Franz Josefs Land – Vienna’s Coldest District

Once you have seen currents of people floating into the Städtische Bad Gänsehäufel* (Municipal Lido Gänsehäufel) at the Alte Donau (Old Danube) in summer you may not believe that this used to be the “coldest” part of Vienna in former times. The reason? Nature and patriotic innkeepers.

From 1882 to 1917 natural ice was extracted from the Old Danube. The ice was the only cooling substance for restaurants and butchers. So called ice choppers extracted the ice out of the frozen Danube and rafted it to ice cellars and ice caverns. What a job!

Aglaia von Enderes – A singing lark doesn’t bring the summer?

„Some inches below the green grass mother made him a bed; the brown furrow slice is his blanket, fine roots are hanging everywhere, his future food. Deep silence and peace around him; the sun lays her hot beams across the soil, warm damp breath swells through the ground. Four to six weeks pass, then something is moving and stirring in the egg and a tiny clumsy grub is crawling out of it.” (Maikäfers Leben und Sterben – May Beetle’s Life and Death [1])

„An egoist with an unfriendly apart character, ponderous appearance and high self-sufficiency. He lives like a hermit and selfish as an old confirmed bachelor does and takes care of his own belly.” (Der Dachs – The Bauson [1])

Wilhelm Beetz – To satisfy Viennese needs

That nightmare: You need to go to the toilet urgently. Searching, running, asking – nothing helps. Nowhere a toilette. Depending on your personality the dream may continue in different fatal ways. What if a man or a women would appear, covered in a wide coat that covers a wooden bucket too. The bucket to sit on – the coat to cover you. Would you dare to end your problem for just two kreutzers?

These Buttenmänner and Buttenweiber (wooden bucket men, wooden bucket women) did exist really in Vienna at the beginning 19th century and this already meant some hygienic improvement. Because the situation in Vienna was upsetting: “heavy-weight air”, “harmful evaporations”, “like in fog”, a higher mortality rate than in Paris and London.

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.

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