How do you Solve a Problem like a Flaktower?
Vienna’s uneasy relationship with its most prominent wartime relics
The skyline of the centre of Vienna hasn’t changed much in 75 years. Stephansdom, the Rathaus, the Riesenrad, the green baroque dome of Karlskirche, the neo-gothic towers of the Votivkirche. But alongside the spires and the metalwork, there are six concrete monoliths hunkered among the city’s rooftops.
Each one is over 40 meters tall, windowless, and with walls three meters thick. You can glimpse them between the houses as you stroll down Vienna’s main shopping street, or as the bus drives you through three of the city’s residential districts. None are that far off the tourist trail, but you won’t find a sign explaining what they are.
In fact, these structures are a network of Flaktürme, anti-aircraft defences that housed the cannons that protected Vienna, the pearl of Hitler’s Germany, during the later years of the Second World War.
In three-quarters of a century, a city can get used to anything. But even if the towers are part of the background of daily life, Vienna’s relationship with its most prominent relics of the war is a constant undercurrent in public discourse. What exactly are we supposed to do with them now, and who should be making the decision?
Vienna’s flak towers were builtin the early 1940s to survive any and all conventional bombing. The German engineer who designed them was an expert in concrete, having previously worked on the country’s Autobahnen. He designed the towers in pairs — always one gun tower and one communications tower — and based the plans on impenetrable medieval fortresses.
The locations for the towers were chosen based on two criteria. Firstly, they had to form a protective triangle around Stephansdom, the symbolic heart of the city. Each tower was positioned around 2km from the cathedral, and each was built at a different height so that all the guns would be the same number of meters above sea level.
Secondly, they had to be constructed without demolishing existing buildings. In comparison with Berlin and Hamburg, where towers had already been completed, the densely built-up districts of central Vienna made this very challenging. The only solution here was to build them in parks. Two were built in the Augarten in the second district. Two in Arenbergpark in the third, and two near Esterhazypark in the sixth, close to the parliament and the famous Ringstrasse.
As well as deterring attacks, the towers were built to shelter the people and treasures of Vienna if the city did experience heavy bombing. They had the capacity to act as hospitals, gasproof air raid shelters, and stores for important artefacts. And, because they had been built in residential areas, they were accessible as well as safe.
All of this was an advantage at the time when the plan was for Germany to win the war and the towers to be clad in black marble and inscribed with the names of fallen soldiers. But now, it’s a headache. The towers are still indestructible, they’re still right in the middle of the places where people jog and catch the bus and take their children to the park, but they’ve become a symbol of a period of history which many would rather forget.
There is a camp in the flak tower debate which would have them demolished whatever the cost. They’re ugly and brutal. They’re a danger to anyone who goes inside. They represent national shame. And, in the 21st century, what use is a building where the walls are so thick that there’s no reception inside and where every passing year fills them up with more pigeons and filth?
In 1946, children broke into the gun tower in the Augarten and started a fire that ignited the explosives that had been left behind. The blast was so powerful that it blew the windows out of all the houses surrounding the park. The only damage to the tower was a few cracks near the roof. However much people might want to, the towers will not be taken down without a fight.
While the flak towers built in Germany have been taken down, all six of the towers in Vienna are still there. But even if this is the safest option, there’s still no agreement about what it means to leave them standing.
There are many voices in the debate who would preserve the towers as time capsules. They were built by prisoners from labour camps, and it would be an insult to their memory to destroy the artefacts they left behind. There are still discarded cigarette packets in the Arenbergpark towers. More than once, the words Vive la France are written in charcoal on the walls. But the site is too unsafe to be opened to more than the occasional guided tour.
On the other hand, there are those who argue that, if the towers have to stay, there must be something useful to be done with them. Pragmatically, they’re valuable real estate in the centre of a growing city. More idealistically, there might be healing to be had in the project of taking something from the darkest period of Austria’s history and using it for something new.
In the Haus des Meeres, the massive saltwater aquarium built in one of the Esterhazypark towers, we have an example of this. Since 1957, it’s brought countless species of marine life to landlocked Austria.
Technically, a flak tower is a great place for an aquarium. The structure is strong enough to support the massive weight of the water in the tanks, and the thick walls keep the temperature comparatively stable throughout the year. The Haus des Meeres remains one of Vienna’s most popular attractions.
Periodically, there’s a call for ideas for what to do with the other towers. The suggestions broadly fall into three categories:
- To take advantage of the constant cool temperatures and darkness for servers, data storage, multi-storey car parking or warehousing (the MAK Museum of Applied Arts already uses a tower in Arenbergpark for storage).
- To add something to the outside of the towers. Open-air cinemas, climbing walls, and rooftop swimming pools have all been put forward as ideas.
- To hide the towers completely. More than once it’s been suggested that the towers could act as a core around which something else could be built. The most common suggestions are for hotels or apartments to encase the towers.
It’s years since many of these ideas were proposed, and we’re still waiting.
But is it any wonder that none of these plans have come to fruition when even the Haus des Meeres hasn’t escaped recent controversy? Previously, there was a massive mural memorialising Kristallnacht on the roof, the words ‘Smashed to pieces (in the still of the night)’. When the aquarium was last expanded, the mural was removed. Because it was complicated. Because it wasn’t by an Austrian artist. Because no one really understood what it meant. Because the further we’re removed by time from the war, the harder it is to live alongside its remains.
In recent years, the way in which Vienna remembers the victims of the Holocaust have been decentralised. Whereas previously, the only memorials were in the first district, there are now illuminated Stars of David in the residential streets where synagogues were destroyed. There are Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) set into the street in front of houses where Jewish families lived and worked, listing their names, dates of birth, and the days on which they were deported. Lines from interviews with survivors have been painted onto the pavements on the streets where their stories took place. This forces us to confront and to remember the history that we’re living on top of and alongside. If it feels uncomfortable, it’s because it should. But what does that mean for the towers, which are so big in contrast to the individual stories that are currently being preserved?
With its flak towers, Vienna has a puzzle and a scar. They represent an opportunity to offend or to make a powerful statement. Any choice that’s made will be an important moment in history. But, if the city is to continue to foreground lived experience in its commemoration of the past, it’s important to act soon before those for whom the construction of the towers is memory, not history, are gone.
