Otto Molden Foyer

The rooms in the Congress Centrum Alpbach are named after personalities and patrons who have had a special connection to the "European Forum Alpbach."

Otto Molden (1918-2002)

Otto Molden was born in 1918 as the first child of Ernst Molden (later editor of “Die Presse”) and Paula von Preradovic (author of the text of the Austrian national anthem and the "Alpbach Elegy") in Vienna. From a young age, he was politically active in the bündische youth movement and, like his younger brother Fritz, was involved in resistance against National Socialism. In 1945, he co-founded the International University Weeks in Alpbach with Simon Moser, which later became the European Forum Alpbach (from 1949, this was also reflected in the title). He served as president of the Austrian College, which hosted the European Forum Alpbach, from 1945 to 1960 and again from 1971 to 1992, shaping its character significantly. Molden was instrumental in expanding the International University Weeks into a broad-based dialogue forum that included science, politics, business, and the arts, and he was deeply committed to the cause of European unification. Politically, he sought to support this cause through the European Federalist Party and the European Federalist International, both of which he founded in 1960. Otto Molden authored several books and passed away in 2002 in Paphos, Cyprus. He wrote about Alpbach in works such as “Der andere Zauberberg. Das Phänomen Alpbach” (1981) and “Odyssee meines Lebens und die Gründung Europas in Alpbach” (2001).