Memorial for the Victims of Nazi Military Justice

The Memorial for the Victims of Nazi Military Justice is located at the Ballhausplatz in the centre of Vienna, opposite the President's office and the Austrian Chancellory.

The inscription atop the three-step sculpture features the poem by Scottish poet Ian Hamilton Finlay consisting of just two words: all alone.

[2] In 1990, a group led by Friedrun Huemer, the then Green District Councillor in Leopoldstadt, carried out a campaign for the deserters of the Wehrmacht in Vienna.

Wadani achieved his breakthrough in 2009 when the then President of the National Council, Barbara Prammer, took up the matter and in October of the same year a draft law was presented by the SPÖ, the ÖVP and the Greens.

On 21 October 2009, the Austrian National Council decided with the votes of the SPÖ, the ÖVP and the Greens to rehabilitate all victims of persecution by the Wehrmacht courts.

According to KÖR, this is reminiscent of a "washed-out jeans blue," a color with which the artist associates the novel hero from Ulrich Plenzdorf's "Die neuen Leiden des jungen W." (The New Sufferings of the Young W.) – a drop-out who refuses.

The central speeches were held by David Ellensohn, Club Chairman of the Greens in Vienna, the deserter (and initiator of the law and monument) Richard Wadani, the writer Kathrin Röggla[14] and Minister of Culture Josef Ostermayer (SPÖ), before Federal President Heinz Fischer opened the event: "Everyone should know that it is honourable to follow ones conscience in the confrontation with a brutal and inhuman dictatorship and to be on the right side.

Before, in between and afterwards there were artistic elements - a dance performance by Mikael Marklund, excerpts from Friedrich Cerha's Spiegel VI (from the tape) as well as the song "Sag Nein!

During the inauguration of the monument other Wehrmacht deserters were present as guests of honour, among them Friedrich Cerha, Josef Stachl and Paul Vodicka, Minister of Defence and Sports Gerald Klug and numerous representatives of the armed forces in uniform, two members of the Viennese provincial government, Michael Häupl and Andreas Mailath-Pokorny, as well as numerous prominent representatives of Austrian civil society, including the Holocaust survivor Rudolf Gelbard, the former chairman of the Green Party and later Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen, and human rights activists Bruno Aigner, Nikolaus Kunrath and Christian Michelides.

[18] The FPÖ voted in the National Council against the legal recognition of the deserters as a victim group and protested against the erection of a memorial at the Ballhausplatz site.