It happened on November 13th, 1961. The "Österreichische Auslandsstudentendienst" (Austrian Foreign Students' Service), then spelled "ÖAD", was established in a constituent general assembly in the University of Vienna’s historic senate hall.
Then – absolutely inconceivable today – only men were present. Representatives of the Universities of Vienna and Innsbruck, the Technische Hochschulen (today Universities of Technology) of Vienna and Graz, the Hochschule of Mining (today University of Mining) Leoben, the Hochschulen für Welthandel (today University of Economics and Business) and of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (today University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences) as well as the Academies of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and Salzburg, the Hochschule of Applied Arts Vienna and the Academy of Fine Arts (today all Universities) were present. Further delegates and observers came from the Austrian Students’ Union and the Federal Ministry of Education.
At that meeting the future board members Prof. Leopold Scheidl (Hochschule für Welthandel) as President, Prof. Adolf Slattenschek (Prorector of the Technische Hochschule Wien) as First Vice-President and Prof. Richard Pittioni (University of Vienna) as Second Vice-President were elected and the Statutes of the Association were adopted.
Prof. Fritz Hohenberg (Technische Hochschule Graz) represented the Styrian university cities and towns as First Presidential Member and Prof. Karl Pivek (University of Innsbruck) represented the university city of Innsbruck as Second Presidential Member.
Prof. Richard Kerschagl (Rector of the Hochschule für Welthandel) and Alois Mock were nominated as representatives to the board by the Austrian Students’ Union.
In particular, the establishment of the planned German courses and the preparatory year were topics of discussion.
The future name of the newly founded association was also intensively discussed. The later Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock was present as a delegate of the Austrian Students' Union and advocated the name "Austrian Academic Exchange Service" or "Austrian Foreign Institute" while the representatives of the universities preferred the name "Austrian Foreign Students' Service", which was finally adopted by vote.
An interesting detail in passing: Alois Mock worked at the Ministry of Education from 1958 to 1962. His duties included the administration of travel grants for scholarships. This included the Monbukagakusho Scholarship with Japan, one of the oldest programmes that the OeAD manages on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF).
The information provided here is taken from Volume II of the OeAD’s publication series, "50 Jahre Bildungsmobilität. Eine kleine Geschichte des OeAD" ("50 Years of Educational Mobility. A brief history of the OeAD", only available in German).