Category Archive 'Austria'
22 Aug 2021

Austrian Lawn Ornament

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21 Nov 2019

Vienna Rejects Monument to Polish King Who Broke the Turkish Siege

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The monument depicts Sobieski as the head of a column of hussars as he routed the Ottoman army at the Siege of Vienna in 1683, a battle that put a check on the Ottomans’ further advances into Europe.

The First News illustrates the spurned monument sitting on a trailer in Cracow.

[T]hirteen attempts have been made to erect a monument in Vienna in honour of the Polish king who relieved the siege of the city. This latest attempt looked set to be successful.

The foundation stone for the monument in Vienna was laid six years ago on the 330th anniversary of the battle. The unveiling of the monument was planned for 12 September 2018 on the 335th anniversary of the relief of Vienna.

However, last July, the new mayor of Vienna, Michael Ludwig, announced that he was withdrawing from the project.

Piotr Zapart, initiator of the project and chairman of the monument’s organising committee said in an interview with radio station RMF FM, “We had all the agreements in place; the cooperation with Vienna, as well as with Kraków was great; there was a signed agreement between the Mayor of the Kraków, Jacek Majchrowski, and the Mayor of Vienna, Michael Häupel.

“On 11 July, President Jacek Majchrowski and I were invited to meet the new mayor Michael Ludwig. And there we were told that a new committee had said that the monument did not meet the artistic standards, was archaic and therefore Vienna withdrew its consent.”

In its letter to the organising committee, the authorities in Vienna, fearing that the monument may be perceived as anti-Turkish, stated that it was not an appropriate time to erect military monuments.

In the place where the monument was to be erected, everything is ready. The pedestal is already there and the area around it has been cobblestoned. On both sides of the pedestal there was to be an inscription in Polish and German ‘King of Poland Jan III Sobieski’ with the date of the battle.

The monument’s placement on a platform trailer normally used to haul broken-down cars symbolises that it is still on the road to its final destination in the Austrian capital.

It will stand in Kraków for a maximum of two weeks according to local authorities in the city. Later, it will move on to Nowy Sącz, Brzeg and Nysa, places that are connected with the life of the king, and possibly to Warsaw, where it would stand in front of the Royal Castle.

RTWT

30 Mar 2019

Living Relatives of Iceman Identified in Austrian Tyrol

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Naturalistic reconstruction of Ötzi – South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology.

Fox News:

Ötzi the Iceman has at least 19 living male relatives in the Austrian Tirol, according to a genetic study into the origins of the people who now inhabit the region.

Scientists from the Institute of Legal Medicine at Innsbruck Medical University analyzed DNA samples taken from 3,700 blood donors in the Tyrol region of Austria.

During their study, they discovered that 19 individuals share a particular genetic mutation with the 5,300-year-old mummy, whose full genome was published last year.

“These men and the Iceman had the same ancestors,” Walther Parson, the forensic scientist who carried out the study, told the Austrian Press Agency.

The researchers focused on parts of the human DNA which are generally inherited unchanged.

“In men it is the Y chromosomes and in females the mitochondria. Eventual changes arise due to mutations, which are then inherited further,” Parson explained.

People with the same mutations are categorized in haplogroups. Designed with letters, haplogroups allow researchers to trace early migratory routes since they are often associated with defined populations and geographical regions.

Indeed, Ötzi’s haplogroup is very rare in Europe.

“The Iceman had the haplogroup G, sub category G-L91. In our research we found another 19 people with this genetic group and subgroup,” Parson said.

Having carried Y chromosome haplogroup analysis, Parson was able to trace only the male descendants of the Neolithic man.

So far the 19 individuals have not been informed of their genetic relationship to Ötzi.

RTWT

04 Nov 2018

A Zither, Yodeling, and Beer in Front of Antique Fly Reels

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HT: Karen L. Myers.

18 Jan 2017

Job Opportunity

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Telegraph:

An extremely rare job opportunity has opened for a hermit in a stunningly beautiful cloister perched on a cliff in Austria.

