2024-01-07 13:39:39
On the article by Simona Pinwinkler with the title “These are the bottlenecks in the festival district” in the SN from January 2nd, 2024:
“It’s impossible not to worry about Salzburg.” This sentence introduces the text whose after-effects determine the fate of Salzburg to this day. Hans Sedlmayr, a knowledgeable and visionary art historian who immigrated from Munich, published the text “The Demolished Beauty” in 1965 as a “call to save Salzburg’s old town”.
There have been decisive moments in Salzburg’s fate several times in history due to the appearance of new forces from within or without. This observation seems to be confirmed again.
In the “Salzburger Nachrichten – From City and Country”, edition of January 2, 2024, Simona Pinwinkler reports in detail under the title “These are the bottlenecks in the festival district” about the technical deficits in the Salzburg festival complex that she has seen and agrees with the demand of the festival’s commercial director, according to which such defects could only be remedied with new (ie pressed in) building material. The associated massive destruction of the overall architectural and natural structure of the festival complex as well as Salzburg’s old town, including the Neutor Tunnel, through structurally alien and scale-busting new construction is deliberately overlooked.
In view of the current danger, one automatically thinks of the situation in the city of Salzburg in the early 1960s and the effects of Professor Sedlmayr’s appeal. In the tribute to his 82nd birthday, the sociologist and historian Christoph von Thienen (“The Destruction of Salzburg” in: “Speaking Stones”, No. 60/61, Vienna, July 1979, p. 18f.) recalled the events of that time: “First of all, the man to whom these lines are dedicated must be remembered. It was Hans Sedlmayr who opened the eyes of the people of Salzburg after a lucky coincidence led him to swap his Munich residence for that of Salzburg in 1964.” One consequence of this initiative was the adoption of the Salzburg Old Town Preservation Act in 1967, which is still groundbreaking today.
Sedlmayr’s “City without a landscape. Salzburg’s fate tomorrow”, his next polemic, argued against the 1970 urban development plan and, due to the whispered propaganda, led to something unforeseen, despite the silence of city officials and most newspapers: “Three young men stepped forward; a Student of architecture, a student of law and a young entrepreneur . . . These three were joined by a fourth from London: another young lawyer who had gotten to know the ecological movements there and English town planning.” This is how the “real” citizen list was created. Ultimately, their initiative, with thousands of signatures and despite resistance from the construction and real estate industry, brought down the plan to develop Salzburg-Süd and the area was able to be established as a landscape protection area.
Is history repeating itself under different circumstances? Even today, a group of young people are speaking out unequivocally against the “prestige project” and are calling for hundreds of millions of euros (from Austrian taxpayers, because they feed the budgets of the federal government, the state and the city of Salzburg) not to be spent here.
Christoph von Thienen came to the conclusion in 1979: “If such a fight, as is the case here, is not carried out under ideological auspices, but across all camps, if the idea of personalizing and untangling the people is foreign to it “By abolishing domination as such, perhaps a step has been taken towards restoring a freer community.”
In the current situation there is probably nothing to add to this conclusion.
Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Bruno Maldoner, 3482 Gösing am Wagram
1704635434
#Prestige #project #Festspielbezirk #SN.at