WI: United States of Greater Austria?

[EMT]

I was bored on wikipedia, so I decided to read a bit on the Hapsburgs, then the HRE,.....then Austria....Austria-Hungary.....and I finally came to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austria

In it, it details a plan that Franz Ferdinard, the Archduke of Austria had, which was to federalize Austria-Hungary into the United States of Greater Austria, a monarchy(I assume) and to give equal rights, power, etc. to all citizens of Greater Austria. Assuming he assumes the throne, what could have happened? Maybe WWI starts differently, but Austria is on the winning side? Austria doesn't get partitioned? Austria drops out early and is spared by the allies? Serbia does something that gets it as isolated as Bulgaria? The real question is how we can make this happen.

 

[Campbell1004]

I real somewhere that he was going to create a triple-monarchy between the Serbs, Hungary, and Austria.

 

[Germaniac]

I real somewhere that he was going to create a triple-monarchy between the Serbs, Hungary, and Austria.

It wasn't the Serbs it was just Croatia, however the Hungarians were trying to eliminate the Croatians and turn it into a Hungarian Land so they would not agree to giving the Croatians equal share.

However in the new federation was going to be very unbalanced as the Germans in each seperate German ethnic territory would wield the same power as each ethnic group (example-The Bohemian Germans wielded the same as the Bohemian Czechs themselves, same with the Danube Germans) Really the plan just gave most of the Power back to Vienna instead of equally in Budapest.

 

[avokado]

Which plan?
US of Austria would be divided by ethnic borders, only with more German states as you mentioned (I find cool there would be republic Triest) =)
But as for trialism, there supposed to be Austrian part (Vienna), Hungarian part (Budapest) and south Slavic part (Trieste, Ljubljana, Zagreb). It is hard to answer which south Slav would prevail (since they wanted 3 capitals within this part of state).
It could be great timeline to write.

 

[chris N]

Actually Karl in 1917-18 was also a supporte of the ideal of a Federal Empire giving not only the Croatian, Slovenians but also the Czechs a say it the running of the Empire. If the War had ended in 1917 or early 1918 it might have happen.