S07E10: Paul Lend­vai on “Aus­tria Behind the Mask” 

This episode explores Aus­tri­an his­to­ry and pol­i­tics, look­ing to lessons of the past to under­stand the future of democ­ra­cy in the coun­try. What might grow­ing sup­port for right wing nation­al­ism mean for Aus­tria? And how does the coun­try’s neu­tral­i­ty play a role in rela­tion­ships with exter­nal pow­er in the EU and beyond? Lis­ten to hear about Aus­tri­a’s com­plex polit­i­cal real­i­ties and paradoxes.

Guest fea­tured in this episode:

Pro­fes­sor Paul Lend­vai, a ver­i­ta­ble doyen of polit­i­cal jour­nal­ism in Aus­tria and beyond, cel­e­brat­ed his 94th birth­day this year. Born in 1929 in Budapest, he fled Hun­gary after the crush­ing of the 1956 rev­o­lu­tion and became a nat­u­ral­ized Aus­tri­an cit­i­zen.
He start­ed his jour­nal­is­tic career in 1957 and soon became the Finan­cial Times cor­re­spon­dent for East­ern Europe, a posi­tion he held for more than two decades. He was a con­trib­u­tor to The Econ­o­mist. He wrote columns for Aus­tri­an, Ger­man, and Swiss print media and radio. In 1982, he became edi­tor in chief at the East­ern Euro­pean Depart­ment of the Aus­tri­an Nation­al Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny, ORF. Lend­vai was the edi­tor in chief and co-pub­lish­er of Europäis­che Rund­schau, a Vien­nese inter­na­tion­al quar­ter­ly for almost 50 years. He runs the month­ly dis­cus­sion pan­el, Europas­tu­dio, on the ORF’s TV chan­nel. The win­ner of numer­ous awards, most recent­ly the Con­cor­dia Prize for Life­time Achieve­ment, award­ed in the Aus­tri­an Par­lia­ment, Paul Lend­vai has authored more than two dozen books.