The Ground We Are Walking

Recently, the Iranian-born Austrian writer, Navid Kermani, mentioned the ‘neurotic’ relationship of the Austrian and German states to today’s Israel in an interview with the Austrian daily newspaper, DerStandard. He understands this neurotic relationship, he says, because when your state, and your ancestors, most of the generation of your grandparents, have sought to wipe an entire people from the face of the earth, a bit of neuroticism might be well-founded. At a time of increasing racism and antisemitism in Austria, this resonates with me, but that does not mean I condone the unbearable atrocities and crimes of the Israeli government or the ongoing wars.

On October 8, 2023, one day after the Hamas attack, I took part in a symposium discussion with two Iranian academics and artists. Speaking about artistic and activist work, we looked at each other in growing despair, brought about by the sudden clarity that this attack not only took innocent lives there, but would reverberate here and destroy years of anti-racism, anti-islamophobia, and anti-antisemitism work. And it did, still does. I am thinking of my Israeli, Palestinian, and Lebanese friends, the people from the Iranian community I know… (The people of the Diaspora communities that I know better are not in line with the war in Gaza, Lebanon, they reject the government of Netanyahu and his extremist cronies, are not supportive of Hamas, Hizbollah, ISIS, or the current Syrian regime, Erdogan’s government, or the Iranian regime… I would like to mention this, as I am expressing a personal view based on the conversations with people in my environment who may hold minority views, and especially so, when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict. See Ghawi & Avneri, 2024 and OneState Embassy Art Collective, 2026.) These friendships inspired the following piece, which considers the way our understanding of the world is rooted in the presence of local history. In this regard, the ground on which I am moving and from which I am thinking and working is always at the back of my mind. But let me explain by taking you on a walk through Vienna with me this evening. 

So, come along and let’s walk through the inner city. You find me here on my way home from a concert of Persian music. It was beautiful, yet once again, I spoke to people desperate for their families and friends. The war in Iran and the whole region is intensifying. Horrors admit horrors. Who wins when people die?

On this cold spring evening, we arrive at Karl Lueger Platz, a square in Vienna’s inner city named after a former city mayor. Born in 1844, he was an Austrian lawyer and a very successful politician who served as Mayor of Vienna from 1897 until his death in 1910. He is credited with transforming Vienna into a modern city. A member of the Austrian Christian Social Party, which he founded and led, he remains highly controversial: Lueger is credited with being the first politician worldwide to successfully develop a brand of populism and gained political power through his populist, racist, and antisemitic demagogy. 

When Lueger was elected, Vienna was already a city imbued with antisemitic resentments that had been stoked over centuries by the emperors who had ruled Austria and the influential Catholic church. However, with Lueger’s election as Mayor of Vienna in 1897, almost 130 years ago, political antisemitism reached its peak and became the socio-political force dominating everyday life. Jews were publicly and openly discriminated against, they were made responsible for the loss of World War I, and, quite generally, accused of causing everything that seemed wrong. They were declared specialists in vile profits, and accused of a disproportionate addiction to monetary profits and the expropriation of the indigenous population. Many examples can be found in Lueger’s speeches, and a lot of things seem eerily familiar to contemporary politics, such as the attack on the press, that can be found in this draft of an early speech:

Before I address the topic at hand, I want briefly to discuss two matters:

1.) I did not come to set citizen against citizen.

The Christian Social Program does not aim to incite, but rather to reconcile; it is not a fight of all against all, but rather a harmonious formation of different interest groups against the stratification of human society by professions and occupations.

2.) Press: here, too, as always in the liberal press, abuses, invectives and the most insolent lies. After 15 years of fighting with the liberal press, I have developed a rather thick skin, thank goodness. Therefore, I shall limit my comments and simply say that the liberal press, sometimes also called Jewish liberal, or Jewish Press, is the most impudent press on this earth, that it was and is the ally and accomplice of all robberies and thefts that have been committed against the Christian people. In Vienna, only fools and those on the same moral level support it; all decent and intelligent people reject it with disdain. […] You will be able to judge whether I speak the truth or not—therefore, whether I belong to the instructors or the corrupters of the people.

[…]

Jewish press against clergy and religion, therefore, we believe: the Jews have no right to become judges, political officials and officers, and must be pushed back.

Christians again have upper hand 

Indigenous property

Indigenous labor 

then peace and quiet will return …. (Lueger, 1891)

Lueger knew how to exploit the economic anti-Semitism in which Jewish industrialists and bankers were regarded as the cause of all social and financial problems. In his demagogy, ‘the Jewry’ was put in opposition to the ‘indigenous Austrians’, a term that is absurd, as Austria, from the monarchy on, has been multi-ethnic and Jewish families have lived here for centuries. Later, the Nazis, with their ‘Blood and Soil’ ideology, profited from the establishment of the trope of ‘indigenous’ Austrians versus Jews. Lueger used and stoked resentments for his political gain, amalgamating absurdities into a convincing populist formula. Thus, he was able to develop a xenophobic and anti-Semitic cultural code that became the set of values that gave his supporters a newfound sense of identity. 

