Virtual Vienna Net - Duncan Smith - The Reich's Monstrous Monuments

On March 15th 1938 200,000 Viennese gathered in the Hofburg's Heldenplatz (Heroes' Square) to celebrate the annexation (Anschluss) of Austria with the so-called "Fatherland" of Germany, something many had wanted since the end of the First World War. Adolf Hitler himself appeared on the balcony of the Neue Burg from where he proclaimed: "As Führer and Chancellor of the German nation and the German Reich I hereby announce to German history that my homeland has entered the German Reich". Afterwards Hitler took an aeroplane directly back to Germany - and the rest as they say is history (see nos. 13, 18 & 58). Within a few years the grand Heldenplatz itself would be ploughed up to plant vegetables in an attempt to feed the city's bewildered population already suffering the privations of Hitler's faltering "thousand year Reich".

In the meantime Vienna's existing and at times bombastic imperial architecture seems to have suited the city's new occupiers and nothing of note was added to the architectural canon. However, on 9th September 1942 Hitler decreed that, like Berlin and Hamburg, central Vienna should be protected by several huge anti-aircraft towers (Flaktürme), three pairs of which would form a defensive triangle centred on the Stephansdom. Consequently in 1943/4 German troops commenced construction of one pair in the Augarten (pictured), thus defacing Austria's oldest surviving Baroque garden, another in Arenbergpark in the 3rd district of Landstrasse and a third straddling Mariahilferstrasse (Esterházypark and Stiftskaserne courtyard) in the 6th district of Mariahilf.

The towers were built of almost indestructible reinforced concrete 2.5-3.5 metres thick and were self-contained with their own water and power supplies, military hospital and filtered air system in case of gas attack. Each pair comprised a large, heavily-gunned attack tower (Gefechtsturm) (photo 1) as well as a smaller communications tower (Leitturm) (photo 2). The former is either a square fortress-style tower, as in Arenbergpark (9-storeys, 41.6 metres high and 57 metres square) or a circular tower, actually 16-sided, as in the Augarten and Stiftskaserne courtyard (12-storeys, 50.6 metres high and 43 metres in diameter). The heaviest artillery (105-128mm guns) was on the roof with lighter armaments (20-30mm) on the projecting balconies below.

The communication towers, from where anti-aircraft operations would be orchestrated, were all rectangular in shape (9-storeys, 39-51.4 metres high and 24 by 39 metres in plan). They were more lightly armed with radar and searchlights on the roof. By the end of the war the towers had only just been made operational and were also serving as air raid shelters for the local populace, protecting up to 30,000 people in each.

In the event of a successful war the towers' designer, motorway architect Professor Friedrich Tamms, had designs on his drawing board to clad them in slabs of black marble on which the names of dead German soldiers would be chiselled in gold leaf. The towers would thus become combined monuments to victory and the dead (rendering them curiously similar to Ravenna's Roman Mausoleum of Theoderich as well as the Castel del Monte in Apulia). Plans were even found in a Berlin architect's office for the bulldozing of Jewish Leopoldstadt and the erection of a vast Nazi Forum.

In reality, Leopoldstadt is a thriving community once more and the flak towers have become immoveable reminders of the darkest chapter of Vienna's history (despite Russian attempts to dynamite the Augarten's attack tower after the war: an act subsequently and erroneously ascribed to a group of Viennese schoolboys igniting a forgotten weapons dump!). Hitler famously described Vienna as being like a pearl for which he would provide a suitable setting: by the end of the war that setting comprised only ruined buildings, his abandoned flak towers bearing silent witness to their creator's madness. Subsequently, only the communication tower

Subsequently, only the communication tower in Esterházypark has found a comprehensive new use, namely the fascinating House of the Sea (Haus des Meeres) (open daily 9am-6pm). The exterior of the tower also doubles as a climbing-wall (Kletterwand am Flakturm) offering 25 different routes, the vertical face and projecting balcony mimicking perfectly an overhanging alpine rock face reaching up to 34 metres high.

A conservatory (or biotope) containing a miniature rain forest filled with birds and monkeys has been bolted onto one side and is entered by a door cut with much effort through the 2.5 metre-thick reinforced German concrete, the latter ensuring a constant temperature for the aquaria and vivaria within. Stable temperatures have also prompted the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) to use the attack tower in Arenberg Park as an archival depository and seasonal exhibition space, known as the Contemporary Art Tower (CAT) (open May-Nov Thurs only 3-7pm).

(Note: a former air-raid shelter at the base of the communication tower in Esterházypark now contains the Museum of Medieval Legal History: the History of Torture (Museum für Mittelalterliche Rechtsgeschichte: Die Geschichte der Folter) open 10am-6pm daily.)

To Flaktürme in the Augarten: take Tram 31 from U-Bahn Schottenring (U-2/U-4)

Text & photographs © Duncan J D Smith 2004 from the forthcoming book Only in Vienna - A Guide to the Hidden Corners, Little-Known Places and Unusual Objects of the City on the Danube

The city has also prompted him to attempt painting, something he has wanted to try for many years, and to indulge his interest in the world of classical music. Duncan is currently researching his new book, Only in Budapest, which will be devoted to the hidden corners of the Hungarian capital. Read More about Duncan