57 Fun Facts About Austria

Ostarrîchi, the name of Austria first recorded in 996, was the eastern frontier march of which duchy?

Bavaria lost the march in 1156, when Emperor Barbarossa made Austria a duchy of its own to compensate its margrave for giving up Bavaria itself.

Which tiny European country is one of Austria's eight neighbors?

Liechtenstein's princes long ruled it from afar; Franz Joseph II, who succeeded in 1938, was the first to make the country his main home.

Which is Austria's highest mountain?

Grossglockner's High Alpine Road was revived during the Depression to create jobs for thousands of unemployed Austrians, and opened in 1935.

Which Austrian ski town hosts the Hahnenkamm races on its steep Streif course?

Kitzbühel honors every Hahnenkamm downhill winner by putting their name on a cabin of the gondola that climbs the mountain.

Which Celtic-era culture, named after an Austrian salt-mining village, left Europe's oldest Celtic evidence?

The village's salt mine is described as the world's oldest still working.

Which Roman province, named after a Celtic kingdom, covered most of modern Austria?

Noricum's iron fed Rome's armies: its especially hard Noric steel was used above all to make Roman weapons.

Rudolph I's 1278 victory at Dürnkrut over Ottokar II of Bohemia began which dynasty's rule in Austria?

The Habsburgs won when Ottokar was killed in the rout, and the family went on to rule Austria until 1918.

Whom did Emperor Maximilian I's son, Philip the Fair, marry in 1496?

Joanna the Mad was not expected to inherit, but the deaths of her brother, sister and nephew made her heir to both Castile and Aragon.

Which Polish king commanded the army that relieved the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683?

John III Sobieski's victory cost the losing grand vizier, Kara Mustafa, his life: the sultan had him strangled in Belgrade that Christmas.

Which Prussian king seized Silesia from Maria Theresa?

Frederick the Great invaded in December 1740; Austria fought two more wars over Silesia, but the 1763 peace left it Prussian.

Emperor Francis I of Austria married his daughter Marie Louise to which ruler?

Napoleon Bonaparte had set aside Josephine because their marriage produced no heir; Marie Louise bore him a son, styled King of Rome, in 1811.

Defeat by Prussia at which 1866 battle shut Austria out of German unification?

Königgrätz was a triumph for Prussia's breech-loading needle gun, which Austrian advance troops had already learned to fear in earlier clashes.

The Ausgleich of 1867 created dual sovereignty between Austria and which kingdom under Franz Joseph I?

Hungary won its own parliament and government, sharing the monarch, foreign policy and army; defeat by Prussia in 1866 had forced Franz Joseph to make the deal.

Empress Elisabeth, 'Sisi', was fatally stabbed in 1898 in which city?

In Geneva, anarchist Luigi Lucheni stabbed her with a sharpened needle file; the wound was so small that she walked on and boarded her steamer before collapsing.

Whose assassination in Sarajevo in 1914 led Vienna to declare war on Serbia?

Archduke Franz Ferdinand survived a bomb that morning, but his driver, never told of a route change, turned wrong and stopped to reverse right beside gunman Gavrilo Princip.

What did Austria's 1919 peace treaty with the Allies forbid for the new republic?

Union with Germany was exactly what the new state wanted: its 1918 provisional constitution called German-Austria part of the German republic, and the treaty banned that name too.

Which Austrian chancellor built an Austrofascist dictatorship and was killed in a 1934 Nazi coup attempt?

Engelbert Dollfuss was shot when SS men disguised as Austrian soldiers and police stormed the Chancellery, though the rest of his government escaped.

Which Austrian chancellor resigned in 1938 after Hitler made him cancel an independence referendum?

Kurt Schuschnigg was then arrested and held by the Nazis until 1945, latterly in concentration camps, and later became a professor in the United States.

Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 in which Austrian town near the German border?

Braunau am Inn's house where he was born has been converted into a police station, a choice that has drawn mixed feelings in the town.

