HISTORY14 - Upper Danube River Countries

In May 2020, Pat is scheduled to take a two-week river cruise in Europe along the Danube River from Budapest, Hungary to Vilshofen, Germany.  I put this history together for background on the places she will visit.

For reference, see the current map of Europe below.  The area of Pat’s trip is within the black oval.

Map of Europe with Pat's visit region within the black oval.

The Danube is Europe’s second longest river at 1,777 miles.  It begins in the Alps, in Germany’s Black Forest, flows through the heartland of Austria, forms the border between Hungary and Slovakia, before flowing through Hungary into Croatia and Serbia, to then form the boundary between Serbia and Romania, then Romania and Bulgaria, where it flows through Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine to finally empty into the Black Sea.

The Danube River flows through, or forms the boundary between, ten countries -  more than any other river in the world.

The topography of the Danube River’s course is shown below.  Starting in the mountainous foothills of the Alps, the River flows through the lowlands of Austria into the Pannonian Plain, south of the Carpathian Mountains, and on to the Black Sea.

Note the Rhine River in western Germany.  Just west of Regensburg, Germany, on the Danube River, a 106-mile canal completed in 1992 connects the Danube River with the Main River to the north.  The Main River flows west into the Rhine River to provide a navigable route between the Black Sea and the North Sea, part of the Atlantic Ocean.

The topography of the course of the Danube River.

Pat’s cruise will spend major time in, or along the borders of, Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria, and includes touring in their capital cities Budapest, Bratislava, and Vienna, respectively.  She will travel off-River to visit Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic.  Therefore, I will focus my discussion on the history of those four countries and descriptions of the capital cities. 

Introduction

The region of the upper Danube was for ages part of a contested borderland between rival realms, countries, and dynasties.  In the 20th century, the region was overrun by Hitler and then dominated by the Soviet Union for decades, until the fall of communism.  Today it continues to undergo a turmoil-filled transition, with both economic growth and lingering problems and challenges.

Early Inhabitants

The upper Danube has been occupied since the Stone Age, based on recovered bone fragments, pottery shards, and bone-tipped arrowheads. 

Most scholars agree that the Celtic culture, comprised of a collection of Indo-European peoples, first appeared in the Late Bronze Age in the area of the upper Danube sometime around the 13th century BC.  By the 8th century BC, iron had replaced bronze-working.  The Celts introduced glass and crafted fine gold jewelry.  The Celts declined because of the Roman Empire’s expansion from the south and migrating Germanic tribes invading from the north and east.

The Celts dominated European territory for over a thousand years.

In 510 BC, the small trading city of Rome became a republic and began to expand steadily, covering most of the Italian peninsula by 250 BC.

Roman Empire

Continuously expanding through wars and conquests, the Romans conquered the area west of the Rhine River and south of the Danube River in about 35 BC and by the first century AD had established imperial provinces along these rivers.  The Romans introduced writing, cultivation of grapes for wine making, and stone architecture, and established garrison towns and other settlements.

The Romans established important trade and transportation centers all along the Danube River, including Budapest, Bratislava, and Vienna.  North of the Danube were Germanic tribes that had moved south out of southern Scandinavia and northern Germany beginning in 1000 BC.

Ancient Rome worshiped a large group of Greco-Roman gods such as Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, and Mars.  Roman priests were responsible for the proper ritual worship to the gods.  But after almost four centuries of resistance, the Roman Empire officially adopted Christianity in AD 380, and continued their hostility toward the Jewish religion. 

The maximum extent of the Roman Empire - included the upper Danube River.

The Great Migrations

From AD 350 to 1000, Europe experienced widespread invasions of people from within or without the region.

The first invasions, occurring from AD 350-500 into the territory of the then declining Roman Empire, were by Germanic tribes from the north and east, including Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Burgundians, and Franks. 

The Romans, to make their empire easier to control, in AD 393, split the empire into two halves, western and eastern.  The capital of the eastern empire was established in Constantinople.  This was about the time that the Visigoths began invading the Roman Empire from their homeland northwest of the Black Sea, where they had migrated from Scandinavia centuries ago. 

