Our trip to Vienna was great. We were travelling with S, our oldest grandson, and staying in a curious and slightly decrepit apartment in a posh street of mansions rather like these.
One day the owners of this apartment will probably spend a fortune modernising it and turning it into something sleek and conventional. But we liked the faded, almost romantic atmosphere of its big, high rooms, dusty staircase and warren of tiny offices on the other floors.
Young S. discovered that it had had once been the home of the Archduchess Elisabeth Maria Henrietta, daughter of Prince Rudolf, who was all set to inherit the throne of the Habsburg Empire.
Unfortunately Prince Rudolf died when the archduchess was young, in an apparent suicide pact with his mistress, so she never had the chance be the daughter of an Emperor. It seemed she didn't want to be one, anyway, and her subsequent life took some sensational twists and turns. But more of that later.....
Each day we'd descend the stone spiral back staircase, go through the arched entrance hall with its huge lantern hanging overhead, and out of the heavy double doors to explore Vienna.
We liked the Prater, Vienna's vintage amusement park, which over the years has accumulated acres of wooded grounds traversed by a miniature diesel-engined railroad, a running track, many 1970s-looking animatronic rides, a virtual reality parlour, terrifying looking chair swings, and a model railway layout of Vienna which shows the city both by night and by day. Plus, of course, all the usual fairground attractions like dodgems and a ferris wheel - the Prater's wheel featured in the 1949 film, The Third Man (click here for the scene). I guess this, below, is supposed to be the wild west - at present those galloping horses are about to run right into a gate.
Below, I was completely fooled by a mirror maze bathed in lurid multi coloured light, sometimes green, sometimes red and sometimes blue. Perhaps I've had a sheltered life but I hadn't been in one of these things before.
There was also an excellent display of award winning Austrian photographs, with each photo blown up large and displayed all around the park. The one below specially caught my eye. It is entitled "Old Franz's 85th birthday" and I love this loden-clad old man, complete with gun, exchanging a kiss with his wife.
The Prater couldn't be more different from the "Kunstkammer" where we went the following day. This suite of galleries occupies one floor of Vienna's main art museum, the vast Kunst Historisches Museum, and comprises 20 giant rooms packed with unimaginably valuable items collected by generations of Habsburg emperors and their families.
I don't want to disrespect Britain's Crown Jewels or anything, but if you really want to see the world's most skilled craftsmanship in porcelain, gold, silver and precious stones, in the shape of countless ornaments, decorations, salvers, plates, dishes, goblets, table settings, automata, devotional items and more, then this place should be at the top of your list.
It's impossible to convey the enormous scale of the display, but here are a few of the items which caught my eye. They include three of the many automata - ornaments that move or perform in some way. This ship, a gilded banqueting table centrepiece, will roll across the table firing cannons as the crew move to music.
Here is a company of gold and enamelled musicians promenading on an ebony balcony.
This large gold bell-tower automaton was based on the stage scenery of a play once attended by the emperor.
I was also impressed by a very large calculator, made in 1727 which is supposedly for land surveying, although I doubt it made many surveying trips outside.
This tiny object, known as a "prayer nut" (it's about the size of a walnut in its shell), is hang on a rosary. I have enlarged it considerably because the carving is too small to be seen properly, at least by me. I can't think how any one ever created it by hand.
And here is a tantalus, a vessel for alcoholic drink, dressed up as a seated man literally wearing a table of food.
I can't vouch for the number of galleries, because I only managed to get through six of them, and that's because we only saw them towards the end of the day. Most of the time we'd been looking at paintings, followed by a pit stop snack in the museum cafe served by waiters (below) It's not quite as pricey as it looks, which is good because I didn't spot anywhere else to eat.
For me, the Dutch and Flemish paintings were the main attraction, particularly several big canvases by Bruegel the Elder, (b. 1589). I visited them years ago and had been so frustrated because they're so intricate that printed reproductions don't fully resolve the fine detail, and yet the canvases are too large to examine closely on the wall. Last time I went without a camera, but this time I managed to capture sections which are easily missed even in large reproductions.