Austria's 1955 declaration of permanent neutrality was modeled on which country's?

Switzerland's style of neutrality was Moscow's price: the Soviets agreed to withdraw their occupying troops only after Austria promised to stay neutral.

Which former UN Secretary-General became Austrian president in 1986 amid a Wehrmacht controversy?

Kurt Waldheim was put on a US watch list in 1987 over his wartime record, barring him from entering the United States as a private person while president.

Austria joined the European Union in 1995 alongside which two countries?

Sweden and Finland joined with Austria; Norway had negotiated to join too, but stayed out after its 1994 referendum.

Sebastian Kurz's first coalition collapsed in 2019 over a corruption scandal named after which island?

Ibiza was where FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache was secretly filmed offering government contracts to a woman posing as a Russian oligarch's niece.

Which organization, founded in Baghdad in 1960, has its headquarters in Vienna?

OPEC's Vienna conference was stormed in 1975 by gunmen led by Carlos the Jackal, who took its oil ministers hostage and flew many of them to North Africa.

What did the Romans call the castrum they founded on the site of Vienna in the 1st century?

Vindobona's south-western wall ran along today's Graben, a central Vienna street named for the ditch that lay in front of it.

Which English king did Austria's Duke Leopold V imprison?

Richard I's ransom was so vast that Leopold's share paid for Vienna's mint and new city walls and helped found Wiener Neustadt.

The Austrian schilling, introduced in 1925 to replace the Krone, earned what nickname for its stability?

The Alpine dollar followed ruinous post-war inflation: the schilling replaced the Krone at 10,000 to one, after a League of Nations loan steadied Austria's finances.

Besides German, which language is official in parts of Carinthia?

Slovene place names were long the flashpoint: how many southern Carinthian villages had to post bilingual Slovene–German signs became a bitter dispute that escalated in the 1970s.

Which composer died in Vienna at just 35?

Mozart died with his Requiem unfinished; his widow had pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr complete it so the commission could be delivered.

Which composer wrote the tune of Austria's old imperial anthem, which Germany's national anthem uses?

Haydn's melody was dropped after World War II because Germany's anthem, also used under the Nazis, had the same tune; Austria adopted a new anthem in 1946.

Which Austrian conductor led the Berlin Philharmonic for more than three decades?

Herbert von Karajan was named Berlin's conductor for life in 1956, yet resigned in April 1989, three months before he died.

Which piece traditionally closes the Vienna New Year's Concert, with the audience clapping along?

The Radetzky March was written in 1848 to celebrate Field Marshal Radetzky's victory at Custoza; the Blue Danube, the concert's other signature, comes just before it.

Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, was born in Freiberg, a town now in which country?

Czechia's Příbor, then called Freiberg, lost Freud at about three, when his family moved to Leipzig and then on to Vienna.

Gustav Klimt, painter of The Kiss, was a founding member of which artists' group?

The Vienna Secession was founded in 1897 by artists who quit Vienna's Künstlerhaus in protest at its conservative, traditional taste.

Who was the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize?

Bertha von Suttner had briefly been Alfred Nobel's secretary in Paris in 1876, decades before she won the prize he founded.

Which two Vienna-born thinkers rank among the 20th century's most influential philosophers?

Wittgenstein and Popper were both born in Vienna; Wittgenstein, from one of Europe's richest families, became a village schoolteacher after World War I.

A Wiener Schnitzel is a thin, breaded, pan-fried cutlet of which meat?

Veal is the rule: in Austria a breaded pork cutlet can't be sold as plain Wiener Schnitzel and needs a label such as 'vom Schwein' or 'Wiener Art'.

Sachertorte's chocolate sponge is layered with which jam?

Apricot jam is in both rival versions: Hotel Sacher and the Demel pastry shop fought legal battles for years over which could call its cake the 'Original'.

As of the 2010s, which white grape was Austria's most widely planted variety?

