Austria-Hungary
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50 free Austria-Hungary trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Austria-Hungary lasted barely half a century, yet it was one of the largest states in Europe: a single monarchy stitched together from two governments, more than a dozen crown lands and nearly as many peoples. Its soldiers took orders in one tongue and chatted in another, its banknotes had to speak to everyone at once, and many of its towns carried two or three names depending on who was asking. This quiz covers what people most often want to know about the Dual Monarchy. Which languages were spoken there, and which ones held official rank? What were the provinces called, and where did they end up after 1918? Which modern cities hide behind the old names on the empire's maps? Alongside those you will meet the rulers, the assassination that started a world war, the treaties that broke the empire apart, and a few famous people who were born its subjects. It suits history students, family-tree researchers puzzling over an ancestor's birthplace, and anyone who has looked at a map of central Europe and wondered how it came to look that way. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Austro-Hungarian submarine ace of World War I became the father portrayed in The Sound of Music?
Georg von Trapp
Georg von Trapp was the most successful Austro-Hungarian submarine commander of the war. His first wife was the granddaughter of Robert Whitehead, inventor of the modern torpedo.
Q 02Which city, merged from three towns in 1873, opened mainland Europe's first electric underground in 1896?
Budapest
Budapest built the Millennium Underground Railway, the world's second electrified underground after London's. The line under Andrássy Avenue has run ever since.
Q 03Which magician was born Erik Weisz in 1874 in the Hungarian capital of Austria-Hungary?
Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini left Hungary as a child when his family settled in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father served as a rabbi.
Q 04Which engineer behind the Volkswagen Beetle was born in Austria-Hungary, in northern Bohemia, in 1875?
Ferdinand Porsche
Ferdinand Porsche also created the first petrol-electric hybrid vehicle, the Lohner-Porsche, long before he designed racing cars for Auto Union.
Q 05Hungarian belongs to the Uralic language family; which other national language of Europe does too?
Finnish
Finnish shares several hundred word roots with Hungarian: water is vesi in one and víz in the other, and hand is käsi and kéz.
Q 06Which ancient language stayed official in the Kingdom of Hungary until 1844, when Hungarian replaced it?
Latin
Latin had held official status in the Kingdom of Hungary since the 11th century, until Hungarian became the exclusive official language in 1844.
Q 07Which empress of Austria, nicknamed Sisi, was stabbed to death by an anarchist in Geneva in 1898?
Elisabeth
Elisabeth was 60 and travelling incognito despite warnings of possible assassination attempts. She had been empress for 44 years.
Q 08In which city was Archduke Franz Ferdinand shot in June 1914, shortly after a bomb bounced off his car?
Sarajevo
Sarajevo saw two attacks that morning: the bomb failed, and the archduke was killed after changing his plans to visit the wounded in hospital.
Q 09Which Bohemian city gave its name to the pale lager first brewed there in 1842 and housed the Škoda Works?
Pilsen
Pilsen hired a Bavarian brewer, Josef Groll, to make that first batch. Emil Škoda later gave his name to a machine works in the same city.
Q 10Which painter of The Kiss became president of the Vienna Secession when it formed in 1897?
Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt and the group soon had their own exhibition hall, the Secession Building, designed by the architect Olbrich in 1897–98.
Q 11Which language was the sole language of command in Austria-Hungary's Common Army, whatever a regiment spoke?
German
German gave the orders, but each unit also had its own regimental languages, and every officer had three years to learn those of his men.
Q 12Which emperor ruled the Habsburg lands for almost 68 years, from the revolutions of 1848 until his death in 1916?
Franz Joseph I
Franz Joseph I came to the throne at 18 when his uncle Ferdinand abdicated, and he died aged 86 in the third year of the First World War.
Q 13Which composer, known as the Waltz King, premiered The Blue Danube in Vienna in February 1867?
Johann Strauss II
Q 21Which crown land, taken from Poland in the 1772 partition, was the largest and most populous in the Austrian half?
Galicia
Galicia was also the empire's poorest province, yet its own assembly, the Sejm, held wide powers over education, culture and local affairs.
