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Greens slam Nazi tower plans

The Vienna Greens have slammed plans to turn a Nazi anti air raid tower in the capital into a data centre.

The party said yesterday (Mon) they were against the plans to turn one of the two air raid tower in Vienna’s Arenberg Park into a data centre since such war relics should survive as they were as war memorials.

The towers date back to the Nazi era in Austria.

Greens’ city planning spokeswoman Sabine Gretner said: "The horror of war can be spatially experienced there."

She called for a round table of representatives of the city government, the federal memorial office and scientists with the goal of arranging tours of the towers. She claimed they were in good enough condition that it would only be necessary to install interior lighting for tours to begin.

Gretner said memorials of National Socialism were of "enormous importance in making young people historically conscious" at a time when "some parties were near to violating the law forbidding neo Nazi behaviour and ideology."

"A data centre can be put into any old industrial building," she added.

Heidemarie Uhl from the Austrian Academy of Sciences said that the tower, one of six in the city, should remain as it was for historic reasons. She added that the 39-metre-high tower had a European dimension in its present form.

It was both a reminder of the spirit of National Socialism and a memorial to the forced labourers who had erected it, she said, noting that the workers had scrawled graffiti on the inside walls of the tower that would not survive renovation work.

The towers’ ostensible purpose, combating enemy aircraft, had been secondary since the real reason for their construction had been for them to serve as "propaganda edifices that would be turned into heroes’ memorials after the war," she said.

Architectural theorist Jan Tabor said he feared Vienna was turning into "a historical Disneyland without historic wounds – operatic bliss is spreading." He added there was too much concentration on Potemkin facades rather than on preservation of buildings’ interiors.

Vienna Social Democratic (SPÖ) councillor Michael Ludwig confirmed that the city government was talking with a prospective operator of the data centre about its rental of the tower rather than its purchase of it.

A spokesman for Ludwig added that the main questions were the use to which the towers should be put and the financing for it. A data centre had the advantage that its installation would not entail major renovations that would violate protection of memorials.

The spokesman added Ludwig hoped for a solution during the first half of this year.

A similar tower in Vienna’s Esterhazy Park houses the popular "Haus des Meeres" aqua terra zoo.

Austrian Times

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