Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

therefore no political considerations were voiced against its partial
reconstruction. The committee further recommended preserving
the GDR Council of State building situated in the immediate vicinity
and with it the headquarters of the head of state. Interestingly,
the GDR authorities had a gate from the castle they had demolished
built into the Council of State building – even they had not
wanted to remove all sense of history. After some time they also reerected
the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great on Unter den
Linden, not far from the demolished castle.
While transformation in the countries of the Eastern Bloc and the
break-up of the Soviet empire was largely peaceful, the break-up of
Yugoslavia ironically proved to be considerably more difficult and
led to terrible wars that once again caused streams of refugees to
flow into Austria, particularly Vienna. In our attempts to provide support
to these refugees, we considered how we could help the
Balkan region itself. We organised aid shipments, specifically to
the heavily affected city of Sarajevo – a multicultural, multi-faith city
whose very essence was under siege. Our support for Sarajevo
was no doubt in some way influenced by its tragic role in Austria’s
history.
On the thousandth day of the Serbian siege, I flew out in a military
aircraft from Zagreb to Sarajevo. It was snowing heavily and rifle
volleys fired by the besieging Serbian forces greeted us on our arrival.
We drove into the city in armoured vehicles. At the Holiday
Inn, which I was later to visit frequently, there was hardly any light,
little water and plastic in place of window panes. The next day I
handed over a sum of money on behalf of the City of Vienna to support
social objectives and, symbolically, tram engines and a few
buses. What impressed me most was a meeting with a young female
journalist who we could not persuade to eat anything. Forced
by food shortages to eat only one meal a day, she did not want to
make an exception to this pattern that would upset her psyche and
her body.
Alongside my activities for Sarajevo, I was also building up my contacts
with other countries in the region – this included with contacts
in Serbia itself. Together with the Mayor of Athens, Dimitris
Avramopolos, and the Mayor of Ljubljana and many-times Foreign
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