History Of Vienna
Prehistory, Roman times, Middle Ages
Archaeological finds show that humans were walking the area as early as the Palaeolithic Age and that the Vienna Basin was constantly occupied starting in the Neolithic Age.Several cremation burials in Vienna attested to Bronze Age urn field culture and settlement traces.Vienna, for example, has evidence of the earlier Iron Age Hallstatt culture, which was manifested by still clearly visible burial mounds and hamlet ruins.There is an oppidum on the Leopoldsberg and a Celtic town called Vedunia (“forest stream”) from Celtic times.
In the first century AD, the Romans built a military camp (castrum) along the Danube in order to protect the boundaries of the province of Pannonia and connected civilian settlement of Vindobona (in today’s third district).The route of the Wall and the camp’s streets could still be seen on the streets of the first district (inner city) even today.Roman era brought city powers for Vienna and Vindobona for the first time.Roman people stayed until the fifth century.The Roman legionary camp was quickly impacted by the flux of the Germanic migrations since it was far to the east of the Western Roman Empire.
Early mediaeval Vienna was centered on the viticultural estate, Berghof.Though it is unclear if this is the city or the Wien river, the Salzburg Annals in 881, when a war against the Magyars took place apud Weniam, oldest recorded reference of the city in the Middle Ages.Beginning in 955 with the victory of East Franconian King Otto I over the Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld, Vienna and Austria started to grow.
Near the border with Hungary, the Babenbergs established the Margraviate of Ostarrichi (Marcha orientalis) in 976 on whose territory Vienna also rested.Early on in the 11th century, Vienna was a major commerce hub; Heinrich Jasomirgott declared it his capital in 1155.Vienna became the seat of the duke after Austria was raised to a duchy with the Privilegium minus only one year later.
Following the Third Crusade, Margrave Leopold V the Virtuous kidnapped English King Richard the Lionheart at Erdberg close to Vienna (today in the third district) on his return to England in 1192 and imprisoned him in Dürnstein.A mint was founded with the large payback, and the first major expansion of the city was sponsored.Following Enns (1212), Vienna became the second city in the Duchy of Austria granted city and staple rights in 1221.The latter called for traders passing Vienna selling their goods within the city.Vienna quickly developed strong commercial relations, especially down the Danube and to Venice, and was seen as one of the most important cities in the empire. This allowed the Viennese to engage intermediary trade.
Habsburgs
Rudolf I’s triumph against Bohemian Ottokar II in 1278 launched the Habsburgs’ power in Austria.Under the Luxembourgers, Vienna dominated Prague as the imperial residence.Early Habsburgs tried to grow the city in order to stay up.
Rudolf IV set himself apart by increasing riches with smart economic policies.He came to be known as the founders when the Gothic nave of St. Stephen was built and the University of Vienna was founded in 1365 (Prague was the model).The next period of Habsburg succession problems brought unrest and financial collapse.
Following the election of Duke Albrecht V as Roman-German King (Albrecht II) in 1438 Vienna became the seat of the Holy Roman Empire; the Viennese Gesera is also related with the name Albrecht, during which the Viennese Jews were expelled or killed in the years 1421/22.The expanding city was appointed the seat of a bishop in 1469, and St. Stephen’s Cathedral was raised to cathedral rank.Under the weak Friedrich III, Vienna was always on the side of its adversary since it could not guarantee public order against roaming mercenaries.At last, Vienna (save from the years 1583 to 1620) became the emperor’s residence once Hungary and Bohemia were merged to the Habsburg dominions in 1558.
Starting in 1551, the period of re-Catholicization of the city—which had quickly become Protestant thanks to Martin Luther’s ideas—started.King Ferdinand I invited the Jesuits to Vienna, where they soon gained recognition.Establishing Vienna as the starting point of the Counter-Reformation for the Holy Roman Empire, the Jesuits built a college, received the University of Vienna, and regulated publications.Its most well-known proponent was Melchior Khlesl, the bishop of Vienna in 1600. The theological conflict produced severe expropriation and exile, therefore by 1640 there were few Protestants left in Vienna and Austria.Recognizing Vienna’s significance in the annals of the Reformation, the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe bestowed upon it an honorary title of “European City of the Reformation” in 2015.
Elisabeth Plainacher was judged guilty and killed in a witch trial held in Vienna in 1583.
Turkish sieges by the Ottoman Empire
The Turks unsuccessfully assaulted Vienna in 1529, first time.The Habsburg and Ottoman areas of Hungary’s border ran just roughly 150 kilometers east of the city, severely restricting its development for more than two centuries.Vienna had lately acquired sophisticated defenses after all.
