Vienna Peace Windows

The Guardian reported on Wednesday 27 August 2014 19.46 BST

In praise of… Vienna’s peace windows
The city’s Peace Museum is bursting out of its walls to curate the streets, inviting passersby to get to know 150 peace heroes

The Guardian picked out Malala Yousafzai, „one of the Vienna Peace Museum’s 150-plus ‚peace heroes‘.“

Along the cobbled alleyway of Blutgasse in Vienna, leading up to Mozart’s home, you stumble across pictures of Peace Heros. For example:

• Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani school pupil and education activist
• William Wilberforce an English politician, philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade and
• Bertha von Suttner – the first female Nobel peace prize winner

– posted on the windows of shops, restaurants and ordinary homes.

In a world-first exhibition format, the tiny Vienna Peace Museum has burst out of its walls to curate the streets beyond, inviting passersby to get to know some 150 peace heroes. Some are very familiar faces, others less so, compelling us to take a moment longer to recognise and honour them. One such figure is 12-year-old Sadako Sasaki. She died of leukaemia 10 years after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and her 1,000 origami cranes came to represent all the child victims. Blutgasse, that is “blood lane”, may have been named after a 14th-century massacre. How fitting: a place that was once the scene of violence is now dedicated to peace.

Link:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/27/in-praise-of-vienna-peace-windows