In the fifth century, under continual attack by the Visigoths, the Western Roman Empire collapsed piecemeal.  Finally, in AD 476, the last Roman Emperor was deposed. 

As is shown on the map below, Europe was also invaded by the nomadic Central-Asian Huns, who crushed the Goths in AD 451/452, but returned to their homeland soon after their leader Attila the Hun’s death in AD 453.

Between AD 350-500, Germanic tribes invaded the declining Roman Empire.

In the place of the fallen Western Roman Empire, small Barbarian kingdoms arose in Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries.  The Frankish kingdom became the nucleus of what would later become France and Germany.  Various Germanic kingdoms, including Ostrogoths, populated the Danube River region.

By AD 500, Germanic peoples had achieved control of most of Europe.

Additional migrations into Europe occurred between 500 and 1000, starting with the Slavs, a nomadic Eurasian tribe from the east, pushing farther into southern and eastern Europe, settling areas along the Danube River, gradually making the eastern half of the European continent predominantly Slavic.

Migration of Slavs into Europe between the 5th and 10th centuries.

In 567 the Avars, a confederation of Turkish tribes from Central Asia, together with a Germanic group, the Lombards, from Italy, defeated the Germanic Gepid Kingdom, and took over the region, forcing the Lombards to return to Italy.  The Avars established the Avar Khaganate which comprised a territory corresponding roughly to modern-day Austria, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria, down to and including parts of Turkey.  The empire lasted until 796 when the Avars were conquered by the Franks under their king, Charlemagne, who by 814 united much of Europe into a single kingdom.

After Charlemagne’s death, the Treaty of Verdun in 843 formally divided his kingdom into three pieces, with the westernmost entity emerging as modern-day France, and the easternmost section, including Bavaria, mostly emerging as modern-day Germany.  Carinthia became part of today’s Austria.

To the east, in 833, resident Germanic and Slavic tribes established the state of Great Moravia, encompassing the present-day Czech Republic, Slovakia, the western part of Hungary, part of Germany, and part of southern Poland.  The Moravian state lasted until 907, when it was overrun by invading Magyars. 

By 814 Frankish King Charlemagne had united most of Europe.

In 892-895, the Magyars (aka Hungarians), a fierce nomadic tribe from today’s Ukraine region, crossed the Carpathian Mountains, began a series of raids in today’s Romania, and in 895 began the conquest of the Carpathian Basin.  By 897, the Magyars had defeated the Moravians.

Between 899 and 955 the Magyars launched a series of plundering raids across Europe, reaching all the way to the Iberian Peninsula, but returned to gradually settle in the Carpathian Basin and established a Christian monarchy, the Kingdom of Hungary, in 1000, ruled by the Arpad dynasty for the following three centuries.

The Holy Roman Empire

The Holy Roman Empire was a conglomeration of lands in Europe, mostly in the regions of present-day Germany and Austria, originating with the partition of the Frankish Empire following the Treaty of Verdun in 843 and lasting until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars.   Over the years, its boundaries varied; at its peak the Holy Roman Empire encompassed the territories of present-day Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, Belgium, and the Netherlands as well as large parts of Poland, France, and Italy.

The Holy Roman Empire was founded on the idea that Christendom (Roman Catholicism) should be a single political unit in which religion and governance are combined, with an Emperor crowned by the Roman Catholic Pope.  This lasted until 1508, after which the different territory leaders elected the Emperor, with a strong tendency for hereditary successions.

Austria became a protectorate of Charlemagne in 803, a province of the Holy Roman Empire in 976, and an independent state in the Holy Roman Empire in 1156.  The House of Habsburg took over control of Austria in 1282 and ruled the dynasty until the end of World War I.  From 1438 until 1806 (with the exception of 1742–1745) the head of the House of Habsburg was also Holy Roman Emperor.

In 1198 the lands of the future Czech Republic became the Kingdom of Bohemia, an independent state of the Holy Roman Empire.

