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Austria GEOGRAPHY
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Figure 5. Topography and Drainage
Austria is a small, predominantly mountainous country located
in south-central Europe. It has a total area of 83,859 square
kilometers, about twice the size of Switzerland and slightly
smaller than the state of Maine. The landlocked country shares
national borders with Switzerland and the tiny principality of
Liechtenstein to the west (200 kilometers together), Germany (784
kilometers) and the Czech Republic and Slovakia (568 kilometers
together) to the north, Hungary to the east (346 kilometers), and
Slovenia (311 kilometers) and Italy (430 kilometers) to the
south.
The westernmost third of the somewhat pear-shaped country
consists of a narrow corridor between Germany and Italy that is
between thirty-two and sixty kilometers wide. The rest of Austria
lies to the east and has a maximum north-south width of 280
kilometers. The country measures almost 600 kilometers in length,
extending from Lake Constance on the Austrian-Swiss border in the
west to the Neusiedler See on the Austrian-Hungarian border in
the east. The contrast between these two lakes--one in the Alps
and the other a typical steppe lake on the westernmost fringe of
the Hungarian Plain--illustrates the diversity of Austria's
landscape.
Seven of Austria's nine provinces have long historical
traditions predating the establishment of the Republic of Austria
in 1918: Upper Austria, Lower Austria, Styria, Carinthia,
Salzburg, Tirol, and Vorarlberg
(see
fig. 1). The provinces of
Burgenland and Vienna were established after World War I. Most of
Burgenland had been part of the Kingdom of Hungary, but it had a
predominantly German-speaking population and hence became
Austrian. Administrative and ideological reasons played a role in
the establishment of Vienna as an independent province. Vienna,
historically the capital of Lower Austria, was a socialist
stronghold, whereas Lower Austria was conservative, and both
socialists and conservatives wanted to consolidate their
influence in their respective provinces. Each province has a
provincial capital with the exception of Vienna, which is a
province in its own right in addition to being the federal
capital. In Vienna, the City Council and the mayor function as a
provincial parliament and provincial governor, respectively.
Data as of December 1993
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