Information about Austria

AUSTRIA

AUSTRIA is a landlocked country in central Europe. It borders Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. Its capital city is Vienna.
Austria is a parliamentary representative democracy consisting of nine federal states and is one of six European countries that have declared permanent neutrality and one of the few countries that included the concept of everlasting neutrality in their constitution. Austria is a member of the United Nations (since 1955) and the European Union (since 1995).

NAME

The German name Österreich can be translated into English as the "eastern empire", which is derived from the Old German Ostarrîchi. The name was wrongly or carelessly translated into Latin as "Austria".
The current official designation is the Republic of Austria.

POLITICS

Austria became a federal, parliamentarian, democratic republic through the Federal Constitution of 1920. It was reintroduced in 1945 to the nine states of the Federal Republic. The head of state is the Federal President, who is directly elected. The chairman of the Federal Government is the Federal Chancellor, who is appointed by the president. The government can be removed from office by either a presidential decree or by vote of no confidence in the lower chamber of parliament, the Nationalrat.
The Parliament of Austria consists of two chambers: the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat and the lower house of parliament, the Nationalrat.

ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISIONS

A federal republic, Austria is divided into nine states, (German: Bundesländer). These states are divided into districts (Bezirke) and cities (Statutarstädte). Districts are subdivided into municipalities (Gemeinden). Cities have the competencies otherwise granted to both districts and municipalities. The states are not mere administrative divisions, but have some distinct legislative authority separate from the federal government.

GEOGRAPHY

Austria is a largely mountainous country due to its location in the Alps. The Central Eastern Alps, Northern Limestone Alps and Southern Limestone Alps are all partly in Austria. Of the total area of Austria (84 000 km² or 32,000 sq. mi), only about a quarter can be considered low lying, and only 32% of the country is below 500 metres (1,640 ft). The high mountainous Alps in the west of Austria flatten somewhat into low lands and plains in the east of the country.

CLIMATE

The greater part of Austria lies in the cool/temperate climate zone in which humid westerly winds predominate. With over half of the country dominated by the Alps the alpine climate is the predominant one. In the East, in the Pannonian Plain and along the Danube valley, the climate shows continental features with less rain than the alpine areas.

ECONOMY

Austria has a well-developed social market economy and a high standard of living.
Labour movements are particularly strong in Austria and have large influence on labour politics.
Germany has historically been the main trading partner of Austria, making it vulnerable to rapid changes in the German economy. Since Austria became a member state of the European Union it has gained closer ties to other European Union economies, reducing its economic dependence on Germany. In addition, membership in the EU has drawn an influx of foreign investors attracted by Austria's access to the single European market and proximity to EU aspiring economies. Therefore estimates of growth in 2006 (about 3%) are much more favourable than in the crippling German economy.

DEMOGRAPHICS

Austria's population was estimated in July, 2006 as 8,280,703 persons. The population of the capital, Vienna, exceeds 1.6 million (2 million with suburbs).
German-speaking Austrians - 90%; Slovenian minority - around 14,000 members (Austrian census; unofficial numbers of Slovene groups speak of about 40,000); Hungarians – around 20,000 and Croatians – around 30,000.
The remaining number of Austria's people are of non-Austrian descent, many from surrounding countries, especially from the former East Bloc nations. So-called guest workers (Gastarbeiter) and their descendants also form an important minority group in Austria.

LANGUAGE

According to the 2001 census, the mother tongue of the population by prevalence, is German (88.6%) followed by Turkish (2.3%), Serbian (2.2%), Croatian (1.6%), Hungarian (0.5%) and Bosnian (0.4%).The official language is German. All of the dialects in the country, however, belong to Austro-Bavarian groups of German dialects, with the exception of the dialect spoken in its west-most Bundesland, Vorarlberg, which belongs to the group of Alemannic dialects. There is also a distinct grammatical standard for Austrian German with a few differences to the German spoken in Germany.

RELIGION

As of the end of the twentieth century about 73% of Austria's population were registered as Roman Catholic, while about 5% considered themselves Protestants. Both these numbers have been on the decline for decades, especially Roman Catholicism, which has suffered an increasing number of seceders of the church. Austrian Catholics are obliged to pay a mandatory tax (calculated by income—ca. 1%) to the Austrian Roman Catholic Church, which might act as an incentive to leave the church.
About 12% of the population declare that they do not belong to any church or religious community. Of the remaining people, about 180,000 are members of the Eastern Orthodox Church and about 7,300 are Jewish. Other religions: Muslim minority - around 300,000; Islam, Buddhism.
A 2005 survey among 8,000 people in various European countries showed that Austria is among those nations whose populations maintain the strongest belief in God. 84% of all Austrians state a belief in God, with only the people of Poland (97%), Portugal (90%) and Russia (87%) yielding higher numbers.

CULTURE

Though Austria is a small country, its history as a European power and its cultural environment have generated a broad contribution to art and science. It has been the professional birthplace of many famous composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, Anton Bruckner, Johann Strauss, Sr., Johann Strauss, Jr. or Gustav Mahler as well as members of the Second Viennese School such as Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern or Alban Berg. Ludwig van Beethoven spent the better part of his life in Vienna.

LITERATURE

Austria was the home of novelists Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig, Thomas Bernhard or Robert Musil, of poets Georg Trakl, Franz Werfel, Franz Grillparzer, Rainer Maria Rilke or Adalbert Stifter and writer Karl Kraus. Famous contemporary playwrights and novelists are Elfriede Jelinek and Peter Handke.

PAINTING

Among Austrian artists and architects one can find painters Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele or Friedensreich Hundertwasser, photographer Inge Morath or architect Otto Wagner.

SCIENCE

Austria was the cradle of numerous scientists including physicists Ludwig Boltzmann, Lise Meitner, Erwin Schrödinger, Ernst Mach, Wolfgang Pauli, Richard von Mises and Christian Doppler, philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, biologists Gregor Mendel and Konrad Lorenz as well as mathematician Kurt Gödel. It was home to psychologists Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Paul Watzlawick and Hans Asperger, psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, economists Joseph Schumpeter, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek (Austrian School) and Peter Drucker, and engineers such as Ferdinand Porsche and Siegfried Marcus.

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