‘One rule for the rich’: the Salzburg mansion, the Porsche heir and the writer Stefan Zweig
|
Version 0 of 1. The car magnate, who is restoring the Jewish author’s former villa, has been given permission to dig out a 500-metre road leading to a garage, causing consternation in the city For three years the peace and quiet of Doris Rüggeberg’s cosy flat on the Kapuzinerberg, a picturesque wooded hill in Salzburg, has been interrupted by the noise from the nextdoor neighbour’s building site. Wolfgang Porsche, a German-Austrian automotive magnate, bought the 17th-century villa at No 5 as a second home in 2019 for about €9m (£7.8m). Ever since, he has been busily renovating the property before he and his partner, Gabriele Prinzessin zu Leiningen, move in this winter. The eight-room house, referred to locally as the Paschinger Schlössl, was home from 1919 to 1934 to the writer Stefan Zweig, who described it as “romantic and impractical”. Among its charms, he wrote, was that it was “inaccessible to cars” and could “only be reached by climbing more than a hundred steps”. Such an idyll has seemed remote in recent years. Rüggeberg, a counsellor, says the building work has been so loud that she has sometimes not been able to hear herself think. But trying as the past years have been, Rüggeberg fears it could be just the start. Porsche last month secured permission from Salzburg authorities for a plan to build an estimated €10m private access road from a municipal car park in the historic city centre through the rugged limestone hill. The 82-year-old’s vision is that the 500-metre road will lead to a subterranean garage next to the villa where he will be able to park eight cars. Porsche has spoken of how he likes to take his cars on early morning spins on the sharp bends up of the Großglockner, Austria’s highest mountain peak, about 120 miles (190km) to the south. His original idea had been for a personal lift to be built to take him up to his home. When that was rejected, he submitted plans for the road. Even in Salzburg, which is used to the foibles of the rich and famous who gather in the city every year for the renowned opera festival, and which appreciates the financial contribution these wealthy guests make, this is seen by some as a step too far. “Porsche has done a lot for the local economy,” Rüggeberg said. “But in this case, the city has failed to negotiate properly. All men are equal but some are more equal than others.” At the very least, she said, she would have liked the city to have insisted the road be accessible to emergency vehicles, rubbish collection and other residents. Porsche received initial permission in early 2024 from Salzburg’s former mayor, a member of the conservative Austrian People’s party, to dig out “the Autohöhle” (car cave). Soon after, the council was taken over by a leftwing contingent, a Social Democrat mayor and his deputy from the Communist party amid concerns the rich were pricing ordinary Salzburgers out of their own city. The new mayor, Bernhard Auinger, worked for Porsche for 27 years and used to sit on the board of its holding company as a former labour representative. He has admitted “the optics could be better”, but has said he has little influence over a project he “inherited”. “No one will have to see the tunnel or even be aware it’s there,” Auinger told Salzburg media. “Whether the tunnel is in keeping with the times and morally justifiable is for others to judge.” Ingeborg Haller, the head of the Greens on the city council, has led opposition to the project and kept the topic in the public domain. “What has appalled people is that a private person is being allowed to hollow out the mountain for his own gain,” she said. She has also been critical of the €48,000 fee Porsche paid the council for permission to cut through land that belongs to the city. An independent expert called in by Auinger after the fee was queried concluded Porsche had overpaid by several thousand euros. Salzburg’s city planning committee, which approved the road in early September, said the project was in the public interest because as long as Porsche’s cars were in the tunnel they would not be emitting exhaust fumes, taking up room or causing accidents. This, say critics, is absurd. “These are wildly amusing arguments, on top of many others we’ve heard, like the fact the parking lots already at the house are apparently insufficient,” the communist deputy mayor, Kay-Michael Dankl, told the Guardian. Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion Dankl suggested the affair had “undermined people’s trust in the rule of law”, and reinforced the perception there was “one rule for the rich, another for the poor”. The proposed road has also led to some creative protest. A group of environmentalists, calling itself the Porsche Tunnel festival, has hung banners from the Kapuzinerberg reading: “And Porsche said, let there be a hole.” Despite the anger, the project , having gained the approval of the planning committee, is almost certain to go ahead. A vote by the state of Salzburg is considered a formality and work is expected to begin soon. Apart from any environmental or ethical concerns raised by a billionaire’s plans to bore into a hill, there is an additional dimension that makes it particularly problematic for some. The villa was Zweig’s home for a quarter of his life, before the Jewish writer fled in 1934, fearing the impact the rise of fascism in Austria would have on his life after a politically motivated police raid on his home. It was here that Zweig, a humanist and pacifist whose memoirs inspired the 2014 Wes Anderson film The Grand Budapest Hotel, entertained literati such as Thomas Mann, James Joyce and the composer Richard Strauss. (Long before Zweig, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s sister, Nannerl, also gave piano lessons here.) It jars with some locally and beyond that the city did not buy the house from its previous owners and keep it as a memorial to Zweig. In front of the house, brass stolpersteine – or stumbling stones – commemorate Zweig, his wife, Friderike Zweig-Winternitz, and her two daughters, all of whom lived there. Instead, the house was bought by Porsche, who, as the German magazine Stern noted, is “the son of an SS man … the grandson of Hitler’s best carmaker”. Ferdinand Porsche, who founded the business, designed the Volkswagen Beetle for the Nazi leader. A spokesperson for the Porsche family said: “As it is a private matter, no comment will be made.” |