Occupation of the Hainburger Au

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A branch in the Hainburger Au

The occupation of the Hainburger Au in December 1984 was of both environmental and democratic importance for Austria .

The Hainburger Au is a natural river landscape on the Danube near Hainburg in Lower Austria , east of Vienna , and has been part of the Donau-Auen National Park since 1996 . At the turn of the year 1982/1983, WWF Austria started its Rettet die Auen campaign and, with the help of some media, started to draw the public's attention to the impending destruction of part of the Danube floodplains by a hydroelectric power plant planned there. The course of the demonstration and the type of settlement became a milestone of the understanding of democracy, but also of energy policy in Austria.

history

In  1983, Österreichische Donaukraftwerke AG obtained a declaration from the Hainburg power plant as the preferred hydraulic engineering by the highest water rights authority. The instrument of preferred hydraulic engineering provided for in the then valid Austrian Water Law Act was intended for the administrative handling of large hydraulic engineering projects that were "of special interest" and meant a concentration of all official approvals at the water law authority and a restriction of the appeal. After the end of the official procedure, work began at Stopfenreuth (Engelhartstetten) in December 1984 .

Although the campaign of WWF Austria was supported by numerous environmental activists, the interest of the general public was limited. The publicist Günther Nenning and Gerhard Heilingbrunner , head of the alternative section of the Austrian Students' Union , acted as initiators of a referendum to preserve the floodplains and establish a national park , for which the Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz was won as a prominent supporter. In support of this Konrad Lorenz referendum , the later so-called animal press conference took place on May 7, 1984 in the Concordia press club . Among the personalities from politics and art present who protested against the power plant construction were Günther Nenning ( disguised as a deer ), the Vienna City Councilor Jörg Mauthe (as a black stork ), Peter Turrini (as a fire-bellied toad ) and Othmar Karas (as a cormorant ). Due to the extensive coverage of this event, the opponents of the power plant construction made the leap into the consciousness of the population.

On December 8, 1984, the Austrian Students' Union organized a star march in which around 8,000 people took part. Several hundred people stayed in the floodplain and forced the clearing work to be stopped.

On December 15th during the live broadcast of the Saturday evening show Wetten, dass ..? from Bremen German environmental activists from Robin Wood with the banner "Don't bet - save the Danube floodplains" in front of the currently speaking sponsor Chancellor Fred Sinowatz . When they had almost been dragged out of the picture area by folders, moderator Frank Elstner stepped in with the words “Nobody is kicked out of my studio!” And gave the activists the opportunity to make a brief statement.

After the Au had been declared a restricted area, there was a controversial police operation on December 19, 1984, during which an area of ​​approx. 4 hectares was bordered with barriers using baton  and cleared under police surveillance. According to official information, 19 people, including members of an Italian television team, were injured in the clashes between 800 gendarmerie and police officers and around 3,000 squatters. ORF editors and cameramen were physically prevented from doing their work by executive bodies during their professional assignment in the Stopfenreuther Au area. On the evening of the same day, up to 40,000 people demonstrated in Vienna against the government's actions and against the construction of power plants.

On December 21, 1984 the federal government imposed a clearing stop. On December 22nd, 1984, under pressure from public opinion and some influential media (especially the Kronen Zeitung ) , Fred Sinowatz announced a Christmas peace. Thousands of people spent the following holidays in the Au. The priest Joop Roeland celebrated the Christmas service with the Aubesetzern. When the Administrative Court in early January 1985 declared further clearings to be inadmissible until the ongoing complaint procedure was concluded, the occupation was ended.

In March 1985 the Konrad Lorenz referendum was carried out, which was signed by 353,906 people.
On July 1, 1986, the Administrative Court overturned the water rights decision.

The Hainburger Au has been part of the Donau-Auen National Park since 1996 .

Political consequences for democracy

For the first time civil disobedience appeared successfully and with publicity and the Austrians became aware of the principle of direct democracy . After the rejection of the Zwentendorf nuclear power plant in 1978, Hainburg was the second event in which grassroots democracy was successfully implemented - and in a sustainable way. For the Green Alternative , this protest led to a reorganization as a party made up of a number of already existing Green groups, and in 1986 it entered the National Council for the first time .

Since then, almost every major construction project has been supported by citizens' initiatives . Subsequently, for example, the Au von Lambach was occupied in 1996 to prevent the Traunkraftwerk (the occupation lasted longer than in the Hainburger Au), in 2003 there was a "symbolic occupation of the Lobau " to prevent tunneling under the Lobau along the Vienna outer ring expressway .

Energy and environmental consequences

The events in Hainburg contributed to the fact that the contrast between conservative and green views in Austria did not develop as sharply into the 21st century as it did in neighboring Germany: the environmental concept has established itself in all party-political programs, while economic liberal forces oppose it social partners have largely resigned. The catchphrase of the eco-social market economy , an ÖVP-related term, emerged at the time.

