Emperor of Austria

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Emperor of Austria
Details
Style His Imperial Majesty
First monarch Francis I
Last monarch Charles I
Formation 11 August 1804
Abolition 11 November 1918
Residence Palaces in Vienna:
•! Hofburg
•! Schönbrunn
Appointer Hereditary
Pretender(s) Karl von Habsburg

Imperial Crown of Austria

The Emperor of Austria (German: Kaiser von Österreich) was a hereditary
imperial title and position proclaimed in 1804 by Holy Roman Emperor
Francis II, a member of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, and continually
held by him and his heirs until Charles I relinquished power in 1918. The
emperors retained the title of Archduke of Austria. The wives of the
emperors bore the title of empress, while other members of the family bore
the title archduke or archduchess.

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References
Predecessors[edit]
Members of the House of Austria, the Habsburg dynasty, had for centuries
been elected to be Holy Roman Emperors and mostly resided in Vienna.
Thus the term "Austrian emperor" may occur in texts dealing with the time
before 1804, when no Austrian Empire existed. In these cases the word
Austria means the composite monarchy ruled by the dynasty, not the
country. A special case was Maria Theresa; she bore the imperial title as
the consort of Francis I (r. 1745–1765), but she herself was the monarch of
the Austrian Hereditary Lands including Bohemia and Hungary.
The Emperor[edit]
In the face of aggressions by Napoleon I, who had been proclaimed
"Emperor of the French" (French: Empereur des Français), by the French
constitution on 18 May 1804, Francis II feared for the future of the Holy
Roman Empire and wished to maintain his and his family's Imperial status
in the event that the Holy Roman Empire should be dissolved. Therefore,
on 11 August 1804 he created the new title of "Emperor of Austria" for
himself and his successors as heads of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine.[1]
For two years, Francis carried two imperial titles: being Holy Roman
Emperor Francis II and "by the Grace of God" (Von Gottes Gnaden)
Emperor Francis I of Austria.
In 1805, an Austrian-led army suffered a humiliating defeat at the Battle of
Austerlitz and the victorious Napoleon proceeded to dismantle the old Reich
(which at this time was only a powerless confederation) by motivating or
pressuring several German princes to enter the separate Confederation of
the Rhine with their lands in July. This led Francis II/I on 6 August 1806 to
declare the Reich dissolved and to lay down the Imperial Crown created in
the second half of the 10th century (today displayed at the Treasury of
Hofburg Palace in Vienna).[2]
From 1806 onwards, Francis was Emperor of Austria only. He had three
successors—Ferdinand I, Francis Joseph I and Charles I—before the
Empire broke apart in 1918. A coronation ceremony was never established;
the heir to the throne became emperor the moment his predecessor died or
abdicated. The symbol of the Austrian Emperor was the dynasty's private
crown dating back to Rudolf II (r. 1576–1612), (called Rudolfinische
Hauskrone by the experts), which should convey the dignity and myth of the
Habsburgs.
Titles of the Emperor[edit]
The Austrian Emperors had an extensive list of titles and claims that
reflected the geographic expanse and diversity of the lands ruled by the
Austrian Habsburgs. The grand title of the Emperor of Austria had been
changed several times: by a patent of 1 August 1804, by a court office
decree from 22 August 1836, by an Imperial court ministry decree of 6
January 1867 and finally by a letter of 12 December 1867. Shorter versions
were recommended for official documents and international treaties:
"Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia etc. and Apostolic King of Hungary",
"Emperor of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary", "His Majesty the
Emperor and King" and "His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty".
The full list (after the loss of the Lombardy in 1859 and Venetia in 1866):
Emperor of Austria,
Apostolic King of Hungary,
King of Bohemia, of Dalmatia, of Croatia, of Slavonia, of Galicia, of
Lodomeria, and of Illyria,
King of Jerusalem, and so forth,
Archduke of Austria,
Grand Duke of Tuscany and of Cracow,
Duke of Lorraine, of Salzburg, of Styria, of Carinthia, of Carniola and of the
Bukovina,
Grand Prince of Transylvania,
Margrave in Moravia,
Duke of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Modena, Parma, Piacenza and
Guastalla, of Auschwitz and Zator, of Teschen, Friuli, Ragusa and Zara,
Princely Count of Habsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, Gorizia and Gradisca,
Prince of Trent and Brixen,
Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia and in Istria,
Count of Hohenems, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Sonnenberg, and so forth,
Lord of Trieste, of Cattaro and of the Windic March,
Grand Voivode of the Voivodship of Serbia, and so forth,
Sovereign of the Order of the Golden Fleece.
House and court[edit]
The function of the emperor was styled like a secular papacy. Therefore, it
was the overall goal to demonstrate the all-highest (allerhöchste) majesty
and dignity of the monarch to his subjects and to other monarchs and
countries. His and his entourage's life was governed by very strict rules all
the time.
The Imperial House[edit]
See also: House of Habsburg-Lorraine
The members of the House of Habsburg were ranked as princes and
princesses of the blood imperial, with the honorary title of Erzherzog or
Erzherzogin (archduke or archduchess). Their permanent address and their
travels abroad had to be agreed to by the Emperor.
Whoever wanted to marry an archduke or archduchess of the Habsburg
dynasty had to originate from a ruling or formerly ruling house, as was
stipulated by the Familienstatut des Allerhöchsten Herrscherhauses, the
Family Statute of the Highest Monarch's House, issued by Ferdinand I in
1839. Otherwise the marriage would be one "to the left hand", called a
morganatic marriage, excluding the offspring of the couple from any right
the House of Habsburg possessed. (The problems of such a situation were
encountered when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive
to the throne, dared to marry a "simple" countess in 1900.)
To manage the political implications of the Imperial house after 1867 the
Emperor and King appointed the k.u.k. Minister des kaiserlichen und
königlichen Hauses und des Äußeren (the I.& R. Minister of the Imperial
and Royal House and of the Exterior), one of the three ministers common to
Austria and Hungary. Under Francis I, Klemens Wenzel had covered these
and many other agenda, bearing the title Haus-, Hof- und Staatskanzler
(Chancellor of the House, the Court and the State).
The Imperial Court[edit]

