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04. 07. 12. - 16:29
Karl Lueger Ring name change official today
From today the street that was named after a former mayor whose anti-semitic views inspired Hitler's hatred of the jews is history.
Dr. Karl-Lueger-Ring will officially be changed to Universitaetsring (University Ring) after backing from the social Democrats and the Greens.
All signs and house numbers will be changed.
The move was opposed by the Freedom party and the conservative People's party. The new road is now named after the university that is located on that section of the avenue circling the inner city.
Those who opposed the plan say that despite his anti-Semitism Lueger, who was mayor for 13 years from 1897 on, had done many good things.
As well as expanding Vienna's pipeline network supplying the city with alpine spring water, he had also established a public transport system and strengthened social welfare services.
But he also openly espoused anti-Semitic sentiments. Adolf Hitler, who lived in Vienna for part of Lueger's tenure, saw him as an inspiration for his hatred of Jews.
Lueger nonetheless had Jewish friends and once famously declared, "I decide who is a Jew." His views were shared by many Austrians at a time when anti-Semitism was widespread across much of Europe and before it became associated with the Holocaust.
Vienna Counsellor for Culture Andreas Mailath-Pokorny of the governing Social Democrat-Greens coalition announced the name change last month, saying the city "should not act as if there were no dark spots" in its history. At the same time, he said, statues and other reminders of Lueger's tenure spread throughout the city will remain standing.
In his comments Thursday, Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache invoked a decision by Vienna's Social Democratic government four years ago to erect a bust of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in a city park.
"The socialists set up a memorial for a foreign mass murderer like Che Guevara, but an excellent Viennese mayor is stripped of a street name," said Strache. "This is a scandal!" His party is Austria's second-strongest political force.
However, Oskar Deutsch, who represents Vienna's Jewish community, praised the action. In an allusion to the Freedom Party, he said the name change should "also serve as a warning on our present politicians who frivolously and reprehensibly use anti-Semitic, racially motivated and xenophobic slogans."
Austria has moved from its postwar portrayal of being Nazi Germany's first victim to acknowledging that it was Hitler's willing partner.
The centrist People's Party — which governs together with the Social Democrats nationally — also took Vienna's Social Democrats to task.
While agreeing that Lueger's heritage needed to be looked at critically, People's Party chief Manfred Juraczka said the municipality's coalition government did not have the moral authority to decide on a name change after commemorating "the mass-murderer Che Guevara" with a bust.
Greens official Alexander Van der Bellen described Lueger as a "great communal politician" whose image was nonetheless besmirched with "his expressions of anti-Semitism."
