Austria Emigration and Immigration

Online Records

 * 1686-1855 Ansiedlerakten, 1686-1855 To Hungary. Card file and documents relating to settlers from Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Böhmen, Moravia to the Banat (mostly) and other regions of Hungary during the 17th-19th century.
 * 1750-1943 Zentrale Sippenkartei, 1750-1943 Index cards, arranged alphabetically by surname, which provide information on date and place of birth, death, and marriage; names of spouse, parents, children (with their birth and death dates); and occupation for Germans who settled abroad, chiefly in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
 * 1750-1943 Auswandererkartei mit Familienangehörigen, 1750-1943 Index cards, arranged alphabetically by surname, for German emigrants and their family members. Provides information on nicknames, given names, and variant forms of surnames; ancestral home, earlier and later lands of allegiance, places and dates of birth and death, religious persuasion, date of emigration, earlier and later places of settlement, original occupation and later activity, name of spouse, places and dates of birth and death, place of marriage, occupation and later activity; names, places and dates of birth and death for children, places of residence, names of spouses. Places of settlement include the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, Poland and Italy.
 * 1782-1805 Ansiedlerakten, 1782-1805 Card file and documents relating to settlers from Germany, Bohemia and Moravia to Galicia and Bukovina during the 18th-19th century.
 * 1904-1914 index & images. Also at MyHeritage index & images ($); includes those with Destination of Austria
 * 1938-1945 Germans, Swiss and Austrians Deported from France,ca. 1938-1945. Index. Incomplete.
 * 1940-1941 Stammblätter der Umsiedler aus Wartheland-Polen, und Litauen Pedigrees of immigrants recorded by the EWZ (Einwandererzentralstelle) (Immigrant Control Office) of migrants from Wartheland-Poland and Lithuania who were resettled in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria. Includes names, dates and birthplaces of the emigrant, his parents, grandparents, and children; residence, occupation, and religion. Often includes a photograph of the immigrant.
 * 1946-1971 Free Access: Africa, Asia and Europe, Passenger Lists of Displaced Persons, 1946-1971 Ancestry, free. Index and images. Passenger lists of immigrants leaving Germany and other European ports and airports between 1946-1971. The majority of the immigrants listed in this collection are displaced persons - Holocaust survivors, former concentration camp inmates and Nazi forced laborers, as well as refugees from Central and Eastern European countries and some non-European countries.
 * Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild Choose a volume and then choose Italy under "Listed by Port of Departure" or "Listed by Port of Arrival".
 * Georgia (United States) Salzburger and allied families

Passports

 * 1792-1918 Paßregister, 1792-1918 Passports of citizens recorded at Vienna, Niederösterreich, Austria.

Finding the Town of Origin in Austria
If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in Austria, see Austria Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

Austria Emigration and Immigration
"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country. Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Emigration from Austria

 * Austrian emigration patterns have been difficult to determine. There was no official country known as Austria until 1918.  Prior to that time the sprawling Habsburg Empire, an amalgam of a dozen nationalities, encompassed the idea of Austria.
 * Between 1860 and 1974 Austria provided 4.3 million emigrants to the United States. These included ethnic German, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Slovene, Romanian, Italian, Croatian and Serbian peoples. During many of these years Latin America also received many Austrian emigrants.

Austrian Americans

 * According to the 2000 U.S. census, there were 735,128 Americans of full or partial Austrian descent, accounting for 0.3% of the population. The states with the largest Austrian American populations are New York (93,083), California (84,959), Pennsylvania (58,002) (most of them in the Lehigh Valley), Florida (54,214), New Jersey (45,154), and Ohio (27,017). This may be an undercount, as many German Americans, Czech Americans, Polish Americans, Slovak Americans, and Ukrainian Americans, and other Americans with Central European ancestry can trace their roots from the Habsburg territories of Austria, the Austrian Empire, or Cisleithania.
 * The Austrian migration to the USA probably started in 1734, when a group of 50 families from the city of Salzburg, Austria, migrated to the newly founded Georgia. Having a Protestant background, they migrated because of Catholic repression in their country.
 * In the first fifty years of the 19th century, many more Austrians emigrated to the United States, although the number of Austrian emigrants did not exceed a thousand people. Prior to the year 1918, the precise number of Austrians who emigrated to the USA is unknown since Austria was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so the U.S. Census recorded the number of people from all over the empire in the same group (the Austro-Hungarian group).
 * In this period, most of the emigrants were Tyroleans who lacked of lands or that fled the Metternich regime.
 * The immigration of Austrians increased during the second half of 19th century, and in 1900 had 275,000 Austrians living in the USA. Many Austrians settled in New York City, Pittsburgh, and Chicago.
 * Since 1880, when a great wave of emigration started from all over Europe, Austrians also emigrated massively to the United States, looking for new agricultural land on which to work because as the Austrian Empire was undergoing industrialization, fields were being replaced by cities.
 * From 1901 to 1910 alone, Austrians were one of the ten most significant immigrant groups in the United States, with more than 2.1 million Austrians.
 * Many of them, more than 35 percent, returned to Austria with the savings that they had made by their employment.
 * In 1914–1938, Austrian immigration was low, until it slowed to a trickle during the years of the Depression. Between 1919 and 1924, fewer than 20,000 Austrians emigrated to the North American country, mainly from Burgenland.
 * However, since the late 1930s, many other Austrians migrated to the United States. Most of them were Jews fleeing the Nazi persecution which started with the Annexation of Austria in 1938. In 1941, some 29,000 Jewish Austrians had emigrated to the United States. Most of them were doctors, lawyers, architects and artists (such as composers, writers, and stage and film directors).
 * Much later, between 1945 and 1960, some 40,000 Austrians emigrated to the United States. Since the 1960s, however, Austrian immigration has been very small, mostly because Austria is now a developed nation, where poverty and political oppression are scarce. According to the 1990 U.S. census, 948,558 people identified their origins in Austria.

Austrian Argentines

 * Austrian immigrants who came to Argentina did during the two great migratory waves, i.e., about the First and Second World War.
 * The main settlement sites were Buenos Aires, Córdoba and Misiones; in the south, cities like San Carlos de Bariloche and San Martin de los Andes were among the main destinations for Austrians.
 * In the early thirties, approximately 9,000 people of Austrian descent resided in Buenos Aires. These figures are similar to those recorded in the Austrian Embassy, approximately 7,000 people of Austrian descent in Buenos Aires, considering the probability of being greater.
 * Since the mid-nineteenth century there had been established a German-speaking colony in the neighbourhood of Belgrano, Buenos Aires. The Austrian and Swiss residents in Buenos Aires were integrated into this colony by the language and cultural affinity in general.

Austrian Canadians
Austrian Canadian largest populations by provincein Canada in 2011:
 * According to the 2016 Census there were 207,050 Canadians who claimed either full or partial Austrian ancestry. Austrian Canadian communities can be found throughout the country but with a higher concentration mainly in Western Canada.
 * In the 17th century, soldiers from the Austro Hungarian Empire settled in New France. Numbers increased following the passing of the Staatsgrundgesetz (constitutional law) in 1867 which allowed free migration from the empire for civilians. Emigration to Canada increased throughout the late 19th century and into the early 20th, until this was tightened in 1914 at the onset of World War I.

For Further Reading
There are additional sources listed in the FamilySearch Catalog:
 * Austrian Americans provides a historical overview of emigration to America.