Vienna’s cityscape is dazzling, its built environment well-orchestrated and – like its former Empire – is fraught with almost incomprehensible aesthetic, stylistic, and philosophical contradictions:
Scale vs Detail. On the one hand, the scale of Vienna’s structures and open spaces has few analogs, even among the greatest of European capitals. On the other, its public monuments and private structures alike offer a degree of detailing, refinement, sophistication, and sculptural complexity that surpasses that of just about any other city (ok, exempting Rome, Lisbon, and selectively, Paris). Rich, symbolic detail has the effect of softening the master plans of Leopoldine and Francisco-Josephinian building boom cycles. It provides continuity with the city’s older, unplanned, medieval core, helping create one of the world’s richest architectural environments. Striking visual detail makes it tempting to take a consensus view – that Vienna’s bright sunlight was among the tools available to generations of its architects – at face value. Actual data on solar irradiance levels and insolation rates, however, casts a long shadow of doubt on this theory: on average, the sun in Vienna is less intense than in Seattle, the least sunny place in the US, and weaker than in nearby Graz or Klagenfurt. Here, this daylight resource simply pales in comparison with intense sunlight that graces the facades throughout Rome, Florence or Venice, enhancing the depth of shadows and the definition of detail in white and pink marble in the art cities across the peninsula. In Vienna, where mustard yellow plaster and grey stucco dominate, it is the actual depth of sculptural reliefs – rather than ambient light – that is responsible for the deep light and shadow contrasts, which enrich the theatrical effect and break down the façade surfaces into more digestible, smaller, eye-catching parts, with minimal help from the rays of sun or other props and substitutes. Like faux marble, Venetial plaster, alabaster, or the trompe l’oeil technique so often employed across Catholic Europe in lieu of physical stone carvings or stucco and plaster works. No, the Viennese detail is real, ubiquitous in quantity, overwhelming in saturation, and of the utmost quality, both of materials and execution.
Density vs Privacy. The city and the court interacted here more intensely than elsewhere, bringing competing notions of ‘the city’ and ‘the garden,’ of the urban patrician residence and the country estate of high nobility closer together. Whereas in Paris, 19th century fashion demanded that space in front of ancient monuments be cleared for proper display, in Vienna the hereditary density of building and the traditionally narrow streets and the Baroque scale of the inner city continued to rule unchallenged. The aspirations of the nobility – and, later, bourgeoisie – to live on a palatial scale yet in close proximity to the court enabled better public-private coexistence in Vienna than elsewhere. Direct sponsorship and patronage – by the court – of some of Europe’s best parks, theaters and museums, intended for use by the city dwellers, helped as well. Obsession with privacy ruled in London and, and – behind rows of shutters, French windows, and outwardly inviting facades, albeit to a lesser extent – may have been secretly important to a Parisian. To a Viennese, the social and aesthetic aspects of public and private space had won the battle with domesticity and comfort a long time ago, decisively and conclusively.
Bourgeois vs Aristocratic. This debate is clearly over. Vienna’s urban space is noble. Even during the Ringstrasse craze, the rising bourgeois population itself, predictably embraced aristocratic aspirations, thereby affirming the values of the nobility in the Viennese society of the new, liberal era. Bourgeoisie chose the form of aristocratic facades and formal enfilade interiors, designed to entertain, over functionality and privacy of small-minded middle class comfort.
Cover vs content. Obsession with the arts, theater, and music – fanatical but genuine – permeated everything in Vienna, providing fertile ground for integration of monumental sculpture, public art, and cultural institutions into the fabric and logic of the functioning metropolis. Holistically. Harmoniously. Inside and out. Behind the grand theatrical quality of the outward-facing attributes of the city’s built environment – it is far from hollow – lies rich underlying content, thanks to the city’s wealth of top notch art repositories and world renowned cultural venues. This harmony and beauty of everyday surroundings makes Vienna itself the ultimate work of art.