But the successful applicant for the unpaid position must be prepared to live without electricity, running water, or the internet, and must be able to cope with the possibility of being shot by a jealous local.

Municipal and Catholic officials in the Austrian town of Saalfelden are looking for someone to live in a nearby hermitage built into steep cliffs characteristic of the Salzburg region that borders on Germany.

Applicants should be independently wealthy or have another job as the parish website says the position does not come with a salary.

And because the 350-year-old hermitage – one of the few such places in Europe that is still in use – is unheated and sits at an altitude of 4,600 feet, it is only inhabitable between April and November.

“There is no classic job description for a hermit,” the parish conceded on its website. Despite the potential hardships, the parish is confident it will find the right man, who according to local priest Alois Moser should be a “a person at peace with himself.”

Father Moser and Saalfelden mayor Erich Rohrmoser will pick the new hermit, who will be chosen more on the basis of personality than on career background.

The job ad did not specify that the future hermit had to be a Roman Catholic, just that he should have a Christian outlook and be ready to greet visiting pilgrims and locals.

A hermit is defined as someone living in solitude as a religious discipline.

But that will not be case in Saalfelden, where the successful candidate will have to greet and listen to the many locals and outsiders who come to appreciate the view from the hermitage and unburden themselves to the resident hermit, the ad explained.

The hermitage has been uninhabited since a Viennese pastor and psychotherapist left last autumn to return to his normal life after just one stint in the job. Before him, a Benedictine monk lived there for more than a decade.

Complete story.

Hat tip to John Brewer.

21 Dec 2014

Krampus: St. Nick’s Evil Twin

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krampus-2

In Austria, when St. Nicholas arrives with gifts for good children, he is accompanied by Krampus, a hairy, horned and cloven-hoofed monster equipped with enormous fangs who carries a bundle of birch twigs to beat up on naughty children. Krampus was banned by the fascists in the 1930s for being too negative a symbol.

In the postcard above, a relatively benign version of Krampus is carrying unwary infants right away.

Wikipedia article.

Krampus: Santa’s Sadistic Sidekick

Krampus

10 Sep 2013

Austrian Dominatrix Gets Male Submissives to Pay to Do Farm Chores

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According to Spiegel, her customers unaccountably became dissatisfied. (Clearly, she needed to whip them harder.)

Several sadomasochists eagerly responded to an advert posted by an Austrian woman farmer seeking clients. But they didn’t get the punishment they had hoped for. Instead, they found themselves doing farm labor in fetish gear, while paying for the privilege.

To sadomasochists keen on fresh air and the country life, it must have seemed like a dream come true. A 35-year-old woman advertizing herself as a dominatrix promised strict discipline to paying clients on her farm in the northeast of Austria.

Some 15 men responded to the advert posted in the Internet, and two or three took up the offer. “They didn’t get what they bargained for,” a spokesman for the Lower Austria police told SPIEGEL ONLINE, confirming reports in the Austrian media in recent days.

Instead of savoring the sweet pleasure of pain, the men found themselves consigned to farm labor such as chopping wood in the nude and mowing the lawn while wearing black fetish masks on the farm near the town of St Pölten. In effect, they were paying for the privilege of doing farm work.

“They had these clothes one wears in such circles, leather and plastic clothes and masks,” said the spokesman.

It is unclear how much they paid their mistress. After a week, they realized they had been duped and downed tools.

24 Aug 2013

Female Memorial Figure

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Female sculpture from Zentralfriedhof Cemetery, Simmering, Vienna (click on picture for larger image)

My curiosity is insatiable once provoked, and I’ve just wasted more than a hour trying to figure out whose memorial this very charming statue ornaments, and what is intended by the image of a classically-draped Bernini-esque female figure, kneeling, long hair hanging down, wringing her hands over a peculiar Art Noveau jewelry box or miniature model of a theater. Are we to take it that the soul or anima of the deceased is housed in this rock-crystal-windowed casket and the lady is imploring for it to come back to life?

