VIENNA

VIENNA. From the later thirteenth century, when Vienna and its surrounding territories were claimed by the Habsburg Dynasty, until the mid-fifteenth century, the Habsburgs slowly built up the old residence of their predecessors, the Babenbergs, and the one-time Roman legionnaires' camp into a sizable city complete with a church dedicated to Saint Stephen as well as a university and a castle residence built next to one of the old Roman roads leading to this important Danube River crossing. By 1500 the city may have had a population of approximately twenty to thirty thousand.

For some time during the fifteenth century, the Styrian branch of the Habsburg Dynasty held the upper hand among the Habsburg relations in central Europe, and their city, Wiener Neustadt, was the preferred residence of many of the Austrian dukes, including the important Habsburg Duke Frederick who was crowned Holy Roman emperor in Rome by Pope Nicholas V in 1452 and ruled until 1493. The emperor was able to achieve the long-standing Habsburg goal of elevating their church in Vienna, St. Stephen's, to episcopal status through papal permission in 1469. (The rival residence city of Wiener Neustadt was similarly honored in the same year.) Now Vienna would be not only a trading city, university town, and sometime archducal residence. It was the center of a modest ecclesiastical jurisdiction as well, one which often unhappily shared religious responsibilities with its much more powerful neighbor, the Diocese of Passau, which also had administrative offices in Vienna.

For Vienna, the later fifteenth century meant a change in regimes: renewed claims over this area by the kings of Hungary led to an occupation of the city by the Hungarian King Mathias I ("Corvinus") Hunyadi beginning in 1485. King Mathias died in the city in 1490. The turbulent and multifaceted relationship with Hungary is an important aspect of Viennese history in this period.

The city on the Danube was again brought under Habsburg control through the efforts of Emperor Frederick's son, Archduke and later Emperor Maximilian I (ruled 1493–1519), who spent much of his time arranging Western marriages and residing in the Habsburg city of Innsbruck in Tyrol, among many other locations. For some time, the exact position of Vienna in the Habsburgs' plans was unclear. The Iberian and Burgundian inheritances engineered by Maximilian necessarily meant that the dynasty's representatives were more tied to cities such as Ghent or kingdoms such as Castile than to the rather forgotten city on the Danube River.

When Maximilian's grandson and younger brother of Emperor Charles V, the Spanish-born Archduke Ferdinand (who ruled 1558–1564 as Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I) chose Vienna as his residence, the city fathers had already established a local regime with its own sense of autonomy. In the 1520s this urban regime was harshly suppressed by the archduke and his officials, and the city administration was reorganized under stricter dynastic control. Ferdinand had arrived in the city with a sizable retinue of Iberian nobles, military personnel, and other assorted hangers-on, and the Spanish-speaking community in the city and at the court endured at various levels for two centuries, reflecting the resident rulers' close ties to their dynastic kin in the West.

One of the pivotal years for the history of early modern Vienna was 1529, when Ottoman troops besieged the city, following on their successful campaigns of the previous years, which had succeeded in defeating the Hungarians and in advancing the Ottomans' control well into that nearby kingdom. The siege was successfully resisted, but the results of the destruction in the suburbs and the economic dislocation the siege had brought lasted for much of the century. The economic foundations of many of the city's religious houses, which controlled properties outside of the old city walls, for example, were wrecked, and this, together with the increasing popularity of the teachings of Martin Luther and his followers, made the culture of the city increasingly Protestant, much to the dismay of Archduke Ferdinand, who resided in the Hofburg, the fortified Habsburg residence in the city.

Following the extinction of the Hungarian ruling dynasty in 1526, Habsburg claims to the Hungarian crown meant that Vienna maintained a certain dynastic importance because it was located so near to Bratislava, the newly relocated capital of Hungary, just down the Danube River. Military operations in the Hungarian kingdom were planned and administered from Vienna, even while the Habsburg rulers themselves increasingly gave in to the allures of Vienna's long-time rival, Prague, as their preferred place of residence. (Ferdinand and his two successors as Holy Roman emperor, Maximilian II and Rudolf II, were all buried in St. Vitus's cathedral in that Bohemian capital.) Ferdinand's grandson, the emperor Rudolf II (ruled 1576–1612), officially moved his residence up to the castle in Prague in the 1580s, leaving his brother Archduke Ernst and his sister Archduchess Elisabeth, the widowed queen of France, to reside in Vienna and attempt to regulate the increasingly unruly and Lutheran city population.

