Abstract
The Habsburgs were not supposed to amount to much in central Europe. When the princes of the German Holy Roman Empire named Rudolph of Habsburg (1218–91) their king in 1273, they thought that they had a sovereign who would respect their territorial freedoms, not one who would advance his family’s fortunes through his office. They badly misjudged the relatively obscure count from southwestern Germany. Though never crowned emperor, a title that the German kingship allowed him to claim and that in theory made its holder the secular champion of Christendom, he proved himself to be ambitious, energetic, and resourceful. Beating back Přemysl Otakar II (1233–78), the aggressive Bohemian king who had invaded Austria above and below the River Enns and Styria, today in eastern Austria, Rudolph endowed his family with these provinces. Rudolph’s heirs added the county of Tyrol, along with an assortment of lands in southeastern Europe along the Istrian coast, to the Habsburg central European patrimony. The family also retained ancestral holdings in southwestern Germany into modern times.
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Notes
Matthias von Neuenburg, Chronik, in Quellenbuch zur Geschichte Österreichs, ed. O. Frass, 4 vols (Vienna: Birkenverlag, 1956–67), vol. 1, p. 125.
C. F. Laferl, Die Kultur der Spanier in Österreich unter Ferdinand I., 1522–1564 (Vienna: Bòhlau, 1997), p. 38.
From Joseph Grünpeck, Geschichte Friedrichs III, in Frass, Quellenbuch, vol. 2, pp. 257–9. A good appraisal is
A. Lhotsky, ‘Friedrich III: Sein Leben und Seine Persönlichkeit’, in A. Lhotsky, Aufsätze und Vorträge, 5 vols, ed. H. Wagner and H. Koller (Vienna: Wagner and H. 1971), vol. 2, pp. 119–63.
E. Bruckmüller, Sozialgeschichte Österreichs (Vienna: Herold, 1985), p. 156;
V. Press, ‘The System of Estates in the Austrian Hereditary Lands and in the Holy Roman Empire: A Comparison’, in R. J. W. Evans and T. V. Thomas (eds), Crown, Church and Estates: Central European Politics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: St. Martin’s, 1991), p. 11.
M. Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 124.
A thoughtful overview of the Habsburg connection with music is K. Vocelka and L. Heller, Die Lebenswelt der Habsburger: Kultur- und Mentalitätsgeschichte einer Familie (Graz: Styria, 1997), pp. 52–66.
H. Wiesflecker, Maximilian I.: Die Fundamente des habsburgischen Weltreiches (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1991), pp. 365–75;
H. Wiesflecker, Kaiser Maximilian I.: Das Reich, Österreich und Europa an der Wende der Neuzeit, 5 vols (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1986), vol. 5, p. 614.
H. G. Koenigsberger, ‘The States-General of the Netherlands before the Revolt’, in H. G. Koenigsberger (ed.), Estates and Revolutions: Essays in Early Modern History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971), pp. 125–43.
Ibid., pp. 296–310. A good overview of Burgundian administration is R. Vaughan, Valois Burgundy (London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 1975), pp. 95–113.
Laferl, Spanier in Österreich, pp. 66–75; S. Petrin, ‘Die niederösterreichischen Stände im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert’, in H. Knittler (ed.), Adel im Wandel: Politik. Kultur. Konfession, 1500–1700 (Horn: Berger, 1990), p. 287.
A. Niederstätter, 1400–1522: das Jahrhundert der Mitte: an der Wende vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit (Vienna: Ueberreuter, 1996), p. 138.
P. S. Fichtner, Ferdinand I of Austria: The Politics of Dynasticism in the Age of the Reformation (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1982), p. 45.
V. Zimányi, Economy and Society in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Hungary (1526–1650) (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1987), pp. 68–9.
Ibid., pp. 158–9; K. J. Dillon, Kings and Estates in the Bohemian Lands, 1526–1564 (Brussels: Librairie Encyclopédique, 1976), pp. 133–42;
J. Bahlcke, Regionalismus und Staatsintegration im Wiederstreit: Die Länder der böhmischen Krone im ersten Jahrhundert der Habsburgerherrschaft (1526–1619) (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1994), p. 166.
Fichtner, Ferdinand I, pp. 66–7; T. Fellner and H. Kretschmayr, Die österreichische Zentralverwaltung, 4 vols (Vienna: Holzhausen, 1907–25) vol. 1, pt 1, pp. 29–31.
P. S. Fichtner, Emperor Maximilian II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 80–3.
P. S. Fichtner, ‘Habsburg Household or Habsburg Government?: A Sixteenth-Century Administrative Dilemma’, Austrian History Yearbook, 26 (1995), pp. 45–60.
The classic work on this subject remains Stephen Fischer-Galati, Ottoman Imperialism and German Protestantism, 1521–1555 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1959).
G. Murdock, Calvinism on the Frontier, 1600–1660: International Calvinism and the Reformed Church in Hungary and Transylvania (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), p. 22.
H. Lou than, Johannis Crato and the Austrian Habsburgs: Reforming a Counter-Reform Court (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Theological Seminary, 1994), p. 3.
Frantisek Cerny (ed.), Dejiny Ceského Divadla, 4 vols (Prague: Československá Akademia Ved, 1968), vol. 1, pp. 134–7.
A. Edel, Der Kaiser und Kurpfalz: Eine Studie zu den Grundelementen politischen Handelns bei Maximilian II. (1564–1576) (Göttingen: Vanden- hoeck and Ruprecht, 1997), pp. 307–8.
This picture is worked out in compelling detail by A. P. Luttenberger, Kurfürsten, Kaiser, und Reich: Politische Führung und Friedenssicherung unter Ferdinand I. und Maximilian II. (Mainz: Philip von Zabern, 1994).
R. J. W. Evans, Rudolf II and his World: A Study in Intellectual History, 1576–1612 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 62–3;
K. Vocelka, Rudolf II und seine Zeit (Vienna: Böhlau, 1985), p. 96.
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© 2003 Paula Sutter Fichtner
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Fichtner, P.S. (2003). The Pattern of Empire. In: The Habsburg Monarchy, 1490–1848. European History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10642-1_1
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