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Hitler's gift causes renewed controversy

Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler�s 1942 gift to the city of Linz of a duplicate statue of Greek goddess of love Aphrodite is causing renewed controversy.

The statue in a pavillion in Bauernberg Park was removed a year and a half ago after students at the city�s Art University discovered Hitler had given it to his favourite city.

The duplicate of a statue by Nazi Wilhelm Wandschneider that stands in the Berlin chancellery, the bronze statue is being stored in the basement of the city�s Nordico museum.

People�s Party (�VP) city councilman Franz Hofer is now calling for the return of the statue to the park. He has called its removal "illegal, populist and hypocritical" since it had protected monument status, and he has threatened to take the city to court.

He has claimed Linz� Social Democratic (SP�) Mayor Franz Dobusch is responsible for the statue�s removal.

"One cannot abolish history. One must deal with it and clarify it to the public. Everyone in Linz knows the history of (steel producer) voestalpine, but no one wants to dismantle it," Hofer said.

Dobusch has refused to comment, arguing that enough has already been said.

Robert Eiter, a spokesman for the Upper Austrian Network against Racism and Right-wing Extremism, said he expected a member of a Christian Democratic party like the �VP to raise issues such as the neo-Nazi parade last 1 May, the recent beating of a black African woman or the smearing of a swastika on a church wall rather than that of a gift from Hitler.

Eiter called on Linz �VP leader Erich Watzl to urge Hofer to raise other issues than the fate of an artistically insignificant but politically controversial statue.

Austrian Times

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