Leopoldsgasse: A Street of Remembrance
Why is it significant?
Walk slowly and keep half an eye on the ground. Leopoldsgasse looks like any other Viennese street: five-storey apartment houses with tall windows, a corner shop, bicycles chained to railings. But every now and then, in front of a doorway, a small square of brass catches the light.
Key Facts
| Place | Leopoldsgasse: A Street of Remembrance |
|---|---|
| Address | Leopoldsgasse, 1020 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.22110, 16.37490 |
| Part of Walk | The Island Across the Canal: Vienna's Leopoldstadt, Augarten and Prater |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk slowly and keep half an eye on the ground. Leopoldsgasse looks like any other Viennese street: five-storey apartment houses with tall windows, a corner shop, bicycles chained to railings. But every now and then, in front of a doorway, a small square of brass catches the light.
Bend down and read one. A name, a year of birth, a date of deportation, a place: Theresienstadt, Minsk, Auschwitz, Maly Trostinec. These are the Steine der Erinnerung, the stones of remembrance. They are not set by the city but by neighbours, relatives and local volunteers, who research who lived in each house and pay for each stone. A whole family is sometimes listed on a single plate, outside the door they last walked through.
Before 1938, this was the everyday heart of the Mazzesinsel. Along streets like this one stood small prayer houses in courtyards, kosher butchers, booksellers, tailors and coffee houses where people argued about politics in four languages. Many families had arrived only a generation earlier from the eastern provinces of the empire, poor and hopeful, and Leopoldstadt was the first stop on their way into Viennese life.
After the Anschluss in March 1938, Jewish Viennese were forced out of their homes all over the city. Many were pushed into overcrowded flats here in Leopoldstadt, several families to an apartment, before the deportations began in 1941. Of the roughly two hundred thousand Jews who lived in Vienna before 1938, most escaped into exile, but tens of thousands were murdered. The district lost a whole world, and the stones are a way of putting the names back on the street.
And still, life returned. Today you can hear Hebrew, Russian, Turkish and German along these pavements, and Jewish schools and synagogues are active in the district again. Now carry on to the end of the street, cross Obere Augartenstraße and enter the Augarten, heading for the huge grey tower you can already see above the trees.