Stumbling blocks Salzburg

Stumbling blocks in the city of Salzburg

The Stolpersteine ​​Salzburg personal committee is a private initiative that works with the German artist Gunter Demnig to lay so-called stumbling blocks in the city of Salzburg . These memorial stones are laid in the sidewalk in front of the last voluntarily chosen place of residence and remind of the fate of the people who were deported, murdered, expelled or driven to suicide by the National Socialists.

The initiative is largely supported by the historians Gert Kerschbaumer , Johannes Hofinger and Helga Embacher , who research life stories and thus enable the production of the stumbling blocks.

Personnel Committee

The non-partisan personal committee consists of 390 personalities, mostly from Salzburg's civil society , including the essayist Karl-Markus Gauß , the writers Christoph Janacs and OP Zier and the political scientist Andreas Maislinger . The President of the Israelite Religious Community of Salzburg, Marko Feingold , was represented, as were active and former politicians on the Salzburg Citizens' List , the SPÖ and ÖVP , including former SP politicians Gabi Burgstaller , Wolfgang Radlegger and the former director of the Salzburg Chamber of Labor , Gerhard Schmidt. Ingeborg Haller from the citizens' list and Thomas Randisek from the umbrella association Salzburg cultural sites acted as initiators .

aims

The website of the personal committee quotes the Talmud on the homepage : “A person is only forgotten when his name is forgotten.” The project is directed against forgetting. It wants to keep memories alive of the expulsion and extermination of Jews , Roma and Sinti , politically persecuted people, homosexuals , Jehovah's Witnesses and the euthanasia victims under National Socialism. Remembrance of the fate of these persecuted and murdered people takes place through stumbling blocks , "cobblestones made of brass", which are laid in front of the last residential address of their choice and contain the most important biographical data.

Laying the stumbling blocks

→ Main article : List of stumbling blocks in the city of Salzburg

So far, the Cologne artist Gunter Demnig has laid a total of 441 Stolpersteine ​​in the area of ​​the state capital Salzburg. (As of: January 2020) This makes Salzburg the most active city outside of Germany in terms of stumbling block work and ranks first - ahead of Rome (with 207 stumbling blocks) and the Dutch municipalities of Oss and Oudewater (with 263 each) and Eindhoven (244). The Salzburg project also serves as a role model on an international level in that it consistently takes into account all groups of victims. So far 109 stumbling blocks have been laid for Jews, 120 for victims of the murder of the sick, 86 for political resistance fighters, 33 for forced labor, 21 for Roma and Sinti, 13 for Jehovah's Witnesses, eleven for victims of revenge, 20 for deserters, ten for homosexuals, eleven for Spain fighters, five for lifesavers and two for Benedictines.

Sponsorships

A number of Stolpersteine ​​laid in Salzburg were financed through sponsorships. Among the sponsors are some well-known personalities and institutions:

• the Christian Doppler Clinic (for five victims of Action T4 )
• the green generation plus (for two victims of the T4 campaign)
• the Archdiocese of Salzburg (for Franz Wesenauer's stumbling block , who had hidden Jews with him)
• the regional court Salzburg (for the stumbling block for the higher regional judge Johann Langer )
• the writer Christoph Janacs (for Dr. Ludwig-Franz Schönwald )
• Wolfgang Radlegger , the former Deputy Governor of Salzburg (for twelve stumbling blocks in memory of resistance fighters)
• the musicologist Till Reininghaus (for Franz Tannert )

resonance

The project is regularly reported in local and national media. On July 5, 2011, the ORF regional studio in Salzburg presented a feature in the series “Come, hear art”. It was entitled: “Stumbling blocks should remind”. There is also close cooperation with schools and educational institutions, such as the New Middle School in Salzburg-Lehen , which sponsored a Stolperstein and whose choir provided the music for the relocation. The Personnel Committee occasionally organizes concerts to draw attention to the stumbling blocks, for example with the Austrian cult band Butterflies and their program Displaced Years - Homage to Jura Soyfer .

On December 1, 2014, the Stolpersteine ​​Salzburg personal committee was awarded the Salzburg Prize of the Culture Fund 2014. The prize money of 5,000 euros was divided among the project employees according to their workload, with Kerschbaumer and Randisek, the translator Stan Nadel and the website programmer also being considered. As a councilor, Ingeborg Haller waived a share. Gert Kerschbaumer also organizes historical tours, not only to stumbling blocks, but also to monuments that have never been created, for example “In search of the place of liberation”.

Smears and damage

In autumn 2013 a total of 31 stumbling blocks for victims of National Socialism in Andräviertel were smeared with tar and thus desecrated. On October 25, 2013, the Salzburg police were able to identify a twenty-year-old from the right-wing extremist scene with a relevant criminal record.

In the course of 2014 there was a series of further smearings and damage to stumbling blocks, in May the euthanasia memorial in the spa garden was destroyed. On January 30, 2015, two young men and one young woman were found guilty of being re-engaged by the National Socialists by damaging 60 stumbling blocks and putting Nazi slogans on buildings and sentenced to prison terms. A number of acts of vandalism could not be resolved.

Awards

• 2013: Rose for Human Rights, awarded by the City of Salzburg
• 2014: Salzburg Prize from the Kulturfonds

gallery

• 

  Rainerstrasse 4

• 

  Rupertgasse 4

• 

  Merianstrasse 40

• 

  Linzer Gasse 35

• 

  Linzer Gasse 38

See also

• Stumbling blocks in the state of Salzburg
• List of places with stumbling blocks
• Stumbling blocks for Wiener Neustadt

literature

• Johannes Hofinger: National Socialism in Salzburg: Victims, Perpetrators, Opponents (= National Socialism in the Austrian Federal States , Volume 5; Series of the Archives of the City of Salzburg , Volume 44), Studienverlag, Innsbruck / Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-7065-5211- 0 (part of: Anne Frank Shoah Library ).

Web links

Commons : Stolpersteine ​​in Salzburg  - Collection of images

• Stolpersteine ​​Salzburg , official website of the project
• Film portrait Stolpersteine ​​Salzburg , with Ingeborg Haller, Gert Kerschbaumer and Thomas Randisek, released on December 2, 2014

Individual evidence

1. ^ Institute for Historical Intervention (IEHI): Remembrance projects in Austria: Stolpersteine ​​Salzburg , accessed on April 24, 2016
2. ↑ As of January 2020, see Stolpersteine ​​Salzburg: Members Committee , accessed on April 24, 2016
3. ↑ stolpersteine-salzburg.at: The project , accessed on March 8, 2017
4. ↑ Stolpersteine ​​Salzburg: Places and Biographies , accessed on January 29, 2020
5. ↑ Stolpersteine ​​Salzburg: List of sponsorships for Stolpersteine ​​in the city of Salzburg , accessed on April 24, 2016
6. ↑ Dachverband Salzburger Kulturstätten: Press review  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   , accessed April 24, 2016
7. ↑ enken.at: 128 stumbling blocks in Salzburg , accessed on April 24, 2016
8. ↑ DrehPunktKultur: In Search of the Liberation Place , accessed on April 24, 2016
9. ↑ Stumbling blocks smeared for Nazi victims - salzburg.ORF.at. In: salzburg.orf.at. Retrieved April 24, 2016 . 
10. ↑ Salzburger Nachrichten : Again stumbling blocks smeared in the city of Salzburg , December 4, 2014, accessed on April 24, 2016
11. ^ ORF Salzburg : Prison sentences in the “Stolpersteine” trial , January 30, 2015, accessed on April 24, 2016