Provinces of Austria facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Provinces of Austria Österreichs Länder / Bundesländer  (German)
Category	Federal state
Location	Republic of Austria
Government	Landtag
Subdivisions	Districts and statutory cities

Austria is a country in Europe that works like a federal republic. This means it's made up of different parts, like a team. Austria has nine main parts called provinces. In German, these are called Länder.

Since "Land" can also mean "country," people often use the term Bundesländer (which means "federal states") to be super clear. Both words are used in Austria's main rulebook, the Constitution of Austria. Each Austrian province can make its own laws, but these laws must follow the rules of the country's constitution. Also, each province sends people to represent them in Austria's main parliament.

Exploring Austria's Provinces: Where Are They?

Burgenland

Carinthia

Lower Austria

Upper Austria

Salzburg

Styria

Tyrol

Tyrol

Vorarlberg

Vienna

Austria's provinces are quite different depending on where they are located.

The provinces of Upper Austria, Lower Austria, Vienna, and Burgenland are mostly in the Danube river valley. This means their land is usually flat and good for farming. It's also easy to travel through these areas.

On the other hand, the other five provinces are located in the Alps mountains. This makes them less suitable for farming. The mountains also make it harder for big factories or long-distance trade. Because of this, most of Austria's population has lived in the flatter provinces for a very long time.

Vienna is Austria's capital and its most crowded province. It's the center of Austria's only big city area. Lower Austria has many of Vienna's suburbs, but it's not as crowded overall because it has large farming areas.

The provinces of Tyrol (which is very mountainous), Carinthia (less mountainous but far away), and Burgenland (mostly farms) are Austria's least crowded. Vorarlberg is a unique mountain province. It's small, a bit isolated, and has its own special German language and culture.

How Provinces Govern Themselves

Each Austrian province has its own elected group of lawmakers, called the provincial parliament. They also have a provincial government, led by a governor. The governor is called a Landeshauptmann (for a man) or Landeshauptfrau (for a woman).

Elections for these provincial parliaments happen every five years, except in Upper Austria where they are every six years. The rules for how the provincial government seats are given to political parties are set by the province's own constitution. Most provinces use a system where parties get seats based on how many people they have in the provincial parliament.

The governor is chosen by the provincial parliament. In real life, the governor is usually the leader of the political party or group of parties that has the most members in the provincial parliament.

Vienna: A City and a Province

Vienna, Austria's capital city, has a special role. It acts as both a city and a province at the same time! The mayor of Vienna also has the rank of a provincial governor. The city council also works as the provincial parliament.

However, Vienna's rules say that city business and province business must be kept separate. So, even though the same people are in both the city council and the provincial parliament, they hold separate meetings. Each group also has its own leader. When they meet as a city council, they only talk about city matters. When they meet as a provincial parliament, they only talk about province matters.

What Powers Do Provinces Have?

Austria's federalism (the idea of sharing power between the central government and provinces) is mostly a theory. The provinces actually have very few powers to make laws.

When Austria's main constitution was first written, it gave all law-making powers to the provinces. But over time, many of these powers were taken away. Now, provinces can only make laws about a few things, such as:

• Planning and building rules
• Protecting nature
• Hunting and fishing
• Farming
• Protecting young people
• Some parts of public health and welfare
• The right to collect certain taxes

Most other important things are decided by federal (national) laws. This includes things like:

• Laws about crimes
• Laws about everyday life (civil law)
• Laws about businesses
• Most economic laws
• Defense (the military)
• Most education matters and universities
• Telecommunications (phones, internet)
• Much of the healthcare system

Also, there are no separate court systems for the provinces. The federal constitution says that the court system is only a national matter. This central way of doing things comes from a long time ago, when power was mostly held in Vienna during the time of the empire.

Even though provinces have limited power to make laws, the province governor (Landeshauptmann) is in charge of carrying out many federal laws within their province. This makes the governor a very important political person. Also, provinces have power over local planning and how public money is spent at the regional level. This gives them a lot of influence. For example, provinces have sometimes been able to stop projects that the national government wanted, like a railway tunnel planned under the Semmering.

Austrian provinces have much less independence than American states or German lands. Even so, Austrians feel very strongly about their own province. They often protect the small amount of independent control their province has. It's common for Austrians to feel like they are, for example, Tyrolean first and Austrian second.

How Austria's Provinces Came to Be

The provinces we see today in Austria got their shapes from the "crown lands" of Austria-Hungary. This was a huge empire with many different groups of people. After World War I, this empire broke apart, and the German-speaking part became the Republic of Austria.

The provinces of Upper Austria and Lower Austria are pretty much the same as the two parts of the Archduchy of Austria. This was a very old principality that was the historic heart of the empire. Salzburg is the same area as the old Austro-Hungarian Duchy of Salzburg.

In a similar way, the province of Carinthia comes from the Duchy of Carinthia. Styria comes from the Duchy of Styria. And Tyrol comes from the Princely County of Tyrol. These provinces had to give up some land to Czechoslovakia, Italy, and Yugoslavia when Austria became a country in its current form. The province of Vorarlberg is made up of lands bought by the House of Habsburg (the ruling family) in the 1300s and 1400s. It was a partly independent part of the County of Tyrol from 1861.

After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, most of these areas lost their independence. Provincial charters (special rules) were put in place in 1861, but the central government still held most of the power. After the First World War, the provincial governments said they were part of the Republic of German-Austria. During this time, the provinces and the national government talked and agreed to form a federation. This meant having a national lower house elected by the people and an upper house representing the provinces.

The city-province of Vienna was part of Lower Austria until 1921. The province of Burgenland is made up of an area where most people spoke German. This area used to belong to the Kingdom of Hungary until 1921. Hungary had to give it to the First Austrian Republic after World War I because of the peace treaties of Trianon and Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

The Nine Provinces of Austria

Here are the nine provinces (Bundesländer) of Austria:

In the list above, a "city" is a community that Austrian law officially calls a city. A "town" is a community that is not called a city. Many of Austria's cities have populations around 10,000 people, and some are even smaller!

See also

In Spanish: Estados de Austria para niños

• Distribution of seats in Austrian provincial parliaments
• Districts of Austria
• Flags of Austrian states
• Coats of arms of the Austrian states
• ISO 3166-2:AT
• List of Austrian states by GDP
• List of Austrian states by Human Development Index