Here are four of the most important historical events taking place in what is today Austria – and why they deserve to be remembered. 

August 4th, 1782 – Mozart gets married

Austria’s most famous composer (and arguably, its most famous cultural export) was married on this day to Constanze Weber, in Vienna’s Stephansdom. 

Constanze, however, was not Mozart’s first choice – it was her older sister, Aloysia. 

The young composer had previously courted Aloysia and had moved into the home of the Weber family of musicians in Vienna to help with the finances when he fell in love with the younger sister.

READ MORE: Wife of Wolfgang Amadeus wanted their son to be ‘the second Mozart’. No pressure then…

Constanze was a trained singer and, it seems, had a fiery temper. The pair even broke up at one stage.

Thanks to a combination of stubbornness and family pressure, the pair finally tied the knot in 1782. 

Precious little remains to describe their marriage, but they did have six children. 

August 6th, 1806 – One empire ends, another begins

The Holy Roman Empire – the collection of German-speaking kingdoms, duchies and other assorted principalities that dominated Europe for close to a millennium – finally dissolved on this day in 1806. 

The cause? An upstart Frenchman, Napoleon Bonaparte, declared himself Emperor of France in the aftermath of the French Revolution. 

With two empires vying for supremacy on the continent, one had to finally buckle. 

The Battle of Austerlitz on December 2nd, 1806, in which Austria’s forces were defeated by the French, led to several German regions forming the Confederation of the Rhine. 

This fragmentation of power effectively rendered the Holy Roman Empire a shell of its former self and largely powerless against France in European affairs.

READ MORE: ‘Most of us don’t live in castles’: What became of Austria’s Habsburg dynasty?

Faced with this prospect, Francis II, the Holy Roman Empire’s last Emperor, sent his herald to read a proclamation from the balcony of the Kirche am Hof in Vienna, much to the shock of the assembling crowd. 

What happened next?

Well, just because the Holy Roman Empire was no more didn’t mean that Austria was, too.

See, Francis II had a lot of his own hereditary lands that were under his direct rule.

Rather astutely, Francis had already organised these lands into the Austrian Empire in 1804, crowning himself Emperor.

The Austrian Empire, which later absorbed Hungary in the mid-nineteenth century, was a major European power until the end of the First World War. 

August 19th, 1989 – First crack in the Iron Curtain 

In the end, all it took was a picnic.

As the eighties came to a close, and the Soviet Union began to enter terminal decline, it was a peace demonstration under the auspices of a ‘picnic’ that would create one of the first cracks in the ‘Iron Curtain’ dividing Europe. 

Organised by the Paneuropean Union (with the Habsburg heir Karl von Habsburg as a guiding hand) and the recently formed Hungarian Democratic Forum, a section of the border between Austria and Hungary was opened for a ‘picnic’ near Sopron – a popular vacation spot for East Germans.

Attendees of the picnic – almost all East Germans – quickly dismantled the border and entered Austria, near Mörbisch am See in Burgenland, where they were greeted by awaiting media. 

Unprepared and in disbelief that such a feat had been pulled off, Hungarian and East German forces were on the back foot and more than 660 managed to escape before the border was restored.

The fabric of the Iron Curtain had been irrevocably weakened, however, and within two years, the Soviet Union had fallen, and German unification had taken place.  

August 21st – Birth of the doomed prince

Generations of Austrians are deeply fascinated by the life of the Empress ‘Sissi’. 

An important part of her story is her only son, Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, whose death affected her deeply. 

Rudolf was born on the 21st of August 1858 at Schloss Laxenburg, outside of Vienna. 

While Rudolf was raised within the strict and regimented world of the Habsburgs, the outside world was undergoing drastic changes, Rudolf was a melancholic child and young man. 

After a marriage in 1881 that would ultimately fail and the death of his infant son, Rudolf began to sink further into depression. 

READ MORE: Marie Vetsera’s suicide letters found

He would ultimately enter into a murder-suicide pact with his young lover, Baroness Marie Vetsera, at his hunting lodge at Mayerling on the 30th of January 1889 – an event that would later be dramatised on stage, screen and ballet. 

‘Sissi’ would mourn for the rest of her life, and the death of Rudolf resulted in his father’s nephew, Franz Ferdinand, becoming next in line for the imperial throne – a result that would have dire consequences for Europe. 

What important anniversaries in Austrian history for August might we have overlooked? Let us know in the comments!