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AUSTRIAN HISTORY

Vienna tour aims to demystify ‘Hitler balcony’ after far-right clip

A guided tour is seeking to demystify the so-called "Hitler balcony" in Vienna after the notorious landmark appeared in a video promoting Austria's far-right party.

Published: 9 September 2023 12:33 CEST
The currently closed, so-called Hitler Balcony in the Neue Burg, part of the Hofburg Palace
The currently closed, so-called Hitler Balcony in the Neue Burg, part of the Hofburg Palace, is pictured during a special guided tour, organised by the House of Austrian History following a controversial video by the youth wing of the far-right Freedom Party. Photo: Alex HALADA / AFP

The balcony — where Adolf Hitler spoke after the Nazis annexed his homeland Austria in 1938 — is currently not in use and closed to the public.

But images of it were included in a promotional video in August from the youth wing of the Freedom Party — which is expected to win next year’s election in Austria.

Amid loaded imagery, including Paris’s Notre Dame in flames, the video shows the party’s youth wing taking part in torchlight processions and standing below the balcony.

The clip sparked outrage in Austria, prompting the House of Austrian History — which today is housed in the building with the balcony — to offer the visits.

“We noticed there is a societal need, a curiosity. And we also see that education is needed, because especially if you look at (online) forums now, there is a lot of incorrect information and misinterpretations,” museum director Monika Sommer told AFP.

She said the tours focusing on the balcony, a vast terrace flanked by neoclassic columns in Vienna’s historic centre, came in response to the far-right video.

‘Dare for new approach’

Thursday’s first of five tours scheduled so far was fully booked out with 35 people listening to Sommer, in front of the closed wood-frame glass doors leading onto the balcony.

Several of those attending were disappointed not to be able to step outside.

“It should be stripped of its taboos,” Markus Mitterhuber, 56, a theatre actor who took the tour, told AFP.

The balcony has only been opened on very select occasions, such as a speech by Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel in 1992 and a private New Year’s party in 1999-2000.

The House of Austrian History has long been pushing to have the balcony opened up, launching an online collection of ideas in 2019 for its future.

“We should dare to approach this place in a new way. Making the place publicly accessible, for example in the form of registered tours, could be a way of demystifying it,” Sommer said.

So far the authorities have refused to open the balcony, citing safety fears, for example, because of its low balustrade.

Austria long cast itself as a victim after being annexed by Nazi Germany.

Only since the 1980s has the country begun to seriously examine its role in the Holocaust when more than 65,000 Austrian Jews were killed.

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AUSTRIAN HISTORY

Austria recognises ‘anti-socials’, ‘career criminals as Nazi victims

Austria's parliament on Wednesday decided unanimously to recognise concentration camp inmates who were persecuted by the Nazis for being considered 'anti-social' or 'career criminals' as victims of National Socialism.

Published: 13 June 2024 09:06 CEST
Austria recognises 'anti-socials', 'career criminals as Nazi victims

During the Nazi era, people who had served a prison sentence of more than six months were persecuted as “career criminals” or “anti-social”, with many of them deported to concentration camps.

After World War II, these victims of Nazi persecution were not entitled to an official certificate or a victim’s identification card.

“With this amendment, we are righting a wrong,” said parliamentary rapporteur Eva Blimlinger of the Greens.

READ ALSO: When is dual citizenship allowed in Austria?

“Namely that in 1947, convicted people were excluded from compensation laws,” she said, adding that the amendment was “only a symbolic act” as there are no known survivors.

According to a study by DOeW resistance archive centre — which is due to be made public in early July — 885 Austrians who fell under that collective category were deported to the Mauthausen camp.

On Wednesday, MPs were reminded of the case of Alfred Gruber, a Viennese convicted of burglary in 1936.

Although Gruber had served his sentence and had not reoffended, he was deported after Austria was annexed by the German Third Reich in 1938 and “the stigma continued after the end of the war”, recalled Social Democrat MP Sabine Schatz.

Among the victims were also “homosexuals, political opponents and simple defenders of democracy”, said liberal MP Fiona Fiedler.

READ ALSO: What is Austria’s church tax and how do I avoid paying it?

In 2020, Germany adopted a similar law, estimating that “at least 70,000 people” could be affected.

Homeless people, beggars, migrant workers and alcoholics were also targeted in Nazi persecution.

Austria — the birthplace of Adolf Hitler — long cast itself as a victim of Nazism and has only in the past decades begun to seriously examine its role in the Holocaust.

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