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Religion
While northern and central Germany was the origin of the Reformation, Austria (and Bavaria) was the heart of the Counter-Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the absolute monarchy of Habsburg imposed a strict regime to maintain Catholicism's power and influence among Austrians. The Habsburgs viewed themselves as the vanguard of Roman Catholicism and all other confessions and religions were oppressed. In 1781, Emperor Joseph II issued a Patent of Tolerance that allowed other Christian confessions a limited freedom of worship. Religious freedom was declared a constitutional right in the Austro-Hungarian Ausgleich in 1867 thus paying tribute to the fact that the monarchy was home of numerous religions beside Roman Catholicism such as Greek, Serbian, Romanian, Russian, and Bulgarian Orthodox Christians (Austria neighboured the Ottoman empire for centuries), and both Calvinist and Lutheran Protestants.

Austria continued to remain largely influenced by Catholicism. After 1918, First Republic Catholic leaders such as Theodor Innitzer and Ignaz Seipel took leading positions within or close to the Austrian Government and increased their influence during the time of the Austrofascism—Catholicism was treated much like a state religion by dictators Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg. Although Catholic leaders welcomed the Germans in 1938 during the Anschluss of Austria into Germany, Austrian Catholicism stopped its support of Nazism later on and many former religious public figures became involved with the resistance during the Third Reich. After 1945 a stricter secularism was imposed in Austria, and religious influence on politics declined.

As of the end of the twentieth century, about 73% of Austria's population were registered as Roman Catholic, while about 5% considered themselves Protestants. Both these numbers have been on the decline for decades, especially Roman Catholicism, which has suffered an increasing number of seceders from the church. Austrian Catholics are obliged to pay a mandatory tax (calculated by income—about 1%) to the Austrian Roman Catholic Church, which might act as an incentive to leave the church.

About 12% of the population declare that they do not belong to any church or religious community. Of the remaining people, about 180,000 are members of the Eastern Orthodox Church and about 7,300 are Jewish. It has to be noted that the Austrian Jewish Community of 1938 – Vienna alone counted more than 200,000 - was reduced to solely 4,000 to 5,000 after the Second World War. The influx of Eastern Europeans, especially from the former Yugoslav nations, Albania and particularly from Turkey largely contributed to a substantial Muslim minority in Austria—around 300,000 are registered as members of various Muslim communities. Buddhism, which was legally recognized as a religion in Austria in 1983, enjoys widespread acceptance and has a following of 20,000 (10,402 at the 2001 census).

A 2005 survey among 8,000 people in various European countries showed that Austria is among those nations whose populations maintain the strongest belief in God. 84% of all Austrians state a belief in God, with only the people of Poland (97%), Romania (91%), Portugal (90%) yielding significantly higher numbers. This is a much larger figure than the European average of 71%, or that of Germany (67%).

Culture

Music Austria's past as a European power and its cultural environment have generated a broad contribution to various forms of art, most notably among them music. Austria 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. and Gustav Mahler as well as members of the Second Viennese School such as Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and Alban Berg. Vienna has long been especially an important center of musical innovation. Eighteenth and nineteenth century composers were drawn to the city due to the patronage of the Habsburgs, and made Vienna the European capital of classical music. During the Baroque period, Slavic and Hungarian folk forms influenced Austrian music. Vienna's status began its rise as a cultural center in the early 1500s, and was focused around instruments including the lute. Ludwig van Beethoven spent the better part of his life in Vienna.

Austria's current national anthem was chosen after World War II to replace the traditional Austrian anthem by Joseph Haydn. The composition, which was initially attributed to Mozart, was most likely not composed by Mozart himself.

Austria has also produced one notable jazz musician, keyboardist Josef Zawinul who helped pioneer electronic influences in jazz as well as being a notable composer in his own right.

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 Ott Wagner.

Science, Philosophy & Economics

Austria was the cradle of numerous scientists with international reputations. Among them are Ludwig Boltzmann, Ernst Mach, Victor Franz Hess and Christian Doppler, prominent scientists in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, contributions by Lise Meitner, Erwin Schrödinger and Wolfgang Pauli to nuclear research and quantum mechanics were key to these areas' development during the 1920s and 1930s. A present-day quantum physicist is Anton Zeilinger, noted as the first scientist to demonstrate quantum teleportation. In addition to physicists, Austria was the birthplace of two of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth 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.

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Transport in Austria

Rail Transport Rail transport is the transport of passengers and goods by means of wheeled vehicles specially designed to run along railways or railroads. Rail transport is part of the logistics chain, which facilitates the international trading and economic growth in most countries. A typical railway/railroad track consists of two parallel rails, normally made of steel, secured to cross-beams, termed [[railroad tie|sleepers],U.K., or 'ties' (U.S.). The sleepers maintain a constant distance between the two rails; a measurement known as the 'gauge' of the track. To maintain the alignment of the track, it is either laid on a bed of ballast or else secured to a solid concrete foundation, and the whole is referred to as Permanent way. Railway rolling stock, which is fitted with metal wheels, moves with low frictional resistance when compared to road vehicles; on the other hand locomotives and power cars normally rely solely for traction on the point of contact of the wheel with the rail whence they obtain adhesion i.e. the part of the transmitted axle load that makes the wheel "adhere" to the smooth rail. Whilst this is usually sufficient under normal dry rail conditions, adhesion can be reduced or even lost through the presence of unwanted material on the rail surface, such as grease, ice or dead leaves.

U-Bahn

U-Bahn is the German abbreviation for Untergrundbahn ("underground railway"), referring to a means of urban rapid transit, such as the "London underground" or "Paris métro". The term was created at the beginning of the 20th century in Berlin, where the Deutsche Reichsbahn Gesellschaft ("German state railway company") (predecessor of today's Deutsche Bahn) created a system of urban and suburban railway lines with fast electric trains with short stopping intervals, called the S-Bahn (Schnellbahn, "rapid railway"). The Hochbahngesellschaft ("elevated railway company"), operating elevated and suburban lines, decided they required an equally short and memorable name for their system, and thus called it U-Bahn, for Untergrundbahn ("underground railway"). In Germany the most common symbol for the U-Bahn is a white "U" on a square blue background, in Austria it is on a circular background.

Motorway
Motorway is a term for both a type of road and a classification or designation. Motorways are high capacity highways designed to carry fast motor traffic safely. In the UK they are predominantly dual-carriageway roads, with two, three or four lanes in each direction (usually three), and all have grade-separated access, comparable with North American freeways and expressways.

Waterway
A waterway is any navigable body of water. These include rivers, lakes, oceans, and canals. In order for a waterway to be navigable, it must meet several criteria:

• The waterway must be deep enough to allow the draft depth of the vessels using it;
• The waterway must be wide enough to allow passage for the beam width of the vessels using it;
• The waterway must be free of barriers to navigation such as waterfalls and rapids, or have a way around them (such as canal locks);
• The current of the waterway must be mild enough to allow vessels to make headway.

Vessels using waterways vary from small animal-drawn barges to immense ocean tankers and ocean liners, such as cruise ships.