What makes them so interesting is that Bruegel was a painter of peasant life, which mostly went unrecorded simply because nobody in those days was very interested in what peasants did. It's such a window into the past. Here's a fraction of a canvas portraying peasant games, pastimes and other leisure activities. You can see how old ladies sit companionably together outside the church, drunks sprawl on the benches outside the inn. A couple of people are fighting, and something is happening that looks like a conga. Some folk play a game involving tossing balls into holes in the ground, while a boy in a chair tries to beat off his friends running around him and teasing him. There may be some sort of small religious procession in the foreground, and I think that boys in the distance are lining up to jump over a broom. Even further away, a bonfire is under construction.
You might have to search the whole painting (below) before you spot the location of all this activity, though.
I was sorry to miss the other 15 or so galleries of the Kunstkammer, (not to mention at least another whole floor of the museum), but actually the Kunst Historisches Museum is a bit overwhelming and I felt more at home in the Wien Museum, which is near the Charles Church, not far away.
Unusually for Vienna, the Wien Museum it is free to enter, so you can drop in when it suits you, and, in my view, better appreciate what it has to say. It is a modern museum which explains the city's story with the help of objects - paintings, posters, books, furniture and so on. I was struck by a painting celebrating Vienna's first ever municipal gas supply. It's reasonably competent art, but the interest lies in its story. It was commissioned by a deeply controversial man, Karl Lueger, who was mayor of Vienna between 1897 and 1910, and was in the habit of hiring artists to paint pictures that promoted himself.
This picture is large, and divided into three parts... It's big and hard to photograph but this is an overview, showing the period "before the arrival of town gas" to the left, "after town gas" to the right and, in the middle, two symbolic female figures.
In "Before," (below) Vienna is made ugly by its coal-gas factories and charcoal production. Both the rich and poor struggle in this dirty place to see their way through smog, crowds, animals and piles of goods. They are illuminated only by the inefficient, "fish tail" burners of the time, which were dim, and stank, and flickered so maddeningly that they made people ill.
The next detail (below) shows two female symbolic figures The top one represents Vienna, carrying a new gas lamp like a sceptre. Below her dainty feet crouches Britannia, representing the British company that previously supplied gas to the city. She is utterly wretched, crouching humiliated in the dirt with her primitive streetlamp smashed, and her dirty old gas pipe cracked.
To the right, rich men and clergy stroll along outside the cathedral, and beneath them, Vienna's magnificent, then-modern town hall (built 1872-83) looms over a well tended park, bright with modern gas lighting and packed with the rich bourgeois.
You will observe Karl Lueger, flatteringly portrayed as more handsome than he appears in photos, lifting his silk hat graciously. Those shown around him appear to have been painted from life, and may have been local dignitaries. But the ones I couldn't take my eyes off were the three women so prominently shown in front of him.
Leuger took care to be seen with women supporters. Although they couldn't vote, he calculated that women could influence their husbands and children to elect him, and like many populists of the time, he enjoyed an ardent female fanbase of women who needed somewhere to direct their emotions. They were known at the time as "Lueger's Amazons" (female warriors).
In those days, a celibate man was admired, and so Lueger remained unmarried and said he was devoting himself to his work. (After his death his mistress published a candid memoir which revealed a different side of him, however. How shocked those respectable Amazons might have been if they had known!)
Are these three ladies members of his tribe of "Amazons"? When I first saw them I certainly felt uncomfortable. The rich, well dressed one on the left has the cold stare of a wicked queen, the one in the middle is wearing a creature on her head resembling a cross between a bird of prey and a stealth missile, and the one on the right ....well.... I dunno. I just wouldn't like to meet any of them on a dark night, well-illuminated or not.
Leuger laid the foundations for Vienna's excellent infrastructure, which has stood the city in good stead. But antisemitism, misogyny and hate were the tools he used to gain support. He told the usual far right story of "we're in a mess because of .... [insert name of scapegoats]" which speaks to the most primitive human emotions, and usually works, however illogical the reasoning that is offered to support it.
In fact, the Emperor of Austria, Franz Joseph, personally loathed Leuger, disapproving so strongly of his divisive approach that he refused three times to confirm him as Vienna's mayor. Still,
when the Emperor was finally persuaded to give way, Leuger was elected with a huge majority, so cultivating the ladies obviously paid off. Perhaps they didn't believe they themselves were included in the women whose fault things were.
The museum also displays a beautiful ceremonial chair (above) that Lueger designed for himself. The craftsmen who made it hid a note inside the chair's structure which was only discovered a hundred years later, when it needed to be conserved. The note said how much they hated him. These days in the city's Lueger Square, his statue is regularly defaced, and nobody is quite sure what to do with it.
