Viennese History – Viennese Stories

Not only two female singers and two male singers survived the horrible fire in the Viennese Ringtheater in December 1881 but columns were under the survivors too. These theatre columns were still usable and cheap. That’s why they were included into the building of the church Kaisermühlenkirche at the Schüttauplatz. A place from where one easily can walk to the ”coldest part of Vienna”. Where a special track commemorates the ice extraction out of the Old Danube and the name reminds us of the discovery of the „Franz Josefs Lands“ in the Northern Arctic Sea.

Two clocks “survived” the fire of the Viennese Ringtheater too. They can be seen in the Clock Museum of the Wien Museum. As is the famous watch and clock collection of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach.

Wilhelmine (Minna) Kautsky – „Energy Awakening“

Minna Kautsky (1837 – 1912) was born in Graz and moved with her parents to Prague. She only gets one year of school education. But with the help of her father and well filled book shelves she can accomplish a kind of a private study. Her reading comprises theatre plays too and she develops a passion for the theatre. Minna becomes an actress. Marriage being 16, theatre engagements in Bohemia, Moravia and Germany, in-between children. Her first child is the “later leading theorizer of Marxism” Karl Kautsky. She cannot keep up such a demanding life for long, she collapses and gets a severe lung disease. Has to give up her theatre life being only 24. 1863 she moves with her husband and their children to Vienna. Her husband has got a position at the Hofburgtheater (imperial court theatre) as set painter.

During her illness she proceeds with her self study among others with reading Darwin. Finally she can learn – together with her children. The disease will remain to a certain extent forever but Karl’s enthusiasm gets transferred to Minna. She feels “young again, with inner power and a strong will.” [1] “And at my side I saw the young man who did only concentrate on how he could understand the theories of the great Master [Marx] profoundly; how he could develop himself and others to fighters for the right mission. He should not have had an impact on his mother? It was the beginning of an wonderful time, energy awakening, the life had beauty and a meaning [...]. I started to write, I had something to say.” [2]

Vienna Ice Revue – Once Upon a Time…

… there was a dream of the „Magic of Love” “In the Country of Dreams”. A dream under the “Rainbow” with “Masquerades”, “Confetti” and “Cocktails”. These were the imaginative names of the imaginative productions of the Revue (1945/46 – 1970/71).

Why was an Ice Revue developed in Vienna? There are two explanations. A sportive and an imaginative. The sportive explanation starts with much Austrian success in figure skating before and after World War II, among others Karl Schäfer, Emmy Puzinger, Emmerich Danzer. So there was potential for founding an Austrian style „Holiday On Ice“. With the music by Robert Stolz and the style of ice operettas they made the Austrian audience happy and could distinguish themselves abroad from their competitors. “The Vienna Ice Revue was a guarantee that after the War there was an Austrian product that was both brilliant and glamorous.” [1] The imaginative explanation is that Vienna was the right place for icy seductions & innovations, colourful & sweet ice exhibits. As a “logic consequence” the Eismarillenknödel (Ice Apricot Dumplings) got invented in 1967 and earned their inventor the title Kommerzialrat.

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.

Karl Anton von Martini – Right Vienna

Do I make a (fishy) compromise and prevent a defeat. Or is a (fishy) compromise the bigger defeat for my consciousness.
I get these ideas when I look at the ups and downs in Martinis’ life in the many socio-political areas of conflicts where he was active. Because Martini (1726 – 1800) quite often stood to his knowledge, insights and beliefs even if this was not wise strategically. Perhaps his way of living was based on a belief like this: “If we don’t make concessions we can collapse but never get spoiled.”*

Karl Anton Martini was born in Revò thirty kilometres north of Trient. The Bishop Principality at that time was a “paradise for lawyers and notaries”. Affected by this he arrives via the