Vienna [antikvár]

VIENNA AND THE VIENNESEThere must be something about the air in Vienna, about the varying hues of the Danube and the wind blowing from the Puszta, which, together with a myriad reminders of history, gives the city its incomparable atmosphere. Wherever one goes, one is struck by the contrast between narrow winding streets and broad avenues, the baroque and the modern, a hint of decadence and much evidence of technological progress between the Burgtheater and the cabarets, the Philharmonic and the Heurigen, where wine made from recently gathered grapes is served, between the spirit of the immortal "Lieber Augustin", a singer of folk songs during the 17th-century plague, and that of Sig-mund Freud. A relaxed elegance and a faint melancholy also contribute to the charm of the formerAbove: coat-of-arms on the pediment of a Viennese palace: the symbol of a glorious past; a statue in the Belvedere. Left: statue of Prince Eugene of Savoy, on the Heldenplatz, in the heart of the Hofburg.imperial capital, which is itself covered with a veil of nostalgia.Archeologists have found that the Viennese basin had already been colonized by the year 2000 BC. After the Illyrians came the Celts, who settled around 400 BC at Vedunia, a name which originally meant "spring of the forest". In 16 BC, under Emperor Augustus, the Romans moved in from Pannonia, established camps such as Vindo-bona and peacefully assumed control of the Danube region; there was also a civilian colony of the same name, with some twenty thousand inhabitants. The philosopher-emperor, Marcus Aurel-ius, died here in 180 AD. Then came successive waves of Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Slavs, until 796, when Charlemagne established the Carolin-gian Marches. In 907 the area was occupied by the Magyars, who were eventually driven out of the Viennese basin in 991, during the reign of Otto the Great, by Margrave Leopold I, the most illustrious son of the Bavarian House of Babenberg. In 1106 Leopold III, or St. Leopold, transferred his residence from Melk to a castle situated on the Kahl-berg. In 1137 Vienna began to figure prominently as a commercial city. The locally minted Viennese pfennigs/as the currency of choice for the Crusad-ers who assembled here. Ottokar the Good of Bohemia succeeded his brother-in-law Francis II, last Duke of Babenberg, on the throne. The city, which had often been destroyed by vast fires, benefited greatly from his rule. On his death in 1282 power passed into the hands of the Habs-burgs, in the person of Duke Albrech 11. They were to retain control for nearly seven hundred years, untill 1918. The German kings, and later on the emperors of the Germanic Holy Roman Emperor, were to reside in Vienna almost without interruption from 1298 onwards. Nothing could stop the ascent of the Habsburgs neither fires nor epidemics, and not even the plague, which wiped out more than a third of the population. In 1529 the powerfully built fortifications successfully withstood the siege by the Turkish forces the first of many such attacks. In 1683 the Grand Vizier Kara Mustapha laid siege to the city with an enormous horde of soldiers. Count Starhemberg and Mayor Liebenberg defended Vienna courageously with a distinctly smaller force, and Prince Eugene of Savoy finally liberated it at the Battle of Kahlen-berg. The buildings erected by him mark the beginning of the Baroque Golden Age of'Vienna Gloriosa'. During the reign of Empress Maria-3