Succession to the throne (Habsburg Monarchy)
The succession to the throne in Austria-Hungary was based on the Pragmatic Sanction issued in 1713 , which was based on the indivisibility of the countries of the Habsburg Monarchy . It was initially valid in the Holy Roman Empire , then in the Austrian Empire founded in 1804 and finally until 1918 in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy that was formed from it in 1867. The house laws of the House of Habsburg and Habsburg-Lothringen regulated the succession; since the Pragmatic Sanction existed, new for the dynasty and most of the countries it ruled, subsidiary female succession to the throne.
House of Austria
Male members of the House of Austria (Habsburg-Lothringen, Austria-Este, Austria-Tuscany) from marriage commensurate with their status were entitled to inheritance; they carried the title of Archduke (descendants from a marriage that was not befitting their class and was then described as morganatic received the title of Count of Habsburg). If there were no male heirs, then subsidiary female inheritance occurred.
Female line of succession
The Pragmatic Sanction, a constitutional state law that regulated the female succession to the throne and was to apply in the Habsburg countries of the Holy Roman Empire as well as in Hungary, was created at the instigation of the Roman-German Habsburg Emperor Charles VI. As a result, his daughter Maria Theresa became heir to the throne in all the hereditary lands of the Habsburgs, most of which had not known any female succession until then. Because Charles VI. had no male descendants after the death of an heir to the throne in 1740.
The emperor tried to achieve general recognition of this rule by declaring the consent of the neighboring dynasts. Nevertheless, in 1740, after the death of Charles VI, other princes had inheritance claims and the Austrian War of Succession . Finally Maria Theresa was able to assert her claims to the royal dignity in Bohemia and Hungary.
However, these claims could not be extended to the imperial title of the Holy Roman Empire , which was then held by the male heads of the House of Habsburg. Because the emperor was chosen by the electors . They preferred the Elector of Bavaria, who, as Charles VII, was the Holy Roman Emperor. After his death, the dignity of Emperor went to Franz Stephan von Lothringen , Maria Theresa's husband.
Empire of Austria
On August 11, 1804, the last Roman-German Emperor, Franz II , founded the Austrian Empire as a hereditary monarchy ; the emperor called himself Franz I here. The pragmatic sanction and the house law of the Habsburgs continued to apply. After the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss (1803), the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved as a result of the establishment of the Rhine Confederation in 1806.
Archdukes and Archduchesses, functionally princes or princesses of the imperial house, were now addressed as "Imperial Highness". After the reorganization of the Austrian Empire into the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy in 1867, they were dubbed “Imperial and Royal Highness” in order to emphasize their importance for Hungary.
Emperor Ferdinand I (1793–1875) was the eldest son of Emperor Franz I. Ferdinand was a weak child who learned to walk and speak late and suffered from epileptic seizures. Nevertheless, the succession to the throne was kept and the Crown Prince became emperor after the death of his father in 1835. For the actual conduct of government business, however, a cabinet government , the so-called state conference, was set up, which consisted of the brother and uncle of the emperor as well as the state chancellor, Prince Metternich, and another minister.
As a result, Franz Karl of Austria (1802–1878), the emperor's younger brother, was always privy to state affairs. When Ferdinand I resigned his office after the March Revolution in 1848 and the October Uprising in Vienna in 1848 and his marriage remained childless, Franz Karl was not his successor. His wife, Sophie Friederike von Bayern , persuaded her husband to renounce the throne in favor of her eldest son, Franz Joseph. He became Austrian emperor at the age of 18.
In the October constitution of 1849, Franz Joseph stipulated in § 9: The crown of the empire and of each individual crown land is hereditary in the House of Habsburg-Lothringen, in accordance with the pragmatic sanction and the Austrian house rules. In § 10 he renewed the provisions of the house laws about the age of the heir to the throne, then about the establishment of a guardianship or regency . The majority of the heir to the throne was thus as in the I of Ferdinand summarized Family Statute in 1839 continue to be set at 16 years. The other princes and princesses of the House of Habsburg-Lothringen did not come of age until they were 20 years old.
