Zwischen Nachkriegspropaganda, Kulturimperialismus und Kulturkritik: Marcel Prawys Lecture-Performances am Wiener Kosmos-Theater Anfang der 50er Jahre

Abstract

Postwar Vienna might not be the first place that comes to mind when discussing „contact zones“ (Pratt 1991) and yet, Pratt’s definition of „social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other“ (ibid. 34) describes the situation Marcel Prawy faced upon his return to the Austrian capital after World War II perfectly. With the Kosmos Theater, the U.S. Army created a dedicated space for cultural exchange in the U.S. sector, where U.S. culture was instrumentalized as a propaganda tool to win over locals for the „American Way of Life“ in the fight against Nazism and communism.

The embodiment of Greenblatt’s term „mobilizer“ (Greenblatt et al. 2009, 253), Prawy’s efforts to introduce conservative Austrian audiences, critics, and political stakeholders to the new genre of Broadway musicals, with which he became familiar during his years in U.S. exile, form the center piece of this article. His background as a remigrant and mobilizer informed his approach as a successful intermediary between Austrian and U.S. cultures as much as his training as an intelligence specialist in the U.S. Army.

A critical examination of the repertoire used by Prawy contextualizes his popular lecture-performances at the Kosmos Theater within the afore-mentioned positive self-portrayal of the United States abroad. I argue that it was this proximity to U.S. postwar propaganda that contributed to the difficult reception history of the genre in Vienna, since local audiences ultimately rejected romanticized notions of an „American Way of Life“, so favored by the U.S. government, as they began to engage with their former occupiers more critically during the Cold War.