Culture

Culture on the territory of what is today Austria can be traced back to around 1050 BC 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.

Art and Architecture

Among Austrian artists and architects one can find painters Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele or Friedensreich Hundertwasser, photographer Inge Morath or architect Otto Wagner.

Literature

Complementing its status as a land of artists and scientists, Austria has always been a country of poets, writers and novelists. It was the home of novelists Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig, Thomas Bernhard or Robert Musil, of poets Georg Trakl, Franz Werfel, Franz Grillparzer, Rainer Maria Rilke or Adalbert Stifter and writer Karl Kraus.

Famous contemporary playwrights and novelists are Nobel prize winner Elfriede Jelinek and writer Peter Handke.

Music and Dance

Vienna has long been an important centre 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 centre 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.

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.

Yodelling

Yodelling 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.

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.

Science

There are many Austrian physicists are who are known worldwide. Among them are Ludwig Boltzmann, Ernst Mach, Victor Franz Hess and Christian Doppler, who were prominent scientists in the 19th century. In the 20th century scientific contributions of Lise Meitner, Erwin Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli to nuclear research and quantum mechanics contributed to the major leap of physics in the 1920s and 1930s.

In addition to physicists, Austria was the birthplace of two of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. In addition to them biologists Gregor Mendel and Konrad Lorenz as well as mathematician Kurt Gödel and engineers such as Ferdinand Porsche and Siegfried Marcus were Austrians.

A focus of Austrian science has always been medicine and psychology, starting in medieval times with Paracelsus. Austria was home to psychologists Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Paul Watzlawick and Hans Asperger and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl.

The Austrian School, which is prominent as one of the main competitive directions for economic theory is related to Austrian economists Joseph Schumpeter, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek.

Sports

Common sports in Austria are soccer, skiing and ice hockey. 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, and in 1954, beat Uruguay to take 3rd place. However the team has not ever qualified for the European Championship, although that will change with the 2008 Tournament as they will 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.