Viaduct arches / Mile of arches
Ing.-Etzel-Straße
Worth knowing
If one is to believe certain particularly cautious Innsbruck residents, the gateway to hell lies somewhere between the city center, Pradl, and Saggen. Others, however, associate the Bogenmeile with some of the best memories of their youth. For decades, the nightlife district along the railway viaduct has divided opinions and continues to inspire personal anecdotes, debates, and urban legends. Since the major renovation of the 1950s, the arches have been home to workshops, shops, and above all, bars and venues of every kind. In 1985, the youth center Z6 moved to the rear side of the arches. That same year, Bogen 13 opened, luring an alternative Innsbruck crowd away from the city center and under the viaduct for the first time. Today, pubs, bars, clubs, breweries, restaurants, and snack stands attract a colorful audience that usually celebrates peacefully until the early morning hours. In recent years, many façades have been decorated with striking street art. The district’s bad reputation stems from the comparatively rare exceptions to this peacefulness—but even more from the universal tradition of older generations finding youthful exuberance inherently threatening.
The arches form the largest structure in the city. Stretching 1.8 kilometers along Ing.-Etzel-Straße from the train station to the Mühlau railway bridge, they carry trains across the Inn toward the east. The massive structure was built between 1855 and 1858, during the construction of North Tyrol’s first railway line. The material used was Höttinger breccia, the same stone used in countless Innsbruck landmarks—from the Old Town to the Triumphal Arch to the South Tyrolean housing estates of the 1930s—until the quarries on the Hungerburg eventually closed. Thousands of workers toiled on the enormous construction site. Unlike today, the area traversed by the stone belt was not densely populated; the great wave of development in eastern Saggen—with housing blocks, the military barracks, the fairgrounds with its cycling track, and the slaughterhouse—was still far in the future.
The viaduct arches acted like an artificial barrier between Pradl and the city center. That this separation did not last is due to the mastermind behind Austrian railway construction: Carl Ritter von Ghega (1802–1860). Thanks to the turbulence of global politics, he became involved in what was perhaps the largest infrastructure project of the monarchy—possibly even in Austrian history. Born as Carlo Ghega, the son of a naval officer in Venetia, he grew up under Napoleonic rule. Only after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 did the region, as Lombardy-Venetia, come under the control of the imperial-royal monarchy. After a brief military career, he chose to study in Padua. At only 17, he completed his studies in mathematics and engineering. Following work experience in road construction and on the Northern Railway between Vienna and Moravia, he traveled to England and North America in the mid‑1830s to study railway technology in its birthplace and in the American frontier firsthand. In 1848, Ghega became Inspector General of the State Railways in the Ministry of Public Works, and in the following year head of the railway construction department and of the general directorate for state railway construction. Elevated to nobility by Emperor Franz Joseph I, the Albanian‑Italian Carlo became Carl Ritter von Ghega—the portrait of whom appeared on the Austrian 20‑schilling banknote from 1968 to 1989. It was his plans that connected the vast Habsburg Empire, from Lviv to Bregenz and Trieste. Innsbruck owes part of its ability to grow spatially to his genius. Von Ghega rejected an earlier plan by Alois von Negrelli, which envisioned an embankment between Innsbruck and Pradl. Although cheaper and faster to build, it would have permanently blocked any eastward connection for the city. In 1958, the extension of Museumstraße through the breakthrough to Rapoldipark created today’s main traffic axis between Pradl and the city center. Since then, the arches have been repeatedly renovated and adapted to evolving traffic needs. Several passageways through the viaduct’s 175 arches now connect Dreiheiligen and the various parts of Saggen. Some of the underpasses have been extensively modernized with artistic lighting installations. At Claudiaplatz, a new regional train station and a traffic‑calmed urban park have emerged. That Carl Ritter von Ghega, with his forward‑thinking engineering, would not only enable a transportation solution but inadvertently create an urban nightlife hotspot was surely never his intention.
Die Eisenbahn als Entwicklungshelfer Innsbrucks
In 1830, the world’s first public railway line for passenger traffic, operated by a steam locomotive, was put into service between Liverpool and Manchester. Shortly thereafter, this new means of transport rapidly spread across the entire continent. Until then, travel had been expensive, long, and arduous—undertaken by carriage, on horseback, or on foot—something that hardly anyone did at all, and certainly not with pleasure. Innsbruck’s mayor, Joseph Valentin Maurer (1797–1843), recognized the importance of the railway as an opportunity for the Alpine region at an early stage. In 1836, he advocated the construction of a railway line in order to make the beautiful but hard-to-reach region accessible to as broad and affluent a public as possible and to re-establish Innsbruck as a European transport hub during economically difficult times for the city. The first practical pioneer of railway transport in Tyrol was Alois von Negrelli (1799–1858). At the end of the 1830s, when the first railway lines of the Danube Monarchy were being put into operation in the eastern parts of the empire, he presented an “Expert Report on the Route of a Railway from Innsbruck via Kufstein to the Royal Bavarian Border at the Otto Chapel near Kiefersfelden.” Negrelli, later one of the many intellectual fathers of the Suez Canal, had served in his youth in the Imperial and Royal Building Directorate in Innsbruck and knew the city well. His report already contained sketches and a cost estimate. As a location for the main railway station, he had proposed the area around the Triumphal Arch and the Hofgarten. In a letter, he expressed himself about the railway line through his former home city as follows:
"...I also hear with the deepest sympathy that the railway from Innsbruck to Kufstein is being taken seriously, as the Laage is very suitable for this and the area along the Inn is so rich in natural products and so populated that I cannot doubt its success, nor will I fail to take an active part in it myself and through my business friends when it comes to the purchase of shares. You have no idea of the new life that such an endeavour will awaken in the other side..."
Friedrich List (1789–1846), known as the father of the German railway, proposed a railway connection from the northern German Hanseatic cities through Tyrol to the Italian Adriatic. The intellectual liberal economist and advocate of the largest possible customs union in Central Europe saw the expansion of the railway network as the key to economic prosperity. On the Austrian side, Carl Ritter von Ghega (1802–1860) inherited overall responsibility for the railway project within the vast Habsburg Empire after Negrelli’s early death. List did not live to see his dream of a meaningfully connected Central European economic area fulfilled; in despair over the conservative political situation in the German states, he shot himself in 1846 on Tyrolean soil in Kufstein. Five years later, Austria and Bavaria declared their intention in a treaty to build a railway line to the Tyrolean capital. In May 1855, construction began on what was then the largest building site Innsbruck had ever witnessed. The station area was created between Museumstraße, Pradl, and Wilten. The station forecourt soon became one of the new centers of the city. Modern hotels were no longer located in the old town but here. To the east, the tracks led out of the city over newly constructed viaducts. On November 24, 1858, after only three years of construction, the railway line between Innsbruck and Kufstein—and onward via Rosenheim to Munich—was opened. The line was ahead of its time. Unlike the rest of the railway network, which was only privatized in 1860, it was opened as a private railway from the outset, operated by the previously established Imperial and Royal Privileged Southern State, Lombardian, Venetian, and Central Italian Railway Company. This move allowed the expensive construction to be kept out of Austria’s perpetually strained state budget. With this opening toward the eastern parts of the monarchy, especially Munich, the first step toward the modernization of Tyrol had been taken. Goods and passengers could now be transported quickly and comfortably between Bavaria and the Alps. In South Tyrol, the first trains ran between Verona and Trento in the spring of 1859.
The north–south corridor, however, initially remained incomplete. Serious considerations for the Brenner Railway began in 1847. Conflicts south of the Brenner Pass and the economic necessity of connecting the two parts of the region led, in 1854, to the establishment of the Permanent Central Fortification Commission. After Austria’s loss of Lombardy in the war with France and Sardinia-Piedmont in 1859, the project was delayed due to political instability in northern Italy. In 1860, the Imperial and Royal Privileged Southern State, Lombardian, Venetian, and Central Italian Railway Company was reorganized as the Imperial and Royal Privileged Southern Railway Company in order to begin detailed planning. The following year, the mastermind behind this outstanding infrastructure project, engineer Carl von Etzel (1812–1865), began surveying the terrain and drawing up concrete plans for the railway line. The planners were instructed by the private investors to keep costs as low as possible and to avoid large viaducts and bridges. Contrary to Ghega’s earlier considerations of mitigating the gradient by starting the line in Hall, Etzel developed a plan that included Innsbruck. Together with his construction manager Achilles Thommen, he selected the Sill Gorge as the best route. This not only saved seven kilometers of track and considerable expense but also secured Innsbruck’s status as a key transport hub. The alpine terrain, landslides, snowstorms, and floods posed major challenges for the builders. River courses had to be diverted, rocks blasted, earthworks excavated, and retaining walls built to control nature. The greatest difficulties, however, were caused by the war in Italy that broke out in 1866. Particularly patriotic German-speaking workers refused to work alongside the “enemy.” Fourteen thousand Italian-speaking workers had to be dismissed before construction could continue. Nevertheless, the highest regular railway line in the world at the time, with its 22 tunnels blasted out of rock, was completed in a remarkably short period. How many men lost their health or lives during the construction of the Brenner Railway is unknown.
The opening ceremony was remarkably understated. Many people were uncertain about the new technology. Economic sectors such as horse-drawn freight services and post stations along the Brenner route faced decline, as had already been seen with the disappearance of rafting after the opening of the railway to the lower Inn valley. Even during construction, farmers had protested, fearing the import of agricultural goods and the resulting loss of income. As with the construction phase, no grand celebration was held. Due to the execution of Archduke Maximilian of Mexico, the brother of Emperor Franz Joseph I, Austria was in a state of mourning. Instead of a priestly blessing and festive inauguration, the Southern Railway Company donated 6,000 gulden to the poor fund. Even the Innsbrucker Nachrichten did not mention the revolution in transportation, apart from reporting on the last express carriage over the Brenner and publishing the railway timetable.
