The empire.According to itypeusa, the French Revolution was flaring up and, although in 1795 the Austria with the third partition of Poland achieved a new enlargement, from 1792 to 1815 all the forces of the country were directed against the revolutionary and then Napoleonic tide: the Netherlands and Lombardy were lost with the Treaty of Campoformio of 1797 (obtaining however great part of the territory of the Venetian Republic) and the left bank of the Rhine with the Peace of Lunéville (1801), mutilated after Austerlitz (1805) of Veneto, Istria and Dalmatia, the Austria, which in 1804 had become the empire of Austria, with the defeat of Wagram and the Peace of Vienna (1809) was at the mercy of Napoleon: Maria Luisa, daughter of Francesco (I as emperor of Austria), was given to him in marriage (1810) and the Austrian troops they had to participate in the Russian campaign. Having regained its autonomy with the disaster of the expedition, after having declared war on Napoleon again in 1813, the Austria under the leadership of K. von Metternich reached the apogee of power in the Congress of Vienna (1814-15): the structure of the Austrian empire was reconstituted (Milan and Veneto as the Lombard-Venetian Kingdom, Tuscany as a second birthright, Parma and Piacenza as third-born, Galicia, the Illyrian provinces, Tyrol and Salzburg), ensured supremacy in Italy and, thanks to the presidency of the Bundestag in Frankfurt, in Germany. After 1815 the. he practiced a rigid policy of repression of revolutionary and independence attempts. Metternich’s politics, however, failed to settle the internal national disagreements, which fully manifested themselves in 1848, forcing Ferdinand I, who ascended the throne in 1815, to abdicate in favor of his nephew Francesco Giuseppe. Having restored order and reaffirmed power over all regions, the emperor had to mitigate the reactionary attitude after the loss of Lombardy, the disappearance of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the duchies of Modena and Parma (1859), trying to reorganize the empire on a constitutional basis. With the war of 1866 the. it was definitively excluded from Germany and lost the Veneto. Towards Hungary there was nothing left but the path of compromise of 1867, with the constitution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. A clear conversion also took place on the level of international politics, where the Austria he made the secret treaty of alliance with Germany (1879), the alliance of the three emperors with Germany and Russia (1881) and the Triple alliance with Germany and Italy (1882). Inside, meanwhile, the Austro-Hungarian dualism aroused new demands on the part of the Slavs as well. The proclamation of the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (1908) provoked a strong agitation in Serbia which, aggravated by the subsequent Balkan wars, resulted in the assassination of Archduke Francesco Ferdinando in Sarajevo (1914). The Austrian military circles believed that the opportunity had come to crush Serbia and, with the ultimatum of 23 July 1914, they initiated the First World War, during which the monarchy revealed all its internal weakness. When Francesco Giuseppe died (1916), his successor Charles I found himself the liquidator of a bankruptcy inheritance. In 1918 the Prague National Committee proclaimed Czechoslovakian independence, the detachment of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes took place, and a Polish republican government was formed. Destroyed the army in the battle of Vittorio Veneto, Charles I abandoned the power and the National Assembly of the Austria German proclaimed the Republic, followed by Hungary.
From the end of the empire to today. The Constituent Assembly (1919) voted a federal constitution with a president, a national council and a federal council and with wide autonomy for the 9 Länder. Austria was in a disastrous economic situation, while the disagreement between Vienna and the provinces that wished to join Germany intensified. After the socialist uprising in Vienna (July 15, 1927), a constitutional reform in an authoritarian and centralizing sense was implemented with the government of H. Schober. The question of annexation to Germany returned to the fore with the advent of the National Socialist regime in this country (1933). After the killing of Chancellor E. Dollfuss by a group of National Socialists and with the birth of the Rome-Berlin axis, the situation worsened, until in 1938 the German army forcibly proceeded to annexation (➔ Anschluss). Until 1945 the history of the Austria remained linked to that of Germany. After the Second World War, liberated by the allied troops (1945), it was divided into four occupation zones and Vienna subjected to a quadripartite administration until 1955. After a provisional government a coalition was formed between the People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Socialist Party (SPÖ). The State Treaty, concluded in May 1955 between the Austria, on the one hand, and the USSR, Great Britain, France and the USA, on the other, recognized the full independence of the Austria within the borders of 1938, prohibiting its reunification with Germany and the restoration of the Habsburgs, and declaring it neutral, a clause later inserted in the Constitution. The coalition between popular and socialists continued for over 20 years, guaranteeing the Austria high internal stability and the consolidation of its new international position. Then, after an ÖVP government, a long phase of socialist hegemony began (legislative elections of 1971, 1975 and 1979, presidential elections of 1974 and 1980). In 1983 the SPÖ lost an absolute majority of votes and a coalition cabinet was formed between socialists and liberals. After the early elections of 1986, which saw a notable success of the liberals and the Greens, bearers of the new environmental issues, the SPÖ and the ÖVP revived a coalition government that conducted a policy of containment of public spending and partial privatizations. Meanwhile, the growth of xenophobic tendencies resulting from the influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe gave strength to far-right formations, in particular J. Haider’s Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (1950-2008). The referendum accession to the European Union and the signing of the program Partnership for peace NATO (1995) redefined Austrian foreign policy, but created discontent with the SPÖ-ÖVP coalition, and in the first European elections (1996) Haider won 27.6% of the votes. With the 1999 elections, the FPÖ became the second largest party in the country and partner of the ÖVP, but the disputed ideological characteristics of Haider’s movement (with a racist and anti-Semitic component) and its influence on the resurgence of xenophobic violence with a Nazi background that the constitution of the new government would provoke waves of protest in the country and worried reactions in the international field (diplomatic sanctions from Europe). In 2003 the popular renewed the government alliance with the FPÖ, in a climate of internal and external tensions. In 2005, a split occurred in the FPÖ with Haider taking over the leadership of a new political group, the Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ). In the 2006 elections, the SPÖ was the most voted party but, lacking an absolute majority, it had to form a “grand coalition” with the popular. In the early elections of 2008, however, both SPÖ and ÖVP were heavily downsized, to the advantage of the BZÖ and the Freiheitliche Partei of H.-C. Strache.
