Thursday, March 22, 2012
Last Things

Yesterday I thought I was going to Bratislava, Slovakia for the day, but more tasks than I could fit into one afternoon required me to cancel the plan and work in the morning. I felt at loose ends, thinking that I had "mastered" Vienna, and it was only left for me to go to the Leopold Museum for the "Klimt: Up Close and Personal" show. This is the 150th anniversary of Klimt's birth, so it is "all Klimt, all the time" in Vienna this year.. --I certainly enjoy his masterworks, but I would have preferred to see the Durer drawing of a hare at the Albertinga. That was impossible because the museum does not show a permanent colleciton and was exhibiting 19th and 20th century works. What to do instead?

I had an article from a book, "The Gentle Art Of Walking", an assortment of articles from The New York Times, compiled thirty years ago. I had made a photocopy of one, "Walking Tour In Old Vienna", by George W. Oakes, who began writing for the Travel Section of the Times in 1961, and continued to do so until his death in 1965

The article, only two and a half pages, including a small map highlighting the stops, proved me wrong in my pride. I spent the entire day walking, completing both walks. Having done so, perhaps now I can say I know Vienna a little.

I began with the hall of the Teutonic Knights, formed in the Crusades, and after, soldiers in the service of princes of German-speaking lands. The Maltese Cross is emblazoned on one of the dorrways, although I don't know whether I use the name correctly, strictly speaking. From there I entered Saint Stephen's Cathedral, the Stefansdom, and took the elevator to the top of the dome. Here are the most spectacular view of Vienna, but of particular interest to me was the "Pummerin", the cathedral bell, cast from the cannonballs of the defeated Turks. It is possible to bend a 50 cent Euro piece into a souvenir of the Pummerin, which I did for luck on my journey.

From there I walked through many small passageways, as Viennese did centuries ago. Not far away was the University quarter and the Jesuit Church, which rivals Il Gesu in Rome, which I saw last week. Further on I passed Rotenturmstrasse, where Johannes Brahms would take his meals. it ought to be said here that the great composer was popular with the Viennese, unlike Mozart and Schubert, who were not, in the view of music-lovers and historians of music, given the recognition they deserved by the Viennese.

The reasons for Vienna's aversion to Mozart and Schubert were revealed to me by my friend Imre a few days ago. As to Mozart, he explained, the composer was a heavy gambler and debt-ridden, as well as an impulsive, unpleasant fellow to be around. Schubert had another defect: he was a great sexual athlete. This led to the syphillis from which he died --but not before he infected some thirty women. Situations alter cases, as the counsel for the prosecution --or defense--might say.

I went on to visit the Greek Orthodox Church and the Danube canal. This is after all, the city where Strauss wrote "The Beautiful Blue Danube" --although "Danube" is "Donau" in German. Lastly, I went off the map to try to find the Palais Ephrussi, the home of the Jewish Viennese bankers who lost everything to the Nazis during the Second World War, haven risen to spectacular heights in Paris and Rome through the Ephrussi Banks located in each.

The original palace was badly destroyed during the war, and was sold to the Austrian government by the family, which was paid $55,000 for it in the 1950s. Today it is the headquarters of an Austrian bank. After stumbling around two other impressive looking buildings on the Doctor Karl Luger section of the Ringstrasse, I stand in front of a building that houses an Italian cafe and a MacDonalds on each side of a heavy wooden double door. I push open one of them and enter an imposing narrow entrance way, high-ceilinged, the walls lined in red and black marble. I proceed through the foyer into an atrium around which i see the floors of an elegant 19th century palace. There is a young woman, dressed casually with a colorful scarf around her head, sitting at a bare reception desk, and no one else visible. When I ask here whether I am standing inside the Palais Ephrussi, she nods her head, "Yes". She knows about the book, and "Yes", many people come to see.

Around the corner, up to the middle of the block --to which the Palais extends-- there is a modern, glass-windowed bookstore featuring, in German --"The Hare With Amber Eyes", ceramicist Edmund de Waal's book about his family, the Ephrussis. There is an old photograph of the original Palais Ephrussi that forms part of the poster for the book on sale within, but the decoration on the topmost part of the building features classical Greek statues of women --perhaps meant to be metaphorical guardians of the Ephrussi interests-- and I am wondering whether I have really found the Palais. The bookseller confirms that the building is the Palais Ephrussi, and when, as I leave I say that if my German were better, I would buy the book, like a good "buchhandlung" --bookseller-- he points to English copies on the table..

A personal note: when I was first in Vienna --for only a night and a day twenty years ago, I came upon a rare book and print shop near the Augustinerkirche and the Albertina. I bought a print of a "durchhaus" --one of those narrow little roofed streets that are extensions of attached houses, and common to medieval Vienna.. It was possible, through a "durchhaus", to avoid Turkish cannon during the Siege of Vienna in 1529 and the Battle of Vienna in 1683, I bought the print to remind me of Vienna's winding streets, and their mystery. Wandering around the city, I could not find it, and wondered how I got the idea the city was smaller than it actually is. Yesterday, I stumbled on the shop, "Wolfrum Buchhandlung", near the Augustinerkirche and the Albertina. I had been circling around it all week.