House of Habsburg

• 1. Introduction

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  The House of Habsburg took its name from a fortress built in the 1020s in what is now Switzerland by Radbot of Klettgau, who called the place Habsburg. The origin of that name is uncertain. Some trace it to the High German Habichtsburg, meaning hawk castle. Others point to the Middle High German hab, meaning a ford, since a river with a crossing lay nearby. The first documented use of the name by the family has been traced to the year 1108. From this modest hilltop seat, a lineage rose that would rule the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and lands across Europe and the Americas. Yet the same family that crowned emperors also bred itself toward ruin. How did counts of a Swiss castle come to wear so many crowns? Why did marriage become both their greatest weapon and their undoing? And what finally ended a dynasty that ruled, in Vienna alone, until 1918?

• 2. A Castle And Its Counts

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  Radbot of Klettgau founded not only the Habsburg Castle but also the Muri Abbey, which became the first burial place of family members. His grandson Otto II was the first to take the fortress name as his own, adding Count of Habsburg to his title. The castle served as the family seat through most of the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. In the 12th century, the Habsburgs grew close to the Staufer emperors, joining the imperial court and the emperor's military campaigns. Werner II, Count of Habsburg, died fighting for Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in Italy. In 1198, Rudolf II, Count of Habsburg, committed the dynasty fully to the Staufer cause by joining the Ghibellines. He funded the Staufer emperor Frederick II's war for the throne in 1211, and the emperor became godfather to his newly born grandson, the future King Rudolf. The family expanded through arranged marriages and political privileges, especially countship rights in Zurichgau, Aargau, and Thurgau. They often profited from the extinction of other noble families, such as the House of Kyburg.

• 3. The Move To Vienna

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  Count Rudolph I, who lived from 1218 to 1291, had become an influential lord in the area between the Vosges Mountains and Lake Constance. On the 1st of October 1273, he was elected as a compromise candidate as King of the Romans, taking the name Rudolph I of Germany. He led a coalition against King Ottokar II of Bohemia, who had used the Great Interregnum to expand southwards. In 1278, Rudolph and his allies defeated and killed Ottokar at the Battle of Marchfeld, and the contested lands reverted to the German crown. Through the Georgenberg Pact of 1286, Rudolph secured the duchies of Austria and Styria for his family. He appointed his sons as Dukes of Austria and moved the family's power base to Vienna. There the dynasty gained the name House of Austria and ruled until 1918. The Habsburgs even claimed descent from the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, a claim common among ruling dynasties of the time. Their original home territories told a different story. The Aargau with Habsburg Castle was lost to the expanding Swiss Confederacy after the battles of Morgarten in 1315 and Sempach in 1386. The castle itself fell to the Swiss in 1415.

• 4. The Invented Title

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  The privilegium maius, a forged document of 1358 or 1359, introduced the title of Archduke. Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, who lived from 1339 to 1365, created it to place the Habsburgs on a par with the Prince-electors of the Empire. Emperor Charles IV had omitted to give them the electoral dignity in his Golden Bull of 1356. Charles refused to recognize the new title, as did his immediate successors. Duke Ernest the Iron and his descendants assumed the title archduke on their own authority. It was only officially recognized in 1453 by Emperor Frederick III, Austria's own ruler. Frederick himself, however, used only Duke of Austria, never Archduke, until his death in 1493. The title was first granted to his younger brother, Albert VI of Austria, who used it at least from 1458. From the 16th century onward, archduke and the female archduchess came to be used by all members of the house. Queen Marie Antoinette of France was born Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria.

