Introduction

This page provides an overview of the diplomatic relations between Austria and the United States on the occasion of the 180th anniversary of this bilateral relationship.

The materials presented here come from Austrian Press- and Information Service in the United States, the U.S. Embassy in Vienna (produced on the occasion of 175 years of diplomatic relations), and from our publication Austrian Information and its individual authors.

This video, produced by the U.S. Embassy in Vienna on the occasion of 175 years of diplomatic relations, provides an overview of the Austrian - American relationship:

The Beginning of the Relationship: Trade and Commerce

by U.S. Embassy Vienna

Although official diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Austria began in 1838, the relationship between the two countries started decades earlier with the Austrian Empire’s interest in exploring opportunities for trade and commerce in the New World. As history shows, the relationship did not always progress harmoniously. More importantly, however, it did evolve to overcome obstacles of historic impact. Now, 180 years later, the two countries are closely bonded in their pursuit of common goals for a secure and just world.

Photos: Emperor Francis I of Austria and Andrew Jackson, President of the United States (1829- 1837)

In 1777 Congress appointed William Lee as the first U.S. representative to Vienna. Austria, however, did not receive him, declining to recognize a country that had rebelled against a monarchy. The Hofkanzlei’s files referred to American officials as “rebels” and “insurgents.” The Empire nonetheless conducted trade in arms with the colonies during the American Revolution, and pursued commercial interests in cotton and tobacco markets. This ambiguity marked the Empire’s position toward the U.S. until the late 19th century.

Official diplomatic relations, however, were established with the appointment of Henry A. Muhlenberg as first American Minister to Vienna on February 8, 1838. He presented his credentials November 7, 1838. The Austrian Empire’s first Minister to the United States, Wenzel Philipp Baron de Mareschal, established an Austrian Legation in Washington, D.C. presenting his credentials October 13, 1838.

By 1850 Austria had established 11 honorary Consular Offices mostly along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, focusing mainly on trade in tobacco and cotton. Over time and despite two world wars, the U.S. and Austria built and rebuilt trade relations that prosper today. The U.S. is Austria’s third largest investor. For U.S. companies, Austria represents an attractive and affluent export market. American companies have invested more than $20 billion in Austria and now employ more than 30,000 Austrians; 130 Austrian companies have invested more than $6.9 billion in the U.S. and employ 25,000 Americans. For the U.S. and Austria, trade and investment is a dynamic, continuously expanding two-way street.

Building the Relationship: Immigration

IIn 1734 fifty families of exiled Lutherans from Salzburg undertook a two-month trip across the Atlantic Ocean and established a community in Ebenezer, Georgia. These Salzburgers and their descendants have played an important role in the history of the state of Georgia and the U.S. They were among the first settlers in America to oppose slavery and they distinguished themselves through their service and contributions to the economic, social, religious and political life in America. Immigration from Austro-Hungary continued through the 19th century, peaking during the first decade of the 20th century.

Because of Austria’s status as a multi-ethnic empire, it is difficult to determine the actual number of Austrian immigrants to the United States prior to 1918. Records show, however, that more than 2.1 million immigrants from the lands of the Austro-Hungarian empire came to the U.S., the largest group of all immigrants during that time. From the first Austrian settlers in Georgia to the big immigration waves in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the dominant method of transportation was the ocean-going ship. At the beginning of the 20th century, an Austrian shipping company, Austro-Americana , joined the bee-line from Europe to America and back

With the onset of the First World War, Austrian immigration practically came to a standstill. During the postwar period of 1919 to 1924, fewer than 20,000 Austrians came to the United States; and of those, an estimated 60% came from Burgenland. According to the U.S. Census, 735,128 Americans claim Austrian heritage. They live mostly in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey. Like their ancestors, they continue to enrich the relationship between the United States and Austria.

Relationship with a New Republic: World War I and the Inter-War Years

In the years leading up to WWI, the U.S. pursued policies to avoid conflict while trying to broker peace. Despite those efforts, President Woodrow Wilson, citing Germany’s violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare, went before a Special Session of Congress to deliver his “War Message” and request a declaration of war against Germany on April 2, 1917. Four days later, Congress overwhelmingly passed the War Resolution. Austria-Hungary then severed diplomatic relations with the U.S. on April 8, 1917. Eight months later, on December 7, 1917, the U.S. declared war on Austria- Hungary.

On January 8, 1918, Wilson presented his historic “Fourteen Points” to Congress, providing a framework for a post-war world order. The tenth point called for the “freest opportunity to autonomous development” of the peoples of Austria-Hungary which contributed to the consequent break-up of the Empire. Unlike its allies, the U.S. did not ratify the Treaty of St. Germain on September 10, 1919, because it included the Covenant of the League of Nations, a concept that the U.S. Congress would not support at the time. Instead, the United States signed the Treaty Establishing Friendly Relations and recognized the Republic of Austria on August 24, 1921.

During the 1930s, the combination of the Great Depression and the memory of tragic losses in World War I influenced American policy toward non-entanglement in international politics. While the rise of fascism was perceived as a threat to international peace, the economic depression restrained American action.

In March 1938 U.S. Chargé d’Affaires ad interim John C. Wiley reported from Vienna that “the visa section is in a state of siege.” Between the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938 and the entry of the U.S. into the War in 1941, 29,000 Austrians emigrated to the U.S. Approximately 80 percent were Jews: professionals and intellectuals that included doctors, lawyers, architects, scientists, musicians and composers, and artists of film and stage. In the U.S. they found opportunities to continue making significant contributions to world culture that benefit society today.

In 1940 U.S. policy shifted from neutrality to non-belligerency by providing aid to the nations at war with Germany, Italy and Japan. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked the U.S. naval installation at Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States formally into WWII. While this meant that relations were again severed with Austria, the post-WWII years nonetheless provided political and economic opportunities that redefined the relationship between the U.S. and Austria. Despite of a few controversies and disagreements, such as the 1986 “Waldheim Affair,” the United States and Austria have built the foundation for a mutually shared commitment to humanitarian values and democratic institutions that influence contemporary society.

Forging a New Relationship

In the long-term interest of avoiding another global war, the U.S. for the first time used economic assistance as a strategic element of its foreign policy, offering significant aid to Europe. By June 1947, when the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration stopped shipments of food to Austria, the U.S. had spent $300 million in food aid to avert a hunger crisis.

On April 3, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed the Economic Cooperation Act, authorizing establishment of the European Recovery Program (ERP), later known as the “Marshall Plan.” The Austrian government accepted the offer to join, and on July 2, 1948, a bilateral agreement was signed. The U.S. government funded the delivery of food, machinery, and raw materials to Austria. Marshall Plan aid to Austria from July 1948 to December 1953 totaled $962 million, making Austria the highest per capita recipient of ERP aid after Norway. In tandem with the ERP, Amerika Häuser, representing a “Marshall Plan of the Mind,” were established across Austria, serving as libraries, concert halls, and movie theaters to build and strengthen cultural ties and shared values between Austrians and Americans.

On March 29, 1961, Austrian Federal Chancellor Julius Raab and U.S. Ambassador H. Freeman Matthews signed the “ERP Counterpart Settlement Agreement,” which turned control of the ERP Fund over to the Austrian government. With assets of about $3.5 billion and annual loans of $356 million, the ERP Fund is operational to this day and remains one of the most important and dynamic instruments of Austrian structural and economic policies. In June 2007, in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of George Marshall’s historic speech, the Marshall Plan Foundation was established with the goal of supporting educational exchange for Americans and Austrians.

