There was an interesting article in yesterday’s newspaper about Austria’s immigrant population. (Here is a link, but unfortunately in German only). It is said that 16% of Austrians were born somewhere outside today’s boundaries of the Austrian Republic.
Quite a number of historic famous Austrians suffer the same fate. Especially if you think of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which used to be the second largest country of Europe and included Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and parts of today’s Romania, Montenegro, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, and the Republic of Serbia.
Having this in mind, it is not so easy to answer the question: Who is Austrian?
Of course there is a legal definition of citizenship, and one might forge close emotional links with a specific country for any other reasons. A possible definition of "Austrianship" might also be: You are Austrian, if Austria is the place of your birth. (Our word nation comes from the Latin word for birth).
From a historical point of view, this definition needs not only a spatial but also a temporal investigation. Is it possible to be a "famous Austrian", if the place of your birth used to be part of Austria at that time but is now part of Hungary, Poland, etc.? And what’s about those who were born at places which belong to Austria now, but were parts of other countries then?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born 1756 in Salzburg. At that time, Salzburg was an independent Archbishopric (= an ecclesiastical state) of the Holy Roman Empire and definitely not a part of Austria. His "colleague" Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany, but got the Austrian citizenship and saw himself as a citizen of Vienna. Johann Strauss II (composer of "The Blue Danube" and other famous waltzes) was born in Vienna, Austria, but later became a citizen of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Other Examples:
The Austrian-Hungarian-actor Peter Lorre ("Arsenic and Old Lace" and "Casablanca") was born in Ružomberok, which is now part of Slovakia. Screenwriter, film director, and producer Billy Wilder ("Some Like It Hot") was born 1906 in Sucha Beskidzka, Austria-Hungary then, today part of Poland. (Wilder himself lived in Vienna from 1916 to 1926).
The founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology, Sigmund Freud: Born 1856 in Príbor, Austria-Hungary, today Czech Republic. The mathematician and philosopher Kurt Gödel: 1906 born in Brno, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic). So are they Austrians or Czechs?
And of course there is one person we normally want to exclude from our Austrian consciousness: Adolf Hitler was born 1889 in Braunau am Inn, which has been part of Austria since 1816 – and still is. At least Hitler changed his citizenship in 1932 and became German…