Austria-Hungary
Franz Joseph I ruled until 1916. In 1867 he established the Austro-Hungarian monarchy ( settlement with Hungary ), which existed until October 31, 1918 (Hungary left the real union with Austria). Franz Joseph's son, Crown Prince Rudolf , committed suicide in 1889; there were no other emperor's sons.
Therefore, the line of succession passed to the emperor's eldest brother and his descendants. Franz Joseph I had three brothers:
- Emperor Maximilian of Mexico (1832–1867). When he assumed the imperial title of Mexico , he had to renounce all claims to the throne and inheritance in Austria. He had no legitimate offspring, but is said to have had an illegitimate son.
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Karl Ludwig of Austria (1833-1896). Succession to the throne passed to him in 1889. After his death in 1896, two of his three sons from a second marriage, with Maria Annunziata of Naples-Sicily , daughter of Ferdinand II , King of Naples and Sicily, were eligible for the line of succession:
- Franz Ferdinand (1863–1914) ⚭ 1900 Countess Sophie Josephine Albina , daughter of Count Bohuslaw Chotek-Chotkova and Wognin and his wife, Countess Wilhelmine Kinsky von Wchinitz and Tettau. When Franz Ferdinand fell ill with tuberculosis in 1895, he was unofficially written off, but regained his health and remained "heir to the archduke" until his assassination in 1914; his not befitting sons were excluded from the line of succession.
- Otto Franz Joseph (1865–1906) ⚭ 1886 Princess Maria Josepha , daughter of King George I of Saxony and his wife Infanta Maria Anna of Portugal ; Otto was already traded as the future heir to the throne during Franz Ferdinand's illness, but died at the age of 41 after various escapades that did not recommend him for this position. His son Karl became heir to the throne in 1914 and Austria-Hungary's last emperor and king in 1916.
- Ferdinand Karl Ludwig (1868–1915), (Ferdinand Burg) ⚭ 1909 Berta Czuber, daughter of the university professor Emanuel Czuber; resigned from the ore house and was therefore not considered.
- Ludwig Viktor of Austria (1842–1919) died unmarried.
In 1900 Franz Joseph had an "authentic interpretation" added to the family statute regarding the equality of the spouses to be selected by the members of the Erzhaus and the consequences of unequal marriages in view of the improper marriage of Archduke heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este . This so-called “renunciation oath” was signed by Franz Ferdinand in the presence of all archdukes, bishops and ministers in the Vienna Hofburg. Franz Ferdinand committed himself never to change the sworn regulations even as emperor.
From 1916 onwards, the eldest son of Charles I / IV, Otto (1912–2011) was the last heir to the throne from the House of Habsburg-Lothringen - in Austria until 1918, in Hungary until 1921.
The end of the monarchy
With the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic on October 28, 1918, the accession of Slovenia to the new South Slavic state ( SHS state ) on October 30, 1918 and the declaration of the state of German Austria to be a republic on November 12, 1918, the rules of succession for Cisleithania were no longer applicable. In 1961, the last heir to the throne, Otto, signed the declaration of renunciation necessary for his entry into the Republic of Austria, declaring himself “as a loyal citizen of the Republic”.
The Hungarian half of the empire followed on November 6, 1921 with the Dethronization Act, after Charles IV (IV Károly) tried twice that year to return to the throne. Hungary, however, remained the monarchy with an imperial administrator at the head. In a letter to the Allied Ambassadors' Conference in Paris on November 9, 1921, the Hungarian government assured that it had legally excluded the Habsburgs from the line of succession and did not intend to elect a new king without consulting the Allies. A king election did not take place until the formal end of the monarchy in Hungary in 1947.
Individual evidence
- ↑ RGBl. No. 150/1849 of March 4, 1849 (= p. 151)
- ↑ Family statute of February 3, 1839 (German)
- ^ Friedrich Weißensteiner: Franz Ferdinand. The prevented ruler. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-215-04828-0 , pp. 101, 108 f.
- ↑ Weißensteiner, p. 108 f.
- ↑ Weißensteiner, p. 131 f.