Weinheber- Memorial/Denkmal

, Bronze cast from a bust by Josef Bock (1940) on a granite pedestal , This memorial was erected in 1975 by the private Weinheber society and officially taken into custodianship by the City of Vienna. Following repeated acts of anonymous vandalism, it was reconfigured in the 1990s with a new pedestal fortified by an underground concrete foundation. In 2013 the foundation was uncovered and exposed as part of an unauthorised artistic intervention to highlight the conflict surrounding the memorial. Afterwards it was restored to its original state by official order. Following years of discussion, in 2019 it was permanently reconfigured., Josef Weinheber (1892-1945), novelist and poet. Like many of his contemporaries, Weinheber's anti-modern ideal of the genius, his excessive masculinity, his antisemitism, and his mythical romanticisation of the German language made him receptive to racial nationalism. He first joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1931 and proceeded to play an active role in the party's art and culture organisations. Within a few years, he advanced to one of the most influential writers in Nazi Germany. His fame was due mainly to his readiness to serve the Nazi regime, e.g. by publicly agitating against other writers deemed politically undesirable or by writing propaganda poetry. He committed suicide in April 1945. In the years thereafter, his literary heritage was honoured mainly by writers with whom he had been friends and who were equally sympathetic to Nazism., Reconfiguration concept: Plattform Geschichtspoltik, =============,