Hotel Metropole was a hotel in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

, Austria that was constructed in 1871–73. It was destroyed during World War II after serving as the Vienna headquarters of the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

from 1938. The address was Morzinplatz, in the 1st District

Innere Stadt The Innere Stadt (; ; "Inner City") is the 1st municipal Districts of Vienna, district of Vienna () located in the center of the Austrian capital. The Innere Stadt is the old town of Vienna. Until the city boundaries were expanded in 1850, the I ...

History

The hotel was built for the Vienna World Exhibition and was designed by Carl Schumann and Ludwig Tischler. The four-story building was richly decorated with

Corinthian column The Corinthian order (, ''Korinthiakós rythmós''; ) is the last developed and most ornate of the three principal classical orders of Ancient Greek architecture and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric order, which was the earliest, ...

caryatid A caryatid ( ; ; ) is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head. The Greek term ''karyatides'' literally means "maidens of Karyai", an ancient t ...

s and

atlases An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a continent or region of Earth. Advances in astronomy have also resulted in atlases of the celestial sphere or of other planets. Atlases have traditionally been ...

. The inner court was glassed over and had a richly decorated

dining hall A cafeteria, called canteen outside the U.S., is a type of food service location in which there is little or no waiting staff table service, whether in a restaurant or within an institution such as a large office building or school; a schoo ...

. After the ''

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "German Question, Greater Germany") arose after t ...

'' of Austria to

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

in March 1938, the hotel was confiscated from its Jewish owners by the Gestapo who made it their headquarters. With a staff of 900 (80 per cent of whom were recruited from the Austrian police), it was the largest Gestapo office outside of Berlin. Many people, especially

Jews Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

, were interrogated or tortured there. At the end of the war, on March 12, 1945, the building was hit and burned during an Allied aerial bombardment of Vienna; ultimately, the ruins were demolished to eliminate any memory of the building. In 1951 a memorial stone was erected by concentration camp survivors, which was then replaced in 1985 with a bigger monument financed by the city of Vienna. The monument consists of

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

blocks from the quarry of the former concentration camp at Mauthausen and a bronze statue symbolising a survivor. The inscription comes from the president of the association of the survivors of the concentration camps Wilhelm Steiner and reads: (

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

) "''Hier stand das Haus der Gestapo. Es war für die Bekenner Österreichs die Hölle. Es war für viele von ihnen der Vorhof des Todes. Es ist in Trümmer gesunken wie das Tausendjährige Reich. Österreich aber ist wiederauferstanden und mit ihm unsere Toten, die unsterblichen Opfer.''" ( English) "Here stood the House of the Gestapo. To those who believed in Austria it was hell. To many it was the gates to death. It sank into ruins just like the 'Thousand Year Reich'. But Austria was resurrected and with her our dead, the immortal victims." On 19 June 1995, the

National Historical Commission of the Philippines The National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP; ) is a government agency of the Philippines. Its mission is "the promotion of Philippine history and cultural heritage through research, dissemination, conservation, sites management ...

, led by Amb. Reynaldo O. Arcilla, along with Rudolf Hundstorser, First Chairman of the

Gemeinderat and Landtag of Vienna As Vienna, the capital of Austria is both a city and a state, the 100 members of the Municipal Council (''Gemeinderat'') of the city of Vienna also act as members of the Landtag (legislative assembly) of the state of Vienna. Members serve for fiv ...

, unveiled at the former location of Hotel Metropole a historical marker of Philippine National Hero,

José Rizal José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda (, ; June 19, 1861 – December 30, 1896) was a Filipino nationalist, writer and polymath active at the end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. He is popularly considered a na ...

's visit to Vienna from 20 to 24 May 1887. Rizal has befriended Austro-Hungarian linguistic scholar Ferdinand Blumentritt of Leitmeritz. On 13 June 2015, as part of the theatre festival

Wiener Festwochen The Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) is a culture festival that takes place in Vienna for five or six weeks in May and June every year. The Vienna Festival was established in 1951, when Vienna was still occupied by the Participants in World W ...

, a group of artists (Zsuzsi Flohr, Benjy Fox-Rosen, Eduard Freudmann, Eva Reinold, Luisa Ziaja) illegally erected a meta-memorial dedicated to the survivors who had illegally erected a monument on that spot in 1951. The inscription reads: (

) ''"Was sie unterließ, haben wir getan. Den Errichter_innen eines nie errichteten Obelisken am 11. April 1951 um 19 Uhr 20."'' ( English) "What they neglected we did. To the erectors of a never erected obelisk on 11 April 1951, at 19:20"

References

External links

Hotel Metropol war ein Name, der für die Gestapo in Wien stand.
(German - deutsch)

{{coord, 48, 12, 47, N, 16, 22, 27, E, region:AT-9_type:landmark_source:kolossus-dewiki, display=title 1951 in Austria The Holocaust in Austria

Metropole A metropole () is the homeland, central territory or the state exercising power over a colonial empire. From the 19th century, the English term ''metropole'' was mainly used in the scope of the British, Spanish, French, Dutch, Portugu ...

Gestapo Buildings and structures in Innere Stadt Metropole, Vienna Intelligence agency headquarters Defunct hotels Buildings and structures destroyed during World War II 1873 establishments in Austria Demolished hotels 19th-century architecture in Austria Vienna in World War II