WWII – The Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies

Woodrow Wilson’s Emancipatory Perspective: The Ottoman and Habsburg Empires

By Larry Wolff

Historian Larry Wolff chronicles the evolution of US President Woodrow Wilson's anti-imperial ideology towards the Habsburg Empire in this article. Though Wilson called for the autonomy of the Habsburg peoples in Point Ten of his Fourteen Points speech in January of 1918, he did not arrive at a fully frank opposition to the empire's existence until that October--a year and a half after America entered World War I. Wilson's thinking about the Habsburg monarchy was shaped by his perspective on the Ottoman empire, his youthful admiration for British Liberal leader William Gladstone, and his sense of Abraham Lincoln's legacy of emancipation.

Woodrow Wilson’s Emancipatory Perspective: The Ottoman and Habsburg Empires2022-08-25T14:50:20+00:00

ruth weiss: Poet, Performer, Grand Dame of the Beat Generation with Thomas Antonic

Thomas Antonic's film about Austrian-American Beat poet ruth weiss, One More Step West is the Sea, recently won "Best International Documentary Feature" in the New York Independent Cinema 2021 Awards.

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ruth weiss: Poet, Performer, Grand Dame of the Beat Generation with Thomas Antonic2021-12-29T17:13:47+00:00

Ruth Weiss: Poet, Performer, Grand Dame of the Beat Generation with Thomas Antonic

ruth weiss: Poet, Performer, Grand Dame of the Beat Generation

with Thomas Antonic

BIAAS's latest podcast presents BIAAS grantee Thomas Antonic, whose film about Austrian-American Beat poet ruth weiss, One More Step West Is the Sea, recently won the New York Independent Cinema Awards 2021 in the category "Best International Documentary Feature."

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Ruth Weiss: Poet, Performer, Grand Dame of the Beat Generation with Thomas Antonic2022-08-25T14:50:38+00:00

Code Name Mary: The Extraordinary Life of Muriel Gardiner

By Carol Seigel

Muriel Gardiner had an extraordinary, multi-faceted life--a young American woman who courageously fought fascism in 1930s Austria; a member of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic circle in 1930s Vienna, who became a psychoanalyst herself, practising and writing in the US in the post war decades, and closely connected to Freud’s most famous patient, the Wolf Man, about whom she wrote a seminal book; and the founder of the Freud Museum London with her friend Anna Freud, Sigmund’s daughter. Muriel is also believed to be the model for Lillian Hellman’s character 'Julia' in the 1977 Oscar winning film.

Code Name Mary: The Extraordinary Life of Muriel Gardiner2022-08-25T15:01:35+00:00

Say Hello to “Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder!” and Ernst Papanek with Lilly Maier

Say Hello to "Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder!" and Ernst Papanek with Lilly Maier

with Lilly Maier

Lilly Maier is the author of the recent biography of Ernst Papanek, "Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder!: Ernst Papanek. Revolutionär, Reformpädagoge und Retter jüdischer Kinder." In this podcast, she discusses the remarkable life of the Viennese-born socialist and educator who saved the lives of almost 300 children from the Nazis.

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Say Hello to “Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder!” and Ernst Papanek with Lilly Maier2022-08-25T14:52:03+00:00

Say Hello to “Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder!” and Ernst Papanek with Lilly Maier

Lilly Maier is the author of the recent biography of Ernst Papanek, "Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder!: Ernst Papanek. Revolutionär, Reformpädagoge und Retter jüdischer Kinder." In this podcast, she discusses the explores the remarkable life of the Viennese-born socialist and educator who saved the lives of almost 300 children from the Nazis.

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Say Hello to “Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder!” and Ernst Papanek with Lilly Maier2021-11-22T16:47:52+00:00

The Enduring Promise of Multinationalism: Hans Kohn’s Habsburg Legacies

By Adi Gordon

These are interesting times to reflect on nationalism. After more than half a century in which nationalism was considerably tamed by the memory of World War Two, by intergovernmental organizations, and through various aspects of globalization, the current decade has witnessed a clear rise of nationalism in the United States and abroad. Part of the new nationalist tide is the prevalent sense of its inevitability. It seems de rigueur nowadays to ridicule as naïve the anticipation of (even hope for) gradual transition into a post national future, in which nationalities are secondary to other allegiances. Nations, it is claimed, have always existed, and nationalism (and even ethno-nationalism) is simply part of human nature. But is it so?

The Enduring Promise of Multinationalism: Hans Kohn’s Habsburg Legacies2022-08-25T14:52:20+00:00

“This is Jimmy Berg from New York:” Dreams, Expectations, and Reality

"This is Jimmy Berg from New York:" Dreams, Expectations and Reality

By Julia-Katharina Neier

Jimmy Berg was born in 1909 in Kolomea as Symson Weinberg. He was a musician, composer, lyricist and journalist. In 1938 he had to flee from Austria because of his Jewish origins and his work in the communism-related cabaret theatre group ABC. Thanks to an affidavit of the industrialist Otto Eisenschimmel Berg was able to enter the US via Southampton on the S.S. Manhattan on November 24,1938.

“This is Jimmy Berg from New York:” Dreams, Expectations, and Reality2022-08-25T15:01:43+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.

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

“I expect that this letter will be terribly long”: Hans (John) Kautsky’s First Letter from the U.S.A.

By Jacqueline Vansant

Sometime between March and April of 1938, a small group of 15- and 16-year-old schoolboys of Jewish heritage stood on a bridge over the Danube Canal in central Vienna and said good-bye to each other “forever.” Because the persecution of Austrian Jews, which had begun immediately after the Anschluss in March 1938, was particularly virulent, the boys and their parents knew that they had to flee the new Nazi regime as quickly as possible. When these classmates from the prestigious Bundesrealgymnasium Wien 1 met for the last time, they did not know what would become of them, but they promised one another that whatever happened they would do their best to maintain ties. The boys’ original promise resulted in an extraordinary group correspondence or Rundbrief that stretched over fifteen years and criss-crossed three continents.

“I expect that this letter will be terribly long”: Hans (John) Kautsky’s First Letter from the U.S.A.2022-08-25T15:11:10+00:00