11 - Popular Culture in Austria, 1945–2000

Summary

AUSTRIA's UNIQUE POLITICAL SITUATION in the first postwar decade did much to shape its popular culture of subsequent decades. The Moscow Declaration of the Allies (1943) viewed Austria as both a victim of Nazi aggression as well as a co-combatant with the Third Reich. As a result, Austria was occupied by the victorious Allies until 1955, but was nevertheless granted a large degree of autonomy through a federal government elected in November of 1945. In the first postwar decade this situation set the stage for a vibrant competition between indigenous cultural traditions and impulses from the foreign cultures represented by the Allied occupation forces. Officially absent from the Austrian cultural landscape at that time was a visible German presence, which was politically — and to a significant degree, culturally — “quarantined” from the land it had annexed in 1938. The Austrian writer Milo Dor spoke of a “paper curtain” between the two lands after 1945 that prevented the free flow of cultural information and artists. Despite censorship and travel restrictions, cultural contact between the two occupied nations slowly resumed to the extent that those Austrians who viewed their culture as distinct from that of Germany, saw cultural impulses from that nation as just one more foreign influence assaulting their beleaguered culture.

Of all the foreign impulses affecting Austrian culture during the occupation, American and British influence had arguably the greatest impact, especially through the programming of the Allied radio networks — such as the American Red-White-Red and the British Alpenland networks — whose contemporary music and entertainment programming became immensely popular among Austrian youth. Although the Allies and Austrians shared many of the same traditions of high culture, they nevertheless diverged significantly with respect to popular culture. American cultural policies in Austria, for example, aimed at “reorienting” Austrian institutions such as radio and the press toward a more “democratic” approach to culture, that is, one more responsive to public taste and allowing for maximal public input and participation. By contrast, Austrian cultural policy of the postwar era, largely promulgated by the conservative Ministry of Education, saw culture as an edifying force that should shape public tastes rather than reflect them.