Summary of Austria's early history

Rome won what are now Austrian territories from Celtic tribes around 15 BCE. In 788 this was incorporated into Charlemagne's empire. The name Austria - (Ostarrich) first appeared in a 10th century document and the Latin word Austria in one from the 12th. It was mentioned as an eastern Holy Roman Empire defense line against the Hungarians and other eastern "barbarians" of the day.

By 1300 the territory around Vienna had been acquired by the Habsburg family, who added vast territories to their growing realm over the next few hundred years as they defeated, but mainly intermarried with rivals for shares of the dying Holy Roman Empire with a succession of rivals. Austria and Habsburg were all but synonymous for almost seven centuries.

It was a bitty and disorganized empire - "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire" as the historian Gibbon wrote, and the Habsburgs were later locked in a long struggle for dominance with the Ottoman Empire, whose armies twice besieged Vienna.

After Martin Luther's Reformation, the Habsburgs became ruthless leaders of Catholicism's counter-offensive, suppressing Protestantism and creating a stodgy, ritualistic bureaucratized form of Roman Catholicism.

Austrian dominance of Germany was undermined by Prussia and other regional rivals in the 18th century and ended in 1866. In 1806 Napoleon scrapped the Holy Roman Empire, and the Habsburgs renamed themselves Emperors of Austria

In 1815 the Conference of Vienna ratified Austrian control of their large empire in the southeast comprising Germans, Hungarians, Slavs and Italians. The Habsburgs had cleverly ceded the German lands and consolidated their non-German possessions. They pushed back the Ottomans and helped Prussia and Russia dissect Poland. The Austro-Hungarian empire was established in 1867, giving autonomy to Hungary. Peace reigned for nearly 50 years until the collapsing dominoes of European alliances escalated into World War I.

By 1900, Vienna was a multi-ethnic capital and half of its population were non-German speakers. Austrian Jews, were a the leading edge of intellectual and cultural life. From their midst came such names as Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, and Sigmund Freud. But multi-ethnic Vienna had, as well as its cultural pride, the seeds of envy and self-destruction. It also produced a backlash, particularly with the German-speaking lower middle classes, among whom Anti-Semitism and xenophobia seethed. Into this milieu arrived first Adolf Hitler, and during the rise of Nazism, its philosophy of hate and German superiority was enthusiastically embraced by the parents of Joerg Haider.

Not a good century