Salzburg Global Seminar - Organizational History

Organizational History

In 1946, Clemens Heller, a native Austrian attending graduate school at Harvard University, "envisioned a cultural bridge spanning the Atlantic not only by introducing the demoralized Europeans to all sorts of American cultural achievements, but also by stimulating a fruitful exchange between European national cultures and America."

Richard D. Campbell Jr., an undergraduate student and Scott Elledge, an English instructor also at Harvard, became allies in the realization of this project. Though Harvard was unwilling to support the project, they were able to convince the Harvard Student Council to be the official sponsors of the Seminar. The three founders raised the majority of funds. It was also necessary for the trio to obtain permission from the State Department for entrance into Allied Occupied Austria.

Legend contends that in 1947, Heller bumped into Helene Thimig on a subway train in New York. The widow of theater producer, Max Reinhardt, had been friends with Heller's parents before the war and had a summer home in Salzburg named Schloss Leopoldskron.

Heller explained his plans and Thimig said she would rent Max’s Schloss at a low rate for the purpose of a summer school. Dick Campbell is quoted as saying “We hope to create at least one small center in which young Europeans from all countries, and of all political convictions, could meet for a month in concrete work under favorable living conditions, and to lay the foundation for a possible permanent center of intellectual discussion in Europe.”

The first session, officially called "The Harvard Student Council's Salzburg Seminar in American Civilization," lasted six weeks in the summer of 1947 and brought together men and women from eighteen countries, including countries from behind the Iron Curtain. Faculty for the first session included literary historian F. O. Matthiessen; anthropologist Margaret Mead; economists Walt Rostow and Wassily Leontief; writer and literary critic Alfred Kazin among others.

The Seminar was formally incorporated on April 20, 1950. Dexter Perkins, Frederick Muhlhauser, Herbert Gleason, Clyde and Florence Kluckhohn, Wassily Leontief and Richard Campbell all signed the papers of the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies. By 1950, the Seminar developed into more than a summer school and session topics were expanded beyond American Studies.

During President Tuthill’s second year, he told the Board that in 1979 “American Law would be the only ‘American’ subject offered.” The Seminar had become so global in focus, that he twice urged that the Seminar be renamed “Salzburg Seminar in International Studies.” In 2007, the Seminar changed its name to the Salzburg Global Seminar in order to better reflect the increasingly global, rather than American, outlook of the Seminar and the focus of its course offerings.

Although the Seminar grew to include a more global focus, American Studies themes continued to be present at the Salzburg Global Seminar. In 1994, the Seminar returned to its roots by establishing the American Studies Center. From 1994 to 2002 thirty-two sessions on American themes were held. In 2003 the Salzburg Seminar American Studies Association (SSASA) was created. SSASA organizes a yearly symposium devoted to a broad American Studies theme such as politics, literature, history or cultural studies.

Today, the Salzburg Global Seminar holds sessions that focus "on critical issues confronting the global community, covering topics as diverse as health care and education, culture and economics, geopolitics and philanthropy... Seminars are designed to be participatory: prompting candid dialogue, fresh thinking and constantly in the search for innovative but practical solutions."