Eduard Freudmann
[9] The piece is performed in English, since many of the individuals it should speak to — descendants of Jews who escaped Vienna from National-socialism, living today in Britain, the United States and Israel[8] — do not understand German.
Matti Bunzl, the director of the Wien Museum, sees the White Elephant Archive performance as an "examination of history and memory in post-Holocaust Vienna," a "product of deep knowledge of Austria’s past" and Freudmann as "one of the most original artists working in Central Europe today.
[11] The president of the Jewish Community of Warsaw (pl) Anna Chipczyńska said she had regrets that they could not find an alternative site that would allow both the honouring of the Righteous Among the Nations as well as avoiding controversies and disagreements.
[12] The architect of the POLIN Museum, Rainer Mahlamäki, one of the judges who voted for the trees, sees the winner of the competition as a new type of art and memorial as opposed to a monument.
[16] In February 2016 Rolat invited the Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan to take on the project but he declined[17] after he had read an article written by Freudmann and Heindl, in which they criticize the foundation and their course of action.
The monument consisted of a sandstone plinth with a bronze bust of the poet, created in 1940 by Josef Bock, a Viennese sculptor who had also made portraits of Adolf Hitler.
The intervention had sparked a public debate on how to deal with monuments dedicated to problematic historical figures, manifesting in a number of media articles and statements by politicians and intellectuals.
[23] Vienna's City Councilor for Culture and Science, Andreas Mailath-Pokorny, of the Austrian Social-Democratic Party, claimed that he appreciated the group's effort and the foundation could have remained excavated for a while if parks and garden division colleagues hadn’t beat him to the punch.
[26] Plattform Geschichtspolitik's re-submitted proposal for the artistic reconfiguration was approved by the city's department for public art but the granted funding was too low to realize the endeavor and the monument remained unchanged.
[21] Maia Nichols of the Droste Effect Magazine claims that by failing to facilitate the reconfiguration of the monument the city government “evades owning up to capture an awareness of their position and role in mitigating and extending the history of Nazism and the various stances towards fascism of their people”.
[27] Curator Sarah Mendelsohn points out, that the slow negotiations with the city authorities and the continual discourse on the reconfiguration can be seen as a “bigger project” leading to the understanding that “monuments and memorials provide stages that can be acted on, and that can be altered”.
