AFGHANISTAN MINORITY PROFILE
Profile
In the 2001 Census 25,884 Austrians stated that they use Hungarian as their everyday language. Of these, 10,686 were in Vienna and 4,704 in Burgenland. The total number of Hungarian-speakers is estimated at around 30,000, with 6,600 in Burgenland. The Burgenland population was 26,600 in 1910. Most of the Burgenland Hungarians live near the two district capitals of Oberwart/Felsoor and Oberpullendorf/Felsopulya. The Hungarian Group Advisory Council is the longest established of the official minority advisory councils. Two-thirds of Hungarians in Burgenland were Roman Catholic in 2004. Other faiths include Lutheran and Calvinist.
Historical context
Hungarians of Burgenland are the descendants of frontier guards sent during the eleventh century to protect the Magyar kingdom. They had aristocratic status and maintained this until 1848. Burgenland was under Hungarian rule until it became part of Austria in 1920. Hungarian education continued in the interwar period in a number of municipalities. Economic decline in Burgenland after the Second World War led to emigration. The negative image of the Hungarian language by this time led to assimilation.
Hungarians established a community in Vienna from 1541 when they were pushed out of Hungary by the Ottoman Turks. Towards the end of the seventeenth century Vienna became an important intellecutal and cultural centre for Hungarians. They set up their first cultural associations in Vienna in the 1860s, and the community increased to around 100,000. After the First World War I they declined sharply, but refugees from Hungary increased the numbers again in 1945, 1948 and 1956.
The Burgenland Hungarians were recognized as an official minority with the right to their own language in the 1976 Ethnic Groups Act.
The Hungarian community in Vienna was recognized as part of the Hungarian ethnic group in 1992.
Current issues
The Hungarian community in Austria complained that they have a disproportionately small share of federal funding to the numbers of their group, €330,000 in 2003. Public subsidies have been used to create teaching materials.
The right to Hungarian-language education in Burgenland was granted in 1937 and confirmed in 1994. Primary education has been provided in Hungarian in some schools in Burgenland since 1995, and Hungarian is offered in secondary and higher education throughout Austria. Hungarian-language primary education is provided by community organizations in Vienna. The community is pressing for state funding. Although the community has been successful in increasing Hungarian-language education, especially at secondary level, other rights such as bilingual place names and road signs have been denied. The amount of broadcasting in Hungarian is considered insufficient. The recognition of the Burgenland Hungarians before that of the Viennese community has meant that cultural initiatives are more advanced in Burgenland. There is some segregation between the two parts of the community, with publications and programmes produced in Burgenland not always available in Vienna.
Updated June 2015
Profile
The 2001 Census recorded 4,348 Romani-speakers with Austrian nationality and 1,925 with other nationalities. However, the official estimate for the Roma population is 10,000–20,000, while Romany sources estimate the autochthonous community at 20,000–25,000. In addition, there are new immigrants. The Roma are the only ethnic group which is officially recognized throughout Austrian territory.
The Burgenland Roma are mainly rural. The other Roma groups – Lovara (horse traders), Kalderas (tinkers), Gurbet and Arlije – and the Sinti are mainly city dwellers. The majority live in Vienna and eastern Austria. The Roma have their own strong religious beliefs and traditions, but down the centuries they have adopted various Christian denominations and Islam in order for their children to be regarded as legitimate by the authorities. The Arlije and some Gurbet are Muslims; other Gurbet follow the Serbian Orthodox religion. Burgenland Roma, Lovara and Sinti extended family networks were destroyed by the Nazi genocide in the 1930s and 1940s, making it more difficult for them to maintain their traditions. Some Lovara migrated from Hungary in 1956 and so their networks remain intact, as do those of the Kalderas, Gurbet and Arlije, who came to Austria as Gastarbeiter (guest workers) from Yugoslavia in the 1960s.
The Kalderas, Gurbet and Lovara are part of the Vlach-Roma group, whose language is strongly influenced by Romanian. The Burgenland Roma speak Roman, a version of Romani. The Romani language is spoken by an estimated 80 per cent of Roma in Austria.
The Roma Advisory Council to the federal government met for the first time in 1995.
Historical context
Roma were recorded in Burgenland at the end of the fourteenth century. Their metal-working skills were in demand and they began to settle there in the seventeenth century. They were banned from northern Burgenland and their persecution continued with so-called ‘gypsy hunts’ in the early eighteenth century. They were forced into inter-racial marriage and their children were removed to be brought up by non-Roma families. Nomadic lifestyle was banned, and the Roma were forced to live on the edge of villages in ‘gypsy houses’, which still exist. They made their living as blacksmiths, knife-grinders, broom makers, seasonal farm workers and musicians.
