With the unexpected election of Rudolph of Hapsburg, a little known prince of small possessions, to the dignity of German Emperor, in 1272, the foundation of the Austrian Empire was laid. The Archduchy of Austria he secured by conquest in 1282, and around this nucleus all the other territories were from time to time, aggregated by the Hapsburgs through marriage, conquest, or treaty. At one time their rule extended over Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Naples, Sicily and Sardinia.
The abdication of Francis II, in the year 1806, prepared the separation from Germany, although Austrian influence persisted in Germany until 1866 when, by the crushing defeat suffered at the hands of Prussia, its place and voice was permanently excluded from German councils. By arrangement with Hungary, the new dual empire of Austria-Hungary came into existence, and gave a new national life and new policies to the coalition which is to amalgamate these south-eastern territories into a homogeneous nation.
By the treaty of Berlin in 1878, this territory of 241,942 square miles with over 45 million people was further increased by the addition of the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina with 1,250,000 inhabitants and 23,262 square miles, first merely placed under Austria’s suzerainty and administration, in 1908 incorporated as an integral part.
It is natural that, corresponding to this great diversity of ethnological elements and historical development, we should find a great variety of forest conditions and uneven development of forestry. While in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia the most intensive management has long been practiced, in the Carpathians of Galicia and in Hungary rough exploitation is still the rule, and in other parts large untouched forest areas still await development.
We can distinguish at least seven regions thus differently developed: the Northwest with Bohemia, Moravia and the remaining part of Silesia, settled the longest, and the longest under forest management; the Northeast, Galicia with the Carpathian Mountains, still largely either exploited or untouched; the Danube lands or Austria proper, with the Vienna forest and the forests connected with the saltworks in Upper Austria and Styria, under some management since the 12th and 16th centuries respectively; the Alp territory, including Tyrol and Salzburg, parts of Styria, Karinthia and Krain, much devastated long ago, and offering all the problems of the reboisement work of France; the Coast lands along the Adriatic with Dalmatia, Istria and Trieste, which, from ancient times under Venetian rule, bring with them the inheritance of a mismanaged limestone country, creating the problems of the “Karst” reforestation which has baffled the economist and forester until the present time; the two new provinces east of this region, Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose rich forest areas have only lately begun to be treated under modern conservative ideas; and finally Hungary with a great variety of conditions in itself.