Crown Jewels of Austria

The Emperor's household, his personal officers and the premises where
they worked were called Hof ("court"). The four highest officials managing
the Imperial Court were the Grand Master (Obersthofmeister), the Grand
Marshal (Obersthofmarschall), the Grand Chamberlain (Oberstkämmerer)
and the Master of the Stables (Oberststallmeister), who were drawn from
among the highest noblemen of the empire.[3][4] Whoever sought an
audience with the Emperor himself had to apply at the Office of the Grand
Master (Obersthofmeisteramt). Francis I used to wear civilian clothes of the
Biedermeier era, while Francis Joseph I and Charles I mostly were seen in
the uniform of an Austrian field marshal to underline the importance of the
army to the throne. Francis Joseph I expected soldiers to appear in uniform
at his court and civilians to appear in tails. He never shook hands with
visitors; in letters he never addressed his subjects as "Sir" or "Mr." (Herr).
The Emperor's court managed the following institutions:
•! the Imperial Palace in Vienna (Hofburg); each of the four Emperors of
Austria chose his living and working rooms in another part of this
huge palace;
•! the Imperial Treasury at Hofburg, where the Habsburgs' crown insignia
were kept;
•! the Imperial Court Library, today Austrian National Library
•! Imperial residences outside Vienna, like Schönbrunn Palace (the area
was included into the Vienna city area in 1892) and Laxenburg
Palace;
•! the court's collection of carriages (today Wagenburg at Schönbrunn
Palace Gardens);
•! the I.R. Hofburgtheater and the I.R. Hofoperntheater;
•! the Imperial Crypt below the Capuchin Church and Monastery in Vienna,
where three of the four Emperors of Austria have been buried
(Charles I was buried on Madeira, his last exile).
Austrian Empire[edit]
The Austrian Empire (Kaisertum Österreich) from 1804 to 1867 consisted of
the Habsburg lands as a whole, leaving each land its special definition as
kingdom (e.g., Bohemia, Hungary), archduchy (Lower and Upper Austria),
duchy (e.g., Carniola) or princely county (e.g., Tyrol).[5] Kaisertum might
literally be translated as "emperordom" on analogy with "kingdom" or
"emperor-ship"; the term denotes specifically "the territory ruled by an
emperor". Austria proper (as opposed to the complex of Habsburg lands as
a whole) had been an Archduchy since the 15th century, and most of the
other territories of the Empire had their own institutions and territorial
history, although there were some attempts at centralization, especially
between 1848 and 1859.
In 1866, Austria lost the war with Prussia and Italy. Francis Joseph I was
urged to solve the internal problems of his realm and was well-advised to
provide a substantial rise to the Hungarian nobility, which had stayed in
passive resistance to him after the crushed Hungarian revolution of 1848
and 1849. In the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 (Ausgleich),
Hungary was recognized as a self-governing kingdom outside of the
Austrian Empire. The Habsburg lands were restructured into a dual union
which shared a monarch and a common army, navy and foreign policy.
Transylvania and Croatia-Slavonia were acknowledged as lands of the
Hungarian crown, which were called Transleithania by government officials
