Maria Theresa is one of the most important figures in Austrian history. Although she is often referred to as Empress, she was officially "only" Archduchess of Austria, Queen of Hungary and Queen of Bohemia. Her domestic reforms were significant. Together with her advisors Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz, Joseph von Sonnenfels and Wenzel Anton Kaunitz, she managed to emerge from the so-called Österreichischen Erblanden to create a modern state. Instead of the administration of its territories by the local nobility, it favoured a modern administration. The welfare of her subjects became more important. In the style of the Enlightenment, her advisors had recognised that the welfare of the state depended on the health and education of its individual parts. Subjects were to be Catholic, but their loyalty was to be to the state. School education was placed under centralised state administration. No critical, humanistic intellectuals were to be educated, but rather material for the state administrative apparatus. Non-nobles could now also rise to higher state positions via the military and administration.

A rethink took place in law enforcement and the judiciary. In 1747, a kleine Polizei which was responsible for matters relating to market supervision, trade regulations, tourist control and public decency. The penal code Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana did not abolish torture, but it did regulate its use.

Economic reforms were intended not only to create more opportunities for the subjects, but also to increase state revenue. Weights and measures were nominated to make the tax system more impermeable. For citizens and peasants, the standardisation of laws had the advantage that life was less dependent on landlords and their whims. The RobotThis was abolished under Maria Theresa.

As much as Maria Theresa staged herself as a pious mother of the country and is known today as an Enlightenment figure, the strict Catholic ruler was not squeamish when it came to questions of power and religion. In keeping with the trend of the Enlightenment, she had superstitions such as vampirism, which was widespread in the eastern parts of her empire, critically analysed and initiated the final end to witch trials. At the same time, however, she mercilessly expelled Protestants from the country. Many Tyroleans were forced to leave their homeland and settle in parts of the Habsburg Empire further away from the centre.

In crown lands such as Tyrol, Maria Theresa's reforms met with little favour. With the exception of a few liberals, they saw themselves more as an independent and autonomous province and less as part of a modern territorial state. The clergy also did not like the new, subordinate role, which became even more pronounced under Joseph II. For the local nobility, the reforms not only meant a loss of importance and autonomy, but also higher taxes and duties. Taxes, levies and customs duties, which had always provided the city of Innsbruck with reliable income, were now collected centrally and only partially refunded via financial equalisation. In order to minimise the fall of sons from impoverished aristocratic families and train them for civil service, Maria Theresa founded the Theresianumwhich also had a branch in Innsbruck from 1775.

As is so often the case, time has ironed out many a wrinkle and the people of Innsbruck are now proud to have been home to one of the most important rulers in Austrian history. Today, the Triumphpfote and the Hofburg in Innsbruck are the main reminders of the Theresian era.

The Austrian state is a fairly recent invention, as is citizenship. For more than 1000 years, Innsbruck was a land of the Heiligen Römischen Reiches. Innsbruckers were subjects of the emperor. And subjects of the Tyrolean sovereign. And their landlord. If they had citizenship, they were also Innsbruckers. And very probably also Christians. What they were not, at least not until 1806, was Austrian. But what was this Holy Roman Empire? And who was the emperor? And was he really more powerful than the king?

The empire was a union of individual countries, characterised by conflicts and squabbles over power, both between the princes of the empire and between the princes and the emperor. It had no capital. The centre of the empire was where the emperor was, who kept changing his residences. Emperor Maximilian I made Innsbruck one of his residence cities, which was like a turbo for the development of the city. Until the 19th century, nationality and perceived affiliation played less of a role in nationality than they do today. Christianity was the bond that held many things together. Institutions such as the Imperial Chamber Court or the Imperial Diet were only introduced in the late Middle Ages and early modern period to facilitate administration and settle disputes between the individual sovereigns. The Goldene Bullewhich, among other things, regulated the election of the emperor, was a very simple form of an early constitution. Three ecclesiastical and four secular electors elected their head. The princes had a seat and a vote in the Imperial Diet and the emperor was dependent on them. In order to assert himself, he needed strong domestic power. The Habsburgs could fall back on Tyrol, among other things. Tyrol was also one of the bone of contention between the Habsburgs and the dukes of Bavaria, although both were loyal to the Holy Roman Empire belonged to. Innsbruck was occupied by the Bavarians several times.

The hierarchy within the feudal feudal system was strictly organised from emperor to peasant. Emperors and kings received power and legitimisation directly from God. The feudal system was ordained by God. Peasants worked in the fields to feed the clergy, who prayed for the salvation of souls, and the aristocracy, who fought for the defenceless and protected the clergy. It was a three-way relationship in which one side was prayer for salvation, one side protection and the third obedience, loyalty and labour.

This loyalty may seem strange to us modern citizens, as the obligations of taxes, compliance with laws, elections or military service are more abstract and much less personal these days. Until the 20th century, however, the feudal system was based precisely on this. Loyalty was not based on a birthright like citizenship is today. The "Austrian" military man Prince Eugene may have been of French descent, but he still fought in the army of Leopold I, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Heiligen Römischen Reiches against France. He was a subject of the Archduke of Austria with residences in Vienna and Hungary. While you had to be born in the USA to become president, the ruler was not bound to an innate nationality. Emperor Charles V was born in what is now Ghent in Belgium, grew up at the Burgundian court, became King of Spain before inheriting the Archduchy of Austria and later being elected Emperor. Germanicus being German did not mean being German, it mostly referred to the everyday language a person used.

