Florian Pumhösl
:
Mahnmal
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Up until the end of the 1930s, the area where WasserCluster Lunz (WCL) now stands was occupied by the Seereith farmhouse, which was used as a youth center. A district youth center (Gaujugendheim) was then built on the site, and from the summer of 1940 on, it served (among other things) as the organization office of the military training camp (Wehrertüchtigungslager) for the Hitler Youth in Lunz. At the camp, the 14 to 18-year-old boys trained in military field and target practice for four to six weeks, while also attending lectures indoctrinating them politically and ideologically in the Nazi worldview. Both the director of the Lunz Hitler Youth camps as well as the district leader of the Hitler Youth of the Lower Danube district (today Lower Austria) were involved in massive crimes in the greater Lunz am See area toward the end of the war.
The memorial created by Florian Pumhösl on the grounds of WasserCluster Lunz (WCL) takes the form of a freestanding, white wall on whose surface the artist reproduced in sgraffito the Yes/No part of the voting ballot for what was officially referred to as the “Parliamentary Election in Greater Germany and the Referendum for Reuniting Austria with the German Reich” (the so-called “Anschluss referendum”) on April 10, 1938. Using reduced means, the artist chose a precise and highly visible way to remind us of the dangers of overturning democratic principles in society.
The creation of the memorial was initiated by WasserCluster Lunz in collaboration with the Department of Arts and Culture / Public Art Lower Austria.
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