Austrian/German. Ing. !!!

[dave1948]

Karen,

Just to say he was Austrian, but i put both Austrian and German to confuse you, lol.  I may not NEED the explanation you gave, but it does help in understanding these little 'quirks' between one country and another.

Regards,  Dave.

[HughC]

I was surprised to see Karen explain Abitur as a "type of technical secondary school".
Surely in Austria, as in Germany, it's the school leaving certificate -- more or less equivalent to our A Level ?
But perhaps the explanation was intended for HTL (which I have to admit I'd never heard of).

The late Prof. Fritz Bauer of the TU München preferred to call it Munich Institute of Technology, I suppose by analogy with MIT.  And when it was just a technische Hochschule it was Munich Polytechnic.
More useless information!

[Berlin-Bob]

But perhaps the explanation was intended for HTL (which I have to admit I'd never heard of).

Yes, that's right.

There are two school leaving certificates:
"mittlere Reife",  equivalent (more or less) to O-levels and
"Abitur",  which is - as you say - "more or less equivalent to our A Level"

As in Britain, if you leave school with "Mittlere Reife"/O-Levels, you can't go to University, but you can go to technical colleges, and get your Abitur there. 

Bob

[HughC]

I now see that the Austrian equivalent of Abitur is called Matura.
In my mind I was equating Matura and mittlere Reife -- but etymology is not always a reliable guide.