Obituaries

Robert Propst (1915 – 2008)
Co-founder and longstanding president of the Austrian-American Council West in Valencia, California, Robert Propst died at the age of 94. Born in Vienna, he left Austria in 1938 via Sweden for New York, where he joined the U.S. military. After the war he began a career in the fashion industry, heading displays for well-known department stores in New York and Los Angeles. In 1977 he founded Architectural Designers and Planners, Inc. In 1982, he was invited by Fritz Molden to contribute to the founding of the Austrian American Council West, to which he strongly dedicated himself as president and later honorary president. He also served as president of the Vienna Cultural Club in Los Angeles and took special pleasure in organizing the Vienna Opera Ball. For his untiring work in maintaining and furthering strong relations between the United States and Austria he was awarded the Silver and Gold Decoration of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria and the Golden Rathausmann by the City of Vienna

Walter Rudolph Weber 1925 -2008
Former Austrian Honorary Consul General for the Northwest, Walter Rudolph Weber passed away on February 8. Born in Vienna, Weber arrived in 1955 with his wife and two pre-school age sons and after earning a BA in Business Administration at the University of Washington, became a Certified Public Accountant and founded his own CPA firm. Weber, who bought and restarted the bi-lingual newspaper “Die Pazifische Rundschau” in 1989 and co-founded the Austria Club of Washington distinguished himself as Honorary Austrian Consul for Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana (1983- 1987) and then as Honorary Consul General until 1997 and was awarded the Medal of Merit in Gold for his extraordinary service.