AEIOU

Snapshot

Anselm Kiefer built a house in Furtwänglerpark in 2002 and filled it with sixty lead books and a Moroccan thorn bush. Inside a white pavilion open to the sky, it stands as the first commission of the Salzburg Foundation’s Walk of Modern Art, named after the Habsburg cipher that scholars have interpreted over 300 different ways.

The Story

The Habsburg motto A.E.I.O.U. was first used by Emperor Frederick III in 1437, a five-letter enigma he marked on everything from castle walls to tableware. The most familiar reading, “Alles Erdreich ist Österreich Untertan” (All the Earth is Subject to Austria), became standard only in the 18th century and still appears on the Austrian Federal Chancellery today. Kiefer, a German artist whose entire body of work is a reckoning with the weight of history, chose this motto as the subject for the opening commission of Salzburg’s Walk of Modern Art.

The result is a white cubic pavilion with no roof, planted in Furtwänglerpark between the Kollegienkirche and the great baroque Festival halls. Inside: sixty lead-bound books on a rusted rack, a Moroccan thorn bush growing through the metal, and a stanza from Ingeborg Bachmann’s poem “Das Spiel ist aus.” The five letters A-E-I-O-U are engraved on the exterior. Lead is Kiefer’s recurring material of choice because it is heavy, it ages, and it registers time. The open sky above is deliberate: history, for Kiefer, is never fully sealed.

The placement matters. Standing at the edge of Salzburg’s most concentrated layer of baroque grandeur, the pavilion treats imperial ambition not as something to be celebrated but as sediment, as an archaeological fragment that needs to be held up to the light. The Salzburg Foundation inaugurated the Walk of Modern Art with this commission because the project needed a work that could stand against the weight of the city’s baroque identity and ask what remains of all that reach.

The Walk of Modern Art now includes fourteen permanent outdoor sculptures across the city, linking the University Church, the riverbanks, and other urban spaces. AEIOU anchors the western end of the cultural core.

Visiting

AEIOU is in Furtwänglerpark, opposite the Festspielhaus, between the Kollegienkirche and the Festival District. Free to visit at any time; the pavilion is permanently installed and accessible as outdoor public art. No booking required. Allow 5-10 minutes at the work itself, or fold it into a longer walk along the Walk of Modern Art trail. Combine with Furtwänglerpark, the Kollegienkirche, and the adjacent Gurken sculpture nearby.