The 1993 Sea of Lights: A defining moment for Austrian civil society

30 years after the largest demonstration of the Second Republic, the House of Austrian History presents objects from the Sea of Lights in its foyer and invites visitors to contribute their own memories of the event in a growing web-exhibition.  On 23 January 1993 around 300,000 people gathered on Vienna’s Heldenplatz square and in different provincial capitals to make a stand against racism and exclusion. The event that triggered the Sea of Lights was a Volksbegehren (popular initiative)—a type of petition to parliament proposing new laws—announced by the Freedom Party in autumn 1992 titled “Austria First”. The popular initiative called for a halt to immigration and the introduction of laws that would discriminate against migrants. 

The Sea of Lights, billed as a ‘wondrous happening’, was organised by a small group of people. They were able to set in motion a broad-based civil society movement supported by individuals and groups from nearly every political camp. This alliance between church groups and left-wing ones, and those from the political centre, was something completely new in the political culture of Austria. This movement did not simply limit itself to criticism of the popular initiative: it highlighted general anti-migrant and racist tendencies in society and criticised the tightening of the legal situation specifically for migrants under the Social Democrat–People’ Party coalition government. 

As the largest demonstration of the Second Republic to date, the Sea of Lights sent an important signal. The fact that far more people took part in this event than in the Anschluss (“annexation”) rally of 1938 gave Heldenplatz square a new significance as a space of democratic civil society.

For all that, the specific demands contained in the Freedom Party’s popular initiative were partly realised over the following years, and by other parties as well. The event gave rise to the organisation SOS Mitmensch, which continues to campaign for the implementation of human rights. 

The web-exhibition www.hdgoe.at/lichtermeer is created from the contributions of visitors like you. Use this space to display things that remind you of the Sea of Lights in January 1993. What have you kept from the event in Vienna? Or were you taking part in one of the other provinces? Tell us your story using a photo, a video, or a picture of an object!