Austria’s fight against the corona virus
E.n last week, a bus drove through winter-dark Linz, and the destination display read “Vaccination Is Murder”. “Is” capitalized. Since a teenager filmed the mission-conscious wishbone, it didn’t take long before the man, as they say in Austria, was “investigated” and dismissed without notice. The Upper Austrian Transport Association distances itself just as quickly as the bus company for which the employee drove.
The case throws the spotlight on the location of our south-eastern neighboring country, in which the federal states of Tyrol, Salzburg and Upper Austria are tenaciously asserting themselves as the home countries of the vaccination opponents. In September, a party called “MFG – Austria People – Freedom – Fundamental Rights” moved into the Linz parliament with more than six percent of the vote and three mandates. Lienz lies ahead of Ried im Innkreis and Hallein, all three of which are beyond the two-thousand-meter mark.
Kitzloch-Bar, was there something?
Hotspots, then and now. It seems like an irony of history that criminal investigations into Ischgl were closed this week. Everything began in the Tyrolean ski resort in March 2020. The chaotic evacuation of thousands of guests had helped spread the virus from the Kitzloch bar across Europe. The Innsbruck public prosecutor’s office, flanked by a commission of experts and the Ministry of Justice, found no evidence that would justify further prosecution. Civil law proceedings against the Republic of Austria are pending. The lifts in Ischgl will open next week.
Culture, on the other hand, remains closed, and people who work in culture feel left alone again. Albertina director Klaus Albrecht Schröder, who actually wanted to attract visitors and compensate losses with a Modigliani exhibition – with 2.5 million euros the most expensive show in this museum to date – turned to the government in a video. He reckons with a loss of at least 2.5 million euros by the end of the year, now one has to rely on the help of the Republic of Austria. Tourism is also returning to the depression, with Viennese hotels reporting eight percent of occupancy. The Germans, otherwise responsible for half of the bookings, stay away. Yawning emptiness at Schwechat Airport.
Two great tremors
Since the beginning of this week, the whole country has been in lockdown and the feeling of having been lost in an endless loop by politics with seeing eyes is epidemic. Covid-19 is just the one virus that has the country under control. Virus number two is the system breakdown in short. What the theologian Ulrich HJ Körtner described in an essay for the Kleine Zeitung, published in Graz, as “the contamination of political culture by the corruption virus”, the philosopher Isolde Charim called “two tremors” in her opening speech for the Book of Vienna: one share with the other whole world, the other belongs to Austria “very exclusive: the hard impact of the so-called ‘System Kurz’ on the public”.
According to Körtner, the opponents of the resigned Chancellor accuse him and his “Praetorians” of their “career-minded cold-nosedness”; the counter charge is that this charge is about hypocrisy and double standards – so seduce all parties. According to the theologian, this leads to the “unspoken admission that the willingness to corrupt is part of Austrian political culture”.
Who likes the Wasserkopf Wien?
In search of the historical roots of this political culture, one ends up in the Danube Monarchy, on whose shrinkage today’s Austria stands geographically and in terms of mentality. The anti-Viennese affect, which, according to surveys, around half of the population cultivates, is gladly tried. In fact, a third of the nine million people living in the greater Vienna area. Just five other cities in the state jump the mark of one hundred thousand inhabitants: Graz, Linz, Salzburg, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt.