“Our Man in Vienna”: Friedrich Torberg’s Journal Forum and the Popularization of American Letters in Austria

Felix W. Tweraser (Utah State University)

Email: twerfeli@cc.usu.edu

 

ABSTRACT:

As editor of Forum: Österreichische Blätter für kulturelle Freiheit between 1954 and 1965, Friedrich Torberg published original work by many leading lights of American letters. Forum was one of many journals supported world-wide by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a Cold-War era foundation set up to support media efforts on behalf of the West, and funded clandestinely by the CIA. The Congress facilitated and strictly oversaw the content of its journals; Torberg thus made use of original American work – some of which he translated himself – submitted to the editors of Congress journals. Torberg became one of the leading publicists for American culture in Austria, acquainting a new generation of Austrian readers with a wide variety of American writing.