The hereditary imperial title and office was proclaimed in 1804 by Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, a member of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, and continually held by him and his heirs until Charles I relinquished power in 1918.

A special case was Maria Theresa; she bore the imperial title as the consort of Francis I (r. 1745–1765), but she herself was the monarch of the Austrian hereditary lands including Bohemia and Hungary.

This led Francis II/I on 6 August 1806 to declare the Reich dissolved and to lay down the Imperial Crown created in the second half of the 10th century (today displayed at the Treasury of Hofburg Palace in Vienna).

The symbol of the Austrian emperor was the dynasty's private crown dating back to Rudolf II (r. 1576–1612), (called Rudolfinische Hauskrone by the experts).

The full list (after the loss of the Lombardy in 1859 and Venetia in 1866): Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, of Dalmatia, of Croatia, of Slavonia, of Galicia, of Lodomeria, and of Illyria, King of Jerusalem, and so forth, Archduke of Austria, Grand Duke of Tuscany and of Cracow, Duke of Lorraine, of Salzburg, of Styria, of Carinthia, of Carniola and of the Bukovina, Grand Prince of Transylvania, Margrave in Moravia, Duke of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Modena, Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, of Auschwitz and Zator, of Teschen, Friuli, Ragusa and Zara, Princely Count of Habsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, Gorizia and Gradisca, Prince of Trent and Brixen, Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia and in Istria, Count of Hohenems, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Sonnenberg, and so forth, Lord of Trieste, of Cattaro and of the Windic March, Grand Voivode of the Voivodship of Serbia, and so forth, Sovereign of the Order of the Golden Fleece.

The members of the House of Habsburg were ranked as princes and princesses of the blood imperial, with the honorary title of Erzherzog or Erzherzogin (archduke or archduchess).

(The problems of such a situation were encountered when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the throne, married a simple countess in 1900).

Under Francis I, Klemens von Metternich had covered these and many other agenda, bearing the title Haus-, Hof- und Staatskanzler (Chancellor of the House, the Court and the State).

The Emperor's court managed the following institutions: The Austrian Empire (Kaisertum Österreich) from 1804 to 1867 consisted of the Habsburg lands as a whole, leaving each land its special definition as kingdom (e.g., Bohemia, Hungary), archduchy (Lower and Upper Austria), duchy (e.g., Carniola) or princely county (e.g., Tyrol), however the Kingdom of Hungary—as Regnum Independens—was administered by its own institutions separately from the rest of the empire.

[6] Kaisertum might literally be translated as "emperordom" on analogy with "kingdom" or "emperor-ship"; the term denotes specifically "the territory ruled by an emperor".

By the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 (Ausgleich), the Kingdom of Hungary and the Empire of Austria, as two separate entities, joined on an equal basis to form the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.

The latter were known in the internal administration as the "Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council" (Die im Reichsrat vertretenen Königreiche und Länder).

The Kingdom of Hungary, due to measures enacted during peace proceedings after the Great War and having terminated the 1867 compromise by 31 October 1918, similarly broke apart.

The term Kaiserlich und Königlich (k.u.k., spoken /ka ʔʊnt ka/, meaning "Imperial and Royal") was decreed in a letter of 17 October 1889 for the army, the navy and the institutions shared by both parts of the monarchy.