THE STORY OF THE AUSTRIAN LICENCE PLATES
Austria had beautiful black licence plates grown in harmony with the cultural heritage of this country.
They became a recognisable and unmistakable symbol in Austria and on the roads of Europe, just like a national flag.
Austria was proud of the licence plates.
Until the levelling mania and industrial interest coincided with the inclination for personal prestige of the Austrian Minister of Transport who, with the support of technocratic statistics, talked the Parliament into changing the law to impose without reason new white licence plates alien to Austrian liking, mentality and tradition. The argumentation of so-called increased security was farfetched.
Drowning slowly in the sea of white metal plates of its surrounding nations, Austria loses a part of its cultural heritage, tradition, identity, elegance and specific character.
The Republic of Austria always had black licence plates. Aggravating is the resentment that only during the time of occupation by the Third Reich, 1938–1945, when Austria belonged to Germany, the licence plates were white.
The Austrians, not only the car drivers, felt run over and became angry.
Hundertwasser redesigned the traditional black licence plates with larger reflecting numerals and letters and improved big coats-of-arms for the nine states, which are more suitable for cars.
At a later stage blue reflecting edges were added to the signs to double the reflecting surface of the licence plates by night.
A conference of eminent international traffic security experts in Graz testified that the white reflecting signs on black ground not only surpass the requirements of visibility but are safer than black signs on white reflecting plates because the latter distract the attention from more vulnerable non-reflecting road users like pedestrians and cyclists and because of other reasons.
After the protest by Hundertwasser in press conferences, bus and fair demonstrations, public opinion, borne up by a majority in opinion polls, TV polls, the media, automobile clubs, taxi associations, a Salzburg licence plate committee and hundreds of thousands of petitions backed the regional governments of Austria to insist on reinstating the law to maintain the black traditional Austrian licence plates.
While measures to produce the white number plates were accelerated to create a fait accompli, a majority of the members of Parliament prepared a motion for an amendment of this unpopular and unnecessary licence plate law.
The Minister of Transport and his Socialist Party feared this democratic parliamentarian act and threatened to leave the coalition and blocked the vote.
A living nation is like a human being.
All alien substances which are not part of the cultural traditional organism will be rejected sooner or later.
Published in:
Brochure accompanying 985 Nummerntafel-Uhr / Licence-plate-watch-object, Vienna, 2000
Schmied, Wieland (ed.): Hundertwasser 1928-2000, Catalogue Raisonné. Vol. II: Fürst, Andrea Christa: Catalogue Raisonné. Cologne: Taschen, 2002, pp. 1088-1090 (German and English)