History UsefulNotes / Austria

* Upper Austria (Oberösterreich): Its most prominent areas are the Mühlviertel and Traunviertel, which are known for their natural beauty. Its local capital Linz is the third biggest city in Austria.

* Salzburg

Football (Soccer for Americans), in which they are less than stellar, though they are getting better (previously qualifying for the Euro for the first time) and Skiing.

** Modern musicians / bands like Opus ("Live is life - na na na na na"), Music/{{Falco}} ("Amadeus" / "Jeanny" / "Der Kommissar"), Music/ErsteAllgemeineVerunsicherung, and Music/ConchitaWurst (drag queen, LGBT rights activist and winner of the 2014 Series/EurovisionSongContest).

** Creator/ChristophWaltz was born and raised in Vienna, but weirdly did not hold Austrian citizenship until 2010 (when he was about 54). His father was German and his mother was Austrian (of Slovene ancestry), but for whatever reason they only registered him for German citizenship when he was born even though he would have been entitled to Austrian citizenship from his mother, and he never bothered with getting his Austrian citizenship until later.

** One should note that ''Theatre/TheSoundOfMusic'' was rather unsuccessful in Austria. This is because the time period it depicts (immediately before and during the Nazi takeover) is one that Austrians have long preferred to neither hear nor speak about. As such one shouldn't be shocked when most Austrians one talks to never saw the movie, or never heard of it at all.

* Tennis

The main rifle of the military is the [[CoolGuns Steyr AUG]] ([=STG77=]) [i.e. the guns used by Hans Gruber's men in ''Film/DieHard''], the service pistol the Glock 17, both being Austrian products.

* Entrepreneurs such as Dietrich Mateschitz (founder of Red Bull), the Rothschild family, [[CoolCar Ferdinand Porsche]] and [[CoolGuns Gaston Glock]]. Also expatriate Frank Stronach, whose birth name is Franz Strohsack (which means sack of straw, so you understand his name change).

Austria (German: ''Österreich''), officially known as the '''Republic of Austria''' (German: ''Republik Österreich''), is a small, Central/Western European republic ("''The Danube Republic''") shaped vaguely like a ''Schnitzel'' that was once one of the leading Empires of Europe.

Austria ('''German:''' ''Österreich''), officially known as the '''Republic of Austria''' ('''German:''' ''Republik Österreich''), is a small, Central/Western European republic ("''The Danube Republic''") shaped vaguely like a ''Schnitzel'' that was once one of the leading Empires of Europe.

* Empress Elisabeth of Austria, wife to Emperor Franz Joseph, also known as Sisi (''Sissi'' like in the Creator/RomySchneider movies is a misspelling). Renowned for her beauty and fairytale romance, as well as her assassination in Geneva in 1898. [[note]]The ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'' episode The Sign of Three featured two people being nearly-murdered in the same manner: a small, thin weapon that bled the victim out under their clothing, with them none the wiser until it's too late.[[/note]] Similar to Mozart, visitors to Vienna are bombarded with her image in the famous Star Dress (Sternkleid) on merchandise and sweets everywhere they go. The "fairytale" story that the tourism industry of Austria relies on was thoroughly debunked in one of Austria's international cultural export, ''Theatre/{{Elisabeth}}''. Their only son and heir Crown Prince Rudolf (who also appeared in said musical) was involved in [[MurderSuicide the Mayerling Incident]] that was, among other things, part of the reason for the outbreak of the First World War. Unlike his mother, because he was a suicide, there was a concerted effort to [[OldShame erase Rudolf]] from public memory.

** Christoph Waltz was born and raised in Vienna, but weirdly did not hold Austrian citizenship until 2010 (when he was about 54). His father was German and his mother was Austrian (of Slovene ancestry), but for whatever reason they only registered him for German citizenship when he was born even though he would have been entitled to Austrian citizenship from his mother, and he never bothered with getting his Austrian citizenship until later.

** Austrians are less proud of their other most known son. He was born in Austria and regarded Linz as his "home town" (he planned to endow it with massive museums and monuments once he'd finished remodelling Berlin), but moved to Bavaria after being rejected for (or not wanting to serve in) the Austrian Army in World War One. After becoming [[GloriousLeader Fuehrer]], Hitler would bring the country of his birthplace into Germany. This is the main reason today's Austrians don't want to be seen as German anymore.

Whenever Austria turns up in a movie, it is also prone to having TelevisionGeography as both the directors and the tourism board have an interest in showing off the beautiful and well-known tourist places. This can greatly annoy people who know the geography in some cases. If it's not the Austrian Alps (as seen in ''Film/TheSoundOfMusic''), it's usually Vienna, either as the stage for Cold War intrigue in shady alleys and the U-Bahn, or as a showcase of classical music concerts and noblemen going from the opera to palace feasts in carriages on cobblestone streets.

