At the end of the 19th century, the farm dogs began to die out when the work they did was no longer needed. In the early 20th century Emil Hauck, looking for an aboriginal dog type identified in 1843 by H. von Meyer as "Canis palustris" or "dog of the marshes" (a type of dog, not an actual species), found what he believed were some examples of similar dogs in the Austrian countryside. In 1921 he began serious breeding to revive and define the type of the breed, to separate them from other landrace pinschers of the area. The Austrian Kennel Club (Österreicher Kynologenverband) first recognised the breed as the" Österreichischer Kurzhaarpinscher" (translates in English as Austrian Shorthaired Pinscher) in 1928. The name was given to the breed to identify its place of origin as Austria (Österreich), and to differentiate it from the Schnauzer which at that time was called the "Rough-haired Pinscher" (rauhaariger Pinscher). After World War II, though, the breed almost vanished. In the 1970s only one registered dog of the breed remained, named Diokles of Angern. Breeding this dog with other dogs identified as of the old pinscher type in the area ("Landpinschern") has brought the breed back, although there are still only a small number of them.