Austria - Habsburg in Numista is used to differentiate issues from Austria under the Habsburg dynasty (roughly 1282-1918, over 600 years) from those issued by the Austrian Republic after the Habsburgs' abdication and their Empire's dissolution after WWI. Separate coinage was also issued for Habsburg ruled territories also under Austrian rule at various points in time, such as the Austrian Netherlands, Austrian states (e.g. Further Austria), and Hungary for example. This article will focus on Austria itself.
(left) Flag of Austria within the Holy Roman Empire; identical to the modern Austrian Republic's flag; (centre left) Flag of the Habsburg ruled Austrian territories from the 18th century, and of the Austrian Empire 1804-67; (centre right) Flag of Austria-Hungary 1867-1918; (right) Greater Coat of Arms of the Austrian Empire and Austrian part of Austria-Hungary (Cisleithania), used officially 1804-1918.
History
What is today Austria started out as part of the Duchy of Bavaria (thanks jokinen!), founded in 555 AD under the Frankish Empire, then East Francia after Charlemagne's 814 AD death, and later the Holy Roman Empire. Austria itself did not become a political entity until 976 AD, when the Margraviate of Austria was carved out; Austria was elevated to an independent Duchy (Herzogtum) in 1156. Meanwhile, a castle in Switzerland gave it's name to the Habsburg family, which came to be known as "von Habsburg"; a member of which, Rudolf became ruler of Austria in 1282, which is used as a starting point for reference to "Habsburg [ruled] Austria" here. As time went by various other territories came under the Habsburgs' rule, such as Carniola and Styria, added to their domain of Austria. Friedrich III successfully became Holy Roman Emperor in 1452, and he elevated Austria again, this time to an Archduchy (Erzherzogtum) in 1453. Until the dissolution of the HRE 350 years later, only two non Habsburgs would rule it as Emperor from now on. A quote of Friedrich III sums up Habsburg dynastic relations and territorial expansion for the next few centuries: "Let others wage wars, but you, happy Austria, shall marry." Indeed, a wedding to the heir to Burgundy in 1477 and to the Queen of Castile and Aragon in 1496 expanded Habsburg inheritance and influence so much that it was said Charles V, Habsburg heir would "come into an inheritance on which the sun never sets", in reference to the vast Spanish New World empire of which the Habsburgs were now rulers of as well.
(above) Map of the territories ruled by Charles V at the time of his death in 1558; includes Castille, Aragon, Austria, the Low Countries, Sicily, Sardinia and the HRE. Note how France is surrounded by the Habsburg dominions, and thus felt threatened by the Habsburgs.
Fears of other European monarchs that Charles V, as Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain was becoming too powerful led to hostility from other kingdoms (particularly France); his reign also saw conflict with the Ottoman Empire and a religious split (the Protestant Reformation) that caused chaos in the HRE. After his death, the Habsburg lands were split, with Austria and the HRE crown going to his brother and Spain to his son; the two empires, ruled by different branches of the same dynasty would however remain allies for another 250 years. From 1526 Hungary too came under Austrian Habsburg rule (partially) and for the next two centuries, Austrian military aims would be to expel the Ottomans from Hungary. The Thirty Years War (1618-48) would devastate the HRE, but during this time the (Catholic) Austrian Habsburgs also came into possession of the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary. The Austrian Habsburgs lost a great deal of their influence in the HRE after the religious wars and the rise of Protestantism; but in 1683 they won a great victory in the Great Turkish War (1683-99), as the Ottoman Army faltered at the very gates of Vienna. However over in Spain the last Spanish Habsburg, Charles II died without an heir in 1700, starting the War of Spanish Succession (1701-14), a dispute with Louis XIV of France over who should inherit the Spanish throne (a Habsburg from the Austrian branch, or a Bourbon) that eventually ended in a compromise where Philip V, a Bourbon, got the Spanish throne but Spain would cede most of it's non-Iberian European possessions to Habsburg Austria.
(above) Map of Europe after the War of Spanish Succession; Habsburg dominions in ochre. Note that to keep the balance of power in Europe, the new Bourbon rulers of Spain agreed to transfer many of Spain's European territories from while it was ruled by the Spanish Habsburgs (Low Countries, Sicily, etc.) to the Austrian Habsburgs.
