Southern Burgenland on Netflix
How Burgenland Shaped Three Extraordinary Global Careers
"You can take the actor out of Southern Burgenland—but you can't take Southern Burgenland out of the actor," says Krutzler. The artist, who has also appeared in international productions like the Netflix series Crooks, knows this path well. For him, everything begins here—and soon leads outward.
"As an actor, you have to see the world. Gather experiences and keep learning." His first steps take him to Graz, later to Vienna.
Yet Burgenland remains a special place for Krutzler. "This is my home, my childhood, and right now, my present. I carry it all in my mind, all in my heart." If he could say something to his younger self? "Do it exactly the way you did." He doesn't want to look back. "I live in the moment. At most, I think about the future. But what truly matters is the here and now."
The Iron Curtain
Emil Brix's journey also begins in Burgenland—more precisely, at a border that was once a dividing line. Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Iron Curtain split Europe, the Central Burgenland border region shapes him from an early age. Later, he witnesses its opening firsthand.
"At that time, a Europe without the Iron Curtain began right here at the Burgenland border with Hungary," he says. This early experience influences his entire career, ultimately leading him into diplomacy.
Brix becomes Austria's ambassador to the United Kingdom and Russia, later serving as director of the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna and now as president of the Austrian Research Community. He never sees his origins as a limitation.
"The fact that my mother's family comes from Deutschkreutz made me sensitive to the opportunities of ethnic diversity and the significance of Central European border regions," he says. And to young people in Burgenland, he advises the same: go out, gather experiences—both within the region and beyond.
Scorching Summers
Johanna Sebauer takes a different approach. For her, much begins in quiet reflection. "My hometown was like a giant playground," she says. Growing up in a sleepy corner of northern Burgenland, "where not much was happening," she early on began creating her own spaces. "Precisely because I was often bored, so much could emerge from it."
In her novel Nincshof, she explores this reckoning with her roots, telling the story of a village that deliberately cuts itself off from the outside world. After finishing school, she leaves Burgenland, travels, and lives abroad. "I hardly thought about my homeland." Yet certain images remain: "The scorching summers and the stifling heat—that was my childhood."
Today, she has returned—artistically, too. For the theater project The Street of Women, premiering in May at the Offenes Haus Oberwart, she engages with female figures from Burgenland. "You have to go out into the world to come back," she says.
Three paths, three directions—yet a shared starting point. So much begins here: in the small, in what seems like the periphery. And from there, the journey leads outward—into other worlds. And sometimes, back again—to where it all began.
