Liechtenstein became sovereign when Germany’s confederation died
The Principality of Liechtenstein is a tiny Alpine monarchy between Switzerland and Austria, formed in 1719 and fully independent after the German Confederation dissolved in 1866. Prince Hans-Adam II heads a state of eleven municipalities with capital Vaduz.
Middle Palaeolithic traces and Neolithic farms from about 5300 BCE precede Hallstatt and La Tène Iron Age layers. Rome absorbed the area into Raetia, with legionary camps at Brigantium near Lake Constance and at Magia, today’s Maienfeld. The Alemanni settled the Alpine valleys by the end of the eighth century, the Treaty of Verdun in 843 placed the land in East Francia, and in 1396 Vaduz gained imperial immediacy, answering to the emperor alone.
The ruling family took its name from Liechtenstein Castle south of Vienna and held estates mainly in Moravia and Lower Austria. To gain a seat among the imperial princes they needed land held directly from the emperor, so they bought Schellenberg and Vaduz; on 23 January 1719 Charles VI united the two as an imperial principality named Liechtenstein.
After Francis II dissolved the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the prince joined Napoleon’s Confederation of the Rhine. Johann I granted a limited constitution in 1818, the year Prince Aloys became the first family member to set foot in the principality; the next visit came in 1842. Full independence followed the German Confederation’s end in 1866, the army was abolished for cost reasons in 1868, and a railway linking Switzerland and Austria-Hungary crossed the country in 1872.
Prince Franz I married Elisabeth von Gutmann, daughter of a Jewish Moravian businessman, and in March 1938 made his grandnephew Franz Joseph regent. A coup attempt failed in March 1939, and the state stayed neutral in the war, leaning on Switzerland. Afterward Czechoslovakia and Poland seized the dynasty’s estates in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, a dispute that later reached the International Court of Justice.
Source: Liechtenstein
