- Robert Musil
Robert Musil (November 6, 1880, Klagenfurt, Austria - April 15, 1942, Geneva, Switzerland) was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel "The Man Without Qualities" (in German, "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften") is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels. The novel deals with the moral and intellectual decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire through the eyes of the book's protagonist Ulrich, …
- Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt was a Hungarian virtuoso pianist and composer of the Romantic period. He was a renowned performer throughout Europe during the 19th century, noted especially for his showmanship and great skill with the piano. Today, he is considered to be one of the greatest pianists in history, despite the fact that no recordings of his playing exist. Liszt is frequently credited with re-defining piano playing itself, and his influence is still visible today, …
- Ferdinand Porsche
Prof. Dr. h.c. Ferdinand Porsche was an Austrian automotive engineer. Porsche was born in Vratislavice nad Nisou, Bohemia, which is now part of the city of Liberec in the Czech Republic, known also as Maffersdorf in German. Porsche is best known for designing the original Volkswagen Beetle and for his contributions to advanced German tank designs: Tiger I, Tiger II and the Elefant.
- Bruno Schulz
Bruno Schulz (July 12, 1892 - November 19, 1942) was a Polish novelist and painter, widely considered to be one of the greatest Polish prose stylists of the 20th century. Schulz was born in Drohobycz, at the time when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the province of Galicia (now Drohobych is in Ukraine) to assimiliated Jewish parents.
- Josef Hoffmann
Josef Hoffmann was an Austrian architect and designer of consumer goods. He studied with Otto Wagner. He played a major part in the shaping of the aesthetic perception and aesthetic understanding of the 20th century. In today's Czech Republic (including Bohemia and Moravia), the results of the Industrial Revolution were more obvious than in the other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Josef Hoffmann (born in 1870 in Pirnitz, Moravia, now Brtnice, …
- Mátyás Rákosi
Mátyás Rákosi was a Hungarian dictator and the leader of Hungary from 1945 to 1956 through his post as General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party. Rákosi was born in Ada, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Serbia). The sixth son of a Jewish grocer, he later repudiated religion. He served in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War and was captured on the Eastern Front.
- Otto Preminger
Otto Ludwig Preminger (December 5, 1906 - April 23, 1986) was an Austrian actor and twice Oscar-nominated film director. Preminger was born in Vienna to a well-known family. Preminger's father Marc was once the Attorney General of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As their father, both Otto and his brother, Ingo Preminger, earned law degrees in Vienna. Preminger worked with Max Reinhardt before emigrating to America. At first he directed and acted for 20th Century Fox.
- Siegfried Marcus
Siegfried Samuel Marcus (Malchin, Mecklenburg, Germany September 18, 1831 - July 1, 1898 in Vienna) was a German but most of his time living in Austria inventor and automobile pioneer. In 1852 Marcus moved to Vienna, capital of Austria (then, the Austro-Hungarian Empire). From 1856 to 1898 he worked as a self-employed manufacturer of scientific instruments in this city. He developed an interest in electricity and as a lighting technician too.
- Mile Budak
Mile Budak was a Croatian polititian and writer, best known as one of the chief ideologists of the clero-fascist Ustaše movement, which ruled illegally under Axis Powers protection in part of Yugoslavia 1941-45, waging a genocidal campaign against its Serb, Roma and Jewish minorities. He created Croatian national plan to get rid of Orthodox Serbs by killing one third, expelling one third and assimilating the rest. Mile Budak was born in Sveti Rok, in Lika, …
- Franz Künstler
Franz Künstler is the last known surviving veteran of the First World War who fought with the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He joined the Austro-Hungarian army in February 1918 for training in a mounted artillery regiment, and served at the Italian front in November 1918. After the war, he fought against the communists, and was a soldier until 1921.
- Franz Schmidt
Franz Schmidt (December 22, 1874 - February 11, 1939) was an Austrian composer, cellist and pianist. Schmidt was born in Pressburg, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (this is now Bratislava, Slovakia). He studied piano briefly with Theodor Leschetizky, with whom he clashed. He moved to Vienna with his family in 1888, and studied at the Conservatory there (composition with Robert Fuchs, cello with Ferdinand Hellmesberger and theory with Anton Bruckner), …
- Kasimir Felix Graf Badeni
Kasimir Felix Graf Badeni (or Count "Kasimir Felix von Badeni", born Kazimierz Feliks hrabia Badeni; Surochów, Galicia, October 14, 1846 - July 9, 1909) was Minister-President of the Austrian half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1895 until 1897. Many people in Austria, especially Emperor Franz Joseph, had placed great hope in Badeni's ability to solve some of the Empire's constitutional problems, but he disappointed them.
