JLH has translated an op-ed by Andreas Unterberger about the rapid demographic changes currently underway in Vienna. The translator includes this note:

We could paraphrase Mark Twain: “There are facts, awful facts and godawful statistics.”

How typical too, that cosmopolitan centers are the first to be corrupted, because this is where the con-men, power brokers and know-it-alls go to assert themselves, while the rest of the country tries to get on with business. I wonder how fast the rest of the country would be transformed if the administration should start taking large numbers of refugees and shipping them off to unsuspecting towns and provinces. (I did not say “Obama”)

The translated op-ed from the independent information portal Vienna.at is below.

Vienna Is Different

by Andreas Unterberger

Nothing shows it more clearly than the unvarnished demographic figures: In recent years, Vienna has become a completely different city — one that is in some parts purely Balkan-Turkish. And it will become even more so in coming years. Isn’t City Hall being really short-sighted when it applauds this development?

To be sure, the tourist crowds in “imperial Vienna,” — center city — are largely from the West. Even though it is possible more than ever this summer to see women covered head-to-toe and Arabic men with their not-exactly-European-deportment.

The money-grubbing Tourist Office is ecstatic and sees no problems. Likewise our leftist ideologues. The rest of the Viennese are beset by powerful worries. An influx is always good for the ventilation of a society, to be sure, but if an influx is too rapid and intense, it leads from control over everyday customs, to the economy, to a complete tipping over and then to the collapse of the society.

Presently, Vienna differs more than ever from the rest of Austria. For instance, if more than half of the students in Vienna’s schools already speak some language other than German at home, then Viennese children — even with the addition of Germans, Swiss, Liechtensteiners (and presumably also Luxembourgers) and South Tyroleans — are no longer the majority there.

Religious Statistics in Vienna

Religious statistics are similar. In one generation, the percentage of Catholics has been halved — and that is despite the influx of almost totally Catholic Poles, Croats and Slovaks. Simultaneously, the number of people of no religious affiliation has risen sharply (even among immigrants). And, indeed, the third largest group is the Muslims, who have been multiplying exponentially since 1971. Trending rapidly, they are already 11% of the population, while the average across Europe is 6%, even though many of those countries — unlike Austria — have a colonialist past. Members of the Orthodox Church, too — mostly from Serbia — have increased more than seven-fold.

If you do not understand how massively that alters a city, then you understand nothing.

And a similar discussion may be had about the fact that one-third of Viennese were born in other countries (this refers to the entire population, not only the schoolchildren, who are just a harbinger of the total population of the future). Still other figures illustrate that Vienna is “different”. It has by far the highest unemployment in Austria and the greatest distribution of “basic income.” And, by the way, the costs for all this are not borne by funds from City Hall, but by federal debt. And that is why — aside from its ideological orientation — City Hall does not panic.

Income statistics for Vienna are, however, quite good. Company headquarters, important officials, trustees and fiduciaries, attorneys and numerous other well-remunerated professions are perforce massively over-represented in the nation’s capital. And they affect the taxation statistics. They form a completely different and much smaller world than may be found in the pubic schools, in the employment agencies or (for instance) along the outer side of the Belt. And only this Vienna is growing.

How long will the city be able to support this growing discrepancy?

Andreas Unterberger was Editor-in-Chief of Die Presse and the Wiener Zeitung for 14 years. His “Not Quite Unpolitical Journal” at www.andreas-unterberger.at is Austria’s most-read internet blog.

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