Linz Tackles Its Past as a 'Führer' City
Linz is to be Europe's Capital of Culture in 2009. Before the Austrian city takes on that mantle it is showing an exhibition about how Hitler had wanted to make Linz a "Culture Capital for the Führer."
Linz is taking on a lot. On New Year's Eve the Austrian city will kick off a three-day opening festival with fireworks and drum rolls, to celebrate its year as Europe's 2009 Capital of Culture. Under the direction of Martin Heller, it's planning an intensive program of exhibitions, concerts, festivals, theater performances and readings.
There is almost as great a desire to deal with the city's past as to highlight its great cultural traditions. Composer Anton Bruckner was the organist at Linz Cathedral, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein went to school here and for 25 years ARS Electronica has been one of the most important festivals in the world for digital art.
However, there is also a dark side to the city's past. The idea of Linz as a "cultural capital" is far from new. Adolf Hitler wanted the city where he had spent nine years of his childhood to become one of the five "Führer Cities" of the Third Reich. Along with Berlin, the Reich's capital; Munich, the capital of the Nazi movement; Hamburg, "The Gateway to the World"; and Nuremburg, "The City of Party Congresses," Linz was scheduled for refurbishment as the "City of the Führer's Youth" -- completing a series of ideological centers upon which the Nazi regime was based.
The idyllic city on the Danube, with both medieval and Baroque architecture, was to take on the role of a European cultural center with a German nationalist stamp. Fortunately, few of the grandiose plans that Hitler vehemently clung to up to the end of the war were ever realized. The brutal megalomania of this project is the focus of an exhibition, "The Culture Capital of the Führer -- Art and National Socialism in Linz and Upper Austria," which opens at the Linz Palace Museum on Wednesday...
Read entire article at Spiegel Online
Linz is taking on a lot. On New Year's Eve the Austrian city will kick off a three-day opening festival with fireworks and drum rolls, to celebrate its year as Europe's 2009 Capital of Culture. Under the direction of Martin Heller, it's planning an intensive program of exhibitions, concerts, festivals, theater performances and readings.
There is almost as great a desire to deal with the city's past as to highlight its great cultural traditions. Composer Anton Bruckner was the organist at Linz Cathedral, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein went to school here and for 25 years ARS Electronica has been one of the most important festivals in the world for digital art.
However, there is also a dark side to the city's past. The idea of Linz as a "cultural capital" is far from new. Adolf Hitler wanted the city where he had spent nine years of his childhood to become one of the five "Führer Cities" of the Third Reich. Along with Berlin, the Reich's capital; Munich, the capital of the Nazi movement; Hamburg, "The Gateway to the World"; and Nuremburg, "The City of Party Congresses," Linz was scheduled for refurbishment as the "City of the Führer's Youth" -- completing a series of ideological centers upon which the Nazi regime was based.
The idyllic city on the Danube, with both medieval and Baroque architecture, was to take on the role of a European cultural center with a German nationalist stamp. Fortunately, few of the grandiose plans that Hitler vehemently clung to up to the end of the war were ever realized. The brutal megalomania of this project is the focus of an exhibition, "The Culture Capital of the Führer -- Art and National Socialism in Linz and Upper Austria," which opens at the Linz Palace Museum on Wednesday...