“Mitteleuropa’s unique spiritual power has to flow into the common European culture” : György Sebestyén and cultural policies in Austria in the 1970s and 1990s

Abstract

Austria’s ‘perpetual neutrality’, the price paid in 1955 for its independence and the withdrawal of Soviet troops, was the starting point of the Austrian ‘lone course’ to Mitteleuropa, carried out mainly thanks to the efforts of both political and intel- lectual actors. The fortunes of Austrian cultural policies received a considerable boost in the mid-Fifties, thanks to the efforts of Budapest-born Austrian writer and journalist György Sebestyén, who was to play a key role in the various stages of the Mitteleuropa process, favouring a transnational bond in the Danube region, which in the 1980s led Austria back into the middle of the action unfolding along and be- yond its Eastern borders. By exploring Austria’s cultural diplomacy with East-Cen- tral Europe from the 1950s to the 1990s, this article uses archival and press sources to show how political and intellectual Austrian elites constantly and skilfully devel- oped a new ‘transnational scenario’ in Mitteleuropa (even though the Iron Curtain constituted a fearsome border regime cutting the Alpine country off from its tradi- tional neighbours). This not only projected a new positive image of their country, veering between culture and dialogue, but also built new partnerships to buttress Austria as a cultural pioneer in the pan-European context.