There were 115 eventful years in Innsbruck's history between the last Count of Andechs and the first Tyrolean sovereign from the House of Habsburg. For around 100 years after the last Count of Andechs, the Counts of Tyrol controlled the destiny of the province and thus to a large extent the city of Innsbruck. Meinhard II of Tyrol (1239 - 1295) was able to expand his territory with skilful politics and a little luck. From his ancestral castle in Meran, he managed to unite the patchwork of what is now Tyrol into a more unified whole. His successor as Tyrolean ruler, Duke Henry of Carinthia (1265 - 1335), was one of the most important aristocrats in the Holy Roman Empire. However, he was not destined to have a male successor. Even before his death, however, Henry had ensured that his daughter Margarethe could succeed him.

Margarethe "Maultasch" of Tyrol-Görz (1318 - 1369) is one of the most famous female figures in Tyrolean history. She was married in her second marriage to Ludwig von Brandenburg, a Wittelsbach. As Dukes of Bavaria, the Wittelsbachs were the great adversaries of the Habsburgs within the Holy Roman Empire at the time. The problem was that Margarethe had not yet divorced her first husband, Johann-Heinrich von Luxemburg. This unloved Bohemian nobleman had been shooed out of the country by the Tyrolean population in 1341, but an official divorce was never finalised. The Pope imposed a curse on the province of Tyrol because of the "unholy" marriage of its sovereign princess. This interdict was one of the harshest punishments for people in the Middle Ages. It forbade the holding of masses and the giving of communion in the country's churches. It was probably at this time that Margarethe was nicknamed Maultasch was given. There are no contemporary portraits that would indicate a deformed mouth. The pictures we have of Margarethe Maultasch today date from the 16th century at the earliest.

Margaret's reign was characterised by several crises. The 14th century saw global warming in Europe, which resulted in a plague of locusts. This also led to crop failures and famine in Tyrol. But that was not all. From 1348 to 1350, Europe was ravaged by the plague. The disease probably travelled from Venice via Trento and the Adige Valley to Innsbruck. The Black death decimated the population and brought economic hardship and misery to the survivors. Not much information can be found in the archives, but the consequences of the plague were devastating, as they were throughout Europe. An Innsbruck woman who fell ill with the plague spoke in her will of the "common dying that is going on in the country".

People could not explain phenomena such as crop failures and plague. Many saw the devastation of the country as a punishment from God and held Margaret responsible, as the papal curse had been imposed on her account. The reasons probably lay elsewhere. Innsbruck was neither a paved city nor did it have the sewage system or drinking water supply that were to be established shortly afterwards. Animals and people shared the cramped space within the city walls under unsanitary conditions, which probably fuelled the Black Death more than the papal curse.

During this time, the Innsbruck Lower city pool in today's Badgasse. Baths were not only used for cleansing, medical care was also provided here by bathers according to the standards of the time. Bathers were travelling or local healers who treated the sick, stitched wounds or pulled teeth. The common doctrine up until modern times was the Four juices doctrine. According to this theory, there was a balance of blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile in the body. An imbalance of these juices leads to illness. The balance was disturbed by a blasphemous lifestyle, poor diet, excessive sexual activity or miasmas in the air. Water also had a reputation for penetrating through the skin and destroying the Juice ratio in the human body, which is why you should be treated after bathing. There were formally trained doctors at universities, but not many of them. The supernatural was considered real, even in medical care. The scientific approach of the universities of the time was not necessarily superior to that of the practice-orientated bathers.

During the 1350s, the Habsburg Rudolf IV (1339 - 1365) had campaigned for a reconciliation between the Pope and the princes of Tyrol, not entirely without self-interest of course. Margaret's son Meinhard III was married to Margaret of Austria, a Habsburg. Duke Ludwig died in 1361, and Meinhard also passed away in 1362. The treaty of succession drawn up in return for his intervention with the Pope regulated the succession in the County of Tyrol very favourably for the Habsburgs. With the consent of the Tyrolean nobility, Margarethe handed over the reins of government to Rudolf IV of Austria in 1363.