In 1241/1242 a Mongol army from Central Asia invaded Eastern Europe, including Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, and the Kingdom of Hungary.  The Mongols decisively crushed the Hungarian army, and proceeded to ravage the countryside for the next year.  By the end of the Mongol campaign, around a quarter of the population of Hungary had been killed, and most of the Kingdom’s major settlements had been reduced to rubble.

In 1285 Mongol armies invaded Hungary for a second time.  This time the invasion was repelled handily, and the Mongols lost much of their invading force to several months of winter starvation, numerous small raids, and two major military defeats.  No major Mongol invasions of Hungary would be launched after the failure of the campaign of 1285, though small raids Mongols were frequent well into the 14^th century.

The next calamity to affect Europe was the Great Plague, or Black Death, one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351.  The upper Danube region was most affected in 1349.

Since the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, most of Europe had undergone Christianization as Roman Catholics.  But, hostility between Christians and Jews grew over the generations, leading to efforts to convert Jews, property confiscation, synagogue burning, mass murder, and expulsion.  In the Middle Ages, attempts were made to expel Jews from most European countries, including Hungary (1360), Austria (1421), and Bavaria (1442).  These expulsions stimulated widespread Jewish migration to much more tolerant Poland, which became the cultural and spiritual center of the Jewish people in Europe.

The map below shows Europe in 1500, with Hungary having slowly recovered from Mongol invasions and the Great Plague, and grown in size with annexations of parts of today’s Romania, Serbia, and Croatia.   The German lands of the Holy Roman Empire remained divided into numerous independent states such as Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Austria.

Europe in 1500.  The Holy Roman Empire and Hungary dominated Central Europe.

The Kingdom of Hungary was also gravely threatened by the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which was founded at the end of the 13^th century and controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa between the 14th and early 20^th centuries.  The Ottomans conquered the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire) with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

The Islamic Ottomans crossed into Europe in the mid-14^th century, conquered the Balkans, and by the mid-15^th century, began a series of inconclusive wars with the Kingdom of Hungary, ending when Hungary finally crumbled in the Battle of Mohacs in 1526. 

After this battle, the Kingdom of Bohemia (future Czech Republic) became a constituent state of the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy.

Defense against Ottoman expansion then shifted to Habsburg Austria.  In 1541 Hungary was partitioned such that the Habsburg dynasty controlled west Hungary, along the Austrian border, and the Ottomans controlled the balance of Hungary.

At about the same time, in the mid-1500s, the Holy Roman Empire experienced the so-called “Protestant Reformation,” when people like Martin Luther challenged the Roman Catholic Church and papal authority.  This religious and political revolution arose in Germany and quickly spread Protestantism across Europe.

Between 1618 and 1648, in the Thirty Years War, Europe suffered one of the most destructive conflicts in its history.  Initially a war between various Protestant and Catholic states in the fragmented Holy Roman Empire, it gradually developed into a rivalry between France and the Habsburgs for European preeminence.  The deadly clashes ravaged Europe; 20 percent of the total population of Germany died in the conflict and there were losses up to 50 percent in the Crown of Bohemia.  The war did not dramatically change the map of Europe (see below), but resulted in a new balance of power, with the rising importance of France, and the curtailing of Habsburg ambition.

Europe in 1650.  The fragmented Holy Roman Empire and Austria dominated Central Europe.

The partitioning of Hungary lasted more than 150 years, from 1541 until to 1699, when the Austrian Habsburgs, together with a coalition of Holy Roman Empire forces, having recovered from the Thirty Years War, and after many years fighting the Great Turkish War, were able to expel the Turks.  The lost territory was recovered and the whole of Hungary became part of the Habsburg Monarchy.

It seems as if Austria was continually at War.  In the War of Spanish Succession with France (1701-1714) over disputes on inherited lands, Austria gained control of the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, and Lombardy.  These acquisitions together with conquests in the Balkans gave Austria its greatest territorial extent.  Next, Austria fought two wars with the Kingdom of Prussia over territorial rights, the War of Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and the Seven Years War (1756-1763), losing territory to Prussia in both cases.

