Those Cranky Austrians

A new German television show, which allows viewers to vote on the “greatest Germans” of all time, has incurred the wrath of Austrians for including several Austrian-born individuals on the list. Chief among the disputed candidates is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was actually from Salzburg and spent the bulk of his career there and in Vienna. Other great Germans of dubious Germanic heritage include Joseph Haydn, Sigmund Freud, and Copernicus. The Germans say that there were bound to be compaints, because, as the show’s producers tactfully put it, “Germany’s borders had changed so often.”