Wien Museum

Today we had a tour of the Wien Museum which is located right next to the Karlskirche. From reading the Concise History of Austria, I got a basic understanding of everything, but not specifically from about Vienna. The Cultural History of Vienna was much more specific, yet this museum itself serves as a better learning tool. The museum has a different floors dedicated to different parts of Vienna’s history. We started out with first floor which has artifacts from the Roman Empire through the Babenburgs. It was the presence of the Babenbergs that prompted the construction of St Stephen’s Cathedral in 1137 that is still the main icon of the city today. In 1278, the Habsburgs constructed city walls to enclose Vienna, since Vienna was autonomous at the time. When the Habsburgs came into power in Vienna, they immediately made the city one of the most important in Europe due to their expansion and its location. The most important city at the time was Cologne. The Wien Museum has by far the most Viennese regional artifacts, and they have tons of ceramic vases and amphoras. It is interesting to note that the reason that there are not that many stone artifacts left for us to see is that over the years they were seen as valuable because they could be used to build buildings. As we made our way around, Dr. O showed us many different pieces, including original stained glass from the Saint Stephan’s Cathedral. Of interest to me was the armor of Maxamilian I. He is an important person because he is responsible for lots of expansion in the form of marrying other land holding royals. You can see howall of the different plates work together to give the best protection, yet all of it is inlayed with intricate gold designs. It just goes to show how wealthy these guys were.

After the tour some of us stayed inside to look at the Gustav Klimt exhibit. It was my first time seeing this many works by one artist, and it was really interesting because there was an incredible mix of beauty and crudeness/rudimentary-ness. But we did see this painting which is more of what I was expecting than all the crude drawings. It was the Potrait of Emilie Flöge from 1902. Klimt does a great job making her look powerful in this portrait with her stance and facial expression. Her hair is wild and her eyes are bright blue, it is a really cool painting from a really famous painter.