steirischer herbst at the Height of the Cold War

6.6.25 / Herwig G. Höller

In this blog, steirischer herbst research fellow and journalist Herwig G. Höller shares his discoveries in the festival archive. They frequently reveal surprising connections between steirischer herbst and the world of—local as well as international—politics.

In 1983, the world may have narrowly avoided nuclear war. There were errors in a Soviet early–warning system, and the NATO military exercise Able Archer 83 could be misinterpreted by the Kremlin as preparation for a first strike.

This tense situation left no immediate traces at steirischer herbst. However, the festival archive shows that in 1983, both East and West noticeably intensified their soft-power efforts: on official invitation, director Peter Vujica (1937–2013) traveled to both the Soviet Union and the US. The Institut français and the FRG and GDR were also interested in the festival. Despite these advances, no subsidies from foreign countries flowed into the 1983 program budget; there was only money for fact-finding and study trips.

Soviet Union

According to a travel expense report, Vujica stayed in the Soviet Union between 22 May and 1 June 1983. “At the suggestion of the Soviet Embassy, I was invited on a fact-finding trip to Moscow, Leningrad, and Erevan […]. The [Austrian] Foreign Ministry is covering flight costs, the Soviet authorities are covering accommodation costs, the Austrian Embassy is covering travel costs within the Soviet Union, and I am responsible for daily allowances,” he informed Kurt Jungwirth, state cultural adviser and festival president, shortly before departure.

Detailed travel plans can be found in a letter dated 15 April. The director thanked the Soviet ambassador in Vienna, Yevgeny Blokhin, for a “pleasant and, I hope, fruitful conversation.” In a letter to the chairman of the Union of Soviet Composers, Tikhon Khrennikov, who was acting as host, Vujica reminded him that he would be traveling with composer Wilhelm Zobl.

“As you may not know, I am the director of steirischer herbst, a series of events devoted exclusively to contemporary art in all its forms. For this reason, I am not only interested in meeting with representatives of contemporary music, but also with the relevant gentlemen in the fields of painting and cultural policy,” he wrote, mentioning the chairman of the Artists’ Union, Tahir Salahov, the head of the state concert agency, Vyacheslav Kondrashov, and Yuri Barabash, deputy minister of culture.

There is no information about specific meetings in the archives. Nor is there evidence of any impact on the festival’s program. Vujica may have been thinking of constructivism, which, according to an exhibition concept from 1983, had survived in Russia despite the emigration of its most important contemporary representatives, Ernst Neizvestny and Lev Nussberg. At the same time, the ingratiation with Khrennikov is surprising: the official was an opponent of Neue Musik, which musikprotokoll in particular championed. Vujica must also have known that in Graz, Khrennikov, of all people, was said to have prevented Soviet composers from attending steirischer herbst ’81.

United States

The Americans turned out to be more generous than the Soviets: Vujica spent a total of forty-four days in the US in 1983, with the US Embassy covering his travel expenses. After his first trip, he told Kleine Zeitung about stops in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Santa Fe.

What he did not mention was that Jerome Margolius, a veteran of the United States Information Agency, which was responsible for foreign propaganda, had played an important role in his journey. Margolius repeatedly looked after key figures in international culture during their stays in the US, including Dmitri Shostakovich and Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

In a letter dated 12 April 1983, Vujica expressed his gratitude for Margolius’s unspecified efforts: “I still believe however that the voyage was for me on the whole very successful, since I could make contacts with artists that are completely unknown here [in Austria] and even known only to insiders even in the USA.” However, projects planned for steirischer herbst ’84, such as an exhibition of West Coast painting or “Indian” art and a show by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, were never realized. Despite exchanging friendly letters with the US ambassador to Austria, Helene von Damm, and her cultural attaché, Cynthia Miller, the festival obtained hardly any subsidies.

Some efforts to deepen Austrian-American cultural relations also originated in Graz: Governor Josef Krainer Jr. traveled to the US in May 1983, where he met with representatives of scientific and cultural institutions. He asked steirischer herbst, among others, to further develop these connections and wanted to see, among others, intensive cooperation with sociologist Richard Sennett and his New York Institute for the Humanities. In August 1983, Sennett came to Graz for a working meeting; the minutes show that he was received almost like a guest of the state. However, nothing came of this. Sennett merely appeared at the 1984 literature symposium. When asked in 2025, he could not remember this inconsequential Styrian episode.

Krainer was also responsible for establishing contact with Fred Croton, head of the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Despite Vujica’s “financial concerns,” Croton repeatedly traveled to Graz between 1983 and 1985 at the expense of steirischer herbst.

Croton was courted here, presented to the Styrian media as an important friend of the festival, and greatly overestimated. Although the bureaucrat was involved in internal disputes in 1985, which were covered at length by the Los Angeles Times, an exhibition of steirischer herbst did indeed take place at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery between 16 July and 6 August 1985. In addition, the series Beyond the Sound of Music, coproduced by the festival, was realized in New York that year with a generous subsidy from the Province of Styria.

France, West and East Germany

It wasn’t just the two superpowers that were stepping up their soft-power efforts: in 1983, Peter Vujica also accepted an invitation to Paris from the Institut français. East Germany was interested as well. On 12 January 1983, the Austrian cultural attaché in East Berlin, Artur Kremsner, wrote to Vujica: Gregor Schneider, the director of the GDR’s Zentrum für Kunstausstellungen (Centre for Art Exhibitions), had informed him that the country would participate in steirischer herbst ’83 and wanted to know what the annual theme was. Vujica traveled to Berlin in February and organized guest performances by the Schillertheater from West Berlin, who were to show Sławomir Mrożek’s The Ambassador and Vladimir Mayakovsky’s Tragedy (translated by East Berlin’s Heiner Müller).

There were exchanges with the West German Embassy, too, yet according to the annual report, these had no financial consequences. Ultimately, Styria-Verlag and Stiefelkönig stepped in as sponsors of the guest performances.