Styria

“ The spirit of Styria reigned in the nursery, rather than the softer code of our more Western country; I doubt whether discipline were stricter in any house in Forstadt than in the royal palace.
They roused me at eight on my coronation day. My mother herself came to my bedside, and knelt down for a few minutes by it. Krak stood in the background, grim and gloomy. I was a little frightened, and asked what was afoot.
"You're to be crowned to-day, Augustin," said my mother. "You must be a good boy."
"Am I to be crowned king, mother?"
"Yes, dear, in the cathedral. Will you be a good king?" ”

“ We must not spare ourselves the realisation of the bitter truth that the greater part of Styria and Carinthia, and the whole of Carniola, Gorizia, Gradisca, and Istria, with the avenue to the Adriatic, are lost to us. ”

“ Styria (1,281) , a central duchy of Austria, stretching in a semicircle from Upper Austria and Salzburg on the NW. to Croatia and Slavonia on the SE., and flanked by Hungary on the E.; a mountainous region crossed by various eastern ranges of the Alpine system, and drained by the Drave, Save, Inn, and other rivers; more than half lies under forest; agriculture flourishes, but mineral products, iron, salt, coal, &c., constitute the chief wealth. ”

“ I know no country more beautiful than that which may be called the Alpine country of Austria, including the Alps of the southern Tyrol, those of Illyria, the Noric and the Julian Alps, and the Alps of Styria and Salzburg. The variety of the scenery, the verdure of the meadows and trees, the depths of the valleys, the altitude of the mountains, the clearness and grandeur of the rivers and lakes give it, I think, a decided superiority over Switzerland; and the people are far more agreeable. ”

“ Once when Miss Emily left the room, Langler seemed only to have waited for this in order to say to the Misses Chambers: "I am on the very verge of a voyage to Styria."
"Styria!" they said together.
"What, is Styria so remote?" asked Langler, leaning forward with a quizzing look. "I didn't say China, I said Styria—a two days' journey by the new rail-trains, with 'every luxury' en route! ”

“ We soon entered the province of Styria, and brighter rivers, greener woods, richer and more graceful uplands and meadows, do not exist in the world. I had thought the scenery of Stockbridge, in my own State, unequalled till now. I could believe myself there, were not the women alone working in the fields, and the roads lined for miles together with military wagons and cavalry upon march. The conscript law of Austria compels every peasant to serve fourteen years! and the labours of agriculture fall, of course, almost exclusively upon females. ”

“ The Semmering divides the plain which extends from Vienna towards the south, from that of Gratz, in the centre of which is situated the town of the same name, the capital of Upper Styria. The railway which traverses this chain of mountains, is of a magnitude worthy of old Rome in its best days; the hills which it ascends are more than 5000 feet above the level of the sea ”

“ Education.—Styria has three higher educational establishments, namely the university and the technical college of Graz and the Montanist College in Leoben.
Notwithstanding the great unevenness of the surface, only 8.0% of the present Styria could be reckoned as unproductive in 1900. Of the productive parts, 19.1% was arable; 0.9% gardens; 0.5% vineyards; 11.8% meadows; 13.3% grazing lands; 54.4% was, however, forest. This territory is justly called “green Styria.” Cattle-raising has greatly developed and farming is actively carried on on the high lands. ”

“ In Styria it is related that those who gathered around him, all lived so devoutly, that the rage for mortification reached even to the herdsmen and shepherds of the neighbourhood, who vied with the monks and hermits in all the exercises of the religious life, fasting, keeping silence, and administering the discipline to each other with great zeal and earnestness. ”

“ A sojourn among the country manors of Styria gave him opportunity for making a number of pretty sketches of rural life. In the warlike years 1813 and 1814, with their marching and their bivouacs, he went about all day long drawing amongst the soldiers. Even in Rome it was not the statues that fascinated him, but the bright street scenes, the ecclesiastical solemnities, and the picturesque caravans of country people. And when he settled down in Nuremburg, and afterwards in Munich, he did not cease to be sensitive to all impressions that forced themselves on him in varying fulness. ”

“ In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours would have answered among wealthy people at home. ”

“ Austria proper was left to his eldest son Maximilian, Tirol to the archduke Ferdinand; and Styria with Carinthia and Carniola to the archduke Charles. Under the emperor Maximilian II. (1564-1576) , who was also king of Bohemia and Hungary, a liberal policy preserved peace, but he was unable to free his government from its humiliating position of a tributary to the Turk, and he could do nothing to found religious liberty within his dominions on a permanent basis. The whole of Austria and nearly the whole of Styria were mainly Lutheran ”

“ In Upper Germany, accordingly, a sharp line is to be drawn between the Bavaro-Austrian and the Alemannic group. In Austria the capacity for sensuous enjoyment and a certain indolence are combined with a tendency toward sanguine but short-lived enthusiasms. A soft, southern air blows about the heights of Styria as well as over Vienna and its environs, and in the works of the writers of these regions (Wilhelm Fischer-Graz, Rudolf Hans Bartsch) everything is resolved into a lyrical mood and a melody of words. ”

“ The growth of the Austrian House will therefore be properly dealt with in a separate section. ♦Extent of its German lands.♦ It is enough to say here that the Austrian dominion in Germany gradually took in, besides the original duchy, the south-eastern duchies of Steiermark or Styria, Kärnthen or Carinthia, and Krain or Carniola, with the Italian borderlands of Görz, Aquileia, and part of Istria. ”

“ Controlling all the jurisdiction of the land, the duke's only duties towards the Empire were to appear at any diet held in Bavaria, and to send a contingent to the imperial army for any campaigns in the countries bordering upon Austria. In 1186 Duke Leopold I. made a treaty with Ottakar IV., duke of Styria, an arrangement which brought Styria and upper Austria to the Babenbergs in 1192, and in 1229 Duke Leopold II. purchased some lands from the bishop of Freising, and took the title of lord of Carniola. ”

“ Linen-weaving is a household industry.
The population of Styria in 1900 was 1,356,058, which is equivalent to 156 inhabitants per square mile. This proportion is considerably above the rate in the other mountainous regions of Austria. ”

“ In Vienna a committee was formed, consisting of the nobility, university, and citizens, who upset the regency, and got possession of the arsenal and the treasury. At last they agreed to hold a meeting in Pruch an der Muhr, at which Herberstein also was present, and there they came to the conclusion that the provinces of Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, and Austria ob der Enns, should send embassies to king Charles, to lay their complaints before him, and to invite him to a speedy assumption of the reins of government. Styria appointed Herberstein as their ambassador. ”

“ Trieste must go with Austria and Salzburg, and the Northern Tyrol and Styria and Carinthia no doubt; but it is not difficult to show that Austria would actually be strengthened by giving up the Southern Tyrol, where the Italian people, or at least the Italian language, is gaining ground day by day. There really seems very little left of the integrity of the Austrian Empire at the conclusion of our survey of its constituent parts. Matters do not look much better if we turn to Trans-Leithania. ”

“ By an odd turning about of meanings, Austria, once really the Oesterreich, the Eastern land, of Germany, has become in truth the Western land, the Neustria, of the new arrangement. With the Hungarian kingdom are grouped the principality of Transsilvania and the kingdoms of Slavonia and Croatia. The Austrian state is made up of Austria itself—the archduchy with the addition of Salzburg—the duchy of Styria, the county of Tyrol, the kingdoms of Bohemia, Galicia and Lodomeria, Illyria, and Dalmatia with Ragusa and Cattaro. ”

“ Carinthia and Styria are inhabited by German people, except the valley of the Drave towards Klagenfurt. Their eastern neighbours there are first the Magyars, then the northern Slavs and the Poles. The whole eastern frontier is very much broken, and cannot be described in a few words. ”

