The AP has reported that the City of Vienna will rename a section of the fashionable Ring Avenue named after Dr. Karl Lueger, Vienna’s mayor from 1897 to 1910. Lueger was a renowned anti-Semite. One resident of Vienna, a failed postcard artist named Adolf Hitler, said he was inspired by Lueger’s public Jew hatred.

Dr. Karl-Lueger-Ring Avenue will be renamed Universiaetsring, after the city’s university which stretches along that section. This despite the fact that Vienna’s schools of higher education could easily match the old mayor’s zeal for ant-Semitism.

Mayor Lueger could qualify among those anti-Semites who say, “Some of my best friends are Jews.” He did, in fact, had Jewish friends, and joked that he didn’t consider them to be Jewish. He once declared, “I decide who is a Jew.”

Vienna counselor for culture Andreas Mailath-Pokorny said Vienna “should not act as if there were no dark spots” in its history.

For that they would have to rename every street and alley in tow, plus much of the countryside… (© 2012 JewishPress. 04/19/12)