When Charlemagne was crowned Roman-German Emperor in Rome in 800, he took over the legacy of the Roman emperors with divine legitimisation through the anointing of the Pope and at the same time as the Pope's secular patron. In return, the emperor was the Holy Father's protective power on earth. The Heilige Römische Reich under the mantle of the emperor only ceased to exist in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. From this time onwards, Central Europe slowly began to transform itself into a collection of nation states modelled on France and England.

The idea of the Roman Empire went back to an adventurous, very old idea that ancient Rome had to continue to exist. The Roman-German emperors saw themselves as the direct successors of the Roman emperors of antiquity. For devout Christians, according to the Lehre der Vier Weltreiche of enormous importance that the empire continued to exist. The basis of the Lehre der Vier Weltreiche was the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament. According to this story, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of four successive world empires. According to the prophet, the world would end with the end of the fourth empire. The Christian church father Jerome interpreted these four empires around 400 AD as the succession of Babylon, Persia, Greece and the Roman Empire. In the belief of the Middle Ages, the end of Roman rule also meant the end of the world and therefore Rome could not come to an end. About this so-called Translatio ImperiiThe transfer of the legal claim of the Imperium Romanum of antiquity to the Roman-German emperors after Charlemagne formally preserved the permanence of Rome and allowed the earth to continue to exist.

Today, Innsbruck's city centre is characterised by buildings and monuments that commemorate the Habsburg family. For many centuries, the Habsburgs were a European ruling dynasty whose sphere of influence included a wide variety of territories. At the zenith of their power, they were the rulers of a "Reich, in dem die Sonne nie untergeht". Through wars and skilful marriage and power politics, they sat at the levers of power between South America and the Ukraine in various eras. Innsbruck was repeatedly the centre of power for this dynasty. The relationship was particularly intense between the 15th and 17th centuries. Due to its strategically favourable location between the Italian cities and German centres such as Augsburg and Regensburg, Innsbruck was given a special place in the empire at the latest after its elevation to the status of a royal seat under Emperor Maximilian. Some of the Habsburg rulers had no special relationship with Tyrol, nor did they have any particular affection for this German land. Ferdinand I (1503 - 1564) was educated at the Spanish court. Maximilian's grandson Charles V had grown up in Burgundy. When he set foot on Spanish soil for the first time at the age of 17 to take over his mother Joan's inheritance of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, he did not speak a word of Spanish. When he was elected German Emperor in 1519, he did not speak a word of German.

Tyrol was a province and, as a conservative region, usually favoured by the ruling family. Its inaccessible location made it the perfect refuge in troubled and crisis-ridden times. Charles V (1500 - 1558) fled during a conflict with the Protestant Schmalkaldischen Bund to Innsbruck for some time. Ferdinand I (1793 - 1875) allowed his family to stay in Innsbruck, far away from the Ottoman threat in eastern Austria. Shortly before his coronation in the turbulent summer of the 1848 revolution, Franz Josef I enjoyed the seclusion of Innsbruck together with his brother Maximilian, who was later shot by insurgent nationalists as Emperor of Mexico. A plaque at the Alpengasthof Heiligwasser above Igls reminds us that the monarch spent the night here as part of his ascent of the Patscherkofel.

Not all Habsburgs were always happy to be in Innsbruck. Married princes and princesses such as Maximilian's second wife Bianca Maria Sforza or Ferdinand II's second wife Anna Caterina Gonzaga were stranded in the harsh, German-speaking mountains after their wedding without being asked. If you also imagine what a move and marriage from Italy to Tyrol to a foreign man meant for a teenager, you can imagine how difficult life was for the princesses. Until the 20th century, children of the aristocracy were primarily brought up to be politically married. There was no opposition to this. One might imagine courtly life to be ostentatious, but privacy was not provided for in all this luxury.

When Sigismund Franz von Habsburg (1630 - 1665) died childless as the last prince of the province, the title of royal seat was also history and Tyrol was ruled by a governor. Tyrolean mining had lost its importance. Shortly afterwards, the Habsburgs lost their possessions in Western Europe along with Spain and Burgundy, moving Innsbruck from the centre to the periphery of the empire. In the Austro-Hungarian monarchy of the 19th century, Innsbruck was the western outpost of a huge empire that stretched as far as today's Ukraine. Franz Josef I (1830 - 1916) ruled over a multi-ethnic empire between 1848 and 1916. However, his neo-absolutist concept of rule was out of date. Although Austria had had a parliament and a constitution since 1867, the emperor regarded this government as "his". Ministers were responsible to the emperor, who was above the government. The ailing empire collapsed in the second half of the 19th century. On 28 October 1918, the Republic of Czechoslovakia was proclaimed, and on 29 October, Croats, Slovenes and Serbs left the monarchy. The last Emperor Charles abdicated on 11 November. On 12 November, "Deutschösterreich zur demokratischen Republik, in der alle Gewalt vom Volke ausgeht“. The chapter of the Habsburgs was over.

Despite all the national, economic and democratic problems that existed in the multi-ethnic states that were subject to the Habsburgs in various compositions and forms, the subsequent nation states were sometimes much less successful in reconciling the interests of minorities and cultural differences within their territories. Since the eastward enlargement of the EU, the Habsburg monarchy has been seen by some well-meaning historians as a pre-modern predecessor of the European Union. Together with the Catholic Church, the Habsburgs shaped the public sphere through architecture, art and culture. Goldenes DachlThe Hofburg, the Triumphal Gate, Ambras Castle, the Leopold Fountain and many other buildings still remind us of the presence of the most important ruling dynasty in European history in Innsbruck.