Allison Centeno, Author at The Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies

The Socialite’s War: The Last Days of the Dual Monarchy on the Society Page

By Emily R. Gioielli

On January 27, 1908, “the most discussed” international alliance in the world was made in a mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York City: the marriage of socialite and heiress Gladys Vanderbilt and Count László Széchenyi, the great-nephew of Hungary’s nineteenth-century great reformer, Count István Széchenyi and an officer in the Austro-Hungarian imperial army.

The Socialite’s War: The Last Days of the Dual Monarchy on the Society Page2022-08-25T15:12:33+00:00

Edith Sampson in Austria: The Promise and Limits of Person-to-Person Diplomacy in the Early Cold War

By Athan Biss

In the first week of June 1951, Edith Spurlock Sampson, a fifty-year-old African American attorney from Chicago’s South Side, arrived in Vienna as a goodwill ambassador under the auspices of the United States Information Service (USIS).

Edith Sampson in Austria: The Promise and Limits of Person-to-Person Diplomacy in the Early Cold War2022-08-25T15:04:21+00:00

Richard Neutra California Living Exhibit at the Wien Museum and Los Angeles Modernism Revisited: Houses by Neutra, Schindler, Ain and Contemporaries by Andreas Nierhaus and David Schreyer

‘Richard Neutra California Living Exhibit at the Wien Museum and Los Angeles Modernism Revisited: Houses by Neutra, Schindler, Ain and Contemporaries by Andreas Nierhaus and David Schreyer

Andreas Nierhaus, curator of architecture at the Wien Museum, and David Schreyer, an architecture photographer based in Austria, embarked on a research trip to Los Angeles and southern California during June 2017 with the intent of taking a fresh look at little-known residences of classic modernism.

Richard Neutra California Living Exhibit at the Wien Museum and Los Angeles Modernism Revisited: Houses by Neutra, Schindler, Ain and Contemporaries by Andreas Nierhaus and David Schreyer2024-04-24T17:02:57+00:00

Teaching American-Austrian Encounters: The Case for Bayard Taylor

By Nadine Zimmerli

In the increasingly crowded antebellum marketplace for books on travel, Bayard Taylor’s 1846 Views A-Foot, or Europe Seen with Knapsack and Staff stood out as the only book chronicling an affordable tour of Europe.

Teaching American-Austrian Encounters: The Case for Bayard Taylor2022-08-25T15:05:17+00:00

Architekturzentrum Wien announces the release of Cold War and Architecture written by Monika Platzer.

‘A r c h i t e k t u r z e n t r u m W i e n announces the release of Cold War and Architecture written by Monika Platzer.

A r c h i t e k t u r z e n t r u m W i e n announces the release of Cold War and Architecture written by Monika Platzer. After Austria’s liberation by the Allies in 1945, Vienna became an important arena of the Cold War. In this book, Monika Platzer contextualizes the role of building activity and its protagonists in a nation lodged between competing systems. The global dimension of the East-West conflict and its ramifications are crucial to the reappraisal of Austrian architectural discourse after 1945. Each of the four occupying powers established an extensive cultural program. Great Britain, France, the US, and the Soviet Union used architectural exhibitions as platforms through which to transfer cultural, ideological, economic, and technological concepts and ideas. The battle of the different systems after the Second World War was all encompassing, and continued in the cultural arms race of two transnational networks of modernism, namely CIAM Austria and the International Summer Seminar (known today as European Forum Alpbach). The Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies is honored to support the English translation of this important work. Distributed by Park Books, the English translation of Cold War and Architecture may be purchased via The University of Chicago Press Books here:

Architekturzentrum Wien announces the release of Cold War and Architecture written by Monika Platzer.2024-04-24T17:03:09+00:00

Nadine Zimmerli’s An Unexpected Encounter between a Silesian Weaver and a (future) American President

An Unexpected Encounter between a Silesian Weaver and a (future) American President

By Nadine Zimmerli

Today I would like to recount John Quincy Adams’s visit to a Silesian weaver’s home in 1800 to share the delightful and unexpected insights that historical research into European-American connections can bring.

