Austria
Geography: Europe - Graz - Vienna -
People: Sigmund Freud - Thomas Bernhard - Elfriede Jelinek - Richard von Krafft-Ebing - Rudi Gernreich - Michael Haneke - Adolf Hitler - Gustav Klimt - Oskar Kokoschka - Alfred Kubin - Fritz Lang - Hermann Nitsch - Ludwig von Mises - Otto Muehl - Karl Popper - Otto Preminger - Wilhelm Reich - Egon Schiele - Romy Schneider - Arthur Schnitzler - Arnold Schoenberg - Ettore Sottsass - Wilhelm Stekel - Erich von Stroheim - Vienna - Amos Vogel - Ludwig Wittgenstein - Josef von Sternberg - Stefan Zweig
Culture of Austria
Although Austria is a small country, its history as a world power and its unique cultural environment in the heart of Europe have generated contributions to mankind in every possible field. Austria is presumably internationally best known for its musicians. It has been the birthplace of many famous composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, Anton Bruckner, Johann Strauss, Sr., Johann Strauss, Jr. or Gustav Mahler as well as members of the Second Viennese School such as Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern or Alban Berg.
Complementing its status as a land of artists, Austria has always been a country of great 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. Famous contemporary playwrights and novelists are Elfriede Jelinek and Peter Handke. 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.
Austria was the cradle of numerous scientists including physicists Ludwig Boltzmann, Lise Meitner, Erwin Schrödinger, Ernst Mach, Wolfgang Pauli, Richard von Mises and Christian Doppler, philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, biologists Gregor Mendel and Konrad Lorenz as well as mathematician Kurt Gödel. It was home to psychologists Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Paul Watzlawick and Hans Asperger, psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, economists Joseph Schumpeter, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek (Austrian School), and engineers such as Ferdinand Porsche and Siegfried Marcus.
Although Austrians can look back with pride on their cultural past, current Austria does not stand back in art and science. Austria hosts a tremendous amount of culture, with its classical music festivals in Vienna, Salzburg and Bregenz, its modern artists and writers, its theatres and opera houses. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria#Austrian_culture [Aug 2005]
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