“ There were unusual sights to be seen here, too; huge caverns were fashioned in the rocks, and grottoes of curious formations. They saw the peasant women making lace, a product for which the province is particularly famed.
At Marburg, Herr Runkel and Leopold Hofer bade farewell to their companions, and boarded the train for Innsbruck where Herr Hofer would meet his young son; while Herr Müller and Ferdinand continued on up into Styria to the city of Gratz, where Frau Müller awaited them. ”

“ Austria does not form a geographical unity, and the constituent parts of this empire belong to different geographical regions. Thus, Tirol, Styria and Carinthia belong, like Switzerland, to the system of the Alps, but these provinces together with those lying in the basin of the Danube form, nevertheless, a compact stretch of country. On the other hand Galicia, extending on the eastern side of the Carpathians, belongs to the great plain of Russia; Bohemia stretches far into the body of Germany; while Dalmatia, which is quite separated from the other provinces, belongs to the Balkan Peninsula. ”

“ In the first years of the reign of Rudolph, Styria was governed by Archduke Maximilian, the brother of the king. He ruled all classes with justice and moderation; consequently the Protestants increased in numbers and strength. But all this was changed when, at the death of the archduke, his son Ferdinand, a pupil of the Jesuits, succeeded his father in the government. He abrogated all the privileges that had been granted to the Protestants, drove their clergy out of the country, putting Catholic priests in their places. ”

“ Frederic, the emperor, Duke of Styria, was now the oldest lineal descendant of Rhodolph of Hapsburg, founder of the house of Austria. The imperial dignity had now degenerated into almost an empty title. The Germanic empire consisted of a few large sovereignties and a conglomeration of petty dukedoms, principalities, and States of various names, very loosely held together, in their heterogeneous and independent rulers and governments, by one nominal sovereign upon whom the jealous States were willing to confer but little real power. ”

“ The immense energies of Duke Henry the Lion had been devoted to his northern rather than his southern duchy, and when the dispute over the Bavarian succession was settled in 1156 the district between the Enns and the Inn had been transferred to Austria. The increasing importance of the mark of Styria, erected into a duchy in 1180, and the county of Tirol, had diminished both the actual and the relative strength of Bavaria, which was now deprived on almost all sides of opportunities for expansion. ”

“ The Heimweh (other languages can hardly express the meaning of this word) is the national sickness to which all natives of the Alps driven into foreign parts are subject, and it is but the other side of that impassioned joy in the home, which finds expression in jubilant songs and shouts rising for ever from the mountains to the sky.
[16] Peter Rosegger is the national poet of Styria. If it can be said that all men on their way through life carry with them a clod of home-soil, as the pious pilgrim carries a handful of sacred earth, then one may say that this poet is home personified. ”

“ This province was inhabited by Slovenes and Germans, and took its name from the castle of Steyer, built in 980 by Otokar III., count of the Trungau. In 1056, it was created a margraviate, and in 1150 it was enlarged by the addition of the counties of Maribor (Marburg) and Cilly. In 1180, Otokar VI. of Styria (1164-1102) obtained the hereditary title of duke from the Emperor in return for his help against Henry the Lion." Dying without children, Otokar made Leopold of Austria his heir. "Styria was annexed to Austria in 1192, and has remained so ever since. ... ”

“ To face page 15 "The Forest Farm."
Peter Rosegger [15]
A Biographical Note By Dr. Julius Petersen
I In the heart of Austria lies Steiermark (Styria) , a rough mountain country on the eastern slope of the Alps. Its inhabitants, protected from the levelling influences of modern civilisation and cut off from that mingling with other peoples which destroys racial character, have retained their old individuality and customs longer than any other German people. ”

“ But the aspect of the people is wonderfully changed on entering the Tyrol. The inhabitants are there as remarkably beautiful as the Styrians are ugly. An air of humanity, and spirit, and health, and plenty, is seen in every face. ”