Culture on the territory of what is today Austria can be traced back to around 1050 B.C. with the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures. However, a culture of Austria as we know it today began to take shape when the Austrian lands were part of the Holy Roman Empire, with the Privilegium Minus of 1156, which elevated Austria to the status of a Duchy, marking an important step in its development. Austrian culture has largely been influenced by its neighbours, Italy, Germany, Hungary and Bohemia.

Name

The German name Österreich can be translated into English as the "eastern realm", which is derived from the Old German Ostarrîchi. The term probably originates in a vernacular translation of the Medieval Latin name for the region: Marchia orientalis, which translates as "eastern border," as it was situated at the eastern edge of the Holy Roman Empire, that was also mirrored in the name Ostmark applied after Anschluss to the Third Reich. The derivation of the Latin name from the original Old German gives rise to the use of "Aust-" for east, rather than south as in Classical Latin (the Classical Latin "Aust-" is the origin of the name for Australia, a southern land). With the term Austria came the name for its inhabitants, Austrian(s).

Art

Vienna Secession

The Vienna Secession was part of that highly varied movement around 1900 that is now covered by the general term Art Nouveau.

Major figures of the Vienna Secession were Otto Wagner, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Koloman Moser.

Literature

Austrian literature can be divided into two main divisions, namely the period up until the mid 20th century, and the period subsequent, in which both the Austro-Hungarian and German empires were gone. Austria went from being a major European power, to being a small country. In addition, there is a body of literature that some would deem Austrian but is not written in German.

Complementing its status as a land of artists, Austria has always been a country of great poets, writers, and novelists. It was the home of novelists Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig, Thomas Bernhard, and Robert Musil, and of poets Georg Trakl, Franz Werfel, Franz Grillparzer, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Adalbert Stifter. Famous contemporary Austrian playwrights and novelists include Elfriede Jelinek and Peter Handke.

• List of Austrian writers

Music

Vienna has long been an important center of musical innovation. Composers of the 18th and 19th centuries were drawn to the city by the patronage of the Habsburgs, and made Vienna the European capital of classical music. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Johann Strauss, Jr., among others, were associated with the city. During the Baroque period, Slavic and Hungarian folk forms influenced Austrian music. Vienna's status began its rise as a cultural center in the early 1500s, and was focused around instruments including the lute.

Classical music

During the 18th century, the classical-music era dominated European classical music, and the city of Vienna was an especially important place for musical innovation. Three composers arose, making lasting innovations: Ludwig van Beethoven's symphonic patterns, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's balance between melody and form, and Joseph Haydn's development of the string quartet and sonata.

Schrammelmusik

The most popular form of modern Austrian folk music is Viennese Schrammelmusik, which is played with an accordion and a double-necked guitar. Modern performers include Roland Neuwirth, Karl Hodina, and Edi Reiser.

Alpine New Wave

This genre of punk rock, whose name may be shortened to alpunk originated in the Alpine regions of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. Alpunk fuses the chaotic, energetic rhythms of punk music with the accordion-based folk music that the region is famous for.

Ländler

The ländler is a folk dance of uncertain origin. Known under several names for a long period, it became known as Landl ob der Enns, which was eventually shortened to ländler. The dance became popular in about 1720. It required close contact between members of the opposite sex, and was thus denounced as lustful by some church authorities. Ländlers were brought first to Vienna, and later to places as far away as the Ukraine. The ländler eventually evolved into what is known as the waltz.

Yodeling

Yodeling is a type of throat singing that developed in the Alps. In Austria, it was called juchazn and featured the use of both nonlexical syllables and yells that were used to communicate across mountains.

Austrian folk dancing

Austrian folk dancing is mostly associated with Schuhplattler, Landler, Polka, or Waltz. However, there are other dances, such as Zwiefacher, Kontratänze, and Sprachinseltänze.

Architecture

Austria is famous for its castles, palaces, and cemeteries, among other architectural works. Some of Austria's most famous castles include the Burg Hohenwerfen, Castle Liechtenstein, and the Schloß Artstetten. Many of Austria's castles were created during the Habsburg reign.

Cemeteries

Austria is known for its cemeteries. Vienna has fifty different cemeteries, of which the Zentralfriedhof is the most famous. The Habsburgs are housed in the Imperial Crypt.

Cathedrals

Austria is rich in Roman Catholic tradition. One of Austria's oldest cathedrals is the Minoritenkirche in Vienna. It was built in the Gothic style in the year 1224. One of the world's tallest cathedrals, the 136-meter-tall (446-foot-tall) Stephansdom is the seat of the Archbishop of Vienna; the Stephansdom is 107 meters (351 feet) long and 34 meters (111.5 feet) wide.

Palaces

two of the most famous Austrian palaces arethe Belvedere and Schönbrunn. The baroque-style Belvedere palace was built in the period 1714–1723, by Prince Eugene of Savoy, and now is home to the Austrian Gallery. The Schönbrunn palace was built in 1696 by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach for Emperor Leopold I; empress Maria Theresa of Austria ordered the palace restyled in Rococo; in 1996, it was added to the United Nations' World Cultural Heritage list.

Semmering Railway

The Semmering Railway, a famous engineering project constructed in the years 1848–1854, was the first European mountain railway built with a standard-gauge track. Still fully functional, it is now part of the Austrian Southern Railway.

Stift Melk

Stift Melk is a Benedictine abbey in the federal state of Lower Austria, overlooking the Danube as it flows through the Wachau valley. The abbey was formed in 1089 on a rock above the city of Melk.

Austrian food

Austrian cuisine, which is often incorrectly equated with Viennese cuisine, is derived from the cuisine of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In addition to native regional traditions it has been influenced above all by Hungarian, Czech, Jewish and Italian cuisines, from which both dishes and methods of food preparation have often been borrowed. Goulash is one example of this. Austrian cuisine is known primarily in the rest of the world for its pastries and sweets. In recent times a new regional cuisine has also developed which is centred on regional produce and employs modern and easy methods of preparation.

Viennese Cuisine

Vienna is the capital of Austria for more than a thousand years. It became the cultural centre of the country and developed its own regional cuisine. Viennese Cuisine is the only kind of cuisine named after a city. [1]

Some Viennese dishes include:

• Apfelstrudel
• Kaiserschmarren
• Liptauer
• Powidl
• Sachertorte
• Wiener Schnitzel

Austrian beer

There are many different types of Austrian Beer to be found. One of the most common brands of beer to be found in Austria is Stiegl, founded in 1492. Stiegl brews both a helles (a light lager) and a Weissbier (Hefeweizen), as well as other specialty beers. There are also many other more local and regional breweries to be found as well.

Cinema

In the silent movie era, Austria was one of the leading producers of movies. Many of the Austrian directors, actors, authors and cinematographers also worked in Berlin. The most famous was Fritz Lang, the director of Metropolis. Following the Anschluss, the German annexation of Austria in 1938, many Austrian directors emigrated to the United States, including Erich von Stroheim, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Hedy Lamarr, Mia May, Richard Oswald and Josef von Sternberg.

Sports

Common sports in Austria, are soccer, skiing, and ice hockey. Parts of Austria are located in the Alps which makes it a prime location for skiing. Austria is the leading nation in the Alpine Skiing World Cup (consistently winning the largest number of points of all countries) and also strong in many other winter sports such as ski jumping. Austria's national ice hockey team ranks 13th in the world.

Austria (particularly Vienna) also has an old tradition in football, even though, since World War II, the sport has more or less been in decline in the country. The Austrian Championship (originally only limited to Vienna, as there were no professional teams elsewhere), has been held since 1912. The Austrian Cup has been held since 1913. The Austria national football team has qualified for 7 World Cups however has not ever qualified in its history to the European Championship, though that will change with the 2008 Tournament as they qualify as co-hosts with Switzerland. The governing body for football in Austria is the Austrian Football Association.

The first official world chess champion, Wilhelm Steinitz was from the Austrian Empire .

Education

Empress Maria Theresa in 1774 laid down the "General School Regulations" which created the Austrian education system. Eight-year compulsory education was intodcuced in 1869. Currently, compusory schooling last nine years. Four years of elementary school(ages 6-10) followed by seconday education which is called the Hauptschule. After the age of 14 students that don't plan to continue education can attend vocational schools. The Education system is run by a national uniform laws. All state-run schools are free of charge. [2] The largest and oldest German-language university in the world is the University of Vienna.

Language

In Austria, there is no unitary Austrian language, but a variety of Germanic dialects are spoken.

While strong forms of the various dialects are not normally comprehensible to Northern Germans, there is virtually no communication barrier to speakers from Bavaria. The Central Austro-Bavarian dialects are more intelligible to speakers of Standard German than the Southern Austro-Bavarian dialects of Tirol. Viennese, the Austro-Bavarian dialect of Vienna, is most frequently used in Germany for impersonations of the typical inhabitant of Austria. The people of Graz, the capital of Styria, speak yet another dialect which is not very Styrian and more easily understood by people from other parts of Austria than other Styrian dialects, e.g. from western Styria.

Minority languages spoken in Austria include Slovenian, Croatian and Hungarian.

Religion

73.6% of the native population identify themselves as Roman Catholic, while 4.7% consider themselves Protestant. About 12% of the population does not belong to any church or religious community. Of the remaining people, about 180,000 are members of the Eastern Orthodox Church, about 7,300 are Jewish, and around 300,000 are members of various Muslim religious communities. Prior to the Holocaust, about 200,000 Jews lived in Austria.

Buddhism in Austria

Although still small in absolute numbers (10,402 at the 2001 census), Buddhism in Austria enjoys widespread acceptance if not popularity. A majority of Buddhists in the country are Austrian nationals (some of them naturalized after immigration from Asia, predominantly from China and Vietnam), while a considerable number of them are foreign nationals.

Public holidays