Author: Michael Burri
Source: German Studies Review, vol. 44 no. 1, 2021, p. 67-86. Project MUSE, .
Publication type: Article
Abstract: The Cold War is marked by a growing convergence of state and culture, a convergence recalled by Willy Brandt's 1970 declaration of culture as a "third column" of foreign policy. This essay explores the resistance among Austrian elites to such a convergence, as manifested by the Österreichische Gesellschaft fur Literatur — in particular, the three literature congresses organized by its director, Wolfgang Kraus, in Vienna from 1965 to 1967. A project of Heinrich Drimmel, the conservative Minister of Education and himself an influential voice against the expanding jurisdiction of the state, the Gesellschaft and Kraus envisioned these literature congresses as a nonstate response to the modern discord of East versus West, and they presented literary intellectuals as the new emissaries of a foreign cultural diplomacy unencumbered by state reason.