73,6% catholics

4,7% protestants

4,2% muslimes

0,1% jews

10,2% without religion

Typical churches:

St.Stephan's cathedral and Charles church:

Percentage of analphabets:4%

Birth rate per woman: 1,31

Average family size: 3,65

Average age of mother for first baby:26-27

Rate of babies dying shortly after birth: 0,2%

Percentage of most

common death reasons: 38% desease of cardiovascular system

                                  24% cancer

Typical meals:

The typical meal for lunch or dinner in Austria is Wiener Schnitzel.

Wiener Walzer

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Typical landscape:

Here you can see the Grossglockner, the highest mountain of Austria and we have a lot more of this sorte of mountains because as you probably know large areas of our land are covered by the Alps.

Typical animal living in our mountains: Gaemse

average:10,7°C

minimum:-9°C

maximum: 35,3°C

in the east: 705 mm

in the west:1674 mm 

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AUSTRIA is a democratic republic, its law emanates from the public

AUSTRIA is a federal State

The Federal State is composed of the autonomous States of Burgenland, Carinthia, Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Salzburg, Styria, Tyrol, Vorarlberg, and Vienna

If you are interested in more detailed information please see the links below, that will inform you on:

-Austria’s Constitution, and its building laws

-System of the Government

-Administration of Justice and control

-Party system and Parties

-Austrias position within the international System

Links:

http://www.austria.gv.at/e/service/polsysteme.pdf

http://www.oefre.unibe.ch/law/icl/au00000_.html - ICL Austrian Constitution

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Art: Typical Writer

Thomas Bernhard (9.2.1931 – 12.2. 1989

"What matters is whether we want to lie or to tell the truth and write the truth, even though it never can be the truth and never is the truth."
Gathering Evidence

Thomas Bernhard's relationship to Vienna and Austria was ambivalent. At the same time celebrated by critics and audience, Bernhard managed to throw light on the abysses of the Austrian soul. This had to be the reason for a few scandals. His texts mostly contain harsh descriptions of life in Austria, especially about Vienna (and its literary coffeehouses) or conservative rural areas. His writing style is very peculiar because of many exaggerations, long sentences and a pessimism, that is very hopeful - reading between the lines.            

Ingeborg Bachmann(25.6.1926 – 17.10.1973) 

Ingeborg Bachmann was the most significant woman writer in post- war German literature and a very important Austrian modernist writer.

Since she had published her first volume of prose “The Thirtieth Year” , Ingeborg Bachmann was showered with literary prizes and critical acclaim. Nevertheless she has written good novels as well as a lot of poetries.

The Heavy Cargo/Die große Fracht

The summer’s heavy cargo has been loaded,

waiting in the harbor a sun ship lies,

as at your back the sea gull dips and cries.

The summer’s heavy cargo has been loaded.

Waiting in the harbour a sun ship lies,

And there upon the lips of figureheads,

The lemur’s mocking smile appears and spreads.

Waiting in the harbour a sun ship lies.

As at your back the sea gull dips and cries,

From the western horizon comes the order to sink,

You’ll drown, open- eyed, in the light you’ll drink,

As at your back the sea gull dips and cries.

Well, Austria is a land of literature and there are a few more names, that are worth mentioning:

Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872

Johann Nepomuk Eduard Ambrosius Nestroy (1801-1862)

Arthur Schnitzler (1862 - 1931)

Peter Handke(1942*)

Stefan Zweig 

Falco

Ausseer Hardbradler

Austrian Architects:

Adolf Loos

10. 12. 1870 Brünn

† 23. 8. 1933 Vienna

He lived in the US from 1893 to 1896

He wrote the book “Ornament and Crime”.

"... the evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects." 

By Adolf Loos

"The dishes of past centuries, which display all kinds of ornaments to make peacocks, pheasants and lobsters look more tasty, have exactly the opposite effect on me... I am horrified when I go through a cookery exhibition and think that I am meant to eat these stuffed carcasses. I eat roast beef." 

Adolf Loos, from Ornament & Crime

Hans Hollein:

Hans Hollein was born in Vienna, Austria in 1934. From his earliest school days, he manifested a talent for drawing. Although he chose architecture as his profession, his works of art are in many public and private collections around the world. 

He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, in Vienna in 1956. He was awarded a Harkness Fellowship which afforded him the opportunity travel in the United States. He did graduate work at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and completed his Master of Architecture degree at the University of California, Berkeley in 1960. During those same years, he was able to meet and study with some of the architects he most admired, including Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra. In 1970, he won praise for his first commission in New York, the Richard Feigen Gallery.

Gustav Klimt

The work of the Austrian painter and illustrator Gustav Klimt, b. July 14, 1862, d. Feb. 6, 1918, founder of the school of painting known as the Vienna Sezession, embodies the high-keyed erotic, psychological, and aesthetic preoccupations of turn-of-the-century Vienna's dazzling intellectual world. He has been called the preeminent exponent of ART NOUVEAU. The primal forces of sexuality, regeneration, love, and death form the dominant themes of Klimt's work. His paintings of femmes fatales, such as Judith I (1901; Osterreichische Galerie, Vienna), personify the dark side of sexual attraction.

Egon Schiele:

Austrian expressionist artist Egon Leo Adolf Schiele, b. June 12, 1890, d. Oct. 31, 1918, was at odds with art critics and society for most of his brief life. Even more than Gustav Klimt, Schiele made eroticism one of his major themes and was briefly imprisoned for obscenity in 1912. His treatment of the nude figure suggests a lonely, tormented spirit haunted rather than fulfilled by sexuality. At first strongly influenced by Klimt, whom he met in 1907, Schiele soon achieved an independent anticlassical style wherein his jagged lines arose more from psychological and spiritual feeling than from aesthetic considerations. The Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918) died when he was only 28 and we do not really know whether he would have developed from the self-pitying adolescent angst that was the main theme of his work.

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It`s very difficult to find typical sports for Austria because there is a wide range in Austria, which starts at golf and goes to skiing.

To give you a overview of Austrias sport, we will present you the most importend sportforms and their stars.

Skiing (National sport number one)

Karl Schranz:                     Franz Klammer:

Generally you can say that all kinds of wintersport for example skijumping, cross country skiing, and so on is very favored in Austria

Soccer

Nowadays table tennis is the sport where the people are interested in because Werner Schlager is the acting world champion since 2003.

Many Austrian peoples are interested in motorsport. And there is also a GP-course in Spielberg, it is called A1-Ring. The race 2003 was the last for the next years, because the GP-chief Bernie Eccleston changed the place.

But this year there will be an Austrian driver in Formula one, he is called Christian Klien, he will drive for the Jaguar team.

Links:      http://www.oefb.at

              http://www.bundesliga.at

              http://www.schiregionen.at

              http://www.golfaustria.net

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