Prof. Otto Molden (13 March 1918 in Vienna, Austria - 15 June 2002 in Paphos, Cyprus) was an Austrian publicist, federalist and author of various books about European identity and history. He founded the European Forum Alpbach in 1945.
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Otto Molden was born shortly before the end of the first world war to Dr. Ernst Molden, an Austrian diplomat, writer, opponent to the Nazi regime and later on founder of the leading Austrian daily newspaper Die Presse and Paula von Preradovic, a poetess and composer of Austria's national anthem.
He deserted from the Wehrmacht in 1944 and was one of the founders of the Austrian Nazi resistance movement 05 before fleeing to Switzerland. After World War II, he studied History at the University of Vienna and wrote his PhD on the Austrian resistance movement during the German occupation.
In 1945, Otto Molden founded the European Forum Alpbach together with Simon Moser as an interdisciplinary forum where ideas for a peacefully united Europe were to be promoted and discussed. From 1945 to 1960 and from 1970 to 1992, Otto Molden was president of the European Forum Alpbach. Nowadays, more than 3000 people from all over the world take part in the European Forum Alpbach per year.
Politically, Molden was an active proponent for European integration and founded the Federalist International (FI) in 1959, which subsequently opened sections in Austria, Germany and Switzerland and other countries. He was also active in defending the independence of Taiwan by founding a Committee for Chinese-European Co-operation in the early 1970s. In the late 1990s Otto Molden reactivated the idea of a federalist European party by founding the European National Movement (ENM).