Austria

The core of an empire that governed a dozen nations, left with eight million people and an identity problem. The Habsburgs held Vienna from 1282 and accumulated by marriage what others took by war, ruling at various points Spain, the Netherlands, Hungary, Bohemia, northern Italy and much of the Balkans. Vienna stopped the Ottoman advance in 1529 and again in 1683. The 1867 compromise made the state Austria-Hungary, a dual monarchy trying to hold together Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Romanians, Croats, Serbs, Slovaks, Slovenes and Italians, and the assassination at Sarajevo in 1914 destroyed it within four years. What remained was a small German-speaking republic that many of its own politicians thought unviable and wanted to join Germany, which it did in 1938 to substantial public enthusiasm - a fact Austria spent decades avoiding by presenting itself as Hitler's first victim, and only acknowledged officially in 1991. Allied occupation ended in 1955 with permanent neutrality. Vienna around 1900 produced Freud, Wittgenstein, Mahler, Klimt and Schoenberg simultaneously. The country joined the EU in 1995. Its Alpine west and Danubian east differ sharply. The country has about nine million people and is landlocked. German is official, with several regional minority languages recognised. The Alps cover about two-thirds of the territory. Vienna has been ranked the world's most liveable city repeatedly. Austria hosts several United Nations agencies and OPEC. Salzburg, Graz and the historic centre of Vienna are World Heritage sites, and the country produced Mozart, Haydn and Schubert. Its neutrality is written into constitutional law rather than merely declared.

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