Conflicts over the Habsburg succession in Bohemia and Hungary eventually degenerated into the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), but they had little direct effect on Vienna. For the most part, the fighting took place well away from the city, although in its earliest stages in late 1618 and early 1619, enemy troops reached the city's vicinity, as did Swedish troops in 1645. The continued rather uncertain status of Vienna in its rulers' imaginations was reflected in the decision of Emperor Ferdinand II (ruled 1620–1637) to return to his ancestral homeland, Styria, to be buried in 1637.

The true blossoming of Vienna as the baroque capital of central Europe and the undisputed capital of the Habsburg Dynasty came only later, in the eighteenth century. The city was once again besieged by Ottoman troops in 1683 and once again successfully withstood their attacks, with the help of King John III Sobieski of Poland. Unlike the aftermath of 1529, however, subsequent Habsburg military campaigns pushed the Ottoman frontier well into Hungary and farther to the southeast. Vienna changed in character from a border fortress to a centrally located administrative and trading center, well located on the Danube for trading downstream with the newly conquered Hungarian territories. The Habsburgs' loss of their Iberian inheritance through the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), as well as their earlier setbacks in the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years' War, combined to redirect the dynasts' attention toward the south and east. Vienna was well situated to benefit from this reorientation.

The alliance of the Habsburgs and their supporters with a reinvigorated Roman Catholicism during the Counter-Reformation also provided an ideology and a cultural program that were physically reflected in the triumphant, new post-1683 city. New convents and monasteries abounded, and a much more extensive (although less militarily effective) wall (the 1704 Linienwall ) was constructed. Noble palaces and Habsburg summer residences were constructed outside the confines of the walls as well, reflecting a new optimism and sense of security that would only be challenged when Napoleon's troops neared the city in the early nineteenth century. Vienna was now the capital of one of Europe's most important powers. It remained so until the demise of that power in the early twentieth century.

See also Austria ; Ferdinand I (Holy Roman Empire) ; Ferdinand II (Holy Roman Empire) ; Frederick III (Holy Roman Empire) ; Habsburg Dynasty: Austria ; Holy Roman Empire ; Hungary ; Maximilian I (Holy Roman Empire) ; Prague ; Rudolf II (Holy Roman Empire) ; Vienna, Sieges of .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barker, Thomas Mack. Double Eagle and Crescent: Vienna's Second Turkish Siege and its Historical Setting. Albany, N.Y., 1967.

Csendes, Peter. Historical Dictionary of Vienna. Lanham, Md., 1999.

Lorenz, Hellmut. "The Imperial Hofburg: The Theory and Practice of Architectural Representation in Baroque Vienna." In State and Society in Early Modern Austria, edited by Charles W. Ingrao. West Lafayette, Ind., 1994.

Spielman, John P. The City and the Crown: Vienna and the Imperial Court, 1600–1740. West Lafayette, Ind., 1993.

Weigl, Andreas, ed. Wien im Dreißigjährigen Krieg: Bevölkerung, Gesellschaft, Kultur, Konfession. Vienna, 2001.

Joseph F. Patrouch

Vienna , Ger. Wien, city and province (1991 pop. 1,539,848), 160 sq mi (414 sq km), capital and largest city of Austria and administrative seat of Lower Austria, NE Austria, on the Danube River. The former residence of the Holy Roman emperors and, after 1806, of the emperors of Austria, Vienna is one of the great historic cities of the world and a melting pot of the Germanic, Slav, Italian, and Hungarian peoples and cultures.

Located on a plain surrounded by the Wienerwald (Vienna Woods) and the Carpathian foothills, it is a cultural, industrial, commercial, and transportation center. The city is divided into 23 districts grouped roughly in two semicircles around the Innere Stadt, or Inner City. Vienna's industries, mainly concentrated on the left bank of the Danube and in the southern districts, produce electrical appliances, machine tools, paper, and clothing. There are also large oil refineries, breweries, and distilleries. The annual Wiener Messe, an industrial fair (est. 1921), attracts buyers from all over the world. Vienna's musical and theatrical life, its parks, coffeehouses, and museums, make it a great tourist attraction; tourism is of great signficance for the city's economy.

