The writer Jörg Mauthe called it the "most absurd and beautiful place in the world" - Vienna's Heldenplatz is undeniably the main square of the Republic of Austria and of modern Austrian history. It is home to political monuments and the site of important state ceremonies. The memory of Adolf Hitler's celebrated "Anschluss" speech from the balcony of the Hofburg on March 15, 1938, looms large over Heldenplatz: To this day, as Peter Stachel shows, it represents in the collective memory of Austrians the moral capitulation to National Socialism.