When the old master of German historical research and historiography Leopold von Ranke congratulated the Austrian historian Alfred von Arneth on his appointment as director of the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv on August 11, 1868, he pointed out that it was “the most important archive for German history.”1 A hundred years ago access to archives in general and those of the Habsburg empire in particular was very limited. Everywhere, archival material was still subject to a strict preliminary censorship before scholars could examine it, and most holdings were not available for research purposes. Yet, in spite of all these restrictions, Ranke could with a good conscience shower the Vienna archive with words of praise. Today the abundance of the treasures of the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, which are so generously put at the disposal of the researcher, proves Ranke's judgment to have been accurate. In many ways the archive deserves words of even higher praise than Ranke's, because it will always be a first-rate research center not only for German history but also for that of a large part of Europe. In historical significance it is now surpassed only by the Vatican archive in Rome; otherwise, it measures up well with all other archives, including those of Western Europe.2

When the imperial archives in Vienna were reorganized to form the Austrian state archives shortly after the end of the Second World War, it became clear that the former name of the archive referred to in non-archival circles after 1945 as the “second division”—Staatsarchiv des Innern und der Justiz (state archive for internal affairs and justice)—no longer accurately reflected its contents. During the decade before the war, the records of all the central offices or ministries except those for foreign affairs, finances, defense, and railways (later transportation) had been added to it. In other words, the archive had become a repository for all documents not housed in the other divisions of the Austrian state archives. Or, to put it more positively, most documents dealing with the internal administration, in its broadest sense, had been stored in the archive. Other branches, such as education and economic affairs, had been only gradually detached from the ministry of interior. For these reasons, the name of the archive was changed to Allgemeines Verwaltungsarchiv in 1945.

Insofar as its present organizational structure is concerned, the Finanz- und Hofkammerarchiv is a new archive established in 1945. Before that year the only connection between the two archives, which had previously been administered separately, lay in the continuity of the records housed in both repositories. During the course of the years the documents stored in the two archives remained unchanged in type even though they were written in offices that bore different names. What led to their amalgamation shortly after the end of World War II was the uninterrupted continuity of the records in both archives.

The history of the Kriegsarchiv, which today constitutes the fourth section of the Austrian State Archives, began in 1711, when, on the initiative of Prince Eugene of Savoy, then president of the aulic war council, the Hofkriegsrätliches Kanzleiarchiv (the aulic war council chancellery archive), or, to use the full title, the Archivum bellicum, Hofkriegsrätliches Archiv, was established. In line with practices in the other court offices, this archive was to preserve all the documents accumulated by the aulic war council since its founding in 1556. In instructions dated April 4, 1711, Bernhard Rosenbaum, the first archivist of the newly-founded repository, was charged with arranging all documentary materials at hand in an orderly manner. At the same time, he was instructed to make lists of the important documents in the archive so that he could readily give out information about military events and organizational matters. Thus, from the very outset, the personnel of the archive was assigned the very important duty of collecting and making available for the army information about past military experiences.

The Verkehrsarchiv (transportation archive) grew out of the last central archive created in the Habsburg monarchy, the Eisenbahnarchiv (railway archive), which had been founded in 1897 in connection with the separate ministry for railways established under Minister-President Kasimierz Badeni. Various changes in the powers and duties of several ministries immediately after 1918 led to the transformation of the Eisenbahnarchiv into a Verkehrsarchiv which, in turn, was incorporated in 1947 into the Austrian state archive as a separate division.

The meaning of the term “state language” is certainly so obvious that it hardly need be defined. A state language is simply the language used in conducting the official business of a state. The language of the state serves in many areas of life. It is the language which authorities are expected to employ in communicating with each other and with citizens and which citizens speak in dealing with officials; it is the language used in courts of justice, the language of the railway and postal services, the language in which the transactions of representative bodies are conducted and in which the minutes of the debates in those bodies are recorded, and, finally, the language in which the texts of laws and decrees must be written to be legally binding.

“Our intervention in Hungary will prove to be an event which, at the present moment, will overshadow all other problems in Europe,” Russia's Chancellor Karl Robert Nesselrode noted in May, 1849,2 while the last major drama sparked by the upheavals of 1848 was being staged in Hungary's towns, undulating plains, and cholera-ridden valleys. Europe's liberals were captivated and Europe's conservatives aghast as Magyar irregulars, in mid-April, 1849, hurled the Habsburg imperial soldiery backwards from their positions encircling Buda and Pest in central Hungary to within forty miles east of Vienna. Would an independent, national Hungarian republic arise in the central Danubian basin? Would nearly six hundred years of Habsburg hegemony along the Danube be rent asunder? Such questions were decided by the clash of arms amid the alternating heat and thunderstorms of the Hungarian summer of 1849.

Although all governments in the past have been strongly influenced in the conduct of foreign policy by domestic considerations arising from the political, economic, and social compositions of their populations and the ethnic divisions within their state, in no European country has the intertwining and interaction between internal controversy and foreign diplomacy been so significant and so fateful for Europe as in the Habsburg monarchy in the last fifty years of its existence. By the close of the nineteenth century not only were the component nationalities in the process of shifting their prime loyalties from the symbol of Habsburg unity, the emperor, to their own leaders and parties, but the majority of them had been able to secure the sympathy, if not the outright assistance, of foreign governments. For instance, the Eomanians and Italians of the monarchy could look to strongly nationalistic governments in Bucharest and Rome whose irredentist propensities were scarcely concealed; the Habsburg South Slavs could hope for future encouragement from Serbia, despite the fact that under the Obrenović dynasty the Serbian government had close ties with Vienna. Among the great powers Russia, although herself a conservative empire opposed to the breakup of the Habsburg state, nevertheless offered a great deal of attraction for some Czechs, South Slavs, and Ruthenes. Even the nationally-minded citizens of the German empire, the monarchy's closest ally, were deeply concerned about the relative position of their German brethren within Austria.

In the fall of 1918, when the colossal empire of the Habsburgs collapsed and a new Czechoslovak state took its place among the Successor States, the birth of the new republic tempted scholars to speculate about how this event would influence the future work of Czech and Slovak historians. Yielding to this temptation, Josef Pekař, a leading Czech historian and co-editor of Český časopis historický (Czech Historical Journal), in the preface of the 1918 volume of the journal jubilantly welcomed the new state on behalf of Czech historians, described the role that Czech history and Czech historiography had played in the past, and suggested what role it would play in the future fortunes of Czech people. His words aptly expressed the views of the large majority of Czech historians at that time:

Warren F. Kuehl's list of United States and Canadian doctoral dissertations in history is an important American bibliographical reference work which no historian can afford to neglect. Yet, scholars of the history of the Habsburg monarchy find it difficult to make effective use of this valuable bibliography, for the bulk of the entries which are of potential interest to specialists in the field are listed under numerous subdivisions and are not consolidated under appropriate headings in the topical index. For instance, numerous dissertations dealing with nineteenth-century alliances, with multilateral negotiations involving the Austrian empire, such as the Congresses of Vienna, Paris, and Berlin, or with the diplomatic relations of the Habsburg monarchy and the Austrian Republic with neighboring states are listed under such diverse headings as “Eastern Question,” “Europe, Diplomacy,” “Alliance System and Concert of Europe,” or “Near East.” While most scholars use library catalogs largely for finding works written by particular authors, those who peruse dissertation lists are more often interested in ascertaining what has been written on specific topics.