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Portal:Austria

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The Austria Portal

Topographical map of Austria
The flag of Austria
Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous city and state. Austria is bordered by Germany to the northwest, the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia to the northeast, Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The landlocked country occupies an area of 83,879 km2 (32,386 sq mi) and has a population of around 9 million.

The area of today's Austria has been inhabited since at least the Paleolithic period. Around 400 BC, it was inhabited by the Celts and then annexed by the Romans in the late 1st century BC. Christianization in the region began in the 4th and 5th centuries, during the late Roman period, followed by the arrival of numerous Germanic tribes during the Migration Period. Austria, as a unified state, emerged from the remnants of the Eastern and Hungarian March at the end of the first millennium, first as a frontier march of the Holy Roman Empire, it then developed into a duchy in 1156, and was made an Archduchy in 1453. Being the heartland of the Habsburg monarchy since the late 13th century, Austria was a major imperial power in Central Europe for centuries and from the 16th century, Vienna was also serving as the Holy Roman Empire's administrative capital. Before the dissolution of the empire two years later, in 1804, Austria established its own empire, which became a great power and one of the largest states in Europe. The empire's defeat in wars and the loss of territories in the 1860s paved the way for the establishment of Austria-Hungary in 1867.

After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, Emperor Franz Joseph declared war on Serbia, which ultimately escalated into World War I. The empire's defeat and subsequent collapse led to the proclamation of the Republic of German-Austria in 1918 and the First Austrian Republic in 1919. During the interwar period, anti-parliamentarian sentiments culminated in the formation of an Austrofascist dictatorship under Engelbert Dollfuss in 1934. A year before the outbreak of World War II, Austria was annexed into Nazi Germany by Adolf Hitler, and it became a sub-national division. After its liberation in 1945 and a decade of Allied occupation, the country regained its sovereignty and declared its perpetual neutrality in 1955.

Austria is a federal parliamentary republic and representative democracy with a popularly elected president as head of state and a chancellor as head of government and chief executive. Austria has the 13th highest nominal GDP per capita with high standards of living. The country has been a member of the United Nations since 1955 and of the European Union since 1995. It hosts the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and is a founding member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Interpol. It also signed the Schengen Agreement in 1995, and adopted the euro currency in 1999. (Full article...)
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City hall of Graz

Graz (German pronunciation: [ˈɡʁaːts]; Slovene: Gradec, Hungarian: Grác) is the second-largest city in Austria after Vienna and the capital of the federal state of Styria. It has a population of 291,890 as of 2010 (of which 258.605 have principal residence status).

Graz has a long tradition as a student city: its six universities have more than 44,000 students. Graz's "Old Town" is one of the best-preserved city centres in Central Europe. In 1999, it was added to the UNESCO list of World Cultural Heritage Sites, which was extended in 2010 by Schloss Eggenberg. Graz was sole Cultural Capital of Europe for 2003.

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Palace and gardens of Schönbrunn

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Statue of Athena outside the Austrian Parliament
Statue of Athena outside the Austrian Parliament

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Elfriede Jelinek (2004)

Elfriede Jelinek (German pronunciation: [ˀɛlˈfʀiːdɛ ˈjɛlinɛk]; born 20 October 1946) is an Austrian playwright and novelist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004 for her "musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that, with extraordinary linguistic zeal, reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power."

Female sexuality, its abuse, and the battle of the sexes in general are prominent topics in her work. Texts such as Wir sind Lockvögel, Baby! (We are Decoys, Baby!), Die Liebhaberinnen (Women as Lovers) and Die Klavierspielerin (The Pianist) showcase the brutality and power play inherent in human relations in a style that is at times ironically formal and tightly controlled.

In her later work, Jelinek has somewhat abandoned female issues to focus her energy on social criticism in general, and Austria's difficulties in admitting to its Nazi past in particular; an example is Die Kinder der Toten (The Children of the Dead).

Did you know (auto-generated)

  • ... that despite losing his left arm in World War II, Austrian tennis player Hans Redl reached the fourth round at Wimbledon in 1947?
  • ... that Rockstar Vienna was the largest video game developer in Austria when it closed in 2006?
  • ... that The Baby-Sitters Club actress Sophia Reid-Gantzert won an Austrian ballet competition when she was six?
  • ... that former International Brigades doctor Walter Fischer managed the Austrian broadcasts of Radio Moscow during World War II?
  • ... that during his tenure as the manager of Austria's Burgtheater from 1971 to 1976, Gerhard Klingenberg often directed plays with analogies of a divided Europe?
  • ... that on Christmas Eve in 1818, the Christmas carol "Stille Nacht" ("Silent Night") was first performed in the Nikolauskirche in Oberndorf, Austria?

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