The Austria Portal

Topographical map of Austria
The flag of Austria
Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine federal states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous city and federal state. Austria is bordered by Germany to the northwest, the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia to the northeast, Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The country occupies an area of 83,879 km2 (32,386 sq mi) and has a population of around 9 million.

Austria, as a unified state, emerged from the remnants of the Eastern and Hungarian March at the end of the first millennium. Originally a margraviate of Bavaria, it developed into a duchy of the Holy Roman Empire in 1156 and was later made an archduchy in 1453. In the 16th century, Vienna began serving as the empire's administrative capital and Austria thus became the heartland of the Habsburg monarchy. Before the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire two years later, in 1804, Austria established its own empire, which became a great power and the dominant member of the German Confederation. The empire's defeat in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 led to the end of the Confederation and paved the way for the establishment of Austria-Hungary a year later. Austria was the common name for the non-Hungarian parts of the state, also known as Cisleithania.

After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, Emperor Franz Joseph declared war on Serbia, which ultimately escalated into World War I. The empire's defeat and subsequent collapse led to the proclamation of the Republic of German-Austria in 1918 and the First Austrian Republic in 1919. During the interwar period, anti-parliamentarian sentiments culminated in the formation of an Austrofascist dictatorship under Engelbert Dollfuss in 1934. A year before the outbreak of World War II, Austria was annexed into Nazi Germany by Adolf Hitler, and it became a sub-national division. After its liberation in 1945 and a decade of Allied occupation, the country regained its sovereignty and declared its perpetual neutrality in 1955.

Austria is a semi-presidential representative democracy with a popularly elected president as head of state and a chancellor as head of government and chief executive. Major cities include Vienna, Graz, Linz, Salzburg, and Innsbruck. Austria has the 13th highest nominal GDP per capita with high standards of living; it was ranked 22th in the world for its Human Development Index in 2022. (Full article...)
Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.

Selected article - show another

Schönbrunn Palace from the front side (1758)

Schönbrunn Palace (German: Schloss Schönbrunn [ʃøːnˈbʁʊn]) is a former imperial summer residence in Vienna. One of the most important cultural monuments in the country, since the 1960s it has been one of the major tourist attractions in Vienna. The palace and gardens illustrate the tastes, interests, and aspirations of successive Habsburg monarchs.

The name Schönbrunn (meaning "beautiful spring"), has its roots in an artesian well from which water was consumed by the court.

UNESCO catalogued Schönbrunn Palace together with its gardens on the World Heritage List in 1996, as a remarkable Baroque ensemble and example of synthesis of the arts (Gesamtkunstwerk). The whole Schönbrunn complex with Tiergarten Schönbrunn, Palmenhaus, Wüstenhaus and the Wagenburg, accounted for more than five million visitors in 2010.

Selected picture - show another

Categories

Select [►] to view subcategories
Statue of Athena outside the Austrian Parliament
Statue of Athena outside the Austrian Parliament

Related portals

Selected biography - show another

Karl Popper

Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA (28 July 1902 in Vienna – 17 September 1994 in Croydon) was an Austro-British philosopher and professor at the London School of Economics. He is regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century; he also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy.

Popper is known for his attempt to repudiate the classical observationalist/inductivist form of scientific method in favour of empirical falsification. He is also known for his opposition to the classical justificationist account of knowledge which he replaced with critical rationalism, "the first non justificational philosophy of criticism in the history of philosophy". As well, he is known for his vigorous defence of liberal democracy and the principles of social criticism that he came to believe made a flourishing "open society" possible.

Popper coined the term critical rationalism to describe his philosophy.

In The Open Society and Its Enemies and The Poverty of Historicism, Popper developed a critique of historicism and a defence of the 'Open Society'. Among his contributions to philosophy is his attempt to answer the philosophical problem of induction as emphasized strongly by David Hume.

Popper played a vital role in establishing the philosophy of science as a vigorous, autonomous discipline within analytic philosophy.

Popper founded in 1946 the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. In 1947, Popper founded with Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises and others the Mont Pelerin Society to defend classical liberalism, in the spirit of the Open Society.

Did you know (auto-generated)

General images

The following are images from various Austria-related articles on Wikipedia.

Topics

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject: