Book from Judith about Strasshof (german): Lernen vom Raster – Strasshof und seine verborgenen Pläne

Strasshof is a suburb north-east of Vienna, which struggles for its own identity in public perception. The reality of the "garden and industrial city of Strasshof on the north railway", which is located next to the huge shunting station as "ideal", is anything but ideal a century after its planning. Based on an orthogonal street grid according to the American model, a masterplan was laid down in 1908 , from which the "largest and most beautiful city of Lower Austria" should have developed - over time, reaching out to space, creating an identity of its own, and thus a right to exist.
The ruling plan could not be raised to the third dimension for political and economic reasons, the idea of ​​the ideal city can be regarded as failed. This particular type of sub-city is not easy to classify for Austrian conditions, too rugged is the grid structure, too alien the lack of a local center. The term "city" does not open up by itself, the topic has to be tackled analytically in order to become tangible and subsequently understandable.
In the location of Strasshof, the Masterplan is above the grid plan, which is not readable, which can be imagined at best in different configurations. All roads lead out of Strasshof, the eye is dragged straight into the surrounding grassland. No gentle curve breaks the view to the “outside”, no place, no elevation, no eye-catcher makes one recognize the identity of the place - the one-glance into the urban life is denied. Where: The individual parts of a village structure, the elements of the buildings are there: the houses with their fence architectures and dense hedges, the broadly spaced shops on the main street, the railroad tracks leading to the past. In the course of time, they have simply and accidentally joined together without referring to each other. And where is the Centre, the heart, from the pulsating life of a community? The answer is simple and sobering: it does not exist. The social references are to be produced differently, for example by means of photographs: social life is recognized in individual situations, detached, artistically subjectively framed and quickly held, "The photographer's job is to see the other thing" (Hejduk, 2012).
From mid-1944 to April 1945 there was a work and transit camp (Dulag) in Straßhof for Hungarian Jews.
In June 1944 almost 21,000 Jews from Hungary were brought to Strasshof as a result of an agreement made between senior SS officer Adolf Eichmann and the leaders of the Relief and Rescue Committee of Budapest. This agreement came about in mid-June 1944, when Eichmann offered to put 30,000 Hungarian Jews "on ice" in Austria, as a gesture of his good will in order to help facilitate the exchange offer he had made called "Blood for Goods." According to the "Blood for Goods" offer, Eichmann was to spare "one million" Hungarian Jews in exchange for certain goods, including 10,000 trucks. The deal ultimately failed; but while it was still a possibility, five million Swiss francs were paid to the SS in exchange for the 21,000 Jews sent to Strasshof. They were transferred from the ghettos of Baja, Debrecen, Szeged, and Szolnok, and made to work as forced laborers in industry and agriculture in eastern Austria.
Another event for which Straßhof gained sad fame was the kidnapping of Natascha Kampusch by Wolfgang Přiklopil.
The abduction of Natascha Kampusch began on March 2, 1998, when the then ten-year-old Austrian was dragged into a delivery van on the way to school, and was subsequently taken over by the unemployed news technician Wolfgang Přiklopil (* 14 May 1962 in Vienna; † 23. August 2006 in Vienna) in his house in the Lower Austrian town of Strasshof on the Nordbahn for eight years. She was able to flee on August 23, 2006, leading to a worldwide media echo.
The shown images provide an overview, atmospheric picture are loosely lined up. Through the snapshots in sequence, the alleged site image is subjected to a dynamization. What the analytic eye of Torsten Pauer has perceived is found in sonn to be published leporello as an image of locations, personalities, and moods. The emotional rationality of the grid is occasionally found, and suddenly the special, additive moment of Strasshof 's snapshots from a kitsch - free zone is revealed.

More about the internment camp at the time of the Nazi Regime (german): Secret projects at Strasshof