Abstract

The history of Alpine skiing is linked to a transfer of knowledge and culture and a global winter sport business that is based on migration and shaped societies. This article examines the transatlantic relations between Austria and the United States with regard to skiing from the 1930s to 1960s. It analyzes the development of a transnational Alpine skiing culture as a cross-border community achievement influenced by various sociopolitical factors and different individuals collaborating over decades.

Funding Group:
  • Award Group:
    • Funder(s):
       Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies

Ski tourism is an economically and culturally important industry in many Alpine parts of Central Europe, as well as in mountain regions of North America. Austria as a skiing nation has a long-established tradition of skiing and ski tourism, which is not only of great importance for the Austrian economy and society but an integral part of Austrian national identity.1 However the social and cultural phenomenon of skiing as a collective practice does not stop at national borders and is in many respect the result of cultural transfers.2 In times of intense transnational exchanges and mass migrations, the emergence of skiing—and this is the case with other popular cultural phenomena—was characterized by cross-border expansion.3 In the 1880s and 1890s, skiing spread from Norway across Europe and reached the Alps. The history of Alpine skiing is thus linked to a transfer of knowledge and culture that goes back to the late nineteenth century.4 In the interwar period, Alpine skiing and “Alpine modernism,” became part of modern mass culture.5 In the late 1920s, entrepreneurs began to develop winter sports and ski infrastructure in many regions of the world, from Europe to Asia and Australia and from South to North America. As Andrew Denning writes: “The popularity of Alpine modernism produced significant material effects, as state officials and private businessmen built thousands of ski lifts, engineered the mountainside to create ideal downhill ski runs, and constructed a dense network of transportation, communications, and accommodations infrastructure to serve the burgeoning (and lucrative) Alpine skiing market.”6

With this as a background, the goal of this article is to examine individual and collective networks involved in the transfer of knowledge and culture in skiing between Austria and the United States from the 1930s to the 1960s. Based on the results of a transnational research project and documents from various regional archives in Austria and the United States, this article focuses on the sociohistorical backgrounds and achievements of a wide variety of actors.7 In doing so, it analyzes the development of a transnational Alpine skiing culture as a cross-border community achievement influenced by various sociopolitical factors and the collaboration of a diverse group of individuals. Following Ian Scully’s distinction between three migration waves (Austrian Alpine ski instructors in the early and mid-1930s, political refugees in the late 1930s, and transmigrants after World War II), this article argues that skiing constitutes a global winter sport business.8 This business not only permanently altered the natural landscape and had an economic and environmental impact, but it also shaped the culture and lifestyle of both Austrian and American societies for generations.

The Emergence of a Global Alpine Ski Culture

As in other areas of society, the end of World War I brought tremendous changes to sports and leisure cultures. War veterans of former ski battalions laid the foundation for an immense growth in the ranks of leisure skiers. At the same time, social life in European leisure societies was characterized by a broad process of democratization, which reshaped outdoor activities in the formerly elite sport of skiing and beyond. Due to new social legislation, for example, the availability of free time enabled broad participation in sports in Austria and other European countries.9 Meanwhile, in the 1920s, sport and athletic clubs were founded and/or reestablished across Austria, and Alpine skiing became one of the most popular sports outside the soccer field. Beside bourgeois ski clubs, workers ski clubs were founded and reorganized after World War I. Ski clubs with different political orientations at local, regional, and national levels emerged and attracted thousands of members. The Austrian Jewish sports club Hakoah had its own winter sport section in both Vienna and in Innsbruck. Similarly, Austrian Catholic gymnasts also established their own ski clubs in bigger cities. Simply put, skiing was no longer an aristocratic and bourgeois way of life. Indeed, large sections of the working class discovered skiing, which became a central part of worker physical culture, not only in the Friends of Nature movement (Naturfreunde-Bewegung), but also in the Workers Gymnastics and Sports Clubs (Arbeiter- Turn- und Sportvereine), which had been organized under the umbrella of the Association for Sport and Physical Culture in Austria (Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Sport und Körperkultur Österreich [ASKÖ]).10 Young men and women from different social classes, across European Alpine countries, now participated in skiing, and club memberships soon grew into the thousands.11

Ski schools played a major role in the global diffusion of Alpine skiing. Hannes Schneider, the inventor of the “Arlberg technique,” founded the first commercial ski school in the Austrian village of St. Anton in 1922, and many others followed. In 1923, Peter Radacher sen. established a ski school and training center for Nordic skiing, specializing in ski jumping on the Hochkönig mountain in the Austrian state of Salzburg.12 Ski instructors who were trained and worked in these ski schools later moved to other places in the Alps and to mountain regions around the world. Alpine skiing became an international business and produced the first “transmigrants of the sport,” as Aneta Podkalicka and Philipp Strobl argue.13

These special skilled migrant workers traveled and lived between different ski resorts and in different societies “on both hemispheres spreading their knowledge all over the skiable world.”14 Trained male and female ski instructors moved from one place to another and shared their experience in Alpine skiing with many others. At the same time, the introduction of uphill transportation modernized and accelerated the practice of skiing. With the mass of skiers, an urban lifestyle found its way into the mountain villages and urban habits were transferred to the mountains.15 Roland Huntford states that “the ski circus was freemasonry; nationality meant little, personality was all.”16 Indeed, skiing was progressive in many ways, fostering individuality, leveling social differences, and expressing irrepressible joie de vivre. At the same time, the ski club culture in the Alpine regions of Austria in the 1920s and 1930s was influenced by fascist values, and there was a political radicalization in the sports communities. The political atmosphere in bourgeois ski clubs was characterized by German nationalism and antisemitism, while the club culture within the Austrian Ski Association (Österreichischer Skiverband [ÖSV]) was shaped by a racist policy of exclusion.17 Moreover, in the 1930s, skiing became a national sport in Austria, sponsored and promoted by the state, especially under the rule of Austrofascism.18

In 1937, an official report of the Austrofascist sports organization Austrian Sport and Gymnastics Front (Österreichische Sport- und Turnfront [ÖSTF]) estimated the indirect profitability of ÖSV sporting events for the tourism industry at over one million Austrian schillings (the equivalent of ca. 4.5 million Euros today).19

From a gender perspective, skiing in the interwar years, like other sports, was in many ways still a men’s world. Women were allowed to compete as ski racers, but under the supervision of men. Nevertheless, the cultural importance of the popular sport had a tremendous impact on the meaning of Alpine skiing and made the sport more accessible. In response to the destruction of the Great War and the crises of the interwar period, skiing was seen as a kind of liberation, accompanied by emancipatory movements, at a time when the culture and practice of Alpine skiing was becoming global. At a competitive level, the International Ski Federation (FIS), founded in 1924, organized the first World Alpine Ski Championships for men and women in 1931. As Podkalicka and Strobl explain, “As part of mass consumer culture, skiing was implicated in the emerge of an interconnected transnational society shaped by material, informational, and cultural networks that transcend national boundaries.”20 Ski resorts developed in transnational spaces and melting pots where people from different countries and backgrounds came together. The emerging mass ski cultures attracted large numbers of young men and women who worked as ski instructors in different ski schools. These ski schools offered a business opportunity related to the tourism industry.21 As Alpine skiing spread throughout the world, these mobile workers and ski experts began to move from one Alpine region to another and from one continent to another. During the economic crises of the 1930s they set out in search of work, income, and better living conditions. In addition to other overseas destinations like Australia and Argentina, North America was a promising destination for young skiers from Central Europe. Indeed, as Denning points out, “American ski resort developers attempted to transfer the prestige of the Alps to the United States by copying Alpine chalet architecture and importing European ski instructors.”22

