This volume of Contemporary Austrian Studies offers a cross-section of Austrian lives and biographical approaches to recent Austrian history. We also suggest that the intellectual biographies of thinkers and professionals are fertile soil for biographical study. Moreover, the prosopographical study of common folks in the Austrian population lifts these lives from the dark matter of anonymous masses and gives rich insight into the lives that ordinary Austrians have been leading.
Gunter Bischof is the Marshall Plan Professor of History and director of CenterAustria at the University of New Orleans.
Fritz Plasser is professor of political science and dean of the faculty of political science and sociology at the University of Innsbruck.