Hungary
Land and People
To the east of the Danube, the Great Hungarian Plain (Hung. Alföld) extends beyond the Hungarian boundaries to the Carpathians and the Transylvanian Alps. The Dráva and Tisza rivers are also important waterways. To the west of the Danube is the Little Alföld and the Transdanubian region, which are separated by the Bakony and Vértes mts. The Mátra Mts. in the north reach a height of 3,330 ft (1,015 m) at Kékes, the highest peak in Hungary. Lake Balaton, the largest lake in Hungary and in central Europe, is a leading resort area. Hungary has cold winters and hot summers; springs and autumns are short.
Situated on a plain near the geographic center of Europe, Hungary has been the meeting place and battleground of many peoples, and its heterogeneous population was often the cause of social upheaval before 1919. However, as a result of the separation of non-Hungarian territories after World War I, the great slaughter of the Jews in World War II, and the exchange after the war of Slavic and Romanian minorities for their Magyar counterparts, Hungary is today essentially homogeneous. The Magyars constitute more than 90% of the population. There are small minorities of Gypsies, Germans, Serbs, and other groups. Hungarian is spoken by most people. Over half of the people are Roman Catholic, but there is a large Calvinist minority. Hungary still has the largest Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe (100,000-120,000).
Economy
Hungary has long been an agricultural country, but since World War II it has become heavily industrialized. Through the 1980s, industry was largely nationally owned and two thirds of agricultural output came from collective and state farms. Hungary's economy underwent difficult readjustment in the 1990s, as it moved from producing goods chiefly for export to the USSR to developing a market-based economy and finding new trading partners. By the end of 1995, almost all retail trade had been privatized and less than half of all economic output originated from state-owned enterprises. Economic reforms also brought high unemployment and rising inflation, but today Hungary's economy is one of the most prosperous in Eastern Europe.
About half of Hungary's land is arable. With highly diversified crop and livestock production, the country is self-sufficient in food. Wheat, corn, sunflower seeds, potatoes, sugar beets, and grapes are the major crops. Pigs, cattle, sheep, and poultry are raised.
Hungary has been an important producer of bauxite, and deposits of coal, copper, natural gas, oil, and uranium have been exploited as well. Mining was curtailed in the 1990s as the country moved to a market economy and found it was not cost-effective to exploit the country's minerals at world prices. There has also been a decline in gas and oil production due to the exhaustion of reserves. However, mining and metallurgy are still important, as is food processing and the manufacture of construction materials, textiles, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, steel, and motor vehicles. About one third of Hungarian industry is located in or near Budapest. Other industrial centers are Győr, Miskolc, Pécs, Debrecen, Szeged, and Dunapentele. The tourism industry is also an important source of foreign capital. Machinery, equipment, and food products are the most important exports; machinery and equipment, manufactured goods, fuels, and electricity are imported. Germany is the country's largest trading partner by far, followed by Austria, Italy, and France.
Government
Hungary is governed under the constitution of 1949 as amended. The president, who is the head of state, is elected by the legislature for a five-year term and is eligible for a second term. The government is headed by the prime minister, who is nominated by the president and elected by the legislature. The unicameral legislature, the National Assembly, has 386 members who are elected by popular vote to four-year terms. Administratively the country is divided into 19 counties, 22 urban counties, and the capital district.
History
Growth of a StateThe Roman provinces of Pannonia and Dacia, conquered under Tiberius and Trajan (1st cent. A.D.), embraced part of what was to become Hungary. The Huns and later the Ostrogoths and the Avars settled there for brief periods. In the late 9th cent. the Magyars, a Finno-Ugric people from beyond the Urals, conquered all or most of Hungary and Transylvania. The semilegendary leader, Arpad, founded their first dynasty. The Magyars apparently merged with the earlier settlers, but they also continued to press westward until defeated by King (later Holy Roman Emperor) Otto I, at the Lechfeld (955).
Halted in its expansion, the Hungarian state began to solidify. Its first king, St. Stephen (reigned 1001-38), completed the Christianization of the Magyars and built the authority of his crown—which has remained the symbol of national existence—on the strength of the Roman Catholic Church. Under Bela III (reigned 1172-1196), Hungary came into close contact with Western European, particularly French, culture. Through the favor of succeeding kings, a few very powerful nobles—the magnates—won ever-widening privileges at the expense of the lesser nobles, the peasants, and the towns. In 1222 the lesser nobles forced the extravagant Andrew II to grant the Golden Bull (the "Magna Carta of Hungary"), which limited the king's power to alienate his authority to the magnates and established the beginnings of a parliament.
Under Andrew's son, Bela IV, the kingdom barely escaped annihilation: Mongol invaders, defeating Bela at Muhi (1241), occupied the country for a year, and Ottocar II of Bohemia also defeated Bela, who was further threatened by his own rebellious son Stephen V. Under Stephen's son, Ladislaus IV, Hungary fell into anarchy, and when the royal line of Arpad died out (1301) with Andrew III, the magnates seized the opportunity to increase their authority.
In 1308, Charles Robert of Anjou was elected king of Hungary as Charles I, the first of the Angevin line. His autocratic rule checked the magnates somewhat and furthered the growth of the towns. Under his son, Louis I (Louis the Great), Hungary reached its greatest territorial extension, with power extending into Dalmatia, the Balkans, and Poland.
Foreign DominationAfter the death of Louis I, a series of foreign rulers succeeded: Sigismund (later Holy Roman Emperor), son-in-law of Louis; Albert II of Austria, son-in-law of Sigismund; and Ladislaus III of Poland (Uladislaus I of Hungary). During their reigns the Turks began to advance through the Balkans, defeating the Hungarians and their allies at Kosovo Field (1389), Nikopol (1396), and Varna (1444). John Hunyadi, acting after 1444 as regent for Albert II's son, Ladislaus V, gave Hungary a brief respite through his victory at Belgrade (1456).