Skiing: An Austrian-American Business

Technical developments in the interwar years transformed the sport into an industry, and ski films emerged as a popular offshoot of the Bergfilm genre.23 Hannes Schneider became an internationally known movie star and ambassador for Alpine skiing. However, in addition to Schneider, who operated US branches of his Arlberg ski school in cooperation with ski instructors from the Arlberg, dozens of skiers from the Alps used their knowledge as ski instructors to make money by going abroad and working in the ski business.24 As the ski historian John B. Allen points out: “They all migrated from racing to teaching.”25 A number of factors contributed here. The lack of local ski expertise provided employment opportunities for European experts, while the political conditions in Europe made it increasingly attractive for ski instructors to go to the United States, where “any ski school worth its name had to have a European on its staff.”26

From the early 1930s, Schneider’s special skiing technique, known as the Arlberg technique in Alpine skiing, was transferred to different regions of the American continent and cultivated from east to west. In June 1934, the US winter sports magazine Appalachia published a multipage report on European ski schools in Austria and Switzerland. The author and ski enthusiast Thomas D. Cabot, who was an American businessman and CEO of the Cabot Corporation wrote the following lines: “First and most important of ski schools is the Hannes Schneider School at St. Anton am Arlberg. . . . The Schneider Ski School is probably the largest in the world and has several hundred pupils daily in mid-season. Nearly everyone who goes to St. Anton joins the school and attends regularly.”27

Articles like this promoted Alpine ski culture in the United States at a time when winter tourism was gaining momentum. In December 1936, Arnold Fanck’s 1931 ski film Der weiße Rausch (The White Ecstasy), starring Hannes Schneider, Leni Riefenstahl, Gustav (Guzzi) Lantschner, and Walter Riml, celebrated its American release in Boston. The program announcement spoke of “The Greatest Ski Film Ever Made!” While the filmmaker Arnold Fanck was not mentioned, the program flyer described Hannes Schneider as “The World’s Foremost Ski Expert.”28 Prior to the Boston premiere at the Fine Arts Theater, Schneider organized a ski show in Boston and New York together with other Austrian ski instructors, including Benno Rybizka.29 Schneider also gave a lecture at the US winter sports exhibition in Boston and showed the official Austrian tourism advertising film Winter in Österreich (Winter in Austria) to the audience.30 Reporting on these events, the Boston Globe wrote: “This visit is probably the most prominent event in the history of American skiing.”31 In addition to the rush of viewers, the shows had enormous advertising value. In Boston, the event attracted 30,000 visitors, but when the ski show moved to the Madison Square Garden in 1936, about 80,000 people saw the shows.32 In the same year, the Hamburg-America-Line offered ski tours to Europe, bringing American ski enthusiasts to the Alps to learn the Alpine skiing technique, who then brought their knowledge back to the United States.33

Allen points out that skiing became a “social occasion” in the United States in the 1930s.34 The railroad network and train connections to the newly created winter sports resorts made it easier for the urban clientele to reach the ski resorts of New England and the American West. Railroad companies brought ski tourists from New York and Boston to the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont or, from San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Denver to the Rocky Mountains. In 1935 Northwest Airlines carried the first passengers to the US ski resorts. However, most ski vacationers traveled by snow trains. In the first months of 1936, around 70,000 guests traveled from New York City to various East Coast ski resorts.35 Major investments in ski lifts followed, and in December 1936 the world’s first chairlift opened in Sun Valley, Idaho. That same year, an aerial tramway brought the first skiers up to Cannon Mountain in New Hampshire. Allen describes this as “the direct result of wealthy Americans who had been using funiculars and cog railways in Austria.”36 While ski instructors from the Alps taught their wealthy Hollywood guests Alpine skiing, the US ski racer Richard Durrance visited Austria to learn his first parallel turns from the Tyrolean ski champion Anton (Toni) Seelos before introducing his newly acquired knowledge to the United States.37

Ski Instructors on the Move

The state ski instructor examination, introduced in Austria in winter 1928/1929, gave hundreds of men and women the opportunity to become state-certified ski instructors. By the mid-1930s, the number of these state-certified ski instructors in Austria had greatly increased. In 1935, the Austrian Professional Ski Instructor’s Association (Berufsskilehrerverband) counted 204 professional ski instructors in the state of Tyrol, while 483 men and women throughout Austria were registered as members of the Professional Ski Instructor Association.38 According to a report in the Telegraf newspaper in October 1936, around 1,400 men and women had passed the state ski instructor exam in Austria, and 450 of them were actually practicing the profession.39 This growth of professionals paralleled the expansion of winter tourism in the Alps and other mountain regions. In the following years many Austrian ski instructors went abroad to teach skiing. Studies quantifying how many of them worked abroad are not available. Still, it is clear that from the 1930s there was an increased seasonal labor migration of Austrian ski instructors to other European countries and overseas destinations. Their radius of movement extended from Italy and France across North Africa, Japan, Australia, and South and North America. In December 1935, the Neueste Sport-Zeitung entitled an article devoted to the subject, “Österreichische Skilehrer in fünf Erdteilen” (Austrian ski instructors on five continents).40 The increased international interest in Austrian ski instructors in the mid-1930s was also linked to the national federations’ preparations for the Olympic Winter Games in the Bavarian ski resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. In January 1935, the US Ski Association asked if the ÖSV could loan two or three of its members to serve as amateur coaches for the US team. At this time, Anton (Toni) Seelos from Seefeld was already coach of the German national ski team, and Leo Gasperl from Kitzbühel coached the Italian Olympic team.41 On the other side of the world, Ernst Skardarasy taught the Arlberg technique at Mount Kosciuszko in New South Wales, Australia.42 In summer 1935, he wrote to Hannes Schneider: “I like it very, very much, although we don’t have much snow and the runs are fairly flat and short. All the people here are very nice and I hope that being here is good publicity for the Arlberg.”43

In the United States, the Austrian Alpine ski racer Harald Paumgarten from Graz opened a ski school in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, in 1930, while Sepp Ruschp, a prominent ski racer and Upper Austrian national combined champion from Linz, emigrated to Vermont in 1936 to become one of the key developers of the Stowe ski resort.44 Ruschp, who had a technical college degree and had the ability to teach skiing, became the director of the Mount Mansfield Ski School as well as the Alpine coach at the University of Vermont and Norwich University.45 Perhaps more importantly, the mid-1930s saw the arrival in the United States of the first ski instructors who had worked directly for Hannes Schneider. First came Otto Lang, who opened an American branch of the Hannes Schneider Ski School at Mount Rainier, Washington.46 Lang, who emigrated from Salzburg to the Cascades in 1935 and founded a ski school there, described his arrival in New York as follows: “The skyline of Manhattan appeared, overwhelming and unreal, a fata morgana, a city rising out of the sea.”47 Lang was born in Zenica, Bosnia, before emigrating to Vienna and then Salzburg after World War I. As a state-certified ski instructor, he was a member of the Austrian Association of Professional Ski Instructors. Beginning in 1935, he ran a ski school on Mount Rainier that soon became the center of Alpine skiing in the Cascades. It was the first Hannes Schneider-branch ski school in the United States.48 During World War II Lang moved to Idaho in the winter season 1939/1940 to teach Alpine skiing in Sun Valley, and he was also secretary of the Sun Valley Ski Club.49