In 1772, Austria, Prussia, and Russia moved their armies into Poland-Lithuania and grabbed territory for themselves, claiming that they were bringing stability to the region.  In the “Partitioning of Poland-Lithuania,” Austria took the region called Galicia, in the south.  Russia gained lands in the east that had been part of Lithuania, today’s Belarus and parts of Ukraine.  Prussia, however, got the most important gains: territory on the Baltic Sea that allowed them to link up noncontiguous parts of the Prussian Kingdom.  At a stroke, Poland-Lithuania lost a third of its territory, and more than a third of its population.

Then Austria, with various European partners, engaged in two Coalition Wars over territorial rights with France (1792-1797 and 1798-1802), and again lost some of their newly-gained lands to the west.

The next events truly changed the shape of Europe:  the Napoleonic Wars between 1803 and 1815 - a series of major conflicts pitting the French Empire under Napoleonic Bonaparte against a fluctuating array of European powers formed into seven different coalitions over 12 years, most involving Prussia, Austria, and/or Russia.  At the height of the conflict, in 1806, after a military defeat by the French Army, the Holy Roman Empire was formally dissolved when the Austrian Emperor abdicated.  Napoleon was finally permanently defeated in 1815, with terms then set by the Congress of Vienna.

The Congress of Vienna redrew the borders of Europe (see map below), and brought a period of relative peace.  The agreement replaced the Holy Roman Empire with the German Confederation, an association of 39 German-speaking states, including Prussia and Austria, plus the mainly non-German speaking Kingdom of Bohemia.  The German Confederation excluded German-speaking lands of eastern Prussia, Switzerland, and the French region of Alsace.

The Habsburg monarchy lands were declared the Austrian Empire, that then included parts, or all of, today’s Hungary, Ukraine, Romania, Poland, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia.

The Napoleonic Wars had profound consequences on European history, including the spread of nationalism and liberalism, and the fundamental reorganization of German territories into larger states.

Europe in 1815.  After the Napoleonic Wars.

European Nationalism

After the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, European states tried to move away from the old autocratic monarchies of the past towards more political independence and recognition of each state’s national interests.

In 1848, a revolution in the Kingdom of Hungary grew into a war for total independence from the Habsburg dynasty.  After a series of major Austrian defeats, with the Austrian Empire close to collapsing, Russia came to Austria’s defense, and a joint army of Russian and Austrian forces defeated Hungarian forces in 1849.  After the restoration of Habsburg power, Hungary was placed under brutal martial law.

Also, in 1848/1849 several of the 39 states of the German Confederation, including Prussia and Austria, protested and rebelled to achieve unity of the German-speaking states, with a more liberal government and improvements to working and living conditions.  These “revolutions” were struck down by the conservative aristocracy.

In 1866, in the Austro-Prussian War, part of a wide rivalry between Austria and Prussia, the Kingdom of Prussia defeated the Austrian Empire, resulting in Prussian dominance over the German states.  The German Confederation was dissolved, and replaced with the North German Confederation, excluding Austria.

With the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, a dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary was established, putting an end to 18 years of military dictatorship in Hungary.  The Austrian and Hungarian states were autonomous, co-equal in power, and together Austria-Hungary was one of Europe’s major powers at the time.

The unification of Germany was achieved with the formation of the German Empire in 1871.  By 1900, Germany was the dominant power on the European continent with a rapidly expanding economy.

In the years leading up to World War I, the nations of Europe were constantly jockeying for power and making mutual protection alliances.  In 1914, the situation in Europe was tense.  Secret alliances, internal politics, and the desire to grow empires had built up distrust and dislike between many of the European powers.

The Austria-Hungary dual monarchy in Europe in 1914, before World War I.

World War I

On June 28, 1914 the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary was assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Austria-Hungary believed that the assassination was organized by the Serbian government and immediately declared war on Serbia.

The conflict quickly grew into World War I, with Germany leading Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire against France, Great Britain, Russia, and (by 1917) the United States.  The War lasted until 1918; defeated and partly occupied Germany was forced to pay war reparations by the Treaty of Versailles.  Germany was stripped of its colonies and lost home territory to Belgium, France, and Poland.  The independent country of Czechoslovakia (First Republic) was formed in 1918 from the combination of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. 

