Ostarrichi — The First Written Mention of Austria
A deed issued by Otto III on 1 November 996 granted land near Neuhofen an der Ybbs to the Bishop of Freising, and described the place as being in the region commonly called Ostarrîchi. That word is the first written appearance of the name that became Österreich, and through Latin Austria, the name of the country. It means eastern realm, and it was a description rather than a title — the eastern march of Bavaria, established after Otto the Great destroyed the Magyars at Lechfeld in 955 and reopened the Danube valley to settlement, and granted to Leopold of Babenberg in 976. The document itself is administratively trivial: thirty royal hides of land, a routine grant of the kind chanceries produced constantly, recorded in Latin with one vernacular word slipped in because that was what people on the ground called the place. It survives in the Bavarian state archive in Munich. The march at that date was a frontier district of a few thousand square kilometres with Hungary immediately beyond it. It became a duchy in 1156, acquired Styria in 1192, and passed to the Habsburgs in 1278, who held it until 1918 and made the name stand for a good deal more than a Danube valley. Austria celebrated the millennium of the word in 1996 with an exhibition and a commemorative coin. The country dates its statehood from the grant of 976 and its name from this deed. A monument stands at Neuhofen, and the deed itself is exhibited only rarely. One word in a routine land grant became a country's name.
- Year: 996 CE
- Category: Cultural