The reign of Hunyadi's son, Matthias Corvinus, elected king in 1458, was a glorious period in Hungarian history. Matthias maintained a splendid court at Buda, kept the magnates subject to royal authority, and improved the central administration. But under his successors Uladislaus II and Louis II, the nobles regained their power. Transylvania became virtually independent under the Zapolya family. The peasants, rising in revolt, were crushed (1514) by John Zapolya. Louis II was defeated and killed by the Turks under Sulayman the Magnificent in the battle of Mohács in 1526. The date is commonly taken to mark the beginning of Ottoman domination over Hungary. Ferdinand of Austria (later Emperor Ferdinand I), as brother-in-law of Louis II, claimed the Hungarian throne and was elected king by a faction of nobles, while another faction chose Zapolya as John I.
In the long wars that followed, Hungary was split into three parts: the western section, where Ferdinand and his successor, Rudolf II, maintained a precarious rule, challenged by such Hungarian leaders as Stephen Bocskay and Gabriel Bethlen; the central plains, which were completely under Turkish domination; and Transylvania, ruled by noble families (see Báthory and Rákóczy).
The Protestant Reformation, supported by the nobles and well-established in Transylvania, nearly succeeded throughout Hungary. Cardinal Pázmány was a leader of the Counter Reformation in Hungary. In 1557 religious freedom was proclaimed by the diet of Transylvania, and the principle of toleration was generally maintained throughout the following centuries.
Hungarian opposition to Austrian domination included such extreme efforts as the assistance Thököly gave to the Turks during the siege of Vienna (1683). Emperor Leopold I, however, through his able generals Prince Eugene of Savoy and Duke Charles V of Lorraine, soon regained his lost ground. Budapest was liberated from the Turks in 1686. In 1687, Hungarian nobles recognized the Hapsburg claim to the Hungarian throne. By the Peace of Kalowitz (1699), Turkey ceded to Austria most of Hungary proper and Transylvania. Transylvania continued to fight the Hapsburgs, but in 1711, with the defeat of Francis II Rákóczy (see under Rákóczy, family), Austrian control was definitely established. In 1718 the Austrians took the Banat from Turkey.
Hungary and AustriaThe Austrians brought in Germans and Slavs to settle the newly freed territory, destroying Hungary's ethnic homogeneity. Hapsburg rule was uneasy. The Hungarians were loyal to Maria Theresa in her wars, but many of the unpopular centralizing reforms of Joseph II, who had wanted to make German the sole language of administration and to abolish the Hungarian counties, had to be withdrawn.
In the second quarter of the 19th cent. a movement that combined Hungarian nationalism with constitutional liberalism gained strength. Among its leaders were Count Szechenyi, Louis Kossuth, Baron Eötvös, Sándor Petőfi, and Francis Deak. Inspired by the French Revolution of 1848, the Hungarian diet passed the March Laws (1848), which established a liberal constitutional monarchy for Hungary under the Hapsburgs. But the reforms did not deal with the national minorities problem. Several minority groups revolted, and, after Francis Joseph replaced Ferdinand VII as emperor, the Austrians waged war against Hungary (Dec., 1848).
In Apr., 1849, Kossuth declared Hungary an independent republic. Russian troops came to the aid of the emperor, and the republic collapsed. The Hungarian surrender at Vilagos (Aug., 1849) was followed by ruthless reprisals. But after its defeat in the Austro-Prussian War (1866), Austria was obliged to compromise with Magyar national aspirations. The Ausgleich of 1867 (largely the work of Francis Deak) set up the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, in which Austria and Hungary were nearly equal partners. Emperor Francis Joseph was crowned (1867) king of Hungary, which at that time also included Transylvania, Slovakia, Ruthenia, Croatia and Slovenia, and the Banat. The minorities problem persisted, the Serbs, Croats, and Romanians being particularly restive under Hungarian rule.
During this period industrialization began in Hungary, while the condition of the peasantry deteriorated to the profit of landowners. By a law of 1874 only about 6% of the population could vote. Until World War I, when republican and socialist agitation began to threaten the established order, Hungary was one of the most aristocratic countries in Europe. As the military position of Austria-Hungary in World War I deteriorated, the situation in Hungary grew more unstable. Hungarian nationalists wanted independence and withdrawal from the war; the political left was inspired by the 1917 revolutions in Russia; and the minorities were receptive to the Allies' promises of self-determination.
In Oct., 1918, Emperor Charles I (King of Hungary as Charles IV) appointed Count Michael Károlyi premier. Károlyi advocated independence and peace and was prepared to negotiate with the minorities. His cabinet included socialists and radicals. In November the emperor abdicated, and the Dual Monarchy collapsed.
IndependenceKárolyi proclaimed Hungary an independent republic. However, the minorities would not deal with him, and the Allies forced upon him very unfavorable armistice terms. The government resigned, and the Communists under Béla Kun seized power (Mar., 1919). The subsequent Red terror was followed by a Romanian invasion and the defeat (July, 1919) of Kun's forces. After the Romanians withdrew, Admiral Horthy de Nagybanya established a government and in 1920 was made regent, since there was no king. Reactionaries, known as White terrorists, conducted a brutal campaign of terror against the Communists and anyone associated with Károlyi or Kun.
The Treaty of Trianon (see Trianon, Treaty of), signed in 1920, reduced the size and population of Hungary by about two thirds, depriving Hungary of valuable natural resources and removing virtually all non-Magyar areas, although Budapest retained a large German-speaking population. The next twenty-five years saw continual attempts by the Magyar government to recover the lost territories. Early endeavors were frustrated by the Little Entente and France, and Hungary turned to a friendship with Fascist Italy and, ultimately, to an alliance (1941) with Nazi Germany. The authoritarian domestic policies of the premiers Stephen Bethlen and Julius Gombos and their successors safeguarded the power of the upper classes, ignored the demand for meaningful land reform, and encouraged anti-Semitism.
Between 1938 and 1944, Hungary regained, with the aid of Germany and Italy, territories from Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania. It declared war on the USSR (June, 1941) and on the United States (Dec., 1941). When the Hungarian government took steps to withdraw from the war and protect its Jewish population, German troops occupied the country (Mar., 1944). The Germans were driven out by Soviet forces (Oct., 1944-Apr., 1945). The Soviet campaign caused much devastation.
