The founding of Universal-Edition (at that time still with a hyphen) in 1901 was a kind of ‘cultural-political declaration of independence’. The intention was simply to counter the predominance of the foreign music trade in Vienna with a domestic music publishing house.

Initiated by a brother-in-law of Johann Strauss, supported by important personalities from the banking sector and announced in the Wiener Tagblatt, the project was quickly implemented. At that time, Vienna, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, was one of the largest cities in the world with a population of about two million. The Imperial and Royal Ministry of the Interior approved the new joint-stock company without any major hurdles.

The name of the new publishing house was both programme and strategy: it simply meant the whole world of music, in which one had some catching up to do. Thus, piano sonatas by Joseph Haydn bear the catalogue number 1. Number 1000, only three years later, was a piano reduction of Beethoven's Missa solemnis. One was very ambitious. But when the "success expected too quickly had not yet materialised", Universal-Edition with its programmatic reorientation "received the face by which it is known in the world today." (Alfred Schlee). 

At this time, Emil Hertzka, born in Budapest in 1869, was the head of Universal-Edition. He took over the publishing house in 1907 and with him came the great turning point in the history of the publisher.