Imperial Austria

 

The Hofburg Palace

In Vienna we decided to visit the Hofburg Complex. This was originally the winter residence of the Habsburgs, rulers of Austria. The oldest parts date from the 13^th century. Today there is no need for a palace. It has been split up into various sections. So here is located the Spanish Riding School, the Hofburgkapelle famed for the Sunday masses sung by the Vienna Boys’ choir, the Imperial treasury, the Austrian National Library, as well as the Silberkammer (Imperial Silver Collection), some Imperial Apartments & the Sisi Museum. It is to the latter we went.

You enter via the silver collection. It is probably wise to go this way as I think you probably wouldn’t bother if you’d been to the Imperial Apartments & the Sisi Museum. And yet it is impressive. The sheer quantity of cooking pots, silverware, cutlery, plates, table centrepieces etc. was overwhelming. It was apparently normal for them to be cooking for 5,000 people a day at the palace, so you can imagine how much was needed to cater for so many people. There were dazzling arrays of gold & silver, & later porcelain services.

Just one room of the glittering array

We were beginning to get a bit bored by it all as we went through room after room, when we progressed upstairs to the Imperial apartments, done up as in the time of the Emperor Franz Joseph (1830-1916). The great heaters, like giant samovars, were magnificent.

There was also a great sadness about the place. The emperor’s study was bedecked with pictures of his beloved family. Yet his wife, the Empress Elisabeth (1837-1898) only showed pictures of her family in Bavaria.

More of the mystery was revealed as we moved into the Sisi Mueum. The Empress Elisabeth, affectionately known as Sisi, was a strange woman. In many ways she was the Princess Diana of her day. She was very beautiful – one look at Winterhalter’s portrait of the young Sisi proves that. She was not brought up in expectation of the role. Her older sister had been groomed for that. However, the young Franz Joseph & Sisi fell in love & that was that. She found life surrounded by so many people overwhelming, her freedom drastically curtailed as she had to behave just so. Her health was affected. She spent much of her time abroad. Eventually she was assassinated by an anarchist in France. Franz Josef was never the same again.

Later on, when we had left Vienna for our stay in the lakes & mountain of the Salzkammergut area of Austria, we visited Bad Ischl, & the Kaiservilla, the Imperial Summer Palace.

The Kaiservilla

It was easy to see why she so much preferred this place. It is so much smaller, so more manageable. She was free to go riding when she wanted, to have something like a normal family life. Oh yes, it was still a privileged but so more informal, more of a Downton Abbey than the prison of the Hofburg Palace.

We unfortunately could not go in the house due to my wheelchair. However we did explore some of the gardens & got the feel of the place, so much greener than central Vienna.

The "And yet so far away" themed garden reflecting Sisi's travels abroad to the likes of Corfu & Madeira

Part of the "White Garden" reflecting Franz Josef's love of hunting. The building behind is the Kaiservilla

What do you do for world peace?

“So, what do you do for world peace?” were the words that greeted us as we stepped into the ViennaPeace Museum.  The question has haunted me ever since.

The Fox, the more quick witted of us responded, “We smile at people.”

This took the man, a priest from Kenya, aback a bit. I don’t think he ever thought a smile could help the cause of peace.

I found myself thinking “We try to promote understanding. We give time to people.”

We are only small powerless people in world terms, in any terms for that matter.  It is difficult to think anything we do is going to make much difference.

When I was a child I had a speech defect. As a result I spent much time practising smiling, in order to pronounce the English “ee” sound properly. I soon discovered if you smile at people, more often than not, they smile back. Everyone’s life seems that much better for it. I still like to practice & hope to bring a little ray of joy in someone else’s life.

Also as a child, even at primary school, my role was the peacemaker, the arbiter in disputes. If one child was causing trouble, biting or fighting, it was my job to sort it. I did so by words, not force.

In France we are constantly being told the French & the English cannot be friends, & yet we have found nothing but friendliness & kindness there. We take time to stop & chat, to get to know other people & for them to get to know us a bit. We do so for our own pleasure, but I suppose as a side effect it maybe helps relations between the two nations, albeit in a small way.

