Lisa (Luise) Palfy, Lottie Horn (Lotte Körner) – Happy Ending in Vienna

“Doesn’t the opera bandmaster Palfy take his lunch here with his daughter?” I am surprised and shocked because I didn’t keep this in mind. Although I am the Vienna expert and not my visitor from Stuttgart with whom I am passing by the restaurant of the Hotel “Imperial” (photo).
I know them all, the Viennese settings of the „doppelten Lottchen“ (Lottie and Lisa / The Parent Trap): the “Imperial” – the Staatsoper – the Rotenturmstraße (flat Palfy) – the Kärntner Ring (studio Palfy). But once you are getting older you sometimes forget all that romantic children novels with the happy endings. Even if you live virtually in them. Once reminded you even let your adult mind criticize that children books.

Antonio Vivaldi – Poor in Vienna

Vienna – wrong time, right place.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678 – 1741) had good contacts to the Austrian “music emperor” Karl VI who among others promoted the court orchestra (Hofmusikkapelle) and good contacts to other Austrian peers. He decided therefore to come to Vienna in 1740 being

Viennese Prams – Time Travel of Men from 1860 to 2007

“When is a man a man? ” The Wien Museum (Museum of Vienna) adds another answer to the already existing many answers on this question.

The new exhibition „Baby an Bord – Mit dem Kinderwagen durch das 20. Jahrhundert“ (Baby on Board – With the Pram through the 20th Century) shows prams and tells pram history with Viennese history. Fascinating pieces are to be seen. Among others the two wheeled Bugholz-Kinderfahrstuhl (bowed wooden children driving chair) (1905). A mixture of Thonet and a wheelchair. But perhaps handy as due to two additional small wheels one can easily climb side walks.

In the 1860 years the serial production of prams starts in Austria. A pram man is a pram inventor, pram producer at that times:
Protected with privileges by the emperor English prototypes are being improved in their stability and their spring system (1862). Cradle prams developed (1877). A „pram with an automated swaying movement“ invented (1900). A folding pram (1927) and a „stairs climbing transportation cart and especially pram“ (1956) patented.

Josephine von Wertheimstein – At Home the Viennese World

When the mirror speaks: You are „sociable, keen on meeting people, wonderfully gifted for rich, colourful, brilliant exchange“ then Josephine von Wertheimstein (1820 – 1894) is looking into the mirror. Her mirror is the writer and director of the Burgtheater Adolf Wilbrandt.

The villa of the family Wertheimstein in the Döblinger Hauptstraße 96 is today the District Museum of

Ludwig van Beethoven – Shareholder

Beethoven’s father was „attached“ to alcohol and he never had enough money. Beethoven (1770-1827) had on average per day in Vienna two bottles of white vine plus one bottle of red vine and he knew how to earn money.

Earning money as self-employed person was a challenge in times of political and economical revolutions, Napoleonic wars and national