The 18th century saw the Habsburgs expand their hegemony in northern Italy, with occasional wars; however when Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI died without sons and was succeeded by Maria Theresa (of MTT numismatic fame) in 1740, the War of Austrian Succession (1740-48) broke out over disputes that a woman could not be Holy Roman Emperor; with Friedrich II of the new Kingdom of Prussia invading Austrian Silesia, ceded to Prussia after the war. In the end Maria Theresa's husband became co-ruler in a compromise, but the dynastic rivalry between the Habsburgs and Prussia's Hohenzollerns remained, with the two switching allies in 1756 and the beginning of the Seven Years War (1756-63). Despite early setbacks, the British and Prussians were ultimately victorious against France, Spain and Austria (after Russia pulled out of the war). The last part of Maria Theresia's reign saw the first of three partitions of a declining Poland-Lithuania (1772, 1791 and 1795) alongside Russia and Prussia. When she died in 1780, the crown passed on to her son, Joseph who had been her co-ruler since his father's death. Her death heralded the end of the Austrian Habsburgs proper, and the dynasty from now on would officially be Habsburg-Lorraine.
(above) Map of Europe after the Seven Years' War; note Silesia (in yellow) ceded to Prussia from Austria (see previous 1714 map). Prussia, Britain, France and Austria switched to each other's allies between 1748 and 1756, known as the Diplomatic Revolution.
Shortly afterwards, in response to the French Revolution (1789), Austria joined a coalition of reactionary, absolutist European monarchs against the new French Republic in 1792, although French forces defeated a Austro-Prussian army and overran the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium) in 1794, annexing it to France shortly afterwards. Austria would participate in the next two coalition wars against France under Napoleon Bonaparte, whose humiliations of the Austrian army in Italy at the battles of Rivoli and Marengo shifted the balance of power dramatically in France's favour. After the disastrous defeat by France at the Battle of Austerlitz (1805), Holy Roman Emperor Franz II dissolved the millennium-old HRE, and instead consolidated the Austrian Habsburg domains in Central Europe officially into an entity called the Austrian Empire, becoming Emperor Franz I of this new Empire. Napoleon forced it to accept the new status quo, with Napoleon's new Confederation of the Rhine redrawing the former HRE territories, and his defeat of Austria in the war of the Fifth Coalition (Austria sat out the Fourth) at Wagram leading to harsh territorial demands in the Treaty of Schönbrunn (1809).
(above) Map of Napoleonic Europe in 1812, following the end of the War of the Fifth Coalition. Thanks to the Treaty of Schönbrunn, Austria is now landlocked and France has provinces on the Baltic and Adriatic (!) seas.
Austria participated in Napoleon's disastrous campaign against Russia in 1812, although as soon as the desiccated Grand Armée retreated from the Russian winter, Austria switched sides and joined the Sixth Coalition against Napoleon. This time, Napoleon was defeated at Leipzig (1813) and the Coalition moved in on Paris, resulting in his May 1814 abdication. The victors met at the Congress of Vienna to redraw the map of post-Napoleonic Europe (interrupted briefly by Napoleon's escape from Elba and Waterloo). The Congress, headed by Austrian diplomat Klemens von Metternich sought to turn back the clock to before 1792; but the determination of conservative monarchies to supress change failed to address the seeds of liberalism and nationalism sown by Napoleon and the Age of Enlightenment. The first half of the 19th century saw outbreaks of both in Poland, Belgium and France in just one year (1830); in northern Italy in particular, Italian nationalism reached a feverish pitch; in 1848, the "Springtime of Nations", revolution broke out across Europe; the Austrians were expelled from Milan and Venice, while a Hungarian revolt became a war for independence that nearly destroyed the Empire.
(above) Hungary's 1848 war of independence, depicting Lajos Kossuth, a Hungarian leader during the rebellion.
Revolutionaries marched on Vienna and demanded the removal of the ultra-conservative Metternich; the sick Emperor Ferdinand I abdicated and was replaced by Franz Joseph I, who called on Russia, the "Gendarme of Europe", to help defeat the Hungarians. Eventually the revolts were crushed, and Hungary subjected to harsh martial law in the revolution's aftermath. Franz Joseph continued Metternich's reactionary policies to a lesser extent, attempting to appease the various nationalities in the Empire with equality measures. This failed to satisfy nationalism entirely, however; in 1859, Sardinia-Piedmont, allied with France under Napoleon III, defeated the Austrians at Solferino and forced Austria to concede Lombardy and it's influence in Northern Italy to the Sardinians, who would unify Italy in 1861. A few years later, in 1866, Italy won Venetia from Austria in another war, this time in concert with Prussia, whom under Bismarck and von Moltke, defeated the Austrians at Königgrätz, securing their own hegemony over the 1815 German Confederation's 37 states and ending the status quo. German unification would occur a few years later, with only Luxembourg and German-speaking Austria excluded.
