With the new year, some important changes have come to the Austrian Embassy in Washington D.C. and also to our team. Ambassador Hans Peter Manz, who arrived in Washington in early December, presented his credentials to President Obama on January 18, 2012. He is an exceptional diplomat with significant experience in bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, and we have included his welcome remarks in this issue of Austrian Information
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Ambassador Hans Peter Manz and AJC Washington Board President David Farber light Hanukkah candles Photo: LuxnerAmerican Jewish Committee (AJC) Leadership and ACCESS DC, AJC’s New Generation Program, joined Austrian diplomats and friends to celebrate Hanukkah on December 19, 2011.
The reception, hosted at the Austrian Embassy, was attended by over 70 young professionals and diplomats. This marked the first-ever Hanukkah reception hosted by the Embassy of Austria and another step in the continuing and growing relationship of the Embassy with the American Jewish Committee.
Austrian Ambassador to the U.S. Hans Peter Manz presented his credentials to President Obama at the White House on January 18, 2012 Photo: The White House
Change is the only constant thing in our lives, especially in the Foreign Service. On December 1, 2011 I had the privilege to take over the Austrian Embassy in Washington.
he "Sound of Music" to the "Taste of Nature"
Austrian Farm BMLFU/AMA Bioarchiv/Begsteiger By Hans Kordik
Farm policies around the globe try to respect the expectations of both farmers and consumers. Typically, farmers in developed countries demand that their services for society render an adequate income. They also expect conditions that will enable them to manage their farms in the future.
Gernot Wagner Patagonia, the outdoor clothing and apparel company, ran an eye-catching, full-page ad in The New York Times the day after Thanksgiving, the busiest shopping day of the year. The headline, “Don’t Buy this Jacket,” was above a photo of one of its products and some text that reminded us of its environmental footprint: 135 liters of water, 20 pounds of carbon dioxide. "Think twice before you buy anything."
Read MoreErna Kubin-Clanin. Photo: Terrance L. Reimer
By Bettina Gordon
"God no longer lives in France. He moved to California, close to world-renowned Yosemite National Park, into the Chateau du Sureau. There he stands shoulder to shoulder with Erna Kubin-Clanin and ensures that everything the guests eat, drink, touch and otherwise perceive with their senses is one thing and one thing only: heavenly."
Read MoreCafe Hawelka. Photo: Veniamin Kostitsin-Teterin
By John A. Irvin
Each individual's lifetime represents a bridge between the urgency and emotion of present events and the eventual transformation of those same events into dry, historical fact.
For some people, their lives also include their personal experience of many of the world's momentous events. These people are essentially living history and their passage marks the loss of something irreplaceable.
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Austrian Information presents Culture Spaces, a new web platform to showcase highlights and to network artistic exchanges between Austria and the United States. Culture Spaces is a tool of applied cultural and digital diplomacy between the two countries and aims to increase mutual understanding and raise awareness of the caliber of cultural exchange between the Austria and the United States.
Photo: David Plakke
The show derives its name from the slogan originally coined by James Carville, which in the early 1990s came to define Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign. The premise of the exhibit is that the economic crisis that we face today has also become a major crisis for representative democracy. The very idea of the modern nation state is in jeopardy as the deterritorialized flow of finance capital melts down all that was once solid into raw material for market speculation.
The Austrian Cultural Forum in Washington, D.C. currently shows migration_ standards, an exhibit that is part of a series focusing on young contemporary art that seeks to foster dialogue between artists from Austria and Washington, D.C. and has been realized in cooperation with the Viennese gallery bäckerstrasse 4 - platform für junge kunst.
Claudia Kryza-Gersch, curator of Italian Sculpture at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, collaborated on the current exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Antico: The Golden Age of Renaissance Bronzes (November 6, 2011–April 8, 2012). It is a return to the place where her career as an art historian began 15 years ago. Alice Irvin has met her for an interview.
The Marshall Plan has provided essential support for the process of democratic and economic reconstruction in Austria after World War II. Austria has received more financial and other economic support per capita than most other beneficiaries. Funds are continuing to flow into the Austrian economy via the European Recovery Fund.
Vienna and Austria are host to numerous summer programs from Austrian or international institutions of higher learning, some of which we list here. These programs focus on many different fields of inquiry, ranging from languages to international relations and music.
The Hohe Tauern National Park
The Grossglockner with Pasterze Glacier
By Markus Reiterer
No doubt, the trip needed careful planning. After all, 115 years ago a trip like this was a somewhat different experience than it is today, to say the least. These days, you hop on a plane, spend some listless hours in celestial limbo, digesting whatever it is you get served, watch a movie or two and arrive wherever it is you want to arrive. In 1899, twenty-five year old Albert Wirth planned his trip from the heart of Austria to North America.
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