Occupation of the Hainburger Au

There are wetlands of the Danube, near Hainburg, in Austria. They are called Hainburger Au. In 1983 and 1984, there was a plan to build a power plant, near Hainburg. This would have impacted a large portion of the wetlands. The Austrian section of the WWF started a capaign to alert people that building the power plant would have a massive impact on the wetlands. This campaign only had a moderate success though, and in December 1984, works to build the power plant started, at Stopfenreuth. 

The Occupation of the Hainburger Au wetlands in December 1984 marked a turning point for environmental awareness in German speaking central Europe and was of great significance for the development of democratic processes in Austria. 

 Press conference of the animals 
Günter Nenning, an Austrian journalist, and a few other people started a referendum to save the wetlands, and to create a national park there.  One of the prominent supports of this was Konrad Lorenz. They organized a press conference that became known as Pressekonferenz der Tiere, press conference of the animals, where they dressed up as animals who would be affected by the construction. Güner Nenning came as a deer, Jörg Mauthe dressed up as a Black stork, Bernd Lötsch dressed up as purple heron, Peter Turrini as an European fire-bellied toad, Othmar Karas came as a cormorant, Freda Meissner-Blau was a ground beetle. Hubert Gorbach did not wear a costume at the start, but later changed to represent a Bluethroat.  Because this press conference was so unusual, they did get a lot of media attention. 

 Demonstration and occupation 
On December 8, 1984, the Austrian Students Association (Österreichische Hochschülerschaft, ÖH) organised a demostration, where 8.000 people attended.

Several hundred people stayed after the demostration, and occupied the wetlands, the Hainburger Au.  The clearing of plants and trees in the wetlands, that was done before construction had to be stopped. 

 Result 
The Hainburger Au was declared a "forbidden zone" and a controversial police intervention followed on 19 December 1984. Batons were used to clear an area of approximately 4 hectares (approx 10 acres), which were fenced off and placed under police surveillance. The action involved a confrontation between 800 police personnel and approximately 3,000 environmentalist occupiers. Officially 19 people were injured, including members of an Italian television crew. That same evening some 40,000 people demonstrated on the streets of Vienna to protest against the government's actions and against the building of the power station.

 Reading list (German language) 

 Gundi Dick, u. a. (Hrsg.): Hainburg. Ein Basisbuch. 276.485 Anschläge gegen den Stau. Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, Wien 1985.
 Ingrid Monjencs, Herbert Rainer (Hrsg.): Hainburg – 5 Jahre danach. Kontrapunkt – Verlag für Wissenswertes, Wien 1989.

 References and notes 

Category:Pages using gadget WikiMiniAtlas
Category:History of Austria