Lang was a colleague of the Austrian ski champion Hans Hauser, who also immigrated to the United States during the interwar period and became the ski school director at Sun Valley, Idaho, for the1936/1937 winter season. Together with five other ski instructors from the province of Salzburg, Hauser established a successful ski school business in Sun Valley before Lang joined in, and the two continued to work together there in the postwar years.50

Lang also worked as film producer and director. He produced short and feature films and was nominated for the Academy Award in 1954 and 1955. He began his film career as the technical director of the film musical Sun Valley Serenade (1941).51 Another ski instructor who first worked for Hannes Schneider was Benno Rybizka, who in 1936 became the director of a ski school in Jackson and North Conway, New Hampshire.52 Rybizka was in charge of the “Eastern Branch of the Hannes Schneider Ski School” the so-called Eastern Slope Ski School in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.53

In the western United States, Yosemite put California on the ski map. On the initiative of the Yosemite Winter Sports Club, a California Ski Association was established in 1930, which immediately affiliated with the National Ski Association (NSA).54 During this period, another Austrian, Walter Mosauer, traveled to California to teach and to develop skiing. Born in Vienna in 1905, Mosauer had earned a PhD in zoology and came to the University of California at Los Angeles in 1931. In addition to his scientific research on snakes, he was deeply interested in skiing and played a leading role in introducing the sport to students there, training them in special student ski teams.55 In 1936, Hannes Schroll from the state of Salzburg, followed with a ski school in Yosemite Valley, California. Schroll was accompanied by Dr. Joseph Rochlitzer, an Austrian-born physician from Santa Barbara, California, whose family had been close friends with the Schrolls.56

By the late 1930s, the ski business was ready to take off and would soon develop into a million-dollar industry. As ski resorts expanded, so did the demand for well-trained ski instructors in the United States. In December 1938, the United States Eastern Amateur Ski Association declared: “The very rapid growth of skiing during the past few years resulted in a demand for ski teachers that far exceeded the supply”.57 During the mid to late 1930s, ski instructors from the Austrian Alps worked in the ski business in various regions of the United States from east to west. Most emigrated seasonally in small groups, but some traveled alone. Unfortunately, we know less about female ski instructors in the interwar years. But with the growth of the industry, it seems reasonable to assume that women also sought their own opportunities by emigrating to the United States. Elfriede Pembauer of Salzburg, a member of the 1936 Austrian Olympic team, emigrated in November 1936 to teach skiing at Lake Placid.58 The Frederick Loeser department store in Brooklyn, New York, hired her to teach ski gymnastics. After a short stay in New York, she received a contract as a ski instructor in Québec and moved to Canada.59 For a short time, Pembauer played an important role in Canadian women’s ski racing and was highly regarded for her skill and athletic success in beating Canadian women skiers. Known as Mickey, she won the Dominion women’s downhill in March 1937 and national slalom ski titles.60 Pembauer returned to Austria in 1938.

Austrian Ski Instructors and the Creation of Sun Valley

In the meantime, winter sport areas emerged in several places in the United States, and American railroad businessmen like William Averell Harriman hired state-certified ski instructors from the Alps to develop ski resorts from east to west. Sun Valley in Idaho was one such resort. The establishment of this particular winter resort was the brainchild of Austrian Felix Schaffgotsch. Harriman had hired Schaffgotsch to look for potential ski resorts in the western United States that were connected to the Union Pacific Railroad.61 Formerly allowed to use his aristocratic title of “count” in Austria, Schaffgotsch had an elite school education. Harriman and Schaffgotsch shared an enthusiasm for skiing while Felix Schaffgotsch, like his younger brother Friedrich, worked as a ski instructor. In December 1930, as a 26-year-old student, Felix Schaffgotsch undertook his first trip to the United States and returned in November 1933 and 1935. His destination was the mountains around the small town of Ketchum, Idaho.62 “This is the place” he telegraphed to Harriman, and soon American newspapers reported on Schaffgotsch’s activities.63 The Union Pacific Railroad Company began publicizing Sun Valley Resort in the fall of 1936. The Idaho Evening Times of August 22, 1936, announced the opening of the resort in late August, calling it “a skiers’ paradise, which presents snowy peaks and tropical diversions in the same locale.”64

It was reported that the Union Pacific invested $1.5 million in tourism infrastructure. Historian John W. Lundin states that almost $3.5 million had been invested in Sun Valley by 1940.65 The Sun Valley Lodge offered modern hotel accommodations for about 350 guests and included an indoor swimming pool, dance hall, and horseback riding.66 In addition to backcountry skiing, Sun Valley offered two chairlifts that made the surrounding terrain easily accessible for Alpine skiing. The US Olympic skier and Dartmouth College professor Charles N. Proctor described Harriman’s vision of building a ski resort comparable to the well-known resorts in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Proctor was hired by Harriman to work with engineers on the logistical planning of the new resort. Together with Schaffgotsch, he examined the land and surveyed areas for skiing.67 The newly created ski resort, which opened in December 1936, soon attracted Hollywood stars, actors, writers, businessmen, and politicians. The American film actor Gary Cooper and the later politician Nelson Rockefeller, a member of the well-known industrialist family, were among the first guests.68

In Sun Valley, Harriman asked Schaffgotsch to establish a ski school based on Schneider’s Arlberg technique taught in Austria. Hans Hauser, mentioned above, was hired to run it. Together with five other ski instructors from the state of Salzburg, he began teaching Alpine skiing in the winter of 1936/1937. The Austrian sportswear company Lanz from Salzburg was hired to design the ski instructors’ clothing so that they would be dressed in typical costume.69

The presence of Hans Hauser was significant. Born in 1911, Hauser was the first skier from Salzburg to win a medal in a World Cup event. In 1932, he won the vice world championship title in the combined events in Cortina d’Ampezzo.70 Only one year later, he won the Austrian championship for the first time, and in the same year he passed the state exam to become a ski instructor.71 In 1936, however, FIS rules prevented him competing in the Olympic Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen because of his professional status as a ski instructor.72 Nevertheless, Hauser’s success and expertise in skiing were already internationally known. Again, personal and financial hardships played a role in the spread of Austrian skiing culture. Hauser’s father was an innkeeper who had died during World War I, leaving the mother to care for Hauser and his brother. Hauser was in his mid-twenties when he left Austria for the first time, boarding a steamship from Bremerhaven to New York. During the Depression years, crossing the Atlantic and traveling to the West for a privileged and well-paid job must have been a great opportunity for Hauser and the other Austrians who followed him. Most of them came from humble backgrounds, and the well-paid seasonal job as a ski instructor in Sun Valley promised social advancement. As head instructor, Hauser was paid $1,000 a month. His five assistant instructors, Josef Benedikter, Franz Epp, Alfred Dingl, Josef Schwaighofer, and Roland Cossmann, received $500 plus expenses for the travel from Austria to Ketchum and free room and board.73 The contract was for six months, from November to April. After the winter season, the instructors had to leave the United States because of their visa status.74 However, they all returned for the next two seasons and brought other ski instructors with them. The increased demand for ski instructors can be seen in the Sun Valley Ski School membership list. In the first four seasons, from winter 1936/1937 to winter 1939/1940, the number of ski instructors in Sun Valley nearly quadrupled from six to twenty-two. In the first two seasons, all of the instructors were from Austria, and all were men from the province of Salzburg. In the prewar season of 1938/1939, German skier Florian Hämmerle from Bavaria joined the Austrian team.

