Austria

  • We Will Never Know

    We will never know what you might have become. We will never know if you would have discovered a cure for cancer. We will never know if you would write the most beautiful love songs. We will never know how many houses you might have built. We will never know how many jokes you could

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  • Music is one of my biggest passions, it has helped mte through many tragedies in my life and it still plays a very important part in my life. Something that worries me is when music is used for political reasons or when musicians make political statements. They are of course entitled to have political views

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  • I have already done a blog on how Hedy Lamarr was imvolved in developing and patenting a technology which was a front runner of something we now commonly call WiFi. That on its own makes her a remarkable woman, but there is so much more to her. In 1933 she starred in a Czech  romantic

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  • This is not meant to be an accusation because since I didn’t live in those times, I just don’t know how I would have reacted. It is however something that has intrigued me.How come the majority of the Germans and Austrians did not see how wrong the November pogrom was? I can nearly understand why

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  • ++++++CONTAINS SOME GRAPHIC IMAGES+++++++   April and May 1945 marked the final stages and the end of World War II in Europe. It also saw an increase of suicides by civilians in Germany and Austria. Cyanide had been one of the most common ways how people killed themselves. Members of the Hitler Youth handed out cyanide

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  • This week marks the 80th Anniversary of the Germans building the Mauthausen Concentration Camp complex in Austria. From day 1, the camp’s aim was to make a profit. The prisoners from the Dachau Concentration Camp built Mauthausen and its many sub-camps, which effectively meant free labour. The Nazis had chosen the site because of the

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  • Vienna in 1913 was a vibrant cultural city. It was one of Europe’s power houses.Needless to say it attracted people from all over the continent and indeed the world. Not was it only known for its musical heritage it was also known for its many fine coffee houses. today Viennese coffee is still enjoyed by

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  •   Who hasn’t heard of the Sound of Music, an immensely popular movie about the von Trapp family. But behind the idyllic portrayal of the family lies a darker origin. I will not focus on the singing legacy in this blog but more on that ‘darker side of the story. Georg von Trapp’s first wive

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  • It is often believed that the Austrians accepted the annexation lying down. For a big part that was true, however, not everyone was so enthusiastic about the “Anschluss.” Of Czech descent, Sindelar was born Matěj Šindelář in Kozlov, Moravia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the son of Jan Šindelář, a blacksmith, and his wife Marie (née Švengrová). Despite occasional claims that

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  • On this day in 1939 Adolf Hitler signed an order to begin the systematic euthanasia of mentally ill and disabled people, the so called T4 program. Forgotten History- The T-4 Holocaust victims:the killing of the disabled The T4 program, which was was basically the gassing of people who were deemed mentally ill, was the first wave of mass

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