Original Purpose vs Current Use. Built and cultivated as Continental Europe’s first court and second city, this former imperial capital seems monumentally and unapologetically oversized for its present-day role of running a tiny, landlocked republic. Vienna may still be below its peak population of a century ago but no identity crisis is visible – a successful deindustrialization and renewal, and a regional leadership role have combined with the city’s globalist traditions to make it so much more than a living museum turned towards the past.
It does the built and the intangible equally well. Buildings give shape to the history of every city, provide attachment and continuity of its identity. The built environment of Vienna – its bold spatial arrangements, monumental exteriors, treasure-packed interiors, all superbly proportioned and articulated – does it more vividly and assertively than elsewhere. This capital of architectural eye candy is fundamentally present, physical, tangible, assertive, it transcends visual gratification: a simple look is enough to evoke a remote tactile sensation without requiring actual contact, or almost. But Vienna excels at the opposite end of the spectrum too, as the undisputed capital of music, the most ethereal and intangible of arts, essentially air hitting the eardrum. It is as if Vienna, having taken the visual medium to the heights of perfection, decided to balance out its built environment by filling the negative space in between with music, mastering it to equal if not greater level of achievement. But it is the unparalleled intellectual scene of the metropolis that gave it voice, a voice heard far beyond the footprint of its once colossal Empire or even the Continent. Let me stop there, at just three of the ingredients of the city’s artistic recipe – buildings, music, and intellectuals – mixed to create a total work of art that is Vienna’s legacy.
Bigoted, nativist state vs supranational melting pot. Vienna’s history is proof that multiple ethnic groups can coexist and function, without the dominant ethnicity asserting its power on the minorities. Contrary to popular belief, the Habsburgs managed the so-called ‘nationalities question’ well – even as their domains shifted further to the East, becoming more multilingual, Garibaldi’s war of independence and Bismark’s wars of unification finishing what the partitions of Poland started. At the macro level, the Empire’s German core, its Slavic majority, and its large Magyar population were in balance. At the micro level, in every crownland, a deliberate balancing of two major ethnicities with near equal power guaranteed the protection minorities’ rights. All linguistic groups were represented in the provincial diets and in the central parliament. Lenin and Trotsky studied Vienna’s ethnic experience when designing the national policy for what was to become the Soviet Union: say what you want about the Soviet state but its official treatment of minorities was a drastic, and positive, departure from the intolerance of the Russian Empire. And we have Vienna to thank for that. Anti-globalist sentiment remained isolated and subdued thanks to the cosmopolitan Empire that was multinational and the Emperor who was supranational. Populists bent on exploiting dark nativist fears had to first overcome the resistance of the court, as in the Emperor’s repeated refusal to confirm controversial Karl Lueger in mayoral elections of 1895. In contrast, the misguided plan and mishandled settlement of WWI brought a populist backlash, ushering in first Mussolini then Hitler and the racial laws. This debate continues today, fiercely, but it is becoming increasingly clear that in Central Europe multiethnicity was part of the solution, not the problem, and forced conversion to tribal nation states – built on blood and soil – the problem not the solution.
Triumph of Jewish secular emancipation or a birthplace of state antisemitism? Vienna’s cultural achievement, its elevation to the rank of the world’s greatest cities – and the birthplace of modernity – may have been facilitated by many factors. But it is inseparable from the remarkable emancipation, advancement and contribution of its Jews. The intellectuals’ Jewish roots were an important ingredient of success, as was the inclusive and tolerant rule, and the multiethnic character of the Empire. Stephan Zweig asserts that “nine tenth of what the world celebrated as Viennese culture in the nineteenth century was a culture promoted, nourished, or even created by Viennese Jewry” and “…much if not the most of all that Europe and America admire today as an expression of new, rejuvenated Austrian culture, in literature, the theater, in the arts and crafts, was created by the Viennese Jews who, in turn… achieved the highest artistic performance of their millennial spiritual activity.” They were “the audience, they filled the theaters and concerts… visited the exhibitions… and with their more mobile understanding, they were the champions of all that was new.”