A statue of this quality and interest is bound to be photographed more than once, and sure enough, I found more details at least, here and here. But none of the photographers can be bothered to identify the deceased party being memorialized, the sculptor, or what exactly is supposed to be going on. Imagine my frustration.

Via Fred Lapides (who means to say “Memento Mori”).

10 Apr 2013

Architectural Whimsy and a Coincidence

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My wife Karen forwarded to me the other day Gizmodo’s story on a dry nook in the middle of a pond in Vöcklabruck, Austria, and it is certainly an eye-catching and amusing architectural gimmick.

The interesting coincidence is the location.

Vöcklabruck
, in Upper Austria is my family’s ancestral home.

They were first recorded under the surname “Buchhaim,” which later became corrupted into Puchhaim and finally Pöchner. (Zienkiewicz came later.)

Seibmacher writes:

Über die Heimat der Pöchner ist nichts verlässliches bekannt. Während einige dieselben aus Schottland stammen lassen, wieder andere Steiermark als ihre Heimat nennen, kommen selbe zu Anfang des. 12. Jahrhunderts bereits in Salzburg vor, von wo sie sich nach Oberöstereich in die Gegend von Vöcklabruck wandten.

(translation:)

Concerning the homeland of the Pöchners there is no reliable information. According to some they originally emigrated from Scotland, but different sources call the Steiermark their homeland. From the beginning of the 12th Century onward they were in Salzburg, from whence they went to Upper Austria to the vicinity of Vöcklabruck.

The theory proposed by the former sources is that Buchhaim-Puchhaim-Pöchner surname comes actually from the Scottish Buchan, and that some Comyns related to the Norman Comyns who inherited via a Celtic maternal line the Scottish Earldom of Buchan moved to Austria.

This would be a plausible story if the emigration occurred in the years between 1306 and 1314 when the Comyns lost the struggle for power and the throne of Scotland to the Bruces, but the Pöchners are already in Austria two centuries earlier.

Below is the Pöchner coat of arms, which the heraldically-knowledgeable will perceive at once represents a simple reversal of the tinctures of the arms of Austria, i.e. of the Babbenburg Dukes of Austria, acquired by Leopold V (“Luitpold der Tugendhafte,” Leopold the Virtuous) in the course of the 1191 Siege of Acre.

Leopold’s arms consisted of “Gules, a fess Argent” because in the course of the fighting his tunic had become completely covered with blood except for a white band which had been covered by his belt.

16 Jul 2012

Heidentor

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Imagined reconstruction of Heidentor (“Heathen’s Gate”), the most impressive surviving Roman monument in Austria.

Carutum web-site:

All that remains now of the former splendid edifice is the famous archway. Latest scientific investigations clearly prove that it was originally erected as a quadrifrons (Greek tetrapylon), a monument with pillars and four archways, which was built from 354 to 361 AD as a triumphal arch in honour of Emperor Constantius II and which rose protectively over the statue of the Emperor.

The name ‘Heidentor’ dates from the Middle Ages when the archway was thought to have been erected by non-Christians and was therefore called ‘heydnisch Tor’ (heathen gate).

12 Jun 2012

Flash Mob, Carmina Burana

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Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

25 Apr 2011

14th Century Horde Found in Backyard in Lower Austria

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Ring with precious stones

An Austrian residing in or near the city of Wiener Neustadt, referred to in news accounts only as “Andreas K.”, was digging to expand a small pond in his backyard garden in 2007 when he discovered a medieval horde of 200 pieces of jewelry, buckles, and silver plates embedded with precious stones, pearls, and fossilized coral.

The finder failed to recognize their value at the time, and simply placed all the objects in a box. He sold his house and moved in 2009, at which time he happened to glance in the box previously stored in the basement. The dirt covering the object had dried and begun to fall off revealing jewels and precious metals.

The finder made inquiries on the Internet and knowledgeable collectors advised him to contact the Bundesdenkmalamt Österreich (BDA), the Austrian Heritage Office.

The BDA press office released a news report on Friday, but it is obvious that the objects have yet to be seriously analyzed and evaluated.

World Weekly News

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.


Belt buckle with pearl inlay

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