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| 1438–(1740) 1806 |
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| Henceforth the imperial crown in practice became hereditary in the House of Habsburg. | 1 |
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| 1438–39 |
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| ALBERT II. | 2 |
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| 1439 |
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| The Pragmatic Sanction of Mainz (abolition of annates, papal reservations, and provisions), a preliminary agreement between the papacy and the emperor, left the German Church under imperial and princely control. | 3 |
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| 1440–93 |
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| FREDERICK III. The last emperor crowned (1452) at Rome by the pope; a handsome amateur astrologer, botanist, minerologist. | 4 |
| Ladislas Posthumus (d. 1457), ward of Frederick, became duke of Austria (1440), was acknowledged king of Hungary (1445) and elected king of Bohemia (1452) with a council of regency. George Podiebrad (champion of the Compactata) emerged (1452) from the Bohemian civil war (Catholics vs. Utraquists) as regent of Bohemia, and later king (1458–71) (See 1439–57). | 5 |
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| 1448 |
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| The Concordat of Vienna, a cynical compromise whereby Pope Nicholas V confirmed the emperor's right to nominate to the highest ecclesiastical offices in Habsburg lands, but the papacy was entitled to annates. | 6 |
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| 1453 |
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| The capture of Constantinople (See 1453, May 29) brought the Ottoman Turks to the frontier of Germany. | 7 |
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| 1454 |
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| Traditional date for the invention of printing from movable metal type. This invention is usually attributed to Johann Gutenberg (?1400–1468) of Mainz, printer of the Bible (1456), the first important book printed from movable type. Printing had been in the process of development for many years and was probably perfected not only by Gutenberg, but also by others like Peter Schoeffer and Johann Fust of Mainz. | 8 |
| Schools sprang up, especially in South Germany, to teach the art of Meistergesang (musical and poetic guilds) in accordance with very strict and complicated rules. | 9 |
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| 1456 |
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| The Hungarian national leader John Hunyadi (without imperial support) repulsed the Ottoman Turks from Belgrade. | 10 |
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| 1458 |
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| Election of Hunyadi's son Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary (to 1490) and George Podiebrad, king of Bohemia (to 1471), the climax of national spirit in Bohemia and Hungary. | 11 |
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| 1462 |
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| Pius II's annulment of the Compactata and the excommunication and deposition (1466) of Podiebrad reopened the Bohemian religious wars. Ladislas (elected 1468) succeeded on Podiebrad's death as king of Bohemia (1471–1516), becoming king of Hungary in 1490. | 12 |
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| 1473 |
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| Frederick, faced with the threat of (French) Burgundian expansion in the empire, avoided giving Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, the royal title and married his son Maximilian to Charles's daughter Mary (1477), bringing the Habsburg fortunes to their zenith, and giving reality to his own monogram: A.E.I.O.U. (Austriae est imperare orbi universo, or Alles Erdreich ist Oesterreich unterthan.) | 13 |
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| 1485 |
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| Expelled from Vienna by Matthias Corvinus, Frederick became a cheery imperial mendicant. | 14 |
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