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.