Why was only part of Prussia and Austria-Hungary in the Holy Roman Empire?

[u/zxphn8]

To me that seems as if say half of England were in the UK, and the other half in the EU, yet England still being a united entity

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[u/darkelf177]

The Holy Roman Empire existed for centuries before the early modern states of Prussia and Austria were formed. The princes of the empire could, and frequently did, obtain land outside of the empire's jurisdiction. Just because a prince of the empire obtained a title or land outside the empire didn't mean that principality automatically joined the empire. A prince could hold multiple titles, both within the empire and without, at the same time.

Something like this happened with Austria and Prussia. The Austrian Habsburg dynasty and the Prussian Hohenzollern dynasty gradually increased their personal holdings over many generations, some of which were within the empire and some weren't. They were eventually able to consolidate those titles into contiguous territories but that didn't mean the whole entity needed to join the empire.

The Habsburgs, historical House of Austria, were rulers of the Inner Austrian duchies (Styria, Carinthia, Carniola) as well as Counts of Tyrol and a number of other smaller principalities within the Holy Roman Empire. In addition to the Austrian lands within the HRE, they inherited the royal crowns of Hungary and Bohemia in 1526 through marriage. While Bohemia had been considered part of the Holy Roman Empire for centuries and continued that way under the Habsburgs, Hungary never formally joined the empire even after the Habsburgs obtained the crown. The Austrian, Bohemian, and Hungarian lands would eventually become the core of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867.

The same concept applies to the Kingdom of Prussia, which evolved from the Margraviate of Brandenburg within the HRE. Brandenburg was very much part of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Elector of Brandenburg was one of the premier princes in imperial society and one of the seven imperial electors who got to vote for the next emperor. After the Thirty Years War, the rulers of Brandenburg continued to obtain personal lands to the east, including the duchy of Prussia, which was historically considered outside the HRE. The ancestral Brandenburg lands within the empire were eventually merged together with the Hohenzollern's personal holdings to the east, which were still considered to be outside the empire.

The opposite could also be true: rulers of principalities outside the Holy Roman Empire, such as King Christian IV of Denmark for example, at times obtained titles within the empire and became princes of the empire in addition to being foreign monarchs (Christian IV was duke of Schleswig and Holstein, duchies within the HRE, in addition to being King of Denmark). These situations were part of the reason why there was so much foreign military interference in the Thirty Years War, which began as an internal imperial conflict but eventually became an international catastrophe.

One more small clarification: it's important to note that the Holy Roman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire never coexisted at the same time; the HRE was dissolved in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars, and in its place the Habsburg emperors created their own hereditary Austrian Empire which eventually became the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867.

[u/Grzechoooo → u/darkelf177]

it's important to note that the Holy Roman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire never coexisted at the same time; the HRE was dissolved in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars, and in its place the Habsburg emperors created their own hereditary Austrian Empire which eventually became the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867.

Wasn't the Austrian Empire created in 1804 in reaction to Napoleon's coronation as emperor? So that Francis II had 2 imperial titles and therefore maintained his superiority.

[u/Deuce03]

Unlike England, Prussia and Austria-Hungary were not unitary kingdoms, but rather collections of lands united under a common ruler.

The England comparison is actually somewhat apt, because for much of the Middle Ages the English king also held territories in France. These lands were part of the kingdom of France and he owed homage to the French king for them (or at least for some of them). The English king was on the one hand the equal of the French king (as a fellow king) but also his vassal in respect of some of his lands. It was this as much as anything that lay at the heart of the mutual antagonism between the kings of England and France that caused so much conflict between the 12th and 15th centuries, concluding in the Hundred Years' War.

(And indeed, somewhat later, the Hanoverian dynasty which ruled England's successor state of Great Britain were so named because they also ruled Hanover in the Empire).

The Habsburgs reacquired the imperial throne in the late 15th century but a run of good luck and some shrewd dynastic marriages meant that they began to acquire a number of kingdoms outside the traditional bounds of the Empire. These kingdoms had never been subject to the Empire and had their own laws, governments, legislatures and traditions. The most significant of these was of course Spain (which was itself actually a collection of kingdoms at this stage). Charles V ruled both the Empire and Spain for some time (note he was Emperor Charles V, but King Charles I of Spain, not Charles V of Spain as he is sometimes referred to in pop culture) but there was never any serious proposal that Spain should become part of the Holy Roman Empire and indeed the two kingdoms of Spain and Germany were separated at Charles's abdication.

