In Vienna, a monument to the mayor was tilted for 776 thousand euros. His antisemitism inspired Hitler
In the Austrian capital, a long-standing conflict surrounding the monument to former Vienna mayor Karl Lueger has been resolved. Instead of dismantling the monument to the antisemitic politician, authorities transformed it into an art object — tilting it by 3.5 degrees. The work officially concluded in June 2026 and cost significantly more than planned.
Karl Lueger governed Vienna from 1897 to 1910. He is considered one of the most popular, yet also one of the most controversial politicians in the city's history. On the one hand, he modernized Vienna: under his leadership, municipal gas and water networks, hospitals, and a green belt around the city were established. On the other hand — he was a populist and the founder of political antisemitism in Austria.
Lueger called migrants "beggar Jews," critical journalists "ink Jews," and he is attributed the phrase "I decide who is a Jew here!" It was precisely his rhetoric and methods that served as an example for the young Adolf Hitler, who was living in Vienna at the time and later called Lueger one of the greatest mayors.
The antisemitic atmosphere in the city under Lueger also influenced Theodor Herzl and the formation of Zionist ideology.
The monument — a 4.5-meter bronze statue on a massive marble pedestal with allegorical figures — was erected in 1926. Its author, sculptor Josef Müllner, later became an open member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP).
In 2020, the Lueger monument became the epicenter of confrontation. Activists repeatedly doused it with paint and inscribed the pedestal with the words "Shame" (Schande) and "Nazi." Jewish student organizations, the local community, and Holocaust survivors demanded the statue be demolished and a museum built in its place. However, the city authorities refused to dismantle it, proposing instead to change the perception of the object through "artistic contextualization."
The Illusion of Falling
Following the competition, a project by local artist Klemens Wihidal titled «Schieflage (Karl Lueger 3,5°)» — «Tilt» won.
The idea was to tilt the entire monument, along with its foundation, by 3.5 degrees to the right. This angle is at the limit of human perception: it creates a feeling of visual discomfort and the illusion that the monument has lost its balance and is ready to collapse. In this way, the artist physically stripped the statue of its former monumentality.
Construction work began in January 2026 and concluded in June. To achieve the tilt, the statue had to be removed and the massive foundation reworked, involving soil scanning to avoid damaging the root system of the historic plane tree growing nearby. As a result, the project budget increased from the initial 500,000 to 776,000 euros.
Moreover, 138,000 euros of this sum went exclusively to cleaning the monument of protest graffiti and paint. This sparked a new wave of criticism. Activists and art historians stated that by erasing the inscriptions, the authorities destroyed traces of contemporary public resistance, which in themselves constituted the best historical context.
To finally clarify the matter, a new information stele was installed next to the tilted monument. It now provides a detailed and uncensored account of Karl Lueger's antisemitism and the Nazi views of Josef Müllner, the creator of his monument.
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