(The last express coach). Yesterday evening at half past seven the last express coach to South Tyrol departed from here. The oldest postilion in Innsbruck was driving the horses, his hat was fluttered with mourning, and the carriage was decorated with branches of weeping willows for the last journey. Two marksmen travelling to Matrei were the only passengers to pay their last respects to the express coach. In the last days of 1797, the beautiful, otherwise so lively and now deserted road was conspicuously dead.
Until the opening of the railway line over the Brenner Pass on 24 August 1867, Innsbruck was a terminus station of regional importance. The new, spectacular Brenner railway across the Alps connected the northern and southern parts of the country as well as Germany and Italy. The new Brenner road had already opened the year before. The Alps had lost their divisive character and their terror for transit, at least a little. While an estimated 20,000 people crossed the Brenner in 1865, three years later in the first full year of operation of the railway line there were around ten times as many. In addition, a whole flood of goods found their way across the new north-south axis, boosting trade and consumption.
The second alpine obstacle that had to be overcome for territorial unity was the Arlberg. Initial plans for a railway line connecting the Lake Constance region with the rest of the Danube Monarchy existed as early as 1847, but the project was repeatedly postponed. In 1871, export bans on food due to the Franco‑Prussian War led to famine in Vorarlberg, because supplies could not be transported quickly enough from the eastern parts of the vast empire to the far west. The economic crisis of 1873 delayed construction yet again. Only seven years later did parliament decide to realize the railway line. In the same year, complex construction work began east and west of the Arlberg massif. A total of 38 mountain streams and 54 avalanche-prone zones had to be secured with 3,100 structures under precarious alpine weather conditions. The most remarkable achievement was the ten-kilometer-long tunnel carrying two tracks. On June 30, 1883, the last transport of mail by horse-drawn carriage departed from Innsbruck to Landeck in a ceremonially mournful setting. The very next day, the railway took over this service. With the opening of the railway from Innsbruck to Landeck and the final completion of the Arlberg Railway to Bludenz in 1884—including the breakthrough of the Arlberg tunnel—Innsbruck was once again definitively established as a transport hub between Germany and Italy, France, Switzerland, and Vienna. In 1904 the Stubai Valley Railway, and in 1912 the Mittenwald Railway, were opened. Both projects were planned by Josef Riehl (1842–1917).
For a large part of the population, the railway was the most directly perceptible sign of progress. The railway viaducts, built from Hötting breccia quarried nearby, formed a physical and visible boundary to the east of the city toward Pradl. However, the railway did not change the region only from a technical perspective—it brought immense social transformation. Workers, students, soldiers, and tourists streamed into the city in large numbers, bringing new ways of life and ideas with them. Josef Leitgeb described this transformation in his novel The Untouched Year as follows:
“Even then, the railway had already brought many newcomers to Wilten. They lived in the new tall buildings that were springing up everywhere on land where grain had grown for centuries. Yet they were still perceived as outsiders; their Czech, Slovenian, and Hungarian names did not fit into the familiar sounds. They wore cheap ready-made clothing bought on installment, avoided church services, and instead attended meetings where the established citizens felt out of place. Seen clearly, they were quiet, hardworking, thrifty people who had simply brought different ways of life from the large cities and the lowlands. Anyone who looked at them askance could claim no other justification than that they did not want spectators for their own comfort. Nevertheless, the rejection of newcomers by the locals was still clearly palpable at the time; the father once heard a sermon in which the priest assured that all people could attain eternal salvation—‘even robbers and murderers, yes, even railwaymen.’”
The Federal Railway Directorate of the Imperial and Royal General Directorate of the Austrian State Railways in Innsbruck was one of only three directorates in Cisleithania. New social classes emerged as a result of the railway as an employer. People from all strata of society were needed to keep railway operations running. Workers and craftsmen could experience social advancement within the railway, similar to opportunities in state administration or the military. New professions such as track keeper, conductor, stoker, or locomotive driver emerged. Working for the railway carried a certain prestige. Not only was one part of the most modern industry of the time; titles and uniforms turned employees and workers into figures of respect. By 1870, Innsbruck’s population had grown from 12,000 to 17,000, largely due to the economic impulses generated by the railway. Local producers benefited from the ability to import and export goods quickly and at low cost. The labor market changed. Before the railway lines were opened, nine out of ten Tyroleans worked in agriculture; after the opening of the Brenner Railway, this figure dropped to below 70%. The new mode of transport contributed to social democratization and the rise of a bourgeois society. Not only wealthy tourists but also ordinary subjects—those who did not belong to the upper class—could now take excursions into the surrounding area. New foods altered people’s diets. The first department stores appeared with the arrival of consumer goods that had previously been unavailable. The appearance of Innsbruck’s inhabitants changed with new, fashionable clothing that became affordable for many for the first time. Not everyone welcomed this development. Shipping on the Inn River, previously an important transport route, almost immediately came to a standstill. The already weakened lower nobility and particularly strict clergy feared the collapse of local agriculture and a final moral decline due to the presence of strangers in the city.
