If we can also determine why the best Americans come from Canada, then perhaps we will have answered 2 questions with but one reply. ;)

if you are talking infamous i know of one closeted homosexual partially Jew painter named Adolph that came from austria

Maybe it's something in the water.

Albert Einstein? Pretty famous.

I think you will find that all the famous Austrians come from Austria. German is the official language of Austria, so even though they speak German, if they are from Austria, then they are Austrian. Not German. =)

While German is the official language of Austria, people from Austria are Austrian, not German.

Its because of the climate

If they were German, that means they come from Germany, not Austria. Austrians come from Austria.

Austrians are not German but they share a common langauge with Germany.

They're really from Holland

1) There are lots of famous Germans who don't come from Austria (I admit I did not check all of them...): Mario Adorf, Moritz Bleibtreu, Daniel Brühl, Sandra Bullock, Tony Curtis, Marlene Dietrich, Martina Gedeck, Gustaf Gründgens, Emil Jannings, Klaus Kinski, Hildegard Knef, Heike Makatsch, Uwe Ochsenknecht, Jürgen Prochnow, Heinz Rühmann, Hanna Schygulla, actors. Ernst Barlach, Joseph Beuys, Lucas Cranach, Albrecht Dürer, Max Ernst, Hans Holbein, Jörg Immendorff, Käthe Kollwitz, Markus Lüpertz, Franz Marc, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, artists. Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Georg Friedrich Händel, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Robert Schumann, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Carl Maria von Weber, Kurt Weill, composers. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, F.W. Murnau, Volker Schlöndorff, Wim Wenders, film directors. Theodor Adorno, Albertus Magnus, Jakob Böhme, Gottlob Frege, Erich Fromm, Jürgen Habermas, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Immanuel Kant, Gottfried Leibniz, Herbert Marcuse, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Schelling, Arthur Schopenhauer, philosophers. Also many scientists, engineers, singers, and writers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Germans (most of the Germans on that list, I would say) 2) Just because someone is speaking German, does not mean that they are German. Austrians speak German. Romy Schneider, Erich von Stroheim, Gustav Klimt, Falco, Udo Jürgens, Herbert von Karajan, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Johann Strauss, Niki Lauda, Fritz Lang, Erich von Stroheim, Edmund Husserl, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Kurt Gödel, Ernst Mach, Wolfgang Pauli, Erwin Schrödinger, Alfred Adler, Hans Asperger, Sigmund Freud, Paracelsus, Bruno Bettelheim, Konrad Lorenz, Ingeborg Bachmann, Peter Handke, Elfriede Jelinek, Rainer Maria Rilke, Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig, are (or were) all Austrians, not Germans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Austrians

Probably you mean Australia?

hitler is the only one i can think of

By the way I think there are no famous Germans from the British or American pov. The only famous German person for them is a certain Mr.Hitler.:) So it is a useless discussion if there ever were famous people coming from Germany. I do not understand such a useless discussion. George W.Bush or Mr.Gordon Brown are much more famous and important than any of these German blokes.