When my great artist friends got this ring back then, first Herbert Boeckl and then Roland Rainer, it made a great impression on me as a permanent Viennese resident,
I was born here and have remained here to this day.
Semmelweißklinik, incubator, allotment garden, schools, working and living always
in Viennese districts, because these districts are wide, worldwide districts.
Not for the art tourist, however, who seems to live and leave with the motto: get there faster
but don't know which way to go.
This art tourism, like all tourism, is a total stamping out of all differences, all idiosyncrasy.
The individuality comes, as every individuality knows, from the respective head, it is
born with it and is unmistakable.
Everything else is provincial, may it be more global than global, deep provincial.
You can't become what you are not, and many hours of flying won't help, no matter how far away
no matter how far away.
The Viennese Schubert and Qualtinger, Grillparzer, Raimund, Saar and so many others thought well and remained
thought well and stayed, Vienna remains Vienna, they thought, even if the majority of the
of Viennese „Sumper“ understand it differently.
Vienna is different, 12 of the 15 Austrian Nobel Prize winners were born in Vienna,
despite the „Sumpers“. Some of the award winners wanted to stay here, but Hitler came
and they had to leave in order not to die.

Other greats have come to Vienna for centuries and have never left, have been born here, have become Viennese, forever and ever, despite the Viennese „Sumpern“in defiance.
Because working in this Viennese swamp and not going under means having a firm foothold.
That's how it is.
Thank you!