No country is more closely associated with classical and sovereign Europe than Austria -- the home of the famous Hapsburg dynasty which dominated central Europe for nearly 700 years. Franz Joseph, portrayed on the obverse of its one ducat coin, is generally characterized as 'the last great monarch of Europe,' and the self-proclaimed 'last monarch of the old school.'

Though his reign was long - lasting seven decades - Franz Joseph became one of European history's most tragic figures. His brother Maximillian, who unwisely took the offer to become Emperor of Mexico, was executed by a firing squad of his own erstwhile subjects in 1867. His son Rudolph was found dead, along with his mistress, in 1889; their deaths were most widely held to be a suicide pact. This event devastated Franz Joseph's wife Elisabeth, a free spirited beauty who never fit in with court life and spent most of her time away from Vienna. In 1898, she was stabbed to death by an anarchist while traveling in Geneva, Switzerland. His nephew and heir Francis Ferdinand would also be assassinated in 1914 - an event which historians point to as precipitating World War I. By the time he died in 1916, the Hapsburg Empire had already begun to unravel.

The reverse of the one ducat depicts the imposing double-headed imperial eagle of the Hapsburg dynasty. The Hapsburg emperors viewed themselves as inheritors of the Holy Roman Empire, entitled to rule the world, thus the double-headed eagle looking simultaneously east and west, sword and sceptre embraced in the right talon and the globus cruiger (the cross-bearing orb) in the left.

Perhaps the most historically significant and enduring contribution from this period in Austrian history was the founding and proliferation of the Austrian School of Economics. At its heart were two great thinkers well known to gold owners: Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek. Aside from being largely pro-gold, the Austrian School of Economics was thought to be a classical liberal, pro- free market economic view, heavily critical of government intervention in the economy.

"The gold standard makes the money's purchasing power independent of the changing ambitions and doctrines of political parties and pressure groups. This is not a defect of the gold standard; it is its main excellence." --Ludwig von Mises

"With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people." --Friedrich von Hayek