Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

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.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

VIENNA

Could be wurst: Vienna sausage stands push for UN recognition

From top bankers and politicians to students and factory workers, Vienna's popular sausage stands heaving with bratwurst and meaty delicacies are a longstanding cultural legacy they hope to have recognised by UNESCO.

Published: 23 June 2024 08:31 CEST
Could be wurst: Vienna sausage stands push for UN recognition

The owners of 15 stands in the Austrian capital have formed a lobbying group and applied last week to have the “Vienna sausage stand culture” inscribed as intangible cultural heritage by the UN agency.

“We want to create a kind of quality seal for Vienna sausage stands,” said 36-year-old Patrick Tondl, one of the association’s founders whose family owns Leo’s Wuerstelstand — Vienna’s oldest operating sausage stand.

“At the sausage stand, everyone is the same… No matter if you’re a top banker who earns hundreds of thousands of euros or if you have to scrape together the last euros to buy a sausage… You meet here, you can talk to everyone,” he adds.

High inflation driving consumers looking for affordable meals, plus a new wave of vendors with updated flavours, have helped keep the stands busy.

Tondl’s great-grandfather started their business in the late 1920s, pulling a cart behind him and selling sausages at night.

The family’s customers have included former chancellor Bruno Kreisky, recalls Vera Tondl, 67, who runs the shop together with her son Patrick.

Leo’s is one of about 180 sausage stands in Vienna today, out of a total of about 300 food stands, selling fast food at fixed locations and open until the early hours, according to the city’s economic chamber.

Whereas the number of stands has remained similar over the last decade, more than a third have changed from selling sausages to kebabs, pizza and noodles, a spokesman for the chamber told AFP.

‘Momentum’

But sausage stands have seen a “mini boom” in customer numbers recently, according to Patrick Tondl.

Many have been drawn back to the stands by high inflation, where a meal can be had for less than 10 euros ($11) with lower overheads than restaurants.

New stand operators have also brought a “bit of momentum”, said Tondl, bringing the likes of organic vegetarian sausages with kimchi.

Tourists are already drawn in droves.

“When you come to Austria, it’s what you want to try,” 28-year-old Australian tourist Sam Bowden told AFP.

The cultural legacy of Vienna’s sausages is far-reaching, including the use of the term “wiener” for sausages in the United States, which is believed to have derived from the German name for Vienna, Wien.

However Sebastian Hackenschmidt, who has published a photo book on the stands, said the legacy of the “Vienna phenomena” is more complex.

He says that for many in multicultural Vienna, the sausage stands hold little appeal — equally for the growing number of vegetarians — and their universal appeal is something of a “myth”.

“Vienna is a city in great flux… With the influx of people, cultural customs are also changing,” Hackenschmidt told AFP.

Some 40 percent of Vienna’s two million inhabitants were born outside the country, where the anti-immigrant far-right looks set to top September national polls for the first time.

SHOW COMMENTS