The Stones of Remembrance in Westbahstraße were unveiled 1 October 2017 commemorating the 42 deported people who lived here before their abduction and murdering. 5 artists set the scene for this event, one of them being Georg Böhme who spoke to “im7ten” about this event. Westbahnstraße 7 was Viktor Kormes last residence. His deportation remains unclear but what is known is that he died in Croatia in Jasenovac where mass-killings took place between 1941 and 1945 without German participation. The archive DÖW (“Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes” – Archive of the Austrian Resistance) lists his fate as “death without confirmation”.
In Georg Böhmes piece for “Stones of Remembrance”, he built a bridge between the missing of a person and the missing of information about this person. On behalf of many, he commemorates Viktor Kormes in an installation. Using a glass bell that creates vacuum – a metaphor that stands for the emptiness and gap in society.
The artist describes having the ruins of society in mind when discussing World War II. The death of millions was a dramatic break like none before and can still be felt in Vienna today. Society in all its aspects as it was known ceased to exist: “All that comes now, is from the zero hour”.
Böhme has been dealing with this topic quite some time already which is why he unhesitatingly agreed to contribute to the event. The gaps and needs would show that the topic was not yet fully processed. In his latest book he refers to Götz, a historian who deals with the madness of the practiced antisemitism in the whole of Europe as one of the precursors of the “industrial destruction” of the Jewish population. The fact that the documentation about deportations was incomplete was a cause for his concern: “History is always a documentation of estates. Tenants can often not be found and fall through the cracks. If there was no expropriation, there were no court cases” Böhmes installation is dedicated to various aspects of the missing and the presence of the lost as a vacuum.
Find more details about the project “Stones of Remembrance” in Westbahnstraße under www.steinedererinnerung.at
