A park in Vienna may have to be renamed for the second time in less than a year after a local newspaper discovered that it currently honours a ‘Nazi profiteer.’
Mizzi-Langer-Kauba-Park, located next to an important transport interchange on Vienna’s ringroad, was named for the Austrian mountain climber Mizzi Langer-Kauba in October 2023.
The decision to name the green space after Mrs Langer-Kauba was taken by the district council in Vienna’s seventh district, part of a citywide policy of making sure women make up half of the street and placenames dedicated to individuals.
At the time, the Green Party, which runs the bohemian seventh district, celebrated Mrs Langer-Kauba, born 1872, as Austria’s first female mountain climber and a pioneering businesswoman.
But last month, the Wiener Zeitung uncovered that after the Anschluss of March 1938, Mrs Langer-Kauba developed a close relationship with the Nazi Party and profited from the Nazi regime in Austria.
The mountain climber was a member of two Nazi organisations: the National Socialist Women’s League and the National Socialist People's Welfare organisation. She also donated to the Nazi Party.
Running a sporting goods store in Vienna, she ran advertisements in Nazi-controlled newspapers and sold clothes to the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls.
Contemporaneous newspaper articles repeatedly describe Mrs Langer-Kauba’s shop as a “point of sale to the NSDAP’s purchasing agency for all official party clothing and equipment as well as badges”.
The discovery has proven to be tremendously embarrassing for the seventh district’s Green Party, which has attempted to pass the blame for naming the park after a Nazi up to the City of Vienna.
District council chair Markus Reiter said in a statement that his body made the decision to name the park after Mrs Langer-Kauba based on an assessment compiled by municipal authorities that made no mention of her Nazi past.
Mr Reiter stated that Mrs Langer-Kauba’s history now had to be formally investigated, and that renaming the park for the second time in less than twelve months “must be an option. There is no room for contaminated street names in [my district]”, he said.
The local centre-right People’s Party (ÖVP) has already put forward a new name for the park: Hedy Lamarr, the Austrian-born actress and inventor. “At a time when women in science are often overlooked, it is important to honour role models like Lamarr”, the ÖVP’s Christina Schlosser said.
The ÖVP, however, were one of the parties who signed off on the decision to name the park after Mrs Langer-Kauba in the first place.
The district branch of the liberal NEOS Party has proposed a thorough examination of all street and placenames locally in light of the Mizzi-Langer-Kauba-Park mishap.
In recent years, the City of Vienna has pursued a policy of erecting explanatory plaques on streets named after problematic individuals including Nazis and antisemites.
Vienna’s prominent statue of its former mayor, the antisemite Karl Lueger, meanwhile, is to be artistically contextualised next year following a long debate about its future
