The Ambassador

Dear visitors of our homepage, 

It is a great pleasure for me to welcome you via internet on the homepage of the Austrian Embassy Manila. 

In the following chapters we have tried putting together some useful information concerning Austria and the Philippines. Consular issues are thereby a clear focal point. We tried to put forward all requirements in order to facilitate your official businesses with the Embassy. Various links will guide you to other relevant pages of the Foreign Ministry in Vienna as well as to other related offices and institutions on topics in the field of economy, culture, tourism etc.  

Additionally, we made efforts to pass on some information on general and historical topics in the field of Austrian-Philippine relations which by the way date back to much earlier days as

might have expected. Did you know for example, that King Carlos I of Spain (under whose regency the first Spanish ships had landed 1521 in the Philippines) was nobody else but Emperor Karl V of the Habsburg Dynasty, ruling an “empire in which the sun never set”? Did you know that the Philippines are named after a member of the Habsburg-family, his son Philipp II? Did you know that a warship of the Austrian Imperial navy had visited Manila already in 1858 and that the famous Austrian artist Josef Selleny had painted some impressive pictures of the Philippines at this occasion?  Did you know that the first book of travels of the Philippines in German language was published in Vienna 1860 at the k.u.k. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei? Did you know that the Philippine national hero José Rizal was a very close friend of the Austrian scholar Ferdinand Blumentritt in the Bohemian town of Leitmeritz (in then Austria-Hungary) and that it was Blumentritt who translated his famous novel “Noli me tangere” into German? 

This shows that already the early stage of our relations has more common reference points than one would probably assume. But it was in the 20^th century when the human contacts were really intensified in substance when thousands of Philippine nurses came to Austria in the 1970s. Many of them married Austrian citizens and founded families there. We can proceed from the assumption that today some 30.000 people with ethnic Philippine background are living in Austria, most of them as Austrian citizens. On the other hand, an average of 500 – 1000 Austrians live permanently in the Philippines, peaking in the months of winter. 

The team of the Austrian Embassy in Manila will try to update the information on this homepage permanently. We very much hope that this page is useful for you.

With my best regards from Manila, 

Wilhelm Donko,

Ambassador