Misplaced Pages

#438561

102-466: Bezirk St. Pölten is a district of the state of Lower Austria in Austria . It completely surrounds the city of St. Pölten , which exists as a separate entity and borders Vienna to the west. Suburbs, hamlets and other subdivisions of a municipality are indicated in small characters . At the end of 2016 the district absorbed Gablitz, Mauerbach, Pressbaum, Purkersdorf, Tullnerbach and Wolfsgraben from

204-572: A Bezirksamt ('district office'). These were typically smaller than the modern districts; for example, Lower Austria, which is today divided into 24 districts, was divided into 70 Amtsbezirke . The crownlands of Carinthia , Carniola (now mostly part of Slovenia ), Salzburg , Upper and Lower Silesia (now divided between the Czech Republic and Poland ) and Bukovina (now divided between Romania and Ukraine ) were not divided into Kreise but directly into Amtsbezirke . Vorarlberg

306-483: A royal free city by the Kingdom of Hungary in 1681; its privilege was grandfathered into the district system when Hungary ceded the region (later called Burgenland) to Austria in 1921. The constitution stipulates that a community with at least 20,000 residents can demand to be elevated to statutory city status by its respective province, unless the province can demonstrate this would jeopardize regional interests, or unless

408-470: A 'circle' of Upper Austria), had become part of the new Empire, while other areas such as the Southern Netherlands and Further Austria (excluding Vorarlberg) had been lost. Following the first wave of the revolutions of 1848 , Emperor Ferdinand I and his minister of the interior, Franz Xaver von Pillersdorf , enacted Austria's first formal constitution. The constitution completely abolished

510-533: A German one, and that its inclusion would bring millions of non-Germans into the German nation state. If Greater Germany were to prevail, the crown would necessarily have to go to Franz Joseph, who had no desire to cede it in the first place to anyone else. On the other hand, if the idea of a smaller Germany won out, the German crown could of course not possibly go to the Emperor of Austria , but would naturally be offered to

612-486: A broad revision of general devolutionary tendency, transformed districts from divisions of the national executive into divisions of the new "state" executives. The replanting had virtually no practical consequences; enforcing national law and handling applications to the national government remain every district's main activities. Province governments have the authority to redraw district boundaries but can neither create nor dissolve districts, nor change how they work, without

714-576: A coronation. Under Minister-President Karl Hohenwart in 1871, the government of Cisleithania negotiated a series of fundamental articles spelling out the relationship of the Bohemian Crown to the rest of the Habsburg Monarchy. On 12 September 1871, Franz Joseph announced: Having in mind the constitutional position of the Bohemian Crown and being conscious of the glory and power which that Crown has given us and our predecessors … we gladly recognise

816-426: A different legal basis than districts. The statutory cities of Graz and Klagenfurt also have subdivisions referred to as "municipal districts," but these are merely neighborhood-size divisions of the city administration. Austria strictly speaking does not name districts but district administrative authorities. The German term for "district commission" and "city," Bezirkshauptmannschaft and Stadt , respectively,

918-403: A district commission typically covers somewhere between ten and thirty municipalities. As a purely administrative unit, a district does not hold elections and therefore does not choose its own officials. It is administered by the district commission ( German : Bezirkshauptmannschaft , also translated as district authority ). The district governor ( Bezirkshauptmann / -frau ) is appointed by

1020-518: A number of death penalties. The Bohemian question would remain unresolved for the entirety of Franz Joseph's reign. The main foreign policy goal of Franz Joseph had been the unification of Germany under the House of Habsburg . This was justified on grounds of precedence; from 1452 to the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, with only one brief period of interruption under the House of Wittelsbach ,

1122-440: A reference to the "administrative districts" of Carinthia, Burgenland, and Styria, even though local legal documents would have called them "political districts". A statutory city is a city vested with both municipal and district administrative responsibility. Town hall personnel also serve as district personnel; the mayor also discharges the powers and duties of a head of district commission. City management thus functions both as

SECTION 10

#1733092593439

1224-406: A regional government and a branch of the national government at the same time. Most of the 15 statutory cities are major regional population centers with residents numbering in the tens of thousands. The smallest statutory city is barely more than a village, but it owes its status to a quirk of history: Rust, Burgenland , current population 2000 (2021), has enjoyed special autonomy since it was made

1326-782: Is a second-level division of the executive arm of the Austrian government. District offices are the primary point of contact between residents and the state for most acts of government that exceed municipal purview: marriage licenses, driver licenses , passports, assembly permits, hunting permits, or dealings with public health officers for example all involve interaction with the district administrative authority ( Bezirksverwaltungsbehörde ). Austrian constitutional law distinguishes two types of district administrative authority: As of 2017 , there are 94 districts, of which 79 are districts headed by district commissions and 15 are statutory cities. Many districts are geographically congruent with one of

