Cisleithania

Cisleithania (red) within Austria-Hungary, the other parts being Transleithania (light grey) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (dark grey)

Cisleithania (German: Cisleithanien, Hungarian: Ciszlajtánia, Czech: Předlitavsko, Polish: Przedlitawia, Slovene: Cislajtanija, Ukrainian: Цислейтанія, transliterated: Tsysleitàniia) was a name of the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary, the Dual Monarchy created in 1867 and dissolved in 1918. The name was used by politicians and bureaucrats, but it had no official status; the press and general public seldomly used it, and did so with a derogative connotation. The Cisleithanian lands continued to constitute the Empire of Austria, but the latter term was rarely used after 1867, to avoid confusion with the era before 1867, when Hungary had been part of that empire. The somewhat cumbersome official name was Die im Reichsrat vertretenen Königreiche und Länder (The Kingdoms and States represented in the Imperial Council).

In general the country was just called Austria, this term only replacing the former official name in 1915.

The Cisleithanian capital was Vienna. The territory had a population of 28,571,900 in 1910 and reached from the Duchy of Bukovina (today parts of Ukraine and Romania) to the Kingdom of Dalmatia (today part of Croatia).

The Latin name Cisleithania derives from the Leitha river, being the historical boundary between Austria and Hungary in the area southeast of Vienna — much of its territory lay west (or on "this" side, from an Austrian perspective) of it. Transleithania, the lands of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Dual Monarchy, lay to the east across the Leitha river.

Crown lands

Cisleithania consisted of 15 crown lands (German: Kronland) which had representatives in the Reichsrat (Cisleithanian parliament). The crown lands were not states, but provinces in the modern sense. However, they were areas with unique historic political and legal characteristics and were therefore more than mere administrative districts. They have been conceived of as "historical-political entities".

After the consititutional changes of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, Hungary and Croatia were no longer crown lands. Rather, they constituted a separate state, officially called the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown and commonly known as Transleithania or just Hungary.

Austria–Hungary:
Cisleithania (Empire of Austria): 1. Bohemia, 2. Bukovina, 3. Carinthia, 4. Carniola, 5. Dalmatia, 6. Galicia, 7. Küstenland, 8. Lower Austria, 9. Moravia, 10. Salzburg, 11. Silesia, 12. Styria, 13. Tyrol, 14. Upper Austria, 15. Vorarlberg;
Transleithania (Kingdom of Hungary): 16. Hungary proper 17. Croatia-Slavonia;
Austrian-Hungarian Condominium: 18. Bosnia and Herzegovina

Crown lands of Cisleithania with capitals and German names

State	German name	Capital	#
Austria, Lower	Niederösterreich	Wien (Vienna)	8
Austria, Upper	Oberösterreich	Linz	14
Bohemia	Böhmen	Prag (Prague)	1
Bukovina	Bukowina	Czernowitz (Cernauti)	2
Carinthia	Kärnten	Klagenfurt	3
Carniola	Krain	Laibach (Ljubljana)	4
Dalmatia	Dalmatien	Zara (Zadar)	5
Galicia and Lodomeria	Galizien und Lodomerien	Lemberg (Lviv)	6
Littoral	Küstenland	Triest (Trieste)	7
Moravia	Mähren	Brünn (Brno)	9
Salzburg		Salzburg	10
Silesia	Schlesien	Troppau (Opava)	11
Styria	Steiermark	Graz	12
Tyrol	Tirol	Innsbruck	13
Vorarlberg		Bregenz	15

Politics

Each crown land had a regional assembly, the Landtag, with the exclusion of Vorarlberg, which was administered like a district of Tyrol. The Landtags enacted laws (Landesgesetze) on matters of regional and mostly minor importance. The executive committee of a Landtag was called Landesausschuss and headed by a Landeshauptmann, being president of the Landtag as well. From 1868 onwards the Emperor himself (in his function as monarch of a crown land, being king, archduke, grandduke, duke or count) and his I. R. government were represented at the capital cities of the crown lands by a stadtholder (Statthalter), in few crown lands called Landespräsident, who acted as chief executive.

Until 1848, the Landtags were traditional diets (assemblies of the estates of the realm). They were disbanded after the Revolutions of 1848 and reformed after 1860 in a new form. Some members held their position as ex officio members (e.g., bishops), while others were elected. There was no universal and equal suffrage, but a mixture of privilege and limited franchise. The Reichsrat, parliament of Cisleithania, from 1867 consisted of delegates of the Landtags. In 1873, direct election of the Reichsrat was introduced with suffrage for male bourgeois and equal, direct, secret and universal suffrage for men was introduced in 1907.

In the Reichsrat (with 353 members in 1873 and 516 in 1907), a nationalist struggle between the Germans and the Slavs of the Empire, especially the Czechs, was played out. The Czechs principally denied the right of the Reichsrat to put decisions relevant for the Bohemian Lands, and used means of obstruction as well as absence to torpedo the Reichsrat's work. The I. R. government was wise enough to please Galician Poles by special regulations for this "developing country"; the Polish members of parliament thence played a constructive role most of the time. In the Reichsrat, at first Germans dominated, but with the extension of the suffrage the Slavs gained a majority after the 1907 electoral reform.

Politics were frequently paralysed because of the tensions between different nationalities. When Czech obstruction at the Reichsrat prevented the parliament from working, Emperor Franz Joseph had to rule autocratically through imperial decrees (Kaiserliche Verordnung) submitted by his government. The Reichsrat was prorogued in March 1914 and did not meet again until May 1917, after the accession of Karl I in 1916.

For representation in matters relevant to the whole of Austria-Hungary (foreign affairs, defence, and the financing thereof) the Reichsrat appointed a delegation of 60 members to discuss these matters parallel to a Hungarian delegation of the same size and to come, in separate votes, to the same conclusion on the recommendation of the responsible common minister. In Cisleithania, the 60 delegates consisted of 40 elected members of the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus) and 20 members of the Upper House (Herrenhaus). In case of not getting the same decision in three attempts, the law permitted the summoning of a common session of both delegations and the eventual counting of the votes in total, but the Hungarians, who averted any Imperial "roof" over their part of the dual monarchy, as well as the common ministers, carefully avoided reaching this situation.

Population

Ethnic composition of the Cisleithanian population (1910)

Ethnicity	% of total population
Germans	33%
Czechs	22%
Poles	15%
Ruthenians (Ukrainians)	12%
Slovenes	5%
Italians	3%
Croats	3%
Other	7%
Source: Allgemeines Verzeichnis der Ortsgemeinden und Ortschaften Österreichs nach den Ergebnissen der Volkszählung vom 31. Dezember 1910 (ed. by K.K. Statistische Zentralkommission, Vienna, 1915) (the latest Austrian gazetteer, register of political communities, giving the results of the 1910 census)

See also

• Austria-Hungary
• Transleithania

External links

• www.cisleithanien.eu