National elections were held in 1945 (in which the Communist party received less than one fifth of the vote), and a republican constitution was adopted in 1946. The peace treaty signed at Paris in 1947 restored the bulk of the Trianon boundaries and required Hungary to pay $300 million in reparations to the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. A new coalition regime instituted long-needed land reforms.
Communist RuleEarly in 1948 the Communist party, through its control of the ministry of the interior, arrested leading politicians, forced the resignation of Premier Ferenc Nagy, and gained full control of the state. Hungary was proclaimed a People's Republic in 1949, after parliamentary elections in which there was only a single slate of candidates. Radical purges in the national Communist party made it thoroughly subservient to that of the USSR. Industry was nationalized and land was collectivized. The trial of Cardinal Mindszenty aroused protest throughout the Western world.
By 1953 continuous purges of Communist leaders, constant economic difficulties, and peasant resentment of collectivization had led to profound crisis in Hungary. Premier Mátyás Rákosi, the Stalinist in control since 1948, was removed in July, 1953, and Imre Nagy became premier. He slowed down collectivization and emphasized production of consumer goods, but he was removed in 1955, and the emphasis on farm collectivization was restored. In 1955, Hungary joined the Warsaw Treaty Organization and was admitted to the United Nations.
On Oct. 23, 1956, a popular anti-Communist revolution, centered in Budapest, broke out in Hungary. A new coalition government under Imre Nagy declared Hungary neutral, withdrew it from the Warsaw Treaty, and appealed to the United Nations for aid. However, János Kádár, one of Nagy's ministers, formed a counter-government and asked the USSR for military support. Some 500,000 Soviet troops were sent to Hungary, and in severe and brutal fighting they suppressed the revolution. Nagy and some of his ministers were abducted and were later executed, and thousands of other Hungarians, many of them teenagers, were imprisoned or executed. In addition, about 190,000 refugees fled the country. Kádár became premier and sought to win popular support for Communist rule and to improve Hungary's relations with Yugoslavia and other countries. He carried out a drastic purge (1962) of former Stalinists (including Mátyás Rákosi), accusing them of the harsh policies responsible for the 1956 revolt. Collectivization, which had been stopped after 1956, was again resumed in 1958-59.
Kádár's regime gained a degree of popularity as it brought increasing liberalization to Hungarian political, cultural, and economic life. Economic reforms introduced in 1968 brought a measure of decentralization to the economy and allowed for supply and demand factors; Hungary achieved substantial improvements in its standard of living. Hungary aided the USSR in the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The departure (1971) of Cardinal Mindszenty from Budapest after 15 years of asylum in the U.S. legation and his removal (1974) from the position of primate of Hungary improved relations with the Catholic church. Due to Soviet criticism, many of the economic reforms were subverted during the mid-1970s only to be reinstituted at the end of the decade.
During the 1980s, Hungary began to increasingly turn to the West for trade and assistance in the modernization of its economic system. The economy continued to decline and the high foreign debt became unpayable. Premier Károly Grósz gave up the premiership in 1988, and in 1989 the Communist party congress voted to dissolve itself. That same year Hungary opened its borders with Austria, allowing thousands of East Germans to cross to the West.
A Democratic HungaryBy 1990, a multiparty political system with free elections had been established; legislation was passed granting new political and economic reforms such as a free press, freedom of assembly, and the right to own a private business. The new premier, József Antall, a member of the conservative Hungarian Democratic Forum who was elected in 1990, vowed to continue the drive toward a free-market economy. The Soviet military presence in Hungary ended in the summer of 1991 with the departure of the final Soviet troops. Meanwhile, the government embarked on the privatization of Hungary's state enterprises.
Antall died in 1993 and was succeeded as prime minister by Péter Boross. Parliamentary elections in 1994 returned the Socialists (former Communists) to power. They formed a coalition government with the liberal Free Democrats, and Socialist leader Gyula Horn became prime minister. Árpád Göncz was elected president of Hungary in 1990 and reelected in 1995.
In 1998, Viktor Orbán of the conservative Hungarian Civic party became prime minister as head of a coalition government. Hungary became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999. Ference Mádl succeeded Göncz as president in Aug., 2000. A 2001 law giving ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries (but not worldwide) social and economic rights in Hungary was criticized by Romania and Slovakia as an unacceptable extraterritorial exercise of power. The following year, negotiations with Romania extended the rights to all Romanian citizens, and in 2003 the benefits under the law were reduced. The 2002 elections brought the Socialists and the allies, the Free Democrats, back into power; former finance minister Péter Medgyessy became prime minister.
In August, 2004, Medgyssey fired several cabinet members, angering the Free Democrats and leading the Socialists to replace him. The following month Ferenc Gyurcsány, the sports minister, became prime minister. Hungary became a member of the European Union earlier in the year. A Dec., 2004, referendum on granting citizenship to ethnic Hungarians in other countries passed, but it was not legally binding because less than 25% of the Hungarian electorate voted for it. László Sólyom was elected president of Hungary in June, 2005. In Apr., 2006, Gyurcsány's Socialist-led coalition won a majority of seats in the parliamentary elections, marking the first time a government had won a second consecutive term in office since the establishment of free elections in 1990.
In September, however, the prime minister suffered a setback when a recording of a May, 2006, Socialist party meeting was leaked and he was heard criticizing the government's past performance and saying that the party had lied to win the 2006 election. The tape sparked opposition demonstrations and riots, which were encouraged by the opposition Civic party, and led to calls for the government to resign. Gyurcsány apologized for not having campaigned honestly, and the coalition was trounced in local elections in early October, but he retained the support of his parliamentary coalition and the government remained in power.
In Apr., 2008, the Alliance of Free Democrats left the governing coalition, and the Socialists formed a minority government. The 2008 global financial crisis led to a sharp drop in the value of the Hungarian currency in October, forcing Hungary to seek a
Bibliography
See P. Teleki, The Evolution of Hungary (1923); D. G. Kosary, A History of Hungary (1941, repr. 1971); C. A. McCartney, A History of Hungary, 1929-1945 (1957, repr. 1962); F. A. Vali, Rift and Revolt in Hungary (1961); N. M. Nagy-Talavera, The Green Shirts and Others (1970); H. G. Heinrich, Hungary (1986); C. M. Hann, ed., Market Economy and Civil Society in Hungary (1990); P. F. Sugar, A History of Hungary (1991); C. Gati, Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt (2006); V. Sebestyen, Twelve Days: The Story of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (2006). See also bibliography under Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
Licensed from Columbia University Press
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Former monarchy, central Europe. Austria-Hungary at one time included Austria and Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, Bukovina, Transylvania, Carniola, Küstenland, Dalmatia, Croatia, Fiume, and Galicia. The so-called Dual Monarchy, formed by the Compromise of 1867, created a king of Hungary in addition to the existing Austrian emperor; though these were the same person, Hungary was granted its own parliament and considerable autonomy. Francis Joseph held both h1s from Austria-Hungary's inception until his death in 1916. Up to 1914, the monarchy maintained a precarious balance among its many minorities; that year saw the balance toppled with the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Francis Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist that precipitated World War I. With its defeat in that war and revolutions by the Czechs, Yugoslavs, and Hungarians, the monarchy collapsed in 1918.
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| Austro-Hungarian Empire |
|---|
| en: The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of St. Stephen |
de: Die im Reichsrat vertretenen Königreiche und Länder und die Länder der heiligen ungarischen Stephanskrone |
hu: A birodalmi tanácsban képviselt királyságok és országok és a magyar Szent Korona országai |
| German | 24% |
| Hungarian | 20% |
| Czech | 13% |
| Polish | 10% |
| Ruthenian | 8% |
| Romanian | 6% |
| Croat | 5% |
| Slovak | 4% |
| Serb | 4% |
| Slovene | 3% |
| Italian | 3% |
The dual monarchy was the successor to the Austrian Empire (1804–1867) on the same territory, originating in the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 between the ruling Habsburg dynasty and the Hungarians.
As a multi-national empire and great power in an era of national awakening, it found its political life dominated by disputes among the eleven principal national groups.
The Habsburg dynasty ruled as Emperors of Austria over the western and northern half of the country and as Kings of Hungary over the Kingdom of Hungary which enjoyed self-government and representation in joint affairs (principally foreign relations and defence).
The Monarchy bore the full name internationally of "The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen".
The capital of the state was Vienna. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was geographically the second largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire, and the third most populous (after both Russia and the German Empire). Today, the territory it covered has a population of about 69 million.
Names of the Empire in languages officially recognized by the Austro-Hungarian Empire:
- Austro-Ugarska
- Rakousko-Uhersko
- Österreich-Ungarn
- Osztrák–Magyar Monarchia
- Austria-Ungheria
- Austro-Vengrija
- Austro-Węgry
- Austro-Ungaria
- Австро-Магярщина
- Austro-Ugarska/Aустро-Угарска
- Rakúsko-Uhorsko
- Avstro-Ogrska
- Австро-Угорщина
Creation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 which inaugurated the Empire's dualist structure in place of the former unitary Austrian Empire (1804–67) originated at a time when Austria had declined in strength and in power — both in the Italian Peninsula (as a result of the Austro–Sardinian War of 1859) and among the states of the German Confederation (where it had been replaced by Prussia as the dominant German-speaking power following the Austro–Prussian War of 1866). Other factors in the constitutional changes included continued Hungarian dissatisfaction with rule from Vienna and increasing national consciousness on the part of other nationalities of the Austrian Empire. Hungarian dissatisfaction grew partially from Austria's suppression, with Russian support, of the Hungarian liberal revolution of 1848–49. However, dissatisfaction with Austrian rule had grown for many years within Hungary, and had many other causes.
In the effort to shore up support for the monarchy, Emperor Franz Joseph began negotiations for a compromise with the Hungarian nobility to ensure their support. In particular, Magyar leaders demanded and received the Emperor's coronation as King of Hungary, and the establishment of a separate parliament at Budapest with the powers to enact laws for the lands of the Hungarian crown (the lands of St. Stephen), which would preserve the political dominance of the Hungarian nobility.
Governmental structure
Three distinct elements ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire:
- the Hungarian government
- the "Austrian" or Cisleithanian government
- common foreign and military policy under the monarch
Hungary and Austria maintained separate parliaments, each with its own prime minister. Linking/co-ordinating the two fell to a government under a monarch, wielding power absolute in theory but limited in practice. The monarch’s common government had responsibility for the army, for the navy, for foreign policy, and for the customs union.
Within Cisleithania and Hungary certain regions, such as Galicia and Croatia enjoyed special status with their own unique governmental structures.
A common Ministerial Council ruled the common government: it comprised the three ministers for the joint responsibilities (joint finance, military, and foreign policy), the two prime ministers, some Archdukes and the monarch. Two delegations of representatives, one each from the Austrian and Hungarian parliaments, met separately and voted on the expenditures of the Common Ministerial Council, giving the two governments influence in the common administration. However, the ministers ultimately answered only to the monarch, and he had the final decision on matters of foreign and military policy.
Overlapping responsibilities between the joint ministries and the ministries of the two halves caused friction and inefficiencies. The armed forces suffered particularly from overlap. Although the unified government determined overall military direction, the Austrian and Hungarian governments each remained in charge of "the quota of recruits, legislation concerning compulsory military service, transfer and provision of the armed forces, and regulation of the civic, non-military affairs of members of the armed forces". Needless to say, each government could have a strong influence over common governmental responsibilities. Each half of the Dual Monarchy proved quite prepared to disrupt common operations to advance its own interests.
