University of Vienna

“ Nevertheless, the universities of Berlin and Vienna can scarcely be said to be threatened with permanent decline. The governments of Prussia and Austria recognize the necessity of a great university in a great capital to give tone to the administrative departments and to resist the spread of the spirit of materialism. Besides, the resident population of each of these cities is entitled to a university, and would be sufficient of itself to support one. ”

“ The English who come to this place are in a particular manner obliged to this family, not only for the polite reception they generally meet with, but also for the opportunities this affords them of forming an acquaintance with the principal people at Vienna. And I imagine there is no city in Europe where a young gentleman, after his university education is finished, can pass a year with so great advantage; because, if properly recommended, he may mix, on an easy footing, with people of rank, and have opportunities of improving by the conversation of sensible men and accomplished women. ”

“ Proceeding further we come to Francis Ring which boasts of the finest buildings of Vienna. To our right are the superb new University buildings, University. Hotel de Ville and Parliament. (far excelling the University buildings of London, Paris and Berlin) , the Hotel de Ville built in ornamented Gothic style, and the Parliament house of Vienna completed only last year. To our left is the new Theatre of Vienna. We pass by the Palais de Justice, and then go along the Burg Ring with the two lofty and imposing museums to our right, and the imperial palace to our left. ”

“ Admission to the reading-room is free to everybody, and books are also lent out under stricter limitations. The University Library of Vienna was established by Maria Theresa. The reading-room is open to all comers, and the library is open much longer than is the rule with university libraries generally. In winter, for instance, it is open from 5 to 8 in the evening, and it is even open from 9 to 12 on Sundays. In 1879, 159,768 volumes were used in the library, 16,300 volumes lent out in Vienna, and 4418 volumes sent carriage free to borrowers outside Vienna. ”

“ CHAPTER V. THE PERFORMANCE OF "THE CREATION." A brilliant festival was to take place to-night in the large aula of the Vienna University. All the composers, musicians, dilettanti, and amateurs of Vienna, had joyously consented to participate in it. The most distinguished names of the aristocracy and the artistic circles of Vienna were at the head of the committee of arrangements. Among those names were those of the Princes Lichnowsky and Lichtenstein, the Countesses Kaunitz and Spielmann, of Beethoven and Salieri, Kreutzer and Clementi, and finally, those of the poets Collin and Carpani. ”

“ As a student, like his German cousin, he lives in frank unmorality. There are thousands of students in Vienna—students at the universities, medical students, music students—each with his schatzkind, who often shares his studies as well as his garret. This thoroughly cosmopolitan set of young people plays a distinct part in the free and easy jollity of the city as a whole. ”

“ Life in the Austrian capital, sunk apparently in sensuousness, had, like a reflection of the ever brightening and warming sun, in its depths, that German, joyous good-nature, that deutsche Gemueth, that leveling peace, and that beautiful disposition [132] which allow every living creature to do what pleases him best and go his own way. Added to this was the high degree of education which distinguished Vienna at the time, and which was influenced, in part, by direct contact with the period of the highest Italian culture, the renaissance. ”

“ The paleontologist might dream, while contemplating this collection of beings, that he could imagine himself in the midst of the secondary period almost as much as if it were still with us; and after seeing it we may readily believe that the day will come when our successors shall have a clear idea of the grand history of past ages.
Vienna, which has long been famous for its life and gayety, has become a splendid city, with its fortifications replaced by spacious boulevards, adorned with gardens, handsome houses, and palaces. Science is destined to profit largely by these transformations. ”

“ Two academies in Prague, one for the Germans of the city and of Bohemia, and one for the Czechs, both under the protection of the government and in receipt of grants from it year by year, have done excellent work, but on a smaller scale than at Vienna. Of lesser academies in various cities in the empire, or of learned societies it is unnecessary to speak, inasmuch as the Vienna Academy is the model which, so far as possible, all of them try to follow. ”

“ Vienna, the capital of Austria, heart and centre of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The city is surrounded by the Danube and its canals, and has several parks and numerous shady avenues of trees, beneath which the gay Viennese love to stroll or sit at the tables of outdoor cafés listening to the bands. You can scarcely walk half a mile in Vienna without hearing music. The gipsy bands which are often heard in Vienna play their national airs with a dash and fire that sets even the most sluggish pulse dancing. ”

“ Woman's position in our country is not only vastly superior to her position in Asia, but very much better than the position of the average woman in continental Europe.
Vienna is not only the capital of the Austria-Hungarian empire, but is one of the greatest cities of Europe. It is worth visiting for its architecture alone, its public buildings combining massiveness and grace. ”

“ As a general rule, the Viennese are gay, pleasure-loving and genial. The Viennese women are justly celebrated for their beauty and elegance, and dressing as a fine art is cultivated here with almost as great success as in Paris. As a rule, the Viennese are passionately fond of dancing; and the city of Strauss, J. F. K. Lanner (1801–1843) and J. Gung'l (1810–1889) gives name to a “school” of waltz and other dance music. Opera, especially in its lighter form, flourishes, and the actors of Vienna maintain with success a traditional reputation of no mean order. ”

“ Prince Metternich, the renowned Austrian statesman, even at his advanced age, was present. Vienna is noted for its beautiful ladies; they belong to a variety of races, the city being a concentrating point, during the gay season, for the fair daughters of Hungary, and of the Bohemian, Polish, and Italian provinces.
The education of young ladies is more superficial here than with us. Music, dancing, and the languages, seem to be the most important branches of an education ”

“ Austria and Hungary strike the casual visitor as very like any other European country, and so long as he remains on the beaten path he finds no reason to revise his judgment. Vienna, Budapesth, Prague, are very like Milan or Berlin. There is plenty of ready money, and every indication of a somewhat too advanced civilisation. In fact, decadence is suggested rather than under-cultivation. The ease with which the city people have adopted every new invention, and the facility with which they adapt themselves to modern appliances and conveniences, quite deceives the stranger. ”

“ In Austria the universities, being modelled on the same system as those of the German Empire, present no especially Austria-Hungary.
Vienna. noteworthy features, except that the sphere of the functions of a rector corresponds precisely with that of the rector in those German universities which have no curator, and the faculties are represented by the ordinary professors as a body along with two representatives of the “Privatdozents.” Vienna has long been chiefly distinguished for its school of medicine, which enjoyed in the last century a reputation almost unrivalled in Europe. ”

“ All higher education of the various nationalities of the empire was down to its break-up regulated from Vienna; the Poles alone had a certain measure of autonomy in secondary education. From the legal point of view the diets of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia had the right to regulate "real schools", but this remained a paper right. Vienna gave all the nations the same mental food. ”

“ The sun went down, the lamps were lit, the alleys were illuminated, the crowd increased, and the emperor himself could not have given a gayer evening’s entertainment.
Vienna has the reputation of being the most profligate capital in Europe. Perhaps it is so. There is certainly, even to a stranger, no lack of temptation to every species of pleasure. But there is, besides, a degree of simplicity and confidence in the manners of the Viennese which I had believed peculiar to America, and inconsistent with the state of society in Europe. ”

“ I do not mean to say that there are no handsome women here, as I saw a goodly number of pretty faces, but they are not more numerous than in other cities. I have read about the great beauty of the women, and know several men who have raved about Vienna as the centre of the earth in this respect, but I cannot understand it. Among the women that are seen in public places, such as the music gardens, restaurants, and cafés, there are no more pretty faces than you would see in Berlin or Paris, and the chances are more than even that those you do see are not Viennese. ”

“ Gay and trifling as the metropolis is, with its abundance of out-door amusement, Vienna must be put down in plain words as the most inhospitable capital in Europe. The Austrians themselves admit that they could not endure to be received abroad as they are in the habit of receiving strangers here. The greater Austrian nobles never receive a stranger to their intimacy.
A late French embassador, who conducted his establishment with splendor, and was at all times profusely hospitable, used to say that he was not once asked privately to dinner during the whole period of his residence in Vienna. ”

“ Every one of the three hundred thousand inhabitants who crowd Vienna and its interminable suburbs seems to reckon it a duty to make his life a commentary. They are more devoted friends of joviality, pleasure, and good living, and more bitter enemies of everything like care or thinking,—a more eating, drinking, good-natured, ill-educated, hospitable, and laughing people,—than any other of Germany, or, perhaps, of Europe. Their climate and soil, the corn and wine with which Heaven has blessed them, exempt them from any very anxious degree of thought about their own wants ”

“ Undoubtedly Vienna is the finest city on the European continent next to Paris, and it is often called the Northern Paris. It resembles the French capital both in its social life and its architecture. The style of the modern buildings is very attractive, displaying great richness and beauty of outline, while the charming perfection of detail is by no means neglected. At least one-quarter of Vienna is new, presenting broad streets lined with noble edifices. ”

“ On the north side the Ring-Strasse gives place to the spacious Franz Josef's quay, flanking the Danube Canal. The municipal districts outside the Ring also contain numerous handsome modern buildings. Vienna possesses both in the inner city and the outlying districts numerous squares adorned with artistic monuments. One of the finest squares in the world for the beauty of the buildings which encircle it is the Rathausplatz, adjoining the Ring-Strasse.
Vienna is the intellectual as well as the material capital of Austria—emphatically so in regard to the German part of the empire. ”

“ Upon the whole, although I am not sure that any one fountain, of the character just mentioned, may equal that in the High Street at Augsbourg, yet, taken collectively, I should say that Vienna has reason to claim its equality with any other city in Europe, on the score of this most picturesque, and frequently salutary, accompaniment of street scenery. In our own country, which has the amplest means of any other in the world, of carrying these objects of public taste into execution, there seems to be an infatuation--amounting to hopeless stupidity--respecting the uniform exclusion of them. ”

“ I am at present confined to my chamber by a sore throat; and am really glad of the excuse, to avoid seeing people, that I love well enough, to be very much mortified when I think I am going to part with them for ever. 'Tis true, the Austrians are not commonly the most polite people in the world, nor the most agreeable. But Vienna is inhabited by all nations, and I had formed to myself a little society of such as were perfectly to my own taste. ”

“ Just as his high renown, and the authority attached to his name and experience, made themselves felt in the deliberations of European politics, so did his noble manners, the manners of the grand seigneur, and his59 urbanity stamp his private receptions and his daily life with a character of gravity wholly in harmony with his diplomatic rôle. At no moment in Vienna did he deviate from the habits contracted in Paris and in the century that lay behind. ”

“ It ought to be said that for this memorable gathering no other city would have answered so well. Vienna is in reality the centre of Europe; at that time it was its capital. A Viennese who had happened to leave the city a few months before would have had some difficulty in identifying himself and his familiar surroundings amidst that new, gilded, and titled population which crowded the place at the time of the Congress. All the sovereigns4 of the North had come thither; the West and the East had sent their most notable representatives. The Emperor Alexander, still young and brilliant ”