LIGHT AND SHADE

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25172, 9 April 1945, Page 6

LIGHT AND SHADE

STOEY OF VIENNA SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE So many European capitals—Rome, Athens, Warsaw, Paris, Brussels, Budapest—have been freed from German tyranny that the addition of one more, Vienna, can hardly arouse the feelings that other liberations evoked. Nevertheless, all democratic countries will hope that this great city, with its 1,800,000 people and heritage of gaiety and tragedy, of music and the arts, will be wrested from the enemy with as little bloodshed and destruction as possible. Unfortunately such an outcome seems unlikely. Former Sieges This is not the first time that a great foreign army has stood before Vienna's gates. The Turks under Suleiman the Magnificent besieged it in 1529 for three weeks, but gave u< and departed. Nearly two centuries later, in 1683, another Turkish army made a determined attempt to capture it. The siege lasted three months, until an army under John Sobieski, King of Poland, and the Electors of Bavaria and Saxony came to the rescue and drove the invaders off. Napoleon entered the city in 1809, after somewhat severe resistance lasting three days, only to suffer a reverse sdon after at Aspern from the Archduke Charles and to win a costly victory at Wagram, just across the Danube. Prussian and Austrian armies faced each other outside Vienna in 1866 after von Moltke's defeat of the Austrians at Koeniggratz, but an armistice was agreed to on Prussian terms, and so modern Teutonic aggression gained its first round. Sited where the upper Danube emerges from between the Alps and the Moravian Hills and enters the Hungarian Plain, Vienna has long been a cosmopolitan city. It stands near the linguistic frontier between German. Slav and Magyar, and its culture, although German, is strongly affected hv other influences which give the Viennese temperament a lightness and colour unknown further west. These qualities, it is believed, have not been extinguished by seven years of Nazi rule, but will revive when peace returns and Vienna is again the crossroads of travel from Hamburg and Paris to Athens and Istanbul. Prosperous Centuries .Like most old Central European cities, Vienna was once a Roman garrison town, and still earlier it was inhabited by Celts. In the period of the great migrations it disappears from history until about 800 A.D., when two churches were founded there. It became capital of the Duchy of Austria in 1137 and the home of a notable school of poets, who composed lyrics and the Germanic epics of the Niebelung and Gudrun. The first of the long Hapsburc dynasty had to enter the city by force, but it prospered under their rule and one of them gave it a university in 1365. _ . ~ , 7 ,, The counter-reformation in the 1/tn century had a powerfully stimulating effect on Viennese life and culture, evidenced by the large number of baroque churches and secular buildings that survive today. The city, as the capital of widespread territories ruled by the Austrian Royal House, became an important financial and trading centre, and the 18th and 19th centuries saw great additions to its architecture in the form of palaces, libraries, museums, institutions of learning and Government buildings. During the long reign of the Emperor Francis Joseph, which began in 1848 and ended under the clouds of war in 1916, Vienna held a unique place in Europe, although latterly it was clear that the looselyjoined Empire must sooner or later go to pieces. Strife and Nazi Intrique The Treaty of St. Germain left it the over-large capital of a small republic with few economic resources. Four years of dire poverty and suffering followed. grass grew in the streets, and most of the Czech and Magyar inhabitants departed. The Powers came to the rescue with loans and other help, and Vienna set out under a Socialist administration to develop new Party strife supervened, and in 1927 there were riots and a strike, in the course of which the Palace of Justice was burned. From 1933 onward, the German Nazis did their best to provoke trouble in Austria. Party armies appeared, and eventually an authoritarian Catholic regime was set up under Dr Engelbert Dollfuss, who was murdered in 1934 after a Nazi rising had been suppressed. Hitler's intrigues culminated in the Anschluss of March 13. 1938, when he entered Vienna at the head of an army and forcibly incorporated Austria in the Reich.

In spite of the vicissitudes through which it has passed, Vienna is a beautiful city. It stands on the right bank of the Danube, with the forest-clad hills of the Wienerwald to the south and east. The old fortifications were levelled nearly a century ago to form the famous Ringstrasse, within which are most of the churches and public buildings. Musical Heritage

St. Stephen's Cathedral, dating from the 14th and 15th centuries, is conspicuous, with its steep roof and spire 450 ft high. Near by is the Hoffburg, the former Imperial Palace, a complex of buildings containing the huge National Library of 1,200,000 volumes and over 100,000 manuscripts. The university, which includes a world-famous medical school, has a library of nearly equal size. The city abounds in art galleries and museums, and some of the latter have large New Zealand collections.

No account of Vienna would be adequate without reference to its musical associations. It was the home of Mozart, Haydn, Schubert and, for the greater part of his career, of Beethoven, to name a few very great names. No composer has expressed its spirit in a popular idiom so well as the "waltz king," Joliann Strauss.

ROYALTY AT CUP FINAL (Reed. 6.30 p.m.) LONDON, April 7

The King and Queen and Princess Elizabeth witnessed the South League cup final at Wembley, in which Chelsea defeated Millwall by 2 to 0. The King after the match presented the cup to the Chelsea captain. The Quern shook hands with the players of both teams as they filed through the Royal box. Ninety thousand people attended the match.