Last Waltz in Vienna (with apologies to author George Clare)

July 11: Tuesday...and tomorrow morning we would be flying (no train this time) to Florence and then heading to our Pistoia farmhouse for a week. Decompression time. But before that, Cindy and I had a lot of ground to cover in Vienna on this last day.

We mostly wandered into areas that we hadn't covered the other days. Cindy wanted especially to show me a couple of Vienna's outstanding Art Nouveau (Jugendstil/ Modernity) buildings.

Apparently, Vienna was one of the birthplaces of modernity at the beginning of the last century. It was Otto Wagner who shaped Vienna's skyline as we know it today. He preferred a geometric variant of Art Nouveau. His buildings are clean and usually symmetrically arranged --matter-of-fact and down-to-earth.

But on our way to Otto Wagner's Postal Savings Bank, we passed some other interesting things, starting with this mural:

Such an interesting mural! As near as I can gather from a rough translation, this is the area where weavers, dyers, and wool traders had their headquarters.

And then we came to Dr. Karl Lueger Platz and its central statue of Karl Lueger, who was Vienna's mayor 1897-1910. Lueger, according to a label explaining a temporary art installation next to the statue, "knew very well how to build a singular cult around his own persona as a

'modernizer' and 'champion of the little people.' Using radical racist rhetoric and ruthless populism, he made anti-Semitism a political program." Sounds like a couple of other guys we don't much like...

It seems pretty clear that contemporary Viennese do not hold this man in high regard--and that perhaps the city authorities agree with the people who have spoken with their paints. This is a city that generally takes very good care of its statues and monuments, so one can deduce from the way this one has been treated that perhaps it's time to consider removing this particular monument to a disgraceful official of the past. But maybe they have decided to let it be, along with a thorough explanation of what Lueger was like, to encourage dialogue about why the statue has been vandalized and not restored.

Not far from this platz stands Otto Wagner's Postal Savings Bank, which now houses the University of Applied Arts Vienna (appropriately). It's a fascinating building, because you can see its relation to Art Nouveau, yet it is quite different--much more geometric and angular. The curves have generally been straightened out and lined up symmetrically.

But first ... we were passing another intriguing building, whose purpose/name I didn't record and have now forgotten. But it was decorated with these wonderful, heroic bronze friezes celebrating work:

So ... ummm ... Austrian, I guess. Maybe the Department of Labor.

This is the door to this unknown building; the side panels are the closest it got to having women holding up the entire structure.

And here is the magnificent Postal Savings Bank (Postsparkasse), built on an entire city block between 1904 and 1912, studded with rivets that have no purpose beyond decorative.

Aluminum was a new material at that time, and Otto was quite taken with it. He used it for those rivets as well as the portico columns, the central heating fans, the statues atop the building, and much more.

Just take a gander at all those rivets!

We went inside; it was majestic and overpowering--and of course had a bust of Franz Joseph I.

The main hall was so huge I didn't get a good photo of it, so I'm borrowing one from Wikiarchitecture (there's apparently a Wiki for everything):

It's not set up like this anymore, but it still is impressive--even the hallways are meant to impress ...

...and the stairwell:

The restroom was pretty impressive also, but I didn't photograph it.

The building across the Georg-Koch-Platz, the former Ministry of War, was a pretty good match as well, but built in the earlier Viennese Classicism style:

We walked on, and came to this unnamed building with a magnificent mosaic mural:

The upper stories were also impressive--but that was of course the case with so many Viennese buildings. And your eye is taken from one level to the next.

This building, whatever it was, housed a restaurant that looked quite intriguing, but we were too early to try it out.

So we walked on again, and found ourselves at the University Church, also once known as the Jesuit Church, which was part of the University of Vienna. This public research university has a very long history; it was founded in 1365 by Duke Rudolph IV, and is the oldest university in the modern German-speaking world and among the largest institutions of higher learning in Europe. The university is associated with 16 Nobel Prize winners and has been the home to many scholars of historical and academic importance. It has survived many empires and governments, economic ups and downs, wars, and changes in thinking--but it has survived.

On we went, traversing much of the terrain we had covered in the past week but always finding buildings and sites of interest. I think, however, that I must have been tired of always pulling out my phone to take yet another photo of yet another beautiful/impressive/monumental structure--there was a definite lull in my picture taking.

But then we came to Karlsplatz and another of Wagner's Jugendstihl buildings--actually pair of buildings--the Vienna Stadtbahn station entrances, both now unused for their original purpose. One of the buildings is managed by the Vienna Museum and holds displays about the Stadtbahn and its history, and the other was a café for a long time. Alas, the café is no longer, and that building has been shamefully neglected.

The café of former times:

And the museum building:

We saw so few neglected buildings in our time in Vienna; it was very sad to contemplate that former café and see the contrast between it and the museum.

We stopped for lunch at the nearby Café Museum (est. 1899 and designed by Adolf Loos, one of the great Art Nouveau architects), which we had passed every day on our travels. Perhaps this café, so close to Karlsplatz, is the reason the Stadtbahn café didn't survive. After reading its history (https://www.cafemuseum.at/en/cafe-museum/our-coffee-house.html), I'm sorry we didn't go inside; we'll have to save that pleasure for our next visit.

The Café Museum was also very close (deliberately so, as its history explains) to the Secession, the other building we had passed daily and that we now were finally visiting. As noted back in the chapter on our arrival in Vienna, this gallery was established by Gustav Klimt along with a number of other artists who were "seceding" from the prevailing artistic community of that time. They established the Association of Visual Artists that continues to direct the Secession 125 years later. It was founded to present contemporary art then, and it still does that today, with only the art changing with the times. The building itself stands as one of the most beautiful and iconic Art Nouveau structures in Vienna.

I was pleased that the gallery had taken down the pride flag that had been there when we arrived (the photo above was taken on July 5th, our first day in town). Much as I appreciate that flag, I had really wanted to get a photo of the front of the building unadorned, as it were.

The message above the door says "To every age its art, to every art its freedom." Plain and profound.

This was our final place to visit, and it was the perfect capstone to our time in Vienna. We were going there specifically to see Klimt's Beethoven Frieze, painted for the 14th Secessionist exhibition (1901), based on Richard Wagner's interpretation of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and paired with a monumental polychrome sculpture by Max Klinger. This exhibition was meant to be temporary, but the walls on which the frieze was painted were instead preserved and stored. In 1986 the frieze was permanently installed in a specially built climate-controlled basement gallery.

This picture is borrowed from an explanation of the frieze. The space looks a bit different now; there are no statues; instead, there is a long bench in the middle of the room so that visitors can sit and view the frieze as they listen to a recording (through headphones) of the "Ode to joy." We sat through that at least twice, just taking in every detail of the frieze sections.

In order around the room:

Left wall: "the yearning for happiness; the sufferings of weak mankind; their petition to the well-armed strong one, to take up the struggle for happiness, impelled by motives of compassion and ambition."

Middle wall: "the hostile forces; Typhoeus the giant, against whom even gods fought in vain; his daughters, the three Gorgons, who symbolise lust and lechery, intemperance and gnawing care. The longings and wishes of mankind fly over their heads."

Right wall: "the yearning for happiness is assuaged in poetry. The arts lead us to the ideal realm in which we all can find pure joy, pure happiness, pure love. Choir of angels from Paradise. 'Joy, lovely spark of heaven's fire, this embrace for all the world.'"

All of the above quotes are from "History of Art:Gustav Klimt". www.all-art.org.

This was a sublime experience and so appropriately Viennese. We soaked it in for as long as we could, and then explored the rest of the Secession's exhibits, none of which could, for us, match the Beethoven Frieze.

On the main floor was an interesting lava lamp installation:

There were a couple of other exhibits, but nothing was as engrossing as the building itself, so we went outside to explore the rest of the exterior. I should note that, of course, there was a great deal of damage during WWII. But by that time the Viennese, who were originally, in 1898, skeptical and scornful of such an odd building, loved it and restored it completely. It's entrancing all around.

And so we had finished our week-long tour of Vienna, and I had come to understand Cindy's love of the city.

We returned to our hotel and our garret room:

This hotel had a lovely staircase:

Fortunately, the elevator at least went to the fourth floor, and we only had to climb one flight to reach our fifth-floor room.

We went to the Naschmarkt one last time for dinner, and were served at the Italian restaurant by a staff person whom I had noticed working at a neighboring restaurant--actually, it was clear that the servers were working at least three separate restaurants that evening. Quite the shortage of staff in the Naschmarkt.

Back to the room to pack up for our very early departure to the airport in the morning.

More on that next.