Sobre este lugar
The Grazer Burg has been the seat of power in Styria for almost six centuries. Friedrich III, the future Holy Roman Emperor, began the residence in 1438 and stamped it with his enigmatic motto A.E.I.O.U., while his successors added the famous double spiral staircase of 1499, a Gothic masterpiece often read as a symbol of eternity. From 1564 Archduke Charles II ruled the lands of Inner Austria from these rooms. After the Anschluss of March 1938 that long continuity of governance was bent to a new and brutal purpose. The Burg and the adjoining administrative quarter became the nerve centre of Nazi rule in the Reichsgau Steiermark, where Gauleiter and later Reichsstatthalter Siegfried Uiberreither concentrated party and state authority in a single hand. From here the regime administered persecution, expropriation and, after 1941, the violent Germanisation of occupied Lower Styria. The fervently National Socialist student movement that had helped earn Graz the title 'Stadt der Volkserhebung' also belonged to this story, including the public burning of books deemed un-German in 1938. Today the courtyard and its staircase are open and free to visit, a quiet place to consider how an old house of government was turned into an instrument of dictatorship.
Datos clave
- 1438 year founded — Friedrich III began building the ducal residence that would govern Styria for centuries
- 1499 staircase — The famous double spiral staircase, a Gothic 'stairway of reconciliation', dates from this year
- 1940 Reichsstatthalter — Siegfried Uiberreither, Gauleiter since 1938, was named Reichsstatthalter of the Reichsgau Steiermark
📍 Freiheitsplatz 5, 8010, Graz