Liam Hoare
A freelance writer on politics and literature based in Vienna. He is the Europe editor for Moment and a frequent contributor to Slate, The Forward and Tablet.
Who Owns Kafka’s Legacy?
The struggle over a rich literary inheritance opens questions of identity regarding the seminal writer, a Czech who was also Jewish but wrote in German of Habsburg-era Prague. At four in the morning on March 15, 1939, Max Brod crossed the Czech-Polish frontier with his wife, Elsa, a visa to Palestine, and a bulky, cracked […]
FPÖ’s Vilimsky tells ORF’s Armin Wolf: ‘This is the last straw!’
Colleagues and opposition politicians defended ORF star journalist and anchor Armin Wolf after a contentious interview with Freedom Party general secretary Harald Vilimsky led to sustained attacks and calls for his resignation. Vilimsky appeared on Wolf’s evening news program ZIB2 Tuesday, where he was asked about a poem by the now-former Freedom Party deputy mayor […]
Vienna’s New Wave of Political Theater
The return of the Thursday demonstrations to Vienna’s streets last October heralded a reawakening of Austrian protest culture. Between climate change strikes and marches against racism, the capital has been very lively of late. And on stage, a new wave of starkly political theater is trying to make sense of the current age of far-right populism. […]
The Ironies of History
In Éric Vuillard’s award-winning historical novel The Order of the Day, an absurd and tragic encounter seals Austria’s fate. The hour grows late and Austria’s dictatorial Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg arrives at the Eagle’s Nest, Adolf Hitler’s mountaintop retreat high above Berchtesgaden. It is February 12, 1938, and in a month’s time, German troops will cross […]
“You’re a Young Guy” | Kurz Meets Trump
Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz described his meeting with United States president Donald Trump Wednesday as “very disputatious” in an interview with ORF’s Armin Wolf. Kurz flew to Washington D.C. earlier this week in order to meet with Trump, becoming the first Austrian chancellor in 13 years to receive an invitation to the White House, at […]
Culture Books | November
Anna Seghers’ Morality Play Available in English for the first time, The Seventh Cross addresses the damage and deep divisions of ordinary life under the Nazis Seven political prisoners escape from the (fictional) Westhofen concentration camp in the Rhineland in the opening pages of Anna Seghers’ epic The Seventh Cross. The camp commandant, the old […]
Turnhalle Café | Hidden Cornucopia
In a crowded brunch landscape, Turnhalle im brick5 offers exceptional organic fare in a relaxed environment.
When the doors to Turnhalle im brick5 open on weekends, a brunch of earthly delights a...
Saving the White Stallions
How the US Army helped preserve the famed Lipizzaners in the final days of WWII. Weeks from the end of the Second World War, a rogue unit of the American Army slipped across the lines into the Sudetenland on a clandestine mission to a secluded horse farm. For housed at Hostau – today Hostouň in […]
After Europe | Ivan Krastev’s Doomsday Prognosis for the EU
In After Europe, Ivan Krastev argues that the refugee crisis is Europe’s gravest threat Europe is in crisis and Ivan Krastev is worried. As at the end of the Habsburg dynasty a century ago, “Europeans are living at a moment when paralyzing uncertainty captures a society’s imagination” the Bulgarian political scientist argues in After Europe. […]
