Transcription Conventions

The nomination of Linz, the capital of the province Upper Austria, for the title of European Capital of Culture was submitted on the 14th December 2004.

The main focus of its presentation was on its attempts since 1985 to change itself from an industrial to a high-tech cultural city. Linz’s representatives, therefore, presented the Austrian town as a creative, cultural and dynamic one, having worldwide significance (The Selection Panel for the European Capital of Culture 2009, cited in Iordanova-Krasteva et al., 2010). Even though St. Polten/Krems, Salzburg and Innsbruck had shown some interest in applying for hosting the European Capital of Culture Event in 2009, Linz, in fact, was the only Austrian applicant. Martin Heller (Swiss) and Ulrich Fuchs (German) were appointed as Linz09 artistic directors and were described as

“unbiased” in their assessment of Linz’s resources due to their lack of previous involvement with Linz (Linz09 GmbH, 2010).

Linz’s authorities were thinking of the event as a project that:

...is endowing its [Linz’s] image with interesting new contours and is a driving force behind dynamic regional development… offers a big chance – already during the lead-in to the big year, but especially during the time thereafter … for an ambitious cultural programme and for tourism marketing. Linz09 has the potential to significantly increase international awareness for this city….

(www.linz09.at) Martin Heller (2008), the artistic director of Linz09, argued that:

….Linz will be the most interesting city in Austria in 2015. That may sound utopian to many, yet it is also imaginable within the logic of contemporary reality. For Linz is already an interesting city today. A city with a brisk pace, a city that enables, an unconcernedly solution-oriented city, a social model city, a rural city, a wealthy city, a globally open-minded city. And a city where culture, industry and nature can enter into a symbiosis like hardly anywhere else…

(www.linz09.at)

However, the objectives required to reach this ambitious aim were generally two: firstly, to give international audiences an idea of what Linz is all about and secondly, to change the clichéd stereotype of Linz as a blue-collar town and chimney stacks (Linz Europa Tour, 2007 – 2009, cited in Iordanova-Krasteva et al., 2010).

A clear sign of image changing efforts is the attempt to establish a new slogan of Linz. The current slogan “Linz veraendert” (in English – “Linz Changes”) will remove the eighteen years old slogan “Linz – Eine Stadt lebt auf” (in English – “A reviving city” ¹ (Linz Changes 2009). This change emphasizes the undertaken process of image change and consolidates the ambitious plans of Linz’s authorities.

The Selection Panel for the European Capital of Culture 2009 also draws attention to the slow growth rate of number of visitors in Linz over the past years (see Appendix 1) and stresses that the city should use the European Capital of Culture Event as a means to attract tourists (The Selection Panel for the European Capital of Culture 2009).

1 Translation from German has been made by the author

The number of arrivals (389,444 both foreign and domestic) in all forms of accommodation in Linz in 2008 shows a slight increase of only 0.5% as compared to 2007 and 0.3% as compared to 2006 respectively, despite all the efforts in establishing Linz as an attractive Austrian destination (TourmisInfo, 2008)

Compared with its domestic competitor destinations: Vienna, Salzburg, Bregenz, Eisenstadt, Graz, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, St. Poelten , Linz was on the fifth place in terms of arrivals in all forms of accommodation in the last three years followed by Vienna, Salzburg, Innsbruck and Graz (see Appendix 2) (TourmisInfo, 2008).

A logical prolongation of the discouraging trend of the number of visitors to Linz is the attendance of its main attractions. The number of visitors of Schlossmuseum in Linz recorded a drastic decrease of 35% in 2008 in comparison to 2007 and has even reached one of the lowest levels observed in 1985 with 55,400 visitors.

The number of visitors of Poestlingbergbahn started to decline in 2005 and in 2008 registered the lowest number of visitors since 1999 – less than 400 000 visitors for the whole year (see Appendix 3) (TourmisInfo, 2008).

Even the pride of Linz – the Lentos Museum of Modern Art could not attract a sufficient number of visitors since it was opened in 2003 and this negative trend is obvious from its visitors’ records (see Appendix 4). The same doom is also shared by Ars Electronica Centre Museum (see Appendix 4) with its number of visitors since 2000 dropping at about 50% (TourmisInfo, 2008).