The railway was worth its weight in gold for tourism. It was now possible to reach the remote and exotic mountain world of the Tyrolean Alps. Health resorts such as Igls and entire valleys such as the Stubaital, as well as Innsbruck city transport, benefited from the development of the railway. 1904 years later, the Stubai Valley Railway was the first Austrian railway with alternating current to connect the side valley with the capital. On 24 December 1904, 780,000 crowns, the equivalent of around 6 million euros, were subscribed as capital stock for tram line 1. In the summer of the following year, the line connected the new districts of Pradl and Wilten with Saggen and the city centre. Three years later, Line 3 opened the next inner-city public transport connection, which only ran to the remote village in 1942 after Amras was connected to Innsbruck.
The railway was also of great importance to the military. As early as 1866, at the Battle of Königgrätz between Austria and Prussia, it was clear how important troop transport would be in the future. Until 1918, Austria was a huge empire that stretched from Vorarlberg and Tyrol in the south-west to Galicia, an area in what is now Poland, and Ukraine in the east. The Brenner Railway was needed to reinforce the turbulent southern border with its new neighbour, the Kingdom of Italy. Tyrolean soldiers were also deployed in Galicia during the first years of the First World War until Italy declared war on Austria. When the front line was opened up in South Tyrol, the railway was important for moving troops quickly from the east of the empire to the southern front.
Carl von Etzel, who did not live to see the opening of the Brenner railway, is commemorated today by Ing.-Etzel-Straße in Saggen along the railway viaducts. Josef Riehl is commemorated by Dr.-Ing.-Riehl-Straße in Wilten near the Westbahnhof railway station. There is also a street dedicated to Achilles Thommen. As a walker or cyclist, you can cross the Karwendel Bridge in the Höttinger Au one floor below the Karwendel railway and admire the steel framework. You can get a good impression of the golden age of the railway by visiting the ÖBB administration building in Saggen or the listed Westbahnhof railway station in Wilten. In the viaduct arches in Saggen, you can enjoy Innsbruck's nightlife in one of the many pubs covered by history.
The Red Bishop and Innsbruck's moral decay
In the 1950s, Innsbruck began to recover from the crisis and war years of the first half of the 20th century. On 15 May 1955, Federal Chancellor Leopold Figl declared with the famous words "Austria is free" and the signing of the State Treaty officially marked the political turning point. In many households, the "political turnaround" became established in the years known as Economic miracle moderate prosperity. Between 1953 and 1962, annual economic growth of over 6% allowed an increasing proportion of the population to dream of things that had long been exotic, such as refrigerators, their own bathroom or even a holiday in the south. This period brought not only material but also social change. People's desires became more outlandish with increasing prosperity and the lifestyle conveyed in advertising and the media. The phenomenon of a new youth culture began to spread gently amidst the grey society of small post-war Austria. The terms Teenager and "latchkey kid" entered the Austrian language in the 1950s. The big world came to Innsbruck via films. Cinema screenings and cinemas had already existed in Innsbruck at the turn of the century, but in the post-war period the programme was adapted to a young audience for the first time. Hardly anyone had a television set in their living room and the programme was meagre. The numerous cinemas courted the public's favour with scandalous films. From 1956, the magazine BRAVO. For the first time, there was a medium that was orientated towards the interests of young people. The first issue featured Marylin Monroe, with the question: „Marylin's curves also got married?“ The big stars of the early years were James Dean and Peter Kraus, before the Beatles took over in the 60s. After the Summer of Love Dr Sommer explained about love and sex. The church's omnipotent authority over the moral behaviour of adolescents began to crumble, albeit only slowly. The first photo love story with bare breasts did not follow until 1982. Until the 1970s, the opportunities for adolescent Innsbruckers were largely limited to pub parlours, shooting clubs and brass bands. Only gradually did bars, discos, nightclubs, pubs and event venues open. Events such as the 5 o'clock tea dance at the Sporthotel Igls attracted young people looking for a mate. The Cafe Central became the „second home of long-haired teenagers“, as the Tiroler Tageszeitung newspaper stated with horror in 1972. Establishments like the Falconry cellar in the Gilmstraße, the Uptown Jazzsalon in Hötting, the jazz club in the Hofgasse, the Clima Club in Saggen, the Scotch Club in the Angerzellgasse and the Tangent in Bruneckerstraße had nothing in common with the traditional Tyrolean beer and wine bar. The performances by the Rolling Stones and Deep Purple in the Olympic Hall in 1973 were the high point of Innsbruck's spring awakening for the time being. Innsbruck may not have become London or San Francisco, but it had at least breathed a breath of rock'n'roll. What is still anchored in cultural memory today as the '68 movement took place in the Holy Land hardly took place. Neither workers nor students took to the barricades in droves. The historian Fritz Keller described the „68 movement in Austria as "Mail fan“. Nevertheless, society was quietly and secretly changing. A look at the annual charts gives an indication of this. In 1964, it was still Chaplain Alfred Flury and Freddy with „Leave the little things“ and „Give me your word" and the Beatles with their German version of "Come, give me your hand who dominated the Top 10, musical tastes changed in the years leading up to the 1970s. Peter Alexander and Mireille Mathieu were still to be found in the charts. From 1967, however, it was international bands with foreign-language lyrics such as The Rolling Stones, Tom Jones, The Monkees, Scott McKenzie, Adriano Celentano or Simon and Garfunkel, who occupied the top positions in great density with partly socially critical lyrics.
