History
From 1453 onwards, the Archduke of Austria had the right to grant nobility to non-nobles, as did the Archbishop of Salzburg, as Salzburg remained an independent territory. Besides the Holy Roman Emperor (an office which was almost uninterruptedly held by the Archduke of Austria from 1438 to 1806 anyway), only a few territorial rulers within the Empire had this right. In an era of Absolutism, the nobility residing in the cities slowly turned itself into the court-nobility (Hofadel). Service at the court became the primary goal of the nobility. This in turn initiated an interest in education and the interests of the court. Within the court, a close inner circle, called the 100 Familien (100 families), possessed enormous riches and lands. They also had great influence at the court and thus played an important role in politics and diplomacy.
After the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the Habsburg rulers, who were Austrian Emperors from 1804 onwards, continued to elevate deserving individuals to nobility until the end of the monarchy in 1918. Some of the noble families even earned themselves the right to be hereditary peers in the House of Lords (Herrenhaus) in the Imperial Council (Reichsrat) of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Nobles from previously sovereign states such as those in northern Italy (Venice, Mantua, Milan) also had their noble rights confirmed and were allowed to keep their titles.
Read more about this topic: Austrian Nobility
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)