Grüner Veltliner leads a wine trade that turned to dry whites after the 1985 scandal over sweet wines laced with diethylene glycol, an antifreeze ingredient.

Which candy was invented in Austria as a peppermint alternative to smoking?

Pez first sold its mints from a plain dispenser in 1949; cartoon heads came only in the 1950s, when the brand turned to children.

Which Thai drink inspired Dietrich Mateschitz to launch Red Bull?

Krating Daeng cured Mateschitz's jet lag, so he teamed up with its Thai maker, Chaleo Yoovidhya, to adapt the drink for Western tastes as Red Bull.

Swarovski, founded in 1895, is based in Wattens in which Austrian state?

Tyrol's Wattens got Swarovski when Bohemian glass cutter Daniel Swarovski, who had patented an electric crystal-cutting machine, set up there in 1895.

Which Austrian topped the US Billboard chart with a German-language song in 1986?

As of 2025, Falco is the only artist to top the US Hot 100 with a German-language song; his earlier hit 'Der Kommissar' never made that chart.

Conchita Wurst won Eurovision for Austria in 2014 with which song?

Rise Like a Phoenix won even though petitions in Russia and Belarus had urged broadcasters to cut Conchita's performance from their coverage.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was born in 1947 in Thal, a village in which state?

He was governor of California from 2003 to 2011.

Which zither player wrote the famous theme of The Third Man, set in occupied Vienna?

Anton Karas was playing zither at a Viennese wine-tavern evening in 1948 when director Carol Reed chanced to hear him and brought him in to score the film.

The real von Trapp family, whose story inspired The Sound of Music, settled in which US state?

Vermont became home after the real von Trapps left Austria in 1938 by train to Italy, not on foot over the mountains as in the film.

Which Austrian city hosted the Winter Olympics in both 1964 and 1976?

Innsbruck got the 1976 Games only after Denver, the original host, withdrew when Colorado voters refused to spend public money on them.

Niki Lauda won his three Formula One world titles with which two teams?

Ferrari and McLaren titles bracket his 1976 Nürburgring crash: badly burned, Lauda was back racing just six weeks later.

Austria's third place at the 1954 World Cup came from beating which defending champion?

Uruguay arrived unbeaten in World Cup finals history but lost their semi-final, then fell 3–1 to Austria in the match for third place.

As of 2025, which club had won the most Austrian football league titles?

Rapid Wien's fans clap through the last quarter-hour of every match, the 'Rapid-Viertelstunde', a ritual begun in the club's early years.

Why did Austria's finished Zwentendorf nuclear power plant never go into operation?

Voters rejected it in a November 1978 referendum, so the finished plant never ran and two more planned nuclear plants were never built.

Austria's area is closest to that of which US state?

South Carolina covers 82,933 sq km, within about 1% of Austria's 83,879 sq km; Austria took roughly that size when the 1919 peace treaty stripped away most of the old Austrian lands.

Which Vienna palace's grounds hold the world's oldest zoo still in operation?

Schönbrunn Palace's zoo was founded in 1752 by Francis Stephen, Maria Theresa's husband, as a private menagerie; in 1778 it opened on Sundays to 'decently dressed persons'.

Which Greek goddess stands atop the fountain in front of Austria's Parliament Building in Vienna?

Athena, goddess of wisdom, fronts a Parliament built like a Greek temple to recall the Greek beginnings of democracy; the Nationalrat meets inside.

Who was sworn in as Austria's federal president in January 2017?

Alexander Van der Bellen, a former Green Party leader, won only on a re-run after the Constitutional Court annulled his first run-off victory over Norbert Hofer.

Which barbarian ruler, who had deposed the last Western Roman emperor, crushed the Rugians' Danube kingdom in today's Austria?

Odoacer carried the Rugian king Feletheus off to Italy as a prisoner and had him executed there, ending the Rugians' kingdom on the Danube.