Lueger represented a verbally radical antisemitism, effectively establishing an anti-liberal middle-class block with clerical, antisemitic, and anti-socialist values, which attracted above all the disoriented middle-class. He made random use of religious, economic, and racist positions. This opportunist and authoritarian approach was expressed in his famous and cynical claim: “I determine who a Jew is!” 

Viennese philosopher and painter Rosa Mayreder (1858-1938) points to the significance of political language when she writes in 1938: “Words are seeds; they sprout wherever they find fertile ground – they take root, they grow, they bear fruit – somewhere, sometime” (My translation: Worte sind Keime, sie gehen auf, wo sie ihren Boden finden – sie schlagen Wurzeln, sie wachsen, sie tragen Früchte – irgendwo und irgendwann (Mayreder, 2018, 11).) And Lueger was truly successful. Once elected mayor, he remained in office until his death. 

His politics were not only antisemitic but also proposed other racist and discriminatory policies; for example, he advocated policies against non-German-speaking minorities in Austria-Hungary. By merging the various racist and anti-Jewish positions, his political party achieved an explosive mass mobilisation in Austria, and thus, the turn of the century witnessed a phase of populist mass politics decisively shaped by Lueger’s antisemitism and spreading from Vienna into Austrian politics. 

Indeed, Lueger’s politics profoundly and lastingly changed the discourse in Austria. Any political group that wanted to appeal had no realistic chance of success without an antisemitic platform. Racism and antisemitism became the norm first in Vienna, then in Austria. Adolf Hitler experienced Lueger’s political acumen and demagogy during his time in Vienna (1908-1913) and later named him a political role model. 

Only in the 21^st century did Vienna begin to distance itself from Lueger’s legacy. In 2012, a section of the Ringstrasse, the city’s central boulevard, that had borne Lueger’s name since 1934, was renamed ‘Universitätsring’ (University Ring). But there is still the square here that bears his name, and it is where we find ourselves on this cool evening. Until recently, his monument stood there, with the word ‘SHAME’ written all over it.

Under Lueger’s reign, another Viennese citizen, Theodor Herzl, laid out in his novel Altneuland (Oldnewland), first published in 1902, the basis of political Zionism. Herzl’s consequential dream was to establish a state for all Jews to call their homeland and feel safe and free from discrimination. While some, such as the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler, hoped to become a theatre director in this new homeland, others rejected the idea. Zionism was a divisive proposition, heatedly discussed between Jewish communities and families from the start, even before the Jewish state became possible after the Holocaust. Indeed, it is uncertain whether the Zionist movement would have gained any significant momentum without the influence of Austrian antisemitism and its long-standing political exploitation, which intensified during Lueger’s tenure and is still part of the Austrian political discourse to this day. 

I am not sure if our little walk could shed some light on Austria’s difficult relationship with its Jewish citizens and with Israel. How these historical connections manifest and are embodied is difficult to explain. Herzl was a citizen of Vienna, and is part of Viennese history, just like Karl Lueger or the Emperors. Certainly, today Herzl’s plight must be seen in a different light, but nevertheless, it’s good to remember that the discriminatory politics in Vienna have contributed to create the urgency for a Jewish state. 

François Jullien (2006) writes that we cannot sufficiently consider the ground on which we stand because we think from it toward something and therefore cannot think of it simultaneously. Thank you for accompanying me on my walk on the Viennese ground tonight, contemplating a specific stratum of its abyssal history with me.

Works Cited:

Ghawi, A. & Avneri, I. 2024. Middle East: “We are Standing Together”. ProPeace [Online] Available from: https://www.propeace.de/en/middle-east-we-are-standing-together [Accessed 04/04/2026].

Herzl, T. 2022. Altneuland. Ein utopischer Roman. Hamburg: bod.

Jullien, F. 2006. Vortrag vor Managern über Wirksamkeit und Effizienz in China und im Westen. Translated by R. Voullié. Berlin: Merve.

Mayreder, R. 2018. Aschmedais Sonnette an den Menschen, Wien: edition XX.

OneState Embassy Art Collective. 2026. OneState Embassy Art Collective. OneState Embassy [Online] Available from: https://www.onestateembassy.com/ [Accessed 04.04.2026].

University of Washington Departments Web Server, Vienna Files, Lueger, K. (1891), “Fragmentary draft of a speech presented in Moravia about 1891”. https://depts.washington.edu/vienna/documents/Lueger/Lueger_anti-semetic.htm [Accessed 04.04.2026].Wurmitzer, M. & Kermani, N. 2026. „Ich wünsche mir kein normales Verhältnis…“ in: Der Standard [Online] Available from: https://www.derstandard.at/consent/tcf/story/3000000312336/navid-kermani-wuensche-mir-kein-normales-verhaeltnis-deutschlands-zu-israel [Accessed 04.04.2026].