Memorial to the Victims of the Ringtheater Fire

The Ringtheater Fire Memorial stands on the Schottenring in Vienna, on the site of the Wiener Ringtheater destroyed on 8 December 1881. That evening, before a sold-out performance of Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann, the gas footlights ignited the fly tower; within minutes the building had burnt out. Emergency exits were locked, doors opened inwards, the power had failed - the official death toll stood at 384, with estimates of up to 1,000. The catastrophe led to new theatre regulations across Europe (iron curtain, emergency lighting, outward-opening doors) and in Vienna to the founding of the Freiwillige Rettungsgesellschaft ambulance service. On the site rose the Suehnhaus, a neo-gothic apartment block where Sigmund Freud opened his first practice in 1891; after war damage it was replaced by today's Federal Police Headquarters, in front of which a sober memorial recalls the dead.