These fortifications, which dominated building activity until the 17th century, were to show their value during the second Turkish siege in 1683, when they guarded the city for two months until the arrival of the relief army headed under Polish King Jan Sobieski Vienna had to end broke.This signalled the beginning of the last Ottoman Empire retreat from Central Europe.
Heyday of baroque and classicism
Strong building activity so started, and the city prospered.Vienna was mostly baroque (Vienna gloriosa) throughout the reconstruction phase.Mostly under the names Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt, many magnificent palaces were built.There was also much of building outside the city limits.The suburbs have had their own sizable defensive system since 1704, the Linienwall, which follows today’s Gürtelstrasse roughly.
After the terrible plague outbreaks of 1679 and 1713, population growth was fast.Around this time, also founded were the first businesses, one at Leopoldstadt.Street cleansing and sewerage developed to better hygienic standards.
Vienna rapidly became a major European cultural center as the city developed, producing the music of Viennese Classicism ( Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert ).
The imperial city between conservatism and avant-garde
In 1804 Vienna became into the capital of the Austrian Empire, a new state.Twice, Napoleon’s army took Vienna, in 1805 and 1809, during the Napoleonic Wars.Vienna declared at 1806 the fall of the Holy Roman Empire.The Congress of Vienna met in 1814 or 1815 following Napoleon’s defeat to reinterpret Europe’s political landscape.
Strict political limitations defined the Vormärz period that followed, but also the blossoming Biedermeier culture.Beginning at this time, industrialization also started with the first stretch of the Kaiser-Ferdinand-)Nordbahn from Floridsdorf to Deutsch-Wagram opening in 1837.
Vienna also suffered from the French February Revolution of 1848; on March 13 the March Revolution broke out, compelling Chancellor Metternich to resign; on October 6 the Vienna October Revolution broke out.At last the imperial army routed the Democrats.The democrat Robert Blum, who helped Frankfurt am Main citizens, was murdered in Brigittenau.
With Leopoldstadt on the Danube islands and the “suburbs” included within the line wall, the first phase of urban expansion started in 1850.Beginning in 1858, the city walls around the ancient town were destroyed, and the ring road bordered with grand buildings was built in its place.The Ringstrace style ( historicism) greatly influences Vienna’s architecture.The early days were ended by the stock market disaster that happened during the 1873 World Exhibition.
Since the devastating flood of 1830, which was completed between 1868 and 1875, there have been regular worries regarding Danube control.After the various ramified side arms from the Danube were removed, a dead-straight main stream was constructed far from the city.Known as the Danube Canal, the arm heading into the city was left in a modified, under control condition.
As industrialisation began in Vienna in the middle of the nineteenth century, the city experienced explosive population increase.The population was one million in 1870 and two million by 1910.An urban development plan replaced the village-style “old Viennese” buildings outside the ring with four to six-story residential and commercial buildings.Along with this were major social upheavals.
Social democracy took hold with the rise in a large working class and pervasive poverty.Often sharing small apartments with one another and with “bed-goers,” the lower class was quite visible.From all throughout the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, immigrants—especially Czechs—turned Vienna into a cultural cross-roads.The city battled poverty by assigning specifically created “poor councils.”
The most famous Kaiser mayor was Christian Socialist Karl Lueger, who held office from 1897 until 1910.His extensive municipal reforms and strong anti-Semitism, which affected political life at the time and targeted both the integrated and economically successful Jewish middle classes in Vienna and ” Eastern Jews,” from Galicia, were well-known. Adolph Hitler was living in Vienna at the time.In his 1925 book Mein Kampf, he presented Lueger as the “most powerful German mayor of all time.
Beginning in 1890, the line wall was also taken down and replaced with a belt as the third ring road for the growing metropolis.Originally the city limit, the consumption tax toll limit stayed until 1922; nevertheless, several additional line offices were built in 1891 most of which are still physically functioning.
Vienn Vienna For the city about 1900, modernism was a fresh cultural highlight.Not least of all, he is connected to the group Secession of painters that founded Vienna as a center of Art Nouveau.Around Arnold Schönberg, a Second Viennese School of music developed.With the coffee shop as a center of cultural innovation, Jung-Wien symbolizes the change to modernism in literature.Sigmund Freud invented psychoanalysis within this rich cultural setting.
