Josef-Schoiswohl-Park in Liesing, Vienna

Josef-Schoiswohl-Park is a very small public park in Vienna’s 23rd district, Liesing, at the edge of Mauer near Anton-Krieger-Gasse and Silvester-Früchtl-Gasse. The City of Vienna currently lists the park by name and explains that it commemorates Dr Josef Schoiswohl, who served as diocesan bishop of Graz-Seckau and earlier as parish priest of St. Erhard in Mauer and dean of the Liesing deanery. The physical park is only a neighborhood green space, but two layers of public memory make it more interesting than its size suggests: the Schoiswohl naming and a surviving birch from the citywide “Für Johanna” art intervention commemorating feminist politician Johanna Dohnal.

The current City park-name register identifies Josef Schoiswohl as born in 1901 and died in 1991. His local connection comes from service as priest of St. Erhard in Mauer before his later episcopal career. Secondary park history states that the green space received the Schoiswohl name in 2002 and had previously been called Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Park. Because the old-name history is not explained on the current City park list, it should be treated transparently as secondary context rather than presented as though freshly published by the municipality.

That older naming matters because Karl Lueger’s antisemitic political legacy has generated long-running debate over public commemoration in Vienna. The 2002 replacement with Schoiswohl can therefore be read as part of a broader history of changing public names, although this support page should avoid claiming motives beyond the sources. The durable primary fact is simply that the City currently names the park for Schoiswohl and no longer uses the Lueger name.

The second memorial layer is much more current. In 2011 artist Isabella Kresse created “Für Johanna,” planting one birch in each Vienna district in a park named after a man to commemorate Johanna Dohnal, Austria’s first women’s minister. In October 2024 the City of Vienna formally confirmed that the birch in Josef-Schoiswohl-Park was still present and maintained by Wiener Stadtgärten. That makes the park part of a citywide feminist public-art network rather than only a local church-history commemoration.

The “Für Johanna” layer is especially useful because it is not merely historical. A 2024 City response listed the individual surviving birches across Vienna and explicitly included Josef-Schoiswohl-Park, stating that Wiener Stadtgärten continues to care for them. The intervention therefore remains physically present more than a decade after installation. For a compact park page, that current confirmation provides a tangible object visitors can look for and a way to connect the park with Vienna-wide debates about whose names and histories are visible in public space.

The juxtaposition is striking. A tiny park named for a male Catholic cleric also contains a contemporary art intervention explicitly addressing the underrepresentation of women in Vienna’s public naming landscape. The support page can explain both layers without pretending they were designed as one unified memorial concept. They coexist because public space accumulates meanings over time.

Secondary park documentation places the park at roughly 850 square metres, with lawn, trees, seating and a short path. Current open mapping gives a location close to Maurer Berg, Anton-Krieger-Gasse tram stop and residential streets on the Vienna Woods edge. The park can also be booked as a filming location in older Vienna Film Commission references, but this is not central to ordinary visitor use and should be treated as specialist production information.

There is no admission fee and no dedicated gate timetable published by the City. The park is free public space. Transport is straightforward by tram and bus through Mauer; Anton-Krieger-Gasse is a few hundred metres away in current mapping. No complete accessibility audit is published.

A visit normally lasts fifteen to thirty minutes. The strongest reason to include Josef-Schoiswohl-Park in travel content is memory, not recreation: learn who Schoiswohl was, understand the park’s earlier naming layer cautiously, and look for the surviving “Für Johanna” birch. That combination gives a tiny Beserlpark a surprisingly rich civic-history story suitable for a compact support page.

This double layer of naming and art makes the park more useful for memory-focused visitors than its tiny footprint would suggest.

For a visitor, this makes the park a compact lesson in how Vienna layers old names, new art and everyday green space instead of treating public memory as fixed once and for all.