ABSTRACT
Migrations are nothing new in Austrian and Central European history. Political and religious motivated migration, the migration of elites, seasonal trade workers and agricultural labourers, or the travelling of tradesmen and students were common along the highways and bye-ways of Central Europe in the eighteenth century. The transportation revolution which accelerated the process of economic integration in the Holy Roman Empire in the eighteenth century also facilitated the expeditious movement of Austrians both within the country and without.1 Yet Austria’s position in the history of European migration in the pre-1848 moment is a particular, and peculiar, one. By the commencement of the nineteenth century, three distinct strands of migration were in evidence in the German-speaking parts of the Habsburg monarchy:
First, the political and religiously motivated forced emigration of Protestants to Prussia and America, as well as the Ländler who travelled, and were deported, respectively, during the reigns of Charles VI and Maria Theresia, from Karnten, Oberösterreich and Steiermark to the Banat and to Siebenbürgen.2 Second, the more common European phenomenon of seasonal migration, inspired by local overpopulation, from the Alps and from the lands bordering the Carpathians to the agrarian regions of the Bavarian Schwabian Alpenvorland and to inner Hungary (Schwabenziige and Sachsenganger). And third, the immigration of political, artistic and crafts elites from abroad to the imperial capital Vienna. These immigrants included the soldier and army leader Prince Eugen von Savoyen, the composer Mozart from Salzburg, Beethoven from Bonn and Clemens Metternich from Koblenz, who count among the illustrious many who came to the hereditary lands (Erblander) during this time.3
