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“Few capitals in the world can boast something like our Prater,” wrote Adalbert Stifter in 1844. Nothing has changed in the 21st century. The uniqueness of the Prater in Vienna-Leopoldstadt, starting from the Praterstern to the Prater Spitz, where the Danube Canal flows into the Danube, lies in its ever-changing diversity. Whether it's the Wurstelprater with its Ferris wheel, a green oasis with idyllic riparian forest remnants, a place of historical events (keyword: the 1873 World's Fair) or a strolling and running mile, to mention the more than four kilometer long main avenue, the Prater is unique and dazzling - a constantly reinventing panopticon. Doing all of this justice in one book in its historical dimension, which begins with the opening of the imperial hunting grounds in 1766 by Emperor Joseph II, is a mammoth task.
Two books are presented here. First of all, a large-format opus that appeared in 2024 for the opening of the newly built Prater Museum and draws attention to the big picture. And then a small, fine book from 2015 that rescues the biological research institute, which was destroyed in 1945, from oblivion.
The editorial duo Werner Michael Schwarz and Susanne Winkler are approaching the Prater as if it were a major journalistic attack. 51 authors have captured the colorful world of the Prater on 448 pages in a large format of 24x30 cm with 100 black and white and 328 colored illustrations. If you want an overview, it's worth starting with the last article in the book, "Planet Prater" (from page 438) by the artist Olaf Osten. He penned the monumental Prater panorama picture in the entrance area of the Prater Museum (Straße des 1. Mai, No. 92), which was newly opened in 2024 and was designed as a hidden object picture with over 700 people, animals and transitional creatures (quote Osten, page 439).
Lovingly detailed drawings span a historical arc. In his picture he unites Mozart and his wife Constanze sitting at a table where an e-scooter driver with dreadlocks is driving past, as well as Princess Pauline Metternich, who not only organized the legendary flower parade on the main avenue but also the "Festival on Mars" in 1902. Accordingly, Osten's princess holds a male Martian in her left hand, which he depicts as a female Martian (!) in a green dress, while she pulls a handcart with flowers in her right hand. The long-lost "Venice in Vienna" with gondolas is being brought into the 21st century, as is Conchita Wurst and Willi Resetarits aka Ostbahn Kurti on the Kaiserwiese. This detailed presentation also stands, pars pro toto, for the high quality of the entire book, which is characterized by the wealth of detail as well as in-depth research.
After three forewords, a total of seven chapters follow. It begins with a definition "What is the Prater?", which combines quite heterogeneous topics. An essay "Vom Kasperl oder Wurstel" can be found as well as the Prater in the landscape painting (from page 99), to mention just two of the 13 essays. The part "City Politics, Power" begins with the opening of the Prater in 1766, deals with the World Exhibition (page 147), May 1st and its celebrations, which have always been a fixture here, the Volksstimme Festival (page 201) and the round ball house by Edwin Lipburger (page 208), which has stood at the beginning of the main avenue since 1982.
“Nature and Technology” is about the natural area, the river morphology (page 201), which gave the Prater its current boundaries through the regulation of the Danube in 1875, as well as “Fun rides and technology” and the planetarium (page 258). After the chapter "Animals", there follows "Body and Lust" which, among other things, deals with "Sex in the Prater" (page 294) and then the last chapter "Great Theater". This is about circuses (page 375) and the legendary Pratersauna. The conclusion is made up of three contributions, which are brought together under the heading “The New Prater Museum” and which pay tribute to the two deceased grandees of Prater research, Hans Pemmer and Ninni Lackner (page 430).
Anyone standing in front of the school traffic garden on the main avenue today would do well to read the black, bilingual information board "Biological Research Institute (BVA) / Vivarium" on the fence. This not only explains the name of the nearby Vivariumstrasse, but also tells us that the institution in question was one of the first of its kind in the world. Founded in 1902 by Hans Przibram (1874 to 1944), Leopold von Portheim (1869 to 1947) and Wilhelm Figdor (1866 to 1938), the institute came in 1914 as a "generous donation to the Academy", as on page 27 of the informative booklet by Klaus Taschwer, Johannes Feichtinger, Stefan Sienell & Heidemarie Uhl can be read.
Their publication accompanies an exhibition by the Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) in 2015, as part of which a memorial day was organized on June 12th, the plaque in question was unveiled and a bust of Hans Przibram, who died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, donated to the ÖAW in 1947 (!), was placed in its auditorium. The building was massively destroyed by bombing in 1945. The years of scientific work that began in 1902 and were to make numerous headlines in the next decades are unforgettable.
The building in the neo-Renaissance style was built on the occasion of the 1873 World's Fair as the "largest aquarium in Europe" (page 12). In 1887 it mutated into a vivarium, a kind of indoor zoo. From 1897 onwards they were tempted by the largest reptile collection in the world, but in the end they were not successful. In 1902, the young zoologist Przibram and the two botanists Portheim and Figdor purchased the vivarium in order to be able to conduct research outside of the university. The funds, around 300,000 crowns (today: around 2.8 million euros), came from their families. In 1908, the BVA counted no fewer than 708 animal species that were the focus of research.
One of the most dazzling researchers was the zoologist Paul Kammerer (1880 to 1926) (page 30ff), whose research on midwife toads was exposed as a fake (page 33ff). The scandal became widely known in 1971 through the book “The Case of the Midwife Toad” by Arthur Köstler. Perhaps less well-known is the physiologist Eugen Steinach (1861 to 1944), who is honored here as a medical star of the interwar period (page 39ff). Steinach, one of the fathers of modern hormone research, was nominated for the Nobel Prize eleven times.
The year 1938 brought restrictions for Przibram and Portheim as well as for all other researchers here with Jewish roots, who made up two thirds of the workforce. Details can be found on page 50. After the institution was destroyed in 1945, the fate of those who once worked there was kept quiet for a long time. In 2013, Klaus Taschwer reported in detail in STANDARD about the brutal extinction of the former model institution under the title “Displaced, burned, sold and forgotten”.
Conclusion: The book "The Vienna Prater - Laboratory of Modernism" does justice to the wide diversity of the Prater at a high level, supported by numerous, previously little-known images. "Experimental Biology in the Vienna Prater" describes the rise and fall of a research institution that is unique in the world and contains numerous facts that are unlikely to be known to a broader public. (Thomas Hofmann, June 12, 2025)