History

The oldest evidence of human settlement in the Viennese basin dates back to the Stone Age. From 400 B.C. onwards the Celts settled here and represented the upper class of people regarding whom however little information is available. In the area of present-day Leopoldsberg, the Celts built one of their typical hill villages and introduced vine-growing. The name “Vedunis”(Waldbach) must have been the Celtic root of the city’s subsequent names.(Vindobona, Wedunia, Wienne, Vienna ).

After the annexation by the Romans in 15 B.C. and the founding of the province of Pannonia, Carnuntum, (near Petronell , in northern Austria ), it became a capital and a military garrison, but Vindobona (Vienna) became first a military training camp (towards the mid-1st century A.D.) and then, later on, a legionary camp under the Emperor Trajan (98-117) .Emperor Marcus Aurelius, known as the “philosopher”, often stayed, as the result of the threat posed by the Marcomanni, at Vindobona and at Carnuntum in the period from 172 to 175 , and it was here that he wrote parts of his “Reflections”.

Towards 213 Vienna became a “municipium”, and lived its first golden age under the Severini dynasty. Emperor Probus (276-82) encouraged the development agriculture and vine-growing and is still today considered to be the founder of the Viennese wine culture.
After the decline of the Western Roman Empire (476), there was a providential intervention by Saint Severino, who died in 482 in Panonia. In the year 488, Odoacer led the remaining Roman population of the province back to Italy and took the relics of Saint to Naples, which had previously been preserved in the church of Saint James, in the present district of  Heiligenstadt.

Subsequently, the Longoboards and the Slavs settled temporarily in the Viennese basin. In the centuries which followed, raids by the Avars, of Mongol-Tatar origin, and later by the Hungarians, threatened the eastern area of German kingdom. The “Salzburg Annals” record a battle between the Franks and the Hungarians which must have taken place in 881 “apud Weniam”, near Vienna, called for the first time by this name. In 976 the Babenberger line received the eastern March of the German Empire (Ostmark), wich in 996 was officially named “Ostarrichi” .
Under Saint Leopold III, who reigned from 1095 to 1136 and was canonized in 1485, the foundations were laid for an independent state, and with the elevation of Austria to the status of Duchy (1156), this development was further assured. The first Duke, Henry II Jasomigrott (1141-77), moved his residence to Vienna, while the previous homes of the Babenbergers had been in Melk, Tulln, Gars and Klosterneuburg. It was in the same period, (1147), that the Stephanskirche (Church of Saint Stephen) was consecrated.

Leopold V (1177-94) built Vienna with great munificence, financing the entire project with the ransom money obtained for King Richard the Lionheart of England. By command of Emperor Henry VI, he had been taken prisoner whilst returning to his homeland from crusade and had then been escorted to Duernstein.

Vienna, which in 1198 was by right considered to be a city, as well as becoming an important cultural center of the courtly love song (Minnesang), experienced a significant economic boom, caused partly by the introduction in 1221 of the Stapelrecht, the unloading duty, which obliged all traveling merchants either to sell their goods in the city for two months, or otherwise to remove them, but only after payment of a heavy tax.

In 1246 the last descendant of the Babenbergers, Frederick II the Quarrelsome (der Streitbare) died in the battle of Leitha, against the Hungarians. King Otakar II Premysl of Bohemia married Margaret, sister of the last Babenberger and widow of King Henry VII, thus taking possession of the Duchy. He ordered the construction of hospitals in Vienna, churches and the first nucleus of the Imperial Palace. He died in 1278 at Durnkurt, in the Marchfeld, during the war against the German kingdom over which he had claimed his right. The victor, King Rudolf of Habitchsburg, in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland, introduced the Hasburg dominion to Austria, which was to last for a staggering 640 years and two months.

When Duke Albrecht I, son of Rudold , refused once more to grant the Viennese their privileges, a rebellion broke out under the first Viennese burgomaster, Konrad Poll (1287-88) .

The Duke , however managed to hold sway: from that time onwards, Vienna remained under the control of the reigning prince and obtained in 1296 a new civic independence, with a document drawn up in German. In the year 1298,Albrect I was elected as German king, in the presence of the kings of Hungary and Bohemia.

The first of the Habsburgs to consider himself as Viennese was Rudolf IV, the “founder” (1358-65). He vied with his father-in-law , Emperor Charles IV, in the development of the city of Prague and in the improvement of his own residence, Vienna. He earned the nickname of “founder” from the construction of the south tower and the central nave of the Stephanskirche, the foundation of the Alma Mater Rudolfina in 1365, the oldest German University after Prague, with a faculty of Theology from 1385 onwards, and the introduction of the “Privilegium maius”, a forged document which set out privileges of Austria against the law of the kingdom in force at that time. (subsequently, the document was actually ratified by Emperor Frederick III in 1453 ).

In 1396 the citizens of Vienna obtained the “right to elect a council”, which gave merchants and artisans the chance to elect each year the burgomaster and the external council. In the first half of the fifteenth century the South Tower of the Stephenskirche, known as Steffl (little Stephen) , was completed , thought not without some difficulty.

From the year of 1438 to the year of 1806, which signaled the end of the “German Holy Roman Empire”, it was always Austrian kings and emperors who ascended to the throne, with an interruption of only three years, from 1742-45.

After the death of the reigning Austrian Prince Ladislas “Posthumus”, the posthumous son of Albert V, Emperor Frederick III (1452-93) came into conflict with his brother Albert VI, over issues relating to the succession. At that time the Viennese supported  Albert, from whom they expected order and safety, and even besieged the imperial family with their son Maximilian, who was staying in the castle of Vienna, driving them out of the city in an outrageous fashion.