Relations over the half-century after 1867 between the two halves of the empire (in fact the Cisleithan part contained about 57% of the combined realm's population and a rather larger share of its economic resources) featured repeated disputes over shared external tariff arrangements and over the financial contribution of each government to the common treasury. Under the terms of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, an agreement, renegotiated every ten years, determined these matters. Each build-up to the renewal of the agreement saw political turmoil. The disputes between the halves of the empire culminated in the mid-1900s in a prolonged constitutional crisis—triggered by disagreement over the language of command in Hungarian army units, and deepened by the advent to power in Budapest (April 1906) of a Hungarian nationalist coalition. Provisional renewals of the common arrangements occurred in October 1907 and in November 1917 on the basis of the status quo.
Ethnic relations
Article 19 of the Austro-Hungarian constitution stated:
- All races of the empire have equal rights, and every race has an inviolable right to the preservation and use of its own nationality and language. The equality of all customary languages ("landesübliche Sprache") in school, office and public life, is recognized by the state. In those territories in which several races dwell, the public and educational institutions are to be so arranged that, without applying compulsion to learn a second country language ("Landessprache"), each of the races receives the necessary means of education in its own language.''
The implementation of this principle led to several disputes since everything depended on the decision as to which language could be regarded as landesüblich or customary. The Germans, the traditional bureaucratic, capitalist and cultural elite, demanded the recognition of their language as a customary language in every part of the empire. While Italian was regarded as an old "culture language" (Kultursprache) by German-speaking intellectuals and had always been granted equal rights as an official language of the Empire, they had particular difficulties in accepting the Slavic languages as equal to German. On one occasion Count A. Auersperg (Anastasius Grün) entered the diet of Carniola carrying what he claimed to be the whole corpus of Slovene literature under his arm to provide evidence that the Slovene language could in his view not be substituted for German as a medium of higher education.
Nevertheless the following years saw an emancipation of several languages at least in the Cisleithanian part of the Empire. In a series of laws from 1867 and onwards, the Croatian language was raised to equality with the hitherto officially dominating Italian language in Dalmatia. From 1882 there was a Slovene majority in the diet of Carniola and in the capital Laibach (Ljubljana), thereby replacing German as the dominant official language. Polish was introduced instead of German in 1869 in Galicia as the normal language of government. The Poles themselves systematically disregarded the large Ukrainian minority in the country, and Ukrainian was not granted the status of an official language.
The language disputes were most fiercely fought in Bohemia where the Czechs formed a majority and wanted to reestablish the equal status for their language. Czech was a single language of administration in Bohemia until 1627, but it was suppressed and gradually replaced with German during the process of forcible Germanization in the 17th and 18th century. German-speakers lost their majority in the Bohemian diet in 1880 and their dominating position in the cities of Prague and Pilsen (while retaining a slight numerical majority in the city of Brno (Brünn)) and found themselves in an unfamiliar minority position. The old Charles University in Prague hitherto dominated by the German-speakers was divided into a German and a Czech part in 1882.
At the same time, Magyar dominance faced challenges from the local majorities of Romanians in Transylvania and in the eastern Banat, of Slovaks in today's Slovakia, of Croats and Serbs in the crownlands of Croatia and of Dalmatia (today's Croatia), in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the provinces known as the Vojvodina (today's northern Serbia). The Romanians and the Serbs also looked to union with their fellow-nationalists in the newly-founded states of Romania (1859–78) and Serbia.
Though Hungary's leaders showed on the whole less willingness than their Austrian counterparts to share power with their subject minorities, they granted a large measure of autonomy to the kingdom of Croatia in 1868, paralleling to some extent their own accommodation within the Empire the previous year. Croatian government, in spite of nominal autonomy, was in fact an economic and administrative arm of Hungary, which the Croatians resented.
Language was one of the most contentious questions in Austro-Hungarian politics. All governments faced difficult and divisive hurdles in sorting out the languages of government and of instruction. Minorities wanted to ensure the widest possibility for education in their own language as well as in the "dominant" languages of Hungarian and German. On one notable occasion, that of the so-called "Ordinance of April 5, 1897", the Austrian Prime Minister Kasimir Felix Graf Badeni gave Czech equal standing with German in the internal government of Bohemia, leading to a crisis because of nationalist German agitation throughout the Empire. In the end Badeni was dismissed.
The Hungarian minority act from 1868 gave the minorities (Slovaks, Romanians, Serbs etc.) individual (and not also community) rights to use their language in offices, schools (although in practice often only in those founded by them and not by the state), at courts and in municipalities (if 20% of the deputies demanded it). Although already the act XVII from 1879 prescribed the teaching of the Hungarian language as a school subject, in 1900 there were still 1340 schools among the 3343 non-Hungarians where the teaching of the Hungarian (the official language of the state) was unsuccessful. From Juny 1907 (lex Apponyi) all the public and private schools in Hungary were obliged to teach the Hungarian language in such an extent that after the fourth class the pupils could express them fluently in Hungarian (which was rather impossible by the standards of the time and led to the closing of several minority, mostly Slovak schools, although it was far less violent than the politics of the new-founded states and their strong anti-Hungarian sentiment which was expressed in the banning of Hungarian in schools, municipalities and offices).
It was not rare for the two kingdoms to divide spheres of influence. According to Misha Glenny (The Balkans, 1804–1999), the Austrians responded to Hungarian badgering of Czechs by supporting the Croatian national movement in Zagreb.
Emperor Franz Joseph himself was very well aware that he reigned in a multi-ethnic country and spoke fluent German, Hungarian, Czech, and, to some degree, also Polish and Italian.
The situation of Jews in the kingdom, who numbered about 2 million in 1914, was ambiguous. Antisemitic parties and movements existed, but Vienna did not initiate pogroms or implement official antisemitic policies. This was mainly out of fear that such ethnic violence could ignite other ethnic minorities and result in violence that could spin out of control. The majority of Jews lived in small towns of Galicia and rural areas in Hungary, Bohemia, although there were large communities in Vienna, Budapest (called Judapest by Karl Lueger), Prague and other large cities.
