In December 2010, the Red-Green coalition administration of the City of Vienna decided to have a memorial created for the victims of the Nazi military law – a group that has hardly been noticed by the public at a dignified visible location. The goal of this competition is to select and suggest a project for implementing this memorial at the proposed site (Vienna 1, Ballhausplatz) from all of the proposals submitted.

“The men and women, soldiers and civilians, prisoners of war and members of resistance movements from all over Europe who fell victim to National Socialist military law are to be given a place in the center of Austria’s federal capital that commemorates their history and pays tribute to what they did in an adequate form. There is already talk about a “memorial to deserters” not only in Vienna – which is legitimate particularly in so far as about three quarters of all death sentences were passed on soldiers who deserted from the Armed Forces. Yet, the memorial’s initiators have defined the group of persons to be commemorated in a broader way – a measure also aimed at shedding light on the dimensions of a terror jurisdiction’s sentential practice far beyond the few commonly known victims. [...]

The memorial to the victims of National Socialist military law pays respect to the sufferings and achievements of all people who contributed to putting an end to the Nazi regime and its war in their own individual way. Thus, the undertaking takes a clear stand concerning a subject of Austria’s recent history that has been blocked out deliberately for a long time. Despite the memorial’s clearly defined historical frame of reference, the discussion on the subject is meant to stimulate questions regarding issues of the present and the future and, particularly, to explore the limits of orders and obedience in the face of wars throughout the world. The initiators of the memorial do explicitly not encourage ahistorical equations of the Second World War with other armed conflicts. The memorial is to make future generations sensitive to historical continuities and breaks and to offer a starting point for a better understanding of the connections between events of the past and present developments.”

Text extract: Dr. Magnus Koch