Reflections by Miriam Haselbacher
During the ethnographic fieldwork, our office, located in the heart of Vienna’s First District, typically served as the starting point. And one need not go far to be confronted with the question of how to deal with the city’s historical legacies in public space. Debates over the appropriate handling of the past unfold all around our office space, the question of hegemonic symbols and anti-Semitically burdened legacies on the one hand, and navigating inherited historical and normative pathways on the other. This blog post explores takes the immediate surroundings of our office as a starting point to explore how such histories are negotiated, obscured, or made visible—and what this reveals about the politics of memory in the contemporary city.
Impressions from the Academy of Sciences, own illustration
Our office is situated on Bäckerstraße, just a few steps away from the main building of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at Ignaz-Seipel-Platz. It is one of the older parts of the city. In the Medieval times, a market place emerged here and many well-preserved Renaissance and baroque buildings still stand today. From the mid-17th century onward, this site served as the centre of academic life in the city. Yet even here, the first layer of symbolic contestation becomes visible: the square, originally named University Square [Universitätsplatz] in the 18th century, was renamed Ignaz-Seipel-Platz in 1949, after one of the leading politicians of the Christian Social Party, the predecessor of today’s Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), who served as chancellor twice in the interwar period. In 2013, the square was flagged as “requiring further discussion” by a commission of historians tasked with reviewing all street names in Vienna, due to concerns about the legacy associated with Seipel’s name and his role in the establishment of an authoritarian government and the support and militarization of fascist groups.
However, very little in the public space recalls this history, only those familiar with the historical background would recognize its significance. A small plaque notes that the square was once called Universitätsplatz, but beyond that, traces of the earlier name and its meanings are absent. In contrast, the most visibly contested site near our office is Karl Lueger Platz.
Lueger was mayor of Vienna from 1897 – 1910 and one of Austria’s most controversial politicians. During his tenure, he oversaw major infrastructure projects that modernized the city and fostered urban development. He also founded the Christian Socialist Party, the predecessor of today’s ÖVP, making him a significant figure in the party’s history.At the same time, Lueger’s political career was inseparable from his anti-Semitic views and demagogic rhetoric. In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler referred to Lueger as the “greatest German mayor of all time,” and his populist style continues to influence right-wing populist discourses to this day.
The Karl Lueger Monument, own illustration
The monument of Karl Lueger, which is prominently placed at the centre of the square, was vandalized in 2020, when it was daubed with paint and disgrace [Schande] was sprayed on several places at the monument. As a reaction, the city of Vienna erected a construction fence to remove the graffiti before the Vienna elections in October. In the following, a group of artists started an intervention to raise awareness for failed attempts of the past to transform and redesign the monument and to prevent the removal of the graffiti. The actionist vigil of disgrace [Schandwache] by the artist collective’ was disturbed by members of the right-wing extremist group Identitarian Movement. The monument had been a place for right-wing extremist gatherings in the past years, a fact that has further added to the polarization of the place. In the following, city officials assured they would not remove the graffiti until a solution was found and removed the construction fence. Today, the future of the monument remains unclear and Lueger’s statue has continued to reside with the graffiti in place, being a living monument and landmark on the negotiation of burdened urban legacies, we walk by on a daily basis.
Contextualization of the Lueger Monument
Burdened legacies in public space thus touch upon a variety of issues, among them the question of who is represented in public space and how, and, vice versa, who is not represented at all? Furthermore, how is history negotiated in public space and what narrations and power relations are inscribed into cultural symbols? While the preservation and contextualisation of such symbols may lead to a reflexive approach towards history, their manipulation can also contribute to the redefinition of place. The already mentioned commission of historians, drafted the text for a plaque that was installed next to the monument in 2016. It gives information on the person and life of Lueger, the history of the monument itself, stating that “it was commissioned and paid for by the Christian Social Party and erected in 1926. The Social Democratic mayor Karl Seitz accepted the statue in the name of the city of Vienna and called Karl Lueger a »controvercial politician«.” It then lists his achievements and states the following regarding his anti-Semitim: “Populist anti-Semitism and the supremacy of German nationalism became increasingly important features of his political rhetoric over the course of his career. […] During the conflict between the nationalities in the late Habsburg Monarchy, Karl Lueger reinforced the anti-Semitic and nationalist trends of his time.”
These spotlights on the case of Lueger illustrate how a struggle on the power of meaning has emerged around Lueger’s achievements as a mayor on the one hand and his political anti-Semitism on the other. The case of Karl Lueger in Vienna shows exemplary how monuments and street names are powerful and contested symbols of hegemonic power relations on the one hand, and serve as cultural symbols that negotiate a city’s history and its identity on the other. Street names or monuments then serve as mediums of colonial, racist or anti-Semitic legacies that inscribe power relations into the urban fabric that are exploited by extremist groups up until today. During the period of our fieldwork, the Identitarian Movement began mobilizing for a demonstration under the slogan “Informing and educating passersby about Vienna’s asylum and migration policies”, taking the Lueger monument as a starting point. This, once more, highlights that public spaces are not neutral and that the question of how to address historically burdened legacies in public space remains highly contentious. The fall and demolition of monuments and the changing of street names are opposed by the demand of their contextualisation and reconfiguration and the wish to preserve them or leave them as they are. These claims stretch out on a continuum of demolition to transformation to inactivity and set the margins for contentious struggles over hegemonic symbols in public urban space that – sometimes unknowingly – form part of our everyday environments.
