February 1934

This is the Vorwärts building, home to the printing press of the party newspaper and the headquarters of the Social Democrats, and on the twelfth of February 1934 it was occupied by police and the army.

 

It all started in Linz, where party members resisted a search for weapons, and within a single day the unrest spread to Vienna. The government had already shut down parliament and banned the workers' militia, and now the municipal housing blocks became the battlefield, because the defenders dug in there and the army turned its artillery on them.

 

Four days later it was over. Hundreds were killed, several of the leaders were hanged, the party was outlawed, and the tenants of those shelled blocks found themselves with a government that treated their neighbourhood as enemy territory.

 

Four years after that, Hitler marched into Austria and that regime vanished too.

 

We follow the quay all the way to the metro station, where this walk comes to an end.