A Look at Vienna [antikvár]

The destiny of the city lies in its position. Should one wish to show a person who knows little about Vienna a point from which he can clearly see the special characteristics of Vienna's role and its layout, one could not do better than take the visitor up to the observation terrace on Kahlenberg, and then drive or stroll with him to the church on Leopoldsberg, from where one has a particularly beautiful view of the city and of the Danube's course. Then one will recognize how it is that the position of this city is also its destiny; decisively dominating the WestEastern course of the Danube, opening out towards the North, South and East, and nestling in the last gentle foothills of the Alps. And we shall see that whoever stood on this spot must have had far-reaching political and cultural plans; for from where else than precisely this place, from this central point which later became Vienna, can one better contemplate the three great geographically conditioned bordering formations, namely the territories of the Alps, of the Sudetes and of the Carpathian mountains. We know too that even the Romans built their Limes Road alongside the Danube. At the same time they erected, at the point of an important Danube crossing towards the North, Carnuntum, which later became the Governor's seat, together with its companion military camp Vindobona. This was in the first century A. D. We must also bear in mind that in the Middle Ages the Danube, the Nibelungen Road, was the most important WestEast route, along which, for instance in the 11th and 12th centuries, many thousands of pilgrims travelled towards the Holy City. One can also mention that long before the existence of a political structure in this area east of Vienna the Bernstein (Amber)-Road ran from North to South, whereby the importance of Vienna's position seems once again to be proved. And if, during the debates about the fate of Austria after 1945, one could frequently hear used the expression "Austria and Vienna are the turn-table of Europe", that is just one more proof of how, today as much as in the Bronze Age, the position of this city is its destiny.Here we have arrived at the second decisive factor, namely the people of this region. For thousands of years people of utterly different origins have moved to this turn-table of Europe. Consider that long before this area was moulded by the Romans, processions of Celtic, Teutonic and Slavic nomads wandered through the district and also became resident for varying periods, and it is a fact that no group of settlers ever moved on in entirety or was completely annihilated. Some always stayed behind, and in this way the mixture peculiar to the Viennese originated, so that even today it is jokingly said that a true Viennese is of Bohemian or Hungarian origin. This in fact is actually the case with a large part of the population, thereby characterizing this city as a constant magnet for immigrants and migrants. But let us return to Roman times: while the Romans were the rulers here, roughly from the end of the 1st century A. D. up to the beginning of the 5th century, there was a continuous coming and going. Many thousands of veterans most of them already married in Vindobona remained here after their term of duty expired. And when one knows how much recruiting was done all over the world for the Roman army, then one realizes how greatly this mixture has helped to form the nature and character of the Viennese.Of no less importance is the time of the migration of nations. We need only think of the three great Mongolian streams that settled temporarily as lords of this region: the Huns, coming shortly after the departure of the Romans, then the Avaric tribes, who ruled here principally from the 8th century until the victorious wars of Charlemagne, and finally the Magyars, who put an end to the Carolingian EasternV