Im Rahmen der 7. World Conference of the Federation for Public History stellte Lukas Schretter das partizipative MEMORY LAB-Projekt zur Geschichte des „Lebensborn“-Entbindungsheimes Wienerwald in Feichtenbach vor.
Neben dem Vortrag von Lukas Schretter waren im Panel „Participation and Inclusion in Public History“ unter der Moderation von Prof. Valérie Schafer (C²DH, Universität Luxemburg) auch Vorträge zu Projekten in Deutschland, Luxemburg und Polen vertreten.

Kurzbeschreibung des Beitrags auf englischer Sprache:

In 1904, Jewish pulmonologists Hugo Kraus and Arthur Baer opened the Wienerwald lung sanatorium in Feichtenbach, Austria. Novelist Franz Kafka was a patient at the sanatorium a few weeks before his death in 1924, and Austrian Chancellor Ignaz Seipel died there in 1932 of sepsis from a bullet lodged in his lung since an assassination attempt in 1924. After Austria’s annexation (“Anschluss”) by the German Reich in 1938, the SS confiscated the building and turned it into the “Ostmark” home (from 1942 the Wienerwald home). It was used by the Lebensborn association as a maternity home to increase the birth rate of “Aryan” children. It is estimated that between the first registered birth on 2 November 1938 and the last on 31 March 1945, more than 1,300 children were born in the Wienerwald home. After 1945, the building was used in quick succession by the Wiener Jugendhilfswerk, then by the Österreichischer Gewerkschaftsbund and the Wiener Gebietskrankenkasse, which used it as a rehabilitation centre until 2002. Since then the building has been left to decay.

Although the building reflects profound societal and political changes in the history of Austria in the 20th century, it has been largely overlooked by historians for decades. Based on the idea that involving citizens in the various stages of research can be the key to creating innovative perspectives and promoting effective research, a participatory research project on the history of the building was carried out from 2023 to early 2024. The project involved people born in the Wienerwald home, their families, and people from the surrounding area in the process of historical research. Workshops and excursions were organised to teach the skills needed by historians to deal with historical and biographical sources. The so-called co-researchers were also involved in the presentation of the project results. In this way, the participatory research project aimed to encourage people to engage with family history, to explore the history of the Wienerwald home, and to promote civic engagement.

This paper has used the project as an example on how to evaluate the outcomes and effects of participatory research in history. What are the main activities and outputs of this participatory research project that are worth monitoring? Have they led to the desired outcomes? And what are the long-term changes we would like to see in relation to the topic of our project? Formal and informal relationships with different stakeholders have been crucial to achieving impact. The project has shown that participatory research creates value for society above all when actors outside academia, such as administrative bodies, take up research findings and put them into practice.