Chapter 01 · c. 1342 – 1699
The Lordships of the Rhine and the Distant House of Liechtenstein
Two small Alpine territories drifted through noble hands while, far to the east, a princely Austrian family grew rich enough to one day buy them.
The land that would become Liechtenstein took shape as two distinct seigneuries on the upper Rhine. The county of Vaduz emerged in the fourteenth century, and above it lay the smaller lordship of Schellenberg; both were modest, mountainous and frequently impoverished holdings within the Holy Roman Empire. Over the centuries they passed through several noble houses, most notably the counts of Hohenems, who acquired them in the sixteenth century and ran the territories into debt, leaving them vulnerable to sale.
Far from these valleys, in the Habsburg lands of central Europe, the House of Liechtenstein had risen to extraordinary wealth and standing. The family took its name from Liechtenstein Castle near Vienna and amassed vast estates in Lower Austria, Moravia and Bohemia. In 1608 Karl von Liechtenstein was granted the hereditary dignity of an imperial prince, a distinction confirmed for his brothers in the following years, raising the family to the highest rank of the nobility. Their holdings in the Habsburg dominions were on a scale that the little Rhine lordships could not begin to match.
Yet rank and riches did not bring political weight in the constitution of the Empire. The Liechtensteins held their great estates as vassals of the Habsburg crown rather than directly of the Emperor, and a seat in the Imperial Diet, the Reichstag, was reserved to those who held land 'immediately' under the Emperor alone. To win that seat the princes needed reichsunmittelbar territory, however small. The indebted lordships on the Rhine, available for purchase and answerable only to the Emperor, were precisely what the family required.
“The Liechtensteins possessed extreme wealth and vast estates, but no land held immediately of the Emperor, and so no seat in the Imperial Diet.”
— On the dynasty's predicament before 1699
Turning points
- c. 1342Formation
- 1608Politics & Power
- 16th–17th c.Economy & Trade
Hohenems debts open the way
The counts of Hohenems, who held Vaduz and Schellenberg, fell into heavy debt, leaving the small Rhine territories available for sale to a buyer rich enough to redeem them.
See the data
Figures of the era
Karl I von Liechtenstein1569 – 1627
First prince of the House of Liechtenstein
A leading figure at the Habsburg court, Karl I obtained the hereditary princely dignity for his line in 1608, the rank that his successors would seek to match with a territory held immediately under the Emperor.
Chapter sources: Liechtenstein: History (Alpine, Principality, Sovereignty), The History of the Princely House of Liechtenstein, The History of the Family and the Collections, How the Principality of Liechtenstein came into being
Chapter 02 · 1699 – 1806
Bought and Founded: The Imperial Principality of 1719
By purchasing two small lordships and persuading the Emperor to unite them, an absentee Austrian dynasty conjured a principality it would not deign to visit for over a century.
Prince Johann Adam Andreas I of Liechtenstein, the wealthiest member of his family, made the decisive acquisitions. In 1699 he bought the lordship of Schellenberg, and in 1712 the county of Vaduz, paying together hundreds of thousands of guilders for the two debt-laden territories. The purchases were not for their pasture or revenue, which were trifling beside the family's Bohemian and Moravian estates, but for their constitutional standing: held immediately of the Emperor, they could carry the seat in the Imperial Diet that the dynasty so coveted.
On 23 January 1719 the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI issued a diploma uniting Schellenberg and Vaduz into a single Imperial Principality, which he named Liechtenstein after its owners. With this act a new member state of the Holy Roman Empire came into being, and it would prove to be the only one created in this way that survives as a sovereign country to the present day, within essentially the same borders. The principality existed, in the first instance, to dignify a family rather than to be ruled.
For generations that is exactly how it was treated. The princes lived amid their palaces in Vienna and their estates in the Habsburg lands and governed Liechtenstein through officials; not one of them so much as visited the territory for more than a hundred years after its foundation, the first to do so being Prince Alois II in 1842. The little state's population, scarcely more than a few thousand peasants, experienced its sovereign as a distant name. The arrangement endured until the wider order that contained it, the Holy Roman Empire itself, came to an end under Napoleon.
“Emperor Charles VI decreed the two parts, Schellenberg and Vaduz, united and raised to the status of an imperial principality under the name of Liechtenstein.”