(above) Austria-Hungary after the Ausgleich; with the Empire in Austria in pink and the Kingdom of Hungary in Yellow. Bosnia, annexed in 1908 is in green. Franz Joseph's official title 1867-1916 was "Emperor of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary".
These two defeats by Italy and Prussia shook the Austrian Empire to it's core, and with the Hungarian nationalists threatening once more to destabilise the Empire, in 1867 the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (Ausgleich) was signed, establishing the dual monarchy of the Empire of Austria (Cisleithania) and the Kingdom of Hungary (Transleithania) as Austria-Hungary, in personal and political union. Franz Joseph was now monarch of both parts of the Empire; but this move, although appeasing the Hungarians, stirred up nationalism in other ethnic peoples within the Empire. The late 19th century saw Austria-Hungary become more involved in the Balkans; following the Congress of Berlin in 1878 that divided up the weak Ottoman Empire's Balkan lands into new countries, Bosnia and Herzegovina were occupied by Austrian troops. The ethnic nationalism that dominated the Empire's domestic policy did not disappear; in 1898 the Empress Elizabeth "Sisi" was assassinated by an Italian anarchist. Meanwhile, when the Ottoman Empire was further destabilised by the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, Austria moved to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina and quell local Pan-Slavism, antagonising Russia and Serbia further. The growth of Serbia and the other Balkan states following their gains in the Balkan Wars (1912-13) alarmed Austria, who resolved not to back down from the next crisis in the region. That came in the summer of 1914, when Gavrilo Princip, a Serb nationalist assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, triggering a system of alliances that lead to the beginning of WWI (1914-18).
(above) Depiction of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo, 28th June 1914, that triggered the First World War.
Austrian forces initially failed to defeat Serbia, and German aid was urgently needed for both Serbian and Russian fronts. The Italians entered the war against Austria in 1915, but the front remained stalemated in the Alps for most of the war. Romania too entered the war against Austria, and once again Germany had to bail it's ally out. The Austro-Hungarian empire was in dire straits, with desertions and mutinies becoming commonplace. The Battle of Vittorio Veneto destroyed the last remnants of the Austro-Hungarian army in October 1918; the Hungarian parliament dissolved the political union with Austria soon after, as Czechs and Slovaks proclaimed their independence from the imploding Empire. Shortly after the Armistice of Vila Giusti with the Allies, Emperor Karl I abdicated the throne, ending the Habsburg dynasty that had ruled for over 600 years. Austria and Hungary would be reduced to their current borders with the Treaties of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919) and Trianon (1920) respectively, and Austria thus became the Republic that it is today.
Coinage
Early Austrian coinage is generally rather irregular; the small silver pfennig was a hallmark of local coinage from the 13th to 16th centuries. From the early/mid 16th century onwards, the Reichsthaler (1/9th of a Cologne Mark) became the standard for most currencies throughout the Holy Roman Empire, including Austria. In some (northern) parts of the HRE "Reichsthaler" more commonly refers to a unit worth 3/4 of the Reichsthaler coin. (Yeah, it is very complicated, isn't it?). The currency units minted in the 17th and early 18th centuries were based in Kreuzer (1/60th of a Thaler), with 1 Pfennig being 1/240th of a Guldenthaler. 1/2 (1/120th of a Thaler), 1 (1/60th), 3 (1/20th), 6 (1/10th), 10 (1/6th), 15 (1/4th), and 30 (1/2) Kreuzer were common coinage denominations, with a gold coin and it's subdivisions called Ducats (Dukats) that were worth 2 and 1/4 Guldenthalers.
(left) Example of a silver Guldenthaler coin, worth 240 pfennige or 60 Kreuzer; (right) Example of a gold Ducat coin worth 2 and a quarter Guldenthaler. Both examples bear the portrait of Leopold I, who defeated the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683.
From 1754 onwards, the Conventionsthaler (Konventionsthaler) set a standard between the Austrian and Bavarian currencies, with 1/10th of a Cologne Mark of silver making 1 Conventionsthaler. Subdivisions of this currency include the Heller, worth 1/8th of a Kreuzer, which was in turn worth 1/60th of a Gulden. This currency would last until 1892, with devaluation occurring during the 18th century and Napoleonic wars (and the issuing of copper coinage) and decimalisation in 1857. Before decimalisation, though, this 1754-1857 Gulden/Thaler (worth 480 Heller and 60 Kreuzer, remember) also had a gold unit, which was also called the Ducat like it's pre-1754 equivalent; it was now worth 4 and 2/3 Gulden, however. There were also Hungarian issues at par with their Austrian counterparts, as well as separate issues minted for various territories such as the Austrian Netherlands or the Austrian partition of Poland.
