Spanische Hofreitschule Performs for Jackie Kennedy 1961

3 – 6 June 1961


On that weekend, the whole world was watching Vienna. The Soviet Premier Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev and the American President John F. Kennedy were meeting in Vienna. For the Viennese, this summit meeting was an event of top priority. The wives of the politicians, Nina Khrushchev and Jackie Kennedy, were especially welcomed with wild enthusiasm.For negotiation were the future status of Berlin, which was still occupied by all four victorious powers, nuclear weapons tests and disarmament. There was to be no rapprochement. For the young Kennedy, who had become President in the same year, it was his first meeting with his great opposite number from the Soviet Union. For the Viennese it was a major coup to have the two heads of the superpowers in town. In Vienna, Khrushchev presents Kennedy with a memorandum concerning the German policy, the so-called Berlin-Memorandum. It contains a proposal for the conversion of West-Berlin into a demilitarized and neutral city and demands the finalization of a peace treaty.

Jackie Kennedy visited the Spanish Court Riding School with Federal Chancellor Alfons Gorbach. She was deeply impressed by the highly trained stallions and the exquisite performance of horses and riders.