Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'The Viennese are neither more abstinent nor more nervous than anyone else in big cities.' Sigmund
Freud
WWI
The assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the nephew of Franz Josef, in Sarajevo on 28 June
1914 triggered the first of Europe's two catastrophic wars in the 20th century. Overnight,
the cultural explosion of fin-de-siècle Austria was replaced by the explosion of shells in
the trenches. Austria responded to the assassination by declaring war on Serbia one
month later, in what it believed would be a short, punitive campaign. Austria-Hungary
was poorly equipped, however, and the war rapidly escalated into a pan-European affair
in which Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey found themselves pitted against a
European power coalition made up of Russia, Britain, France and Italy. Halfway through
the war Franz Josef died and was replaced by Karl I. Ultimately, military revolt by troops
in Italy spread and caused the rest of the army to lay down its arms, bringing defeat and
collapse of the empire. WWI resulted in about 1.4 million military casualties for Austria-
Hungary, and another 3.5 million Austro-Hungarians were wounded. In the rest of
Europe, it was perceived as unprecedented in the scale of destruction and suffering it
caused, and so horrific that it was dubbed 'the war to end all wars'.
Vienna's population peaked at more than two million between 1910 and 1914. After WWI, Vienna was
one of the world's five largest cities.
The First Republic
With defeat and the abdication of Karl I, Austria declared itself a republic on 12 Novem-
ber 1918, having been reduced to a small country of about 6.5 million inhabitants, most
of whom spoke German. South Tyrol was carved off from the rest of Austria and given to
Italy, and the perception at the time was that a country of Austria's size would have little
chance of surviving. Austria was therefore caught between contrasting movements that
either wanted to unite with Germany, return to a monarchical system, or simply break
away and join another country, as was the case with Vorarlberg (which sought union with
Switzerland). The loss of land caused severe economic difficulties. Whole industries col-
lapsed and unemployment soared, fuelled by the return of ex-soldiers and the influx of
refugees, but also by a huge number of bureaucrats who, with the collapse of the mon-
archy, now had no job to return to.
