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The Austrian Circle
The Holy Roman Empire (962-1806) was organized, beginning in the early 1500s, into ten Imperial Circles, each of which had its own diet or parliament, and which had certain responsibilities with regard to defense, tax collection, and other functions. (Some territories of the empire, for example, Bohemia and parts of Italy, were not grouped in circles.) This late-18th century French map shows the Austrian Circle, which largely coincided with those lands ruled by the House of Habsburg from Vienna. In addition to Austria proper, the Austrian Circle included parts of ...
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Library of Congress
Subscribe to the 8th War Loan
In World War I, all sides used posters as tools to mobilize their populations for the war effort. This poster, published in Vienna in 1918, shows a little girl reaching through a number "8" to deposit a coin into a pile below, an advertisement for the eighth war loan being raised by Austria-Hungary, Germany’s chief ally in the war. The artist who designed the poster was Alfred Offner. Born in Czernowitz in 1879, Offner was a painter and graphic artist who was associated with the Vienna Secession, a group ...
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Library of Congress
Union Bank, 8th War Loan; Peace Through Victory
In World War I, all sides used posters as tools to mobilize their populations for the war effort. This poster, published in Vienna in 1918, is an advertisement for the eighth war loan being raised by Austria-Hungary, Germany’s chief ally in the war. It shows a young woman offering a bowl of coins at an altar decorated with the Austrian coat of arms. The artist was Thomas Fasche, who created several other World War I posters, but about whom little is known.
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Library of Congress
National War Relief Exhibition
In World War I, all sides used posters as tools to mobilize their populations for the war effort. This poster, published in Pozsony (present-day Bratislava, Slovakia) in 1917, shows a disabled veteran with a prosthetic arm using a scythe to harvest wheat. The text announces the National War Relief Exhibition in Pozsony. The poster was created by Pal Sujan, a popular artist whose portraits and other paintings were widely shown in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Sujan was born in Budapest in 1880, studied art, and worked as an art teacher in ...
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Library of Congress
Austria-Hungary
The Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918) was a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual empire governed by a dual monarchy that exercised Habsburg rule across Europe’s second largest sovereign territory. Although considered a Great Power in the concert of European nations, the empire was internally divided by internecine quarrels among its national minorities and ultimately broke up under the strains of World War I. This 1906 Rand McNally map shows the empire in the decade before its dissolution. William Rand founded the company that became Rand McNally in Chicago in 1856, initially to print guidebooks ...
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Library of Congress
The Grand Theater of the War in Italy
Pierre Mortier (1661-1711) was a Dutch publisher of atlases, maps, and charts. The grandson of religious refugees from France who settled in Leiden about 1625, Mortier grew up in Amsterdam, which at the time was the center of the international book trade. As a young man, he spent several years in Paris, where he got to know French maps and publishers. Returning to Amsterdam about 1685, he established himself as a publisher of high quality maps, including reprints of works by Alexis-Hubert Jaillot, Nicolas Sanson, and the other great French ...
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Library of Congress
Introduction to a Systematic History of Shelled Animals
Joachim Johann Nepomuk Anton Spalowsky (1752–97) was a veritable polymath in the Austrian Empire of the late 18th century. Little is known of his life, but it is thought that he was of Polish Silesian ancestry. He was a surgeon attached to the civic regiments of Vienna and a member of the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences in Prague. His erudition is evidenced by the range of his publications. His 1777 inaugural dissertation treated poisonous plants and related topics. He went on to write works on shells, birds, and ...
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Smithsonian Institution
Vienna 1, Parliament
Rudolf von Alt (1812–1905) was an Austrian painter, draughtsman, and printmaker known for his city scenes, landscapes, and interiors. Shown here is Alt’s ink drawing with white heightening of the parliament building in Vienna, signed and dated 1885 in the lower right-hand corner. Located in the Innere Stadt (Inner City), or the first district of Vienna (“Vienna 1”), the neoclassical structure was built in 1874–83 by Danish architect Baron Theophil Edvard von Hansen (1813–91). It served as the meeting place of the two chambers of the ...
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Austrian National Library
Opening Proclamation from University Authorities Prior to an Academic Term
The University of Vienna was founded by Duke Rudolph IV of Austria in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. As at other European universities, the primary language of scholarship was Latin. This proclamation in Latin is by Petrus Muchitsch, a classical philologist and theologian who twice served as rector of the university, in 1577–78 and again in 1578. In this greeting, Petrus invites the students of the university to resume their studies following the end of the 1578 epidemic of plague in Vienna. Printed in ...
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Austrian National Library
Exlibris
Wolfgangus Lazius is the Latinized name of Wolfgang Laz (1514–65), an Austrian humanist, historian, cartographer, and physician who produced the first set of maps of the hereditary lands of the Austrian crown. Lazius was professor of medicine on the faculty of the University of Vienna, where he was several times dean and rector. Emperor Ferdinand I appointed him his personal physician, historiographer, and adviser, as well as curator of the imperial collections. Like many 16th century scholars trained in the sciences, Lazius was drawn to the emerging art of ...
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Austrian National Library
The Magic Flute
Die Zauberflöte (The magic flute) is among the best known of the 22 operas written by the Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91). Mozart composed the opera in the spring and summer of 1791, with the exception of the Overture and the March of the Priests at the beginning of Act II. These parts were completed only a few days before the premiere on September 30 of that year. Shown here is Mozart’s original manuscript score. During the initial phase of work, Mozart normally wrote only the melody ...
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Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
The Salzburg Missal
The five volumes of the monumental feast missal of the Salzburg basilica, now in the Bavarian State Library, is among the most lavishly ornate, and probably the most costly, medieval missals in the world. Commissioned by the Salzburg Prince-Archbishop Bernhard of Rohr (1418–87, reigned 1466–82), an art lover and bibliophile, the manuscript was completed by 1494 under the rule of his successors. It contains 22 liturgical texts for the most important religious feasts to be celebrated in the Salzburg basilica. In the late 1450s, the Salzburg painter Ulrich ...
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Bavarian State Library
Book of the Holy Gospel of Our Lord and God Jesus Christ
The first printing of the Syriac New Testament appeared thanks to the patronage of Ferdinand I, to whom a long preface is dedicated to begin the book. Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter (1506-1557) and Moses of Mardin, on whose handwriting the Syriac type for the book was based, were the forces behind the work. This Syriac type was produced by Kaspar Kraft under the direction of the French Orientalist Guillaume Postel (1510-1581). This edition of the New Testament has James, 1 Peter, and 1 John, but not the other General Epistles or ...
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Hill Museum & Manuscript Library