200 Protest Play About Nazis
About 200 demonstrators gathered outside Vienna’s famed Burgtheater today to protest the premiere of a play on the Nazi past and Austria’s treatment of Jews.
Police increased security around the theater, but the demonstration was peaceful and no incidents were reported. The tumult over Austrian playwright Thomas Bernhard’s new play “Heldenplatz,” or “Heroes’ Square,” has grabbed headlines for weeks in a nation that takes its culture at least as seriously as its politics. Heldenplatz is the name of a large Vienna square where Adolf Hitler appeared in triumph to an estimated 1 million jubilant fellow Austrians after the Nazi annexation in March, 1938.
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