As part of post-WWII reconstruction, the Fulbright Act (1946) provided economic assistance for education and research and laid the foundations for the United States’ renowned academic exchange program. In 1950 Austria was among the initial handful of countries to establish a bi-national Fulbright Commission. This flagship U.S. academic exchange program was conceptualized by Senator J. William Fulbright to: “increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries…and thus to assist in the development of friendly, sympathetic and peaceful relations.” Since 1951, more than 2,300 American and 3,500 Austrian grantees have participated in the Fulbright Program. Since 1963, it has been co-funded by Austria. The Fulbright Commission has placed more than 2,800 U.S. university graduates at secondary schools in communities all over Austria under the auspices of the Austrian Ministry of Education’s Foreign Language Teaching Assistant Program.

Austrian-American exchanges have grown steadily since World War II. IES Abroad, the largest facilitator of study abroad programs for U.S. students, was founded at the Institute of European Studies in Vienna in 1950. Every year, about 1,000 Austrians study at universities in the U.S., and some 2,700 Americans study in Austria through programs developed by Austrian and American educational institutions.

Over the past 60 years, more than 1,000 Austrians have been invited to participate in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), the U.S. Department of State’s premier professional exchange program. Through short-term visits to the United States, current and emerging leaders from a variety of specialized fields experience American culture and society firsthand and can cultivate lasting relationships with their American counterparts.

Austrian-American Relations from Cold War to Post Cold War

by Guenter Bischof

During the Cold War, Austria was the superpowers’ “darling” of sorts and saw itself playing a “special role” (Sonderfall). As a Cold War neutral state, it played a crucial role as a mediator and “bridge builder” between East and West. Vienna was the site of important summit meetings (Kennedy- Khrushchev in 1961, Carter–Brezhnev in 1979) and long-running arms-control conferences (Conventional Force Reduction Talks), as well as the third host (with New York and Geneva) of important United Nations agencies like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Austria was an important player among the Neutral & Non-Aligned states in the preparation and execution of the Conference of Security and Cooperation in Europe, culminating in the Helsinki meeting in 1975 that cemented European détente, and its follow-up meetings. Politically, Washington has respected Austrian neutrality since Foreign Minister and then Chancellor Bruno Kreisky defined his “active neutrality” policy as very pro-Western after the signing of the State Treaty in 1955.

Economically, Austria continued to profit from the counterpart funds left over from the Marshall Plan. In 1961, the American government handed over the entire counterpart account to the government of Julius Raab, who initiated the “ERP-Fonds” as an important permanent, long-term, low-interest investment vehicle for the Austrian economy. Austrians perceived their status as a “special case” during four-power occupation (1945-1955) and then as a Cold War neutral as a “Sonderfall” – call it “Austro-exceptionalism”. The U.S. tolerated Austria’s growing trade relationship with Eastern Europe in the 1970s but looked askance at Austrian high-tech exports to the Communist Bloc during the 1980s under Reagan. Culturally, widespread Americanization defined Austria’s young generation, which rendered the U.S. a quasi-“cultural superpower.” Austria made up its failure to integrate into the European Economic Community by closely aligning itself with the West German economy; while serving as a “secret ally” of the West during the occupation decade and beyond, it kept its defense expenditures to a minimum. Austrian defense spending during the Cold War never amounted to a credible defense of its neutral status in case of attack.

Austrian neutrality was incompatible with joining NATO and the transatlantic structures and networks emanating from it. The end of the Cold War (1989- 1991) dramatically changed both the U.S.’s and Austria’s international positions. The United States transmuted into a hegemonic giant (the French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine quipped the U.S. was a “hyperpower”), while Austria joined the European Union and remained a small player (in the EU and in the world at large). Since the presidency of George H.W. Bush, Austria has figured less significantly in U.S. geopolitics.

During the dramatic events of 1989/90, the Bush administration was riveted on and consumed by both the fall of communism in the Soviet satellites and German reunification and virtually ignored Austria. On the mental map of American policymakers, Austria moved from its Central European position to being perceived increasingly as a Western Europe nation (part and parcel of the European Economic Communities). Meanwhile formerly communist “Eastern Europe” became “Central Europe” – we are speaking here of the new post-communist countries of East Central Europe that were rushing towards NATO and the EU.

