Thursday 5.8.10
One of the interesting things we talked about in Thursday’s lecture was a suicide loophole, for devout but extremely depressed Catholics. Since one can’t get into heaven if one commits suicide, the emos liked to violently murder small children, turn themselves into the authorities, repent of the murder, get executed, and escape the tribulations of the physical world while still going to heaven. So it’s better for your soul to murder a child than commit suicide. Hooray for Catholicism!
We also talked more about Martin Luther. Knowing that the Church hated him, and knowing also that the Church is prone to doing sneaky underhanded violent hypocritical things, why didn’t they assassinate Martin Luther? The answer lies in the Habsburgs! Frederick the Wise of Saxony was one of the electors that chooses the Holy Roman Emperor. The current HRE, a Habsburg, was getting close to dying and they wanted to stay in power. So they protected Martin Luther to retain Frederick’s good will and vote. He was kidnapped for his own protection and taken to a tower, where he grew a beard and translated the New Testament into German to make it more accessible to the non-Latin speaking majority of the populace. As this is a very important text, Martin Luther’s Saxon German has influenced modern German. Also of note is that Gutenberg’s printing press was invented around this time, so Martin Luther’s message could be distributed very effectively.
After class we climbed the south tower of Stephansdom (by law the highest structure in the Innere Stadt) and got a view of the city and a burning feeling our legs. Three and a half Euros and 343 steps to the top, but very worth it. After that we meandered our way to Peterskirche, and very ornate church near Stephansplatz, and a big center for Opus Dei. The founder of Opus Dei is buried there. Unfortunately I forgot my camera (tut mir leid!) but the others took lots of pictures, we got lots of culture in, and saw some more of the city. I found to my dismay that my German is not, in fact, very good, and had to revert to English in a couple exchanges with locals, to my great chagrin.
Later the entire class accompanied Professorin Stuart and her girlfriend Louise to the Wiener Zentralfriedhof (Vienna Central Cemetary). There are some interesting notes in the Parsons text on the death culture in Vienna. They take their dying very seriously. Indeed, the Viennese at the Zentralfriedhof seemed less grumpy than anywhere else I’ve seen them. They traditionally liked to bury their dead in the church graveyards near wherever they lived, and were fond of big, ornate funerals. When one Habsburg died (don’t remember who or when) his coffin was too large to fit through the door of his church, prompting, in traditional Viennese style, the construction of a larger, more magnificent church. Emperor Joseph II, son of Maria Theresia, instituted some death reforms. To save wood, he tried to get people to use reusable coffins, which had trapdoors. Once the procession to the grave was complete, the body would be dumped unceremoniously into the hole and the coffin used for the next stiff. The Viennese were NOT PLEASED with this idea, and it was short-lived.
Here lies Ludwig van Beethoven.
Thursday night many of us went with our house manager, a Polish veterinary medical student named Kinga, to a big club in Vienna. It was interesting to note how much American music we heard in the club. Some of the songs were in German, but most of them were in English. In fact, one may not be able to readily distinguish the club we went to in Vienna from an American club. So American songs . . . also it was “ladies’ night,” which turned out to suck for us fellas. For one thing ladies got in for free and got €10 for drinks. Guys had to pay a €6 cover charge. Also there was this one thing where I was dancing, and then suddenly I hear the Fox music. You know, the trumpety entrance music that plays at the beginning of Fox movies. I was pretty confused, the Fox music isn’t exactly club stuff. After this the Terminator soundtrack music plays, and a muscular guy dressed like Predator (three American themes in one) comes out and proceeds to strip down to his thong. Being a heterosexual male, this made me pretty uncomfortable, but I didn’t want to get separated from my female companions, and they were staring rapturously at the beefy, almost-naked stripper. Anyway the point of this story is that the Vienna club scene looks to the American club scene as an example. By the time we got out of the club, it was nearly 5 in the morning, so we just waited around until the subway started working again and took that home. While we were waiting in the subway station, our friend, who we’d last seen very, very drunk and who’d been missing for like two hours, showed up jubilant, having just been to a casino to win €450. So that was nice. We were kind of worried about him.
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