Born 1929 in Budapest. He is the author of 20 books on Central and Eastern Europe and writes a regular weekly column for the Viennese daily, "Der Stanfdard".

Between 1982 – 87 he was Chief-Editor of the East-Europe Programmes of Austrian Radio and TV (ORF), between 1987 – 1998 Director of Radio Austria International. He was between 1980 and 21024 host of regular international discussions - "Europastudio" on Austrian teleivision about developments in Europe.
Past positions: Between 1960 – 82 Vienna correspondent of the „Financial Times“ and contributor to leading Austrian, Swiss and German newspapers and radios.

He has widely lectured in Europe and overseas and in 1971 was Regents Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara; participated as Austrian representative at Bilderberg Conferences, lectured at conferences of the World Economic Forum at Davos and Salzburg, at the Aspen Institute, at the Council of Foreign Relations in the US as well as in Japan, India, the UK, Germany and Switzerland.

He received the Karl-Renner-Prize, Austria’s most prestigious award for journalistic achievements. He was given high decorations by the Austrian, German, French, Hungarian and Polish governments including in 2001the Corvinus Prize by Europe Institute in Budapest and the Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold, Commander´s Cross 1st  Class by the Republic of Austria. In 2002 honours included the Dr. Alois Mock-Europa-Preis, and in 2003 the Commander´s Cross of Merit with star by the Republic of Hungary. 2006 State Prize for "Kulturpublizistik" (Cultural Commentaries), Republic of  Austria.
He received the European Book Prize 2018 for his Orbán Biography and 2020 the Bruno Kreisky Prize for his liffe achievements.

Author of 20 books about Eastern Europe and Austria, eleven also in English and Hungarian, four in French, three in Slovak and Polish, two in Rpmanian,Japanese, Croatian and Czech,one in Italian, Hebrew and Slovene.