The Habsburg dynasty finally came to an end in 1918, after almost 500 years of continuous rule. Austria and Hungary were again separate countries.  The first Austrian Republic was formed in 1918. 

Hungary lost about 72% of its prewar territory to Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, Italy, and the new country of Yugoslavia.  In 1918 the short-lived First Hungarian Republic was declared, but was quickly followed by a restored Kingdom of Hungary.

The Ottoman Empire's defeat, and the occupation of part of its territory by the Allied Powers in the aftermath of World War I, resulted in its partitioning and the loss of its Middle Eastern territories, which were divided between the United Kingdom and France. The successful Turkish War of Independence (1919-1923) against the occupying Allies led to the emergence of the Republic of Turkey and the abolition of the Ottoman monarchy.

The map below shows the new European borders after World War I.

Europe in 1919, after World War I.  Today's Central and Eastern European countries begin to take shape.

World War II

In the early 1930s, the worldwide Great Depression hit Germany hard, as unemployment soared and people lost confidence in the government. In January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. His Nazi Party quickly established a totalitarian regime, and Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands, threatening war if they were not met.  Remilitarization of the Rhineland came in 1936, then annexation of Austria (Hitler’s native country) and parts of Czechoslovakia. On 1 September 1939, Germany initiated World War II in Europe with the invasion of Poland.  In 1940 Hungary joined the War on the German side. The Germans swept Denmark and Norway, the Low Countries, and France, giving Germany control of nearly all of Western Europe. Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.

This terribly destructive war involved the Axis Powers: Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Japan against the Allied Forces:  France, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States. 

In 1942, the German invasion of the Soviet Union faltered and Britain became the base for massive Anglo-American bombings of German-occupied territory. Following the Allied invasion of Normandy (June 1944), the German Army was pushed back by the Allies from the west and by the Soviets from the east, until the final collapse of Germany in May 1945.

Continuing what they had started in their own country in 1933, during World War II, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews, around two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population, and hundreds of thousands of Gypsies, intellectually disabled, dissidents, and homosexuals.  These murders, known today as the Holocaust, were carried out in organized massacres and mass shootings, by a policy of extermination through work in concentration camps, and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps. 

There were eight concentration camps in Germany, two in Czechoslovakia, and one in Austria.  Poland, which had by far the greatest population of Jews at the start of the War (about 3 ½ million people), housed four concentration camps and all five extermination camps.  There were also two concentration camps farther east in today’s Belarus and Ukraine.  By mid-1942, victims were being deported from Jewish communities across Europe in sealed freight trains to extermination camps, where if they survived the journey, they were worked to death or gassed.  Four hundred thousand Hungarian Jews were rounded up and gassed in Poland.

After the War, in 1945 and 1946, the Nuremberg Trials, a series of 13 military tribunals, were held by Allied Forces to prosecute prominent members of the political, military, judicial, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany, who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in the Holocaust and other war crimes.

Immediately after World War II and the Holocaust, Germans experienced their own ethnic cleansing in Central and Eastern Europe.  Some 12-16.5 million ethnic Germans fled their homes or were expelled.  In the process, it is estimated that from half a million to two million died or were killed. The turnover of territories was anything but humane and orderly.

Prague Germans were rounded up. In some towns, mass violence against German civilians took place, revealing the pent-up hatred. One evening in Brno, some 20,000 Germans were given 10 minutes to pack and marched towards the Austrian border, and then confined in the open air for months of suffering before expulsion.  By 1947, two and half million Germans had left Czechoslovakia. 

Under occupation by the Allies, German territories were split up.  The boundaries of Czechoslovakia were restored and Poland gained land in the west from Germany.  Austria was again made a separate country, divided into four occupation zones.  Yugoslavia remained independent, but now as a communist country.

With the end of the War, Central/Eastern European countries were united in shared misery. Massive numbers of people were dead; political structures had collapsed, and economies lay in ruin.  Another immediately visible reality was the massive power of the Red Army, which had played a predominant role in destroying Nazi Germany.  Some 11 million Soviet soldiers stood in Eastern Europe.

