April 1955, Bandung

‘Austria is free!’ was the cry at the signing of the Austrian State Treaty on 15 May 1955. At the same time, huge parts of the world were striving for a very different kind of freedom – freedom from colonialism. One month before the State Treaty, a major step had been taken towards this aim at the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung, Indonesia. The Global South, back then known as the ‘Third World’, had begun to formulate its global political interests, and Austria noticed. In 1964, the then Foreign Minister Bruno Kreisky set up a special department for Afro-Asian Cooperation in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.