Now the HRE is called the German-Roman Empire in many languages because the inhabitants of it would be considered German (later the Dutch/Deutch divide and all that, which has already been discussed here before).
But despite being German people, there still exist very distinct cultures amongst the German people. Most notably is the Bavarian culture which has been popularized as the German culture in the US.
Now I've seen plenty of times that they tried to push for unification after the Habsburg emperors were dethroned after WW1 and, to quote Wikipedia, "This was grounded in the view that Austria had never been a nation in the true sense. While the Austrian territory had existed in one form or another for over 700 years within the Holy Roman Empire and later the German Confederation, its only unifying force had been the Habsburgs. Apart from being German inhabited, these Lands had no common ‘Austrian’ identity and there had never been an Austrian state before. They were Habsburg ruled lands that had not joined the Prussian dominated German Empire after Austrian Empire lost the Austro-Prussian War."
So what I wondered is, if there's such distinct cultural differences within the current German state (which I would wager to be as different as Denmark-Norway-Sweden and to some extent - Finland-Iceland), why did the people at the time believe there was no distinct Austrian identity? And was that actually true?
And additional question would be, why they based the state on the Habsburgs, since other nations were also solely ruled by one dynasty through many centuries - the current Danish monarch can trace her lineage back to Gorm den Gamle (though not directly since that line has since vanished) as an example.
EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_German-Austria <--- Wikipedia link!
The problem of Austrian national identity is a bit of a tricky one.
First off, the term "Austria" was in 19th century until the end of WWI used in three different ways:
A) "Austria" as a multiethnic dynastic empire consisting of various kingdoms, duchies etc. ruled under the Habsburg imperial crown and encompassing significant part of Central and Eastern Europe; after the Ausgleich (compromise) with Hungary in 1867 this term started to be more and more limited to the Cisleithanian (or "Austrian" if you will) part of the Monarchy.
B) "Austria" as the historical Archduchy of Austria; it's worth mentioning that this historical Austria was also pretty heterogenous, it consisted of Slovenes and Italians as well and there were some very culturally specific regions eg. Vorarlberg.
C) "Austria" as the so-called "German Austria" which was an informal name for either the German-speaking parts of the Archduchy of Austria or for all the German-speaking regions of the entire Empire, not only limited to the Archduchy; although the German-speaking parts of Transleithania (the "Hungarian" part of the Monarchy) were generally excluded from this term, thus it reffered mainly to the German-speaking parts of the Archduchy of Austria and Kingdom of Bohemia.
Now, the problem with "Austrian nation" in 19th century was that it reffered to something different than what we understand today. The nationally conscious people of German Austria considered themselves part of the German peoples, reffering to themselves as "Austro-germans", "Austrian Germans", "German Austrians", "Germans in Austria" or simply "Germans". That doesn't necessarily mean that the Austro-Germans didn't see differences between themselves and most of the "Germany's Germans", especially in terms of religion; however they still considered themselves as a part, albeit a rather specific part, of the German nation and not as a nation in itself.
It's worth noting that there were significant regional differences within German Austria on this issue, for example in Vorarlberg they held a referendum in 1919 in which over 80% of the local population voted to join Switzerland, albeit that initiative was rejected by the Entente. On the other extreme, Manfried Rauchensteiner in his book "The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy" gives an example of several peasants from Upper Austria in 1918 that wrote on a church door 'We were Bavarian, and we want to be Bavarian again’. Hence the situation was not as straightforward.
Now, the term "Austrian" until 1918 was understood not in the ethnic nationalist terms - since "Austria", as outlined above in A), was a multiethnic Habsburg dynastic empire, the term "Austrian" was understood in terms of state citizenship or as an expression of dynastic loyalty towards the Emperor (Kaisertreue), thus basically being a declaration of supra-national identity, hence even a Czech or a Ruthenian could be (and was) considered as an "Austrian".
Since the different parts of the Monarchy had little in common except for the sovereign, fostering such identity was considered by the goverment as crucial to hold this vast multiethnic entity together - basically the goverment used it as a tool to contain the rise of nationalism in the entire monarchy which threatened its very existence; some of the more radical pan-german nationalists in Austria for example advocated incorporation of German Austria into Germany under Hohenzollers rather than Habsburgs. By the way in the radical nationalist circles (this applies not only to the Germans but also to for example the Czechs) the term "Austrian" was used as a derogatory term for a person who was not sufficiently "nationally active".
The idea of Austrian identity as a completely separate nation as we know today became prevalent only after WWII (in no small part thanks to an attempt to distance from Nazi Germany and its crimes), albeit the interwar goverment/dictatorship of right-wing conservative Engelbert Dolfuss in 1930s already tried to distance Austria from Germany, accenting the religious differences in particular, however this had only a limited appeal compared to the post-WWII development.
Sources:
HOOR, Ernst; Österreich 1918-1938. Staat ohne Nation. Republik ohne Republikaner, 1997
RAUCHENSTEINER, Manfried, The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914-1918, 2014
THALER, Peter, The Ambivalence of Identity: The Austrian Experience of Nation-Building in Modern Society, 2000
What one also has to mention is that to this day, there are multiple divisions of Austria. We are organized as a Federation consisting of 9 States. Vorarlberg has a very distinctive identity, they speak an alemannian dialect and feel therefore close to the Swiss. Tirol has always maintained a very independent identity, as it had its own "parliament" of estates since 1293. Salzburg was independent until 1815. Carinthia has its unique Slovenian-German history.
For the people in 1918, they considered themselves "Vorarlberger" or "Tyrolean" or "Carinthian" first and foremost. And as an overarching identity, they considered themselves "Germans" because they spoke german. Language was identical with Nationality back then in common view. The various Italian states had been unified under the notion of "we all speak dialects of Italian, so we must be one country!". The same is true for the German states who joined Prussia in the German Empire/Reich.
The wish to be annexed by Germany was however not solely caused by the feeling of a "German identity". When Hungary, Czechoslovakia etc declared themselves independent, the country lost big parts of their resources and factories. The economy of the Monarchy was similar to the globalised world of today: Cattle was held in the Hungarian plains, then the meat got delivered to all the parts of the monarchy. Cloth manufactures were in Bohemia. Fish was bred in the Alps. When the Monarchy collapsed, this network of economy was intermitted by new borders and tariffs.
Therefore many people in Austria deemed the economy of this new state of Austria not able to survive and wanted economical access to the German markets.