Austria

The Republic of Austria is a German-speaking parliamentary democracy in southeastern Europe. Catholicism is its major religion.

Under the rule of the House of Hapsburg, Austria was the nucleus of a substantial land-empire from the fifteenth century through the early 20th century. Using a mixture of marriage, heriditary right, and conquest, Austria absorbed territories, provinces, and whole countries, most notably Hungary.

Prussia arose in the eighteenth century to challenge Austria's role as pre-eminient German state. Throughout the 19th century, Austria's influence began to wain, especially as the modern German state emerged, built around Prussia. A critical step in the unification of Germany was Austria's defeat at the hands of Prussia. Concurrently, Austria agreed to a Dual Monarchy with Hungary, which brought a diverse population of ethnicities and religions under Austrian rule.

Despite past military defeat, Austria allied itself with Germany throughout the remainder of the 19th century and into the early 20th century. Austria's invocation of this alliance in the aftermath of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand helped trigger World War I in 1914. Austria capitulated in 1918, and was stripped of its empire.

Austria was briefly a republic during the 1920s, but by the 1930s, Fascism had taken hold. In 1938, however, Austria was officially annexed by Nazi-dominated Germany, and remained part of the German Reich until the end of World War II. After a period of Allied occupation, Austria once again became an independent republic in 1955.

Austria in Atlantis
Austria's ongoing conflict with Prussia helped touch off the French and Spanish War.

Austria in Household Gods
Nicole Gunther went as a tourist to Austria and visited the ruins of the Roman city of Carnuntum, where she bought a plaque of the gods Liber and Libera which she took with her back to America, not knowing that a remote ancestress of hers had lived in that city. Eventually, when she felt fed up with life in the modern Los Angeles, the two Roman gods tansported her to that city in the Second Century, where she lived in the body of her ancestress. She found the city and the whole of what would become Austria a province of the Roman Empire, whose inhabitants spoke Latin (though with a provincial accent), idnetified themselves as Romans and regarded the Gemranic-speaking tribes invading the city with hostility and disdain. Nicole Gunther was the only one who knew that their descendants would be German-speaking Austrians, and she kept this knowlege to herself.

Austria in In the Presence of Mine Enemies
The Ostmark (although it was still known informally as Austria even into the 21st Century) was absorbed into the Greater German Reich prior to World War II as part of a union (German, "auschluss") with Nazi Germany. Its major city was Vienna. The Reich's first Führer, Adolf Hitler, and its third, Kurt Haldweim, were born in Austria, as was the ill-fated interim Führer, Odilo Globocnik.

During the 2011 elections, held after the failed putsch against Heinz Buckliger, Austria split among the conservative Nazis (who carried rural Austria) and the reformers (who carried Vienna).

Austria in Ruled Britannia
Austria was ruled by the Hapsburg dynasty, a powerful Catholic royal family in Europe. In 1588, the King of Austria was a brother of King Philip II of Spain, and Philip arranged a marriage between the Austrian prince Albert and his own daughter, Isabella, when he installed Isabella as Queen of England.

Austria in Southern Victory
See Austria-Hungary.

Austria in The Two Georges
The Austrian Empire was considered a European power given its geographic position but not a world one given the limited territory it controlled. Its natural direction of expansion in a south-easterly direction into the Ottoman Empire was blocked by the fact that it was a British protectorate. Instead, it intrigued in the Italian States against the Holy Alliance and in the Germanic States against Prussia and Russia in addition to the Alliance.

Editorial Note
In this timeline, the French Revolution was nipped in the bud and later revolutions such as those of 1848 did not happen. Thus, evidently, there was no Hungarian revolt to force the German-speking Austrians to share power with the Hungarians, and the unitary Austria was never transformed into the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary.

Austria in "Les Mortes d'Arthur"
By the late twenty-second Century, Austria had merged with other Western European countries forming United Europe. As such, it had its autonomy reduced to something comparable to that of a state in the United States.