Nadine Zimmerli’s An Unexpected Encounter between a Silesian Weaver and a (future) American President2022-08-25T15:06:16+00:00

Imprisoned Germans, Half-mad Scots, and Bloodsucking Americans: The Habsburg Fears of Emigration to the United States

By Jonathan Singerton

“One could call this era the start of a new mass migration,” declared the editors of the popular Provinzial Nachrichten (Provincial News) of Lower Austria in August 1783. There was good reason. The rest of the frontline article relayed the numerous reports from across Europe of the wave of emigrants heading to the new United States of America. From Ireland, where “130,000 people” uprooted themselves, to as far as Poland “the same amount are now migrating to America,” the newspaper reads. A description of such an exodus in the Habsburg Monarchy was conspicuously absent from the report, but it was present.

Imprisoned Germans, Half-mad Scots, and Bloodsucking Americans: The Habsburg Fears of Emigration to the United States2022-08-25T15:06:25+00:00

A “solitary supper… and a glass of Hungary wine”: American Impressions of Central Europe in the Early Nineteenth Century

A "solitary supper... and a glass of Hungary wine": American Impressions of Central Europe in the Early Nineteenth Century

By Nadine Zimmerli

In mid-November of 1822, Washington Irving sat down to "a solitary supper... and a glass of Hungary wine" in Vienna. Irving—America’s first bestselling author of international fame—traversed much of Central Europe in the early 1820s, and he's a good reminder that early Americans explored Europe beyond the better known destinations of Britain, France, and Italy.

A “solitary supper… and a glass of Hungary wine”: American Impressions of Central Europe in the Early Nineteenth Century2022-08-25T15:06:42+00:00

Walter Kotschnig and the German Refugee Scholar Crisis

Walter Kotschnig and the German Refugee Scholar Crisis, 1933–36

By Joseph Malherek

At a critical historical juncture following Hitler’s rise to power, an Austrian political scientist helped to coordinate a profoundly consequential intellectual migration to the United States. Walter Maria Kotschnig (1901–1985) was well-positioned to respond to the crisis of refugee scholars caused by the Nazi Reich’s law to “restore” the professional civil service, which went into effect in April of 1933 and led to the immediate dismissal of more than a thousand academics in Germany.

Walter Kotschnig and the German Refugee Scholar Crisis2022-08-25T15:06:48+00:00

Vic Huber Interview

Austrian author Theodora Bauer discusses her writing process and research for her 2017 novel, Chikago. Published in German, Chikago chronicles the immigration journey of three young people, Feri, Katica, and Anica, from Burgenland to Chicago during the 1920s and 1930s.

LISTEN

Vic Huber Interview2019-12-03T15:39:23+00:00

About Allison Centeno

The Socialite’s War: The Last Days of the Dual Monarchy on the Society Page

Edith Sampson in Austria: The Promise and Limits of Person-to-Person Diplomacy in the Early Cold War

‘Richard Neutra California Living Exhibit at the Wien Museum and Los Angeles Modernism Revisited: Houses by Neutra, Schindler, Ain and Contemporaries by Andreas Nierhaus and David Schreyer

Teaching American-Austrian Encounters: The Case for Bayard Taylor

‘A r c h i t e k t u r z e n t r u m W i e n announces the release of Cold War and Architecture written by Monika Platzer.

An Unexpected Encounter between a Silesian Weaver and a (future) American President

Imprisoned Germans, Half-mad Scots, and Bloodsucking Americans: The Habsburg Fears of Emigration to the United States

A "solitary supper... and a glass of Hungary wine": American Impressions of Central Europe in the Early Nineteenth Century

Walter Kotschnig and the German Refugee Scholar Crisis, 1933–36