For decades, the “Red Salon” was named after the red carpet that Max Reinhardt had fitted over the parquet flooring of this meeting room. It is believed to have been the first carpet of this kind in Salzburg and was very much in keeping with Max Reinhardt’s fondness for dusky pink tones. During the restoration of this room in 2020–21, the fitted carpet was removed and the paneled parquet floor repaired. This revealed a previously unseen feature of the room: a large Star of David.
The room is positioned in the northeast of the palace, between the library and the Green Salon. Today, the walls are a light gray-green, the ceiling is creamy white, and the stucco decorations are pale pink, yellow and green. The current wall color harmonizes well with the turquoise of the well-preserved baroque cocklestove. The bright stucco ceiling looks warm
and vibrant today.
Max Reinhardt used this room for meetings. In 1927, he had the baroque doorways made smaller (due to the balustrade of the adjoining library), the walls painted dusky pink, the ceiling white and the stucco pale gray. He had the oil painting on the ceiling, which depicts the Annunciation, encircled with an ocher-colored stucco frame. The large baroque bureau cabinet was set off with a shallower counterpart by Reinhardt’s cabinetmaker Anton Widerin: the neo-baroque bookcase on the window side of the room. An alliance coat of arms was placed on top of this bookcase, which depicts the Firmian family’s deer antlers and the Lodron family’s rising lion. The room was named for many years after the American judge Carl E. McGowan (1911–1987). He lectured in Leopoldskron on the legal system in the United States and was a member of Salzburg Global Seminar’s board of directors in the 1970s and 1980s.
This room, initially named after the red carpet Reinhardt installed, was for many years not red. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Salzburg Festival and thanks to US Ambassador to Austria, Trevor D. Traina, who played a pivotal role in this project, as well as numerous other former US Ambassadors to Austria, Reinhardt's Red Salon was restored and reimagined for the 21st century.
In 2023 the new Red Salon was unveiled: A collaboration of renowned American designer Ken Fulk and London-based brand de Gournay, the project seeks to honor Reinhardt's legacy and inspire creativity and collaboration. Through meticulous research and inspired by several of Reinhardt's original theatrical backdrops discovered in the attic of Schloss Leopoldskron, the room underwent a stunning transformation combining color, beauty, and light. Thin wood panels displaying a handpainted fantasy landscape replaced white walls, while elements from the backdrops and the baroque stucco ceiling were incorporated into the mural.
75 Years in 12 Vignettes
With 75 years behind us and more than 40,000 Fellows in 170 countries, Salzburg Global obviously has many stories to tell. The following 12 vignettes have been selected not only for their ability to relate the history of the institution, but also to convey the unlikely symbiosis of a visionary enterprise, conceived at an American university that came to be situated in an eighteenth-century rococo palace in the heart of Europe with the goal of serving the global good.