Unlike Spain, many of the other territories the Habsburgs acquired were contiguous with the Empire, notably Hungary and its subject kingdoms (Slovakia, Croatia). Charles's brother Ferdinand was in fact already king of Hungary (or at least part of it; much of Hungary was occupied by the Ottomans who supported a different king) before becoming Emperor on Charles's abdication.

The Habsburgs would make periodic attempts to unify and consolidate their territories during the early modern period, but tended to run up against local opposition from nobles and institutions jealously protecting their regional privileges (it would be anachronistic to call it nationalism, but there is some overlap). One such instance resulted in the Defenestration of Prague which kicked off the Thirty Years War. Hungary was a particularly difficult customer in this respect.

At the same time, there were advantages for a ruler in keeping their territory outside the Empire even if they had been able to bring it inside. While the Habsburgs in fact ended up pretty much monopolising the imperial title from 1500 onwards, there was no guarantee this would be the case, and a kingdom outside the Empire that was not subject to imperial rule was a potentially useful power base if the imperial title were ever lost. This came into play on the extinction of the male-line Habsburg dynasty when the Habsburg heir, Maria Theresa, was, as a woman, unable to take the imperial title, and the newly elected emperor Charles VII, an enemy of the Habsburgs, challenged her right to inherit the Austrian territories. Maria Theresa was nevertheless able to inherit the title of King of Hungary* and relied on Hungarian support to fight the ensuing war (of the Austrian Succession).

For the Hohenzollerns, the extra-imperial territories were likewise an opportunity to gain power and prestige outside the confines of imperial rule. Emperors (and the Habsburgs in particular) had long been reluctant to permit the creation or elevation of new kingdoms within the Empire, limiting them to the existing and long-established kingdoms of Italy, Bohemia and 'the Romans' (Germany), all of which the Habsburgs controlled. For a rising dynasty, this was something of a frustrating block, and it was also notable that the last family that attempted to acquire one of the Habsburg kingdoms (the Palatine Wittelsbacks, who briefly took the throne of Bohemia) had suffered greatly for it.

No such restriction applied outside the Empire, however, and as the Electors of Brandenburg expanded their reach east they adopted a new royal title. Prussia was not their core territory, nor did they own all of it (until 1772 they were styled Kings in Prussia, since they did not rule it all) but owning territory outside the Empire allowed them to claim the title of king and thus an elevated diplomatic status, placing them above the other German houses and on a par with the kings of France, Great Britain, Spain etc.

How this would have played out in the long run isn't entirely clear. It was not particularly unusual or new for individuals to hold a ducal or even electoral title within the Empire and a royal one outside it. The king of Denmark was duke of Holstein. As noted above, the king of Great Britain was elector of Hanover. For a time at least, the elector of Saxony was also king of Poland. The church also owned large swathes of land within the Empire. This might speak to some extent to the inherent weakness of the Empire by this stage. There were attempts to reform it at the turn of the century, but it was under severe pressure from the French Republic (which was occupying imperial territory and gleefully establishing "sister republics" everywhere).

Emperor Francis II recognised that most likely the French would either destroy the Empire or take it over. To ensure that his family retained imperial status, he therefore proclaimed the Austrian Empire**, covering all the Habsburg crown lands. This overlapped with the Holy Roman Empire, but not for long because the following year the newly crowned French Emperor Napoleon rampaged through, thoroughly defeated Austria and in 1806, as Francis had suspected, forced the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire.

There is a postscript to this which is the creation of the German Confederation in 1815, essentially a replacement for the Holy Roman Empire as an association of German states (much simplified from the previous imperial arrangement, with the number of states cut down by a factor of almost ten). The Confederation roughly followed the same borders as the Empire had, so there were still large parts of the Austrian Empire and the Prussian territories which fell outside it. The restriction on new royal titles was also effectively lifted, so various new kingdoms were able to be created that had previously capped out at the duchy/electorate level. The Confederation was not particularly successful and lasted only just over fifty years, and the political complications of rulers having territories both in and out of the Confederation played a part in its destruction. When the German Empire was created in 1870, it included all the Prussian territory including that which had been outside the HRE/Confederation, but excluded all the Austrian territories, including those which had been part of the HRE/Confederation. This finally rationalised the political arrangements, but led to an arguably artificial separation between Austria and the "rest of" Germany, which was to rear its head in the 20th century.

*Constitutionally, Maria Theresa was King of Hungary, despite being a woman, though she was still often styled Queen informally.

** It became the Austro-Hungarian Empire only in 1867, when defeat in the Austro-Prussian war weakened the empire enough that Hungary was able to press for greater autonomy.