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939 at the latest, the origins of Sun Valley’s ski instructors changed and more American-born teachers joined the business.75 Until then, the seasonal migration of Austrian ski instructors had been largely due to economic motives rather than persecution driven. This changed with the Anschluss in March 1938 and the National Socialist policy of persecution. In addition to Jewish skiers and ski instructors, political opponents of the Nazi regime increasingly emigrated in search of a safe home. For their part, Austrians who had been associated with National Socialism prior to 1938 returned home.76

At the same time, women were increasingly involved in teaching skiing at the Sun Valley ski school. One was the American skier Clarita Heath, and another was the Austrian skier Elli Löri-Stiller.77 Löri-Stiller, the Austrian ski champion from Vienna, came to Idaho for the 1939/1940 winter season and later married Fred Iselin of Switzerland, who also taught at Sun Valley.78 After being hired as a ski instructor, she opened a ski boutique and introduced Bogner skiwear to Sun Valley skiers.79 Elli Löri-Stiller remained in the United States and died in 1951 in Aspen, Colorado. Her example shows how global skiing in the 1930s opened up professional and personal opportunities for women.

Skiing in Troubled Times

The Anschluss and Nazi takeover in Austria caused enormous disruption, including the arrest of Hannes Schneider, followed by his escape to the United States, as well as the murder of his longtime Jewish companion Rudolf Gomperz. Meanwhile, Jewish sports organizations were liquidated, and Jewish athletes and political opponents were persecuted. Within hours of Germany’s formal annexation of Austria on March 12, 1938, Schneider, who was anti-Nazi and seen by leading Nazi officials and Nazi skiers as a promoter of Jewish sport business, was arrested at his home in St. Anton and imprisoned by a group of local National Socialists. After weeks in the public jail in Landeck in Tyrol, he was taken to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where Schneider remained under house arrest for another eight months. The SS wanted him dead, but Schneider was finally released and allowed to leave Nazi Germany in 1939, accepting an offer from influential American businessman Harvey Dow Gibson to take over the ski school at Mount Cranmore in North Conway, New Hampshire.80

Persecuted by the new National Socialist regime, Jewish-Austrian skiers escaped to the United States to start a new life. Many of them knew each other from the Jewish sports organization Hakoah, which was liquidated by the Nazis in March 1938.81 Some had been instructors at Hannes Schneider’s Arlberg ski school and had already been to the United States. Luggi Föger, for example, had worked as a ski instructor in Yosemite during the 1933/1934 winter season. Föger fled to New York in the summer of 1938, accompanied by his friend and fellow ski instructor Georg Eisenschimmel, and reached the West Coast in November 1938. Eisenschimmel, who was born in Vienna and had a successful career as an industrialist, became a major promoter of skiing in Canada, while Föger, along with other Austrian skiers and Alpine experts, was an instructor with the 10th Mountain Division.82 Formed by Charles Minot Dole from the US Army’s 87th Regiment in 1941 and reaching its full strength of about 14,000 men in 1944, this specially trained mountain unit fought in the Italian campaign at the end of World War II.83 As director of the Military Assault Climbing School at Camp Hale and the West Virginia Maneuver Area, Föger was a leading figure in the development of the 10th Mountain Division. After the war, he moved in and out of ski teaching to become a filmmaker in Hollywood, using his experience from the ski films of the 1930s as a producer.84

Other expelled skiers came from eastern parts of Austria, especially from Vienna. One of them was the Jewish female skier Paula Kann Valar. Born in 1922, she fled to the United States in 1939 and settled in North Conway, New Hampshire. A protégée of Hannes Schneider, she entered and dominated the American Alpine racing scene during World War II and also contributed to the American ski business in the postwar era. In 1953, after her career as a ski racer, she became the first female ski instructor in the United States and developed a special method of teaching children to ski. Together with her Swiss husband, Paul Valar, she ran several ski schools in the White Mountains. In 1970, Kann Valar was elected to the US National Ski Hall of Fame.85 Her story and those of other ski migrants and refugees are representative of a transfer of knowledge that shaped Alpine skiing culture in the late 1930s and 1940s. With their specialized skills in Alpine skiing, Austrian skiers and ski instructors developed a network of ski schools across the United States and shared their knowledge in the form of ski lessons and ski course books. In addition, new ski migrants and refugees from Central Europe brought an Alpine lifestyle that further enriched US skiing in many areas. Exiled Jewish skiers were involved in developing ski resorts and infrastructure, and they played an important role in shaping various competitive disciplines on a regional and national level. Today, American-born freestyle skier Avital Carroll, who competes for Austria, is an example of how Jewish life and identity in sports survived the Holocaust. Carroll’s grandmother, Elfi Hendell, and her husband, David, escaped from Vienna to New York in 1939. It was she who inspired Carroll’s passion for skiing. The result was two bronze medals at the 2023 World Freestyle Ski Championships.86

The Marshall Plan as Start-Up Support for Austria, the Skiing Nation

Immediately after its liberation by the Allies, Austria declared itself a ski nation. Sports officials and government politicians took it upon themselves to present skiing as Austria’s national sport and to emphasize the country’s hegemonic role in the field. In the 1930s, the Austrian Sport and Gymnastics Front (Österreichische Sport- und Turnfront [ÖSTF]) propagated Austria’s unique advantages in skiing and spoke of a “ski country Austria” (Skiland Österreich). This image was revived after World War II, and it was through skiing that Austria competed for recognition in the international community after 1945. Indeed, winter tourism in the Alps became a key driver of economic reconstruction in the postwar decades.87 Massive investments in the cable car infrastructure, largely financed by Marshall Plan aid, promoted tourism and accelerated prosperity.

In this context, Alpine skiing played a key role as a “culture-making machine” that created identity and generated foreign currency.88 At the same time, skiing was a suitable vehicle for whitewashing the Nazi past with images of an idyllic parallel world. Based on the victim myth and by its own internal policy of appeasement, the Austrian Ski Association (ÖSV) was able to cover up the involvement of its members in the National-Socialist regime.89 Unlike Germany, Austria was allowed to take part in the 1948 Olympic Games in London and St. Moritz. Here, the St. Moritz Winter Games were especially important in the nation-building process based on winter tourism and Alpine skiing. Anton Sailer’s triple victory at the 1956 Olympic Games in Cortina, Italy, eight months after the signing of the Austrian State Treaty in May 1955, demonstrated, at a sporting level, that a new, postwar Austria had arrived. With his Olympic medals, Sailer reached the status of a national sporting hero, and the Second Austrian Republic gained the reputation of a skiing nation.90

During the postwar period, the financial contribution of the Marshall Plan had a considerable impact on the development of ski tourism in Austria. Several scholars, such as the historian Günter Bischof, mention that tourism infrastructure in the Alps was directly financed by the Marshall Plan. Bischof points out that “ERP investments in the tourist industry had only one goal: to rebuild the existing Austrian tourist industry to attract foreign guests and produce sufficient foreign currency.”91

Two-thirds of the ERP counterpart funds invested in Austrian tourism between 1950 and 1955 went to the three western Austrian states: Vorarlberg, Tyrol, and Salzburg. With the French and Americans as occupiers, they also had the least oppressive occupation regimes. If one includes the Upper Austria Lake District, Styria, and Carinthia, by the end of 1955 almost 87 percent of the ERP funds earmarked for tourism went to the western zones.92 In particular, the western states suffered less damage and had a more advanced tourism infrastructure. These states had a better chance of attracting foreign tourists and therefore had to be given the highest priority in repairing and modernizing their hotel facilities. Between 1950 and 1955, a total of 525.4 million Schilling in ERP loans were poured into tourism, with the lion’s share (404 million) going into the reconstruction and modernization of hotels, 93.3 million schillings to ski lifts and transportation, and 28.1 million spent on tourism promotion.93

