1923: Head of Siegfried

The so-called “Head of Siegfried” is a monument created by sculptor Josef Müllner on the initiative of the “German Student Fraternity of Austria” that was originally put on display in the main hall of the University of Vienna. The sculpture – a head lying on a pedestal and looking toward the sky – was officially dedicated to the students and lecturers of the University of Vienna who died in the First World War. From the start, however, the monument was appropriated by right-wing sections of the student body and reinterpreted as a memorial stone for the “heroic dead of German Youth”. Long into the Second Republic, the monument served as the central meeting and performance venue for Vienna’s German National fraternities, including, for example, their weekly “Farbenbummel” ("colour stroll") event.

As of the 1960s, the monument started to be viewed critically as its history and its appropriation by right-wing groups, also outside of the university, were increasingly regarded as problematic. Despite a resolution that had already been passed by the academic senate of the University of Vienna in 1990 to remove the sculpture, the monument was only moved from its old location to the university’s arcaded courtyard in the course of a renovation of the main hall in 2006. In the course of restructuring, the “Head of Siegfried” was converted into an artistic memorial by the artist duo, Bele Marx and Gilles Mussard. It now consists of a disassembled version of the sculpture that is covered with a glass case, and upon which is printed the history of the monument from 1923 until the present. Since being relocated, the monument no longer serves as a meeting place for fraternities, and public interest in it has decreased.