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Kopfstand 09: History of Everyday Life in Linz

Tuesday, 29th January 2008, 7 p.m.

One thing history most definitely is not is dry-as-dust. At a jam-packed session marked by passionate, almost truculent audience participation, members of the Stahl History Club discussed accounts of the past with Dr. Roman Sandgruber, Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Linz.

The 9th installment in Linz09’s Kopfstand series was staged on Tuesday, January 29, 2008 in the ÖSWAG shipyard’s canteen. The theme was Alltagsgeschichte, a form of microhistory dealing with everyday life and recording eyewitnesses’ own accounts of events. The center of attention at this very well-attended get-together was the Stahl History Club, an association that has been dealing for the last 20 years with historical events connected with the grounds of the voestalpine steel mill, Linz’s biggest employer by far.

A Passion for History
The club was represented by Helmuth Gröbl and Hans Egger. Helmuth Gröbl emphasized that he enjoyed gathering lots of individual puzzle pieces and assembling them into an “overall picture from an external perspective.” Hans Egger remarked that it was his involvement with the history club that enabled him to really get to know the company he worked for. The two retired “voestlers” offered insights into how much this process of dealing with the history of their employer truly means to them. On the other hand, this confrontation is rather the exception than the rule in Austria, according to Prof. Sandgruber, since domestic firms’ interest in their own history is rather limited.

“Dig where you’re standing!”
And this despite the fact that intensive involvement with a company’s own roots is precisely what could do so much to strengthen its corporate identity, Sandgruber added. The problematic aspect of this, however, is that any portrayal of history—whether by historical scholars or eyewitnesses to historical events—is always a construct. The representatives of the history club heatedly took issue with this judgment, stressing that they placed great value on an objective representation of the past. Sandgruber went on to conclude: “No one who deals with history can be truly objective. But that’s OK. Nobody is interested in just the facts; people want interpretation.” And what else do people want? Discussions like this one, to be sure!

A Club with a History
The Stahl History Club is an association that, until recently, went under the name voest History Club. It was founded in 1989, and has 38 members who work voluntarily collecting and archiving source material, documents and photos, writing chronicles and publications, and operating an exhibit on the club’s premises located in the Werkshotel at Glimpfingerstraße 59.

Details are available online at www.geschichteclubstahl.at