Traditional top resorts such as the Arlberg region of Lech, Zürs, St. Christoph and St. Anton, Kitzbühel, and the Gastein Valley held out the prospect of building up winter seasons for international skiers. Already in the winter of 1948/1949, there were 174,486 overnight bookings.94 With the help of the ERP Fund, 71 new lifts were built in Seefeld, Kitzbühel, and in the Arlberg region in the early 1950s. Investments were made in Lech, Zürs, and St. Anton, with 60 percent of ski lifts financed in this manner and hotels in the Arlberg region modernized and bed capacities increased.95

Alpine valleys were given a new look, and winter tourism conquered even those valleys that had previously been little developed. Environmental historian Robert Groß determined that in Vorarlberg alone, 50 out of 96 municipalities were funded by ERP money. Most of the investment went into developing winter sports infrastructure.96 Ten years after World War II, the Austrian Alps were equipped with 165 tow ropes and 68 chair lifts.97

The ERP’s funding of winter tourism infrastructure was no coincidence but was the result of transatlantic relations cultivated in the interwar period. In the winter of 1949/1950, Harriman, who knew the Arlberg region from his ski trips in the 1930s and had used Austrian expertise to build the Sun Valley ski area, visited St. Anton during a Christmas ski vacation.98 He saw the potential of the villages, and as Minister of Trade and Special Ambassador of the ERP, Harriman became one of the leading promoters of Austria’s Alpine tourism industry. His interventions made the investments possible. Harriman suggested the Arlberg region as the perfect place to transform through technical infrastructure, as had been done in Sun Valley.99 A former successful manager of the ski lift supplier Union Pacific Railroad, Harriman stressed the economic benefits of skiing and winter sports tourism to Austria and announced through the media that every American who skis is drawn to Austria.100

The financial support of Austrian tourism fit well with the foreign policy of the United States during the Cold War, bringing American travelers to Europe as ambassadors of Americanization. According to Bischof, over 54,000 American citizens visited Austria in 1950 and spent around $1.3 million.101 At the time, there were still hundreds of GIs stationed in Austria, who were exposed to skiing during their military service and leisure time, taught by Austrian ski instructors like Peter Radacher, who had been in Sun Valley before the war.102 The infrastructure projects for winter tourism in Austria were accompanied by aggressive tourism advertising in English-speaking magazines and newspapers for the Anglo-American market. Published in the 1950s, “Season in Austria” was a special magazine for American and British tourists in Austria, focusing on cultural and winter tourism in Vienna, Salzburg, and Innsbruck and the surrounding area.103 In the winter season of 1955/1956, the Austrian Tourist Board (Verkehrsverband Österreichischer Bundesländer) offered reduced fares for winter holidays in Austria during the “thrift season.” The announcement was published in various English-speaking newspapers.104 The advertising campaign not only brought ski tourists to Austria, but also had a lasting impact on Austria’s image as a ski nation.

Ski Migration to the United States in the Postwar Era

The postwar period was marked by another wave of emigration from Austria to the United States. In addition to the emigration of displaced persons (DPs), in the late 1940s and 1950s, well-educated young workers left Austria, many for the United States.105 Emigration was facilitated by the Austrian state’s employment offices, which placed workers with foreign companies or organized various training courses for those willing to emigrate, including ski instructors.106 Informal networks and long-lasting relations between Austria and the United States in the field of skiing were important for the emigration of ski instructors in the postwar period. In addition, the conservative paradigm of the 1950s began a process of “re-Austrification,” which resulted in a national Austrian identity shaped by Alpine skiing.107 In this context, the male-dominated image of the ski instructor of the 1930s was revived in the postwar years and promoted in tourist advertising and films around the world.

This is how Herbert Jochum came to the United States. The son of a farmer and a ski instructor, Jochum was born in Lech am Arlberg in 1929. In 1950, he passed the state ski instructor exam in Innsbruck and St. Christoph. Two years later, he was given the opportunity to coach the United States women’s Alpine ski racing team for the 1952 Olympic Games. Jochum then taught one winter each at Friedl Pfeifer’s ski school in Aspen, Colorado, and as head coach in New Zealand, before spending two seasons as a ski instructor at Sun Valley, Idaho, under the direction of Sigi Engel of Kitzbühel.108

Until the 1960s, the United States, along with Australia and Canada, were considered promising grounds for Austrian skiers. The expansion of ski resorts opened up new perspectives for the postwar generation. The biography of Horst Abraham is an example of this. Abraham moved from Kitzbühel to Aspen in 1965 and became one of the main architects of the American teaching method. Today he is a member of the US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame. Abraham remembers: “In 1965 I came to Aspen under the academic and caring directorship of Curt Chase, one of the founders of the Professional Ski Instructors of America. Curt urged his instructors to think about the great international skiing experiences many of our worldly guests brought with them. We could learn from our students as we taught, as long as we listened.”109

Another second-generation Austrian who arrived after World War II was Walter Föger. In 1945, he co-founded the Austrian Ski Association and served as its director before being selected to coach the Spanish national team, leading them to the 1952 Olympics. In December 1956, he established a ski school at Jay Peak, Vermont, and by 1967 he had completely transformed this ski resort by teaching thousands of people. By the end of the 1970s, Föger’s ski schools had introduced some 150,000 skiers to the sport. In 1973, he returned to Austria to head the country’s tennis association, a position he held until his retirement in 1982.110

Building Up Aspen

After 1945, Austrian ski instructors continued to contribute to the development of American ski areas. The first and second generations were equally involved. The previously mentioned Friedl Pfeifer, an instructor of the famous Hannes Schneider Ski School on the Arlberg, had traveled to the United States in 1938 to coach the women’s Olympic team and run the Sun Valley Ski School. During World War II, he served with other Austrian-American skiers and mountaineers in the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division, fought in the campaign of Italy against German troops, and moved to Aspen after the war.111 With the financial help of the Chicago industrialist Walter Paepke, he developed a plan to create a ski resort on Aspen Mountain. As a result, the Aspen Skiing Company was formed and filed as a corporation with the Colorado Department of State in February 1946. The assignment to the Aspen Skiing Corporation, executed in Denver, Colorado, on May 3, 1946, which included an agreement between the Smuggler-Durant Mining Corporation (a New York corporation) and Pfeifer, granted Pfeifer the exclusive right to construct, maintain, and operate ski facilities for commercial purposes and to use the surface of certain real property for skiing and other outdoor sports.112 Thus began Pfeifer’s career as a ski entrepreneur. From 1946 until the mid-1960s, he ran the Aspen Ski School, developed Buttermilk Mountain into a beginner and intermediate ski area, and was responsible for the exploration of Aspen Mountain.

Conclusion

This article shows that sport history is an integral part of social history and illustrates how sport is linked to broader political, economic, gender, and racial issues. Given this understanding of sport’s social and cultural dimensions, analysis of long-term processes as well as individual and collective patterns are required. A sociohistorical analysis should therefore combine the organizational history of sport with a history from below and ask about the social significance of sport for particular groups at particular times. Deeply anchored in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the relationship between Austria and the United States in skiing is closer than it appears at first glance.

