From the Editor
Dear Readers, 
Instructed by his government "to tread softly" when dealing with Moscow at the Marshall Plan negotiations in Paris, the Austrian representative risked a tightrope walk: trying to secure a maximum of support for Austria while avoiding to offend the Soviet occupying power, which criticized the "Marshallization" and "enslavement" of Austria. The Vienna Technisches Museum opened an exhibition commemorating this unique U.S. initiative.
Extraordinary changes of supply and demand have spurred Eastern and Southeastern European markets.
Since the mid-90s, a bi-lingual radio station has engendered a self-assured and relaxed generation of listeners.
Austria is at the architectural forefront. The new European Central Bank will be "Made in Austria".
Discover the work of one of the co-founders of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism.
Yours sincerely,
Christoph Meran
Administrator
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The New European Centralbank "Made in Austria"
Drab, functional, housing stressed-out and overworked bureaucrats in pin-striped suits are the usual images one associates with the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, a less than hip institution with little international glamour. Nonetheless, the design selected for the new bank by Coop Himmelb(l)au, a Viennese architectural firm, is sophisticated and provocative - the kind of cool abstraction that is the home of corporate power and symbolizes Europe's growing financial stature in an emerging globalized world - one portending dynamic things to come.
The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism
The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism was an art movement founded in post-war Austria by a group of young, mostly Austrian artists. These artists attended the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts together, and their teacher and mentor was Albert Paris Gütersloh, a dazzling, larger-than-life personality (1887-1973). Born in Vienna, Gütersloh, whose real name was Albert Conrad Kiehtreiber, studied with the painter Gustav Klimt. When he started his teaching career in 1930, he had already acquired an extraordinary amount of varied experience: he had been a journalist, a writer, an editor, an actor and a film director. Among his friends were some of the most outstanding writers of the early 20th century, including Heimito v. Doderer, Hugo v. Hofmannsthal, Robert Musil and Hermann Bahr.
The New Gold Rush of Markets
Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, people behind the Iron Curtain looked back on decades of dismal, grey stores with empty windows and little to buy. With the momentous turn of events in the early 1990s, hoards of Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians streamed across the borders into Austria, eager for Western goods after so many years of doing without, preferring shopping sprees to visiting Vienna's cultural treasures.
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Minister Rauch-Kallat Visits the U.S.
During her visit to the United States from February 26 - March 3, 2005, the Austrian Federal Minister for Health and Women, Maria Rauch-Kallat, attended the 49th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York, prompted by the 10th Anniversary of the World Women's Conference in Beijing, China. The session was strongly represented by ninety-three high-ranking delegations from around the world. She addressed the UN Plenum on Austria's planned initiatives for 2006 and conducted bilateral talks with other delegates including Rigoberta Menchú, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992.