Austria

Von Hofmannsthal was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1874. Vienna is the capital of Austria, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ruled by the Hapsburg dynasty, from the thirteenth into the twentieth centuries. The Hapsburg Empire included areas that are now parts of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Austria. A revolution in 1848 lead to the emancipation of the serfs in Austria. Francis Joseph ruled the empire from 1848 to 1916, when Charles succeeded him. The Hapsburg Empire was formally dissolved in 1918, in the wake of World War I, when Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Austria each became independent nations.

Seventeenth-Century Poland

Poland in the seventeenth century was much different than it is today. Geographically, the Kingdom of Poland included what are now Lithuania, Belarus, and half of what is now the Ukraine. Also, half of contemporary Poland used to belong to Prussia. This century was a period of great upheaval for the Republic...