In many cases, the highly skilled migrant workers and refugees from Austria who came to the United States did more than just teach skiing and share Alpine ski culture. They were entrepreneurs, managers, and marketers who helped build the American ski business. The media on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean closely followed this seasonal and permanent migration of ski instructors from the Austrian Alps to North America. In doing so, the North American media contributed to a positive image of Austria as a ski nation. As cultural ambassadors, these transmigrants also made a significant contribution to Austria’s post-1945 reconstruction. And while their contributions to winter sports remain difficult to quantify, they are clearly visible to this day in infrastructure, architecture, teaching methods, sports medicine, and films. Austrian transmigrants and Austrian-Americans pioneered ski routes and slopes, founded and managed ski schools and hotels, and trained members of the US national ski teams. They also introduced a special form of Alpine culture to American society, expressed in Austrian folk songs and Tyrolean-style Schuhplattler dances. The Stratton Mountain Boys, who still perform today, were founded by an Austrian ski instructor and are only one example.113

Today, place and street names, such as “Mittersill” in New Hampshire, are reminiscent of the places of origin of these Austrian migrants. And if we look at the landscape of some mountain towns in the United States, we can see how Alpine culture has transformed the landscape in the form of hotel buildings and cabins. Even though the glory days of Austrian-American ski instructors are over, the cultural heritage lives on and is maintained through museums, exhibitions, performances, publications, and with the US Ski Hall of Fame.

Across the Atlantic, Alpine skiing played a central role in the nation-building process of the Second Austrian Republic. In Austria, skiing was and is a national affair of the highest importance. Identity-forming myths about Austrian ski heroes shaped the collective consciousness, which is still served by politics and the media today. In addition to the sociopolitical dimension, skiing in Austria has enormous economic and touristic significance. This can be seen in the live broadcasts of the World Cup races in Kitzbühel and Schladming, which are shown in the mass media every year. With approximately 1.5 million viewers each, these two ski races are among the top-rated programs on Austrian national television broadcast ORF.114 Meanwhile, from a tourism perspective, Austria remains a leader in the construction of ski resorts. There are over 400 ski resorts in Austria, more than in any other country in the Alps. The famous Arlberg ski circuit, known as the White Ring (Der Weiße Ring), and the world-famous downhill slope Kitzbüheler Hahnenkamm would not have been possible without the Marshall Plan. Beyond these famous sites, smaller Austrian ski resorts also benefited from the infusion of cash from the United States. With the help of the Marshall Plan, entire Alpine valleys were transformed into ski destinations that today form a central pillar of the Austrian economy.115

Notes

1.

For the importance of skiing for the Austrian economy and society, see Rudolf Müllner, “The Importance of Skiing in Austria,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 30, no. 6 (2013): 659–73; Müllner, Perspektiven der historischen Sport–und Bewegungskulturforschung (Vienna: LIT Verlag, 2011), 310–25; Andreas Praher, “Austrian Skiing and National Socialism: Participation Patterns and Fields of Action,” Stadion 45, no. 2 (2021): 314–37; and Praher, “Die Rückkehr der ‘Ehemaligen’: Belastete ‘Skihelden’ und das nationalsozialistische Erbe im österreichischen Skisport,” Stadion 47, no. 1 (2023): 56–88.

2.

Like other scholars I use the term ski culture (Skikultur) in the meaning of skiing as a cultural phenomenon. See John B. Allen, The Culture and Sport of Skiing: From Antiquity to World War II (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007); Annie Gilbert Coleman, Ski Style: Sport and Culture in the Rockies (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004); Bernhard Tschofen, “Skikultur: Zum Mehrwert eines Geschichte und Gegenwart verbindenden Zugangs,” in Skispuren: Internationale Konferenz zur Geschichte des Wintersports, ed. Christof Thöny and Rudolf Müllner (Bludenz: Lorenzi Verlag, 2019), 25–38; and Annette R. Hofmann, “The Collective Memory of Skiing and Its lieux de mémoire: International Traces of a Skikultur,” in Surmonter les frontières à ski—Grenzen überwinden mit Ski, ed. Thomas Busset and Peter Engel (Neuchâtel: CIES, 2021), 133–52.

3.

For the emergence of transnational and transregional popular cultures, see Antje Dietze and Alexander Vari, “Introduction: Transnational and Transregional Histories of Urban Popular Culture in Europe,” in Urban Popular Culture and Entertainment: Experiences from Northern, East Central, and Southern Europe, 1870s–1930s, ed. Antje Dietze and Alexander Vari (New York: Routledge, 2022): 1–25.

4.

Allen, Culture and Sport of Skiing, 64–69; Roland Huntford, Two Planks and a Passion: The Dramatic History of Skiing (London: Continuum, 2008), 177–210; Zachary Beldon, Hongxin Li, and Sandy Nguyen, “Skiing,” in Routledge Handbook of Global Sport, ed. John Nauright and Sarah Zipp. (New York: Routledge, 2020), 320–29; Christof Thöny, “Grenzüberschreitende Beziehungen in der frühen Geschichte des Skilaufs in der Bodenseeregion,” in Busset and Engel, Surmonter les frontières à ski, 31–46.

5.

Andrew Denning uses the term “Alpern modernism.” He describes it as an influential ideology that was elaborated between 1900 and 1939 by skiers who blended modern mass culture and nature appreciation. See Andrew Denning, “Alpine Modern: Central European Skiing and the Vernacularization of Cultural Modernism, 1900–1939,” Central European History 46 (2014): 853; Denning, Skiing into Modernity: A Cultural and Environmental History (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 100.

6.

Denning, “Alpine Modern,” 890.

7.

Research project funded by the Botstiber Institute and entitled “Moving Athletes: Austrian Ski Migration to North America, 1930–1960.” See “Announcing the 2022 Research, Project, and Event Grantees,” Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies, accessed July 5, 2023, https://botstiberbiaas.org/announcing-the-2022-biaas-grantees/.

8.

Ian Scully, “Austria’s Influence on American Skiing,” in 3rd FIS Ski History Conference, ed. Wintersportmuseum Mürzzuschlag (Mürzzuschlag: Wintersportmuseum, 2004), 179–84.

9.

Matthias Marschik, “Austrian Sport and the Challenges of Its Recent Historiography,” Journal of Sport History 38, no. 2 (2011): 189–98; Andreas Praher, Österreichs Skisport im Nationalsozialismus. Anpassung – Verfolgung – Kollaboration (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021), 51–54; Anneliese Gidl, “Von elitären Versuchen zum Massensport,” in Wintersportmuseum Mürzzuschlag, 3rd FIS Ski History Conference, 121–29.

10.

For the emergence and difference among Catholic, working-class, and Jewish skiing cultures in Austria in the interwar years, see Praher, Österreichs Skisport, 155–75.

11.

Ibid., 54.

12.

Ibid., 69–70.

13.

Aneta Podkalicka and Philipp Strobl, “Skiing Transnational: Cultures, Practices, and Ideas on the Move,” in Leisure Cultures and the Making of Modern Ski Resorts, ed. Philipp Strobl and Aneta Podkalicka (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave, 2019), 4.

14.

Ibid.

15.

Anneliese Gidl, “Hohe Ansprüche, große Breitenwirkung: Ein Bild des österreichischen Skisports in den 1950er- und 60er-Jahren,” in Images des Sports in Österreich: Innensichten und Außenwahrnehmungen, ed. Matthias Marschik, Agnes Meisinger, Rudolf Müllner, Johann Skocek, and Georg Spitaler (Göttingen: V&R unipress; Vienna University Press, 2018), 312–13.

16.

Roland Huntford, Two Planks and a Passion: The Dramatic History of Skiing (London: Continuum, 2008), 378.

17.

For the political orientation of the ÖSV in the interwar years, see Andreas Praher, “‘Skifahren ist für uns Deutsche in den Alpenländern mehr als nur ein Sport’: Der österreichische Skisport als politische Kampfzone der 1930er-Jahre,” in Marschik et al., Images des Sports in Österreich, 200–217; Praher, Österreichs Skisport, 111–14.