1428-450: Is part of the official proper name of each such entity. This means that there can be pairs of districts whose two proper names contain the same toponym. Several such pairs do in fact exist. There are, for example, two district administrative authorities sharing the toponym Innsbruck : the (statutory) city of Innsbruck and the Innsbruck district commission . To avoid confusion, the names of

1530-480: Is the representative organ of the state administration, and through that of the national administration. Its tasks include, for example: District commissions were first introduced in 1849 during the rule of Franz Joseph I . In their current form they were defined in 1868, in a decree that stated that every province had to be divided into political subdivisions – districts – headed by a district governor. The 1868 Act establishing districts in their modern form adds

1632-743: The Reichsrat (Upper House) from 1891 to 1893 in the Young Czech Party and again from 1907 to 1914 in the Realist Party (which he had founded in 1900), but he did not campaign for the independence of Czechs and Slovaks from Austria-Hungary. In Vienna in 1909 he helped Hinko Hinković 's defense in the fabricated trial against prominent Croats and Serbs members of the Serbo-Croatian Coalition (such as Frano Supilo and Svetozar Pribićević ), and others, who were sentenced to more than 150 years and

1734-607: The 12 points that established modern civil and political rights, economic and societal reforms in Hungary. The Compromise partially re-established the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Hungary, separate from, and no longer subject to the Austrian Empire. Instead, it was regarded as an equal partner with Austria. The compromise put an end to 18 years of absolutist rule and military dictatorship which had been introduced by Francis Joseph after

1836-631: The Austrian Chancellor Prince Klemens von Metternich resigned (March–April 1848). The young archduke, who (it was widely expected) would soon succeed his uncle on the throne, was appointed Governor of Bohemia on 6 April 1848, but never took up the post. Sent instead to the front in Italy , he joined Field Marshal Radetzky on campaign on 29 April, receiving his baptism of fire on 5 May at Santa Lucia . By all accounts, he handled his first military experience calmly and with dignity. Around

1938-679: The Austro-Prussian War of 1866, which resulted in the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 . The Hungarian political leaders had two main goals during the negotiations. One was to regain the traditional status (both legal and political) of the Hungarian state, which was lost after the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 . The other was to restore the series of reform laws of the revolutionary parliament of 1848, which were based on

2040-675: The Congress of Berlin (1878). On 28 June 1914, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo resulted in Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against the Kingdom of Serbia , which was an ally of the Russian Empire. This activated a system of alliances declaring war on each other, which resulted in World War I . Franz Joseph died in 1916, after ruling his domains for almost 68 years. He

2142-440: The House of Habsburg . Franz Joseph was troubled by nationalism throughout his reign. He concluded the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 , which granted greater autonomy to Hungary and created the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. He ruled peacefully for the next 45 years, but personally suffered the tragedies of the execution of his brother Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico in 1867, the suicide of his son Rudolf in 1889, and

SECTION 20

#1733092593439

2244-569: The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 . Franz Joseph then acceded to the throne. In 1854, he married his cousin Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria , with whom he had four children: Sophie , Gisela , Rudolf , and Marie Valerie . Largely considered to be a reactionary , Franz Joseph spent his early reign resisting constitutionalism in his domains. The Austrian Empire was forced to cede its influence over Tuscany and most of its claim to Lombardy–Venetia to

2346-694: The Kingdom of Sardinia , following the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859 and the Third Italian War of Independence in 1866. Although Franz Joseph ceded no territory to the Kingdom of Prussia after the Austrian defeat in the Austro-Prussian War , the Peace of Prague (23 August 1866) settled the German Question in favour of Prussia, which prevented the unification of Germany from occurring under

2448-481: The League of Three Emperors ( Dreikaiserbund ) with Emperor Wilhelm I of Germany and Emperor Alexander II of Russia , who was succeeded by Tsar Alexander III in 1881. The league had been designed by the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck , as an attempt to maintain the peace of Europe. It would last intermittently until 1887. In 1903, Franz Joseph's veto of Jus exclusivae of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla 's election to

2550-509: The Principality of Transylvania would be reestablished. These events represented a clear and obvious existential threat for the Hungarian state. The new constrained Stadion Constitution of Austria, the revocation of the April laws and the Austrian military campaign against Kingdom of Hungary resulted in the fall of the pacifist Batthyány government (which sought agreement with the court) and led to

2652-566: The "state education" began, the central contents of which were "sense of duty", religiosity and dynastic awareness. The theologian Joseph Othmar von Rauscher conveyed to him the inviolable understanding of rulership of divine origin (divine grace), and therefore a belief that no participation of the population in rulership in the form of parliaments was required. The educators Heinrich Franz von Bombelles and Colonel Johann Baptist Coronini-Cronberg ordered Archduke Franz to study an enormous amount of time, which initially comprised 18 hours per week and

