# German v. Austrian Ethnicity. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 17, 2018, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-v-austrian-ethnicity/826267 "2018-12-17T13:52:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Jim\_B](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jim_b/32/4338_2.png) [@Jim\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_B)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-v-austrian-ethnicity/826267/21 "2018-12-19T15:20:11Z")
I don’t if any of you are interested. But [here](http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/3094885/49692703) is a photograph of my Austria great grandmother. I was originally going to cut and past it in my OP. But for some reason I can’t do that with my cell phone. Yeah, I never met her. She does look like a typically Austrian woman, though, doesn’t she? My mother thought she was attractive. But she never mentioned the fact of how obese she was. When I saw her for the first time, I didn’t mention that to my mother. I have nothing against overweight people per se. But as I said, at first I envisioned her as a glamorous svelte woman (as per my mother’s descriptions). 🙂 EDIT: BTW, she could speak several languages. So apparently she was smart. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-v-austrian-ethnicity/826267/22 "2018-12-19T16:39:00Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > It’s very common. It’s generally much easier to understand a foreign language than to speak it yourself. You can get the gist of what’s said to know by knowing individual words without knowing enough grammar to construct a sentence yourself. As a Spanish speaker, I can often get the gist of lectures in Portuguese, although I don’t know enough to carry out a conversation readily. I agree, surprised anyone would doubt this. I wonder if they know any foreign languages less than perfectly, or maybe their brain just works differently than mine. I’ve polished up my high school French (of decades ago) in recent years to be able to read about topics of interest (military history and technology usually) in French fairly readily. This also means I can understand spoken French better than I used to. But I’m quite tongue tied to try to speak myself except very simple things. In Korean it depends. I have a lot of trouble understanding people speaking in certain styles and in those cases I can speak better than I understand. When people are speaking in more familiar styles (centered around the style of an older generation woman from southwestern South Korea, IOW my wife, who I understand well) I can understand better than I speak. I also understand the written word better than I can speak, again if that counts. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-v-austrian-ethnicity/826267/23 "2018-12-19T16:46:02Z")
> [@Jim\_B](#): > > I am a little confused about lineage and ethnicity. Specifically mine. > > My father was three-quarters French and 1/4 German. My mother was 3/4’s Polish and one-quarter Austrian. > > Anyway that makes me three-eighths Polish and three-eighths French. I realize that. But what about the German/Austrian part? Can I just add them together? > > I guess what I am asking is are Austrians and Germans ethnically the same? > > They speak the same language. German. They both typically have German surnames. Austria borders Germany. I believe they share a similar history. Some Germans welcomed Hitler, who was Austrian, as liberator. (I know that last one was unfortunate. But it does support my point:).) I guess the main difference is religion. Austrians are predominantly Roman Catholic. > > So ethnically (I am talking _ **ethnically** _)? (I realize geographically they are separate countries.) Are they the same thing? > > BTW and FWIW my mother said I should consider myself a Pole. I was a little closer to my mother’s side of the family and I did love her very much. But this thread is not meant to address that (i.e., what I should feel in my heart). > > :):)🙂 Similarly, my family came from the German portion of Switzerland, so we’ve considered ourselves “Germanic.” ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-v-austrian-ethnicity/826267/24 "2018-12-19T17:01:38Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > I agree, surprised anyone would doubt this. I wonder if they know any foreign languages less than perfectly, or maybe their brain just works differently than mine. I’ve polished up my high school French (of decades ago) in recent years to be able to read about topics of interest (military history and technology usually) in French fairly readily. This also means I can understand spoken French better than I used to. But I’m quite tongue tied to try to speak myself except very simple things. I’m surprised anyone would doubt this as well. It’s not just the grammar as someone previously mentioned- it’s also a difference in vocabulary. Even in our native language, we understand more words than we use. And it wasn’t terribly uncommon at various times and places for parents to discourage their children from using the parents’ language. Just as an example for **Jim B.** , my mother somewhat\* understood the Italian her grandparents spoke- because she heard it all the time. But her parents insisted that she speak only in English (which her grandparents understood a few words of) - and by “somewhat” I means she understood what you might call “household speech”. She would know if her grandfather wanted something to eat or if her grandmother wanted to know if it was cold outside, but she wouldn’t have been have a conversation about politics or work in a factory/office where that was the language. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-v-austrian-ethnicity/826267/25 "2018-12-19T18:16:17Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > DNA is relatively objective. Ethnicity is not always. But ethnicity results from DNA tests is a commercial attempt to map one to the other, and they are currently not doing a good job of being honest about how accurate, or inaccurate, that is. Ancestry’s latest update ditched the decimal point and default reporting of small percentages, but at the same time they added more regions and still report to single percentage point precision the percentages that are included. They are in the business of selling DNA-tests, not in the science of figuring out how DNA _actually_ varies geographically today and in the past. So they will slap a label on your DNA and say “You are 20% Polish and 80% German”, when what they have actually determined is that 20% of your DNA shows patterns that are more common in some of our reference groups in Poland than other reference and 80% … [the same for Germany.] Their autosomal comparisons are much more honest, because people can actually verify or refute claims of interrelatedness, whereas for ethnicity estimates people will accept any old ad hoc explanation. “I didn’t expect this much German, but there was a lot of movement of people between Germany and Poland.” is all true, but it that doesn’t mean it’s the correct explanation for your test results, rather than “The tests are not very accurate beyond very broad regions”. And everyone whose results fit their preconceptions will pipe up with their confirmation bias, even when their tests with two other companies gave what they considered wrong percentages. ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-v-austrian-ethnicity/826267/26 "2018-12-19T19:21:23Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Generally, to the last. However I will note there was a tendency, if at times a weak one, to refer to everyone living in the 19th-20th century Austro-Hungarian empire as “Austrian”. Witness my great-grandfather who emigrated to the US around 1910. His entry papers list him as _Austrian_ as a citizen of that state. But ethnically he was a Serb from Croatia ;). Same for my maternal grandmother’s parents except that they were Jews from what is now southern Poland near the Slovak border. Various other documents say they are from Poland or Galicia. You should have seen the conversation I had with the census enumerator for the American Community Survey! ---
**Author:** ![GiantRat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@GiantRat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GiantRat)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-v-austrian-ethnicity/826267/27 "2018-12-19T22:39:59Z")
All of these answers are in English. It’s a Germanic language. We must all be Germans. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-v-austrian-ethnicity/826267/28 "2018-12-19T23:02:23Z")
> [@Eva\_Luna](#): > > Same for my maternal grandmother’s parents except that they were Jews from what is now southern Poland near the Slovak border. Various other documents say they are from Poland or Galicia. You should have seen the conversation I had with the census enumerator for the American Community Survey! Yeah, Poland’s map is especially nuts. It disappeared there for a good while from the 1800s to 1918, and from the first years after 1918, the territory went all over the place. My great grandparents were Catholics from southern and eastern Poland, so when I did genealogy for the branch that moved to the US, I could find their places of birth listed as : Galicia, Austria, and Russia, but not Poland. There also was a faction from further northwest somewhere in there, as I remember seeing Prussia in the records as well. ---
**Author:** ![nicky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f0a364/32.png) [@nicky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nicky)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-v-austrian-ethnicity/826267/29 "2018-12-20T08:21:36Z")
Germans and Austrians are the same ethnicity: “white” ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-v-austrian-ethnicity/826267/30 "2018-12-20T12:17:11Z")
I’m sure they will be happy to learn it. Too bad the Thirty Years’ War could not have been averted. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-v-austrian-ethnicity/826267/31 "2018-12-20T18:53:18Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Similarly, my family came from the German portion of Switzerland, so we’ve considered ourselves “Germanic.” I have been to Switzerland and met my distant relatives descended from the siblings of my ancestor who journeyed to the New World. He was something like the 15th of 15 children, and while about half his siblings died in infancy, I guess there were still too many around when it came time to divvy up the family land, so he scooted. But while I have a Germanic last name, that ancestor put a T in front of the Z in it so it would be pronounced correctly over here. The relatives in Switzerland, of course, never adopted the T. And there is a Hungarian with that same surname who was famous enough in the 19th century to be put on a postage stamp at some point. My uncle, who researched our family tree extensively, figured him to be some sort of distant cousin. So Germanic extends beyond Germany, Austria and even Switzerland. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-v-austrian-ethnicity/826267/32 "2018-12-20T21:27:45Z")
“The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.” - Billy Wilder ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-v-austrian-ethnicity/826267/33 "2018-12-20T22:43:14Z")
My grandfather told me his parents were from Austria. Turned out they were ethnic germans from Alsace who migrated to what is now Croatia back when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and left there in 1900 for the US. Another branch of that same migrant family said they were Hungarian. But 23andMe DNA analysis shows them (and me) to be pretty germanic. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2018, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-v-austrian-ethnicity/826267/34 "2018-12-21T18:20:32Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > I’m not an expert on this, but is it not the case that “Germany” did not exist until about 200 years ago? Austria was just one of the richer, more successful states. Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Hanover, etc. were independent states or some were occasionally loosely federated. (There were dozens?) Much the same with “Italy”. So it would seem logical that the common ethnic group would be Germanic. Germany, Italy, France or Spain have existed as geocultural concepts a lot longer than they have been nation-states, but take into account that the modern concept of “nation state” is itself a recent invention (barely 200 and change years old). We all know who was King of Spain in 1520. In 1520 there was no Kingdom of Spain, but there was a clear concept of Spain. The same dude was Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, which in his mother’s language was called the _Sacro Imperio Romano Germánico_. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-v-austrian-ethnicity/826267.md?page=1)