The Lovara came to northern Burgenland in the second half of the nineteenth century and a second wave fled from Hungary after 1956. Sinti left southern Germany for Austria from the turn of the twentieth century until the beginning of the First World War. They worked as travelling salesmen, makers of umbrellas and musical instruments, acrobats, actors and musicians.
From 1928 the Burgenland Roma, Lovara and Sinti were forced to register on a ‘gypsy index’. From 1939 they were interned, then deported to concentration camps, where the majority died.
Those who survived the concentration camps or managed to escape deportation benefited from the post-war economic revival in the cities. They were joined by the second wave of Lovara in 1956 and the Kalderas, Gurbet and Arlije Gastarbeiters in the 1960s. The Kalderas worked mainly in the construction and metal industries, while Arlije were carpenters, electricians and mechanics.
The Roma gained official recognition as a minority group in 1993.
Current issues
The majority of Roma are city-based and many have assimilated. Most Gurbet and Arlije are Austrian citizens, as are most second-generation Kalderas. Many are self-employed in second-hand trading and other businesses.
As ethnic data is only collected on an optional basis in the Austrian Census, the numbers and distribution of Roma, and thus the analysis of problems of integration and discrimination, are inevitably inaccurate. Government policy for the Roma community is directed mostly at the conditions of the Burgenland Roma, the most disadvantaged group – but they are quite a small part of the total Roma community.
Roma education and media
Roma are disadvantaged in education and achieve lower levels than the general population. A minority complete higher secondary education, and very few go on to higher education. But the situation has improved somewhat for children born after 1980.
In 1993 the Romani community and Graz University developed teaching materials for Romani, which has been offered in Burgenland as a voluntary subject for at least five pupils since 1999/2000. In 2004/05 such classes were held in two primary and one secondary school. Romani associations provide language courses for children and adults.
Since 2000 Roma teaching assistants have been assigned to classes in Viennese schools with a high proportion of immigrant Roma.
A radio station was set up in 1999 by Roma and other minority communities to broadcast in their languages in Burgenland. However, it went off air in 2002 when the government withdrew its financial support. There is no Romani language programme provision by the state broadcaster, ORF.
According to Roma representatives, the Roma Advisory Council to the federal government is dominated by those with political party interests who have little knowledge of the Roma community.
Roma and the Holocaust
The federal government has announced a programme to compensate Roma victims of the Holocaust and to document the community’s suffering during that time. However, a secret vote of the Burgenland Municipal Council of Kemeten in 2003 went against the Burgenland government’s decision that monuments should be erected to the Roma victims.
Continuing discrimination
In 1995, four Roma were murdered in a pipe bomb attack in Oberwart, Burgenland County, Austria. The attacker – who targeted minorities in other attacks – was subsequently jailed for life. Racist prejudice continues against established Roma and new immigrants. A 2005 Council of Europe Anti-Racism Commission report said that many Roma continue to face serious socio-economic disadvantage – especially in education. It also noted that Roma report prejudice and discrimination in their relations with law enforcement officers.
Updated June 2015
ABOUT AUSTRIA
Main languages: German
Main religions: Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam
Minority groups include former Yugoslavs 322,261 (4.0%), other Central and Eastern Europeans 59,353 (0.7%), Turks 127,226 (1.6%), Roma/Gypsies 20,000-30,000, Burgenland Croats 19,374, Carinthian Slovenes 12,554, Styrian Slovenes 2,192, Burgenland and Viennese Hungarians 25,884, Jews 8,140 and Czechs 11,035.
There is strong pressure to assimilate and naturalization increased from 2.2 per cent of the foreign population in 1992 to 4.2 per cent in 2001. The trend continues upwards. Nearly 30 per cent of those acquiring nationality in 2004 were born in Austria. Once minorities have Austrian citizenship, their minority origin is no longer recorded in national statistics, making indirect discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity hard to track.
There are 13 officially recognized religions. In 2001 Roman Catholics accounted for 5.9 million (73.4%), followed by Protestants (Augsberger and Helvetic) 376,150 (4.7%), Muslims 338,988 (4.2%), Greek Eastern Orthodox (Russian, Greek, Serb, Romanian and Bulgarian) 174,385 (2.2%), Old Roman Catholics 14,621, Buddhists 10,402, Jews 8,140 and the following small congregations: New Apostolic, Mormons, Armenian Apostolic, Coptic Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox and Methodist. There are nine other religions which have fewer rights, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, Free Christian and Pentecostal, Evangelical, Seventh Day Adventists, Hindu, Baptists, Christian Movement for Religious Revival, Baha’i, and Pentecostalists in Austria.