Lueger died in 1910, and then there was the First World War. After that, Vienna became extremely left wing: the period is called "Red Vienna" and all kinds of social innovations were made which further improved the infrastructure. You can sometimes spot artwork around the city that comes from this period, like this Communist style mural of happy healthy children on a block of flats.
Vienna is famous for its coffee and cream cakes, and many of the traditional coffee shops attract long queues of tourists. They have prices to match and rude or indifferent service. We didn't eat out much, but did visit the Cafe Central, because that is not only historic but also has a good reputation, which we found it lived up to.
On one cold and blustery day we lunched in its glassed-over courtyard,several stories high with a slightly Palm Court atmosphere. Here, a kind and friendly waiter helped to make our meal really cosy and congenial - and the cakes were great!
We also loved The
Third Man Museum. You have to plan carefully to be able to visit, as it is only open for a few hours once a week, but it's run by real hardcore fans of The Third Man
film, who have funded the whole thing themselves. They have spared no time and expense in putting together one of the very best private collections of film memorabilia and Viennese wartime history that I have ever seen. Throughout the museum you can find videos of relevant interviews they have conducted, and visits they have taken to pursue aspects of "Third Man" lore. (Who knew that Osaka Central railway station played the "Third Man" theme to announce the departure of the day's last train?)
I was enchanted by a 1980s interview with the man who had played five-year-old "Little Hans" in the film. ( You'll find him in picture No. 47 on the Third Man page here)
He was likeable, genial and full of amusing anecdotes, and pointed out that the half-ruined Vienna tof the film was just a playground to him in those days.
The museum has a section full of memorabilia of this curious post war period when the bomb-shattered city was divided into "zones" run by Britain, the US and Russia. Everything from care packages to military memos and American soldiers' letters home showed the human side of this curious historical interlude.
We visited many other things in Vienna, including the personal railway station built for the last emperor. It was built by Otto Wagner, a groundbreaking architect of the late 19th and early 20th century who deserved to be world famous but unluckily made little impact outside Vienna. Even here, not much of his work has survived, and this is one of very few buildings that still exists relatively unaltered.
He had the difficult task of building something incredibly imperial on a budget, so the decoration on the waiting room (for instance) is only woven into fabric instead of inlaid in wood as one might expect. This octagonal room features a magnificent painting showing an eagle's eye view of the city, but because of poor old Otto Wagner's bad luck, even this little gem narrowly escaped permanent disfigurement, and was restored only in this century.
Oh, I'll just tell you a little more about the Archduchess who had once lived in our accommodation. Poor woman, her family was about as dysfunctional as a family could be, and she was not an easy person herself. During her tempestuous life, she shot a love rival, who later died, employed armed guards to ensure she had custody of her children, and became such an ardent socialist that she took her son out of school and set him to work in a factory. Her
biography on Wikipedia reads like part of the synopsis of a family saga about the Habsburgs. It is interesting, but we were glad that she didn't live in the house any more!
Vienna, like most big cities, sounds rather overwhelming! Although I have relatives there, I have never been, but my parents and my sister have.
ReplyDeleteI am glad you found a place to stay that you liked, and had a good experience at the Café Central.
The parallels between Mr Lueger and Mr Trump are particularly interesting, aren't they!
Yes, although the only thing you can say in Lueger's favour is that he did actually lay out a really good public infrastructure in Vienna, which is way beyond anything Trump could do! Despite the huge grand terraced houses, palaces, and public buildings, in some other ways Vienna felt less overwhelming than many other capital cities. It is really well organised, and also quite compact, with a reasonable amount of green space and really good public transport.
DeleteWow, Jenny. What a fabulous look at your time in Vienna. While I'm sure you only scratched the surface, you certainly packed in a lot, and all of it interesting. The Prater sound fun and the Kunstkhammer fascinating. How could one possibly get through all that -- even if they had all day! I love Breugel -- he's always been one of my favorites. "The Wedding Dance" is in our DIA and I can see what you mean by so much going on you have to really isolate sections for the detail. The automatons look fascinating as well. The Leuger commission in the Wein is interesting. And I have to say, I must remember your phrase "moderately competent." That says it all (for so many things!). I'm going to check out the links you shared, especially for the Third Man museum, but others too. I feel like I've been there with you -- and I'm sure you only scratched the surface!
