Vienna Park Honors Jewish Writer Lore Segal After Removing Antisemitic Name
A park in Vienna's Josefstadt district will soon bear the name of Jewish writer Lore Segal. The decision replaces the current name, Hamerling Park, which honours a controversial 19th-century poet linked to antisemitism and misogyny. Local officials approved the change with broad political backing.
Segal, who was born and raised in Josefstadt, fled Austria as a child during the Nazi era. Her literary career later earned critical acclaim, including a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 2008.
Lore Segal spent her early years in Josefstadt, where she played in Hamerling Park until the Nazis banned Jewish children from public spaces. In 1938, after Austria's annexation by Germany, her family was forced from their home. She escaped to Britain on a Kindertransport convoy, eventually settling in the US.
There, Segal studied English literature in London before moving to New York. She became a regular contributor to *The New Yorker* and published several novels, short stories, and translations. Her 2008 collection, *The Story of Lucille*, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. An exhibition at the Josefstadt District Museum in 2024–25 celebrated her life and work. She died in New York earlier this year at the age of 96. The park's current namesake, Robert Hamerling, was a 19th-century Austrian poet whose writings promoted antisemitic stereotypes and German nationalist ideas. His works also included misogynistic themes. In 2021, a city commission flagged all sites named after him as needing review. The renaming aligns with Vienna's broader effort to remove honours for figures with racist or antisemitic legacies—including streets previously named after Richard Wagner and Karl Lueger. The Josefstadt district council approved the change with support from multiple parties. The new name, Lore Segal Park, will take effect in the coming months.
The renaming of Hamerling Park to Lore Segal Park removes a reference to a figure tied to antisemitism and misogyny. It also honours a Jewish writer whose life and work were shaped by her flight from Nazi persecution. The decision reflects Vienna's ongoing reassessment of public spaces named after historically controversial individuals.
Read also:
- American teenagers taking up farming roles previously filled by immigrants, a concept revisited from 1965's labor market shift.
- Weekly affairs in the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag)
- Landslide claims seven lives, injures six individuals while they work to restore a water channel in the northern region of Pakistan
- Escalating conflict in Sudan has prompted the United Nations to announce a critical gender crisis, highlighting the disproportionate impact of the ongoing violence on women and girls.