2754-556: The 1868 restoration and the 1918 collapse of the Habsburg monarchy. Vienna was growing significantly during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, absorbing dozens of suburbs. Three districts disappeared between 1891 and 1918 due to their domains being incorporated into the imperial capital wholesale. Two other districts lost parts of their territories to Vienna. Eleven new districts were carved out of existing districts between 1891 and 1918 due to general population growth. Following

2856-474: The 20th century. However, Franz Joseph remained immensely respected; the emperor's patriarchal authority held the Empire together while the politicians squabbled among themselves. Following the accession of Franz Joseph to the throne in 1848, the political representatives of the Kingdom of Bohemia hoped and insisted that account should be taken of their historical state rights in the upcoming constitution. They felt

2958-399: The Austrian Empire a unitary, centralised and bureaucratically administered state. When Franz Joseph returned to constitutional rule after the debacles in Italy at Magenta and Solferino and summoned the diets of his lands, the question of his coronation as king of Bohemia again returned to the agenda, as it had not since 1848. On 14 April 1861, Emperor Franz Joseph received a delegation from

3060-425: The Austrian Empire. The next few years saw the seeming recovery of Austria's position on the international scene following the near disasters of 1848–1849. Under Schwarzenberg's guidance, Austria was able to stymie Prussian scheming to create a new German Federation under Prussian leadership, excluding Austria. After Schwarzenberg's premature death in 1852, he could not be replaced by statesmen of equal stature, and

3162-456: The Austrian territories had been suppressed by 1849, in Hungary, the situation was more severe and Austrian defeat seemed imminent. Sensing a need to secure his right to rule, Franz Joseph sought help from Russia , requesting the intervention of Tsar Nicolas I , in order "to prevent the Hungarian insurrection developing into a European calamity". For the Russian military support, Franz Joseph kissed

St. Pölten District - Misplaced Pages Continue

3264-588: The Austro-Prussian War, and had just seen their historic state rights tossed aside and their land subsumed into the "other" half of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, commonly called "Cisleithania". The Czech hopes were revived again in 1870–1871. In an Imperial Rescript of 26 September 1870, Franz Joseph referred again to the prestige and glory of the Bohemian Crown and to his intention to hold

3366-669: The Bohemian Diet with his words (in Czech): I will have myself crowned King of Bohemia in Prague, and I am convinced that a new, indissoluble bond of trust and loyalty between My throne and My Bohemian Kingdom will be strengthened by this holy rite. In contrast to his predecessor Emperor Ferdinand (who spent the rest of his life after his abdication in 1848 in Bohemia and especially in Prague), Franz Joseph

3468-524: The Buchlau Conference. However, Izvolsky made this agreement with Aehrenthal without the knowledge of Tsar Nicholas II or his government in St. Petersburg, or any of the other foreign powers including Britain , France and Serbia . Based upon the assurances of the Buchlau Conference and the treaties that preceded it, Franz Joseph signed the proclamation announcing the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina into

3570-505: The Emperor was wounded and bleeding, the collar saved his life. Count O'Donnell struck Libényi down with his sabre. O'Donnell, hitherto a Count only by virtue of his Irish nobility, was made a Count of the Habsburg monarchy ( Reichsgraf ). Another witness who happened to be nearby, the butcher Joseph Ettenreich, swiftly overpowered Libényi. For his deed he was later elevated to the nobility by

3672-696: The Habsburg realms into the Austrian Empire , while also remaining Holy Roman Emperor. The formerly separate realms became crownlands of this new Empire; those which were part of the Holy Roman Empire remained part of both. Francis dissolved the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. As a result of the German mediatisations and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, culminating in the 1815 Congress of Vienna , various territories, including Salzburg (until 1849

3774-610: The Habsburgs had generally held the German crown. However, Franz Joseph's desire to retain the non-German territories of the Habsburg Austrian Empire in the event of German unification proved problematic. Two factions quickly developed: a party of German intellectuals favouring a Greater Germany ( Großdeutschland ) under the House of Habsburg; the other favouring a Lesser Germany ( Kleindeutschland ). The Greater Germans favoured

3876-596: The Hungarian Revolution of 1848. Franz Joseph was crowned King of Hungary on 8 June, and on 28 July he promulgated the laws that officially turned the Habsburg domains into the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary . According to Emperor Franz Joseph, "There were three of us who made the agreement: Deák , Andrássy and myself." Political difficulties in Austria mounted continuously through the late 19th century and into