— On the diploma of 23 January 1719
Turning points
- 1699Economy & Trade
Purchase of the lordship of Schellenberg
Prince Johann Adam Andreas I bought the lordship of Schellenberg from the indebted Hohenems, the first of the two acquisitions that would form the principality; the prince did not attend the homage ceremony in person.
See the data - 1712Economy & Trade
Purchase of the county of Vaduz
Johann Adam Andreas I acquired the county of Vaduz, and from this time Vaduz Castle entered the possession of the princes of Liechtenstein, completing the territory of the future principality.
See the data - 23 Jan 1719Formation
Foundation of the Principality of Liechtenstein
Emperor Charles VI united Schellenberg and Vaduz and raised them to an Imperial Principality named Liechtenstein, granting the family the immediate standing and Diet seat it had sought; the founding diploma survives in the Princely Collections.
- 1842Politics & Power
Figures of the era
Johann Adam Andreas I1657 – 1712
Prince who bought the territories
Known as 'Hans-Adam the Rich', he purchased Schellenberg in 1699 and Vaduz in 1712, securing the reichsunmittelbar lands on which the principality was built. He died in 1712, before the territories were formally united into a principality.
Anton Florian1656 – 1721
First prince of the united principality
A close adviser to Emperor Charles VI, Anton Florian obtained the 1719 diploma that united Vaduz and Schellenberg into the Principality of Liechtenstein, finally securing the family its long-sought seat and vote in the Imperial Diet.
Chapter sources: Emperor Charles VI unites Vaduz and Schellenberg and raises them to the Imperial Principality of Liechtenstein (diploma, 23 Jan 1719), 1719 – 300 Years of Liechtenstein (exhibition), The History of the Princely House of Liechtenstein, How the Principality of Liechtenstein came into being, Liechtenstein: History (Alpine, Principality, Sovereignty), History of Liechtenstein
Chapter 03 · 1806 – 1918
From the Empire to Sovereignty
Carried through Napoleon's reordering of Germany and the German Confederation, the principality emerged in 1866 as a fully sovereign state, tied closely to Austria.
The collapse of the Holy Roman Empire transformed Liechtenstein's position. When Napoleon dissolved the old Empire and reorganised the German states, Liechtenstein was admitted in 1806 to the Confederation of the Rhine, the French-sponsored league of German principalities. By this membership the principality attained a recognised sovereignty it had never separately possessed, surviving as one of the smallest states to weather the upheavals of the Napoleonic era intact.
After Napoleon's fall the principality joined the German Confederation, the loose association of German states formed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and remained within it for half a century. Throughout this period its ties ran eastward to the Habsburg monarchy: its princes resided in Austria, its institutions and outlook were Austrian, and it stood under the shadow of Vienna. When the German Confederation was broken apart by the Austro-Prussian War, Liechtenstein found itself, almost by accident, a fully sovereign and independent state from 1866.
Sovereignty for so small a country meant choosing how little to defend. In 1868 Liechtenstein abolished its tiny army as an unnecessary expense and declared its permanent neutrality, a posture it has maintained ever since. The nineteenth century also brought the first stirrings of constitutional life, with a constitution granted in 1862 that created a parliament, the Landtag, beside the prince. The principality remained overwhelmingly rural and poor, bound by treaty and sentiment to Austria-Hungary, an arrangement that would be shattered by the First World War.
“Included in the Confederation of the Rhine from 1806 and the German Confederation from 1815, Liechtenstein became independent in 1866.”
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, on the road to sovereignty
Turning points
- 1806Independence
Sovereignty through the Confederation of the Rhine
On the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, Liechtenstein was admitted to Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine, gaining recognised sovereignty and surviving the Napoleonic reordering of Germany.
See the data - 1815Politics & Power
Membership of the German Confederation
After Napoleon's defeat, Liechtenstein joined the German Confederation created at the Congress of Vienna, remaining within it until 1866 while keeping close dynastic ties to Austria.
- 1862Politics & Power
First constitution and the Landtag
A constitution granted in 1862 established a parliament, the Landtag, beginning the slow growth of constitutional and representative institutions alongside the prince.
- 1866Independence
Full independence
When the German Confederation dissolved after the Austro-Prussian War, Liechtenstein became a fully sovereign and independent state, its links thereafter resting on treaty and choice rather than confederation.
