Greater Austria proposal

Between 1849 and 1851, Austria repeatedly proposed that all Habsburg-ruled territories should join a German confederation.

[1] An important initiative in this direction was the plan of the Austrian head of government Felix zu Schwarzenberg of March 9, 1849.

The accession of Hungary and northern Italy would have considerably strengthened Austrian supremacy in Germany.

The ideas of his trade minister Karl Ludwig von Bruck from October 1849 went in a similar direction: He sketched out the outlines of a corresponding customs union with world power ambitions.

[2] It also opposed the Prussian attempt in 1849/1850 to establish a more conservative federal state (Erfurt Union).

The outlined Greater Austria (Germany and the whole of Austria, shown here in green) would have had around seventy million inhabitants