ReplyDeleteYes, I was glad I had been before a couple of times as it would have been really frustrating to miss some of the things. But it's wonderful to have so many options that you can't do them all, in a way. I'd be happy to have another few days in Vienna, that's for sure!
DeleteThat was a super trip....but it sounds as if you would need a month to really see Vienna!
ReplyDeleteYes, I had been two or three times before and we didn't duplicate any of what we did then.
DeleteWhat a marvelous social and artistic history of the city! Thank you for guiding us around. So that's where that Mayerling hunting lodge shooting came in? Mysterious to this day.
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing was so crazy that I would believe anything ! I was rather sorry for Rudolf's very young girlfriend, she was only 17 and convinced they were incredibly in love.
DeleteThis was all so interesting! I don't think I've ever seen The Third Man. Found it on Amazon Prime videos!
ReplyDeleteLastly--I am now off to read the biography of the Archduchess on Wikipedia. She sounds like a strange one--lol! :)
Hope you enjoyed the film of the Third Man! The museum was probably our very favourite thing in Vienna, so we had to re-watch as soon as we got back!
DeleteHello Jenny, You always get the most out of every place you visit. About those automata, here is one in the Yale Art Gallery, restored and running (this is a short film, and be sure to watch until the very end!):
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6ro4zscyE0
--Jim
What an interesting little thing. I am quite impressed that they could wind it up and let it run, I can't imagine how complicated some of these things must have been mechanically - I suppose the royal palace must have had a resident clockmaker to keep fixing them all as well as the clocks!
DeleteHello Jenny! Your post makes me want to hop on a plane to Vienna just to spend a few days in that amazing museum. Wow. Thanks for sharing! Sara
ReplyDeleteThanks, Sara, it certainly would take a few days to see it!
DeleteA wonderful trip. You must take extensive notes to prepare such detailed explanations.
ReplyDeleteI always keep a diary of the salient points and can look up anything I don't fully understand afterwards online.
DeleteSo nice to find a new post and this tour was very informative. Vienna is definitely a city that’s on my to visit one day list. The Third Man exhibit would have been a highlight for me and now I need to re-watch the film.
ReplyDeleteThanks, and I hope you will get the chance to go to Vienna. I really didn't write much about the elegant side of the city but it is very noticeable too, and very interesting.
DeleteThanks for that interesting tour of Vienna. We had just booked a trip to Vienna in 2020 when the lockdown started and we had to cancel. We've never got round to re-booking.
ReplyDeleteThe paintings by Bruegel the Elder are wonderful, full of fascinating details. And what a charming photo of old Franz. The bit about Karl Lueger and his Amazons is intriguing. How amusing that the craftsmen hid a candid note in the chair!
Oh dear, lockdown put the lid on so many plans. I hope you'll get the chance to go another time although I am sure you now have all kinds of other places you want to do as well!
DeleteVienna! How interesting it all sounds. So much to see! The photo of the cakes, they can't taste as good as they look! Now, off to read your link to that strange lady! Take care!
ReplyDeleteThe cakes in the Cafe Central were really good. I guess they vary from place to place. On an earlier visit I stayed in the Hotel Sacher where they actually served Sacher Torte for breakfast and really it was a bit disappointing, much dryer than I had hoped.
DeleteThank you for your very detailed account of your trip/visit to Vienna.
ReplyDeleteA very interesting read and I also enjoyed seeing your photographs.
All the best Jan
https://thelowcarbdiabetic.blogspot.com/
Thank you Jan. I see that you too get signed in as Anonymous on blogger sometimes. It always happens when I try to comment from my phone. I suspect the Blogger software is pretty antique by now!
Delete...Jenny, you sure saw lots of interesting things on our trip to Vienna. My ADD mind is a bit on overload. I need to return again to process more bits of information. Thanks for visiting my blog. Take care and be well.
ReplyDeleteI felt a bit on overload actually being there Tom!
DeleteBeautiful Vienna! How wonderful that you have been there recently, and thank you for so much detail of what you experienced. The gilded ship is astonishing (we missed that one). We were there in 2018, at the Kunst Historisches Museum, looking at the Breugels which I adore, and yes, we even had a snack at that very same pretty museum cafe! Such a great city, and in five days we mostly saw different things from what you were doing, but all is amazing. I do not think I have seen The Third Man, but now I want too, just in case we go back. Next year we are going to Salzburg, not so far from Vienna.