This change provoked a backlash. The spearhead of the conservative counter-revolution was the Innsbruck bishop Paulus Rusch. Cigarettes, alcohol, overly permissive fashion, holidays abroad, working women, nightclubs, premarital sex, the 40-hour week, Sunday sporting events, dance evenings, mixed sexes in school and leisure - all of these things were strictly abhorrent to the strict churchman and follower of the Sacred Heart cult. Peter Paul Rusch was born in Munich in 1903 and grew up in Vorarlberg as the youngest of three children in a middle-class household. Both parents and his older sister died of tuberculosis before he reached adulthood. At the young age of 17, Rusch had to fend for himself early on in the meagre post-war period. Inflation had eaten up his father's inheritance, which could have financed his studies, in no time at all. Rusch worked for six years at the Bank for Tyrol and Vorarlberg, in order to finance his theological studies. He entered the Collegium Canisianum in 1927 and was ordained a priest of the Jesuit order six years later. His stellar career took the intelligent young man first to Lech and Hohenems as chaplain and then back to Innsbruck as head of the seminary. In 1938, he became titular bishop of Lykopolis and Apostolic Administrator for Tyrol and Vorarlberg. As the youngest bishop in Europe, he had to survive the harassment of the church by the National Socialist rulers. Although his critical attitude towards National Socialism was well known, Rusch himself was never imprisoned. Those in power were too afraid of turning the popular young bishop into a martyr.
After the war, the socially and politically committed bishop was at the forefront of reconstruction efforts. He wanted the church to have more influence on people's everyday lives again. His father had worked his way up from carpenter to architect and probably gave him a soft spot for the building industry. He also had his own experience at BTV. Thanks to his training as a banker, Rusch recognised the opportunities for the church to get involved and make a name for itself as a helper in times of need. It was not only the churches that had been damaged in the war that were rebuilt. The Catholic Youth under Rusch's leadership, was involved free of charge in the construction of the Heiligjahrsiedlung in the Höttinger Au. The diocese bought a building plot from the Ursuline order for this purpose. The loans for the settlers were advanced interest-free by the church. Decades later, his rustic approach to the housing issue would earn him the title of "Red Bishop" to the new home. In the modest little houses with self-catering gardens, in line with the ideas of the dogmatic and frugal "working-class bishop", 41 families, preferably with many children, found a new home.
By alleviating the housing shortage, the greatest threats in the Cold WarCommunism and socialism, from his community. The atheism prescribed by communism and the consumer-orientated capitalism that had swept into Western Europe from the USA after the war were anathema to him. In 1953, Rusch's book "Young worker, where to?". What sounds like revolutionary, left-wing reading from the Kremlin showed the principles of Christian social teaching, which castigated both capitalism and socialism. Families should live modestly in order to live in Christian harmony with the moderate financial means of a single father. Entrepreneurs, employees and workers were to form a peaceful unity. Co-operation instead of class warfare, the basis of today's social partnership. To each his own place in a Christian sense, a kind of modern feudal system that was already planned for use in Dollfuß's corporative state. He shared his political views with Governor Eduard Wallnöfer and Mayor Alois Lugger, who, together with the bishop, organised the Holy Trinity of conservative Tyrol at the time of the economic miracle. Rusch combined this with a latent Catholic anti-Semitism that was still widespread in Tyrol after 1945 and which, thanks to aberrations such as the veneration of the Anderle von Rinn has long been a tradition.
