Vienna to Build Monument for 265,000 Guest Workers
(MENAFN) Austria’s capital is moving to put the story of its guest workers into public space, with a monument planned near the city’s main train station, the welfare organization Volkshilfe Wien (VHW) said in a statement Tuesday.
VHW said labor migration has been decisive in shaping Austria’s development and that the memorial is meant to give that history a permanent home in the public realm.
Vienna’s City Councilor for Culture, Veronica Kaup-Hasler, said a public call for proposals will be issued through the city’s public art office. She said the project will cost a maximum of €250,000, with donations expected to cover most of it.
The site is near Hauptbahnhof, close to where the former Sudbahnhof once stood. It was there, in the 1960s and 1970s, that guest workers from what was then Yugoslavia and Türkiye stepped off trains into Vienna.
The initiative also aims to support scholarly research into the lives and labor of the people who lived and worked in the city. Findings are to be displayed in a space in the Favoriten district, VHW said, adding that further steps toward implementation are underway.
“Anyone who talks about Austria’s prosperity must also talk about the people who helped build it. For generations, people have come here to work and build a life for themselves,” Tanja Wehsely, executive director of VHW, said in the statement.
“Their work and their life stories are still not visible enough in the public sphere. The monument is intended to give them the place in our collective memory that they deserve,” she added.
Figures from a national labor body show roughly 265,000 guest workers arrived between 1961 and 1974 under recruitment agreements. About 200,000 came from the former Yugoslavia, around 80% of the total. Some 30,000 came from Türkiye, under an agreement with Ankara signed in 1964. Fewer than 1,000 arrived from Spain.
VHW said labor migration has been decisive in shaping Austria’s development and that the memorial is meant to give that history a permanent home in the public realm.
Vienna’s City Councilor for Culture, Veronica Kaup-Hasler, said a public call for proposals will be issued through the city’s public art office. She said the project will cost a maximum of €250,000, with donations expected to cover most of it.
The site is near Hauptbahnhof, close to where the former Sudbahnhof once stood. It was there, in the 1960s and 1970s, that guest workers from what was then Yugoslavia and Türkiye stepped off trains into Vienna.
The initiative also aims to support scholarly research into the lives and labor of the people who lived and worked in the city. Findings are to be displayed in a space in the Favoriten district, VHW said, adding that further steps toward implementation are underway.
“Anyone who talks about Austria’s prosperity must also talk about the people who helped build it. For generations, people have come here to work and build a life for themselves,” Tanja Wehsely, executive director of VHW, said in the statement.
“Their work and their life stories are still not visible enough in the public sphere. The monument is intended to give them the place in our collective memory that they deserve,” she added.
Figures from a national labor body show roughly 265,000 guest workers arrived between 1961 and 1974 under recruitment agreements. About 200,000 came from the former Yugoslavia, around 80% of the total. Some 30,000 came from Türkiye, under an agreement with Ankara signed in 1964. Fewer than 1,000 arrived from Spain.
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