Vienna to rename boulevard named after anti-Semitic former mayor
After years of heated debate, authorities in the Austrian capital Vienna have decided to re-baptize a stretch of its ring road currently named after the city’s former mayor Karl Lueger (1844-1910), an anti-Semitic populist who was idolized by Adolf Hitler. The ‘Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Ring’, on which the University of Vienna has its main building, will henceforth be called ‘Universitätsring’, a city official confirmed to the Austrian news agency APA. Although Lueger during his tenure as mayor had modernized the city, he was widely regarded as the „founder of modern anti-Semitism”, Social Democratic city official Andreas Mailath-Pokorny said.
A monument in honor of Lueger will remain on the boulevard.
Lueger was mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910. Hitler, a Vienna citizen from 1907 to 1913, saw him as an inspiration for his own negative views on Jews. Lueger also advocated racist policies against non-German speaking minorities in Austria-Hungary. According to Amos Elon, „Lueger’s anti-Semitism was of a homespun, flexible variety – one might almost say ‘gemütlich’ [cozy]. Asked to explain the fact that many of his friends were Jews, Lueger famously replied: ‘I decide who is a Jew.'”
The leader of the extreme-right Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache, called the renaming of the street „a scandal”. Lueger had been a great mayor, he said in reaction, adding: „While for a foreign mass murderer like Ché Guevara Vienna’s Socialists are building a monument, a distinguished Viennese mayor is being removed from the street name.” However, other parties welcomed the decision, which was taken at the request of Vienna University.
