The Mock-up Monument to Emperor Franz Joseph

In November 1937 an 11-metre-high mock-up was erected on the altan, or terrace, of the Neue Burg. After many decades, it looked like the idea of a monument to Emperor Franz Joseph was finally becoming a reality. The Dollfuss-Schuschnigg dictatorship ran a total of three competitions to plan a monument to the long-serving emperor. The emperor was a symbol of the Habsburg Monarchy and, increasingly, of the nostalgic idealisation of the imperial “good old days”. This project and the redevelopment of the Outer Palace Gate into an Austrian Heroes’ Monument in 1934 were important aspects of the memory politics of the dictatorship: the past in the Monarchy was presented as if it had been “glorious” and “glamorous”. This was intended to create a distinct Austrian identity and enable the country to distance itself from the National Socialist German Reich (other such measures included exhibitions and balls).

The three competitions were organised by the Central Association of Austrian Architects with the support of state radio, the Municipality of Vienna and the Association for the Erection of an Emperor Franz Joseph Monument in Vienna, which was founded in 1934. The president and government of the Republic were patrons of this organisation, and senior figures in the church supported it. In addition to the decision about the type of monument, the question of its location played a key role in all three competitions. In the competition run by the Municipality of Vienna, 57 entrants decided to place the Emperor’s Monument within the Hofburg complex, some of them on the terrace of the Neue Burg on the Heldenplatz. In the competition of 1937, this terrace was initially designated the only possible location. The competition announcement by the monument committee called for “the redesign of the Neue Burg into a grand Emperor Franz Joseph Monument” with the statue of the emperor as the “dominating centre point of the façade of the Neue Burg”. Both the terrace as location and the requirement for a monumental staircase with terraces and pedestals provoked loud criticism, which ultimately led to changes to the competition permitting alternative sites. The placement of a wooden dummy of the emperor’s statue on the terrace was the last, unsuccessful attempt to finally decide the location question. Numerous protests against this location by experts and the general public—along with the National Socialist seizure of power in 1938—finally put an end to the project.