In 1989, when the Iron Curtain came down, Austria redirected its foreign policy both towards Central and Western Europe. It rebuilt traditional ties with its East Central European and Western Balkans neighbors, building stronger trading and banking ties and investing enormously in the new markets of formerly communist Eastern Europe while completing its economic integration into the European Economic Community. In 1995, Austria joined the European Union and both its developing “Common Foreign and Security Policy” and (later under the Lisbon Treaty) “European Security and Defense Policy.” Becoming part of the ever-deepening European political, military and economic integration process, Vienna realigned its foreign policy with Brussels and abandoned Washington’s embrace, which had been loosening since the Reagan years anyway.

Austria moved toward full political and economic integration with Western Europe. Yet, due to continuing popularity of neutrality among two-thirds of the population, Austria never became a member of NATO, and thus, never fully aligned its security policy with the Atlantic community; in this sense it never fully “arrived” in the West. On March 1, 2007, the Austrian Foreign Ministry was renamed “Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs.”

This name change reflects the growing importance of “EUropean [=EU-European] affairs” and the relative decline of all other foreign-policy priorities. It also reflects a fear of the conservative People’s Party to lose EU competencies to the Social Democratic Chancellor. Yet, after 1995, Austria aligned itself with EU foreign policy. This made Austria part and parcel of the transatlantic-structures-sans-NATO- membership, including the dramatic ups and downs of transatlantic relations during the Clinton and Bush II years. Once it embraced EU integration, Austria lost its “special” Cold War international standing, namely its East-West bridge-building function and its status of “Austro-exceptionalism.”

During the Cold War, the Austrian embassies in Washington and Moscow served as the most important diplomatic missions abroad. After 1995, the Brussels Representation received highest priority among foreign missions. Moreover, the Lisbon Treaty (2009) established the “European External Action Service,” which marks the beginning of a EUropean diplomatic service that is bound to further absorb Austrian foreign policy into the common EUropean foreign policy agenda.

On their stopovers in Europe these days, American presidents visit Prague and Warsaw rather than Vienna. While bilateral economic and cultural relations are holding their own, political relations are weakening between Austria and the U.S. During the first half of the Cold War, Washington regularly posted topnotch professional foreign-service officers such as Llewelyn “Tommy” Thompson and H. Freeman Mathews as ambassadors to Vienna.

On Washington’s foreign policy priority list small nations like Austria have become less important. American presidents since Richard Nixon have dispatched political appointees to Vienna. After the end of the Cold War, all U.S. ambassadors to Austria have been wealthy political appointees who received ambassadorial appointments as a result of their big campaign contributors and “bundlers” in successful presidential campaigns.

Ambassadorial appointments have been important indicators of Austria’s relative standing on the Washington totem pole of global significance. Meanwhile, the Austrian governments have consistently been posting top diplomats as ambassadors to Washington, signaling the continued importance of Washington for Austria.

Frauen-Power asserted itself in both foreign ministries, the Ballhausplatz/ Minoritenplatz in Vienna and in Washington’s Foggy Bottom. For the first time in history, women became principal diplomatic actors on both sides of the U.S.–Austrian relationship. Prominent women ambassadors were appointed by the Austrian and American governments (Eva Nowotny, Swanee Hunt, Susan Rasinski McCaw) as were the first female secretaries of state/ foreign ministers. President Bill Clinton promoted Madeleine Albright, his U.N. Ambassador (1993-1997), to become the first female Secretary of State (1997-2001). President George W. Bush appointed his NSC-Adviser Condoleezza Rice (2001- 2005) as his Secretary of State (2005-2009) during his second term. President Obama made his rival in the 2008 campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton, his Secretary of State (2009-2013). Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel promoted two career diplomats to the position of Foreign Minister: Benita Ferrero- Waldner (2000-2004) and his former Chief-of-Staff Ursula Plassnik (2004-2008).