See the data - 1868Politics & Power
Figures of the era
Johann II1840 – 1929
Long-reigning prince
Reigning for over seventy years, Johann II 'the Good' presided over the principality's passage from its Austrian orientation toward Switzerland, granting a liberal constitution in 1921 and steering Liechtenstein through the First World War as a neutral.
Chapter sources: Liechtenstein: History (Alpine, Principality, Sovereignty), The History of the Princely House of Liechtenstein, How the Principality of Liechtenstein came into being
Chapter 04 · 1918 – 1949
The Turn to Switzerland, Neutrality and the Beneš Decrees
Cut adrift by the fall of Austria-Hungary, Liechtenstein bound its fortunes to Switzerland, kept its neutrality through a second war, and lost in Czechoslovakia an estate many times its own size.
The defeat and dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918 left Liechtenstein's traditional partner in ruins and its own economy, tied to a collapsing Austrian currency, in crisis. The principality turned decisively westward to its other neighbour. It concluded a customs treaty with Switzerland, signed in 1923 and in force from 1 January 1924, which made the two countries a single customs and economic territory, and it adopted the Swiss franc as its currency. Switzerland also assumed responsibility for representing many of Liechtenstein's interests abroad. A new and liberal constitution in 1921 reshaped the state at home, balancing the prince against an elected Landtag and direct democracy.
Sheltered behind Swiss arrangements and its own neutrality, Liechtenstein survived the Second World War without being drawn into the fighting, though it lay between the Axis powers and was acutely exposed. In 1938 Prince Franz Josef II became the first reigning prince to take up permanent residence in the principality itself, ending more than two centuries of absentee rule and giving the dynasty, at last, a home in its own state during the most dangerous years of the century.
The war's end brought the principality its gravest modern loss. Under the decrees issued by Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš in 1945, the property of those classed as Germans was confiscated, and the Czechoslovak authorities treated the House of Liechtenstein, the largest landowner in the country, as German and seized its estates. These holdings in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia comprised on the order of 1,600 square kilometres of farmland and forest, a domain many times larger than the principality itself. Liechtenstein, a neutral sovereign state, protested that its head and citizens were not German nationals, but the confiscations stood, opening a dispute that would last for decades.
“Some 60 per cent of the Liechtensteins' land was confiscated in Moravia and the Czech lands, precisely 161 thousand hectares of farmland and forests.”
— Czech-Liechtenstein Society, on the 1945 confiscations
Turning points
- 1921Politics & Power
- 1923–1924Economy & Trade
Customs union with Switzerland and the Swiss franc
A customs treaty signed in 1923 and in force from 1 January 1924 joined Liechtenstein and Switzerland into a single customs and economic area; Liechtenstein adopted the Swiss franc, binding its economy to its western neighbour.
See the data - 1938Politics & Power
A prince moves to Vaduz
Prince Franz Josef II became the first reigning prince to take up permanent residence in Liechtenstein, ending more than two centuries of rule from abroad on the eve of the Second World War.
- 1945Catastrophe
Confiscation under the Beneš decrees
Czechoslovakia confiscated the vast Bohemian and Moravian estates of the House of Liechtenstein under the Beneš decrees, treating the family as German; the seized land, around 1,600 square kilometres, far exceeded the area of the principality.
See the data
Figures of the era
Franz Josef II1906 – 1989
Reigning prince through the war
The first prince to reside permanently in Liechtenstein, from 1938, Franz Josef II led the neutral state through the Second World War and the loss of its Czechoslovak estates, and presided over its postwar transformation into a wealthy modern country.
Edvard Beneš1884 – 1948
President of Czechoslovakia
His 1945 presidential decrees authorised the confiscation of property held by those deemed German, under which Czechoslovakia seized the Liechtenstein family's enormous holdings, the act at the root of a dispute carried decades later to the International Court of Justice.
Chapter sources: Advantages of the customs and monetary union with Switzerland, The History of the Princely House of Liechtenstein, History of Czech–Liechtenstein relations (confiscations and 2009 relations), Certain Property (Liechtenstein v. Germany) — case overview, Summary of the Judgment of 10 February 2005, Certain Property (Liechtenstein v. Germany), Liechtenstein: History (Alpine, Principality, Sovereignty)
Chapter 05 · 1949 – present
A Wealthy Microstate: Finance, the ICJ Case and the Modern Constitution
Industry and finance made the principality astonishingly rich; the postwar decades brought women the vote, a seat at the United Nations, a contested constitution and an unresolved reckoning with Prague.
