“Like a finger in a still open wound”: Vienna wants to demystify “Hitler’s balcony”

You can see it from a French window but it is forbidden to enter it: guided tours allow you to have a glimpse of the famous balcony of the Imperial Palace in Vienna, from where Adolf Hitler had celebrated the Anschluss of his native country.

Eighty-five years after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938, the House of Austrian History (HDGÖ) is organizing a series of sessions to "dispel the aura" surrounding de this promontory. She made this decision after the appearance of the monument in a controversial video recently broadcast by the far right, one year before the legislative elections in which the FPÖ party was declared the winner.

“We noticed a need, a curiosity in society,” museum director Monika Sommer told AFP, welcoming the “strong interest” aroused by this initiative. She also mentions “the need to educate” the public in the face of the proliferation of “false information” on the internet.

Among the 35 participants in the first visit on Thursday, Regina Steiner, a 59-year-old teacher, confirms the importance of “raising young people's awareness” of the fact that “terrible events have happened in Austria” and that history can “unfortunately to repeat". She hoped to be able to set foot on the balcony but the visitors found the door closed. Access is officially prohibited for security reasons, particularly due to the low height of the balustrade.

Also disappointed, Markus Mitterhuber, a 56-year-old theater actor, calls for an open discussion, “without taboos”. “We should dare to approach this place differently. Make it accessible to the public, for example in the form of visits, which could contribute to its desecration,” adds Ms. Sommer. The House of History has been advocating for years for an opening of the terrace, and launched a competition for ideas in 2019.

Only a handful of people were able to access it, including camp survivors like the Jewish writer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel in 1992. Privileged people also had the right to organize a New Year's Eve there to celebrate the transition to peace. year 2000. As the HDGÖ wrote in the past, this balcony remains “like a finger in an ever-open wound”.

Austria has long denied its responsibility by presenting itself as “the first victim of Nazism”. It was only in the mid-1980s that a critical eye began to be exercised. The Alpine country, where a large part of the population had given Hitler a triumphal welcome, had provided a large contingent of cadres and soldiers to the Nazi regime and participated actively in the Holocaust.