The small gold-plated statuette, a mere 12 inches in height, is fiercely coveted, and this year Austria took home the prize. After three-quarters of a century of recognizing excellence in cinema, Hollywood’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bestowed the Oscar upon Austria and its entry film, the Austrian/German production, The Counterfeiters, (Die Fälscher) during the 80th Academy Awards. Unlike the other Oscars, the Best Foreign Language Film Award is not presented to a specific individual but is considered an award for the entire country. It is of special significance, for from a record number of 95 countries invited to submit their best film, Austria was selected for the honor.

by Sonat Birnecker Hart

From the turn of the century until 1938, the Viennese literary coffeehouse was known to foster a liberal, intellectual, and creative environment; a kind of “ersatz-home” for members of society seeking refuge from the establishment and its parochial mores. Most of all, it owed its renown to its Jewish literary denizens, who not only wrote and conducted affairs in the coffeehouse but also celebrated its unique atmosphere in their literature. Among these writers, including Peter Altenberg and Joseph Roth, it is Friedrich Torberg who stands out for having created the most thorough tribute to the coffeehouse world in his Tante Jolesch or the Decline of the West in Anecdotes, published for the first time in English this year (Ariadne Press, ISBN: 9781572411499). In Austria, Tante Jolesch has already become a classic, beloved for its descriptions of a world with a slower pace than our own, one imbued with the cultural vestiges of the Habsburg Empire and its vibrant Jewish cultural elite.

 

by Robert Birnecker

You have been in the U.S. for quite some time now, but what was your life like in Vienna with your father being the head of the Jewish Community in the 1930s?
The Community was a state within a state – it was recognized by the Austrian government as autonomous. You had to pay taxes to the Community as well as to the Austrian state and every four years there were elections. My father, Josef Löwenherz, had always volunteered for the Community and was eventually elected to be vice-president, still an unpaid job. In 1936, he gave up his law practice to become “Amtsdirektor,” a paid fulltime position to run the administration.

Austrian literature is a constitutive element of Austria’s culture and serves as a medium to bring Austria closer to a wide variety of people. Yet to bring this literature to new shores requires assistance, and Ariadne Press of California has been dedicated to this task, publishing “a canon of Austrian literature from Grillparzer to now” as Jorun B. Johns, one of the founders and editors points out. Thirty years ago, most books written in German were considered “German Literature” and even German professors were reluctant to accept Austrian Literature as representative of a unique literary tradition. Today, however, Austrian Literature is generally accepted as a distinct category, even by the Library of Congress, and Ariadne Press is happy that it has played a small part in helping to bring about this awareness.

 

On April 17, 2008 Margrit B. Krewson was honored by the German-American Heritage Foundation of the USA as the Distinguished German-American of the Year for 2007.  The awards gala was held at the Austrian Embassy under the Patronage of Ambassador Eva Nowotny.  Guests of Honor included Prince Johannes Waldburg-Wolfegg and Nobel Prize laureate and Distinguished German-American of the Year of 2005, Dr. Günter Blobel. 

In the past few decades many of the innovations that have advanced the world and enlightened society have come from computer technology. It is a world that encourages revolutionary ideas, driven by competition and internet talents, and drawn to places like Silicon Valley in California. The environment is competitive and working hours endless. To compensate, companies such as Microsoft, Google or Yahoo have created luxurious campuses for their employees – with fitness gyms, massages and free-of-charge restaurants – the perfect environment for spawning brilliant ideas.

Vienna born journalist, author, publisher, political official, supporter of writers, musicians and artists, Hans Janitschek died in New York on February 21 at the age of seventy-three. As of 1994 Janitschek was working out of New York as a correspondent covering the U.S. for Austria’s largest daily newspaper, the “Neue Kronen Zeitung.” His multi-faceted career as a once quoted “passionate intellectual and lively journalist” began in the 1950s in New York working for the news agencies, United Press and Reuters, followed by a return to Vienna as correspondent for “Kurier” and “Express.” In 1963 he joined the Austrian Foreign Service and was posted in N.Y. before returning once again to Austria in 1966 as an advisor to the late Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky.