Hotel Metropole, Vienna

Infobox hotel
hotel_name = Hotel Metropole


image_width = 200px
caption = Old daguerrotype of the Hotel Metropole in the back
location = Morzinplatz,
Vienna, Austria
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opening_date = 1873
stars = 5
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closing_date = 1938 (ceased to be hotel)
ca1940 (destroyed by bombing)
architect = Carl Schumann
Ludwig Tischler
developer =
operator =
owner =
number_of_restaurants =
number_of_rooms =
number_of_suites =
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website =
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Hotel Metropole (sometimes spelled "Hotel Metropol") was a hotel in Vienna¹ which was constructed in 1871-73 but destroyed during World War II after serving as the headquarters of the Gestapo from 1938.

History

The hotel was built for the Vienna World Exhibition and was designed by Carl Schumann and Ludwig Tischler. The four-story building was richly decorated with Corinthian columns, caryatids and atlases. The inner court was glassed over and had a richly-decorated dining hall [pg. 121, Dieter Klein, Martin Kupf, Robert Schediwy (Ed.) Stadtbildverluste Wien - Ein Rückblick auf fünf Jahrzehnte. LIT Verlag, Vienna 2005. ISBN 3-8258-7754-X] .

After the Anschluss of Austria to Nazi-Germany in 1938, the hotel was confiscated by the Gestapo who headquartered themselves there. Prisoners, especially Jews, were brought to the hotel to be interrogated, tortured and killed. During the war the building was hit by a bomb and burned down and ultimately the ruins were torn down to eliminate any memory of the building.

In 1951 a memorial-stone was erected by concentration-camp survivors, which was then replaced in 1985 with a bigger monument financed by the city of Vienna. The monument consists of granite-blocks from the quarry of the former concentration-camp at Mauthausen and a bronze statue symbolising a survivor. The inscription comes from the president of the association of the survivors of the concentration-camps Wilhelm Steiner and reads:

(German) „"Hier stand das Haus der Gestapo. Es war für die Bekenner Österreichs die Hölle. Es war für viele von ihnen der Vorhof des Todes. Es ist in Trümmer gesunken wie das Tausendjährige Reich. Österreich aber ist wiederauferstanden und mit ihm unsere Toten, die unsterblichen Opfer."„

(English) "Here stood the House of the Gestapo. To those who believed in Austria it was hell. To many it was the gates to death. It sank into ruins just like the 'Thousand Year Reich'. But Austria was resurrected and with her our dead, the immortal victims.”

Notes

¹ The address was Morzinplatz, in the I. District Innere Stadt

References

External links

* [http://www.doew.at/english/exhibition/morzin.html DÖW | Memorial for the Victims of the Gestapo]