Education and training were of particular concern to the pugnacious Jesuit. The social formation across all classes by the soldiers of Christ could look back on a long tradition in Innsbruck. In 1909, the Jesuit priest and former prison chaplain Alois Mathiowitz (1853 - 1922) founded the Peter-Mayr-Bund. His approach was to put young people on the right path through leisure activities and sport and adults from working-class backgrounds through lectures and popular education. The workers' youth centre in Reichenauerstraße, which was built under his aegis, still serves as a youth centre and kindergarten today. Rusch also had experience with young people. In 1936, he was elected regional field master of the scouts in Vorarlberg. Despite a speech impediment, he was a charismatic guy and extremely popular with his young colleagues and teenagers. In his opinion, only a sound education under the wing of the church according to the Christian model could save the salvation of young people. In order to give young people a perspective and steer them in an orderly direction with a home and family, the Youth building society savings strengthened. In the parishes, kindergartens, youth centres and educational institutions such as the House of encounter on Rennweg in order to have education in the hands of the church right from the start. The vast majority of the social life of the city's young people did not take place in disreputable dive bars. Most young people simply didn't have the money to go out regularly. Many found their place in the more or less orderly channels of Catholic youth organisations. Alongside the ultra-conservative Bishop Rusch, a generation of liberal clerics grew up who became involved in youth work. In the 1960s and 70s, two church youth movements with great influence were active in Innsbruck. Sigmund Kripp and Meinrad Schumacher were responsible for this, who were able to win over teenagers and young adults with new approaches to education and a more open approach to sensitive topics such as sexuality and drugs. The education of the elite in the spirit of the Jesuit order was provided in Innsbruck from 1578 by the Marian Congregation. This youth organisation, still known today as the MK, took care of secondary school pupils. The MK had a strict hierarchical structure in order to give the young Soldaten Christi obedience from the very beginning. In 1959, Father Sigmund Kripp took over the leadership of the organisation. Under his leadership, the young people, with financial support from the church, state and parents and with a great deal of personal effort, set up projects such as the Mittergrathütte including its own material cable car in Kühtai and the legendary youth centre Kennedy House in the Sillgasse. Chancellor Klaus and members of the American embassy were present at the laying of the foundation stone for this youth centre, which was to become the largest of its kind in Europe with almost 1,500 members, as the building was dedicated to the first Catholic president of the USA, who had only recently been assassinated.
The other church youth organisation in Innsbruck was Z6. The city's youth chaplain, Chaplain Meinrad Schumacher, took care of the youth organisation as part of the Action 4-5-6 to all young people who are in the MK or the Catholic Student Union had no place. Working-class children and apprentices met in various youth centres such as Pradl or Reichenau before the new centre, also built by the members themselves, was opened at Zollerstraße 6 in 1971. Josef Windischer took over the management of the centre. The Z6 already had more to do with what Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda were doing on the big screen on their motorbikes in Easy Rider was shown. Things were rougher here than in the MK. Rock gangs like the Santanas, petty criminals and drug addicts also spent their free time in Z6. While Schumacher reeled off his programme upstairs with the "good" youngsters, Windischer and the Outsiders the basement to help the lost sheep as much as possible.
At the end of the 1960s, both the MK and the Z6 decided to open up to non-members. Girls' and boys' groups were partially merged and non-members were also admitted. Although the two youth centres had different target groups, the concept was the same. Theological knowledge and Christian morals were taught in a playful, age-appropriate environment. Sections such as chess, football, hockey, basketball, music, cinema films and a party room catered to the young people's needs for games, sport and the removal of taboos surrounding their first sexual experiences. The youth centres offered a space where young people of both sexes could meet. However, the MK in particular remained an institution that had nothing to do with the wild life of the '68ers, as it is often portrayed in films. For example, dance courses did not take place during Advent, carnival or on Saturdays, and for under-17s they were forbidden.
Nevertheless, the youth centres went too far for Bishop Rusch. The critical articles in the MK newspaper We discuss, which reached a circulation of over 2,000 copies, found less and less favour. Solidarity with Vietnam was one thing, but criticism of marksmen and the army could not be tolerated. After years of disputes between the bishop and the youth centre, it came to a showdown in 1973. When Father Kripp published his book Farewell to tomorrow in which he reported on his pedagogical concept and the work in the MK, there were non-public proceedings within the diocese and the Jesuit order against the director of the youth centre. Despite massive protests from parents and members, Kripp was removed. Neither the intervention within the church by the eminent theologian Karl Rahner, nor a petition initiated by the artist Paul Flora, nor regional and national outrage in the press could save the overly liberal Father from the wrath of Rusch, who even secured the papal blessing from Rome for his removal from office.
In July 1974, the Z6 was also temporarily over. Articles about the contraceptive pill and the Z6 newspaper's criticism of the Catholic Church were too much for the strict bishop. Rusch had the keys to the youth centre changed without further ado, a method he also used at the Catholic Student Union when it got too close to a left-wing action group. The Tiroler Tageszeitung noted this in a small article on 1 August 1974:
"In recent weeks, there had been profound disputes between the educators and the bishop over fundamental issues. According to the bishop, the views expressed in "Z 6" were "no longer in line with church teaching". For example, the leadership of the centre granted young people absolute freedom of conscience without simultaneously recognising objective norms and also permitted sexual relations before marriage."
It was his adherence to conservative values and his stubbornness that damaged Rusch's reputation in the last 20 years of his life. When he was consecrated as the first bishop of the newly founded diocese of Innsbruck in 1964, times were changing. The progressive with practical life experience of the past was overtaken by the modern life of a new generation and the needs of the emerging consumer society. The bishop's constant criticism of the lifestyle of his flock and his stubborn adherence to his overly conservative values, coupled with some bizarre statements, turned the co-founder of development aid into a Brother in needthe young, hands-on bishop of the reconstruction, from the late 1960s onwards as a reason for leaving the church. His concept of repentance and penance took on bizarre forms. He demanded guilt and atonement from the Tyroleans for their misdemeanours during the Nazi era, but at the same time described the denazification laws as too far-reaching and strict. In response to the new sexual practices and abortion laws under Chancellor Kreisky, he said that girls and young women who have premature sexual intercourse are up to twelve times more likely to develop cancer of the mother's organs. Rusch described Hamburg as a cesspool of sin and he suspected that the simple minds of the Tyrolean population were not up to phenomena such as tourism and nightclubs and were tempted to immoral behaviour. He feared that technology and progress were making people too independent of God. He was strictly against the new custom of double income. People should be satisfied with a spiritual family home with a vegetable garden and not strive for more; women should concentrate on their traditional role as housewife and mother.
In 1973, after 35 years at the head of the church community in Tyrol and Innsbruck, Bishop Rusch was made an honorary citizen of the city of Innsbruck. He resigned from his office in 1981. In 1986, Innsbruck's first bishop was laid to rest in St Jakob's Cathedral. The Bishop Paul's Student Residence The church of St Peter Canisius in the Höttinger Au, which was built under him, commemorates him.
After its closure in 1974, the Z6 youth centre moved to Andreas-Hofer-Straße 11 before finding its current home in Dreiheiligenstraße, in the middle of the working-class district of the early modern period opposite the Pest Church. Jussuf Windischer remained in Innsbruck after working on social projects in Brazil. The father of four children continued to work with socially marginalised groups, was a lecturer at the Social Academy, prison chaplain and director of the Caritas Integration House in Innsbruck.
The MK also still exists today, even though the Kennedy House, which was converted into a Sigmund Kripp House was renamed, no longer exists. In 2005, Kripp was made an honorary citizen of the city of Innsbruck by his former sodalist and later deputy mayor, like Bishop Rusch before him.
The good and the bad of Innsbruck
The arches, that's where the good Innsbruckers don't go in Innsbruck. Unless they are drunk because they were somewhere else with the less good Innsbruckers beforehand, where the less good ones persuaded them to drink alcohol, which the good ones didn't want to drink, as they will tell their partner, spouse, guardian or breadwinner when they come home the next day, remorseful for their weakness and upset about the misfortune they suffered at the hands of the less good Innsbruckers. But who cares, the good Innsbruckers don't go there, because everything that doesn't meet anywhere else meets in the arches: men in shirts, women in dresses, women in trousers, men in kilts, men with long hair, women with dyed hair, rockers, hackers, students, young farmers, sportsmen, musicians, punks - in short, so that we can cope - everything. It's scary. And there's not just drinking, there's also dealing, beating and stabbing. I haven't seen the beatings, at least not any more than in other pubs where drunk people get together, and no stabbings anyway, but it's in the papers and that's probably how it is.
Sometimes, it used to be more often, because I'm already old, when I get talking to a good Innsbrucker in a beer mood, and the conversation turns to arcs at some point during the evening and how bad they are, then I like to explain that if you follow Einstein's theory of space-time, which I don't understand but still like to bring up to impress the good Innsbruckers, who don't understand it either, then arcs are neither good nor bad, but relative at best. Then nobody understands it and I have to explain it. The arcs are relative because they have neither a beginning nor an end in terms of time or space, neither on a small scale nor on a large scale.
Not in the short term, because the arches never really close. When the last bar closes, the first one opens again. Brennpunkt sells its coffee to hipsters more in the morning than in the evening. And not in the big time either, because the things that happen there repeat themselves like in an endless time loop, except that everything gets worse, of course. Because when I was younger, everything was better than it is now that my son is starting to go out, the music anyway and it wasn't as expensive and we didn't dress as stupidly or talk as stupidly to each other as the boys do today. And when I tell him about the old days and how great everything was, especially in the arches, then of course he listens to me in awe, just like I used to listen to my dad when he told me how everything was better in the old days.
And it's not just the arches that are in this time loop, what happens afterwards because of the arches doesn't change either, you can't get that old. My mum used to complain when I was younger and lived at home, well, with my parents, because you live at home anyway, when I came home early in the morning and drunk. "Have you been drinking in the arches again, ha?". When I moved out and had a girlfriend who didn't drink alcohol at all and therefore never went to the arches, I didn't go there as often, but she always complained when it happened. Now I have a friend who used to go to the arches and when I go there now, she goes with me and if you think that hardly anyone can complain, then you're wrong, because the complaint is just because she has a headache and a hangover the next day because of me, because she had to go with me. So it's no use growing up, if you go to the arches, whether alone or not, you'll get told off.
