Blog
Günter Bischof, PhD, a BIAAS Board Member, writes about Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian Catholic Resister. Terrence Malick’s WWII drama A Hidden Life, about Jägerstätter, will debut at the Cannes Film Festival.
By Jonathan Singerton In November 1783, readers of the Wienerisches Diarium learned about the craze of monument building across the Atlantic. “Sculpted marble,” “bas-reliefs,” and “statues of bronze” were springing up across the American states to commemorate their independence and to honour their leader, Washington. The editors closed the latest report in the ‘Amerika’ section…
By Jonathan Singerton When Colonel William Stephens Smith (1755-1816) rode along the “most remarkably bad road” between Pirna and Litoměřice along the Elbe River, he joined an exclusive cadre of Americans who reached the Habsburg lands in Central Europe. In all likelihood, Smith became the fifth American to visit the Habsburg capital, Vienna. In August…
By Jonathan Singerton During the summer of 1785, a middle-aged man and his seventeen-year-old son entered a house in New York City. Inside were three men but only one rose to greet them. An impressively tall figure, standing at 6’6”, he warmly invited them to share some of the finest Madeira wine. Such an encounter…
By Jonathan Singerton Who are the most famous foreigners to have fought in the War of American Independence? Fighting for the side of American liberty, we may think of familiar French officers like the Marquis de Lafayette or the Comte de Rochambeau. Prussians like Baron von Steuben or martyrs like Johann de Kalb and Casimir…
By Jonathan Singerton The name Joseph Donath might not be familiar to you, but perhaps it ought to be. Donath became the second Habsburg representative in the United States after Baron de Beelen-Bertholff. His commercial mission came about through the machinations of several Viennese industrialists, spearheaded by Joseph Paul Reichsfreiherr von Weinbrenner. Weinbrenner owned a…
By Jonathan Singerton August should have been a relatively safe time for transatlantic travel, but calm seas and prosperous winds could still give way to fierce storms and howling gales. “At around two in the morning,” recorded one poor soul on the George Washington in 1783, “we awoke for the second time to one of…
By Jonathan Singerton There was nothing ordinary about Maria von Born; from the very beginning she seemed destined to lead an extraordinary life. Her father was the most celebrated scientist and mineralogist in the Habsburg Monarchy, Ignaz von Born. Born in Prague, in the gilded Saxon House overlooking the gateway to gothic Charles Bridge, she…
By Jonathan Singerton Back when the United States of America struggled to become an independent nation, one name stood out for Europeans as the quintessential American: Benjamin Franklin. Before the revolution his name became synonymous with modernity through his prolific writing, scientific endeavours, and his numerous inventions, most famously the lightning rod, the Franklin stove,…
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