So austria was a part of HRE/german confederation and austro-hungarian empire/austrian empire, how did that work?

So austria was a part of HRE/german confederation and austro-hungarian empire/austrian empire, how did that work?
What was HRE any way a loose federation or a true state, how did it function? Did states in HRE went to war often?

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please answer i dont know

HRE is made up of the remnants of the Karling empire. HRE was a loose federation. They went to war with eachother all the time. The HRE Emperor didn't even really have all that much authority.

Was Hungary part of it though?

how was possible that austria was a part of 2 states at the same time?

it looks like not, seems very complicated

they were one side of the coin that england used to conquer the world by constantly pitting it against other mainland shit like napolean

Austria was a state that is also a member of the federation that was the HRE.
Austria is currently a state that is also a member of the federation that is the EU

The Monarch of Austria has numerous territories acquired through various wars/marriages/treaties. Some of those territories were within the border of the HRE, others were not.

It's that simple.

well yes i understand that but how did that function where austrian territories in HRE just formally under the HRE kings control?

It did not, the HRE was just a idea for most of history. The emperor had about as much authority as a class rep

>So austria was a part of HRE/german confederation and austro-hungarian empire/austrian empire, how did that work?
>What was HRE any way a loose federation or a true state, how did it function? Did states in HRE went to war often?
Whoah boy hold onto your butts this is a clusterfuck. Short answer is Feudalism.

Long answer might take a bunch of posts. So the Holy Roman Empire was a feudal German kingdom that was founded in the 800s and has its origins going all the way back to Charmelagne. Being a feudal polity, it consisted of a bunch of minor lords who all owed allegiance to the king - in this case, the Holy Roman Emperor. Now, when the HRE was first formed, feudal states were very decentralized. Its always been hard to rule a large kingdom in pre-industrial times, and it was even moreso in early middle ages Europe where the eastern parts of the Empire were still relatively undeveloped backwaters.

So with logistics of highly centralized ruling making a state like we think of them today effectively impossible, kingdoms were less of a modern state and more of a collection of vassals swearing loyalty to successive levels of lords until you got to the Emperor. With pretty strict inheritence laws, that also led to some interesting territorial acquisitions. Marriage alliances would put relations all over the map, and when a local line inevitably died out, those lands often went to some foreign relative. That meant that, as the HRE developed, the domains of various lords weren't always contiguous. Worse, if you came into the possesion of lands that belonged to a vassal of another lord, you could be both a vassal of say a count and still a duke (giving you a higher rank than a count). This wasn't exclusive to the HRE - The Angevin dynasty in England was both the King of England and a major Duke within France, meaning they were legally subjects of the French king. Making things even more complicated, you had lands controlled directly by the Church.

>cont

>So austria was a part of HRE/german confederation and austro-hungarian empire/austrian empire, how did that work?

Imagine being a citizen of a country where you hold a high position in government. Now imagine you also own large amounts of land outside that country. That's essentially was that Habsburgs did. Also the Austrian Empire was only proclaimed after the HRE fell apart and the Habsburgs reorganized all there lands inside and outside the old HRE borders into their new "Empire".

The habsburgs were holy roman emperor, King of Hungary and Galicia and others, and duke of austria etc.

Just because one person owned all these offices doesn't mean much in the time before centralized state powers.

Each had their own laws and governments and a period of centralization was undertaken starting with Maria Theresa in the 18th century and ending with Franz Joseph at the great war.

Basically Maria had to reform each of her kingdoms (using that term loosely) and try to reign them in. She had no problem doing so in Galicia or the crown lands as she had most of the titles and had ruled them for 500 ish years.

The HRE had older laws and she had less authority there. Its akin to the US in a sense but if 500 years of 'states rights' arguments had slowly eroded the power of the Federal government. The president has power in the US but its easy to see a situation in which each of the states themselves were more powerful.

Hungary had old laws and powerful nobles who was very very reluctant to give up power. The struggle went on for several generations and eventually a compromise that created the Austro-Hungarian Empire was reached in which Austria and Hungary were each given independant and equal laws to rule over the rest.

The HRE ceased to exist when Francis destroyed the title in 1804 to ensure Napoleon couldn't claim it himself.

Napoleon had captured some of the HRE land and was created the Confederation of the Rhine and the worry was if he had them all he would be Holy Roman Emperor which was repugnant because of his relatively low birth and revolutionary spirit.

Francis created the Austrian Empire out of the HRE lands to prevent this from happening and by doing so ended the HRE laws and traditions created new ones where he had more power in a centralized government.

The problem the HRE ran into over its history, however, was that it failed to centralize like surrounding kingdoms. France was incredibly centralized by the time of the French Revolution, so much so that the nobles were reduced from semi-sovereign landowners to more of an especially privileged aristocracy.