The Dukes of Bavaria from the House of Wittelsbach refused to recognise this inheritance treaty, which declared their claims to Tyrol null and void. As late as 1363, they moved towards Innsbruck in order to rectify the law by force of arms. The citizens of Innsbruck, who were obliged to do military service, were able to successfully defend the city, which was fortified by Andechsburg Castle and the city walls. It may be an irony of fate that it was the Wittelsbach Ludwig who had the city walls raised and reinforced.

Without Rudolf's unscrupulousness and his swindle, the history of Innsbruck would have been very different. With the acquisition of Tyrol, the Habsburg family was able to close an important geographical gap within its sphere of power. The incorporation of the city into the much larger territory of the Habsburgs gave Innsbruck additional importance, while the actual capital of Merano was further marginalised. In addition to the north-south transport of goods, the city on the Inn had now also become a west-east transport hub between the eastern Austrian lands and the old Habsburg possessions in the west. At the same time, the survivors of the great plague wave of 1348 led to an economic boom throughout Europe. Labour had become scarce due to the shrinking population, but greater resources were available per capita. For the people of Innsbruck, who had survived the turbulent first half of the 14th century, better times were about to begin.

The intelligent, liberal-minded and sensitive Crown Prince Rudolf (1858 - 1889) was regarded as the Favourite of the nations of the Habsburg Empire. In many respects, his life can be read as exemplary for the period between 1848 and the outbreak of the First World War. The struggle between new political ideas and the traditional, the enthusiasm for science, art and culture as well as customs and morals, which also characterised society and everyday life in Innsbruck, are reflected in the figure of Emperor Franz Josef I's son. The vast majority of Innsbruckers did not have the material means or the status of Habsburgs, but the fashions and trends under which they lived were the same.

The Danube Monarchy had changed since Franz Joseph I took office. In 1866, after Königgrätz, Austria had left the Deutschen Bund was eliminated. The so-called Compromise with Hungary took place in 1867. The Italian territories, with the exception of Trentino and the port of Trieste, were lost. The endeavours of the individual ethnic groups for national independence did not stop at Tyrol, as the Trentino region between Salurn and Riva on Lake Garda also included an Italian-speaking part of the country. In the Tyrolean provincial parliament, Italian-speaking members of parliament, so-called Irredentistsmore rights and autonomy for what was then South Tyrol. In Innsbruck, there were repeated tensions and clashes between Italian and German-speaking students. The WallschenThis term for Italians persists to this day in Tyrol and they were considered dishonourable, unreliable and lazy.

Rudolf was considered to be very well-read and educated. He was interested in a wide range of subjects, in keeping with the spirit of the educated middle classes. In addition to Greek and Latin, he also spoke French, Hungarian, Czech and Croatian. As a private citizen, he devoted himself to writing press articles, science and travelling through the countries of the monarchy. He organised the publication of of the Kronprinzenwerka natural science encyclopaedia. Volume 13 was published in 1893 and dealt with the crown land of Tyrol.

He was also politically open to new ideas. Rudolf wrote liberal articles in the "Neue Wiener Tagblatt" under a pseudonym. Among other things, he wanted to promote land and land reforms by taxing large landowners more heavily and granting the individual nationalities of the Habsburg Empire more rights. He was particularly unpopular in the conservative, rural Tyrol. Among the liberal-minded people of Innsbruck, on the other hand, he was seen as a hope for a renewal of the monarchy in the sense of a modern, federal state. Although the Rudolf Fountain on Boznerplatz in Innsbruck does not commemorate the crown prince, he was present at its inauguration.

Despite, or perhaps because of his aristocratic background, Rudolf's private life was turbulent, but not atypical of the time, in which parents and teachers were less approachable educators and more distant figures of respect. Children were brought up strictly. Neither teachers nor parents shied away from corporal punishment, even if there were limits, laws and rules for the use of domestic violence. Militarism and a focus on future gainful employment prevented the kind of childhood and youth we know today. Rudolf's early years, when he had to undergo a military education under General Gondrecourt at the request of Emperor Franz Josef, were also less than luxurious. It was only after his mother Elisabeth intervened that harassment such as water cures, drill in the rain and snow and being woken up with pistol shots were removed from the six-year-old crown prince's daily programme.

Like many of his contemporaries, Rudolf found himself in an unhappy, arranged marriage as an adult. The 19th century was not the age of love marriages. Aristocrats and members of the upper middle classes married out of arrogance and with the aim of preserving the dynasty. Servants, maids, farmhands and maidservants were forbidden to marry for a long time. In the upper classes, wives were nothing more than jewellery for their husbands and the head of the household. Husbands indulged in sexual affairs with maids, mistresses and prostitutes. Only when the often older husband had died could widows enjoy a life outside this role.

Throughout his life, Rudolf was not averse to the fairer sex outside of marriage. In the last months of his life, Rudolf had an affair with Mary Vetsera, a girl from the rich Hungarian aristocracy who was considered particularly beautiful and was only 17 years old. At this time, he was already suffering from depression, gonorrhoea, alcoholism and morphine addiction. On 30 January 1889, Rudolf met Vetsera after spending the previous night with his long-term lover, the prostitute Maria "Mizzi" Kaspar, had spent the night. Under circumstances that have never been fully clarified, he first killed the young woman and then himself with a shot to the head. The suicide was never recognised by the Habsburg family. Zita (1892 - 1989), the widow of the last Emperor Karl, still spoke of an assassination attempt in the 1980s. 

The discussion surrounding the burial of the heir to the throne and his mistress revealed the Christian morals and double standards of the Habsburg Empire. Suicide was considered a grave sin and actually prevented a Christian burial. Vetsera was buried inconspicuously in a small grave by the cemetery wall in Heiligenkreuz near Mayerling, while Rudolf was given a state funeral after imperial intervention with the Pope and was laid to rest in the Capuchin crypt, probably the most famous burial place of the Habsburgs in Vienna.

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.

Many tyroleans see themselves as an own nation. With „Tirol isch lei oans“, „Zu Mantua in Banden“ and „Dem Land Tirol die Treue", the federal state has three more or less official anthems. There are historical reasons for this pronounced local patriotism. Tyrolean freedom and independence are often invoked as a local shrine to underpin this. It is often referred to as the first democracy in mainland Europe, which is probably a gross exaggeration when you consider the feudal and hierarchical history of the country up until well into the 19th century. However, the country cannot be denied a certain peculiarity in its development, even if it was less about the participation of broad sections of the population and more about curtailing the power of the sovereign.

After the marriage of the Bavarian Ludwig von Wittelsbach to the Tyrolean princess Margarete von Tirol-Görz, the Bavarian Wittelsbachs were rulers of Tyrol for a short time. In order to win over the Tyrolean population to his side, Ludwig decided to offer the provincial estates a treat in the 14th century. In the "Großen Freiheitsbrief" of 1342, Louis promised the Tyroleans that he would not enact any laws or tax increases without first consulting the provincial estates. This Große Freiheitsbrief was henceforth consulted by the representatives of the Tyrolean population in all negotiations with the sovereigns. However, there can be no question of a democratic constitution as understood in the 21st century, as these provincial estates were primarily the aristocratic, landowning classes, who represented their interests accordingly

As the towns and bourgeoisie slowly became more important in the 15th century, a counterweight to the nobility developed within these estates. At the Diet of 1423 under Frederick IV, 18 members of the nobility met 18 members of the towns and peasantry for the first time. Gradually, a fixed composition developed in the provincial diets of the 15th and 16th centuries. The Tyrolean bishops of Brixen and Trento, the abbots of the Tyrolean monasteries, the nobility, representatives of the towns and the peasantry were all represented. The provincial governor presided over the meeting. Of course, the resolutions and wishes of the provincial parliament were not binding for the prince, but it was probably a reassuring feeling for the ruler to know that the representatives of the population were on his side or that difficult decisions were supported. 

Another important document for the country was the Tiroler Landlibell. In 1511, Maximilian stipulated, among other things, that Tyrolean soldiers should only be called up for military service in defence of their own country. The reason for Maximilian's generosity was less his love for the Tyroleans than the need to keep the Tyrolean mines running instead of burning out the precious labourers and the peasantry that supplied them on the battlefields of Europe. This special right of the Tyroleans was one of the reasons for the 1809 uprising, when young Tyroleans were conscripted in the mobilisation of the armed forces as part of general conscription. 

