VIENNA, AUSTRIA.-To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Austrian State Treaty With paintings and sculptures, photos and posters und drawings the exhibition “Physiognomy of the Second Republic” stirs memories of great personalities and momentous events that shaped the Second Republic. By showing the face and mask of the epoch it demonstrates what has emerged in the course of half a century – a new Austrian identity and new self-awareness.
Important personalities from politics, trade and industry, literature, art and science, film, theatre, society, sport and the media as well as momentous political and cultural events from the 1950s to 1980s, reflect the origins of legends and myths. One remembers and is reminded, encounters something familiar and discovers something new in this physiognomy of the Second Republic.

In conjunction with the exhibition a book has been published in German with essays about socio- and cultural-political aspects of the epoch, edited by Gerbert Frodl, Paul Kruntorad und Manfried Rauchensteiner.