The HRE, on the other hand, arguably ended up decentralizing even further since its inception. The Ottonian dynasty died out, and by the end of the 14th Century, the HRE had become a semi-hereditary elective monarchy, where each king had to be confirmed by an electorate of powerful landowners. The first election saw the King of Bohemia elected the Holy Roman Emperor, but in the early 1400s you had several elections attempt to depose him. By the end of the 15th century, the Hapbsurgs, whose domain lay in Austria, had secured the throne, which they would hold until the demise of the empire in 1806. But, although it was effectively hereditary, the Hapsburgs still had to be mindful of the electorate. That meant catering to their interests, which, at its heart, meant preserving their autonomy.

Eventually, you had a couple of polities within the HRE start acquiring territories outside of its de jure borders. In the 17th Century, the Hapsburgs managed to luck themselves into inheriting the thrones of both Hungary/Croatia and Bohemia. Brandenburg had similar luck, acquiring Prussia and eventually getting themselves declared King-in-Prussia (not King *of*, as the Bohemians had been assured in the past that their special status as the sole kingdom within the HRE would be preserved). Further complicating things were the interests of other states. France, Hapsburg Spain, and Sweden would all end up with territorial possessions of some sort within the HRE, either de jure or de facto, so it quickly became in everyone's interests to keep the HRE as decentralized as possible.

>cont

Now, in 1618, everything fell apart. The rise of Protestantism saw a massive north-south rift form in Germany, ultimately leading to the 30 years war when Hapsburg king inherited the throne of Bohemia. 30 years and 8 million people later, the HRE had lost its hold on its Italian and Swiss posessions, Sweden gained a permanent foothold in Mecklenberg, and, most importantly, the Peace of Westphalia was signed.

The Peace of Westphalia effectively signed into law the HRE as it would be known for the remainder of its history. The general idea of the Peace was sovereignty - states were independent entities that could not be legally coerced into doing another state's bidding. The terms of the Peace didn't make the members of the HRE completely independent states, but it was worded in such a way that they were now very close to de facto independence with only a few nominal duties. Electors continued to exist, as did elections for the Emperor, but the member states were very independent, especially those like Austria and Prussia.

Through the remainder of the HRE's history, the member polities can increasingly be looked at as independent states. The Bavarians went to war against Austria during the War of Spanish Succession, while the Prussians fought the Hapsburgs three times over Silesia in the 1700s. When the French Revolutionary Wars began, the member states of the HRE were nominally belligerents on the Austrian side, but, as we see with the Duke of Brunswick's campaign and Prussian involvement in general, they were really only nominal belligerents - the Prussians withdrew from the war after a short, unenthusiastic, and indecisive campaign.

>one last one hopefully

But just because the HRE was very decentralized didn't mean it didn't have teeth. The rise of Napoleon saw the left bank of the Rhine fall into French hands and those states on the right bank fall under French influence. By 1806, Napoleon had the majority of the electors as satellite states (only Prussia and Austria remained as major entities outside of French influence), and there was a very real possibility that Napoleon could be elected Emperor, giving him the legal basis to conquer Austria and Brandenburg/Prussia. Thus, following the defeat at Austerlitz, the Holy Roman Emperor abdicated and dissolved the Empire rather than risk letting Napoleon take the throne.

>tl;dr
The HRE was a feudal state legally backed up by the Catholic Church that, due to its legalistic way of handling things, failed to centralize like most other states. Because of its unique legal structure, it endured where similar states would have been swallowed up by more centralized neighbors, and in the end it stood out as a peculiar anachronism in an era of more modern centralized states.

Thanks

>HRE kings
Emperor you mean, and no, save for when said Emperor was by any chance also ruler of Austria.

>Feudalism
Interesting answer, given that the HRE had many non feudalistic entities.

Were there any beyond the (many) ecclesiastical holdings?

Well, all the free city republics from northern Germany to northern Italy and of course the Swiss cantons.

Ah yeah I somehow forgot about those. Clusterfuck doesn't even begin to describe the HRE.

It is pretty simple when you ditch the notion of a modern national state and see it as an amalgamation of independent political entities each with their own leadership under the Umbrella of an Empire where the Emperor is mostly a figure head and doesn't hold that much real power.

It's not that simple though. The Emperor did hold quite a bit of power even while the Empire looked like nothing more than a nominal title. The Edict of Restitution, for example, was the largest restructuring of land prior to WW2, and it was declared by the Emperor at the height of the 30 years' war. IIRC, even in 1806, the Emperor still had a lot of legal power, but he couldn't effectively exercise it with surrounding great powers willing to step in to back up any dissenters.

Say Napoleon got the throne - you likely would have seen him exercising a lot of the Emperor's powers and effectively expanding them far beyond what we would have seen with the Hapsburgs.

The power level of the HR Emperor is a very complex question and needs to be viewed in detail
>yes, that means for every single fucking one of them it was different.

Voltair's autism aside, the HRE really was a bizarre polity. Here's a quick rundown.

youtube.com/watch?v=Ev8f5CMc4gM