Following the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, Austrians became much more keen to distance themselves from Germany for... obvious reasons. Whether Austria was a Nazi conquest or willing ''Reichsgau'' is a sore issue, especially given UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler was originally Austrian. One of Hitler's motives was to unify [[TheOldCountry his Austrian homeland]] with his German dominion. Many would like to present Austria as "Hitler's first victim," but when looked at historically it just doesn't hold up. There is still a certain amount of denial going on about it. This was in large part because with the concept of Austrian nationalism being such a new thing, it was widely felt that acknowledging how many Austrians had been willing collaborators would tear their fragile national identity apart. As a result of the aforementioned violently sectarian interwar Austrian politics it was decided after the war to have [[EnemyMine cooperation between Catholic-Conservatives and Social Democrats]] as the rule for governments and until 1999 every Austrian government (except 1983-1986) consisted of one of those two parties and usually both. Furthermore the civil service and the multitude of state owned enterprises in Austria had strict politics-based hiring quotas; if the head of the radio was a "black" (conservative) his second in command had be a "red" and vice versa, giving balance across all important "fiefdoms". This "Proporz" (proportionality) was never actually a constitutional provision at the federal level, but some state constitutions ''did'' have provisions that ''all'' parties represented in the state parliament were to have representation in the state government. While this system did manage to make politics less acrimonious (if a bit boring), it also created a lot of corruption and gave the FPÖ, a right wing populist party and favorite of Nazis (old and new), an easy way to attack "The System" of which they were, for the most part, not a part. This changed with the formation of the 1999 ÖVP-FPÖ coalition which was widely seen as "breaking a taboo" in the European Union which Austria had only joined in 1995 leading to EU leaders only meeting the bare minimum amount with Austrian leaders for the duration of that government.

Following the Second World War, Austrians became much more keen to distance themselves from Germany for... obvious reasons. Whether Austria was a Nazi conquest or willing ''Reichsgau'' is a sore issue, especially given UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler was originally Austrian. One of Hitler's motives was to unify [[TheOldCountry his Austrian homeland]] with his German dominion. Many would like to present Austria as "Hitler's first victim," but when looked at historically it just doesn't hold up. There is still a certain amount of denial going on about it. This was in large part because with the concept of Austrian nationalism being such a new thing, it was widely felt that acknowledging how many Austrians had been willing collaborators would tear their fragile national identity apart. As a result of the aforementioned violently sectarian interwar Austrian politics it was decided after the war to have [[EnemyMine cooperation between Catholic-Conservatives and Social Democrats]] as the rule for governments and until 1999 every Austrian government (except 1983-1986) consisted of one of those two parties and usually both. Furthermore the civil service and the multitude of state owned enterprises in Austria had strict politics-based hiring quotas; if the head of the radio was a "black" (conservative) his second in command had be a "red" and vice versa, giving balance across all important "fiefdoms". This "Proporz" (proportionality) was never actually a constitutional provision at the federal level, but some state constitutions ''did'' have provisions that ''all'' parties represented in the state parliament were to have representation in the state government. While this system did manage to make politics less acrimonious (if a bit boring), it also created a lot of corruption and gave the FPÖ, a right wing populist party and favorite of Nazis (old and new), an easy way to attack "The System" of which they were, for the most part, not a part. This changed with the formation of the 1999 ÖVP-FPÖ coalition which was widely seen as "breaking a taboo" in the European Union which Austria had only joined in 1995 leading to EU leaders only meeting the bare minimum amount with Austrian leaders for the duration of that government.

"Austria" had always been simply the name of a place, same as Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, etc. What bound the nation together had been loyalty to the Habsburgs. As an ethnicity, the Austrians had always thought of themselves as German. Almost immediately after the war, Austria attempted to unite with Germany, even naming the newly independent state "German Austria." The Entente vetoed this, and actually forbade Austria from referring to itself as "German." This displeased the Austrians, many of whom rejected the existence of any "Austrian" national identity separate from a German one. Austria remained independent for 20 years, but internal politics were at best fractious, and at worst the country was on the verge of civil war. It finally did unite with Germany in 1938.

The Habsburgs were Holy Roman Emperors, Kings of Bohemia (Czech Republic) and Arch-Dukes of Austria within the Empire, and Kings of Hungary (including Croatia, Slovakia, and Transylvania) without it. In 1806, Napoleon decided that this was just too confusing and abolished the HRE. From then on, the Habsburgs were to be Emperors of a single united Austrian Empire, within which were Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, and The Rest.

In 1278, the [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic House of Habsburg]], originally hailing from rural UsefulNotes/{{Switzerland}}, acquired rulership of the Duchy of Austria (the name ''Ostarrichi'' deriving from "Eastern Realm", being a former eastern province of the [[UsefulNotes/TheSixteenLandsOfDeutschland Margraviate of Bavaria]]), which lay at the eastern edge of the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire and form the North of the modern republic. Through marriage, the Habsburgs spread their control over large parts of Europe, including Spain, the Netherlands and large parts of Italy, and became Holy Roman Emperors. In 1522, the sprawling and difficult-to-defend Habsburg empire was divided by UsefulNotes/CharlesV, who assigned its eastern half to his younger brother, Ferdinand I. However, following the disastrous Battle of Mohács (1526), an early victory in the Ottoman Turks' Hungarian campaign which led to the occupation of most of Hungary and several sieges of Vienna, Ferdinand I would claim the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary for the Austrian Habsburgs. War between the Austrian and Ottoman Empires continued on and off until the end of the seventeenth century, when the Ottomans ceded most of Hungary.

* Painters such as Klimt, Kokoschka, Makart and Schiele