Connecting hands

Connecting hands , often also called Haider's hands , is a memorial for Jörg Haider .

Description and history

The monument consists of eight pairs of hands cast in bronze, each connected in a handshake . The Kazakh artist Waldemar Schröder cast these hands in the Strassacker foundry in Stuttgart . The hands are placed between two marble elements designed by the stonemason and BZÖ functionary Gunter Höher. Schröder judged the artistic concept of the monument as "not particularly interesting or novel."

The monument was privately commissioned and pre-financed by Robert Paulitsch in 2009, but was later also funded with public funds. In total, the material costs were around 50,000 euros. Robert Paulitsch sees himself as the owner of the monument.

Dispute over the location

The memorial was first erected in Klagenfurt in front of the mining museum, where it was located until January 12, 2011. The installation at this first location had already caused astonishment. After an exhibition on the life of Jörg Haider, which was shown in this museum, had been completed, the connecting hands were first to be dismantled and re-polished and then, from the end of the month, they were to be erected in front of the Gurk Cathedral as part of the Gurktal cycle path . January 2011 to be blessed. Governor Gerhard Dörfler and representatives of the FPK spoke out in favor of this plan. Not only the bishop of the Gurk diocese, Alois Schwarz , protested against the planned location in Gurk , but also the party leader of the SPÖ Peter Kaiser , who feared that the state could get into talk through “idol worship” and “monument tourism”. The Greens in Carinthia also spoke out against the relocation of the monument in front of the cathedral.

The Neuhauser Deputy Mayor Sadnek had campaigned for the monument to be erected at the Jörg Haider Bridge , but was unable to pay the required transfer fee of 7,000 euros, which Dörfler took from the budget for culture in road construction to secure the location in Gurk .

The memorial was unveiled in front of the Gurk Cathedral on January 25th, 2011, after a memorial mass for Haider had been held in the cathedral. In 2013, the state of Carinthia stopped the maintenance and cleaning of the memorial by the road maintenance authority, since "[...] the maintenance of a private memorial certainly cannot be the responsibility of the public service."