For the first time united from 1253 until 1276 under the reign of Ottokar II of Bohemia, they later joined again and, together with Hungary, formed a major European power under the Habsburg dynasty which lasted from 1526 until 1918.

The Czechs demanded to be ruled by a government in Prague, the capital city of their kingdom, not in Vienna, and as part of their main party strategy of passive resistance did not participate for years in the political discussions and decisions of the Austrian Reichsrat, the parliament in Vienna representing all nations of the Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarían Monarchy.

While the emperor had given internal autonomy to the Hungarians in 1867 to reduce tensions with the Magyar aristocracy, the Czechs' wishes never were fulfilled until the end of the empire in 1918.

This was due to the fact that in Bohemia 37% and in Moravia 28% of the population were Germans, who fiercely opposed to represent a minority in a Czech parliament, while they were part of the leading nation in Cisleithania.

Although the Czech lands developed as the industrial centre of the Monarchy, hundreds of thousand Bohemians of poor personal living standard, mainly from agricultural areas of southern Moravia, moved to Vienna between 1870 and 1910 to work there in cheap jobs.

Aside from these the imperial capital attracted a large number of middle-class Bohemians who studied or pursued careers there, including Sigmund Freud, Karel Rokytanský, Gustav Mahler, the future president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and many others.

In March 1938, when Austria was annexed to Germany, again some politicians flew to the neighboring country, at this time together with Switzerland the only democracy in Central Europe.

The properties these people had to leave behind when moving to their new countries of residence have been in fact nationalized and then redistributed among the Czech population under set rules.