“I was born an Austrian and I want to die an Austrian” is Hermine Orian’s last wish. The 103-year-old South Tyrolean has been fighting for an Austrian passport for years. But here, along with the Andreas Hofer Bund, it falls on deaf ears.
The tough elderly man was born on April 23, 1919 in Kurtatsch. South Tyrol was then still part of Austria, although the Italian army had occupied the country. Only through the Treaty of St. Germain did South Tyrol become part of Italy. Mrs. Orian is the last remaining catacomb teacher who secretly taught children German.
The case of a native of Carinthia was also curious in a very different direction. When he wanted to move within Vienna, he was promptly rejected by the magistrate with the words “You are a foreigner”. They even asked for his mother’s birth certificate. Only after much back and forth and a “Krone” report was the Austrian believed and allowed to report back to Vienna.
The SPÖ and the Labor Chamber pushed through with criticism of the granting of citizenship, the president said: The thresholds were “too high”. Not true, the ÖVP refuted, referring to the increase in naturalizations last year and this year. But what are the facts? And how do you get the coveted red-white-red passport?
The biggest point of contention is how long you have to live here before you can apply for the passport. It is ten years, in exceptional cases six. Sufficient knowledge of German at B1 level must be demonstrated for the document. This means that you can talk about many topics in simple language. If you want to call yourself Austrian, you must have an income of 1000 euros per month.
When you have all the documents together, you can take the exam. You have to prepare for it with a hundred pages of material. There are 18 questions (partly multiple choice), nine are state specific, the rest Austrian general knowledge (see examples below, solution at the end of the article). If it doesn’t work, you will get a new appointment.
Some don’t want to, some don’t
Coming back to whether obtaining citizenship is easy or difficult, as always, the truth lies somewhere in between. The fact is that Austria has a pretty strict law. In other EU countries it is often a lot easier.
Yet the numbers have been steadily increasing for years. In 2010, there were still 6190 neo-Austrians, in 2020 already 8996 people could enjoy the red passport (half after six years). In 2021 that was 16,171. This is also due to the fact that many Nazi victims and their descendants received their passports during a ceremony. Yet there is criticism: SOS Mitmensch calculated that with the naturalization rate of 0.6 percent, it would take 170 years before all 1.6 million foreigners living here would have a passport. It is also a fact that Western European ‘foreigners’ in particular – the Germans form the largest group – often do not want this at all.
One thing is already clear: the last word in the citizenship debate is far from over.
Source: Krone
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
