Vienna addresses its Nazi-named streets
VIENNA’S CITY government is to finally address the matter of its 150 problematic street names — including many that are called after Nazis.
The Austrian capital’s culture secretary, Veronica Kaup-Hasler, has said that streets honouring members of the Nazi Party or supporters of the Nazi regime will be contextualised by way of explanatory plaques.
In a couple of sentences, the plaques will recount a biography of the individual after whom the street is named including, in these particular cases, their connection to Nazism, racism or antisemitism.
A plaque already installed on MariaGrengg-Gasse, for example, explains that the children’s book author Maria Grengg was “a member of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party)” and “openly racist”.
The process of dealing with this issue began in 2013, after a historical commission examined Vienna’s street names and found 159 examples that demanded immediate attention.
A street named after the biochemist Richard Kuhn, who denounced his Jewish colleagues to Nazi authorities and participated in the Nazis’ research into poison gas, was renamed in 2018. But this was the exception rather than the rule. In general, the city has opted for contextualisation, believing the city’s Nazi history cannot be erased or whitewashed.
So far, only a few plaques have actually been installed.
One on Dusikaweg now clarifies that the Olympic cyclist Franz Dusika profited from Aryanisation when he received a former Jewish-owned bicycle shop after the Anschluss. Dozens of streets named after Nazi artists and writers, architects and educators remain uncontextualised.
The remaining plaques will be installed this year, Ms Kaup-Hasler said.
Vienna’s culture secretary also addressed another historical issue: the future of the city’s monument to Karl Lueger, the former mayor whose virulent Catholic antisemitism inspired Theodor Herzl to write The Jewish State.
In June, the Austrian Union of Jewish Students circulated a petition calling for the monument’s removal.
The same month, the base of the memorial was smeared with pink paint and graffitied with the word Schande, meaning shame.
Jewish students, artists, and activists led a protest action in October at the monument. Last month, activists from Vienna’s Green Party erected a small statue representing the girl in the red dress from Schindler’s List at the site. For months, the monument has stood
So far only a few plaques have actually been installed’
covered in graffiti while city officials debated what was to do with it.
Ms Kaup-Hasler said she will convene a roundtable of historians and other experts to come up with a longterm solution for the monument. Its removal appears unlikely.