Q 22Which river southeast of Vienna gave the two halves of Austria-Hungary their informal names?
Leitha
Leitha is a right tributary of the Danube, and it marked only part of the boundary: some Austrian crown lands lay far to the north-east of Hungary.
Q 23Which Ottoman province did Austria-Hungary occupy in 1878 and formally annex in 1908, provoking a European crisis?
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Johann Strauss II first wrote it as a song for a carnival choir. The orchestral version he made for that year's Paris World's Fair became the great success.
Q 14Defeat by which kingdom at Königgrätz in 1866 pushed Austria into its Compromise with Hungary a year later?
Prussia
Prussia won decisively, ending Austria's role as leading state in the lands to its north and leaving the Habsburg Empire on the verge of collapse.
Q 15On which kingdom did Austria-Hungary declare war on 28 July 1914, a month after the shooting of its heir?
Serbia
Serbia, by some historians' reading, had accepted every term of Vienna's ultimatum except letting Austro-Hungarian police operate on its soil.
Q 16Which city on the Danube, now a national capital, was known as Pressburg in Austria and Pozsony in Hungary?
Bratislava
Bratislava became the official name only in March 1919. As Pozsony, the city had seen eleven Hungarian kings crowned in its cathedral.
Q 17At which hunting lodge in the Vienna Woods was Crown Prince Rudolf found dead with his teenage mistress in 1889?
Mayerling
Mayerling cost the emperor his only son, so the succession passed to his brother's line and to the nephew who was shot in 1914.
Q 18Which eastern region of the Kingdom of Hungary, home to Saxons and Székelys, became part of Romania in 1920?
Transylvania
Transylvania was proclaimed united with Romania on 1 December 1918, the date Romania now celebrates as its national day.
Q 19Which heraldic emblem did the Austrian Empire keep as its arms after the Holy Roman Empire ended in 1806?
Double-headed eagle
The double-headed eagle did not outlive the monarchy: republican Austria switched to a bird with a single head.
Q 20Which Austrian border town, where his father was a customs official, was the 1889 birthplace of Adolf Hitler?
Braunau am Inn
Braunau am Inn was his home only until the age of three, and the house where he was born has since been turned into a police station.
Bosnia and Herzegovina belonged to neither half of the Dual Monarchy. It was run as a shared holding under the joint finance ministry.
Q 24Which Adriatic city, Habsburg since 1382, was Austria's main trading port and the base of the Austrian Lloyd line?
Trieste
Trieste grew into the fourth-largest city of Austria-Hungary, and by 1913 Austrian Lloyd ran a fleet of 62 ships.
Q 25Lemberg, capital of Austria's most populous crown land, is known today by which name?
Lviv
Lviv grew from about 30,000 people at the Austrian annexation in 1772 to 196,000 by 1910, and Poles knew it as Lwów.
Q 26Which city, once known in Austria as Agram, was the seat of Croatia-Slavonia's parliament, the Sabor?
Zagreb
Zagreb was hit by a destructive earthquake in 1880, and the building boom that lasted until 1914 gave the town the layout it has today.
Q 27Laibach, the capital of the crown land of Carniola, is known today as which national capital?
Ljubljana
Ljubljana was badly damaged by an earthquake in 1895 and rebuilt in the Vienna Secession style, which still stands beside its older Baroque buildings.
Q 28Which Alpine crown land of Austria-Hungary was split in 1919, when its southern part passed to Italy?
Tyrol
Tyrol kept its capital, Innsbruck, but the Treaty of Saint-Germain gave Italy the Alpine watershed at the Brenner Pass.
Q 29Which 19-year-old student shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914 and was spared execution because of his age?
Gavrilo Princip
Gavrilo Princip was 27 days short of the twenty-year minimum for execution under Habsburg law, so he was sentenced to twenty years in prison.
Q 30Which 1920 treaty, signed in a palace at Versailles, left Hungary with 28% of its pre-war land?
Trianon
Trianon also left Hungary landlocked, cut off from the sea port it had built up at Fiume on the Adriatic.