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Mission Statement

Shortly after taking office, the artistic directors published a document in early 2006, which was based on an in-depth analysis of the city and outlined – in the manner of a mission statement – seven principles that were going to underpin the forthcoming programme of the Culture Capital. The mission statement’s seven propositions may be summed up as follows:

1. Linz09 represents Austria on the European stage. This is why it must be open both to international artists and to visitors from across Europe.

2. The people involved in Linz’s cultural life are asked to redouble their efforts in 2009.

3. Linz09’s programme is to take into account the dimensions, issues and topics of cultural development in Europe to broaden Linz’s horizon.

4. It is of great importance not to lose sight of the characteristic features of Linz and the regions surrounding it: Linz in its present incarnation is a technology and knowledge based industrial city located in the heart of Europe, which takes culture and the culture industries equally serious.

5. In terms of thematic content the programme of Culture Capital Year will embrace the greatest possible degree of openness.

6. The programme must be given the chance to develop at its own pace, step by step, in a process open to suggestions of all kinds, against the background of a clearly perceptible framework that allows a great deal of manoeuvring room.

7. The City of Linz and the Province of Upper Austria have tackled intensely the National Socialist era over the past years, have come to terms with their part in this past and have accepted responsibility for it. In view of the significance of that period of history and of the role that Linz played in it, the Nazi era will be a thematic focus of the Culture Capital Year.

Linz and National Socialism

Linz09 has as its base a city whose history is to be showcased within the framework of Culture Capital Year both at a European and a local level. A crucial position in this context is occupied by the era when today’s Capital of Culture was a “Führerstadt” surrounded by a circle of extermination camps (Mauthausen, Gusen, Ebensee, Hartheim). Traces of National Socialist activities are to be found not only in Linz’s vicinity but also in the city itself, where they continue to be part of everyday life – in the shape of the so-called “Hitlerbauten”, the industrial facilities of the VOEST built on the foundations provided by the “Hermann Göring Werke” and in the very building materials used for the construction of seemingly uncontroversial buildings: Mauthausen granite was paid for with the lives of concentration camp prisoners.

Linz09 has no wish to claim a pioneering role for itself in Austria’s efforts to come to terms with its past. What it does however attempt to do is to find new ways of talking about that past that are felt to be relevant both by the population of the region and by people from all over Europe.

Linz09 wants to build on a stock of knowledge in regard to a thoroughly researched and carefully documented period of history and to make the discussion of that history, of its consequences and their continuing relevance accessible to the public. The period in question has obvious European dimensions: Mauthausen was the final destination for deportees from all over Europe, and the attempt to come to terms with the crimes that were committed here and elsewhere and with the ideology underpinning them continues to exercise European societies to this day.

The first prerequisite for anyone who wants to become active in this field is to subject their own point of view to a close scrutiny and to resolve for themselves a number of basic issues. Today our task is less to do with merely handing on knowledge or dealing with guilt and its apportionment than with reflecting on the facts and embedding them in the concerns of today. Maintaining painstaking historical integrity must be supplemented by the continuingly relevant question what developments and what social mechanisms made it possible for these historical events to occur in the first place.

The questions we want to put to our own history have changed or rather broadened in focus. The National Socialist past is now also perceived under an urbanistic, aesthetic and artistic perspective, which neither relativises nor detracts from the atrocities of the past.

And there is, finally, the issue of narrative styles: Linz09 is going to make many different narrative styles possible and lend them a helping hand in order to engage with the topic in all kinds of registers. The styles that history can be dealt with include the polemical, factual, sober and provocative, and it is obvious that this list is far from complete. Different Linz09 projects will be used to highlight different aspects of the reasons for and the forms of this discussion. The multiplicity of approaches will stake out a frame that will remain in evidence throughout and that encompasses the most diverse positions to make it possible for different audiences to engage with the topic in question. That Linz09 as the frame of reference for all subprojects provides multiple approaches will, it is hoped, result in preference being given to multi-faceted, individualistic points of view rather than to prefabricated glib answers. Being confronted with individualistic or even idiosyncratic points of view is going to make it more likely for audiences to become involved, to take an active interest in history and to internalize the past.

The success of the discussion of this period of contemporary history as part of the Capital of Culture Year will ultimately be measured in terms of the quality and the impact of the impression that it will have left in the minds of its audiences. It is hoped that this impression will prove strong enough to reverberate in conversations, memories and in an increase of awareness up to – and beyond – the proverbial year 2015.