The modern city dates from Francis Joseph 's reign (1848-1916). By 1860 the old ramparts around the inner city had been replaced by the famous boulevard, the Ringstrasse. The principal edifices on or near the Ringstrasse are the neo-Gothic Rathaus, with many statues and a tower 320 ft (98 m) high; the domed museums of natural history and of art, in Italian Renaissance style; the Votivkirche, one of the finest of modern Gothic churches; the parliament buildings, in Greek style; the palace of justice; the famous opera house and the Burgtheater, both in Renaissance style; the Künstlerhaus, with painting exhibitions; the Musikverein, containing the conservatory of music; and the Academy of Art. Among Vienna's many other museums are the Albertina, a state museum housed in an 18th-century building, and the Kunstforum, a bold contemporary exhibition space. In the late 20th. cent, Danube Island was developed as one of the largest urban parks in Europe; the neighboring Danube City development includes many modern buildings.

History

Originally a Celtic settlement, Vienna, then called Vindobona, became an important Roman military and commercial center; Emperor Marcus Aurelius resided there and died there (AD 180). After the Romans withdrew (late 4th cent.), it rapidly changed hands among the invaders who overran the region. The Magyars, who gained possession of Vienna early in the 10th cent., were driven out by Leopold I of Babenberg , the first margrave of the Ostmark (see Austria ). Construction on Vienna's noted Cathedral of St. Stephen began c.1135.

Several decades later Henry Jasomirgott, first duke of Austria, transferred his residence to the town, made it capital of the duchy, and erected a castle, Am Hof. The town was fortified by Ottocar II of Bohemia, who conquered Austria in 1251. In 1282, Vienna became the official residence of the house of Hapsburg . The city was occupied (1485-90) by Matthias Corvinus of Hungary and was besieged by the Turks for the first time in 1529. In the critical second siege (1683) by the Turks under Kara Mustafa and their Hungarian allies under Thokoly, the city, heroically defended by Ernst von Starhemberg , was on the verge of starvation when it was saved by John III (John Sobieski) of Poland.

Early in the 18th cent. a new circle of fortifications was built around the city, and many magnificent buildings were erected. Bernhard Fischer von Erlach drew up new plans for the Hofburg (the imperial residence) and built the beautiful Karlskirche; Johann von Hildebrandt designed St. Peter's Church, the Belvedere (summer residence of Prince Eugene of Savoy), and the Kinsky Palace; together they planned the Schwarzenburg Palace and the winter residence of Prince Eugene. Empress Maria Theresa (reigned 1740-80) enlarged the old university, founded in 1365, and completed the royal summer palace of Schönbrunn , started by her father, Charles VI (1711-40). Joseph II (1765-90) opened the Prater, a large imperial garden, which now contains an amusement park, to the public. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert lived in Vienna and gave it lasting glory.

In 1805 and 1809, Vienna was occupied by Napoleon. In the early 19th cent. Vienna was famous for the waltzes of Joseph Lanner and the Strauss family, and for the farces of Nestroy, the comedies of Raimund, and the tragic dramas of Grillparzer. During the revolutions of 1848 , revolutionists in Vienna forced Metternich to resign, but they were eventually suppressed by Windischgrätz .

In the late 19th and early 20th cent., Vienna flourished again as a cultural and scientific center. Rokitansky, Wagner-Jauregg, and Billroth (to whom Brahms dedicated the string quartets Op. 51) worked at the General Hospital; at the same time Freud was developing his theory of psychoanalysis. Vienna attracted Brahms, Mahler, Richard Strauss, and Arnold Schoenberg and his disciples, who gave it a further period of musical greatness. Krauss, Werfel, Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, and Wassermann dominated the literary scene.

Vienna suffered hardships during World War I. Amidst food shortages and revolution it became, at the end of the war, the capital of the small republic of Austria. In 1922, Vienna became an autonomous province ( Bundesland ) of Austria. The highly successful Social Democratic city government headed by Mayor Karl Seitz (1923-34) initiated a program of municipal improvements. In public housing Vienna set an example for the world. Model apartment houses for workers, notably the huge Karl Marx Hof, began to replace the city's slums. The projects were badly damaged in the civil war of Feb., 1934, between Viennese Socialists and the Austrian government of Chancellor Dollfuss .