Common languages in Cisleithania
| Land | Most common language | Other languages (more than 2%) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bohemia | 63.2% | Czech | 36.8% | German | ||||
| Dalmatia | 96.2% | Croatian | 2.8% | Italian | ||||
| Galicia | 58.6% | Polish | 40.2% | Ukrainian | ||||
| Lower Austria | 95.9% | German | 3.8% | Czech | ||||
| Upper Austria | 99.7% | German | ||||||
| Bucovina | 38.4% | Ukrainian | 34.4% | Romanian | 21.2% | German | 4.6% | Polish |
| Carinthia | 78.6% | German | 21,2% | Slovene | ||||
| Carniola | 94.4% | Slovene | 5.4% | German | ||||
| Salzburg | 99.7% | German | ||||||
| Silesia | 43.9% | German | 31.7% | Polish | 24.3% | Czech | ||
| Styria | 70.5% | German | 29.4% | Slovene | ||||
| Moravia | 71.8% | Czech | 27.6% | German | ||||
| Tyrol | 57.3% | German | 42.1% | Italian | ||||
| Küstenland | 37.3% | Slovene | 34.5% | Italian | 24.4% | Croatian | 2.5% | German |
| Vorarlberg | 95.4% | German | 4.4% | Italian | ||||
Economy
The Austro-Hungarian economy changed dramatically during the existence of the Dual Monarchy. Technological change accelerated industrialization and urbanization. The capitalist way of production spread throughout the empire during its fifty-year existence replacing medieval institutions. Economic growth centred around Vienna, the Austrian lands (areas of modern Austria), the Alpine region, and the Bohemian lands. In the later years of the nineteenth century, rapid economic growth spread to the central Hungarian plain and to the Carpathian lands. As a result, wide disparities of development existed within the empire. In general, the western areas became more developed than the eastern. By the early 20th century, most of the empire had started to experience rapid economic growth. The GNP per capita grew roughly 1.45% per year from 1870 to 1913. That level of growth compared very favourably to that of other European nations such as Britain (1.00%), France (1.06%), and Germany (1.51%). However, the economy as a whole still lagged considerably behind the economies of other powers, as sustained modernization had begun much later. Britain had a GNP per capita almost 70% larger, while Germany's stood almost 100% higher. Nonetheless, these large discrepancies hid different levels of development within the empire.
Rail transport expanded rapidly in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Its predecessor state, the Habsburg Empire, had built a substantial core of railways in the west, originating from Vienna, by 1841. At that point, the government realized the military possibilities of rail and began to invest heavily in construction. Bratislava, Budapest, Prague, Kraków, Graz, Laibach (Ljubljana), and Venice became linked to the main network. By 1854, the empire had almost 2000 kilometres of track, about 60 to 70% of it in state hands. The government then began to sell off large portions of track to private investors to recoup some of its investments and because of the financial strains of the 1848 Revolution and of the Crimean War.
From 1854 to 1879, private interests conducted almost all rail construction. What would become Cisleithania gained 7,952 track kilometres, and Hungary built 5,839 track kilometres. During this time, many new areas joined the railway system and the existing rail networks gained connections and interconnections. This period marked the beginning of widespread rail transportation in Austria–Hungary, and also the integration of transportation systems in the area. Railways allowed the empire to integrate its economy far more than previously possible, when transportation depended on rivers.
After 1879, the Austro-Hungarian government slowly began to re-nationalize the rail network, largely because of the sluggish pace of development during the worldwide depression of the 1870s. Between 1879 and 1900, more than 25,000 km of railways were built in Cisleithania and Hungary. Most of this constituted "filling in" of the existing network, although some areas, primarily in the far east, gained rail connections for the first time. The railroad reduced transportation costs throughout the empire, opening new markets for products from other lands of the Dual Monarchy. See Imperial Austrian State Railways for details.
Military
Foreign policy
The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, in creating a semi-independent Hungary, entailed the rise of an assertive Magyar identity within the Empire. The Slav minorities found themselves at the mercy of Magyar nationalism, far less liberal in many ways than the policy previously followed by Vienna. After the agreement of 1867 the Imperial foreign minister was obliged to take account of the views on the minister-president of Hungary; besides Germanisation the Hungarians were most concerned about the threat of Pan Slavism. Here Russia was perceived as the immediate threat, with Serbia as its "Trojan Horse" in the Balkans. No individual represented this view more clearly than Count Gyula Andrássy Jr., son of first minister-president of Hungary and then himself the Imperial foreign minister.It is also important to remember that, by the late 1860s, Austrian ambitions in both Italy and Germany had been choked off by the rise of new national powers. Only the Balkans were left as a field for potential expansion. The whole Empire was thus drawn into a new style of diplomatic brinkmanship, first conceived of by Andrássy, centering on the province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a predominantly Slav area still under the control of the Ottoman Empire. It was a dangerous game to play in a dangerous place. A road was thus mapped out, with a terminus at Sarajevo in 1914.
On the heels of the Great Balkan Crisis, Austro-Hungarian forces occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina in August 1878; this was sanctioned by the Treaty of Berlin. In order to counter Russia's interests in the Balkans, an alliance was concluded with Germany in October 1879. The empire eventually annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in October 1908 as a common holding under the control of the finance ministry, rather than attaching it to either territorial government. This led some in Vienna to contemplate combining Bosnia and Herzegovina (originally Bosnien und Hercegowina) with Croatia to form a third component of the Empire, uniting its southern Slav regions under the domination of Croatians.
The Great War
The deaths of Franz Joseph's brother, Maximilian (1867), and only son, Rudolf, made the Emperor's nephew, Franz Ferdinand, heir to the crown. On June 28 1914, he visited the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, where Bosnian Serb militants of the nationalist group Mlada Bosna, supplied by the Serbian militant group Black Hand, ambushed Franz Ferdinand's convoy and assassinated him. There were a few members of the Black Hand in Sarajevo that day. Before Franz was shot, somebody had already tried killing him and his wife. The member of the Black Hand threw a grenade into the vehicle but Franz managed to push it away. It injured some people nearby and Franz made sure they were seen to before the convoy could carry on. Gavrilo Princip was the man who shot and killed Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. The convoy took a wrong turning into a street where Gavrilo Princip was. He took out a pistol from his pocket and shot Franz and his wife.
