Hotel Metropole, Vienna

Hotel Metropole (sometimes spelled Hotel Metropol) was a hotel in Vienna1 which was constructed in 1871-73 but destroyed during World War II after serving as the headquarters of the Gestapo from 1938.

History
The hotel was built for the Vienna World Exhibition and was designed by Carl Schumann and Ludwig Tischler. The four-story building was richly decorated with Corinthian columns, caryatids and atlas's. The inner court was glassed over and had a richly-decorated dining-hall.

After the Anschluß of Austria to Nazi-Germany in 1938, the hotel was confiscated by the Gestapo who headquartered themselves there. Prisoners, especially Jews, were brought to the hotel to be interrogated, tortured and killed. During the war the building was hit by a bomb and burned down and ultimately the ruins were torn down to eliminate any memory of the building.

In 1951 a memorial-stone was erected by concentration-camp survivors, which was then replaced in 1985 with a bigger monument financed by the city of Vienna. The monument consists of granite-blocks from the quarry of the former concentration-camp at Mauthausen and a bronze statue symbolising a survivor. The inscription comes from the president of the association of the survivors of the concentration-camps Wilhelm Steiner and reads:

„''Hier stand das Haus der Gestapo. Es war für die Bekenner Österreichs die Hölle. Es war für viele von ihnen der Vorhof des Todes. Es ist in Trümmer gesunken wie das Tausendjährige Reich. Österreich aber ist wiederauferstanden und mit ihm unsere Toten, die unsterblichen Opfer.''„

„Here stood the House of the Gestapo. To those who believed in Austria it was hell. To many it was the gates to death. It sank into ruins just like the Thousand-Year-Reich. But Austria was resurrected and with her our dead, the immortal victims.”