On Mar. 15, 1938, Adolf Hitler triumphantly entered Vienna, and Austria was annexed to Germany. During World War II the city suffered considerable damage. The Jewish population (115,000 in 1938), residing mainly in the Leopoldstadt district (designated the official ghetto in the 17th cent.), was reduced through extermination or emigration to 6,000 by the end of the war. The Russian army entered Vienna in Apr., 1945. Vienna and Austria were divided into four occupation zones by the victorious Allies. The occupation lasted until 1955, when, by treaty, the four powers reunited Austria as a neutral state.

Vienna became the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957; it is the headquarters for several other international organizations, including the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The city also has been a neutral site for international talks, such as those between President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev in 1961.

Bibliography

See A. J. May, Vienna in the Age of Franz Josef (1966); I. Lehne and L. Johnson, Vienna—The Past in the Present (1985).

Vienna, capital up to 1918 of the former Austro-Hungarian empire, and until the mid-19th century the focal point of the German-speaking theatre. Its theatrical history begins at the end of the 15th century, when the humanists encouraged their students at the university to perform the works of Plautus and Terence as well as new plays in Latin. By the mid-16th century plays in the vernacular were incorporating elements of indigenous folk-comedy which were to be important later, but these had for a time to give way to the splendours of Jesuit drama. The influence of the English Comedians, who first appeared in the neighbourhood in 1608, combined with indigenous drama to give rise to the Haupt-und Staatsaktion, with its heroic background and its all-pervading Hanswurst, who with his companions under Stranitzky occupied in 1711 the Kärntnertor, the first permanent theatre building in Vienna. The Altwiener Volkstheater, or Folk-theatre of Old Vienna, reigned supreme. In 1776, however, the Emperor Josef II made the Burgtheater, built in 1741 in the Imperial palace, the home of serious drama in German, banishing the light-hearted comedies with their songs and dances to the remote suburbs. His reforms were ably implemented by the Austrian Josef von Sonnenfels (1733–1817), the theatre's Director from 1776, an exponent of ‘regular drama’ in the manner of Gottsched. The Burgtheater's pre-eminence was established by Josef Schreyvogel (1768–1832), who took over in 1814 and built up a repertory which included not only the classical plays of Europe and the works of Goethe and Schiller but also the first plays of Grillparzer and such lighter fare as Kotzebue. He recruited from many parts of the German-speaking theatre a company of distinction with a polished but natural diction, the Viennese parlando. Meanwhile, contrary to all expectations, the old folk-comedy flourished in the suburbs, at the Leopoldstädter Theater (1781), the Josefstädter Theater (1788), and the Theater an der Wien (1801), the first manager of the last being Mozart's librettist Emanuel Schikaneder. Two comic characters typify this last phase of the old extempore farce—Kasperle and Thaddädl. Their brief but glorious reign gave way in the later 19th century to the unique mixture of farce, fairy-tale magic, and parody which culminated in the great but practically untranslatable plays of Raimund and Nestroy and finally disappeared in the vogue for Viennese operettas. The Burgtheater, after a period of decline following the departure of Schreyvogel, was revivified by the German playwright Heinrich Laube (1806–84), its Director from 1849, who retained the European classics in the repertoire if they had a contemporary appeal, but also introduced the well-made plays of France, partly because they were such admirable vehicles for the Burgtheater's intimate casual style. Its world-famous acoustics had been reinforced by the introduction of the box-set, which Laube pioneered in the German-speaking theatre. By the time of his retirement in 1867 pre-eminence had passed to Berlin. In 1888 the Burgtheater company moved to a new theatre which, destroyed in 1945 and rebuilt in 1955, still stands on the Ring facing the Town Hall. With the founding of the Austrian Republic in 1918, responsibility for the Burgtheater passed from the Court to the state. Heavily subsidized, it is now too unwieldy for one man to influence creatively, and its somewhat conservative repertory absorbs the theatre of the avant-garde only when it has become established. But its brilliant company, in beautifully set and costumed productions directed by outstanding men of the theatre, still makes it one of the great theatres of Europe. Of the other Vienna theatres, the Leopoldstädter, rebuilt in 1847, was demolished in 1945; the Josefstädter has a widely based repertory in which the tradition of fine acting in an intimate style, initiated by Reinhardt when he took over in 1924, still survives; the Theater an der Wien is mainly notable for its operettas and musical shows. The Volkstheater, which presents classical and modern plays with a political flavour, was reconstituted from the earlier Deutsches Volkstheater in 1948. There are also the Raimundtheater, built in 1893 for folk-plays; the Akademietheater, seating about 500, opened in 1922; the Kammerspiele, the home of light comedy; and a number of experimental ‘cellar’ theatres. In summer the finely preserved rococo theatre in the Schönbrunn Palace, built in 1747, offers a season of plays mainly for visitors.