Environment
Austria is adjacent to the Balkan countries and to the new European Union (EU) member countries in Central Europe. It has been a centre for migration from the east for hundreds of years and continues to be so.
History
Austria has long had a shifting population. Slovenes settled much of present-day Austria, parts of Italy and Hungary, as well as Slovenia, from the sixth to the ninth centuries. By 1500 changing alliances and dynasties reduced their territory to southern Austria, Slovenia, eastern Italy and western Hungary, and this was ruled by the Hapsburgs until 1918. German immigration to Carinthia and Styria from the thirteenth century further reduced Slovene numbers there.
Jewish immigration and money-lending was encouraged by a charter giving Jews protection issued in 1244 by Count Friedrich II of Austria. Even so, hatred preached in Christian churches against Jews led to their expulsion from Carinthia and Styria to Burgenland in 1496. By the seventeenth century, prosperous Viennese Jews were members of the royal court. Repression from 1740 to 1780 was followed by the Tolerance Edict of 1781. Jews were accorded equal rights and full participation in society in 1867. Jews became prominent in finance, business, the arts and learning. After the First World War Zionists formed the Jewish National Council to fight against assimilation and anti-semitism. Jews were among the leaders of the Social Democratic Party. With the rise of National Socialism, many emigrated. The annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, the Anschluss, was followed by the deportation of around 100,000 Jews to concentration camps, where 70,000 died. Jewish property was confiscated and restitution since 1945 has been restricted to those Jews who kept their Austrian nationality and did not adopt foreign nationality.
Roma were recorded in Burgenland at the end of the fourteenth century. Favourable conditions for them led to the first settlements there in the early seventeenth century. However, in the late seventeenth century they were banned. Their persecution continued with so-called ‘gypsy hunts’ in the early eighteenth century, followed in the later part of the century by forced inter-racial marriage and seizure of Roma children to be brought up by German-speaking families. The nomadic lifestyle was banned, and the Roma forced to live on the edge of villages. They made their living as knife-grinders, broom makers, seasonal farm workers and musicians. In 1928 they were forced to register on a ‘gypsy index’. Regarded as an inferior race by the Nazis, from 1939 they were interned, then deported to concentration camps, where the majority died. Despite the ban on nomadic lifestyle, the Sinti, a distinct group similar to the Roma, worked as travelling salesmen, makers of umbrellas and musical instruments, acrobats, actors and musicians until the 1930s, when they met the same persecution as the Roma. Those who survived the concentration camps or managed to escape deportation benefited from the post-war economic revival in the cities. The Sinti have maintained their anonymity, unlike the Roma in Burgenland, who became an official minority in 1993.
Croat immigration began after the first Turkish siege of Vienna in 1529 and Turkish occupation of the Balkans. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries immigrant Czechs and Slovaks provided cheap labour for Austria’s industrialization. In 1910 the majority of Vienna’s inhabitants were not born there. Discrimination and the requirement of those who would settle to swear to uphold vigorously ‘the German character’ of Vienna resulted in most immigrants being assimilated within one generation.
The rural areas, where the established minorities were settled, saw massive emigration to the USA from the late nineteenth century, increasing in the 1920s and 1930s as agriculture declined. Rural minorities also moved to the Austrian cities. These trends, coupled with the pressure to assimilate, have led to a constant decline in established minority populations.
The main centres for established minorities have been Burgenland (Croats, Hungarians and Slovaks) and Carinthia (Slovenes). Carinthia saw increasing German settlement over the centuries. Nazi activity was particularly strong in Carinthia and against the Slovenes generally in the 1930s and 1940s. Many were dispossessed of property and some were deported to concentration camps. Strong right-wing politics remain a feature of the German-speaking population in Carinthia and Styria.
The Republic of Austria was occupied by French, British, US and Soviet troops after the Second World War. The Austrian State Treaty of 1955, which restored sovereignty, gave official minority status to the Croats in Burgenland and the Slovenes in Carinthia and Styria. The Slovene and Croat languages were recognized as official minority languages for use in administration and legal affairs and education in these districts.
