By Benjamin M. Korstvedt

The tremendous growth in popularity of the music of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) in performance and especially on record during the 1960s and 1970s has achieved almost mythical status. Not only did performances and recordings of Mahler’s symphonies begin to flourish as never before, but his image was radically transformed. He went from being widely regarded as a composer of sprawling, idiosyncratic, often self-indulgent symphonies that belonged only on the fringes of the repertoire, to being seen as a composer of urgent importance who brought the long tradition of the Germanic symphony to its great and tragic climax...

By Thomas Riegler

In 1951 and 1955 Philby was investigated as ‘the third man’ after the defection of the first two members of the Cambridge Five. As journalist Gordon Corera puts it: ‘By a strange quirk of fate, the title of Graham Greene’s screenplay was now applied to the man, unbeknown to anyone, may have helped inspire it...

By Elizabeth O'Neil

During the 1930s and 1940s, thousands of scientists and intellectuals fled Austria. Some, especially those with Jewish heritage, left in the early 1930s when the threat of Nazi antisemitism became apparent. Others remained in Austria through the war years and left afterwards in search of financial security. This “intellectual migration,” as scholars often call it, had profound impacts both on Austria and the United States...

By Jonathan Singerton

Over the duration of its existence between 1829 and 1917, the Society donated around 4.2 million Austrian Gulden to the American cause. Unlike the other missionary societies, the Leopoldine Society restricted its alms to causes solely for use in North America, meaning the United States and Dominion of Canada...

By Duncan Bare

While much is already known about what US intelligence did in Austria between 1945 and 1955, relatively little has been written to date about their structure(s) or personnel, except to add ‘flavor’ and depth to stories of their operational exploits or specific projects. In some way, the task I set myself was to write organizational ‘biographies’ of OSS, SSU, and CIG in Austria. To accomplish this as accurately and comprehensively as possible, I would also need to reconstruct their organizational ‘family trees’, with branches stretching back to Washington...

By Dóra Fedeles-Czeferner

Rosika Schwimmer is probably the most established Hungarian women’s movement activist from the first half of the 20th century. In November 1918, she even stepped onto the international political stage when the government of Count Mihály Károlyi (1875, Fót, Hungary-1955, Vence, France) made her Hungarian envoy to Switzerland.

By Andrew Nagorski

Dr. Sigmund Freud, no less, with his gleaming violet eyes, his hard carved beard, his note of tense and even exasperated superiority, was advancing gravely to host and hostess. A hush came over the room as he moved forward like a boat through bulrushes; guests crammed to watch, but were bent back by the force of his slow, majestic passage. “Freud!” people whispered. The whole assembly became silent in awe...

By Kristina E. Poznan

Percy Lavon Julian became the third African American to earn a Ph.D. in Chemistry when the University of Vienna awarded him his doctorate in 1931. Julian had been born in Alabama and educated at the Lincoln Normal School, DePauw University, and Harvard University. He subsequently taught at Fisk University, West Virginia State College, and Howard University, educating a host of black students in chemistry...

By Mark S. Weiner

Why does the honor guard of the Mountain Rescue Association (MRA), the umbrella organization for all mountain rescue in America, carry Austrian ice axes when it stands in respect at memorials for fallen search-and-rescue personnel? For the past two years, I have been making a documentary film about the Austrian mountain rescue service, the Bergrettung, supported by seed funding from BIAAS.