Word: austrian
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Behind drawn draperies in a ponderously furnished, strangely silent office on Vienna's Wohllebengasse (Alley of Good Living) lies one of the key outposts of the Communist drive for East-West trade. It is Garant Insur ance, a Russian-owned-and-operated firm set up under Austrian law, and its business is supplying coverage for Western businessmen who trade with the Soviet bloc. In the five years of its existence, Garant has seen its premium income soar from less than $600,000 to $4,000,000 this year; it now does business with some of the best-known manufacturers...
...Backwoods Barrister." Author Peter C. Newman, 34, national affairs editor of Maclean's magazine, is an Austrian-born Canadian who first regarded Diefenbaker with great admiration. He now sees the ex-Prime Minister as a messianic orator who in office "turned out to be not a spiritual leader at all, but a renegade. He interpreted the people's splendid acclaim of him as adequate proof of his greatness." Diefenbaker's administrative skills were those "of a backwoods barrister," says Newman, describing weeks of fran tic search by Diefenbaker's staff for a letter from President Eisenhower...
Capitalist Hangover. Hand kissing got its start in Europe with the Roman emperors, who exported the gesture as a symbolic act of fealty. In Central Europe it ceased to be a pledge of loyalty to the sovereign in the late 18th century, when Austrian Emperor Joseph II snatched his hand from subjects' lips with the cry: "It isn't there for someone to wipe his nose on!" More recently Mussolini, who frowned on the custom in any form, tried to discourage il baciamano. He might as well have tried to suppress spaghetti. The Nazis also deplored the Handkuss...
Unlike the Austrian, who is a born knuckle nuzzler and usually even prefaces a telephone call to a woman with a murmured Küss die Hand, the traditional German hand kisser seems hopelessly stiff to other Europeans. He somehow gives the impression that he is afraid of catching germs. To purists, the greatest danger is that the art, dry or wet, is becoming too popular. "When a man used to kiss your hand, and did it right," mourns one venerable German baroness, "it meant he was well-bred. Now you can't be sure any more." Of course...
...perhaps the world's best lyric opera company and East Berlin's finest cultural ornament. In an atmosphere where the culture bullets really sting, the East's operatic triumph had one touch of irony: Walter Felsenstein, the Komische Oper's founder and director, is an Austrian who lives in West Berlin...