to distinguish them from Cisleithania, the lands remaining in the Austrian
Empire from 1867 onwards. These were officially known only as the
"Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council" (Die im
Reichsrat vertretenen Königreiche und Länder). Unofficially ever since,
these territories officially were called "Austria" from 1915 to 1918 only,
despite the fact that all the citizens held the common Austrian citizenship
since 1867.
The Austrian Empire disintegrated at the end of World War I in 1918, when
the Austrian lands established their independence. Bohemia and Moravia in
the newly created Czechoslovakia, Galicia joined Poland, while Bukovina
became a part of Romania. Carniola and Dalmatia joined Yugoslavia. Other
territories were annexed by Italy (South Tyrol, Trieste and Istria). Yet the
last Emperor, Charles I, used his imperial title until the end of his life. The
Kingdom of Hungary, having terminated the 1867 compromise by 31
October 1918, similarly broke apart.
Abbreviations of common and non common
institutions[edit]
The term Kaiserlich und Königlich (k.u.k., spoken /ka ʔʊnt ka/, meaning
"Imperial and Royal") was decreed in a letter of 17 October 1889 for the
army, the navy and the institutions shared by both parts of the monarchy.[6]
Institutions of Cisleithania used the term Kaiserlich-Königlich (K.K.,
meaning "Imperial Royal", e.g. K.K. österreichische Staatsbahnen, Imperial
Royal Austrian State Railways).
Emperors of Austria (1804–1918)[edit]
Name Lifespan
 12 February 1768
Francis I
March 1835 (aged

19 April 1793 – 29 J
Ferdinand I
1875 (aged 82)

18 August 1830 –
Francis Joseph I November 1916
(aged 86)

Charles I 17 August 1887 – 1

the Blessed 1922 (aged 34)

Succession to the throne[edit]

See also: List of heirs to the Austrian throne
The heir apparent to the throne bore the title of Crown Prince (Kronprinz);
heirs presumptive were called Thronfolger, in addition to their title of
Archduke. Francis I was followed by Ferdinand Charles, (later Ferdinand I).
In the wake of the 1848 revolutions, the empire's existence was in danger.
The Habsburg family tried a new start with a new emperor: Ferdinand I was
urged to hand over government on 2 December 1848. He then moved to
Hradcany Castle in Prague and, without laying down his imperial title, lived
there privately until his death in 1875.[7]
As Ferdinand I had no sons, his brother Francis Charles would have
become emperor, but was persuaded by his wife to pass over the right of
succession to their son, Francis Joseph. He accepted the duty of the
Emperor of Austria without having been Crown Prince or Thronfolger
before. Francis Joseph's only son Rudolf committed suicide in 1889,
Francis Joseph's brother Karl Ludwig died in 1896. Karl Ludwig's son Franz
Ferdinand became heir presumptive to the throne. He was assassinated in
Sarajevo, Bosnia in 1914; due to his morganatic marriage, his son had no
rights to the throne. At this time his younger brother Otto Franz had already
died, which made Otto's son Charles the new heir presumptive to the
throne, to which he acceded in 1916 as Charles I, upon the death of Francis
Joseph I. In this moment Charles I's son, four-year-old Otto became the last
Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary. He declared himself a loyal citizen of the
Republic of Austria in 1961.