The empire's military spending had not even doubled since the 1878 Congress of Berlin, while German spending had risen fivefold, and British, Russian and French threefold. The empire had previously lost ethnically-Italian areas to Piedmont due to nationalist movements sweeping through Italy, and many Austro-Hungarians perceived the threat of losing the southern territories inhabited by Slavs to Serbia as imminent. Serbia had recently gained a significant amount of territory in the Second Balkan War of 1913, causing much distress in government circles in Vienna and Budapest. Some members of the government, such as Conrad von Hötzendorf, had wanted to confront the resurgent Serbian nation for some years. The leadership of Austria–Hungary, especially Count Leopold von Berchtold, backed by its ally Germany, decided to confront Serbia militarily before it could incite a revolt; using the assassination as an excuse, they presented a list of ten demands called the July Ultimatum, expecting Serbia would never accept. When Serbia accepted nine of the ten demands but only partially accepted the remaining one, Austria–Hungary declared war.
Over the course of July and August 1914, these events caused the start of World War I, as Russia mobilized in support of Serbia, setting off a series of counter-mobilizations. Italy initially remained neutral, although it had an alliance with Austria–Hungary. In 1915, it switched to the side of the Entente powers, hoping to gain territory from its former ally.
General Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf was the Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff during the war. Under his command, Austro-Hungarian troops were involved in much of the fighting in the Great War.
At the start of the war, the army was divided in two; the smaller part attacked Serbia while the larger part fought against the massive Russian army. The 1914 invasion of Serbia was a disaster. By the end of the year, the Austro-Hungarian Army had taken no territory and had lost 227,000 men (out of a total force of 450,000 men (see Serbian Campaign (World War I)).
On the Eastern front, things started out equally badly. The Austro-Hungarian Army was defeated at the Battle of Lemberg and the mighty fort city of Przemysl was besieged and fell in March 1915.
In May 1915, Italy joined the Allies and attacked Austria–Hungary. The bloody but indecisive fighting on the Italian front would last for the next three and a half years. It was only this front that the Austrians proved effective in war, managing to hold back the numerically superior Italian armies in the Alps.
In the summer, the Austro-Hungarian Army, working under a unified command with the Germans, participated in the successful Gorlice–Tarnow Offensive. Later in 1915, the Austro-Hungarian Army, in conjunction with the German and Bulgarian armies, conquered Serbia.
In 1916, the Russians focused their attacks on the Austro-Hungarian army in the Brusilov Offensive, recognizing the numerical inferiority of the Austro-Hungarian Army. The Austrian armies took massive losses (losing about 1 million men) and never recovered. The huge losses of men and material inflicted on the Russians during the offensive contributed greatly to their communist revolution of 1917. The Austro-Hungarian war effort became more and more subordinate to the direction of German planners, as it did with the standard soldiers. The Austrians saw the German army positively, but by 1916 the general belief in Germany was that they were "shackled to a corpse." Supply shortages, low morale, and the high casualty rate seriously affected the operational abilities of the army, as well as the fact the army was of multiple ethnicity, with different races, languages, and customs.
The last two successes for the Austrians, the Conquest of Romania and the Caporetto Offensive, were German-assisted operations. Due to the fact that the empire had become more and more dependent on German assistance, the majority of its people, not of Hungarian or Austrian ethnicity, became aware of the empire's destabilization.
Dissolution of the Empire in 1918
As it became apparent that the Allied powers of the British Empire, France, Italy and the United States would win World War I, nationalist movements which had previously been calling for a greater degree of autonomy for various areas, started pressing for full independence.
As one of his Fourteen Points, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson demanded that the nationalities of the empire have "freest opportunity to autonomous development." In response, Karl I agreed to reconvene the Imperial parliament and allow for the creation of a confederation with each national group exercising self-governance. However, the latter no longer trusted Vienna, and were now dead set on independence.
On October 14 1918 Foreign Minister Baron István Burián von Rajecz asked for an armistice based on the Fourteen Points. In an apparent attempt to demonstrate good faith, Karl I issued a proclamation two days later, transforming Austria into a federal union of four components—German, Czech, South Slav and Ukrainian. The Poles were granted full independence with the purpose of joining their ethnic brethren in Russia and Germany in a Polish state, and Trieste was to receive special status.
It was all for naught; four days later, on October 18, Secretary of State Robert Lansing replied that the Allies were now committed to the causes of the Czechs, Slovaks and South Slavs. Therefore, Lansing said, autonomy was no longer enough, and Washington could not deal on the basis of the Fourteen Points anymore. In fact, a Czechoslovak provisional government had joined the Allies on October 14, and the leaders of the South Slav community had already declared in favor of uniting with Serbia in a large South Slav state.
The Lansing note was, in effect, the death certificate for Austria–Hungary. National councils formed in the empire's provinces had already begun acting more or less as provisional governments of independent countries. With defeat in the war imminent, Czechoslovakia declared independence on October 28, and on October 29, the southern Slav areas declared the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. The Hungarian government terminated the personal union with Austria on October 31, officially dissolving the Austro-Hungarian state. There was now nothing left of the Habsburg realm except its Alpine and Danubian provinces.
Facing an impossible situation, the last Habsburg emperor-king, Karl I (styled Károly IV in Hungary), issued a statement on November 11 in which he renounced the right to participate in Austrian affairs of state. On November 13, he issued a similar proclamation for Hungary. However, he did not abdicate, in the event the people of either state recalled him.
In Austria and Hungary, separate republics were declared at the end of the war in November. The Treaty of Saint Germain (between the victors of World War I and Austria) and the Treaty of Trianon (between the victors and Hungary) regulated the new borders of Austria and Hungary.
