1959: The Ybbs-Persenbeug Power Plant

Power plants have often been connected to Austria’s search for identity after 1945. This applies to the Kaprun storage power plant, the planned but never realised Danube power plant in Hainburg, as well as the Ybbs-Persenbeug Danube power plant. Although it was initially planned in the 1920s, it could not be realised due to a lack of funds. Following the “Anschluß” (“annexation”) in 1938, the site was given highest priority as part of war preparations for Nazi Germany. Construction also involved about 1000 forced labourers and POWs from the Soviet Union and Britain, who were housed in barracks built specifically for them. In 1943 construction was discontinued.

Construction resumed in 1954 after the Soviet occupying power re-opened the construction site and facilities that had previously been confiscated as German property. Five years later, the power plant opened and was celebrated as a symbol of Austrian reconstruction. It was not until the 1980s that a societal shift occurred regarding large-scale projects in the energy sector.

Ybbs-Persenbeug is, however, also associated with a tragic event: In the district of Hofamt Priel, 228 Jewish-Hungarian forced labourers were shot on the way to Mauthausen on the night of May 2–3, 1945, presumably by an SS raiding squad. The circumstances remain unclear to this day. A memorial stone commemorates the massacre.