A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

676 Ch. 17 • The Era of National Unification

Austrian political and cultural life during the 1850s and 1860s by building
a broad modern boulevard, the Ringstrasse. The grand artery was built on
the traces of the city’s fortifications, which Francis Joseph had ordered dis­
mantled in 1857, since they had long since lost all military function except
to separate the wealthy center of the city from the proletarian suburbs. The
new boulevard also took shape with military motives in mind—troops could
be moved rapidly in the event of a working-class rebellion. The architec­
ture of central Vienna reflected the taste of the aristocracy and the
Catholic Church. In contrast, public buildings (including the university,
the opera, and the parliament building) and residences of manufacturers
and bankers that bordered the Ringstrasse reflected the secular cultural
tastes of the Viennese upper classes.
The empire’s largest Czech and Austrian towns were largely German­
speaking; in Prague, Germans outnumbered Czechs by more than three to
one, although the percentage of Germans there declined during the sec­
ond half of the century with the migration of more Czechs to the city. Ger­
man was also the official language of the army (and of the secret police).
To get anywhere, one had to speak German, a fact learned by non-German
migrants to the cities. The German middle class also benefited from free­
trade policies, and profited from the beginnings of industrial concentra­
tion in Bohemia.
Third, the monarchy enjoyed the support of Austrian and Hungarian
nobles, as well as their Croatian, Polish, and Italian counterparts, landed
nobles of ethnic groups with long histories of political sovereignty. The lat­
ter three nobilities depended on the Habsburg monarchy to maintain their

A view of Vienna and its Ringstrasse, 1873.