ABSTRACT
Austrian statesmen took an active role in overcoming this East-West divide to ease Austrian foreign policy choices. Austrian accession into the European Union in 1995 was as radical a turning point for Austrian foreign policy as the end of the four-power occupation and the arrival of neutrality in 1955. The “long fifties” were characterized by Grand Coalition’s intentions to get rid of the occupation regime and its desire to establish and to stabilize an independent and sovereign state. After the safeguarding of the entity of the Austrian state and the final attainment of its freedom, the first independent positioning took place both within the global framework of politics with United Nations membership in 1955. Rauchensteiner, and after him Helmut Kramer, saw the period of the late 1950s and 1960s as the trajectory of Austria’s “emancipation” from the former occupation powers. Rudolf Agstner, Austria’s diplomatic representative in Bonn, presents an institutional history of the Austrian foreign office after World War I.
