1955: Storage Power Plant Kaprun

The Kaprun storage power plant in the Salzburg Tauern mountains is the symbol of the Austrian reconstruction in the 1950s par excellence. Although it had initially been envisaged already in the 1920s, it could not be built then for technical and financial reasons. Similar to the power plant Ybbs-Persenbeug, construction began – with considerable propaganda effort – only after the “Anschluß” (“annexation”) in 1938, when forced labourers and Soviet prisoners of war were also used. In 1943 construction was discontinued. With financial aid from the Marhsall Plan, the US economic recovery programme for the reconstruction of Europe, construction resumed in 1947 and was completed in 1955.

The power station as well as, most importantly, the engineers, technicians and workers became a – masculine – emblem for a post-war Austria that had overcome the conflicts and economic problems of the First Republic. In popular culture and the media, technical bravura and a heroic community of workers across all class boundaries together defeated rugged, overpowering nature: everything was possible.

Only later on did authors, such as Christoph Ransmayr (Kaprun oder Die Errichtung einer Mauer, 1985) and Elfriede Jelinek (In den Alpen, 2003) thematise the suffering of forced labourers, just as the myth of an absolute mastery of nature was replaced by the idea of the need to preserve the natural environment of the Kaprun valley.

External Resources (in German only):

Bericht über die Bedeutung der Fertigstellung des Kraftwerkes:
https://www.mediathek.at/portaltreffer/atom/1F1B69EE-2CD-00228-00001717-1F1A9A2D/pool/BWEB/