First World War
Vienna was not immediately threatened by the First World conflict, but it did cause a horrible supply problem that manifested itself in food riots among other things as the war developed.Particularly women were active here, complaining their hunger and, occasionally not shying away from thievery.The end of the “great war” aligned with Austria-Hungary’s collapse.On October 30, 1918, German Austria was born as a new state.
After First World War
Emperor Karl I declared his resignation on November 11, 1918, then left Vienna and Schönbrunn Palace.The next day the Provisional National Assembly in Parliament established the Republic and decided German-Austria would be a part of the German Republic.In the spring of 1919 the effort was judged unfeasible.
The federal constitutional statute adopted on November 10, 1920, the pillar of Austrian constitutional law, clearly names Vienna as a separate province.Consequently, the Vienna City Constitution, passed on the same day and implemented on November 18, 1920, has a section on Vienna as a state with the mayor (as state governor) and the municipal council (as state parliament) using their state powers.The separation Act took effect on January 1, 1922, including the last property law clauses from Lower Austria.This is the reason this day is often reported wrongly as its founding date even though the State of Vienna has existed since November 10, 1920.
Vienna has been an independent state since then, except 1934–1945 (a city directly under the federal government during Austrofascism, Reichsgau during Nazi power).Apart from Lower Austria’s predominance in the new small state feared by the less populous federal states, the differences between the mostly Social Democratic urban population and the mostly Christian Social rural population were among the factors driving apart from the surrounding area.The split provided Vienna financial power, hence it was crucial for the future expansion of the city.
Globally, the projects of the municipal government at the time ( “Red Vienna”) were considered as innovative.Broadly speaking, a rich network of social facilities and staff accommodation in ” Gemeindebau,” (municipal housing) was developed.
Vienna was a stage for the political and economic flux of the First Republic.Parliament, the media, political groups, and many demonstrations all questioned or backed the political acts of the conservative government.Radicalization began with the July 15, 1927 fire at the Palace of Justice, which caused major strife between the Federal Security Guard Corps and demonstrators killing 94 people.
From February 12 to 15, 1934, the fight between the two main political factions resulted in the “February uprising” of the Social Democrats (government version) and the “civil war, in which the government used the military against the people,” social Democratic interpretation says.Declared Vienna a “federal city” and sacked her democratic city government on February 12, 1934, the corporate state’s clerical, Austro-Fascist dictatorship ruled for four years.Although the July coup by Austrian National Socialists that year failed, it lost autocratic chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss his life.
Vienna at the time of National Socialism and the Second World War
With the active support of Austrian National Socialists, who had already started to “take power” on March 11, Adolf Hitler directed the German Wehrmacht to invade Austria on March 12, 1938, therefore substituting the Nazi authority for the Austro-Fascist administration.On March 15, 1938, Hitler gave his well-known follow-up speech on the Vienna Hofburg balcony in front of hundreds of thousands of fervently applauding spectators on Heldenplatz.
Vienna, where anti-Semitism has been rising since the early twentieth century, provided a rich ground for Hitler’s plan of eradicating Jews.The so-called “wild Aryanization” started right once following the National Socialists’ takeover: anyone who wished to loot their Jewish neighbors, drove them from their stores or homes, or otherwise mistreated them.This unanticipated explosion of anti-Semitism was swiftly channeled in a disciplined way, and discrimination, disenfranchisement, thieving, and so on were put into bureaucratic procedures meant to seem to be under control.
During the November pogroms—beginning on November 9, 1938—92 synagogues in Vienna were destroyed.Only one was spared: the municipal temple in Vienna’s first district as the Jewish community’s archive in the adjacent communal rooms kept the addresses of every Jew in Vienna intact.From there, Jewish Viennese people selected by the Nazi government were compelled to assist in the planning of the deportation or evacuation of their fellow Jews.main office for Jewish exodus (by emigration, I mean war robbery, expulsion, and murder).About 120,000 forced to leave and about 60,000 dead, almost 200,000 Jewish Viennese were stolen.After the war, Vienna’s Jewish population barely amounted to 5,243 people.
More than fifty air strikes on Vienna starting on March 17, 1944, destroyed practically one-fifth of the city.There were not any area bombings like Operation Gomorrah in Hamburg or the Dresden bombing.Still, practically one-third of the city center was destroyed, and important cultural buildings including the Albertina and the State Opera were also devastated.Originally unharmed from the air war, St. Stephen’s Cathedral caught fire not from military activity but from robbery.Based on Rome’s model, Gauleiter Baldur von Schirachprevented any attempts to classify Vienna as a “open city”.Beginning on April 5, 1945, the eight-day struggle for Vienna came to an end when the Wehrmacht was defeated and the Red Army, having advanced from Hungary took command.