After the Second World War, the Cold War ensued, resulting in the division of Germany into democratic West Germany and communist East Germany.  From 1948 through 1991, Europe was divided into two hostile, armed camps - one aligned with the United States of America and one aligned with the Soviet Union, separated by the “Iron Curtain,” with a handful of neutrals in between.

The 1950s and 1960s were marked by repeated revolts in Central/Eastern Europe, even in the face of regimes that demanded total obedience to their ideology.  In 1956 Hungary revolted against Soviet imposed policies, but Soviet tanks and troops entered the country to crush the revolt.  Other revolts were put down with swift force by the Soviets, who were determined to hold the line in the Cold War.  In 1955, they engineered the Warsaw Pact that included Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Albania, and the Soviet Union. The Pact made vividly clear that the Soviet Union was the big brother, ready to re-impose order.

In 1961 the Soviets erected the Berlin Wall, separating west and east Berlin. The East German state had already closed the land border with West Germany, but continued to hemorrhage people through the open city of Berlin, as almost 2.7 million Germans fled west.

As shown in the map below, the NATO states were aligned against the Soviet Union and Warsaw pact countries.  Austria and Switzerland maintained a non-aligned status.  

Europe in 1955, after World War II.  Most of Central and Eastern Europe was occupied by communist forces.

In 1946, Hungary established its second Hungarian Republic, then a socialist Peoples Republic during 1949 to 1989, and then a democratic Third Republic of Hungary in 1989, adopting a new constitution in 2011.  Austria became an independent sovereign state - the democratic Second Republic - in 1955.  In 1989, a non-violent “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia led to the overthrow of the Communist government, which had ruled in that nation for over 40 years, and establishment of a democratic republic.

Dramatic events continued to reshape Europe. In 1989, the Berlin Wall was destroyed. East Germany was reunited with West Germany in 1990.  In 1991, the Warsaw Pact dissolved and the Soviet Union collapsed.

From 1992 to 1995, an internal war of stunning violence and tragedy tore apart the multiethnic country of Yugoslavia.  After terrible fighting and many episodes of ethnic cleansing, Yugoslavia broke up, reestablishing Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia, and forming the new country of Montenegro.

In 1993 Czechoslovakia agreed to the peaceful separation of Slovakia as a separate, independent country.  Czechoslovakia became the Czech Republic.

While on one level the Cold War divided the continent, in other respects it made it more unified than ever before. The threat of communism inspired the US-aligned nations to resolve longstanding conflicts and forge institutional ties. These relationships and institutions outlived the USSR and laid the foundation for modern Europe.

After the fall of Communism in 1991, Central and Eastern Europeans faced the challenge of seeking to rejoin Europe. The economic dimension of moving from planned command economies to the free market was daunting. 

During the Cold War, West Germany experienced rapid economic expansion, and became the dominant economy in Europe. A new Franco-German friendship became the basis for the political integration of Western Europe in the European Union.

Fortunately, Central and Eastern Europe did not collapse into generalized anarchy. The desire to rejoin Europe and gain security in the form of NATO membership played a powerful restraining role, even as finally achieving membership in the European Union or NATO proved a frustratingly long and drawn-out process.

Germany became a European Union member in 1959, Austria in 1995.  In 2004, eight Central and Eastern European countries joined the European Union: the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. 

Europe in 2020.  Most European countries are part of the European Union.  Note that the United Kingdom withdrew from the European Union in January, 2020.

Upper Danube River Countries Today

The table below summarizes key characteristics of the four countries that Pat will visit along the Danube River.

