Chapter 47 - Wiener Neustadt, Part 3

I saved this last of the Wiener Neustadt blogs for a beautiful old church. The Gothic Neukloster ("New Monastery") was founded in 1444 by Emperor Frederick IV. It was created in conjunction with the earlier Our Trinity Church built in 1250 which had succeeded the Dominican Church and Monastery from 1227. The Neukloster was a Dominican monastery, which was then part of the Cistercian Order.

The church is truly beautiful, from its graceful outer lines to extensive marble works inside, including the marble tomb in the apse of Eleonore of Portugal, wife of Emperor Frederick. She was married at age 16 after the emperor deemed a painting of her pretty enough. He accused her of frivolity and causing the deaths of three of their children in infancy by feeding them too much sugar. The other two children, including his heir Maximilian I, lived very spartan lives by order of the emperor and survived to adulthood. After her death at age 30, probably of a gastric infection, Eleonore was entombed there in 1467 along with her three babies.

Although no longer a monastery, today the church serves the community as a parish church and contains an extensive library on theology, history, philosophy and science.

Several views of the outside of the church.








We saw several weeds and twiglets growing high up on the side of the church. So who climbs up there to remove this small tree before its roots start to break the stone?


Two pictures of the monastery area.




I loved this old staircase inside the monastery. It's in an area that has not had any restoration so you can just imagine generations of monks using it all day long.


A quiet and serene inner courtyard.


One of the gates leading out of the courtyard.


Here are two side altars inside the church. Note how much marble is used on all these altars.




This is the high altar.


Another side altar.


This is the balcony.


This is Eleanore's marble tomb.


The inscriptions on these two marble relief panels are in an old Germanic script that is extremely hard to read, much less translate. All I could get is that the one of the woman is from 1548.

Chapter 46 - Wiener Neustadt, Part 2

There are a variety of things covered in this second part of the Wiener Neustadt blogs. The first picture is of the "Spinnerin am Kreuz" or "Spinner at the Cross." The 69-foot-tall tower was built in 1382-4 in front of the city's Wiener Tor (gate). Among the figures ornamenting the statue are statues of saints, reliefs depicting scenes from the Passion of Christ, coats of arms and relief busts of the master builder and founder and their wives.

The legend of the Spinner at the Cross is a touching one, I think. While a merchant was abroad on Crusade, his wife came to the site every day to sit by the cross and work with her spinning wheel and pray for her husband's safety. Long after the Crusade ended and her husband hadn't returned, the woman was urged to forget him and marry again, but she refused. She continued to spin at the cross and was finally rewarded by her husband's return.

Spinner at the Cross


This miniature golf course was in the same park as the Spinner at the Cross. What a mix of old and new!


The cathedral, or dom, was consecrated in 1279 and renovated and added to from 1469 to 1785. We wanted to go inside, but it was closed on Saturday (first time we've seen that). Outside you can see a lot of reconstruction.

The cathedral from the front.


Part of the side of the Dom.


War memorial to the fallen from the world wars. This is the first one we've seen like this.


This tablet from 1681 commemmorates the dead from a plague epidemic, presumably the 1679 epidemic that was so shattering in central Europe.


Two views of the main door.




The side of the Dom.


This beautiful fountain is composed of tiny colored tiles and rocks. I think the figure is Neptune. Of course it's not working because of the reconstruction.


We were walking around the old town area when we noticed a park and this old wall. We had no idea what it was and were really surprised to discover that the wall is all that's left of the old Jewish synagogue.


A plaque on the wall says that these medieval Jewish tombstones were abandoned in 1496 (doesn't say why) but that they were revealed and properly displayed in 1846. Looking into the history of the town, I learned that there was a massacre of Jews in 1298. In 1348 during the hysteria of the Black Death, thousands of Jews in Austria were burned at the stake because it was believed they caused the plague. In the late 1400s Jews were expelled from Austria.


These tombstones have Hebrew writing on them and above five of them is a German translation. Of the five who have tablets, the first, third and last were rabbis, the third the daughter of a rabbi and fourth the wife of one. They died in the years (from left to right) 1252, 1353, 1286, 1285 and 1369 (this one noted that the rabbi died of plague).


This tablet translates roughly that Jewish citizens in 1938 left town [forced to by the Nazis]. They returned as survivors and had a celebration in 1995. About 200,000 Jews lived in Austria when the Nazis took over; 2/3 went into exile, the rest died in the Holocaust. In Wiener Neustadt, 700 Jews lived in the town at the beginning of World War II; now 10 do.


The Military Academy is housed in a 13th century formerly four-towered castle which was used as an imperial residence in the heyday of Wiener Neustadt. Habsburg Emperor Frederick III had the castle enlarged and added the St. George Chapel in the mid 1400s. The castle has notable glassworks and houses the tomb of Emperor Maximilian I. In 1751 Empress Maria Theresa dedicated the world's first military academy inside the imperial castle. Known as the Theresian Military Academy, it has been in continuous operation to the modern day and is often referred to as the Westpoint of the Alps. One interesting sidenote: Gen. Erwin Rommel was the commandant in 1938. Part of the original building was heavily damaged in an earthquake in 1768 and again in bombing during World War II, but it was rebuilt both times to the original architectural plans.

Four views of the Military Academy

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.