18.

Praher, Österreichs Skisport, 71–76.

19.

Anonymous, “Der Skilauf als Wirtschaftsfaktor,” Sport in Österreich 1 (1937): 2–4.

20.

Podkalicka and Strobl, “Skiing Transnational,” 6.

21.

For the economical aspect of skiing, see Susan Barton, “Winter Sport as Business History: How the Development of Tourism and a Sporting Ethos in Swiss Alpine Resorts Created the Cultural Milieu in Which Skiing Could Develop,” in Busset and Engel, Surmonter les frontières à ski, 79–94.

22.

Andrew Denning, “Going Downhill? The Industrialisation of Skiing from the 1930s to the 1970s,” in Strobl and Podkalicka, Leisure Cultures, 32.

23.

Denning, “Going Downhill?,” 31; Denning, “Alpine Modern,” 884; and Christian Rapp, “Der weiße Rausch: Der Skisport im deutschen Bergfilm um 1930,” in Skilauf – Volkssport – Medienzirkus: Skisport als Kulturphänomen, ed. Markwart Herzog (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2005), 111–22.

24.

Allen, Culture and Sport of Skiing, 268.

25.

Ibid., 226.

26.

Ibid.

27.

Thomas D. Cabot, “Ski Schools,” Appalachia, June 1934, 47–48. Thomas D. Cabot was CEO of the Cabot Corporation and in 1951 US Department of State’s director of the Office of International Security Affairs in the Truman administration. Robert Mcg. Thomas Jr., “Thomas Cabot, 98, Capitalist and Philanthropist, Is Dead,” New York Times, June 10, 1995, 48, https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/10/obituaries/thomas-cabot-98-capitalist-and-philanthropist-is-dead.html.

28.

Allen, Culture and Sport of Skiing, 269; Cal Conniff and John B. Allen, Skiing in Massachusetts (Charleston, NC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006), 104.

29.

Allen, Culture and Sport of Skiing, 268.

30.

Neueste Zeitung, October 20, 1936, 3.

31.

“Schneider will visit America,” Boston Globe, October 31, 1936, 8.

32.

John B. Allen, From Skisport to Skiing: One Hundred Years of an American Sport, 1840–1940 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), 167.

33.

Conniff and Allen, Skiing in Massachusetts, 105.

34.

Allen, From Skisport to Skiing, 107.

35.

Ibid., 108–9.

36.

Allen, Culture and Sport of Skiing, 229.

37.

Allen, From Skisport to Skiing, 125.

38.

Mitgliederverzeichnis Österreichischer Berufsskilehrerverband 1935, private archive of Peter Radacher sen.

39.

Telegraf, October 29, 1936. Skihistorisches Archiv des ÖSV, Innsbruck.

40.

Neueste Sport-Zeitung, December 2, 1935, 3.

41.

Der Ski, January 20, 1935, 81.

42.

Kosciusko Weekly Review, July 17, 1935; Skihistorisches Archiv des ÖSV, Innsbruck.

43.

Ernst Skadarasy to Hannes Schneider, July 7, 1935, Skihistorisches Archiv des ÖSV, Innsbruck. Translation from the German is mine.

44.

Christof Thöny, “Arlberg: The Creation of a Resort,” in Strobl and Podkalicka, Leisure Cultures, 124.

45.

“A Celebration of the Life of Sepp Ruschp,” July 14, 1990, biographical file, Sepp Ruschp, New England Ski Museum, Franconia, New Hampshire.

46.

Advertising brochure America’s First Official Hannes Schneider Ski School, under Direction of Otto Lang 1937, Rainer National Park, Skihistorisches Archiv des ÖSV, Innsbruck.

47.

Otto Lang, A Bird of Passage: The Story of My Life (Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories Publishing, 1996), 95.

48.

America’s First Official Hannes Schneider Ski School.

49.

Otto Lang to Toni Matt, February 28, 1941, private archive Anton Matt, New England Ski Museum, Franconia, New Hampshire.

50.

Praher, Österreichs Skisport, 95; Js, “Salzburger Skischule in Amerika,” Salzburger Chronik, October 7, 1936, 4; Ski instructors’ list of the Sun Valley ski school, Community Library Ketchum, Ketchum, Idaho.

51.

“Otto Lang, Pioneer Skier and Filmmaker,” International Skiing History Association, accessed July 5, 2023, https://www.skiinghistory.org/lives/otto-lang.

52.

Thöny, “Arlberg,” 124.

53.

Allen, From Skisport to Skiing, 119; David Shedd, “Eastern Slope Ski School/Club,” Brochure Eastern Slope Ski Club, NESM 2004.027.003, New England Ski Museum, Franconia, New Hampshire.

54.

Allen, From Skisport to Skiing, 137.

55.

Ingrid Wicken, “Walter Mosauer: Father of Southern California Skiing,” Skiing History: Journal of the International Skiing History Association 33, no. 1 (2021), https://www.skiinghistory.org/online-magazine/walter-mosauer-father-southern-california-skiing.

56.

Gilbert W. Kirby, “The 1935 Olympic Tryouts on Mt. Rainier: A Key Event in Nationalizing U.S. Skiing,” in International Ski History Congress 2002: Selected Papers from the Seminars Held at Park City, Utah, January 20–24, 2002, ed. John B. Allen (New Hartford, CT: International Skiing History Association, 2002), 96.

57.

Ford V. Sayre and Charles N. Proctor, “Skiing,” Appalachia, December 1938, 264.

58.

Elfriede Pembauer’s immigration as documented in the New York Passenger and Crew Lists, 1820–1957, indexed by Ancestry.com and available for subscribers at http://www.ancestry.com/ (accessed June 22, 2023); Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 22, 1936, 11.

59.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 6, 1936, 86; News Chronicle, February 1, 1938, 5.

60.

Gazette, March 15, 1937, 20.

61.

Günter Bischof, “American Bucks and Austrian Buccaneers: Sun Valley—the Making of America’s First Winter Resort,” in Strobl and Podkalicka, Leisure Cultures, 143–60. The historian Günter Bischof points out the importance of Austrian ski instructors for the development of the ski area.

62.

Praher, Österreichs Skisport, 94–95.

63.

Allen, From Skisport to Skiing, 143; Des Moines Register, February 28, 1937, 70.

64.

Idaho Evening Times, August 22, 1936, 8.

65.

John W. Lundin, Skiing Sun Valley: A History from Union Pacific to the Holdings (Charleston, NC: The History Press, 2020), 202.

66.

Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, November 28, 1936, 9; Edwardsville Intelligencer, February 2,1937, 2.

67.

Lundin, Skiing Sun Valley, 53–56.

68.

Praher, Österreichs Skisport, 95.

69.

Salzburger Chronik, October 7, 1936, 4.

70.

Salzburger Volksblatt, February 9, 1932, 4; 100 Jahre Skiclub Salzburg 1910–2010 (Salzburg, 2010), 49.

71.

Salzburger Volksblatt, February 13, 1933, 10.

72.

Due to the amateur paragraph of the FIS, professional ski instructors were not allowed to take part in the Olympic Winter Games in 1936.

73.

Lundin, Skiing Sun Valley, 105.

74.

Salzburger Chronik, October 7, 1936, 4.

75.

Ski instructors’ list of the Sun Valley ski school, Community Library Ketchum, Ketchum, Idaho.

76.