Vienna (Wien) Capital of Austria, on the River Danube. Vienna became an important town under the Romans, but after their withdrawal in the 5th century it fell to a succession of invaders from e Europe. The first Habsburg ruler was installed in 1276, and the city was the seat of the Holy Roman Empire from 1558 to 1806. Occupied by the French during the Napoleonic Wars, it was later chosen as the site of the Congress of Vienna. As the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it was the cultural and social centre of 19th-century Europe under Emperor Franz Joseph. It suffered economic and political collapse following the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I. After World War 2, it was occupied (1945–55) by joint Soviet-Western forces. Vienna's historical buildings include the 12th-century St Stephen's Cathedral, the Schönbrunn (royal summer palace), and the Hofburg (a former residence of the Habsburgs). Industries: chemicals, textiles, furniture, clothing. Vienna is the world's third-largest German-speaking city (after Berlin and Hamburg). Pop. (2001) 1,562,676.

Vienna, Austria, Canada, USA Austria: Wien in German and Bécs in Hungarian. Fortified early in the 1st century ad and home at first to the 13th Legion, the Roman name Vindobona was probably derived from the Celtic Vindomina ‘White Fort’ from vindo ‘white’, referring to the splendour of the city and its location. Subsequently it was called Wenia and Wienis before assuming its present German name of Wien. It was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire (1558–1806), of the Austrian Empire (1806–67), of the Austro‐Hungarian Empire (1867–1918), and of the Republic of Austria since 1918. It is also a state. It has given its name to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations signed in 1961.

Vienna town (1990 pop. 14,852), Fairfax co., N Va., a residential suburb of Washington, D.C.; inc. 1890. There is computer software research. Originally called Springfield, Vienna became the site of Fairfax county's first courthouse in 1742. Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts is on the city's outskirts. Nearby is the enormous Tysons Corner Center mall, which attracts shoppers from the N Virginia-Washington, D.C., area.

Vienna ♀ From the name of the capital of Austria (so called from the river on which it stands, thought to have derived its name from the Celtic element vindo ‘white’). Modern adoption as a female first name follows the pattern of other female-sounding city names such as Verona, Siena, Ravenna, and Paris.

Vienna •Alana, Anna, bandanna, banner, Branagh, canna, canner, Diana, fanner, Fermanagh, Guyana, Hannah, Havana, hosanna, Indiana, Joanna, lanner, Louisiana, manna, manner, manor, Montana, nana, planner, Pollyanna, Rosanna, savannah, scanner, spanner, Susanna, tanner •Abner • Jaffna • Patna • caravanner •Africana, Afrikaner, Americana, ana, banana, Botswana, bwana, cabana, caragana, Christiana, Dana, darner, Edwardiana, garner, Georgiana, Ghana, Gloriana, Guiana, gymkhana, Haryana, iguana, Lana, lantana, liana, Lipizzaner, Ljubljana, Mahayana, mana, mañana, marijuana, nirvana, Oriana, pacarana, piranha, prana, Purana, Rosh Hashana, Santayana, Setswana, sultana, Tatiana, Tijuana, Tirana, tramontana, Tswana, varna, Victoriana, zenana •Gardner • partner •antenna, Avicenna, duenna, henna, Jenna, Jenner, Morwenna, Ravenna, senna, Siena, sienna, tenner, tenor, Vienna •Edna • interregna • Etna • Pevsner