People Vienna

An Italian in Margareten

Vienna named an apartment block after Mussolini's most famous victim, even as its own government was busy courting good relations with Rome.

1 min readSiebenbrunnenfeldgasse 26

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The gateway passage of the Matteottihof across the Fendigasse

was an Italian socialist who stood up in the parliament in Rome and denounced election fraud. A few weeks later he was kidnapped and murdered. This was 1924.

Three years on, decided to name this new apartment block after him, at a moment when Mussolini was firmly in the saddle and the Austrian government was going out of its way to stay on good terms with Rome. So naming a residential block after his most famous victim wasn't really a domestic gesture. It was foreign policy written in brick.

this name came down too, and after the war it returned, together with a bronze portrait of Matteotti by the passageway.

Step into the courtyard and you can see where the money went, because the complex had its own kindergarten, a laundry and shop units along the ground floor, so that daily household life no longer had to fit into a single room.

We carry on north, into the street named after the residents themselves.

Map showing Siebenbrunnenfeldgasse 26, 1050 Wien
Siebenbrunnenfeldgasse 26, 1050 WienVienna
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Sources. Story: Wien Geschichte Wiki, Stadt Wien; Das Rote Wien, Weblexikon der Wiener Sozialdemokratie Photos: Matteottihof, Buchhaendler, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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