Austria-Hungary?

Question

If your grandparent came from from a country of Austria-Hungary to Austria Hungarian parents, would that make you Austrian or Hungarian or both??? The town he came from was considered Hungarian before Czechoslovakia?

Answer 1

At the time they came to the USa the two countrys were ruled as one country under Saint Steven. You also may be a Banater. The Banat is a  area surronded by three rivers. David Dryer has done alot of research on this and the families from there. He has alot of info available on the internet to research.

Answer 2

It simply makes you "of mixed heritage", like everyone else !

your own heritage probably includes an Austro-Hungarian element at the very least. Your grandparent would have held the nationality of whichever country he was living in at the time, and that could have changed from time to time as the politics of the region changed.

Answer 3

Especially when looking at THIS PART OF EUROPE.. it can be next to impossible to "pin" a label on a person.  Consider-

a person is born in a town that when born, was Poland. Thirty years down the road, it has been annexed by Russia.  His ethnic background and nationality are not the same thing, since "nationality" fluctuates.  A comparison would be us being born in the US, but sometime down the road, Canada started a war, and took over the US.  The other factor is that, at present.. you don't have the PARENTS of the person involved.. you might find that he was born in Hungary.. but his FATHER was from France, and his mother was from Greece.  Extremes, but to help understand.. that in many cases, you can't box someone in to a specific.  

My grandfather, for example.. was born in what was, at the time, Germany, but only because Germany had annexed Poland.  I never attempt to define ME as being 1/4th Polish..because I am aware that I don't yet have HIS specifics or parents, which might easily change his "definition".  

99% of our thinking on this.. comes from us being raised in a country where the political boundaries are stable. If you go back in American history.. this can also be a factor. What is a person who was born in Calif in 1830?? Calif. was not a state then.. it was part of Mexico.. but this does not mean that the parent/ ancestor of that person had Mexican background, if they immigrated from Scotland to Calif, pre statehood.

The further you get in research.. the less you will be attaching definitions like that, because they don't work, as we expect them to.

Answer 4

you'd be half austrian and half hungarian i think :)

thats a nice mix

Answer 5

He could be either or both.  What became Czechoslavakia and Yugloslavia were part of the AustroHungarian empire.  There were many border changes so you really would have to research your grandparent's ancestry to see what ethnic group of the AustroHungarian empire they were. In that part of the world you really can't take it for granted that just because he was born in a specific town about his background.  He might be a mixture of a number of ethnicities from the AustroHungarian empire.

Answer 6

My paternal grandfather was born in Danzig, Prussia ... which is now Gdansk, Poland ... but is considered to be of German ethnicity. One of my great-grandfathers was born in Wasselone, Alsace, a region where German was spoken, ownership of which was sometimes French and sometimes German. He also is considered to be of German ethnicity.