Country	Hungary	Slovakia	Austria	Czech Republic
Founding	Kingdom of Hungary           AD 1000	Independence from Czechoslovakia 1993	Province of Holy Roman Empire AD 976	Duchy of Bohemia c. AD 870 Czechoslovakia 1918 Czech Republic 1993
Size (Sq Mi) (Comparison to U.S. State)	35,920 (Maine)	18,933 (Between Maryland/      W. Virginia)	32,386 (South Carolina)	30,450 (South Carolina)
Population (2018 Est.)	9.77 M	5.45 M	9 M	10.65 M
Government	Unitary Parliamentary Republic	Unitary Parliamentary Republic	Federal Parliamentary Republic	Unitary Parliamentary Republic
Head of State Elected By	Parliament,     by Absolute      Majority	Direct Election	States of    Austria	Direct Election
Religion	Catholic 39% Protestant    13.8%	Catholic 62% Protestant 8.2%	Catholic 57% Protestant   3.3% Muslim 7.9%	Undeclared 44.7% Non-Religious 34.5% Catholic 10.5%
Industry	Electronics, Mining, Metallurgy, Textiles, Chemicals, Construction, Food Processing, Auto Manuf., Agriculture	Auto Production, Electrical Engineering	Financial, Business Consulting, Metals and Mining, Energy and Utilities, Healthcare	Auto Production, Energy Trading, Oil Processing, Electronics Manuf., Steel Production, Transportation
GDP	$350 B	$209 B	$461 B	$432 B
Annual Tourists (2018)	15.8 M	5.49 M	20.8 M	21.2 M
Capital City	Budapest	Bratislava	Vienna	Prague

The capital cities that Pat will visit on her Danube River cruise, shown in the table below, have much in common.  Most date from early Celtic and Roman settlements and most were occupied at one time in their histories by Germanic tribes, Slavs, Avars, Mongols, Ottomans, and Soviet troops.  Also, most were bombed by Allied Forces during World War II and today are UNESCO World Heritage sites due to their historic significance.

City	Population (city)	Selected Facts
Budapest  Hungary	1.75 M	·         Three separate cities (Buda, Obuda, Pest) until unification in   1873. ·         Co-capital of Austro-Hungarian Empire. ·         Nicknames: “Paris of the East” and “City of Baths.” ·         20% of Hungarians live in Budapest. ·         Great Synagogue is 2nd biggest in world. ·         Metro line is 2nd oldest (1896) in world. ·         Buildings restricted to 315 feet height. ·         Home of 80 geothermal springs.
Bratislava  Slovakia	0.433 M	·         Only national capital bordering two sovereign states:  Austria,   Hungary ·         Straddles the Danube River. ·         Only 37 miles from Vienna, Austria. ·         Known as Pressburg until 1919. ·         Nicknames: “Beauty on the Danube” and “Little Big City.”
Vienna  Austria	1.89 M	·         Capital of Austrian Habsburgs Dynasty, Austrian Empire,   Austria-Hungary ·         Nearly 1/3 of Austrians live in Vienna ·         2nd largest German-speaking city, after Berlin. ·         Known as “City of Music.”  Home of Mozart, Beethoven,   Strauss, Schubert, Brahms. ·         Known as “City of Dreams.”  Home of Sigmund Freud. ·         Home of world’s largest zoological garden. ·         Home of Vienna Boys Choir, dating to 1498. ·         Produces wine within city limits.
Prague  Czech Republic	1.32 M	·         Capital of Kingdom of Bohemia. ·         Home to several Holy Roman Empire emperors. ·         Prague Castle is oldest (started in AD 870) ancient castle in       world. ·         Europe’s oldest active synagogue (1270). ·         World’s 3rd oldest active astronomical clock (1410). ·         Czechs drink more beer per capita than any other country.

Since ancient times, the Danube has become a traditional trade route in Europe.  Today, 1,501 miles (total length 1,777 miles) of the Danube River are navigable.  Besides the 10 countries that the Danube touches directly, the River’s drainage basin includes part of nine additional countries for a total area of 309,447 square miles, a region about 15% larger than the entire state of Texas.  The River contains 42 islands along its length.

The Danube has been a source of drinking water for about 20 million people.  In Austria and Hungary today, most water is drawn from the ground and spring sources and only in rare cases is water from the Danube used.  Most countries also find it too difficult to clean the water because of excessive pollution.  Only parts of Romania, where the water is cleaner, still obtain drinking water from the Danube on a regular basis.

Tourism, in the form of river cruises, is big business on the Danube River.  During the spring and fall peak seasons, more than 70 cruise ships are in use on the River.  There is also a very popular bike trail along the Danube.