Emperor Franz Joseph I and his great grand-nephew and second-in-line to the throne
Otto von Habsburg, in 1914
Heads of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine (since
1918)[edit]
Charles I did not see himself as a pretender but as the monarch of Austria,
while the Habsburg Law of the Republic of Austria of 1919 called him "the
former bearer of the crown" (der ehemalige Träger der Krone). His son Otto
von Habsburg, who had used the title Archduke of Austria in his earlier life
outside of Austria, declared himself a loyal citizen of the Republic in order to
be allowed to enter Austria; from 1961 onwards he no longer considered
himself pretender. Otto's son Karl von Habsburg has never pretended to be
the rightful monarch of Austria.
•! Charles I (11 November 1918 – 1 April 1922)
•! Otto von Habsburg (1 April 1922 – 1 January 2007)
•! Karl von Habsburg (1 January 2007 – present)
•! Heir apparent: Ferdinand Zvonimir von Habsburg
See also[edit]
•! Austrian nobility
•! Holy Roman Emperor
•! List of Austrian consorts
•! List of rulers of Austria
•! Pragmatic Sanction of 1713
References[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has
media related to Emperors
of Austria.
Wikimedia Commons has
media related to Coats of
arms of Emperors of
Austria.
1!Jump up 
^ Allerhöchste Pragmatikal-Verordnung vom 11. August 1804. In: Otto
Posse: Die Siegel der Deutschen Kaiser und Könige. (The Seals of German
Emperors and Kings), tom. 5, attachment 2, p. 249
2!Jump up 
^ Erklärung des Kaisers Franz II. über die Niederlegung der deutschen
Kaiserkrone, in: Quellensammlung zur Geschichte der Deutschen
Reichsverfassung in Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Collection of Sources to the
History of the Constitution of the German Reich), edited by Karl Zeumer, p.
538–539 (full text on Wikisource)
3!Jump up 
^ Daniel Unowsky (2001). Maria Bucur; Nancy Meriwether Wingfield, ed.
Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central
Europe, 1848 to the Present. Purdue University Press. pp. 16–17. ISBN 978-
1-55753-161-2.
4!Jump up 
^ William M. Johnston (23 March 1983). The Austrian Mind: An
Intellectual and Social History, 1848-1938. University of California Press.
p. 39. ISBN 978-0-520-04955-0.
5!Jump up 
^ " In 1804 Emperor Franz assumed the title of Emperor of Austria for all
the Erblande of the dynasty and for the other Lands, including Hungary. Thus
Hungary formally became part of the Empire of Austria. The Court reassured
the diet, however, that the assumption of the monarch’s new title did not in any
sense affect the laws and the constitution of Hungary Laszlo, Péter (2011),
Hungary's Long Nineteenth Century: Constitutional and Democratic Traditions,
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, the Netherlands, p. 6
6!Jump up 
^ From the Otto's encyclopedia (published during 1888-1909), subject
'King', online in Czech.
7!Jump up 
^ Notice on Ferdinand's death in the official newspaper Wiener Zeitung,
No. 146 / June 30, 1875, p. 1
<img src="//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAutoLogin/start?type=1x1"
alt="" title="" width="1" height="1" style="border: none; position: absolute;" />
 Categories: Lists of monarchsEmperors of Austria

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