For Nazi skiers in the United States before 1938, see Praher, Österreichs Skisport, 99–100. For the flight movement of Austrian-Jewish skiers and political opponents after the Anschluss, see also Praher, Österreichs Skisport, 239–53.

77.

See the Ski instructors’ list of the Sun Valley ski school, Community Library Ketchum, Ketchum, Idaho. For Elli Stiller, also see Lundin, Skiing Sun Valley, 227; and Ilse Korotin, biografiA: Lexikon österreichischer Frauen, vol. 4 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2016), 2022.

78.

For biographical information on Elli Stiller, see “County Marriages, 1864–1950,” Idaho, United States, accessed June 22, 2023, available with subscription on www.ancestry.com.

79.

Tim Willoughby, “Legends & Legacies: Fast Times with Elli Iselin,” Aspen Times, October 16, 2016, https://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/legends-legacies-fast-times-with-elli-iselin/.

80.

Praher, Österreichs Skisport, 231–34; Thöny, “Arlberg,”124–25.

81.

For the dissolution of Hakoah in 1938 and the flight movement of Jewish-Austrian skiers, see Praher, Österreichs Skisport, 247–53.

82.

Christof Thöny, “Vom Arlberg nach Kanada – Georg Eisenschimmel & die Pfarrkirche Stuben,” Edition Skispuren, vol. 1 (Bludenz: Foundation Friends of Hannes Schneider, 2017), 8–9.

83.

Florian Traussnig, Militärischer Widerstand von außen: Österreicher in US-Armee und Kriegsgeheimdienst im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Vienna: Böhlau, 2016), 163.

84.

For Luggi Föger, see Praher, Österreichs Skisport, 245–46; and “Luggi Foeger: Hall of Fame Class of 1973,” U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame, accessed June 22, 2023, https://skihall.com/hall-of-famers/luggi-foeger/.

85.

Andreas Praher, “Paula Kann Valar: The Transatlantic Saga of an Austrian-American Skier,” Journal of the New England Ski Museum 128 (2023): 5; Morton Lund, “Paula Kann Valar: Olympian, Inspired Teacher,” Skiing Heritage: Journal of the International Skiing History Association 13, no. 4 (2001): 40–41.

86.

Gerhard Öhlinger, “Österreichs neue Skihoffnung kommt aus New York,” Salzburger Nachrichten, November 30, 2022, https://www.sn.at/sport/wintersport/oesterreichs-neue-skihoffnung-stammt-aus-new-york-130559959; Michael Schuen, “Avital Carroll: Eine Enkelin von Kriegsvertriebenen will für Österreich siegen,” Kleine Zeitung, January 7, 2023, https://www.kleinezeitung.at/sport/wintersport/skialpin/6235173/SkiBotschafterin_Avital-Caroll_Eine-Enkelin-von; “Carroll erobert zweite Bronzemedaille auf Buckelpiste,” Sport, ORF.at, February 26, 2023, https://sport.orf.at/stories/3108620/.

87.

Praher, “Die Rückkehr der ‘Ehemaligen,’” 56–57.

88.

Rudolf Müllner uses the term “culture-making machine” to explain the importance of Alpine skiing for Austria’s search for identity after 1945. Müllner, “Importance of Skiing in Austria,” 660.

89.

After 1945, the official postwar Austria defined itself almost exclusively as a victim of the Nazi regime. This narrative was formative for the identity of the Second Austrian Republic. See Oliver Rathkolb, Die paradoxe Republik: Österreich 1945 bis 2005 (Vienna: Zsolnay, 2005), 47–48; Praher, “Die Rückkehr der ‘Ehemaligen,’” 57–58.

90.

Rudolf Müllner, “Anton Sailer: Österreichs Sportler des Jahrhunderts,” in Helden und Idole: Sportstars in Österreich, ed. Matthias Marschik and Georg Spitaler (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2006), 242–58.

91.

Günter Bischof, “Conquering the Foreigner: The Marshall Plan and the Revival of Postwar Austrian Tourism,” in The Marshall Plan in Austria, ed. Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka, and Dieter Stiefel (New York: Routledge, 2000), 359.

92.

Ibid., 360.

93.

Ibid., 379.

94.

Ibid., 366.

95.

Thöny, “Arlberg,” 133; Günter Bischof and Hans Petschar, Der Marshall Plan – seit 1947: Die Rettung Europas und der Wiederaufbau Österreichs (Vienna: Brandstätter, 2018), 137–38.

96.

Robert Groß, Die Beschleunigung der Berge: Eine Umweltgeschichte des Wintertourismus in Vorarlberg/Österreich (1920–2010) (Vienna: Böhlau, 2019).

97.

Robert Groß, “Uphill and Downhill Histories: How Winter Tourism Transformed Alpine Regions in Vorarlberg, Austria – 1930 to 1970,” Zeitschrift für Tourismuswissenschaft 9, no. 1 (2017): 126.

98.

Bischof and Petschar, Der Marshall Plan, 138.

99.

Groß, “Uphill and Downhill Histories,”126.

100.

Neues Österrreich, December 23, 1949, 1.

101.

Bischof and Petschar, Der Marshall Plan, 138.

102.

Praher, Österreichs Skisport, 100–102; and Praher, “Die Rückkehr der ‘Ehemaligen,’” 80.

103.

Season in Austria: Vienna-Salzburg-Innsbruck; A Magazine for American and British Tourists in Austria 3, no. 1 (1951).

104.

E.g., in the Coventry Evening Telegraph, November 11, 1955, 31.

105.

Sylvia Hahn, “Österreich,” in Enzyklopädie Migration in Europa: Vom 17. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Klaus J. Bade, Pieter C. Emmer, Leo Lucassen, and Jochen Oltmer (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007), 182–83.

106.

Hahn, “Österreich,” 183.

107.

Rudolf Müllner speaks of “re-Austrification” through sport and emphasizes the role of skiing. Müllner, “Anton Sailer.”

108.

Thöny, “Arlberg”, 135; “Happy Birthday: 90 Jahre Herbert Jochum,” in Schneezeit 28, October 2015, 8.

109.

Horst Abraham, “Student-Centered Teaching,” in Skiing History: Journal of the International Skiing History Association 35, no. 2 (2023): 13.

110.

For the biography of Walter Föger, see “Walter Foeger: Hall of Fame Class 2005,” U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame, accessed June 22, 2023, https://skihall.com/hall-of-famers/walter-foeger/.

111.

“Friedl Pfeifer,” Aspen Hall of Fame, accessed June 22, 2023, https://aspenhalloffame.org/inductee/friedl-pfeifer/.

112.

Assignment signed by Friedl Pfeifer and the Aspen Skiing Corporation, executed at Denver, Colorado, May 3, 1946, Friedl Pfeifer Papers, M2027, 10th Mountain Division Resource Center, Denver Public Library, Denver, Colorado.

113.

Stella Schuhmacher, “Schifoan” auf Amerikanisch, Der Standard, March 27, 2019, https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000099427071/schifoan-auf-amerikanisch.

114.

“5,225 Millionen sahen Ski-Weltcup-Saison im ORF,” ORF, April 19, 2021, https://der.orf.at/unternehmen/aktuell/210322_bilanz_ski_saison100.html.

115.

Winter sports in Austria generated gross sales of 12.6 billion euros in the 2022/2023 winter season. This means that winter sports account for 4.1 % of the total gross domestic product. See “Skipotenzialstudie zeigt: Skitourismus erfreut sich großer Beliebtheit,” last updated November 8, 2023, WKO, https://www.wko.at/oe/oesterreich/potenzialstudie-skitourismus-erfreut-sich-grosser-beliebtheit.