German surnames are also quite common in the Czech Republic; the country was part of the Austrian Empire before 1918 and had a large German population until World War II. Some of them got phonetically normalized and transcribed to Czech ("Müller" (miller) as well as "Miler"; "Stein" (Stone) as well as "Štajn", "Schmied" (Smith) as well as "Šmíd" (or "Šmýd"), Fritsch (Frič), Schlessinger (Šlesingr), etc. Some of them retain their original German surnames e. g. : Gottwald, Feiersinger, Dienstbier, Berger, Koller, Klaus, Franz, Forman, Ebermann, Lendl, Ulihrach, Gebauer, Kaberle, Vogelstanz, etc.