In the second half of the twentieth century Liechtenstein transformed itself from a poor agrarian backwater into one of the wealthiest places on earth. Industrialisation, foreign investment, low taxes and the growth of banking and financial services built a prosperous, highly developed economy with negligible unemployment, anchored by its customs and monetary union with Switzerland. The principality became a noted financial centre, a status that brought riches and, in time, international pressure over banking secrecy and transparency that prompted reform.
Sovereignty was matched, slowly, by fuller participation in the world and at home. Liechtenstein remained, strikingly, the last country in Europe to deny women the national vote: only in 1984, by a referendum of the male electorate decided by a slender margin, was women's suffrage finally introduced. The state then stepped onto the international stage, joining the United Nations as its 160th member on 18 September 1990 and acceding to the European Economic Area in 1995, integrating into the European single market while remaining outside the European Union. In 2003 a referendum approved Prince Hans-Adam II's revision of the constitution, expanding the reigning prince's powers, including rights to veto legislation and dismiss the government, after he threatened to leave the country if it failed.
The wound of 1945 remained open into the new century. Liechtenstein never recognised the postwar Czechoslovak seizure of the princely estates, and the two states had no diplomatic relations at all until 2009. When a painting by the Dutch master Pieter van Laer, part of the family's collection since the eighteenth century and confiscated in 1945, was lent from Brno to a museum in Cologne in 1991, Prince Hans-Adam II sued in the German courts, which refused to hear the claim. Liechtenstein then brought the case Certain Property (Liechtenstein v. Germany) to the International Court of Justice in 2001; on 10 February 2005 the Court found that it lacked jurisdiction ratione temporis, holding that the dispute's true source lay in the 1945 measures and the postwar Settlement Convention. Diplomatic relations between Liechtenstein and the Czech Republic were finally established in 2009, alongside a joint commission of historians to address the shared past.
“The painting had belonged to the family of the Reigning Prince of Liechtenstein since the eighteenth century; it was confiscated in 1945 by Czechoslovakia under the Beneš Decrees.”
— International Court of Justice, Certain Property (Liechtenstein v. Germany)
Turning points
- 1 Jul 1984Politics & Power
- 18 Sep 1990Politics & Power
- 1995Economy & Trade
Accession to the European Economic Area
Liechtenstein joined the European Economic Area, integrating into the European single market as an EFTA state while remaining outside the European Union and preserving its Swiss customs union.
See the data - 2003Politics & Power
- 10 Feb 2005Politics & Power
ICJ judgment in Liechtenstein v. Germany
In Certain Property (Liechtenstein v. Germany), brought to the International Court of Justice in 2001 over a confiscated van Laer painting, the Court ruled on 10 February 2005 that it had no jurisdiction, locating the dispute's source in the 1945 Beneš-era confiscations.
- 2009Politics & Power
Diplomatic relations with the Czech Republic
After more than six decades without recognition arising from the 1945 confiscations, Liechtenstein and the Czech Republic established diplomatic relations in 2009 and created a joint commission of historians.
Figures of the era
Hans-Adam IIborn 1945
Reigning prince and reformer
Succeeding in 1989, Hans-Adam II modernised the principality's finances and pressed the family's claims abroad, suing over the confiscated van Laer painting and winning a 2003 referendum that enlarged his constitutional powers; in 2004 he handed day-to-day governance to his son Alois.
Pieter van Laer's painting
Object of the ICJ dispute
A seventeenth-century work owned by the Liechtenstein family since the eighteenth century and seized in 1945, its 1991 loan from Brno to Cologne triggered Prince Hans-Adam II's German lawsuit and ultimately the case Liechtenstein v. Germany before the International Court of Justice.
Chapter sources: The History of the Princely House of Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein: History (Alpine, Principality, Sovereignty), Advantages of the customs and monetary union with Switzerland, Hans-Adam II, prince of Liechtenstein, Certain Property (Liechtenstein v. Germany) — case overview, Summary of the Judgment of 10 February 2005, Certain Property (Liechtenstein v. Germany), Certain Property (Liechtenstein v. Germany) — Preliminary Objections: the Court finds it has no jurisdiction, History of Liechtenstein, History of Czech–Liechtenstein relations (confiscations and 2009 relations)