In the 1960s Austria invited Gastarbeiter (guest workers), principally from Türkiye, former Yugoslavia and Poland. But neither they nor their children have residency rights. The 1976 Aliens Employment Act restricted immigration with different types of work permits. The 1993 Residency Act set annual immigration quotas and introduced separate work and residence permits, with family members of immigrants not allowed to work. From the late 1990s, family reunification rules were made more restrictive. Newly unemployed non-nationals are liable to deportation. Austria’s tough policy on asylum seekers has been criticized by the Council of Europe and other members of the EU, which Austria joined in 1995. But the influence of new right-wing parties from the 1990s, the war on terror from 2001, the enlargement of the EU from 2004 and the enactment of new EU anti-discrimination laws resulted in the introduction of even more stringent measures for new immigrants and policing in 2006.
Governance
The 1955 State Treaty is the basis for protection of minorities. It recognizes Croat and Slovene as official languages in addition to German in Burgenland, Carinthia and Styria, where there were significant ‘mixed’ populations. The State Treaty also bans acts of discrimination. The burden of proof lay with the plaintiff. Penalties for racial discrimination were mainly focused on preventing a revival of National Socialism. Other measures against discrimination were aimed at keeping the peace rather than improving conditions for victims. Data was collected on racial crimes and the activities of right-wing extremists, giving an incomplete picture of discrimination. In 2004 anti-discrimination measures were enacted in civil and employment law.
In 1976 the Austrian Parliament passed the Status of Ethnic Groups in Austria Act, extending the rights of recognized ethnic groups to allow for minority representation and thus the facilitation of funding for minority protection. Burgenland Hungarians and Viennese Czechs became official minorities. One year later, Ethnic Advisory Councils were set up to assist the federal government in all matters concerning Austria’s Croat, Slovene, Hungarian and Czech minorities. The requirement that these official minorities should be settled and have a distinct ethnicity and language prompted a trend towards greater segregation, which runs counter to the State Treaty. In addition, the 1976 Act required that a ‘considerable’ part of the population (taken to be 25 per cent) should be from the minority before place-name signs could be put up in that language as well as German. The changes in the 1976 law which deviated from the State Treaty were contested by the Burgenland Croat community, who won their case at the Constitutional Court in 1987.
In 1992 the Residence Act introduced different work and residence permits, preventing family members of immigrants from working. In 1997 the amended Aliens Act set restrictive quotas on family reunification but gave greater security to immigrants living for five or more years in Austria. In 2003 new laws required immigrants to study the German language and Austrian civic duties, and to provide a health certificate. Quotas for permanent residence were reduced while temporary permits increased. Asylum would not be considered for any national of a country deemed ‘safe’ by EU governments.
The 2004 Equal Treatment Act, Federal Equal Treatment Act, and Equal Treatment Commission and Office for Equal Treatment implemented the EU’s Racial Equality Directive and the Employment Equality Directive, and introduced comprehensive anti-discrimination measures into civil and employment law for the first time. The burden of proof has shifted and the accused must establish the likelihood of non-discrimination. However, the two organizations that will oversee the application of the law are not independent of government. As anti-discrimination law is both a federal and a provincial matter, the nine provincial governments enacted the equal treatment laws by early 2006.
The Aliens Law Codification, which came into force on 1 January 2006, upheld the restrictive immigrant residency and work permit system, and introduced new limitations on asylum and new police powers of arrest.
Austrian Citizenship Act 2006
The Austrian Citizenship Act 2006 requires foreign nationals wanting to adopt Austrian citizenship to have knowledge of the democratic process and history of Austria, proof of knowledge of the German language, sufficient means of subsistence, no convictions or offences, and continuous residence of six to 30 years depending on other conditions. The six-year rule applies if the applicant is a national of another European Economic Area (EEA) state, has the official right to asylum, was born in Austria, has been married and living with an Austrian spouse for five years, or has made an exceptional contribution to science, arts or business in the interest of Austria. Those making an exceptional contribution can be granted nationality without long-term residency at the discretion of the federal government.
The authorities can also grant citizenship at their discretion to foreign nationals who have lived continuously in Austria for 10 years. Those who have lived in Austria continuously for 15 years and who have proven personal and professional integration, and those who have lived continuously in Austria for 30 years have the right to citizenship.
The provincial governments of Carinthia and Burgenland have minority education acts to allow the teaching of Slovene in Carinthia and Croat and Hungarian in Burgenland.
Religious communities are governed by an 1874 law (updated in 1998) which sets three categories: officially recognized religious societies, religious confessional communities and associations. The first can conduct religious services, set up schools and raise funding for programmes. The government provides funding for their religious teachers and private schools. This is denied to the other two categories.