3978-606: The Hungarians, who had rebelled against Habsburg central authority in the name of their ancient constitution. Franz Joseph was also almost immediately faced with a renewal of the fighting in Italy , with King Charles Albert of Sardinia taking advantage of setbacks in Hungary to resume the war in March 1849. However, the military tide began to turn swiftly in favor of Franz Joseph and the Austrian whitecoats. Almost immediately, Charles Albert

4080-556: The Italians at Custoza in late July 1848, the court felt it safe to return to Vienna, and Franz Joseph travelled with them. But within a few weeks Vienna again appeared unsafe, and in September the court left once more, this time for Olmütz in Moravia . By now, Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz , an influential military commander in Bohemia, was determined to see the young archduke soon put on

4182-575: The Ottomans, sought and obtained an agreement with Austria-Hungary. In the Budapest Convention of 1877 , the two powers agreed that Russia would annex southern Bessarabia , and Austria-Hungary would observe a benevolent neutrality toward Russia in the pending war with the Turks. As compensation for this support, Russia agreed to Austria-Hungary's annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. A scant 15 months later,

St. Pölten District - Misplaced Pages Continue

4284-562: The Russian foreign minister, Alexander Izvolsky , offered Russian support, for the third time, for the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary, in exchange for Austrian support for the opening of the Bosporus Strait and the Dardanelles to Russian warships. Austria's foreign minister, Alois von Aehrenthal , pursued this offer vigorously, resulting in the quid pro quo understanding with Izvolsky, reached on 16 September 1908 at

4386-561: The Russians imposed on the Ottomans the Treaty of San Stefano , which reneged on the Budapest accord and declared that Bosnia-Herzegovina would be jointly occupied by Russian and Austrian troops. The treaty was overturned by the 1878 Treaty of Berlin , which allowed sole Austrian occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina but did not specify a final disposition of the provinces. That omission was addressed in

4488-591: The Three Emperors' League agreement of 1881, when both Germany and Russia endorsed Austria-Hungary's right to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina. However, by 1897, under a new tsar , the Russian Imperial government had again withdrawn its support for Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Russian foreign minister, Count Mikhail Muravyov , stated that an Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina would raise "an extensive question requiring special scrutiny". In 1908,

4590-548: The agricultural countryside. Some of the suburbs affected, however, had long had much closer ties to the capital than to the rest of their former province, both socially and in terms of infrastructure. Permanently ejecting these suburbs from Vienna would have been inadvisable. Reaffirming the Nazi border changes either entirely or in part, on the other hand, would have led to demarcation discrepancies between Austrian and allied administrative divisions. Disputes regarding communal debt added to

4692-425: The allies worked from the city's pre-1938 borders. The Nazi expansion of Vienna, however, had made some sense. A number of rural areas incorporated into Greater Vienna were inimical. Most of Lower Austria had been leaning conservative to nationalist for a century; Vienna had been a bastion of Social Democracy for decades. The bureaucracy steering Vienna, a city of industry and finance, was sociologically distant from

4794-666: The assassinations of his wife Elisabeth in 1898 and his nephew and heir presumptive, Archduke Franz Ferdinand , in 1914. After the Austro-Prussian War, Austria-Hungary turned its attention to the Balkans , which was a hotspot of international tension because of conflicting interests of Austria with not only the Ottoman but also the Russian Empire . The Bosnian Crisis was a result of Franz Joseph's annexation in 1908 of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had already been occupied by his troops since

4896-457: The assent of the cabinet . In 1921, Hungary ceded the German-speaking part in the western region to Austria, this was created a new province and became Burgenland . While part of the Kingdom of Hungary, the rural border region had been partitioned into seven wards ( Oberstuhlrichterämter ), clusters of small towns and villages headed by a magistrate who served as both the district judge and

4998-534: The bulk of the population was still living and working on manorial lands and was still used to the lord of the manor being head of some form of manorial court. Following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 , Franz Joseph was forced to assent to the December Constitution , a set of five of Basic Laws that restored constitutional monarchy in Cisleithania . One of these Basic Laws, in particular, restored

5100-552: The collapse of the monarchy, the 1920 constitution of the First Austrian Republic retained the district system. At least one of the principal framers, Karl Renner , had suggested to endow districts with county -like elected councils and some degree of legislative authority, but could not gain consensus for this idea. The 1920 constitution characterizes Austria as a federal republic and its provinces as quasi-sovereign federated states . A 1925 constitutional reform,

5202-502: The conflict between the Hungarian parliament and Francis Joseph. The Austrian Stadion Constitution was accepted by the Imperial Diet of Austria , where Hungary had no representation, and which traditionally had no legislative power in the territory of Kingdom of Hungary; despite this, it also tried to abolish the Diet of Hungary (which existed as the supreme legislative power in Hungary since

SECTION 50

#1733092593439

5304-533: The constitutional concessions he had made, especially as the Austrian parliament meeting at Kremsier had behaved—in the young Emperor's eyes—abominably. The 1849 constitution was suspended, and a policy of absolutist centralism was established, guided by the Minister of the Interior, Alexander Bach . On 18 February 1853, Franz Joseph survived an assassination attempt by Hungarian nationalist János Libényi . The emperor

5406-419: The country's 113 judicial venues. Statutory cities are not usually referred to as "districts" outside government publications and the legal literature. For brevity, government agencies will sometimes use the term "rural districts" ( Landbezirke ) for districts headed by district commissions, although the expression does not appear in any law and many "rural districts" are not very rural. A district headed by

5508-458: The defunct Wien-Umgebung District . 48°10′59″N 15°40′01″E  /  48.183°N 15.667°E  / 48.183; 15.667 Districts of Austria [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] A district ( German : Bezirk )

5610-542: The districts that had been absorbed into Vienna. Austria had been divided into four occupation zones and jointly occupied by the United States , Soviet Union , United Kingdom , and France . Lower Austria, the region surrounding Vienna, was part of the Soviet zone. The capital itself was considered too valuable to be left to any one power and was, just like Berlin, separately divided into four sectors. In drafting their plans,

5712-570: The early part of his reign, his realms and territories were referred to as the Austrian Empire , but were reconstituted as the dual monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. From 1 May 1850 to 24 August 1866, he was also president of the German Confederation . In December 1848, Franz Joseph's uncle Emperor Ferdinand I abdicated the throne at Olomouc , as part of Minister President Felix zu Schwarzenberg 's plan to end

5814-471: The emperor and became Joseph von Ettenreich. Libényi was subsequently put on trial and condemned to death for attempted regicide . He was executed on the Simmeringer Heide. After this unsuccessful attack, the emperor's brother Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian called upon Europe's royal families for donations to construct a new church on the site of the attack. The church was to be a votive offering for

5916-506: The emperor himself effectively took over as prime minister. He was one of the most prominent Roman Catholic rulers in Europe, and a fierce enemy of Freemasonry . The 1850s witnessed several failures of Austrian external policy: the Crimean War , the dissolution of its alliance with Russia, and defeat in the Second Italian War of Independence . The setbacks continued in the 1860s with defeat in

6018-501: The estates and called for a separation of executive and judicial authority , immediately crippling most existing regional institutions and leaving district offices as the backbone of the empire's administration. With Ferdinand having been forced to abdicate by a second wave of revolutions, his successor Franz Joseph I swiftly went to work transforming Austria from a constitutional monarchy back into an absolute one but kept relying on district offices at first. In fact, he strengthened

6120-484: The fundaments of modern civil and political rights, economic and societal reforms in the Kingdom of Hungary. The crucial turning point of the Hungarian events were the April laws which was ratified by his uncle King Ferdinand, however the new young Austrian monarch Francis Joseph arbitrarily "revoked" the laws without any legal competence. The monarchs had no right to revoke Hungarian parliamentary laws which were already signed. This unconstitutional act irreversibly escalated

6222-444: The hand of the tsar in Warsaw on 21 May 1849. Tsar Nicholas supported Franz Joseph in the name of the Holy Alliance , and sent a 200,000 strong army with 80,000 auxiliary forces. Finally, the joint army of Russian and Austrian forces defeated the Hungarian forces. After the restoration of Habsburg power, Hungary was placed under brutal martial law . With order now restored throughout his empire, Franz Joseph felt free to renege on

SECTION 60

#1733092593439

6324-442: The head of the largest and most powerful German state outside of Austria—the King of Prussia . The contest between the two ideas, quickly developed into a contest between Austria and Prussia . After Prussia decisively won the Seven Weeks War , this question was solved; Austria lost no territories to Prussia as long as they remained out of German affairs. In 1873, two years after the unification of Germany, Franz Joseph entered into

6426-413: The inclusion of Austria in a new all-German state on the grounds that Austria had always been a part of Germanic empires, that it was the leading power of the German Confederation , and that it would be absurd to exclude eight million Austrian Germans from an all-German nation state. The champions of a lesser Germany argued against the inclusion of Austria on the grounds that it was a multi-nation state, not

6528-514: The king was alive and unable to do his duty as ruler, a governor (or regent, as they would be called in English) had to assume the royal duties. Constitutionally, Franz Josef's uncle Ferdinand was still the legal king of Hungary . If there was no possibility to inherit the throne automatically due to the death of the predecessor king (since King Ferdinand was still alive), but the monarch wanted to relinquish his throne and appoint another king before his death, technically only one legal solution remained:

6630-442: The late 12th century.) The new Austrian constitution also went against the historical constitution of Hungary, and even tried to nullify it. Even the territorial integrity of the country was in danger: On 7 March 1849 an imperial proclamation was issued in the name of the Emperor Francis Joseph, according to the new proclamation, the territory of Kingdom of Hungary would be carved up and administered by five military districts, while

6732-408: The long personal union between the Kingdom of Hungary and other Habsburg ruled areas, the Habsburg monarchs had to be crowned as King of Hungary in order to promulgate laws there or exercise royal prerogatives in the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary. From a legal point of view, according to the coronation oath, a crowned Hungarian king could not relinquish the Hungarian throne during his life; if

6834-462: The mid-eighteenth century absolute monarchies with no written constitution and no modern concept of the rule of law . Some of these entities lay within the Holy Roman Empire (the Erblande , the Lands of the Bohemian Crown , 1714–97 the Austrian Netherlands ) while others lay outside it (the Kingdoms of Hungary and Croatia ; from 1711 Transylvania ; from 1772 Galicia and Lodomeria , among others). The modern state of Salzburg and parts of

6936-416: The mother of the young Archduke "Franzi" brought him up as a future emperor, with emphasis on devotion, responsibility and diligence. For this reason, Franz Joseph was consistently built up as a potential successor to the imperial throne by his politically ambitious mother from early childhood. Up to the age of seven, little "Franzi" was brought up in the care of the nanny ("Aja") Louise von Sturmfeder. Then

7038-431: The national government objects. The last community to have invoked this right is Wels , a statutory city since 1964. As of 2021 , fifteen other communities are eligible but not interested. The statutory city of Vienna , a community with well over 1.9 million residents, is divided into 23  municipal districts ( Gemeindebezirke ). Despite the similar name and the comparable role they fill, municipal districts have

7140-459: The papacy was transmitted to the Papal conclave by Cardinal Jan Puzyna de Kosielsko . It was the last use of such a veto, as the new Pope Pius X prohibited future uses and provided for excommunication for any attempt. During the mid-1870s a series of violent rebellions against Ottoman rule broke out in the Balkans, and the Turks responded with equally violent and oppressive reprisals. Tsar Alexander II of Russia , wanting to intervene against

7242-417: The parliament had the power to dethrone the king and elect a new king. Due to the legal and military tensions, the Hungarian parliament did not grant Franz Joseph that favour. This event gave to the revolt an excuse of legality. Actually, from this time until the collapse of the revolution, Lajos Kossuth (as elected regent-president) became the de facto and de jure ruler of Hungary. While the revolutions in

7344-430: The position of Bohemia within the Habsburg monarchy should have been highlighted by a coronation of the new ruler to the king of Bohemia in Prague (the last coronation took place in 1836). However, before the 19th century the Habsburgs had ruled Bohemia by hereditary right and a separate coronation was not deemed necessary. His new government installed the system of neoabsolutism in Austrian internal affairs to make

7446-612: The pre-existing quarters of those realms. A major break with tradition, the system was unpopular at first; "in some provinces considerable resistance had to be overcome." The district offices never became fully operational in the Kingdom of Hungary or the Austrian Netherlands. In 1804, in response to the declaration of the First French Empire and the ongoing Napoleonic Wars , Holy Roman Emperor Francis II declared himself Francis I, Emperor of Austria and unified

7548-421: The problem. Franz Joseph I Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I ( German : Franz Joseph Karl [fʁants ˈjoːzɛf ˈkaʁl] ; Hungarian : Ferenc József Károly [ˈfɛrɛnt͡s ˈjoːʒɛf ˈkaːroj] ; 18 August 1830 – 21 November 1916) was Emperor of Austria , King of Hungary , and the ruler of the other states of the Habsburg monarchy from 2 December 1848 until his death in 1916. In

7650-507: The provincial governor; the district civil servants are province employees. In the provincial laws of Lower Austria and Vorarlberg , districts headed by district commissions are called administrative districts ( Verwaltungsbezirke ). In Burgenland , Carinthia , Salzburg , Styria , Upper Austria , and Tyrol , the term used is political district ( politischer Bezirk ). National law, including national constitutional law, uses all three variants interchangeably. The district commission

7752-595: The recognition of separate Bohemian state rights for which they had hoped. Bohemia remained part of the Austrian Crown Lands . In Bohemia, opposition to dualism took the form of isolated street demonstrations, resolutions from district representations, and even open air mass protest meetings, confined to the biggest cities, such as Prague. The Czech newspaper Národní listy complained that the Czechs had not yet been compensated for their wartime losses and sufferings during

7854-490: The respectively adjacent rural districts; the city of Krems on the other hand was promoted to district status. The districts otherwise remained intact, but they were now German Kreise instead of Austrian Bezirke . Reborn with the downfall of Nazi Germany in 1945, the Republic of Austria immediately restored the administrative structure torn down between 1938 and 1940, putting the districts back in place. The only exception were

