Chapter 45 - Wiener Neustadt, Part 1

So how did Wiener Neustadt come to be? The answer is surprising. A little roundabout prologue: Remember the legend of Robin Hood and his Merry Men in England? They supposedly stole from the rich to give to the poor, but why? The taxes in late 12th century England were high because Richard I (1157-1199) needed funds for his military campaigns. Richard was the third son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine and her favorite. He was a great soldier, hence the nickname "Lion-Heart," but he was terrible at everything else. He was a bad son (intrigued against his father), bad husband (insisted on marrying his wife for her lands but completely ignored her in every way) and a bad king (spent only 6 months of his reign in England and never learned to speak English).

All Richard wanted was military glory, lasting fame and lots of loot, and in his lifetime the best way to do that was to go on Crusade. He ruthlessly increased taxes, then gallivanted off to the Holy Land in the Third Crusade of 1191, becoming extremely ill with scurvy along the way. In the Holy Land Richard covered himself with military glory but miscalculated with one of his allies. When Babenberger Duke Leopold V of Austria flew his flag next to that of England and France at Acre, Richard had the flag torn down and thrown into manure in the moat at Acre Castle. This was an insult (duh) and also prevented the Austrians from participating in the looting and sacking of conquered Acre. Sometimes rash acts come back to haunt you.

On the way back to England, bad weather caused a shipwreck and forced Richard to attempt the overland route through central Europe. He was disguised as a Knight Templar but was captured at Christmas, 1192 by the Austrians and held hostage at Durnstein. Leopold had his revenge and demanded an enormous ransom of 150,000 marks (two to three times the annual income of the English crown). Meanwhile, back in England, Richard's younger brother, John (yes, the one of later Magna Carta fame), was proving to be as bad a sovereign as his brother. He and his henchmen, like the Sheriff of Nottingham, were universally hated. The people yearned for the return of Richard (one wonders why), and Robin Hood and his men cavorted about, stealing from the rich and supposedly sharing their ill-gotten gains.

Eleanor, being the typical she-wolf-type mother, went about raising the ransom money. The people loved Richard and not John so she didn't have too hard a time. Taxes were raised again, and gold and silver treasures of the churches were confiscated. The money was paid, Richard returned in triumph in early 1194, John sulked and skulked, and I don't know what Robin Hood and his bunch did. To finish the story, Richard died five years later of gangrene 12 days after being shot by an arrow because he thought it was safe to stroll about conquered territory without his chain mail. In nauseatingly-typical medieval fashion, his brain was buried in the Abbey of Charroux in Poitou, his heart at Rouen in Normandy and his body at the feet of his father at Fontevraud Abbey in Anjou. John ascended to the English throne and proceeded to be even worse a king than his brother.

But to return to our story. Leopold used the ransom money to build the city of Wiener Neustadt 28 miles south of Vienna. How about that for a roundabout story?

The original purpose of Wiener Neustadt ("Viennese Newtown") was as a fortress to defend against Hungary. In the 1400s Emperor Friedrick III lived in the city, and his son, Maximilian I, maintained his court there. But its original purpose failed; King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary conquered the city in 1487 after a two-year siege, but it was retaken three years later. Wiener Neustadt lost its imperial status in the 16th century but continued to fulfill its function as a bulwark against the Turks. Empress Maria Theresa dedicated the world's first military academy in 1751. In the 19th century the city became an industrial town and later served as a training ground for flight pioneers. The city was heavily bombed during World War II because of its oil refinery and aircraft factory which used forced labor from the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. Ten B-17s were lost on one raid, and on a later B-24 raid, one of the pilots was future U.S. Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern.

Today Wiener Neustadt is a picturesque community of about 40,000, contains Austria's first and largest college for business and engineering and is also known as an industrial, research and commercial center. We had so many pictures I'm going to do three blogs on the town.

Some shots of the old town area.






Note the date on this building - 1614.




This old-fashioned gift shop looks quite inviting. It's open only three hours a day and two on Saturday. Unfortunately, Bob saw the business hours, too, so it may not be easy to arrange another visit at the right time of day.


The water tower.


These cannon balls are from the wars against the Turks from 1529 to 1683.


One of my favorite sights, the Mariensaule, the plague column at the Hauptplatz (main square).


Here are three pictures of the old medieval wall.




This part of the wall is crumbling undisturbed so one wonders if the sections of the wall in the previous two pictures have been restored.


This is the Wiener Neustaedter Kanal, the starting point of the only shipping canal in Austria. It was originally meant to reach out to Trieste but was never finished.




This was Bob's favorite stop of the day. We had to bring our own mustard in our little padded ice chest since Austrian mustard is beyond strange. We always order hamburgers ohne (without) sauce.


You see trampolines like this at a lot of fast food places in Austria, like the indoor playgrounds at McDonald's back home. Apparently, liability isn't a problem over here. Some of the kids are really good.