• 5. Crowns Won By Marriage

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  The Siege of Neuss, fought in 1474 and 1475, forced Charles the Bold of Burgundy to give his daughter Mary of Burgundy as wife to Frederick III's son Maximilian. The wedding took place on the evening of the 16th of August 1477, and brought the Habsburgs control of the Burgundian Netherlands. After Mary died in 1482, Maximilian fought to secure her inheritance for their son Philip the Handsome. The Burgundian succession was finally settled in Philip's favor by the Treaty of Senlis in 1493. In 1497, Philip married Joanna of Castile, known as Joanna the Mad, heiress of Castile and Aragon. Their eldest son became Emperor Charles V in 1516 and ruled Castile, Aragon with their New World colonies, Southern Italy, Austria, and the Habsburg Netherlands. The foundations of Austria-Hungary were laid in 1515 by a double wedding celebrated in grand style on the 22nd of July. It joined Louis, son of Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary, to Maximilian's granddaughter Mary, and Louis's sister Anna to Archduke Ferdinand. When Louis died in battle in 1526, Ferdinand became king of Bohemia and Hungary.

• 6. Two Branches

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  Charles V became sole monarch of Spain upon the death of his imprisoned mother, Queen Joan, in 1555. His abdication in 1556 split the dynasty in two. The Austrian, or German, branch was led by his brother Ferdinand, who became Holy Roman Emperor and ruler in his own right of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary. The Spanish branch was led by Charles's son Philip, who became Philip II of Spain and ruled the Habsburg domains in Italy and the Low Countries. The Spanish Habsburgs also ruled Portugal for a time, known there as the Philippine dynasty from 1580 to 1640. The Seventeen Provinces and the Duchy of Milan were held in personal union under the King of Spain, yet remained part of the Holy Roman Empire. In the secret Onate treaty of the 29th of July 1617, the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs settled their mutual claims. Although they ruled distinct territories, the branches kept close relations and frequently intermarried. Emperor Charles V was the last emperor to be crowned by the Pope himself, at Bologna in 1530.

• 7. The Cost Of Inbreeding

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  Frequent consanguineous marriages left a cumulatively harmful effect on the Habsburg gene pool. Health impairments tied to inbreeding included epilepsy, insanity, and early death. A study of 3,000 family members across 16 generations by the University of Santiago de Compostela suggests inbreeding may have played a role in the dynasty's extinction. Many members showed specific facial features: an enlarged lower jaw with an extended chin called mandibular prognathism, or the Habsburg jaw; a large nose with a hump and hanging tip, the Habsburg nose; and an everted lower lip, the Habsburg lip. A 2019 study found that the degree of mandibular prognathism showed a statistically significant correlation with the degree of inbreeding. A correlation with maxillary deficiency was present but not statistically significant. Other studies dispute any link between fertility and consanguinity. The last of the Spanish line, Charles II, was severely disabled from birth. His genome was comparable to that of a child born to a brother and sister, as was his father's. The death of Charles II in 1700 led to the War of the Spanish Succession, which the House of Bourbon won, ending Habsburg rule in Spain.

• 8. Lorraine And The Long End

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  Emperor Charles VI died in 1740, triggering the War of the Austrian Succession. Maria Theresa won it, and the throne passed to a new main branch, the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, in the person of her son Joseph II. This branch was created by her marriage to Francis Stephen, Duke of Lorraine; both were great-grandchildren of Emperor Ferdinand III. The Holy Roman Empire itself did not last. On the 6th of August 1806, Emperor Francis I dissolved it under pressure from Napoleon's reorganization of Germany, with Napoleon's military victories chief among the causes. Anticipating the loss, Francis had declared himself hereditary Emperor of Austria on the 11th of August 1804. The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 gave the Kingdom of Hungary co-equality with the Empire of Austria. On the 11th of November 1918, the last Habsburg ruler, Charles I of Austria, who also reigned as Charles IV of Hungary, renounced any role in state affairs. He did not formally abdicate, but this is considered the end of the dynasty. In the interwar years the family opposed both Nazism and Communism. Otto von Habsburg led a Central European resistance movement that the Nazis and the Gestapo persecuted; among its members was Heinrich Maier, who passed plans for V-2 rockets, Tiger tanks, and aircraft to the Allies before his execution. Otto renounced all claims to the throne on the 31st of May 1961. The current head of the family is Karl von Habsburg.