The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg - Trailer
History of the Germans
Dirk Hoffmann-Becking
4.9 • 550 Ratings
🗓️ 14 August 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"Let others wage war: you, happy Austria, marry’. Is that really it? Did this family acquire an empire where the sun never sets through just luck and longevity?
That is what we will try to find out in this season where we follow the family from the murder of king Abrecht I in 1308 to the election of emperor Charles V in 1519.
For most of that period the Habsburgs had been languishing in the wilderness. They experienced defeats, divisions and humiliations, were even expelled from their duchy of Austria just before they rose meteorically to world leadership under Maximilian and Charles V. Something must have happened in this period that forged them into the most successful European dynasty. As they say in the music industry, every overnight success was years in the making”.
That is why this season is called “The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg” and is dedicated to the question, what made the Habsburgs so special.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the history of the Germans, Season 11, the fall and rise of the |
| 0:09.7 | House of Habsburg. Let others wage war, you happy Austria marry. Is that really it? Did this |
| 0:17.9 | family acquire an empire where the sun never sets through just luck and longevity? |
| 0:24.4 | If indeed that is all it was, it was an extraordinarily successful strategy. |
| 0:30.3 | Let me read you a probably incomplete list of modern countries that at one point or another |
| 0:34.8 | had been ruled by members of the House of Habsburg, in alphabetical order. |
| 0:39.3 | Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Brazil, |
| 0:43.3 | Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Czechia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Holy Roman Empire, |
| 0:50.3 | Honduras, Hungary, large parts of Italy, Poland and Ukraine, Mexico, Netherlands, Nicaragua, |
| 0:56.2 | Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Uruguay and Venezuela. |
| 1:04.7 | Technically, I could have added England onto the list, though four years is a bit too short a time |
| 1:10.0 | period to count. |
| 1:11.8 | Seriously, do we really believe all that could be gained by marrying the right girl or right |
| 1:16.8 | boy and then surviving for long enough to scoop up what better man and women had been |
| 1:21.7 | fighting over? |
| 1:23.2 | Plus, acquiring an empire is one thing, holding to it is the really difficult bit. The British |
| 1:28.9 | Empire lasted roughly 200 years. The Julius Claudians controlled the Roman Empire for a bit over |
| 1:33.8 | 100 years, same as the Tudors. Napoleon managed just 16. The Habsburgs, depending where one |
| 1:41.1 | puts the starting point, kept a seat at the top table for at least 400 years. |
| 1:46.0 | And whilst they had their fair share of exceptional rulers, |
| 1:50.0 | Rudolf I, Maximilian, Charles V and Maria Theresa, |
| 1:53.0 | the majority of the Habsburgs who set on European thrones ranged from mediocre to outright inept. |
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