Austrians
Historically, Austrians were regarded as ethnic Germans and viewed themselves as such. Austria was part of the Holy Roman Empire and the German Confederation until the Austro-Prussian war in 1866 which resulted in Prussia expelling Austria from the Confederation. Thus, when Germany was founded as a nation-state in 1871, Austria was not a part of it. In 1867, Austria was reformed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918 at the end of World War I, Austria was reduced to a rump state and adopted and briefly used the name the Republic of German-Austria ("Republik Deutschösterreich") in an attempt for union with the Republic of Germany, but was forbidden due to the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919). The First Austrian Republic was founded in 1919. The Third Reich annexed Austria with the "Anschluss" in 1938.
Statutory city (Austria)
From the middle ages until the mid-eighteenth century, the Austrian Empire was an absolute monarchy with no written constitution and no modern concept of the rule of law. Regional administration had no overarching legal framework; customs were different from province to province. A first step towards a systematic footing was taking by Empress Maria Theresa, who in 1753 partitioned the country into districts ("Kreise") ruled by district offices ("Kreisämter") staffed by professional administrators and operating under empire-wide consistent rules.
The scheme was unpopular at first and met with resistance. Most notably, it was never fully implemented in the Kingdom of Hungary.
Following the first wave of the revolutions of 1848, Emperor Ferdinand I enacted Austria's first formal constitution. The constitution abolished the estates and called for a separation of executive and judicial authority, crippling most existing regional institutions and leaving district offices as the backbone of the empire's administration. 
An 1849 Imperial Resolution consolidated and reaffirmed and revised the system.
The law was implemented in 1850, many districts now already in their present-day borders. Small to medium towns and villages were arranged into districts of ten to thirty municipalities each. Larger cities were made districts of their own; these cities would from now on be referred to as statutory cities. The first statutory cities in regions that are still part of Austria today were Vienna, Graz, Innsbruck, and Klagenfurt.