A monarchist revival in Hungary after a short-lived communist government after the Romanian invasion of 1919 resulted in the restoration of the Hungarian monarchy on March 1920, with royal powers entrusted to a regent, the naval hero Admiral Miklós Horthy. Ill-prepared attempts by Karl to regain the throne in Budapest (March, October 1921) collapsed when the initially wavering Horthy, who had received threats of intervention from the Allied powers and neighboring countries, refused his cooperation. Subsequently, the British took custody of Karl and removed him and his family to the Portuguese island of Madeira, where he died the following year.
New states
The following successor states were formed (entirely or in part) from the former Habsburg lands:
- Austria
- Hungary
- Czechoslovakia
- State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (joined with the Kingdom of Serbia on 1 December 1918 to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later Yugoslavia)
- Poland
Some Austro-Hungarian lands were also ceded to Romania, Ukraine and Italy. Liechtenstein, which had formerly looked to Vienna for protection, formed a customs and defence union with Switzerland, and adopted the Swiss currency instead of the Austrian. In April 1919 Vorarlberg, the westernmost province of Austria, voted by a large majority to join Switzerland; however both the Swiss and the Allies disregarded this result.
Territorial legacy
| Kingdoms and countries of Austria–Hungary: Cisleithania: 1. Bohemia, 2. Bukovina, 3. Carinthia, 4. Carniola, 5. Dalmatia, 6. Galicia, 7. Küstenland, 8. Lower Austria, 9. Moravia, 10. Salzburg, 11. Silesia, 12. Styria, 13. Tyrol, 14. Upper Austria, 15. Vorarlberg; Transleithania: 16. Kingdom of Hungary, 17. Croatia-Slavonia; Austrian-Hungarian Condominium: 18. Bosnia and Herzegovina |
The following present-day countries and parts of countries were located within the boundaries of Austria–Hungary when the empire was dissolved:
Empire of Austria (Cisleithania)
- Austria (with the exception of Burgenland)
- Czech Republic (with the exception of Hlučínsko area)
- Slovenia (with the exception of Prekmurje)
- Italy (autonomous regions of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and small portions of Friuli-Venezia Giulia)
- Croatia (Dalmatia, Istria)
- Poland (voivodeships of Lesser Poland, Subcarpathia, southernmost part of Silesia (Bielsko and Cieszyn)
- Ukraine (oblasts of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Ternopil, and most of the oblast of Chernivtsi)
- Romania (county of Suceava)
- Montenegro (bay of Boka Kotorska, the coast and the immediate hinterland around cities of Budva, Petrovac and Sutomore)
Kingdom of Hungary (Transleithania)
- Hungary
- Slovakia
- Austria (Burgenland)
- Slovenia (Prekmurje)
- Croatia (Slavonia, Central Croatia, southern parts of the pre-1918 Baranya and Zala counties – today's Croatian part of Baranja and Međimurje county)
- Ukraine (oblast of Zakarpattia)
- Romania (region of Transylvania and Partium)
- Serbia (autonomous province of Vojvodina and parts of the present-day Belgrade metropolitan region north of the Sava River)
- Bosnia and Herzegovina (the villages of Zavalje, Mali skočaj and Veliki skočaj including the immediate surrounding area western of the city of Bihać)
Austrian-Hungarian Condominium
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Montenegro (Sutorina – western part of the Municipality of Herceg-Novi between present borders with Croatia (SW) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (NW), Adriatic coast (E) and the township of Igalo (NE))
- Raška region/Sandzak of Serbia and Montenegro under effective Austro-Hungarian occupation while formally part of the Ottoman Empire until 1912
Other parts of Europe had been part of the Habsburg monarchy once but left it even before its dissolution in 1918. Prominent examples are the regions of Lombardia and Veneto in Italy, Silesia in Poland, most of Belgium and Serbia, and parts of northern Switzerland and south-western Germany.
Flags and heraldry
Flags
Although Austria–Hungary did not have a common national flag, a common naval ensign and a common civil ensign (the latter was introduced in 1869) did exist.The colours of the House of Habsburg were used as flag of the Austrian part. The Hungarian part used a red-white-green Tricolour defaced with the Hungarian coat of arms.
Coat of arms
The double-headed eagle of the Habsburg-Lorrain dynasty was used as coat of arms of the common institutions of Austria–Hungary between 1867 and 1915. In 1915 a new one was introduced, which combined the coat of arms of the two parts of the empire and that of the dynasty.Additionally each of the two parts of Austria–Hungary had their own coat of arms.
See also
- Czech lands: 1867-1918
- Aftermath of World War I
- Austrian nobility
- Ethnic composition of Austria-Hungary
- Habsburg Monarchy
- Former countries in Europe after 1815
- List of extinct states
- Banat Republic
- Corporative federalism, a form of administration adopted by the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
- Baron Ladislaus Hengelmüller von Hengervár, Austro-Hungarian Ambassador to the United States from 1894–1913
References
- Jászi, Oszkár The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.
- Macartney, Carlile Aylmer The Habsburg Empire, 1790–1918, New York, Macmillan 1969.
- Mark Cornwall (ed.) The Last Years of Austria–Hungary in Exeter Studies in History. University of Exeter Press, Exeter. 2002. ISBN 0-85989-563-7
- Sked Alan The Decline And Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815–1918, London: Longman, 1989.
- Taylor, A.J.P. The Habsburg monarchy, 1809–1918 : a history of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary, London: Penguin Books in assoc. with Hamish Hamilton, 1964, 1948
- Geographischer Atlas zur Vaterlandskunde an der österreichischen Mittelschulen. (ed.: Rudolf Rothaug), K. u. k. Hof-Kartographische Anstalt G. Freytag & Berndt, Vienna, 1911.
External links
- Habsburg Empire Austrian line
- Microsoft Encarta: The height of the dual monarchy
- The Austro-Hungarian Military
- Heraldry of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
- Austria–Hungary – extensive list of heads of state, ministers, and ambassadors
- History of Austro-Hungarian currency
- Austria-Hungary, Dual Monarchy
- The Austro-Hungarian Army in the Italian Dolomites (in italian)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Friday October 10, 2008 at 08:49:30 PDT (GMT -0700)
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