Pietas Austriaca

'After the Habsburg lands had recovered to some extent from the consequences of the Thirty Years' War, the populace of this region was struck by yet another misfortune: the plague. It came from Hungary in 1678 and quickly spread to the west. It is thought to have claimed some fifty thousand victims in Vienna alone. In an effort to escape this epidemic, the royal household fled to Prague in 1679. Here too, however, the number of fatalities was not insignificant: some six thousand people met their death in the city by the Moldau.

The plague had barely been brought under control when disaster once again struck the still-suffering populace. This time it was the Turks. As is well known, they stood before the gates of Vienna in 1683 after having plundered and pillaged the surrounding countryside. Although the Turks could be repulsed by the relieving army under the command of King John III of Poland (John Siebiski), the running fights exhausted the resources of the strained populace. During subsequent years the invaders were increasingly driven back to the east and defeated in a series of battles by Prince Eugene of Savoy, the emperor's famous general. The final triumph over the Turks and over the Plague, with the latter returning, however, in a devastating epidemic in 1713, marked the "birth" of the Pietas Austriaca, the lived piety of the Habsburgs. In gratitude for having survied such extreme misfortune, people erected plague columns and similar monuments in many places and held pilgrimages and processions in honor of the saints who had protected them. The most magnificent testimony to this newly strengthened piety was certainly the Karlskirche (Church of St. Charles) in Vienna that Emperor Charles VI, fulfilling a vow, had built by Johann Bernhard Fischer in 1713. The spirit of the times also found expression in music, where court ceremony and lived piety met ...'

From the liner notes to CPO's 2006 2CD Vienna 1700: Baroque Music from Austria, one of a number of interesting albums exploring the music of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Wanbires on the front page

According to this weekly newspaper from March 1732, the Habsburg Emperor Charles VI found the news of the so-called 'Wanbieren', or Bloodsuckers, so curious and important, that the reports should be sent to the universities for evaluation. As we know, a lot was written on the subject over the next months and years, making the vampire a household name.

Prefect of the Court Library

While in Vienna I revisited the 'home' of the above fellow, the bust of good old Gerard van Swieten in the Prunksaal (State Hall) of the Austrian National Library. Van Swieten was prefect of the Court Library from 1745 to 1772, and according to the museum guide, 'utilizing his contacts with booksellers in Paris, Venice and Leiden, he amassed a collection of contemporary scientific literature from across Western Europe.'

The hall itself was constructed by order of Charles VI whose statue is close to van Swieten's bust in the hall. It was built and decorated at the time of the famous Serbian cases, that is from 1723-30. In those days it housed the entire collection of the Court Library and was actually open to the public. In 1738 the Bibliotheca Eugeniana, the library of Prince Eugene of Savoy was purchased by the Emperor and installed in the hall.

Nowadays the hall is used for the National Library's exhibitions, the current concerning early geographical approaches to other continents.

Bloody crimes in a magnificent library

As mentioned in my previous post, Gerard van Swieten was head of the court library (Hofbibliohek). The library was built in the 1720s, under Charles VI, and today is known as the Prunksaal, a magnificent baroque library that should make anyone say: Now, this is a library! Van Swieten started systematically obtaining books for the library, and he is commemorated in the huge hall by a bust shown in the photo below.

Until November 2nd this year the Prunksaal houses an exhibition on bloody crimes from Cain's murder of Abel over cannibals to modern mass murderers and the Holocaust: Blutige Geschichte. A gallery of some of the exhibited books and objects is found here.

The photos can't do the baroque hall with its frescos, books etc. justice, so it's obviously a place to visit if you go to Vienna, although you have to hurry if you want to see books on cannibals exhibited next to Van Swieten :-)