Database of Funded Projects
The Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies has generously funded academic research and public history projects that promote an understanding of the historic relationship between the United States and Austria. The following search tools make it possible to explore these projects and to learn more about the scholars and organizations who have received BIAAS grants and fellowships.
Susanne Keppler-Schlesinger
Together with her daughter Leonille Wittgenstein and son Constantin Wittgenstein, celebrated Swiss-Hungarian actress Sunnyi Melles, who has i.a. performed the role of Jedermann’s lover (Buhlschaft) at the Salzburg Festival 1990-1993, will trace the eventful journey of Max Reinhardt’s life in a multimedial way, by reading from writings and contemporary documents, with music and sound design by Constantin Wittgenstein. The reading will last about 50 minutes. The performance will be followed by an artist talk with Dr. Helga Rabl-Stadler, Austrian politician, businesswoman and president of the Salzburg Festival 1995-2022. The event will take place on November 29th, 2023, at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York.
Hans Petschar
The research project will study the life and work of Yoichi Okamoto, personal photographer of General Mark Clark 1945–1948 in Austria, head of the United States Information Service Pictorial Section in Austria 1948–1954 and Presidential Photographer of Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House 1963–1969. Surprisingly enough, despite Okamoto’s extraordinary career in Europe and later in the U.S. as White House photographer during the Johnston era, a comprehensive biography of Yoichi R. Okamoto is still missing. Archival research will take place at the Daniel Library, The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, the National Archives in Washington DC and the Lyndon B Johnson Library in Austin, Texas. Research results will be integrated in exhibitions and scholarly publications in Austria and the U.S.A. Hans Petschar is a historian and Director of the Picture Archives and Graphics Department at the Austrian National Library. In 2015/16 he served as the Marshall Plan Chair at the University of New Orleans.
Laura MacDonald
This project examines Austrian engagement with American musical theatre from postwar innovations at the Vienna Volksoper through to transnational programming and new musical development by contemporary Austrian institutions such as Vereinigten Bühnen Wien (VBW) and the Landestheater Linz. Having learned and developed from the Broadway musical, Austria is now influencing the growth and development of “das Musical” in East Asia, where Austrian musicals have become valuable models for new musical development and have introduced European practitioners to producers in Tokyo, Seoul, and Shanghai. This research will culminate in The Broadway Musical's Transnational Journeys: Circulating American Dreams in Europe and East Asia, a book-length study documenting European and East Asian musical theatre industries’ long histories and achievements and establishing that a comprehensive understanding of musical theatre must consider complex and dynamic global activity.
Benjamin Korstvedt
The music and public images of Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) and Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), widely regarded as the preeminent Austrian symphonists of the epoch around 1900, have long been interpreted and reinterpreted in ways that reach far beyond the usual confines of musical life. This critical discourse originated in the context of the political and cultural upheavals Austria and Austrian culture underwent in the first half of the twentieth century, and as the music of both composers increasingly entered American musical life in the postwar, it was reformulated in new ways within the distinctive sociocultural milieu of the U.S. This comparative critical study of the changing views and representations of these two composers will shed light not only on their musical works but also on fundamental issues of cultural politics and changing definitions of Austrian identity.
Anjeana Hans
This project focuses on Jewish filmmakers, actors, and film technicians forced to leave Germany after the Nazi’s rise to power, many of whom went first to Austria and worked in the independent film industry that existed there between 1933 and 1937. The project will examine how these independent films engage with the experience of persecution and whether the trauma of expulsion and expatriation finds expression on the levels of both narrative and form. Further, in examining these productions closely, contextualizing them in their historical moment and against the broader backdrop of early Austrian film, and considering their afterlives, the aim is to trace not only the impact of exile on these films, but also their influence on film broadly, both internationally and in Hollywood specifically. Anjeana Hans is a Professor of German Studies and affiliated faculty in Cinema and Media Studies at Wellesley College.
Marsha Leah Rozenblit
Three Times Homeless: The Last Generation of Austrian Jews explores how Jews born in Habsburg Austria around 1900, who came of age in that large multinational state, coped with the fact that they lost their homeland several times in the course of their lives and had to craft new homes for themselves, first in the Habsburg successor states, and then elsewhere as refugees from Nazi Europe, especially in America. How did these Jews create new national and Jewish identities, and how successful were they in forging a new sense of at-homeness in very foreign environments? What connections did they still retain to their former Austrian homeland? Why were they more successful in making a new home in America than anywhere else?
Andreas Praher
The research project will analyze the transatlantic migration of skiers and ski instructors who migrated from Austria to the United States for different reasons in the first half of the 20th century. The focus will be on sociopolitical, economic, cultural, institutional and structural circumstances in which migration in skiing took place from the 1930s to the 1960s. In studying the historical patterns of migration, factors that have influenced and stimulated the movement of sport labor should be identified. The research work asks about the socio-cultural background of men and women. It will take into account the female ski migration and the impact of the Jewish exodus in skiing on the American sport system.
Dóra Fedeles-Czeferner
Rosika Schwimmer (Budapest, 1877-New York, 1948), one of the best-known women’s rights leaders in the Austro-Hungarian Empire became a celebrated peace activist in the U.S. She was awarded the World Peace Prize and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Schwimmer formed a crucial link between the Hungarian, Austrian and transnational women’s and peace movements and made a marked contribution in the U.S. where she lived in exile from 1921 until her death. The project seeks to explore these transatlantic connections by drawing on the widest possible range of archival sources from Hungary, Austria, the U.S., England and the Netherlands. The ultimate aim is to provide a comprehensive monograph on Schwimmer’s life and career.
Patricia Allmer
Tilly Losch: Interstitial Modernism between Vienna and Hollywood offers the first book-length analysis of the life and extensive corpus of works by the Austrian-Jewish dancer, choreographer, film star, painter, and celebrity Tilly Losch (1903-75). Redressing critical neglect of her work, the book will resituate Losch in the interstices of conventional definitions of modernist cultural practice. It will employ recent theoretical and historical material alongside extensive archival research to recalibrate and refine our understanding of transatlantic modernism and of Austria-US relations via a critical assessment of Losch’s long and diverse interdisciplinary and transmedial career in Vienna, Paris, England, New York, and Hollywood.
Michael Haas
Dr. Michael Hass received a $15,000 BIAAS grant for “Discovering Karol Rathaus,” a film about a Jewish composer of classical music posed to become one of the most influential composers of his generation. With the rise of the Nazis he escaped Germany but failed to reestablish himself in the hostile cultural and political atmosphere of McCarthy America. Hiding behind the facade of ‘happiness’, Rathaus became one of the many unacknowledged casualties of the Holocaust. The [...]