1959: Arthur-Schnitzler-Hof (Residential Complex)

The Arthur-Schnitzler-Hof was built in Vienna’s 19th district in 1959-1960 on a former portion of the Währinger Jewish Cemetery. In 1941, the Nazi-led municipal administration confiscated the property, destroyed the gravestones on it, and the bones of about 2000 buried people were uncovered in excavations, which were then collected by some members of the Jewish Community and re-buried in a mass grave at the Central Cemetery, Gate IV.

After lengthy negotiations, the area was finally ceded to the city of Vienna in 1955. Following the re-zoning of the area into building land, Vienna began the construction of the residential complex in 1959, whereby quite a few more graves were destroyed. In May 1962, the community council decided to name the building after Arthur Schitzler; in the meeting minutes, he was referred to exclusively as an “important Austrian poet” and was to be honoured on his 100th birthday.

This incident is paradigmatic of how the young Second Republic dealt with its Jewish material heritage following the Holocaust and of the appropriation of intangible heritage of Jewish-born personalities as “Austrian” culture.