The Napoleonic Wars were a milestone for the Tyrolean self-image when the Catholic crown land was threatened by the "godless French" and the revolutionary social order of 1792. Before a decisive battle against Napoleon's armies in June 1796, the Tyrolean marksmen entrusted their fate to the heart of Jesus and made a covenant with God personally that would guarantee their Heiliges Land Tirol from Napoleon. Another legend from 1796 centres on a young woman from the village of Spinges. Katharina Lanz, who was known as the Jungfrau von Spinges in die Landesgeschichte als identitätsstiftende Nationalheldin einging, soll die beinahe geschlagenen Truppen mit ihrem herrischen Auftreten in der Schlacht solcherart motiviert haben, dass sie schlussendlich den Sieg über die französische Übermacht davontragen konnten. Je nach Darstellung soll sie mit einer Mistgabel, einem Dreschflegel oder einer Sense ähnlich der französischen Jungfrau von Orleans den Truppen Napoleons das Fürchten gelehrt haben. Teile des Tiroler Selbstverständnisses rund um die Schützen und das Nationalgefühl, eine selbstständige und von Gott auserwählte Nation zu sein, die zufällig der Republik Österreich angehängt wurde, geht auf diese Legenden zurück. Nationalisten zu beiden Seiten des Brenners bedienen sich noch heute der Jungfrau von Spingesthe heart of Jesus and Andreas Hofer, to publicise their concerns. The Säcularfeier des Bundes Tirols mit dem göttlichen Herzen Jesu was still celebrated in the 20th century with great participation from the political elite.

The historical Tyrolean nationalism is based on this independent political history of the region and the aversion to everything that comes from Vienna or Brussels that persists to this day, which finds its highest expression in bon mots such as "bisch a Tiroler bisch a Mensch, bisch koana, bisch a Oasch" celebrates. The more centralisation progressed since Maria Theresa, the more Vienna was keen to minimise special rights in the historical crown lands such as Tyrol, Carinthia and Styria. The subjects' sense of belonging should not be to the province of Tyrol, but to the House of Habsburg. In the 19th century, the aim was to strengthen identification with the monarchy. The press, visits by the ruling family, monuments such as the Rudolfsbrunnen or the opening of Mount Isel with Hofer as a Tyrolean loyal to the emperor were intended to help turn the population into subjects loyal to the emperor.

When the Habsburg Empire collapsed after the First World War, the crown land of Tyrol also broke up. What had been known as South Tyrol until 1918, the Italian-speaking part of the province between Riva on Lake Garda and Salurn in the Adige Valley, became Trentino with Trento as its capital. The German-speaking part of the province between Neumarkt and the Brenner Pass is now South Tyrol / Alto Adige, an autonomous region of the Republic of Italy with the capital Bolzano. In the Tyrolean part north of the Brenner Pass, as in many former crown lands, there was an intention to break away from the newly constituted Republic of German-Austria after the lost World War. The small rump of the vanished Habsburg Empire with its oversized capital Vienna was not seen as viable by the majority of people. Throughout the centuries, Innsbruckers felt themselves to be Innsbruckers, Tyroleans, Germans, Catholics and subjects of the Emperor. Before 1945, however, hardly anyone felt Austrian. In a referendum, 99% of Tyroleans voted in favour of annexation to Germany.

It was only after the Second World War that a sense of belonging to Austria began to develop. To this day, however, many Tyroleans are proud of their local identity and like to distinguish themselves from the inhabitants of other federal states and countries. For many Tyroleans, after more than 100 years, the Brenner Pass still represents a Injustice limit even if the Europa der Regionen cooperates politically across borders at EU level. The legend of the Holy Landthe independent Tyrolean nation and first mainland democracy persists to this day. The fact that the historic crown land of Tyrol was a multi-ethnic construct with Italians, Ladins, Cimbri and Rhaeto-Romans is often overlooked in right-wing circles.