Coudenhove-Kalergi Memorial Plaque Defaced

The act of vandalism in the Heiligenkreuzerhof is the second attack on a monument to the Paneuropa founder.

This is already the second attack in a short space of time against a monument to the Paneuropa founder Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi. At the Theresianum, the head of the monument was struck off; now, in the Heiligenkreuzerhof—where Coudenhove-Kalergi lived during the interwar period and from where he managed to flee on the night of 11 March 1938, just ahead of the advancing occupation troops of Nazi Germany—the memorial plaque erected in 2012 has been defaced.

“Even if it is only damage to property,” says Rainhard Kloucek, Secretary General of the Paneuropa Movement Austria, condemning the action, “it is nonetheless a further assault on the idea of a peaceful, free, democratic, and united Europe, which Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi championed and for which the Paneuropa Union still stands today.”