The Vienna Review

On the Town
City Life
The Grätzl / ‘gr З:tsl /noun
(Viennese dialect) a neighbourhood in Vienna contained
by subjective boundaries and a coherent identity
The Gloriette in Schönbrunn Park, imported stone for stone from the Semmering
Photo: Pietro Zuco
Hietzing:
Graceful Living Remuddled
by Nicholas Parsons
One day, just as I was passing the noble portal of Plachutta’s legendary Hietzinger Bräu, an
exotic figure emerged with his entourage.
“Why, it’s DJ Ötzi!” exclaimed my female
companion excitedly. “Wow!” I said, not having
the slightest idea who DJ Ötzi might be, but not
wishing to appear uncool. Evidently the occasional bunte Vogel may yet be sighted in the 13th
Bezirk, as in years past when cameras rolled at
a film studio nearby, or the further past, when
Ferdinand Raimund strutted his stuff at the long
demolished Hietzinger Theater.
But that is emphatically not what solid,
bourgeois Hietzing is about today. Nor is DJ
Ötzi the typical Stammgast at Hietzinger Bräu,
the carnivore’s temple whose elegance recalls the
lamented Zu den drei Husaren in the Inner City
in its halcyon days.
The conservatism, mirrored in Plachutta’s
signature dish of Emperor Franz Joseph’s favourite Tafelspitz, is entirely appropriate to Hietzing
by Duncan J.D. Smith
Vienna’s summer streets are a hive of activity,
as visitors make pilgrimage from park to palace,
and market to museum. Understandably, many
locals flee to the countryside for the cool and the
quiet.
But there is another way! And that is to head
underground. Beneath the 1st District is a warren of secret places that speak just as eloquently
about the history of the city.
Signposts to the past
Signposts to subterranean Vienna are easily
missed. Take the curving row of baroque houses
at the top of Naglergasse. They sit exactly over
the long-lost north-west corner of the Roman
legionary fortress of Vindobona, a stunning example of continuity in the urban landscape. The
two levels are separated by 20 metres of accumulated occupation debris, providing archaeologists
with a palimpsest of Vienna’s development.
Geography dictated the location of Vindobona, which was founded on a heap of glacial
boulders rising conveniently above the Danube
floodplain. The river was the Roman frontier,
and Vindobona one of a string of forts built to
guard it. A staircase from Hoher Markt leads
underground to a ruined house that once stood
at the city’s main crossroads – now the site of the
fascinating Römermuseum. And just behind the
museum at Ertlgasse 4, a five-storey cellar leads
down to the remains of the fortress gateway.
Great piles of bones
The Romans buried their dead just outside
their fortress walls, where Stephansdom now
stands. Perhaps the Roman gravestone incorporated into the twelfth century cathedral’s entrance
was to mollify the ancient gods? When the city’s
graveyards were cleared in the eighteenth century
great piles of bones were stacked like firewood in
which, after all, borders on the park of Schönbrunn. Its turn of the century inhabitants included the actress and imperial companion Katharina Schratt, who lived only a short walk away
(Gloriettegasse 9). Other satellites of the imperial circle also took up residence here, notably
the senior bureaucrats whose elegant residences
stretch into the Hietzing hinterland.
Artists, musicians and the media
The “new” (1787) Hietzinger Friedhof bears
witness also to cultural icons like Alban Berg,
Otto Wagner, Fanny Elßler, Franz Grillparzer,
and industrialists who have favoured leafy Hietzing in the past. Architectural buffs may spend
a rewarding day tracking down their elegant Secessionist villas designed by Josef Plecnik, Josef
Hoffmann and Adolf Loos. The most celebrated
is surely Hoffmann’s fine Villa Skywa-Primavesi
(1913 – Gloriettegasse 18), built, says Architektur Wien, “at the high, and simultaneously end,
point of the Viennese style of cultivated living.”
The Vienna Review
September 2012
Politically too, Hietzing remains (like the
Altstadt) conservative, an oasis of the ÖVP in a
Socialist city. Tradition reigns at the lovely Café
Dommayer, where Johann Strauss Jr. made his
wildly successful debut on the music scene. Today it belongs to the upmarket Oberlaa chain
of Konditoreien, but its idiosyncrasies remain:
The international newspapers still hang near the
entrance, the velvet benches are soft, the niches
cosy. But they have upgraded the sticky cakes and
extended the garden at the rear. The clientele is
sprinkled with ORF journalists descending from
their fiefdom on Küniglberg, but otherwise few
Promis (celebs), all served by staff whose dignified courtesy stands in stark contrast to the vulgar mateyness of a London coffee shop.
No doubt the tranquil villas and noble apartments in residential Hietzing were deemed conducive to reflection and creativity. Gustav Klimt
rented a small house at Feldmühlgasse 11 that was
his studio between 1911 and his death in 1918.
Here he would start the day’s work after a notorious breakfast that included a pint of cream from
the Schönbrunn dairy, not exactly calculated to
prolong life. Of the paintings created in this atelier, the landscape Litzlberg am Attersee (done from
sketches after his annual Sommerfrische) sold in
New York in 2011 for $40 million. It was also
thanks to Klimt that the young Egon Schiele
rented a studio at Hietzinger Hauptstrasse 101 in
1912, only four blocks away. This autumn, the
restored Klimt villa will reopen to the public.
