Episode 5

1972

I was born in the year 1972 in Leopoldstadt, that´s the second district of Vienna. My parents came from the countryside, out of very simple circumstances. My father met my mother when he was on vaccation in the village she was born, close to Zell am See. They immediately had a crush on each other.

Together they went to Vienna and got married in 1966. When my mother was pregnant with my older brother, all three moved to a Gemeindebau. That was a community idea the socialists developed with an idealistic view of communists like Karl Marx. I’m still there, just on a different floor. My widowed father lives alone now on the ground floor where I grew up.

I was a happy child in red Vienna of the seventies. It was the golden era of Bruno Kreisky, a very wise politician whom not only we socialists adore. During this period, the color scheme in politics was quite simple: just red and black, the two major parties. The Greens were delightful environmentalists and the color blue was just soothing on my mother’s blouse.