I suppose to some extent you could say some of my blogs are an endeavour to promote understanding, usually of disability, but above all of difference.

Ultimately I suspect understanding is the only weapon we do have in the face of war & aggression. You are far less likely to attack another nation if you see of them as a nation of people, facing the same everyday problems you do, if they are humans rather than animals, numbers, aliens, to be suspicious of & to fear.

And yet, maybe war is an inherent characteristic of man. There has never been a prolonged period of peace. It seems to me my generation has been lucky not to have had to go to fight. But even in our generation it has to be admitted our own country has not been entirely at peace, just look at Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Iraq, Aden, for example. It’s as though there is almost an inherent urge to go to war.

There could be so many reasons for war. Religion seems to have promoted more war than peace, to divide rather than unite – just think of the Crusades, Partition between Pakistan & India, the present troubles with radical Islam.  

Some men seem to feel only truly alive when they feel that buzz, intensity of life, only when life itself is at risk, as in war – in peace the only resort is high risk sport. For some war is an opportunity for revenge, for wrongs done to family & friends in the past. For others it’s an opportunity for greed as land can be taken over & goods pillaged, an opportunity to make money on the inevitable black market & people smuggling. Others have the chance to use power for their own selfish desires in the knowledge they will go unpunished, & happily use weapons such as rape to that end.

Can man ever be truly at peace with fellow man? I wonder. But the only hope I can see is if man sees the other man as a person, good, bad & indifferent, but above all a fellow human being, if he discovers what is common between them rather than what separates them.

Our answers earned an invite for a free stay in Kenya. I can’t see us taking up the invite. The practicalities of being disabled & a wheelchair user make a stay in rural Kenya unfeasible. But I do think the offer was genuine & kindly meant.

Meanwhile we keep smiling. And giving time to people. And talking.

So what do you do for world peace?

The hawk & the dove

The time has come for a few reminiscences about our trip to Austria, about what we saw & did.

We started our holiday with a few days in Vienna.

Our first full day we decided to tackle Gustav Klimt. From my reading beforehand clearly he was going to dominate the holiday. As it happened he didn’t. Souvenirs with his artwork could be found everywhere, but the only original Klimt we saw was in Vienna.

Anyway we set off for the Upper Belvedere, where a large collection of 19^th-21st century art can be found, including many Klimt & Schiele.

The Upper Belvedere

The building itself is part of the palace complex built for Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736), Austria’s greatest military leader, & is an artwork in itself. Gilt & Baroque twiddles appeared everywhere. Personally I think it would be overpowering to live with & a nightmare to keep dust-free. Nonetheless it was beautiful & shouted power & money with all its gilding.

As for Klimt. We did see some of his most famous works. The one that really hit me was “The Kiss”. I had always heard & read of it being described as a wonderful encapsulation of passionate love. I was shocked to realise I didn’t feel it was.

Instead I saw violence. Seeing the original I felt it was as though the male was like a bird of prey, a hawk, pouncing on a gentle defenceless dove. It was more of a rape than a loving kiss. She almost seems to be turning away to avoid his embrace. She’s unable to escape from the strength & power of the man. He dominates her & seems to force her against her will. This is quite a different interpretation from any I have come across. It had never struck me seeing this image in reproduction before.

I still shudder a bit at the memory of the image. I think we’ve both come back unsure about Klimt. I’m telling myself he obviously must have a certain greatness as an artist to have such an impact on me, yet what I saw repulsed me.

We did go on to look at other of his works, including “Judith” & some landscapes. What really struck me was the amount of gold leaf he used in all his painting, also the amount of intricate patterning, especially in fabrics.

The Upper Belvedere seen from the gardens

The Belvedere gardens seen from the Upper Belvedere, looking down tot he Lower Belvedere & across Vienna

I had thought we might stop at the Seccession Building on the way back to our hotel. This building houses Klimt’s “Beethoven Frieze”, but by the time we were ready to leave the Belvedere complex we were too weary to do anything except head back to the hotel. We passed the golden tracery of dome of the Secession Building in the taxi as we made our way to the train station at the end of our stay in Vienna.