Lecture, Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Hookah Bar

Wednesday 4.8.10

Wednesday: Lecture on Habsburgs and their pension to marry and fight their way to the top. Austria was ruled by the Babenbergs until the last one died heirless and Austria was up for grabs. The Bohemian king Ottokar II took over (by marrying Margaret, sister of the last Babenberg) and started building the Hofburg. Rudolph of Habsburg (who owned lands along the Rhine) enters the scene. He gained considerable power when he was elected king of Austria and Holy Roman Emperor, but Ottokar refused to recognize his authority. This led to a battle in which Ottokar died, and the Habsburgs took over Austria until 1918. This was all in the thirteenth century. In 1452 the Habsburgs took over the Holy Roman Emperor and were in possession of it until its dissolution by Napoleon in 1806 or so. The Habsburgs were very good at using marriage alliances to get land, and at the height of their controlled most of Europe: Austria, Spain, Hungary, Bohemia, parts of Italy and the Netherlands, &c. This led to a sort of Habsburg maxim: “Let others wage war; you, happy Austria, marry.” Frederick III came up with AEIOU and wrote it on everything he had made. It stands for “Austria rules over the whole world” in German and Latin (Alles Erdreich ist Österreich Unterthan, Austria est imperare omni universo). We talked about the Counter-Reformation a bit. As Holy Roman Emperors, the Habsburgs were kind of obligated to remain and defend Catholicism. In 1555 the Peace of Augsburg established the right of rulers to choose whether their territory would be Catholic or Protestant.

We then went to the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum – Austria’s military history museum. I enjoyed taking lots of photos of the weapons. For me, it’s the older the better. However, they also had a collection of tanks and lots of Nazi stuff from WWII. I enjoyed an exhibit of a rabidly anti-Hitler Austrian artist. He portrayed Hitler as a wolf, and the Nazis as skeletons eating brains. He also had a piece detailing what he’d like to do to Hitler (bullet to the head, knife to the heart, &c.). Instead of portraying his figures as they’d normally be seen, he displayed various layers of their anatomy, which was interesting. The most famous thing in the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum is the car in which Franz Ferdinand was shot, prompting the first World War. After this, a nice dinner with some friends.

My favorite part of the Military History museum was all the badass historic weapons.

The automobile in which Franz Ferdinand was assassinated.

At night, we went to hookah bar to work on our blogs over beer and apple-flavored sheesha. It was quite relaxing, and we got a lot of work done. They had a musician who styled himself “Johnny Crash” and played a guitar and sang songs both in German and in English with an Austrian accent. American songs are actually very, very popular in Austria.