Creation vs Adaptation. Before the advent of Modernism (when Vienna became a powerhouse of idea generation), for most of its history, it could hardly be counted among true centers of artistic and architectural invention, not in the way of Florence, Rome, or Paris – or even of Antwerp or Munich. Instead, it functioned as a hub for the reception, adaptation, synthesis, and processing of different styles and influences, allowing mutually exclusive ideas to coexist. This emporium of influences in turn set the trend for urban centers of Germany and Central Europe.
Stylistic plurality and creativity. There is a lot to be said about the cultural heterogeneity of Vienna’s urban society and the linguistic diversity of its crownlands: foreigners represented about 6% of Paris population in 1900 but over 60% of Vienna’s. Linguistic and cultural minorities of its multiethnic and polyglot Empire – and reciprocal influences and exchange among them – helped this city develop multiple personalities. Unmatched by the capitals of most Western European nation states. Vienna’s astounding concentration of symbolic and political power, social and artistic energy at that time of Franz Joseph’s 68 yr long reign (one of the longest in history) secured for this city an impressive share of the world’s intellectual legacy.
Aversion to Innovation vs Modernity. Vienna is the pinnacle of Catholic, aristocratic, and royal establishment – all things traditional – and, therefore, a place where modernism was unlikely survive even if it, or its underlying idea, was born there (how famous is Vienna for the world’s first flight school or for important automobile inventions? exactly). Its Baroque/Biedermeier/Historicist mix – the poster child for Old Europe – proved to be fertile ground for multiple successive modernist movements in every genre of visual and plastic arts. Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos were hardly less modern than their contemporary Louis Sullivan of the post-great-fire Chicago, considered in the US synonymous with modernity. But it had a much greater influence on modernity outside visual and performing arts, from economics to medicine to political experiments, many of which found their application later, and elsewhere.
Individualistic Tradition vs Seeds of Totalitarianism. Some of the greatest liberal philosophers, economic and social thinkers, who are credited with transforming their fields by praising the individual, lived and worked in Vienna – at the same time. As did Tito, Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, the Austro-Marxists, and even Hitler – again, at about the same time. Unprecedented liberal thought coexisted there with every illiberal ideal known and every breed of totalitarian ideology imaginable, from municipal socialism of Karl Lueger to bolshevism, fascism, Nazism. Many mutually exclusive movements originated or were significantly enhanced here during the same period – Zionism and institutional antisemitism? – but the more extreme ones could only take off once the liberal, multilingual, pluralistic monarchy was dismantled and replaced with a collection of aggrieved, revanchist nation states, traditionally foreign to Central Europe’s habitat. I would argue that even after Ferdinandeum, which in 1533 deprived the city of the liberties previously allowed by its medieval German law, the emphasis on the singular, the individual remained, mainly thanks to the relatively softer rule of the dynasty. The dismemberment of the Empire ultimately led to persecution of minorities in its successor states, Nazism, genocide, and WWII, none of which would have happened had the Allies allowed Europe’s stabilizing supranational entity to remain in place in 1918. This was the period of unprecedented triumph of humanism and liberal thought. Thought exercised freely in a cosmopolitan multiethnic city, a city that had the power to transcend, at least among intellectuals, the small-minded limitations of coercive, totalitarian nation state of the decades to come.
Vormarz vs Grunderzeit and Beyond. The contrast here was not limited to that between provincial Biedermeier before 1848 and cosmopolitan eclecticism that accompanied Vienna’s explosive population growth after. The rule of the House of Habsburg itself changed, and did it more sincerely than other monarchs. From mercantilist to one that embraced the free market and the founding members of the Austrian school of economics. From tight controls of the conservative world order of Joseph II before the Napoleonic Wars and Prince Metternich after the Congress of Vienna to a liberal constitutional monarchy. From attempted absolutism on a mission to consolidate power around the ethnic German center to a limited monarchy with broad representation across partially autonomous crownlands.