7956-693: The rights of the kingdom and are prepared to renew that recognition through our coronation oath. For the planned coronation, the composer Bedřich Smetana had written the opera Libuše , but the ceremony did not take place. The creation of the German Empire , domestic opposition from German-speaking liberals (especially German-Bohemians ) and from Hungarians doomed the Fundamental Articles . Hohenwart resigned and nothing changed. Many Czech people were waiting for political changes in monarchy, including Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and others. Masaryk served in

8058-481: The rural districts in these pairs are commonly rendered with the suffix -Land , in this context roughly meaning "region." The customary name for the city of Innsbruck is Innsbruck , the customary name for the district headed by the Innsbruck district commission is Innsbruck-Land . While this usage is nearly universal both in the media and in everyday spoken German and even appears in the occasional government publication,

8160-454: The same time, the imperial family was fleeing revolutionary Vienna for the calmer setting of Innsbruck , in Tyrol . Called back from Italy, the archduke joined the rest of his family at Innsbruck by mid-June. It was here that Franz Joseph first met his cousin and eventual future bride, Elisabeth, then a girl of ten, but apparently the meeting made little impression. Following Austria's victory over

8262-609: The separation of judiciary and executive. Pursuant to this stipulation, the merger of administrative and judicial districts was reversed the following year; the law in question established the districts in essentially their modern form. No attempt was made this time to impose the scheme on Hungary. The Kingdom of Hungary was now a separate country, fully independent in every respect save defense and international relations, and neither needed nor wanted to copy civil administration policies enacted in Vienna. No significant changes were made between

8364-420: The sudden emergence of Lajos Kossuth 's followers in the Hungarian parliament, who demanded the full independence of Hungary. The Austrian military intervention in the Kingdom of Hungary resulted in strong anti-Habsburg sentiment among Hungarians, thus the events in Hungary grew into a war for total independence from the Habsburg dynasty . On 7 December 1848, the Diet of Hungary formally refused to acknowledge

8466-546: The suffix -Land is not part of any official, legal designation in Lower Austria. From the Middle Ages until the early nineteenth century, what would become the Austrian state – the Habsburg monarchy – was a large collection of formally separate feudal entities in a personal union under a single monarch of the house of Habsburg ( Habsburg-Lorraine from 1780) rather than a single unified state. These entities were until

8568-454: The supervisor of the local administrators. Austria simply transformed the seven wards into seven new districts. The region also included two royal free cities , Eisenstadt and Rust ; these were made into statutory cities, thus also becoming districts. With the March 1938 annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany , Austria initially became a state ( Land ) of the German Reich. In May, Vienna

8670-542: The surrounding states at this time belonged to the Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg and numerous small enclaves belonging to other ecclesiastical principalities existed within the Erblande . The states were ruled by the monarch, usually the emperor himself or a vassal of the emperor, supported by their personal advisors and the estates of the realm . The precise nature of the relationship between ruler and estates

8772-533: The survival of the emperor. It is located on Ringstraße in the district of Alsergrund close to the University of Vienna , and is known as the Votivkirche . The survival of Franz Joseph was also commemorated in Prague by erecting a new statue of St. Francis of Assisi , the patron saint of the emperor, on Charles Bridge . It was donated by Count Franz Anton von Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky , the first minister-president of

8874-475: The system. His March Constitution retained the separation of judiciary and executive. It prescribed a partition of the empire into judicial venues, with courts to be headed by professional judges, and a separate partition into administrative districts, to be headed by professional civil servants. An 1849 Imperial Resolution fleshed out the details. The districts started functioning in 1850, many of them already in their present-day borders. The March Constitution

8976-598: The terms "administrative district" ( Amtsbezirk ) and "political administrative district" ( politischer Amtsbezirk ). The 1920 Federal Constitutional Law prefers "district" but occasionally uses "political district" to emphasize is it not referring to judicial districts. Over the course of the dozens of revisions the Law has undergone since 1920, all occurrences of either were excised; the version currently in force still mentions district administrative authorities but no longer mentions districts. The 1955 Austrian State Treaty contains

9078-567: The throne. It was thought that a new ruler would not be bound by the oaths to respect constitutional government to which Ferdinand had been forced to agree, and that it was necessary to find a young, energetic emperor to replace the kindly but mentally unfit Ferdinand. By the abdication of his uncle Ferdinand and the renunciation of his father (the mild-mannered Franz Karl), Franz Joseph succeeded as Emperor of Austria at Olmütz on 2 December 1848. At this time, he first became known by his second as well as his first Christian name. The name "Franz Joseph"

