Vienna, Allegory of Itself

The twoness of Vienna—of land and city—on display. 

Many things that Vienna is, it also is not. It is Roman—it certainly looks and acts Roman—and yet in antiquity it was little more than a military encampment, of which hardly anything remains. It is—or was—the center of Europe, the capital of a continent; yet in many ways it is also peripheral. Linguistically, culturally, and geographically, it exists on a boundary: between Slavic, Romance, and Germanic; between the relaxed Mediterranean and the more serious north; between alps, to the west, and the vast plains of Hungary to the east, the Danube tracing a line between them. And while "downtown Vienna" is certainly metropolitan, Vienna is also not a metropolis—not, at least, if you consider that fully a quarter of Vienna is either forest or meadowlands, and another seventeen percent is used for farming. Vienna is in fact made up of a collection of villages, which were only gradually—and only partially—gathered into a single entity.

What follows is a written "map" of Vienna, compiled from three days of walking, which illustrates (I hope) a reading of Vienna as a metaphorical image of itself, in all its polarities and tensions.

1. The city limits—forest. Vienna's ancient frontier character, which endures especially in its position as the easternmost outpost of Western Europe, is alive here as well. For the frontier's romance is the nearness of the other—which the Viennese have preserved in the ring of trees that invades their city from the west. Vienna cherishes within itself the negative image of the city—"the natural"—and in this way, the mythos of the frontier, of the changing of realms, is replicated. As Vienna is a watershed for Europe, so is the tree-line a watershed for Vienna; and these watersheds, as they divide, also unite.

2. Kahlenberg—in 1683, the Polish cavalry charged down this hill to break the Turkish siege of the city. Just as the Kahlenberg's steep incline sends you tumbling into the heart of the city—you seem to be pulled down its face—such was Vienna's pull on its neighbors. The Poles were drawn to its defense by sacred duty: in fulfillment of the ties of the Coalition of Christians. Vienna's holy weight cannot but pull you in.

3. Vineyards—raked into the forest slopes near the city's edges. Vienna's best memory of Rome: the introduction of the grapevine. Importing Rome's legacy must be done thoroughly, after all.

4. Graveyards—the first signs of the city; or, walking the other direction, its last outposts. Vienna, the crossroads of death, of wars measured in decades—a history better not remembered, better pushed to the margins. The Protestant Cemetery, pushed out especially far—almost outside the city.

5. Beethovengang—here, Vienna has inverted itself. The track into the woods: Beethoven wrote this place into his music. Now, they have written Beethoven into this place. (Don't forget the adjacent Beethovenhaus, Beethovenpark, Beethovenruhe, and Beethovendenkmal.)

6. Czartoriskygasse—keeps good company with Vienna's many Slavic streets. These are the inroads of the peripheral East toward the city center—inroads from Vienna's hinterlands. These streets are channels simultaneously for international inpouring and imperial outpouring; they, like Vienna, run in two directions.

7. Karlskirche—a monster. Disparate Roman monuments have been copied and welded together to create a terrifying complex, almost incapable of being read. It is simultaneously a temple, victory columns, St. Peter's Basilica, a Viennese façade, and a Turkish mosque. These are the ideas that have been assembled to create Vienna—the ancient, the imperial, the Christian, the provincial, the foreign. How to interpret?

8. Kunst und Natur—two identical palaces face off across a garden. One is the Art History Museum; the other, the Natural History Museum. Bearing twin inscriptions, they are the two poles of the world:  two locked in confrontation over Vienna's landscape. But just as Vienna's richly built interior and wild exterior form one and the same city, so are the two museums simultaneously made one in the lofted figure of Maria Theresa, whose monumental statue anchors the center of their garden. The combined powers of Art and Nature have elevated her—mother of the city—to supernatural height.

9. AEIOU—the cipher of the emperor Frederick III, a mystery to this day; convincingly interpreted as Austriae est imperare orbi universo—"Austria is destined to rule the whole world." But in the anti-fascist resistance of the 1930s and 40s, the cipher gained a new meaning in graffiti carvings around the city: Allen ernstes ist Österreich Unersetzlich—"Truly, Austria is irreplaceable." From the whole world to the homeland: Austria has turned on its hinges, and recycles the past to project itself forward. This revolution, both in Austria and the AEIOU, is inscribed into the Stephansplatz at the center of the city: the memorial to the resistance is carved into St. Stephen's cathedral, Frederick III's resting place; across the street, the glass Haas-Haus, one of the most modern and most controversial buildings in Vienna. Its glass reflects the cathedral's image‚ heavily distorted. Vienna is constantly molding the past into a new future.


10. Stephansdom—Vienna was long the political center of all Europe—like a gravitational anomaly, it collected all things to itself; cultural fragments rolled into the Danube basin and, transfigured, came to rest there. More identities than one city can accommodate crowded in, packed together under their own weight; each shoving at the others for breathing room. There could be no better symbol for this than Vienna's own definitive center, both in space and idea—the Stephansdom, St. Stephen's cathedral. The crowding of monuments, altars, tombs, inscriptions, statues, and styles in this church is bewildering—like having walked into a raging argument whose substance is washed away by sheer volume. Here every emperor, duke, and bishop has hung his trophy on the wall. In its center, in its highest church, Vienna collects its meaning: centuries, empires, and vast landscapes, crammed into a universal point.

Stephansdom, section of interior.