(above) Author's own example of a pre-decimalisation Gulden/Thaler coin, struck in 1818 in Venice (V mintmark located below bust). The titles on the reverse give evidence to the Habsburgs' collection of crowns; apart from "AVSTRIAE IMPERATOR" on the obverse (Austrian Emperor), the Latin titles also include "HVN" (Hungary), "BOH" (Bohemia), "LOMB. ET VEN." (Lombardy-Venetia, northern Italy), and "GAL LOD" (Galicia-Lodomeria, now southern Poland).
At this point it's probably worth mentioning the famous Maria Theresa Thalers (commonly abbreviated as MTTs). The original (very rare) thalers were Conventionsthalers minted in 1780, the year of Maria Theresa's death, and ever since 1781 millions of restrikes have been made by many, many sources all around the world. In 1853 Franz Joseph I passed a law decreeing all MTTs made since as officially trade coinage, and thus collectors of MTTs often differentiate between earlier restrikes and later restrikes using 1853 as a cutoff date. They were very popular with merchants in the Near East who were familiar with and thus readily accepted the "Fat Lady Dollar" as a trustworthy silver coin; in fact so much so that there were attempts to introduce a similar trade dollar by Italian authorities in colonial Eritrea after WWI. Even today you can (supposedly) sometimes still find merchants in bazaars in that part of the world accepting them as good hard currency. A comprehensive guide to ID'ing your MTT can be found here.
(left, centre) Author's own example of a Maria Theresa thaler restrike; origin narrowed down to being most likely from London 1936-61. Restrikes carry the "X" beside the date; actually a Cross of Burgundy. (right) Author's own example of a 1918 R Italian Eritrea "Tallero", deliberately designed to imitate the MTT for use in the Near East.
Decimalisation of the Austrian gulden occurred in 1857, with the introduction of the Vereinsthaler in the German Confederation. Now 100 Kreuzer made 1 Gulden, with the half Kreuzer coin interestingly being denominated as "5/10 Kreuzer" (You'd think someone in the Empire would've heard of simplifying fractions). Meanwhile, the "Florin" was introduced as the singular unit of the decimalised Gulden, with Vereinsthaler coins worth 1 and 3/4 Florins being struck 1857-68, until the abolition of the Vereinsthaler across the newly unified German Empire, which used the mark from 1873 onwards. Hungarian coins were also struck at par with the Austrian gulden. Despite Austria-Hungary not being in it, LMU standard gold coins were also struck, with denominations in Florins and Francs (1 Florin = 2.5 Francs). Many gold ducat coins also continued to be struck; some are restruck to this day just like the MTT.
(left, centre) Author's own example of a 1 Florin coin from 1879; (right) Author's own example of a gold ducat restrike, with the frozen date of 1915
Finally, the last currency used by the Austro-Hungarian Empire was the Krone, from 1892 onwards. This was also a decimalised currency, with 100 Heller making 1 Krone. (Notice that they liked to recycle the old names of former currency units for new currencies). As with the previous two currencies, Hungarian coins were also struck at par with the Krone until the demise of the Empire. Banknotes with German on both sides, or Hungarian on one were issued as well, to reflect the dual monarchy status of the Empire. During WWI, the Krone suffered from devaluation, and issues were minted in iron. After the collapse of the Empire, Austria continued to use an inflated Krone for a few years until they officially switched to the Schilling in 1925. Some of the new countries/entities formed during the Empire's breakup (e.g. Czechoslovakia Yugoslavia, Fiume) continued to use counter-stamped banknotes of the Austro-Hungarian Krone for a few years afterwards.
(left) Reverse of author's own example of a 1900 5 Corona coin from Austria; (centre) Reverse of author's own example of a 1900 5 Korona coin from Hungary, (right) comparison of Emperor Franz Joseph I's bust on both coins (identical apart from language of legend)
Guldenthaler (1520-1754):
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/autriche-habsbourg-1.html#c_autriche-habsbourg1548
Conventionsthaler/Gulden (1754-1857):
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/autriche-habsbourg-5.html#c_autriche-habsbourg1165
Florin/Decimalised Gulden (1857-1892):
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/autriche-habsbourg-7.html#c_autriche-habsbourg295
Krone (1892-1924):
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/autriche-habsbourg-7.html#c_autriche-habsbourg214
Hah, gotcha! 
