Austrian Americans

It is impossible to correctly estimate the number of Americans of Austrian descent, though the 2000 U.S. census reported 735,128 Americans or 0.3 percent of the 2000 population. The difficulty in determining an exact number is introduced by Europe's fluctuating borders, and the rise and fall of its states throughout American history. A Habsburg-dominated Austria grew out of the Holy Roman Empire and became a major European power around the 17th century, while North America was being settled; it was proclaimed an empire in 1804 and reorganized as Austria-Hungary in 1867. That empire collapsed with the end of World War I in 1918 and was succeeded by six states, including the modern republic of Austria, which was annexed by Germany in 1938 and didn't regain sovereignty until 1955.

The earliest Austrian settlers in North America seem to have arrived in the early 18th century. Hundreds of Protestant Austrians from Catholic Salzburg settled in the colony of Georgia in 1734, establishing the town of Ebenezer near Savannah. The first governor of Georgia after independence, Johann Adam Treutlen, was an Austrian American. In the mid-19th century, 48ers immigrated to the United States following the uprisings in Austria in 1848, prompted by liberal intellectuals. A number of them became involved in the abolition movement, as they settled in northern cities like New York. Skiing was popularized in the United States in part because of Austrian Americans, who introduced alpine skiing, which became a competitive sport in 1861. Common occupations of 19th-century Austrian Americans included laborers, the service industry, and the growing steel industry.

The timing of an immigrant's arrival to the United States (or the pre-Revolution colonies) affects the likelihood of that new American identifying and being identified as Austrian. German speakers from anywhere in Europe were often counted as Germans by U.S. immigration officials in the 19th and early 20th centuries, regardless of their ethnicity. Immigration statistics from Austria-Hungary were not subdivided according to the empire's major ethnic groups, of which there were about 15. Nor were immigrants classified consistently; the same family might be classified as Austrian or Serbian depending on the immigration official. Many Austrians continued to be categorized as German until well after World War I.

In the chaos following World War I, over 18,000 Austrians immigrated to the United States from 1919 to 1924, at which point new immigration laws restricted Austrian immigration to 785 per year (bumped up to 1,413 per year in 1929). Until 1937, 16,000 more immigrated from that point; Austrian immigration to Canada also increased steeply because of American restrictions. In 1937, when the federal government relaxed immigration restrictions for refugees at the behest of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, numerous Austrian Jews came to the United States—over 30,000 before 1941. Some of this immigration was reversed in the 1960s as postwar Austria stabilized. Today, annual immigration from Austria is in the low hundreds.

The greatest concentration of Austrians settled in New York City, which today has a community of 93,083 Austrian Americans as of the 2000 census. Large groups also settled in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley (58,002 in Pennsylvania as a whole) and New Jersey (45,154). California (84,959) and Florida (54,214) have high concentrations of Austrian Americans, principally from later interstate migration from the northern cities. By percentage, the American communities with the most Austrians are in Wisconsin (Waterville: 12.1 percent, Durand: 9.2 percent, Rock Creek: 5.2 percent, Drammen: 4.4 percent, Mondovi: 4 percent), Pennsylvania (Coplay: 10.6 percent, Northampton: 5.2 percent, Upper Nazareth [Page 307]Township: 4.2 percent, Shuykill Township: 4.2 percent), and the Mid-Atlantic.

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