9180-492: The title of the new king, "as without the knowledge and consent of the diet no one could sit on the Hungarian throne", and called the nation to arms. While in most Western European countries (like France and the United Kingdom) the monarch's reign began immediately upon the death of their predecessor , in Hungary the coronation was indispensable; if it were not properly executed, the kingdom remained " orphaned ". Even during

9282-477: The uniform of a military officer. Franz Joseph was soon joined by three younger brothers: Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian (born 1832, the future Emperor Maximilian of Mexico ); Archduke Karl Ludwig (born 1833, father of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria ), and Archduke Ludwig Viktor (born 1842), and a sister, Archduchess Maria Anna (born 1835), who died at the age of four. During the Revolutions of 1848 ,

9384-595: Was administered with Tyrol as Kreis Bregenz . This administrative structure did not apply to Lombardy–Venetia , Hungary (which at the time excluded Transylvania and the Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar , which did use the system), or the Military Frontier ; Croatia and Slavonia used the term Comitatus (contemporary German : Comitat , modern Komitat ; Croatian : županija ) in place of Kreis . Intellectuals aside, few objections were raised;

9486-405: Was chosen to bring back memories of the new Emperor's great-granduncle, Emperor Joseph II (Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790), remembered as a modernising reformer. Under the guidance of the new prime minister, Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg , the new emperor at first pursued a cautious course, granting a constitution in March 1849 . At the same time, a military campaign was necessary against

9588-415: Was decisively beaten by Radetzky at Novara and forced to sue for peace, as well as to renounce his throne. Unlike other Habsburg ruled areas, the Kingdom of Hungary had an old historic constitution , which limited the power of the crown and had greatly increased the authority of the parliament since the 13th century. The Hungarian reform laws ( April laws ) were based on the 12 points that established

9690-417: Was different from region to region. Regional administrators were appointed by and answerable to the monarch. The first step towards modern bureaucracy was taken by Empress Maria Theresa , who in 1753 imposed a system of ' circles '/districts ( Kreise ) and 'circle'/district offices ( Kreis ämter ) throughout most of her realms. The 'circles' of Upper and Lower Austria and Styria were largely based on

9792-450: Was expanded to 50 hours per week by the age of 16. One of the main focuses of the lessons was language acquisition: in addition to French, the diplomatic language of the time, Latin and Ancient Greek , Hungarian , Czech, Italian and Polish were the most important national languages of the monarchy. In addition, the archduke received general education that was customary at the time (including mathematics, physics, history, geography), which

9894-520: Was expanded to create Greater Vienna ( Groß-Wien ), absorbing another four districts. Two weakly populated rural districts were discontinued as well. In October, Burgenland was dissolved, its northern half being attached to Lower Austria and its southern half to Styria . Between May 1939 and March 1940, Austria was dissolved. Its eight remaining provinces became seven Reichsgaue , answerable not to Vienna but directly to Berlin. Several statutory cities lost their special status and were incorporated into

9996-417: Was later supplemented by law and political science. Various forms of physical education completed the extensive program. On his 13th birthday, Franz Joseph was appointed Colonel- Inhaber of Dragoon Regiment No. 3 and the focus of his training shifted to imparting basic strategic and tactical knowledge. From that point onward, army style dictated his personal fashion—for the rest of his life, he normally wore

10098-546: Was never crowned separately as king of Bohemia. In 1861, the negotiations failed because of unsolved constitutional problems. However, in 1866, a visit of the monarch to Prague following defeat at the Battle of Königgrätz was a huge success, testified by the considerable numbers of new photographs taken. In 1867, the Austro-Hungarian compromise and the introduction of the dual monarchy left the Czechs and their aristocracy without

10200-465: Was never fully implemented and formally scrapped in 1851. Officially returning to full autocracy, the Emperor abolished the separation of powers. In 1853 Administrative districts were merged with judicial venues; district administrative authorities with district courts. During this period the Kreise were subdivided into Bezirke (or Amtsbezirke  [ de ] , 'office districts'), each with

10302-570: Was succeeded by his grandnephew Charles I & IV . Franz Joseph was born on 18 August 1830 in the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna (on the 65th anniversary of the death of Francis of Lorraine ) as the eldest son of Archduke Franz Karl (the younger son of Francis I ), and his wife Sophie, Princess of Bavaria . Because his uncle, reigning from 1835 as the Emperor Ferdinand , was disabled by seizures, and his father unambitious and retiring,

10404-456: Was taking a stroll with one of his officers, Count Maximilian Karl Lamoral O'Donnell , on a city bastion , when Libényi approached him. He immediately struck the emperor from behind with a knife straight at the neck. Franz Joseph almost always wore a uniform, which had a high collar that almost completely enclosed the neck. The collars of uniforms at that time were made from very sturdy material, precisely to counter this kind of attack. Even though

#438561