Volksstimmefest
The Volksstimmefest is the traditional press festival of the communist Viennese monthly magazine “ Volksstimme ”, which appeared as a daily newspaper until the end of March 1991, as a weekly newspaper from 1994 to 2003 and as a monthly magazine since 2009. The festival has been held annually since 1946 on the last weekend before school starts in Vienna in the Prater ; for a few years it took place at the end of June.
The first Volksstimmefest took place in Vienna's Prater Stadium in 1946, and the Jesuitenwiese in Vienna's Prater has been the venue since 1947 (the adjacent arena meadow was initially included). Regardless of the turbulence of the party newspaper that began in 1990 (renaming, temporary suspension, restart as a monthly newspaper), the tradition of this left-wing folk festival has been continued by the KPÖ to this day (with a financial interruption in 2004).
The Volksstimmefest is organized in a similar way to its great model, the Fête de l'Humanité . It offers a music program on several stages, most recently by the singer-songwriter Sigi Maron , the band Drahdiwaberl , the group The Butterflies and Harri Stojka . During the era of Real Socialism, famous athletes and artists from the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries also performed at the Volksstimmefest , such as the Soviet clown Oleg Popow , the Czechoslovak singer Karel Gott or the Brecht interpreter Gisela May from the GDR.
There was a sports festival since 1962, u. a. with exhibition fights by the Hungarian boxer László Papp . The weightlifters from the Soviet Union set several world records on the Jesuit meadow, z. B. in the heavyweight division Yuri Petrovich Vlasov and Leonid Ivanovich Schabotinsky . There were international matches in judo and boxing, u. a. with boxing teams from Cuba. In the chess competitions, u. a. the Russian masters Anatoly Evgenjewitsch Karpow , Wassili Wassiljewitsch Smyslow and Tigran Petrosjan .
The Rotpunkt gallery showed committed art from 1977 and readings have been held under the title Linkes Wort since 1975 . Those who have appeared here also include well-known authors such as Erich Fried , Elfriede Gerstl , Elfriede Jelinek , Michael Scharang , Josef Haslinger , Peter Turrini , Marlene Streeruwitz and Helmut Zenker .
A traditional part of the festival was also a large firework display , which, however, had to be sacrificed to the need for financial redimensioning. The Solidarity Village has existed with numerous international organizations since 1982. Today the festival is also a festival of the Viennese left with a wide variety of political groups that present themselves on the Initiative Street. The Austrian Federation of Trade Unions took part in 2010 for the first time since the festival began. The Volksstimmefest receives a small financial subsidy from the municipality of Vienna every year.
Web links
- www.volksstimme.at Volksstimme Austria, official website
- www.volksstimmefest.at Website for the Volksstimmefest
- For cancellation in 2004
literature
- Ilse Grusch: The Volksstimmefest. History of a Viennese folk festival . Diploma thesis, University of Vienna, 2000