With the occupation it became clear that the Austrian population judges the landscape value just as highly as the security of supply - the ORF spoke at the time of the “new environmental awareness of the Austrians”. Since Kaprun , the symbol of the reconstruction years, power station construction had been the “flagship” of economic policy, the 1980s brought two decisive changes: With the non-commissioning of Zwentendorf, which was “confirmed” with the 1986 disaster of Chernobyl , Austria swung as second country worldwide on an anti-nuclear course . With Hainburg it became clear that the resource of hydropower cannot be fully exploited either (preferred hydraulic engineering) because it comes into conflict with the interests of recreational value as well as tourism . Soon after the Hainburg events, Minister of Commerce Norbert Steger brought the two relevant laws, the Electricity Industry Act and the Energy Promotion Act , closer to the requirements of the Konrad Lorenz referendum.

With this, the course for a sustainable energy industry was already set for Austria in the mid-1980s. Because Austria is otherwise poor in energy resources - or there is room for extensive alternative energy - in the 1990s one completely abandoned the model of Austria's energy self-sufficiency that was achieved during the oil price shock in 1973 and 1979/80. Today, the Austrian energy policy focuses on Europe-wide energy networks, gas storage management or the refinement of cheap base-load electricity bought from abroad into expensive peak electricity by converting existing hydropower plants into pumped storage plants in a way that is gentle on the landscape . Environmental policy - for example after the declaration of the reservoirs on the Lower Inn as a European reserve in 1979 or the integration of the Kaprun and other power plants in the area surrounding the Hohe Tauern National Park - has gained a more integral view of nature conservation, which in addition to the wilderness concept also includes the biosphere concept of Use of nature considered.

See also

literature

  • Gundi Dick, u. a. (Ed.): Hainburg. A base book. 276,485 attacks against the traffic jam. Publishing house for social criticism, Vienna 1985.
  • Anton Pelinka : Hainburg - more than just a power plant: Evaluation of the events surrounding the construction of the power plant in Hainburg . In: Österreichisches Jahrbuch für Politik , Vol. 1985 (1986), pp. 93-107.
  • Ingrid Monjencs, Herbert Rainer (Ed.): Hainburg - 5 years later. Kontrapunkt - publishing house for things worth knowing, Vienna 1989.
  • Robert Foltin : And yet we are moving. Social movements in Austria. Edition Grundrisse, Vienna 2004 ( pdf, 2 MB ).

media

Web links

Historical databases:

Individual evidence

  1. The CONSTRUCTION 1984 chronologically. In: 30-years-hainburg.at. November 9, 2014, accessed December 14, 2014 .
  2. Georg Seeßlen: Victories over nothing. In: Der Tagesspiegel. February 12, 2006, accessed December 14, 2014 .
  3. ak / my / ss: APA 194-ID / AL Hainburg / Sinowatz / Wetten dass Hainburg opponents also in "Wetten dass" 1 =. APA message no .: AHI0138. In: apa historically, zeitgeschichte online, 55-85. APA, December 15, 1984, accessed December 14, 2014 .
  4. ^ Time in picture  1 with Horst Friedrich Mayer from December 19, 1984: collisions in the Hainburger Au. Austrian Media Library, V-00032.
  5. Ö1-Mittagsjournal from December 20, 1984; ORF: News from 2:25. Austrian media library.
  6. sp / dl / ew: APA 295-ID Hainburg / Demonstration Hainburg in Vienna 4 apa / 19.12. =. APA message no .: AHI0253. In: apa historically, zeitgeschichte online, 55-85. APA, December 19, 1984, accessed December 14, 2014 .
  7. Decision of the Administrative Court of January 2, 1985, reference number 84/07/0376 , with which a complaint against the decision on the water law approval of the Hainburg Danube power plant was granted suspensive effect
  8. Ö1-Mittagsjournal from October 16, 1985, Erich Eichinger; ORF: Hainburg Administrative Court. From 21:17. Austrian media library.
  9. Bernhard Natter: The "citizens" versus the "powerful". Populist protest using the examples of Zwentendorf and Hainburg . In: Anton Pelinka (Ed.): Populism in Austria . Edition Junius, Vienna 1987, p. 151–170 ( pdf , Demokratiezentrum.org).
  10. ^ Symbolic Lobau occupation - protest rally against the motorway through the Vienna National Park. In: derStandard. December 12, 2003, accessed June 2, 2011 .
  11. Upper Austria has had a black-green coalition since 2003 .
  12. a b Ö1-Mittagsjournal from February 22, 1985, Wolfgang Fuchs; ORF: Energy policy after Hainburg. From 34:11. Austrian media library.
  13. Dieter Pesendorfer: Paradigm Shift in Environmental Policy: From the Beginnings of Environmental Policy to Sustainability Policy: Model Case Austria? VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007, ISBN 978-3-531-15649-1 .
  14. ^ Waltraud Winkler-Rieder: Energy policy . In: Herbert Dachs, u. a. (Ed.): Handbook of the Austrian political system . 3. Edition. Manz, Vienna 1997, p. 619–627 ( pdf , Demokratiezentrum.org).

Coordinates: 48 ° 8 ′ 45 ″  N , 16 ° 53 ′ 36 ″  E