4.2.1. Linz’s Cultural Life

Since the 1970’s, new vibrant appreciation of the arts has led to an expansion of the cultural and social definition of the city’s cultural policy with the main focus on culture and technology (the Ars Electronica Centre and Lentos Museum) and open space culture (Cultural Development Plan, 2000) represented by the three big hallmark events which dot its cultural calendar and are considered as the cultural trademarks of Linz - the Pflasterspektakel,

the Ars Electronica Festival and the Linz Cloud of Sound (Iordanova-Krasteva et al., 2010).

4.2.2. Linz Nazi’s Past

The evaluation panel of Linz’s nomination for hosting the European Capital of Culture Event in 2009 made a recommendation that recent history should find a place in the programme of the event and it would be a real benefit if materials referring to the city’s history in the context of the Third Reich is included as part of the programme (The Selection Panel for the European Capital of Culture, 2009).

Until the time of the First Republic, the name Linz was associated with provincial culture. Even Adolf Hitler was born in the outlying village of Braunau and only grew up in Linz – Linz is Hitler’s’ town as Salzburg is Mozart’s, for example. During the Nazi period, Linz was transformed from a small town into an industrial city with a potential to become a cultural metropolis on the Danube. After 1945 the main concern of Linz’s authorities was to distance themselves from Nazi culture and Hitler, in particular, while highlighting traditionally humanist cultural values (Cultural Development Plan, 2000). However, traces of Nazi’s past are still part of everyday life in Linz – in the appearance of the so-called “Hitlerbauten”², the industrial facilities of VOEST³ founded as the "Hermann Göring Werke" during World War II and also in the materials used for buildings construction that raise an embarrassing point: Mauthausen granite was paid for with the lives of concentration camp prisoners (Mission Statement, 2009, cited in Iordanova-Krasteva et al., 2010).

Linz’s policy makers have decided to accept the challenge and to make use of probably the most outrageous associations with the town as Adolf Hitler is one of the last “celebrities” that could be expected to find a place into a destination promotion campaign (Pierce, 2009, cited in Iordanova-Krasteva

2 Cheap homes that Hitler built for industrial workers

3VOEST is leading European processing group with own steelmaking facilities

et al., 2010), unless the destination attempts to establish itself as a dark tourism destination.

One of the first events of the European Capital of Culture programme, therefore, was an exhibition called the “Fuhrer's Capital of Culture” and was part of a therapy aiming to overcome Linz's dark history and audience’s prejudices. Ulrich Fuchs, the deputy manager of Linz09, said with regard to Hitler’s issue that: "…..whenever you come to Linz in the coming year, you will find something related to this topic. We are not sweeping Hitler under the carpet."

Developing this line of thought, Martin Heller, the artistic director of Linz 2009, stated that:

….we want to reflect back and show how cultural and political ambitions went together in the Nazi time,” “Talking about culture always means talking about politics……the only way of dealing with Hitler is to be completely honest…

(www.linz09.at) The director of the Upper Austrian State Museums, Peter Assmann, recognized that an exhibition about Linz’s Hitler past might be treated as going too far, because Hitler's legacy is still a very difficult and sensitive topic (Iordanova-Krasteva et al., 2010), but he defended the exhibition by arguing that:

I don't see any glorification of Hitler in the exhibition. Hitler is fact, so we just face this fact and we face it with many arguments, with a lot of information about that time. People walk through the exhibition and they get impulses for discussion.

(Pierce, 2009)

Making Hitler’s and Nazi’s past a part of Linz09 programme attempted to uncover new ways of talking about historical issues that seem to be relevant not only to the Austrian, but also to the whole humanity. Linz’s task has less to do with guilt, but rather with reflecting on historical facts and embedding them in the concerns of today (Mission Statement, 2009). Coincidence or not, the year 2009 is the 120th anniversary of Hitler’s birth and the 70th

anniversary of Hitler’s war – both considerable important events for the human history.