Devout Catholicism vs Religious Tolerance. The Habsburgs were and remained perhaps the most Roman Catholic of Europe’s sovereign rulers, as one would expect for a family that held the title of Holy Roman Emperors longer and with more continuity than others. Before the Thirty Years War the dynasty’s possessions in Austria and Spain were the main strongholds of the Jesuits and the Counter-Reformation; a century later, the lifting of the Turkish siege secured Vienna’s hold over Catholic Christendom. Notwithstanding, in later centuries liberal monarchy ruled by the same dynasty practiced genuine tolerance, within the constraints of a Catholic dominated society. The Habsburgs offered protections to other Catholics (Ukrainian Greek Catholic and Armenian Catholic church were represented in the House of Lords, upper house of Austria’s parliament, along with the Roman Catholic church), to Orthodox Christians, Protestants, Jews and Muslims, and to every ethnic minority. The loyalty of the Jews the Muslims of Bosnia to the dynasty was legendary, both fought for the Austrian Emperor and suffered a higher casualty rate than any other religious or ethnic group in the monarchy. It is safe to say that in the Habsburgs’ multiethnic state genocide as such would have been unthinkable.
Uniformity vs Character. Despite its uncommonly centralized and even monocentric character, its exceptional standard of quality, and its nearly complete lack of slums, Vienna’s built environment is eclectic, not overplanned, and not devoid of contrasts. Easily the most striking is one between the claustrophobic medieval residential lanes of the Innere Stadt – or small town charm of Spittelberg, the exquisitely detailed garden palaces of Leopoldine golden age of the late 1600s – on the one hand, and the luxurious, cosmopolitan expanse of monumental ensembles from the Grunderzeit period lining the Ringstrasse. But these contrasts are attenuated by the historicist detail sprinkled throughout the old city as important intersections were upgraded during the Francisco-Josephinian period of explosive economic and population growth. The world’s richest collections of buildings found in Vienna are in Baroque, Biedermeier, and Historicist styles, which happen to share some of the same qualities of ostentatious display – this helps smooth visual transition across the former city walls and throughout the city districts. The Gesamtkunstwerk in Vienna urban space is naturally unifying. It has lessened division between facades, interiors, storefronts, street furniture. This attention to detail in Vienna’s built environment visually ties its urban landscapes of dissimilar proportions from different periods into a single holistic entity.
Public Display of Greatness vs Results on the Battlefield. Zweig asserted that “because Austria for centuries had been neither politically ambitious nor particularly successful in its military actions… it turned more strongly towards a desire for artistic supremacy.” Indeed, the infrequent periods of strong political or military success – from Josephinian reforms of 1870s to Napoleonic Wars to false comfort of Biedermeier culture during Metternich’s vormartz period post the Congress of Vienna – were precisely the periods of relative artistic provincialism and, it is said, almost total absence of new public building or urban embellishment, and a timidly restrained architecture in what did go up. In contrast, Austria’s creativity in arts and sciences showed a tendency to flourish following the loss of Silesia by Maria-Theresia, and again after the loss of Lombardy and Italian unification after the defeat at Solferino in 1859 and later after the loss of Venice and the exclusion from the affairs of Germany after its defeat at Koniggratz by Bismarck in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866. Not that this is confined to Vienna alone – Paris experienced its greatest boom of representational architecture after the defeat of Napoleon with baron Haussmann’s boulevards during Second Empire and again after losing in Franco-Prussian War during the Third Republic.
Museum City vs Thriving Metropolis. After the loss of Empire, the mass exodus of its intellectuals, the expulsion and deportation of its Jews after Anschluss and during the Holocaust, the city became a beautiful shell for several decades. It only recently started to regain its edge and leverage its rich artistic legacy, multiethnic tradition and geography – albeit with no court to provide leadership, no Metternich’s political smarts, no Schwarzenberg’s military genius, no Klimt at the Academy of Fine Arts, no Freud at the University, no Mahler at the Opera, and no Jews.
A by all means fabolously written work, what immense joy it was to read it!
Thank you for the good word, much appreciated!