ReplyDeleteWe did consider a train trip from Vienna to Salzburg if we ran out of things to do in Vienna (as if). It is so pretty but fairly small, so if you'll be staying there a while you could probably do the train ride the other way around and have a couple of days in Vienna!! :)
DeleteI enjoyed reading about your visit to Vienna, Jenny. I have a lot of memories too. When I read about "description apartment in a posh building" I thought of an apartment in Vienna with plywood floors and hooks on the wall instead of a closet. I also took pictures of Bruegel's paintings, but they turned out badly because of the lighting. Yours are good. I didn't know about the Vienna Museum, very interesting. I'm glad you liked the Viennese pastries, I bought a 'Sachertorte' before leaving. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThank you Nadezda. The apartment was mostly original fittings but some of it not very well maintained. Those rickety floors were actually expensive parquet.... I think there was a problem with the joist underneath!
DeleteHello! How nice to read your posts again. Hopefully this comment doesn’t get eaten by the internet like my last one. Your Vienna trip sounds wonderful. I would like to go at some point. I love the Bruegel paintings for just the reason you say, it’s those details of the ordinary folk. I really want to eat Viennese pastries! When I was at uni I made a Sachertorte from a 1938 recipe I found in an old cookbook in the library. Later I discovered all about the rivalry between the two versions of Sachertorte. Mine had apricot preserve through the centre of the cake as well as under the chocolate glaze. A friend had brought the preserve from Vienna, and a group of us ate the cake washed down with glasses of champagne in honour of the occasion!
ReplyDeleteWow, that sounds good! Some of the favourite recipes in our house are old ones too. For years I used to make Mrs. Beeton's no-suet Christmas pudding from my 1911 copy of her book, which assumed you were cooking on a coal fired range! Luckily the pudding had to be boiled, not baked! lol
DeleteHi Jenny - I haven't visited your blog for far too long! I'd forgotten how much you pack in, yet keep me reading right to the end. You paint a fascinating picture of a Vienna I know little about, but would love to visit even more now. The Kunstkammer, in particular, looks amazing - that prayer nut is astonishing. I should watch the Third Man again - I actually have the theme music on my mobile :-)
ReplyDeleteI must say we were humming that theme music for days afterwards!
DeleteAgain, as always, an extremely interesting, informative post, Jenny. Thank you so very much, my dear! :)
ReplyDeleteTake good care.
A pleasure, Lee, glad you enjoyed it!
DeleteWhat an amazing trip to Vienna! I love how you captured the charm of the apartment and the history behind it. The Prater sounds like a perfect blend of old-world fun and quirky modern attractions, and your descriptions of the Kunstkammer and its treasures are fascinating—especially the automata and intricate craftsmanship! I also found the historical insights from the Wien Museum intriguing, particularly the gas lighting painting. Such a unique perspective on Vienna's evolution. Wishing you a great week!
ReplyDeleteThanks Melody. I always think that there are so many stories in places if you get the chance to find out about them.
DeleteWhat a great break! I loved that golden ship. The prayer nut with those minute carvings is something else. Herr Leugar looks like the type of man you would wish a Lugar to deal with. Loved the note left in the chair! The Bruegels paintings were always extreme, much to see. I can understand the desire for coffee shops when you see the cakes on offer! And who would have thought that a monarchical family could be broken...?
ReplyDeleteHave to say I thought about the Luger pistol too and actually checked to make sure his name was not actually the same. And yes, I agree with you that to have a royal family which was actually well functioning seems way beyond the realms of fantasy ..... I always think it must be incredibly dificult if you're born into a job and not allowed to refuse to do it, for fear of being banished for life ! The surprise to me is that many of them do manage to keep things together!
DeleteWhat a fabulous post. I've never visited Vienna but you remind me that I must make a plan to do so.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, the Prater is indeed different to everything else that you saw! I'd love to photograph that. That prayer nut and the Bruegel painting are masterpieces. Both such works of talent.
What a weirdly vain little man that Lueger was!
Thanks Mandy. There are some very good pictures to be taken in the Prater, partly because it is rather quaint and old fashioned in parts. I hope you get there and can take some! Yes, Lueger doesn't sound like my cup of tea, I must say!
DeleteI've seen The Third Man several times. Nice to see Vienna has bounced back since then.
ReplyDeleteYes, it is almost impossible to imagine it as it was then!
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