Vienna’s position as the capital of the monarchy, which persisted until 1938, had effects that culminated in the Nazi era.Particularly in light of Jewish persecution, Vienna’s intellectual and artistic life suffered enormous loss that cannot be offset.The Eastern Bloc’s emergence hampered Vienna’s scientific and economic rebirth while bringing spies from both sides to the city.
About 87,000 homes were rendered useless by more than 20% of the housing stock being either totally or partially damaged.The urban area had approximately 3,000 bomb holes, several bridges were in ruins, and sewage, gas and water pipes had been badly disrupted.The first task was to solve the most fundamental problems; the city had to be put back into running order.
After World War II
Few days following the end of World War II fighting in the Vienna region in mid-April, the Soviet Army set up a new municipal government.Political parties also emerged prior to Europe’s war’s end on May 8th.Until the fall of 1945, the Soviets forbade military contingents from the other three Allies—the United States, Great Britain, France—from entering Vienna; it remained a four-sector city until 1955.Every month the 1st district’s occupation changed; none of the four occupying powers was permanently assigned.Real and suspected rape by Red Army troops forced police head Carl Szokollon to petition to Marshal Fyodor Ivanovich Tolbukhin on April 12, 1945.
Known as Stalinplatz from 1946 to 1956, the Red Army built the Liberation Monument, Heroes’ Monument on Schwarzenbergplatz in 1945.It was dedicated on August 19, 1945, and the local government has kept it up to date ever then.The state pact assures on its survival.
Like the rest of the nation and Western Europe, Vienna saw a remarkable economic rebirth following the war, mostly thanks to the Marshall Plan.
Frustrated, communist-dominated workers organized the October walkout in 1950 following the fourth pay-price agreement negotiated by the social partners.The political and intra-union isolation of the strikers caused him to fail; also, the Social Democrat-dominated building workers’ union, under Franz Olah, authorized riot squads against the strikers.
Following the Soviet Union’s veto, the 1946 decision to limit Greater Vienna to the modern metropolitan region came to be operative in 1954.While 17 stayed in Vienna, eighty former local churches went back to Lower Austria.
On May 15, 1955, the Austrian State Treaty brought back complete freedom for the nation.The agreement became operative on July 27, 1955, and the occupying troops had three months to leave.
Modern History
Following the abortive uprising against the communist government, many Hungarians fled to Vienna in fall of 1956.Likewise, many Czechs and Slovaks who had left Czechoslovakia following the bloody end of the Prague Spring were let back in 1968.Vienna had a fresh wave of immigrants after Yugoslavia broke up in 1991. Until November 1989, Vienna remained not a natural travel destination for people from these countries.
Following 1945, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) emerged as the first foreign agency with headquarters located in this city in 1957.Vienna also has been the headquarters of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) since 1965.Meeting in Vienna for a summit conference in 1961, US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Party Leader Nikita KhrushchevOpening in 1979, the third official seat of the United Nations is the Vienna International Center; it is joined later to create the UNO-Cityforms by the Austria Center Vienna.All of this contributed to define Vienna as a city of congresses and conflict resolution.Vienna has been a part of the Centrope European area since 2003; together with Bratislava, it has created a “twin city” with a population of around 3 million people.
Held on the left bank of the Danube in 1964 on the site of a former rubbish dump, the WIG 64, the Vienna International Garden Show 1964, featured the Danube Tower as the new landmark.Finished in 1986, the New Danube replaced the former floodplain close to the Danube stream; likewise, the Danube Island developed between the two bodies of water and became a popular recreational area.New residential districts on both sides of the Danube started to sprout at the end of the twentieth century, and Donau City, a high-rise area on the left bank of the Danube, was created.
Vienna is among the cities with the best quality of living in world rankings today; most recently, it was ranked first globally ahead of Zurich and Auckland, which came second and third, and Munich and Vancouver, which came fourth and fifth, respectively.This is a result of the city’s high proportion of greenery (about 50%), its rather good ecological quality (except from air quality and traffic), its high degree of social and police security, its first-class healthcare system, its highly developed education system, the density of cultural institutions, its efficient public administration, the quality of leisure time in Vienna, and its dense network of public transportation.
In an Islamist attack in Vienna, five persons were killed (including the assailant) and more than twenty were injured on November 2, 2020, some gravely.