However, foreign policies did not markedly change or soften under female leadership, maybe because the foreign ministry staffs continued to remain largely male bastions of power. Particularly Albright and Rice were as militant in their conduct of U.S. foreign policy as their male counterparts, if not more so. Ferrero-Waldner and Plassnik were often overshadowed by Schüssel’s dominant role in foreign policy, especially in EU policies.

The U.S.–Austrian relationship, a small cog in the wheels of EUropean– American relations, became part of the growing transatlantic turmoil. U.S.–European relations since the end of the Cold War were a story of divergence, disagreement, and at times overt hostility. The everyday flow of bilateral U.S.–Austrian relations during the presidencies of George H.W. Bush, William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton and George W. Bush were rocked by significant international crises that reoriented and redefined the Austrian-American bilateral relationship too. As American foreign policy turned more unilateral after the end of the Cold War, it also became more imperial.

These, then, were the significant markers and turning points that contributed to a steady deterioration of transatlantic relations: 1) the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Iron Curtain from 1989 to 1991; 2) the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian crisis from 1991 to 1995 and the Kosovo war in 1999; 3) the formation of the Schüssel coalition government with the right-wing FPÖ in January 2000 and the subsequent international isolation of Austria; 4) the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on New York and Washington and the subsequent in Europe unpopular “wars of preemption” against Afghanistan and Iraq. “Bush’s wars” in the Middle East produced the worst transatlantic discord since the Vietnam War and split Europe into U.S.-critical “old” and U.S.-friendly “new” Europe and unleashed a global wave of anti-Americanism, spilling over into Austria as well.

While Barack Obama’s election aroused great expectations in Austria, the Obama administration has been paying little attention to Austria. As President Obama has been “pivoting” his foreign policy from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the entire transatlantic partnership has lost its former significance. While writing about very recent contemporary history can be treacherous terrain for historians used to digging up the primary records in archives, a “first draft of history” is possible. Online newspaper archives and other online sources such as the homepages of Presidential Libraries and the extensive treasure trove of Wikileaks cables are available.

Peter Moser, the former Austrian Ambassador to the United States (1999-2003), published his memoirs and donated his personal papers to Center- Austria at the University of New Orleans. American politicians and diplomats have a strong democratic sense of obligation towards the attentive public and regularly explain their politics and world views in voluminous memoirs. Austrian politicians and diplomats rarely do so. Looking at the memoirs/autobiographies by Presidents William Jefferson Clinton and George W. Bush, along with key cabinet members such as Madeleine Albright,Warren Christopher, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Cheney, Richard Holbrooke and George Tenet, one is left with the impression that Austria is but a small blip on Washington’s radar. Thousands of pages of memoirs contain only three meager references to “Austria.” There is considerable secondary literature both on Austrian and American foreign policy during the post- Cold-War era in general but hardly any on U.S.–Austrian relations in particular.

Continuity and Cooperation

On May 15, 1955, the U.S. was a signatory to the Austrian State Treaty, ending the Four-Power occupation and declaring Austria to be a free, independent and neutral state. Because of Austria’s neutrality, Vienna has frequently been chosen as a venue of key superpower summit meetings and an official location for multi-lateral and international organizations. In addition to the bilateral Mission to Austria, the U.S. State Department maintains embassies to the United Nations in Vienna (UNVIE) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

While respective approaches to regional and international issues may differ at times, the United States and Austria share many common values and perspectives: support for human rights and the rule of law, commitment to reducing threats posed by climate change and nuclear proliferation, and a shared vision of peace and freedom for all. Austria and the United States, partners in promoting global security and prosperity, cooperate in addressing issues of global concern such as terrorism, illegal drug trade, organized crime, and trafficking in persons.

The two countries are bound together through family ties, people-to-people exchanges and contacts in business, the arts, education and research, sports and recreation. Last year, more than 175,000 Austrians visited the U.S., and nearly 500,000 Americans visited Austria.