About Adriana Lecuona

This author has not yet filled in any details.
So far Adriana Lecuona has created 40 blog entries.

Atom Splitting / Atomzertrümmerung: Austrian Manhattan Project Scientist Otto Robert Frisch in Los Alamos, 1943-1945

Atom Splitting /Atomzertrümmerung: Austrian Manhattan Project Scientist Otto Robert Frisch in Los Alamos, 1943-1945

By Kristina Poznan

The U.S. government’s World War II Manhattan Project benefitted from the work of several scientists born in Austria-Hungary, from physicists to chemists to mathematicians. Elizabeth Rona, Leó Szilárd, Edward Teller, John von Neumann,[1] and Eugene Wigner were all from Budapest, George Placzek from Brno, and Stanislaw Ulam from Lviv. Among those born in Vienna were Victor F. Weisskopf and, most significantly for our purposes, Otto Robert Frisch.

Frisch arrived in the United States to work on “Project Y” in Los Alamos in1943 as part of “British Mission” cohort of scientists (Frisch had hurriedly been made a British citizen to participate). Frisch’s scientific work had already taken him from Vienna to Germany, Denmark, and England before the United States, including the laboratory of his renowned aunt, Lise Meitner, with whom he theorized the fission of uranium. Although Frisch returned to Europe in 1946 after the war, his three years in New Mexico are indicative of a wide contribution of Austro-Hungarian scientific training to Allied victory in World War II.

READ MORE
Atom Splitting / Atomzertrümmerung: Austrian Manhattan Project Scientist Otto Robert Frisch in Los Alamos, 1943-19452022-08-25T15:02:37+00:00

ACFNY’s THREE WITH A PEN: LILY RENÉE, BIL SPIRA, AND PAUL PETER PORGES

AUSTRIAN CULTURAL FORUM NEW YORK ANNOUNCES PRESENTATION OF THREE WITH A PEN: LILY RENÉE, BIL SPIRA, AND PAUL PETER PORGES

On view March 11 through September 3, 2021

The Austrian Cultural Forum New York, in cooperation with the Jewish Museum Vienna, presents Three with a Pen: Lily Renée, Bil Spira, and Paul Peter Porges featuring works by the three Jewish artists driven from their homes in Vienna after the German annexation of Austria, the so-called “Anschluss”, in 1938. On view March 11 through September 3, 2021, the exhibition showcases examples of their signature work in comic books, New Yorker cartoons, Mad magazine spoofs, caricatures, portraiture, fashion design, advertising, and children’s books, among other formats. Biographical material and ephemera amplify the artists’ personal stories of survival and, in part, help contextualize their professional achievements.

LEARN MORE
ACFNY’s THREE WITH A PEN: LILY RENÉE, BIL SPIRA, AND PAUL PETER PORGES2022-08-25T15:02:45+00:00

Raptured and demonized: Josephine Baker in Vienna

Raptured and demonized: Josephine Baker in Vienna

By Mona Horncastle

In 1928, after two successful years in Paris, Baker starts her first tour of Europe with great expectations. Yet her victories are always accompanied by controversy. In Vienna, the first stop on her journey, Baker is omnipresent: posters advertising her second film La Revue des Revues show the almost naked Baker in pearls and feather jewelry throughout the city. The poster for her revue Black and White is no less revealing. Vienna is not Paris, and the entertainment culture of the Music Hall is still completely foreign to the city, which leads to agitation among cultural conservatives: Catholic circles mobilize before Baker even arrives in Vienna. When her train from Paris arrives, the church bells of the Paulanerkirche are chiming to warn the population of the "Black Devil." However, an unfazed crowd gathers to cheer enthusiastically as Baker arrives on the platform of the train station. The authorities are also ambiguous: on the one hand, Baker is promised police protection for the duration of her stay in Vienna, on the other hand, the Ronacher Theater is not permitted to show the announced revue.

READ MORE
Raptured and demonized: Josephine Baker in Vienna2022-08-25T15:02:52+00:00

Transatlantic Journeys in Musical Practice with Christiane Tewinkel

Transatlantic Journeys in Musical Practice

with Christiane Tewinkel

In this podcast, Dr. Christiane Tewinkel shares many fascinating aspects of her musicology research as related to Theodor Leschetizky and his American students. Born in Galicia in 1830, Theodor Leschetizky, a pianist and composer himself, became internationally famous as a piano teacher with over 1,000 students, including Fanny Bloomfield-Zeisler, Elly Ney, Ignacy Paderewski, and Arthur Schnabel.

Although Leschetizky had enormous influence during his time, his personal records had never been studied. That is, until now. Christiane Tewinkel traveled to the Leschetizky Association in New York to see their special collection for herself.

LEARN MORE
Transatlantic Journeys in Musical Practice with Christiane Tewinkel2022-08-25T15:02:58+00:00

Transatlantic Journeys in Musical Practice with Christiane Tewinkel

Dr. Christiane Tewinkel discusses her musicology research as related to Theodor Leschetizky and his American students. Born in Galicia in 1830, Theodor Leschetizky, a pianist and composer himself, became internationally famous as a piano teacher with over 1,000 students. Of these, 350-400 were American. Although Leschetizky had enormous influence during his time, his personal records had never been studied. That is, until now. Christiane Tewinkel traveled to the Leschetizky Association in New York to see their special collection for herself. Her findings are fascinating, revealing so much about a man, his "Method," students, transatlantic relations, musicology, and more.

LISTEN
Transatlantic Journeys in Musical Practice with Christiane Tewinkel2021-05-18T19:09:05+00:00

VOICES

VOICES

Leaving Siegfried Behind: Reimagining Monuments in Austria and the American South By Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand

A solitary stone figure occupies a prominent space at the institutional heart of the university. The statue commemorates the lives, primarily of students, tragically cut short on the battlefields of a war that ended in defeat. The memorial testifies to the continuing significance of that lost cause; the figure’s presence allows that past to intrude constantly into the present, allows that past to insist on keeping its narrative and its problematic memory current for successive generations. Each generation, in its respective present, must wrestle with the legacy of the past for which the memorial stands, a past that becomes increasingly contentious over time, as times change.

READ MORE
VOICES2022-08-25T15:03:04+00:00

A Sense of Belonging: The Camphill Movement and its Origins with Katherine E. Sorrels—A Two-Part Podcast Series

A Sense of Belonging: The Camphill Movement and its Origins—A Two-Part Podcast Series

with Katherine E. Sorrels

The Camphill Movement is a global network of intentional communities for abled and intellectually disabled people. With over 100 communities today, Camphill began after Dr. Karl Koenig, his wife Tilla, and a group of volunteers fled Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1938 and rejoined in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1939. There they undertook the care of Austrian- and German-Jewish refugee children, as well as British children, with disabilities. From that first Camphill Special School, a fusion of Jewish diasporas with Austrian and German spiritual movements and the U.S. counterculture all developed Camphill's extraordinary approach to disability.

READ MORE
A Sense of Belonging: The Camphill Movement and its Origins with Katherine E. Sorrels—A Two-Part Podcast Series2022-08-25T15:03:10+00:00

A Sense of Belonging: The Camphill Movement and its Origins–Part II

In this second podcast of a two part-series, Dr. Katherine Sorrels elaborates on specific elements of the Camphill Movement:  anthroposophy, counterculture, approaches to disability, Karl Koenig's relationship with Hans Asperger, and more.

LISTEN
A Sense of Belonging: The Camphill Movement and its Origins–Part II2021-02-23T15:56:19+00:00

Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies
200 E. State Street, Suite 306-A
Media, PA 19063
610-566-3375
CONTACT

Go to Top