrians
had to make concessions to their largest minority group, the Hungarians, in order to keep their
Empire together after the Austro-Prussian War) fought, and *spoiler alert* lost,
together in WWI. The War saw the complete and utter destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
leaving Austria in control of just Austria for the first time in centuries. So why
not join the new German Republic, which had replaced the Prussian-dominated Empire, then?
Well, they tried to. The first republic in Austria called itself German-Austria and its
leadership were eager to join with Germany, but the victorious allies of WW1 weren’t particularly
happy to reward their conquered enemy with a new province, so they explicitly forbade Austria from
unifying with Germany in the treaty that ended the war. Of course, in the early 1930’s Germany was
taken over by a jerk with a silly moustache who isn’t all that well known for respecting treaties,
or national borders. So, in 1938 he sent German troops, unopposed, into his native
Austria to ensure that a referendum on whether they should join Germany went the right way.
Surprisingly, not, with guns metaphorically to the Austrian’s heads it did, and Austria
was annexed by Germany. Marking the only time in history when Germany proper and Austria were
united under one centralized government. That lasted until 1945 when Germany was quite rightly
defeated in WW2 and both Austria and Germany were split into occupation zones by the allies.
In 1955 Austria was reunified, and they’ve been an independent nation-state, ever since.
If you want to know more about Austria-Hungary check out the video on it’s collapse to the left.
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I’ve been James and thank you for watching Look Back History.