It was created by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1180 when he raised the March of Styria to a duchy of equal rank with neighbouring Carinthia and Bavaria, after the fall of the Bavarian Duke Henry the Lion earlier that year. Margrave Ottokar IV thereby became the first duke of Styria and also the last of the ancient Otakar dynasty. As Ottokar had no issue, he in 1186 signed the Georgenberg Pact with the mighty House of Babenberg, rulers of Austria since 976, after which both duchies should in perpetuity be ruled in personal union. Upon his death in 1192, Styria as stipulated fell to the Babenberg Leopold V, Duke of Austria.
The Austrian Babenbergs became extinct in 1246, when Duke Frederick II was killed in battle against King Béla IV of Hungary. Styria, a vacant Imperial fief, became a matter of dispute among the neighbouring estates. It passed quickly through the hands of Hungarian kings in 1254, until King Ottokar II of Bohemia conquered it, being victorious at the 1260 Battle of Kressenbrunn. As King Ottokar II had married the last duke's sister Margaret, he laid claim to both Austria and Styria. This met with strong opposition by the newly-elected King Rudolph I of Germany, who claimed the duchies as escheated fiefs. Rudolph finally defeated Ottokar at the 1278 Battle on the Marchfeld, seized Austria and Styria and granted them to his sons Albert I and Rudolf II.
The House of Habsburg provided Styria with dukes of their lineage from that point on. The duchy was, however, separated from Austria by the 1379 Treaty of Neuberg, after which Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola formed the Inner Austrian territory ruled by the descendants of Leopold III of the Leopoldian line, who took their residence at Graz. In 1456 they could significantly enlarge the Styrian territory by acquisition and re-acquisition of the comital Celje estates in Lower Styria. Both duchies were again ruled in personal union, when Leopold's grandson Frederick V inherited Austria in 1457. In 1496 Frederick's son Maximilian I signed an order expelling all Jews from Styria, who were not allowed to return to Graz until 1856. In 1512 the duchy joined the Empire's Austrian Circle.
A second Inner Austrian cadet branch of the Habsburgs ruled over Styria from 1564. Under Archduke Charles II of Inner Austria, Graz became a centre of the Counter-Reformation, expedited by the Jesuits at the University of Graz established in 1585 and continued under Charles' son Archduke Ferdinand II, who became sole rule of all Habsburg hereditary lands and Holy Roman Emperor in 1619. The Protestant population was expelled, including the astronomer Johannes Kepler in 1600. Meanwhile, at the time of the Ottoman invasions in the 16th and 17th centuries after the 1526 Battle of Mohács, the land suffered severely and was depopulated. The Turks made incursions into Styria nearly twenty times; churches, monasteries, cities, and villages were destroyed and plundered, while the population was either killed or carried away into slavery.
The Duchy of Styria (dark red, dark orange) in modern Austria and Slovenia
Styria was attested in historical documents in AD 907 as Styria, in 1191 as Marchia Stirensis, and in 1215 as Marchia Styrie.[1] The name is of pre-Romance substrate origin. The German name Steiermark is a compound; the first element is borrowed from the ancient name Stiria and the second element, Mark, means 'march, border region'. The Slovene name Štajerska and the Czech name Štýrsko are borrowed and adapted from the German name for the region.[1]
Frederick V (1424–1493), son of Ernest the Iron, also King of the Romans from 1440, Holy Roman Emperor from 1452 and Archduke of Austria from 1457, jointly with his brother
