In August 1945 Alpbach was the setting for the first of the international seminars to be organised in Europe after the War by Otto Molden und Simon Moser. Since then the Alpbach European Forum has been held every year in August, with the Austrian College as the official organisers.
Over the decades, the atmosphere of a free spiritual community of thinkers meeting in the liberating setting of the Alpbach Valley has attracted many famous names from the worlds of science, business, the arts and politics - people who have themselves shaped the thinking of their age, such as Ernst Bloch, James Buchanan, Ralf Dahrendorf, Gottfried von Einem, Friedrich von Hayek, Cardinal Franz König, Konrad Lorenz, Karl Raimund Popper, Erwin Schrödinger, Fritz Wotruba, Indira Gandhi, Jacques Delors, Yitzak Rabin, Bruno Kreisky and many others.
For years Alpbach was the home of the author Alma Holgersen, and Arthur Koestler had a house built here, which he called the "Schreiberhäusl". From 1939 until his death in 1982, the artist Werner Scholz also lived and worked in Alpbach, while the grave of Nobel prize-winner Erwin Schrödinger lies in the village cemetery.
