Vienna Removes Name of Anti-Semitic Mayor
Vienna is removing the name of a notoriously anti-Semitic mayor from a section of the elegant Ring boulevard that encircles the heart of the city.
A city official announced Thursday that the section now known as Dr. Karl-Lueger-Ring, will be renamed Universitaetsring (University Ring) in honor of the University located there.
Lueger was mayor from 1897 until his death in 1910.
His anti-semitic policies and his use of economic anti-semitism to win popular support were a big influence on Adolf Hitler, who lived in Vienna at the time.
Oskar Deutsch, the newly named president of Vienna’s Jewish community, praised the decision to drop Lueger’s name from the Ring.
The move, he said, should “also serve as a warning to our present politicians who frivolously and reprehensibly use anti-Semitic, racially motivated and xenophobic slogans.”
He apparently was referring to the nationalist Freedom Party, Austria’s second-largest political force, whose leader condemned renaming the street as a “scandal.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
