Und ihr habt doch gesiegt, 1988

Every fall since 1968, a cultural festival known as the Styrian Autumn has been held in Graz, the capital of the Austrian province of Styria. The festival presents concerts, theater, and opera productions, film showings, symposia by writers, and art exhibitions. Although constituted as an independent organization, its director is chosen by a board on which representatives of the provincial and the city government play an important role. In 1988, the board was chaired by Professor Kurt Jungwirth, the deputy governor of Styria and a prominent member of the conservative party (OVP). Graz was represented by its social democratic mayor, Alfred Stingl (SPO), and its commissioner of culture Helmut Strobl (OVP). The festival is funded by the province, the city of Graz, and the Austrian government. Dr. Peter Vujica, the director of the Styrian Autumn in 1988, chose for the twentieth anniversary of the festival the motto Guilt and Innocence of Art and suggested that reference be made to Hitler's annexation of Austria in 1938. The Anschluss was the theme of a number of public events in Austria in the year of its fiftieth anniversary. Inevitably, the enthusiastic welcome Hitler received when his troops marched into Austria became the subject of agitated public debate. That debate was further fuelled by the controversy surrounding the role the recently elected Austrian president, Kurt Waldheim, had played as a Wehrmacht officer in the Balkans during World War II. Dr. Vujica commissioned Dr. Werner Fenz, the curator of the city's Neue Galerie, to organize the visual arts section for 1988. Dr. Fenz invited artists from various countries to produce works for temporary installation in selected public places in Graz. He chose as Points of Reference 381/88 locations that had played a significant role during the Nazi regime, such as the police/Gestapo headquarters, city hall, squares where Nazi rallies had been held, the Hitler Youth headquarters, the bishop's palace, and so forth. One of the city's older monuments, the Marienstiule (Column of the Virgin Mary), rises in a square at the south end of Herrengasse, the most prominent street of Graz. A fluted column on a massive base, crowned by a gilded statue of the Virgin on a crescent moon, it was erected late in the seventeenth century to

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