And the spatial aspect is also relative, because the arches have two beginnings and two ends, and you can't really say where they begin and end, because that depends on where you go in and then leave again when you've finished. For me, the arches start at the front, at Sillpark, where the Viaduktstüberl used to be, a pub that always had dirty windows with Unterberg advertisements and where it could happen that someone would get wild very early in the evening, because where the arches start, people started drinking alcohol very early. Now, by the way, there's a restaurant in this arch where families are supposed to go.
For someone else, the arches certainly start at the back of the Sillzwickl where the Outsider Motorcycle Club has its clubhouse, although I find that strange, but as a cosmopolitan person you have to respect this wrong opinion. I was there once at a 150th birthday party. When I turned 30, I had a party with four friends who were also turning 30. That was also funny, by the way, especially how the girlfriend of one of my friends cuddled with one of the motorbike waiters, that was the end of the story.
But it's better to go back to the beginning. Here's the thing about the bends. If you count the last bend after the Outsider, which is actually a pass, there are 175. 175 bends spread over 1.7 kilometres. I know this because I measured it with my sports watch. Between the Outsider and the next restaurant, the Cafe zum Mo In the 103 bend, the first 650 metres, or the last, as you see it, are actually only car and moped garages and the Veloflott for bicycles, i.e. mobility, and I'm more interested in the alcoholic side of the bends. And the interesting part is the first one, because there are bars and pubs along this kilometre.
The first is the Little Rock, which looks a bit like a saloon and where we used to say, when everything was better, that we wouldn't go in there because it's very similar to the Down Under anyway, except that the Down Under is much cooler. It's just a shame that the Down Under no longer exists. When I was standing in front of the door and realised that it was closed, it was like a Catholic when the Pope dies, and the Catholic doesn't notice and then at some point when he's standing in Rome he's told: "The Pope has died." That's probably how I looked the moment I found out, with a very surprised and sad face, because Down Under I've drunk a lot of beer up at the tables and at the bar. And when a place like the Down Under no longer exists, you realise - Holla, I'm not young anymore either. It's like when your kindergarten is torn down and it's been so long since you were there that you can't even remember it. The difference between Down Under and kindergarten is that there was no tequila in kindergarten. And the music was always good there too, in the Down Under, not in the kindergarten. It was so loud that you could still have a conversation. That's why you always went to Down Under, where you could still talk and weren't completely drunk, and only later to PMK, where there are always concerts and the music is louder. What's more, people were always more relaxed at Down Under than at PMK, where everyone was always stressed.
If you now think that the PMK was the opposite of Down Under, then that's wrong. The opposite of PMK is on the other side of the arches, where the new railway station is now. The arches have their own railway station, as they should. The opposite of PMK, with all the alternatives and left-wingers, is both geographically and ideologically the St Andrew's parlourwhere the landlord, Ander, serves his Indians, most of whom have spent too many summers and winters in the arches, beer and Ramazzotti to the sound of pop music like a chieftain.
Next to the Andreasstüberl is Shakespeare's, where you might also hear pop music, because they often sing karaoke there and if the DJ is in a good mood, he might sing a pop song, even though he himself is more of a metal fan.
If you then take everything between the Little Rock and the Café zum Mo, then everything is relative, as Einstein says, but there is still a centre. Because no matter how much of a physicist you are, in the real world, which both the good and the less good Innsbrucker understand, there needs to be a centre. And in the arches, this centre is the plateau. Of course, like everything else, the Plateau has got worse because there's nothing going on there any more, which could of course be because I can't stand it until three o'clock any more, there was never anything going on there before, but I think it used to be better. It doesn't really matter, because the plateau is really the definition of spacetime, at least as far as I understand it. How else can it be that there is no time, the small space always looks much bigger and everything is relatively unimportant when you're in there. For example, you go in sometime after midnight and leave again at half past midnight. Half past midnight is the time when it's already light outside and the birds are chirping and the good people of Innsbruck, who weren't trapped in space-time, go to work and it's still dark on the plateau because it's only just past midnight there.
When I was young, I needed money, so I even spent two weeks during the Christmas holidays in the Plateau doing the accounts, scrubbing the floor and cleaning the toilets. So when I went in in the morning, the waiters were still sitting inside drinking and smoking and I was sober and wanted to clean, but I couldn't because in the Plateau's space-time, the drunks have priority. It can be there outside the door, but in this small room, it's always halfway there.
And when the good people of Innsbruck always grumble about the Plateau and the Andreasstüberl and the PMK and the other arches, then I have to say that I think it's great that we have something in the city where everyone meets and everyone is equal and even the space and time are no longer quite so exact and it's OK if it gets halfway. So!