"Quarry near Mauthausen at the Danube": Discourse-Analytical Remarks on the Career of a Photograph in the 20th and 21st Century

In 1940, a photograph by Robert Stenzel depicting a quarry near Mauthausen was published in a popular book on Upper Austria and Adolf Hitler. In the early 21st century, two articles on the Austrian writer Heimrad Backer refer to this publication, misrepresenting the photograph as depicting the quarry attached to the Mauthausen concentration camp which was built in 1938. This article demonstrates that the photograph was in fact first published in 1933 and instead shows a different quarry in Mauthausen. Using Michel Foucault's approach to discourse analysis, this article traces the different meanings Stenzel's photograph carries in the contexts in which it was published: first as part of the Austrian conservative concept of "Heimat" in 1933, then within the National Socialist ideology linking "Heimat" and "Volk" in 1940, and finally in contemporary perspectives on history, where the perception of quarries is shaped by the crimes committed in concentration camps.