Cultural differences between Austria and Slovenia

Abstract

Austria and Slovenia share a long common history. Both countries were inhabited by Celtic people and the Romans. Slavic toponyms can still be found in the South of Austria, up to the Enns river area in the middle of the country, thus indicating that a significant part of Austria was populated by Slavic people, especially in the times between the barbarian migration and the formation of the Frankish Empire. From 1335 to 1918, both countries were under Habsburg rule, sharing not only princes and emperors, but also social, cultural, and institutional developments (e. g. the simultaneous introduction of compulsory schooling by Empress Maria Theresia in 1774 in both countries). Watzlawick (1983) vividly described the environment that both countries were part of: “In the heart of Europe there was once a great empire. It was composed of so many and so widely different cultures that no commonsense solution to any problem could ever be reached, and absurdity became the only possible way of life. Its inhabitants — the Austro-Hungarians, as the reader may already have suspected — thus were proverbial not only for their inability to cope reasonably with the simplest problems, but also for their ability to achieve the impossible somehow almost by default.” (p. 9) The common heritage also manifests itself in religious beliefs. While the official census data for 2001 shows that 73.6 per cent of the Austrian population was Roman-Catholic (Statistik Austria 2010), the same statistics for Slovenia was 71.6 per cent in 2002 (Statisticni urad Republike Slovenije 2010c).