The Emperor and new clothes
Hietzing village is the retail and service centre of the neighbourhood at the west end of
Schönbrunn Park, which, with its museums,
Orangerie, Tiergarten (zoo) and Palmenhaus is
a universe unto itself. And overlooking the park
gates stands the neo-baroque Parkhotel Schönbrunn, built in 1907. Thomas Edison stayed here
in 1911 during his European tour, promoting
his inventions. Later came the stars from the
Maxingstrasse film studio, making the hotel’s
“Film Ball” a highlight of the season.
Sadly, traffic streams and tram routes have
ruined Hietzing’s architectural cohesion, not
improved by the ugly Ekazent shopping centre
(1965), the hideous glass and metal extensions
to the Parkhotel and adjacent boutiques, the
worst of '60s urban renewal. Many a Hietzinger
claims this was the revenge of the Socialists.
Still, the shopping centre houses one of Vienna’s
increasingly rare bookshops, a CD shop with a
good line in classics and curiosities, an organic
food joint, and a Radatz doing a roaring trade in
pensioners’ lunches.
Alternative medicine is big as is everything
organic, and (perhaps significantly) there are
two distributors for hearing aids doing brisk
business in the High Street.
Stones of Vienna
Beneath Vienna's cobblestones and cellars you find a labyrith
of ­hidden passages, crypts, churches and forgotten relics
Subterranean Cityscapes
a labyrinthine crypt beneath the cathedral, where
they remain to this day. Also here are urns containing Habsburg entrails, their hearts and bodies
stored elsewhere to ensure the dynasty’s omnipresence in death. Then, during the 1970s, UBahn engineers tunnelling beneath Stephansplatz
made an unexpected discovery: a vaulted Gothic
chapel constructed around the same time as the
cathedral. It was built to house the relics of a saint
and later as a family crypt dedicated to Saint Virgil. This extraordinary structure is visible from the
U-Bahn concourse.
Steps leading down to the labyrinthine crypt of St. Stephan’s Cathedral
Photo: Duncan J.D. Smith
21
The young head to the trendy Mario, Plachutta junior’s Italian locale, where a laid-back
younger set toy with their iPhones while nibbling
over a breakfast of farmer’s cheese and fruit salad.
For the trencherman, however, the marvellous
Brandauer’s Schlossbräu, formerly a Biedermeier
dance hall, serves the best spareribs in town under
the chestnut trees of its gemütlicher Biergarten.
And don’t forget the delightful Hietzinger
Pfarrkirche, a late 17th century Baroque gem incorporating the ruined core of an earlier Gothic
church destroyed by Turkish and Hungarian
incursions. Am Platz, north of the church, is a
statue of the ill-fated Maximilian, Franz Joseph’s
talented and frustrated younger brother who accepted the crown of Mexico, only to be slaughtered by his intended subjects in 1867.
Just as Hietzing once swam in the imperial
orbit of Schönbrunn, so Maximilian swam, and
sank, in the orbit of the European dynasties that
lost interest in the imperial adventure on which
they had sent him.
¸
Plachutta Hietzinger Bräu:
Auhofstraße 1, Tel: 877 70 87
Café Dommayer:
Auhofstraße 2, Tel: 877 54 65
Mario:
Lainzer Straße 2, Tel: 876 90 90
Brandauer’s Schlossbräu:
Am Platz 5, Tel: 879 59 70
The Klimt Villa (Feldmühlgasse 11)
officially opens on the 30 September 2012
Hietzinger Pfarrkirche:
Am Platz 1
Schönbrunn Park
Schönbrunner Schloßstraße 47
A ghostly synagogue
The Babenbergs, the dynasty that preceded
the Habsburgs, extended privileges to the Jews
of Vienna, albeit confining them to a gated community. At its heart was a synagogue containing
one of the most important Talmudic schools in
the German-speaking world. After the Habsburgs
ascended to power in 1278, they made scapegoats
of the Jews and torched the synagogue. These
charred remains lay buried beneath Judenplatz
for six centuries until they were excavated in the
1990s. They now form the centrepiece of one of
Vienna’s most affecting museums, reached by a
tunnel from the Jewish school in the corner of the
square. The demarcation of the ruins is represented by a ghostly line on the pavement surrounding
Rachel Whiteread’s Holocaust Memorial.
Crumbling walls
The Turkish Siege of Vienna in 1683 might
have been successful were it not for the city’s colossal walls. So it was particularly ironic when
in 1848 these stones were used by home-grown
revolutionaries against Austrian troops. So the
walls were demolished to build the Ringstrasse,
although fragments remain, including a gate in
the Stubentor U-Bahn station, and tunnels beneath the Palais Coburg visible from the street.
Alongside another fragment at Schottentor
is the Melkerhof, the former townhouse of the
monks of Melk Abbey, who in 1629 received the
right to sell wine in Vienna, which they stored in
cellars beneath the house. These are still accessible
today through Tostmann’s Trachten shop, guarded by the ghosts of those who sheltered here from
air raids during the Second World War. ¸
Duncan J.D. Smith is the author of
Only in Vienna
(Christian Brandstätter Verlag)
www.duncanjdsmith.com