RULE.TIMES

A REPUBLICAN HISTORY LESSON

Wolfgang Maderthaner, Historian, Director General of the Austrian State Archives

in dialogue with

Christina Lutter, historian, professor at the Department of History and the Institute for Austrian Historical Research at the University of Vienna, member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

No Austria without the Habsburgs. Their early days in the Middle Ages are characterised by numerous legends. The fact is that the family came from their ancestral castle, the Habichtsburg in the Swiss canton of Aargau, to what is now Austria and became one of the most powerful dynasties in European history at the beginning of the modern era. Another dynasty had done the decisive groundwork: In the three centuries before the Habsburgs came to power in Austria, the Babenbergs had turned this area into a contiguous domain. Count Rudolf of Habsburg became the first Roman-German king from his dynasty in 1273. Until the fall of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, numerous family members were to succeed him in this function.

In our new series "It's a good country. Republican History Lesson(s)", Wolfgang Maderthaner and various interviewees sketch out an up-to-date history of the space that has been labelled "Austria" within a wide variety of boundaries and with massively changing attributions of meaning.