Stefan Scholz first attended Salzburg Global Seminar in the spring of 1960, as a participant of Session 67 – Art, Architecture, and Music. Ahead of Salzburg Global Day, he got in touch with us to share his experience and the impact the Seminar has had on his life.

"In the spring of 1960, the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies offered a seminar on “Art, Architecture, and Music”. I had the unexpected fortune to attend and that changed my future professional life. Now, some details.

As a student of the Vienna Academy of Music (now the University of Music and Performing Arts), I was asked in the spring of 1960 by our Dean whether I would be interested in a scholarship offered by the Ministry of Education to attend the Salzburg Forum.

I applied and then was invited for an interview by a young civil servant at the Ministry with Alois Mock.

In our initial meeting he regretted that I would not be eligible as I had studied only music and not art, too. A few days later, however, he informed me that his applicant of choice had cancelled and that I could go instead to Salzburg.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Seminar and the exposure to American academic thinking and learned a lot, especially about contemporary art in the USA, a field which in 1960 in Austria had not been widely discussed yet.

With three excellent American professors we went through the cultural development of the last 50 years.

Three months later – I had just earned a professional license to practice teaching – the Dean at the Academy called me and said without any further explanation, that since I had qualified for the Salzburg Seminar I would now be the ideal candidate to be a teacher of music in Kabul/Afghanistan to build the Western music education schooling and curricula.

I went to Kabul, became a royal employee and taught there until I fell ill with jaundice. Back in Austria, I became a teacher at a gymnasium, then a lecturer at the Academy and finally professor and, for one period, rector of the Vienna University for Music and Performing Arts.

Besides that, I was for two years a guest professor at the Indiana University Bloomington, then at Stanford University as well as in the Netherlands (Leiden University), Hong Kong (Academy), and Bangkok (Mahidol).

I married in 1964 a young Salzburgian, the daughter of the Salzburg Landeshauptmann and later Chancellor Josef Klaus. She had worked temporarily as an assistant to the Salzburg Seminar. Both of our two sons attended American schools and three of my five grand-daughters were born in Washington DC.

Looking back to my time at Schloss Leopoldskron I can say, they are roots of my professional life - thanks a lot!”

- Stefan Scholz