Dietrich W. Botstiber (1912 - 2002)

Dietrich grew up in a Vienna environment of high culture and the arts; his Catholic mother was an alto opera singer – his Jewish-Hungarian father was one of Vienna’s premier music managers, directing the Wiener Konzerthaus for many years. Peter Drucker, who also emigrated to the U.S. and became America’s premier management guru, was his best childhood friend.

Against his father’s wishes he studied mechanical and electrical engineering at Vienna’s famed Technical University. As he put it in his memoirs Not on the Mayflower: “To my father, the world, or its purpose, consisted of music, culture, the arts, their masters, their history, and their development. Unfortunately, his son was a barbarian who was obsessed with industry, engines, airplanes – and America” (Botstiber, 164).

As early as 1931 he was beginning to plan to emigrate to the United States, where opportunities were better; in 1938 he finally received his visa and left for New York (while his parents left for England). Settling in Philadelphia, he first worked as an electrician before he quickly moved up in an engineering career, culminating in his naturalization in 1943. In 1947 he began working for the Piasecki Helicopter Corporation and became its chief engineer only four years later.

In 1952 he launched his own business, the Technical Development Company (TEDECO) , which developed and manufactured aircraft engine accessories. In 1985 he sold his company, which by then was employing 235 people and totalling annual sales of $20 million. Botstiber left his fortune for philanthropic work and the Botstiber Foundation was set up. In 2008 the Foundation set up the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies. It has become a premier institution funding and promoting Austrian Studies in the United States. Dietrich Botstiber thus has left a lasting legacy in strengthening Austrian-American relations for a long time to come (Lackner in Bischof, 183-96; Botstiber in JAAH, 1-39).