- Viktor Ullmann
Viktor Ullmann (b. 1 January 1898 in Teschen, Austro-Hungarian Empire, now divided between Cieszyn in Poland and Český Těšín in the Czech Republic; d. 18 October 1944 in Auschwitz-Birkenau) was an Austrian composer, conductor and pianist.
- Hans Richter
Hans Richter (4 April 1843 in Raab, today Győr, Hungary as János Richter, died 5 December 1916 in Bayreuth) was an Austrian-Hungarian conductor. Richter studied at the Vienna Conservatory with a particular interest in the horn), and developed his conducting career at several opera-houses in the Austro-Hungarian empire. He became associated with Richard Wagner in the 1860s, …
- Jovan Dučić
Jovan Dučić was a famous Bosnian Serb poet, writer and diplomat. The exact date of Dučić's date of birth is still undetermined; it is variously said to have been on February 17 (or February 5 according to the Julian calendar) of 1871, 1872, or 1874, with the latter date most often given. He died on April 7, 1943. He was born in Trebinje in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he attended primary school.
- Emmerich Kalman
Emmerich Kálmán, also known as Imre Kálmán, was a Hungarian composer of operettas. Kálmán was born in Siófok, on the southern shore of Lake Balaton, Hungary (formerly in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) in a Jewish family. Kálmán had initially intended to become a concert pianist, but because of early-onset arthritis, he instead started focusing on composition.
- Paul Henreid
Paul Georg Julius Hernried Freiherr von Wassel-Waldingau, (January 10, 1908 - March 29, 1992), known professionally as Paul Henreid, was an actor and film director probably best known for his roles in "Casablanca" and "Now, Voyager". Born in Trieste, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Henreid was the son of an aristocratic Viennese banker.
- Arthur Arz von Straussenburg
Baron Arthur Arz von Straussenburg was the last military leader of the Austro-Hungarian Army, until the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
- Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg was an Academy Award nominated American director, actor, producer, and acting teacher. He was born Israel Strassberg in Budzanów, former Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Budaniv, Ukraine), to Ida and Baruch Meyer Strassberg.
- Aleksandar Hemon
Aleksandar Hemon (born 1964) is a Bosnian fiction writer living in the United States. Hemon was born in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, to a father of Ukrainian descent and Serbian mother. Hemon's great-grandfather, Teodor Hemon, came to Bosnia from Western Ukraine prior to World War I, when both countries were a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hemon graduated from the University of Sarajevo with a degree in literature in 1990.
- Leó Szilárd
Leó Szilárd, originally Szilárd Leó, was a Hungarian-American physicist who conceived the nuclear chain reaction and worked on the Manhattan Project. He was born in Budapest under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and died in La Jolla, California.
- Alfred Kubin
Alfred Leopold Isidor Kubin (April 10, 1877 - August 20, 1959) was an Austrian Expressionist, illustrator and occasional writer. Kubin was of Czech ancestry, he was born in Bohemia in the town of Leitmeritz, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. From 1898 to 1901, Kubin studied at the art school Schmitt Reutte and at the Munich Academy. He produced a small number of oil paintings in the years between 1902 and 1910, …
- Wilhelm Jahn
Wilhelm Jahn was an Austro-Hungarian conductor. He served as director of the Vienna Court Opera from 1880 to 1897 and principal conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra from 1882 to 1883. He gave the partial premiere of Bruckner's "Symphony No. 6", performing the middle two movements in 1883. Jahn was born in Dvorce, Bruntál District in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in the Czech Republic) and died in Vienna, Austria at age 34.
- Yevhen Petrushevych
Yevhen Petrushevych (June 3, 1863 in Busk, Galicia — August 29, 1940 in Berlin, Germany) was a western Ukrainian politician and president of the Western Ukrainian National Republic formed after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918.
- Muhammad Asad
Muhammad Asad (born Leopold Weiss in July 1900 in what was then Lemberg in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Lviv in Ukraine; died 1992) was a Jew who converted to Islam.
- Ferenc Szisz
Ferenc Szisz, was a French race car driver and the winner of the first Grand Prix motor racing event on a Renault Grand Prix 90CV 1906. Ferenc Szisz was born in the small town of Szeghalom in Békés county of the Hungarian part the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was trained to be a locksmith but in his early twenties the growing proliferation of automobiles fascinated Szisz and he studied engineering. After time spent in several Austrian and German cities, …
- Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing
Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (August 14 1840 - December 22 1902) was an Austro-German psychiatrist who wrote "Psychopathia Sexualis" (1886), a famous study of sexual perversity, and remains well-known for his coinage of the term "sadism" (after the Marquis de Sade). He also coined the term masochism using the name of a contemporary writer, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, …
- Elisabeth Bergner
Elisabeth Bergner (August 22 1897-May 12 1986) was an actress. She was born Elisabeth Ettel in Drohobycz, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Drogobych, Ukraine). She began acting in Innsbruck at the age of 15. In Vienna, she worked as an artist's model, posing for sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck, who fell in love with her. She eventually moved to Munich and then Berlin. In 1923 she made her film debut in "Der Evangelimann".
- Zoltán Tildy
Zoltán Tildy was an influential leader of Hungary, who served as Prime Minister from 1945-1946 and President from 1946-1948 in the post-war period before the seizure of power by Soviet-backed communists. He was born in Losonc (which is now Lučenec, Slovakia), in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the family of a Hungarian official in the local government. He took a degree in theology from the Reformed Theological Academy in Pápa, …
- Rose Ausländer
Rose Ausländer, maiden name Rosalie Beatrice Scherzer, was a German writer. She was born in Czernowitz, which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Between 1907 and 1919, she received her primary and secondary education in Vienna and Czernowitz. In 1919, she began studying literature and philosophy in Czernowitz. She developed at this time a life-long devotion to the philosopher Constantin Brunner.
- Emmy Destinn
Emmy Destinn was a renowned Czech operatic soprano. Destinn was born Emilie Pauline Kittel or Ema Pavlína Věnceslava Kittlová in Prague, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At first Destinn devoted herself to studying the violin, and intended to shine as a virtuoso on that instrument. When she was well on in her teens, however, her voice was so rich and full that she changed her mind and determined upon an operatic career.
- Rudolf Bing
Sir Rudolf Bing (January 9, 1902 - September 2, 1997) was an Austrian-born opera impresario. Bing was General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1950 to 1972. He was Knighted in 1971. Born Rudolf Franz Joseph Bing in Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire to a well-to-do Jewish family (his father was an industrialist) Bing studied at the University of Vienna and as a young man worked in theatrical and concert agencies.
- Max Valier
Max Valier was an Austrian rocketry pioneer. He helped found the German "Verein für Raumschiffahrt" (VfR - "Spaceflight Society") that would bring together many of the minds that would later make spaceflight a reality in the twentieth century.
- Leo Perutz
Leopold Perutz was a German language novelist and mathematician. He was born in Prague and was thus a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He lived in Vienna until the Nazi "Anschluss" in 1938, when he emigrated to Palestine. According to the biographical note on the Arcade Publishing editions of the English translations of his novels, …
- Wilhelm Souchon
Wilhelm Anton Souchon (2 June 1864-13 January 1946) was a German admiral in World War I who commanded the Kaiserliche Marine's Mediterranean squadron in the early days of the war. His initiative made him one of the most important characters for the entry of the Ottoman Empire into World War I. When hostilities erupted between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Serbia in July 1914, …
- Count Ottokar Czernin
Ottokar Theobald Otto Maria Graf Czernin von und zu Chudenitz (born September 26 1872 in Dymokury, Bohemia; died April 4 1932) was a son of the Bohemian high aristocracy, in the diplomatic service of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and a politician during the time of World War I.
- Josef Wagner
Josef Franz Wagner (1856 - 1908) was an Austrian military bandmaster and composer. He is sometimes known by the sobriquet 'The Austrian March King'. He is best known for his 1902 march "Unter dem Doppeladler" or "Under the Double Eagle", referring to the double eagle in the coat of arms of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The march became a favourite part of the repertoire of John Philip Sousa, who recorded it three times.
- Anna Ticho
Anna Ticho (1894 - 1980) was born in Moravia, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the modern-day Czech Republic. At the age of 15 she began to study the art of drawing in Vienna. In 1912 she moved to Israel (then known as Palestine) with her cousin, the renowned ophthalmologist Avraham Albert Ticho (1883-1960), whom she later married. The two moved to Jerusalem where Dr. Ticho opened an eye clinic and Anna worked as his assistant.
- Carl Auer von Welsbach
Carl Auer Freiherr von Welsbach (9 September 1858 - 8 April 1929) was an Austrian scientist and inventor who had a talent for not only discovering advances, but turning them into commercially successful products. He is particularly well known for his work on the rare earth elements, which led to the development of the flint used in modern lighters, the gas mantle which brought light to the streets of Europe in the late 1800s, …
- Robert William Seton-Watson
Robert William Seton-Watson (August 20, 1879-July 25, 1951), commonly referred to as R.W. Seton-Watson, he also used the pseudonym Scotus Viator, was a British historian who also played an active role in encouraging the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during and after World War I.