Kreuzbergl – "State memorial site" and site of firing squad executions
To the northwest of the Klagenfurt city centre, at the end of Radetzkystraße, the State memorial site Kreuzbergl is located, a converted Way of the Cross, built in the mid 1950s to remember "all the victims of the wars" and dedicated in 1959. This site constitutes a unification of Christian and national-socialist symbolism: The sufferings of Jesus are used as an analogy to those of "the everyman battlefield soldier", "the submarine sailor" and "the unknown soldier". Even the generalising definition of a "memorial to all victims of national-socialism" right at the first station of the cross, led to an outcry among dismayed supporters. Every year in October, a remembrance ceremony takes place here, organised by the "Freunde der Landesgedächtnisstätte" (friends of the State memorial site), with the participation of the Austrian army.In an especially cruel twist, the State memorial site is located in the immediate vicinity of the execution site on Kreuzbergl, which the Nazi judiciary used to have their convicted shot. Even in the last months of the war, death sentences were carried out at this site – under the title "army personnel executed" the files of the cemetery office of the Celovec/Klagenfurt magistrate mention 16 executions having taken place from September 1944. Most likely the last victim was 24-year-old partisan Ivan Podbevšek/Johann Podbeuschek, who was shot on 2 May 1945. The premises, which also served as an army training site during the second republic, is abandoned today. In 2006 a group of youths occupied the vacant buildings and temporarily turned Kreuzbergl into an autonom centre of culture.