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The city of Vienna has its clichés, as a city of music, as a city on the Danube, and - from a culinary point of view - as the capital of Wiener Schnitzel, Sachertorte and apple strudel. It is not known a priori that Vienna can also boast mountains. Of course, the Kahlenberg is no stranger, also thanks to its widely visible transmission mast. There are also Franz Grillparzer's legendary words: "If you have looked at the surrounding countryside from Kahlenberg, then you will understand what I wrote and what I am." Carved in stone on the facade of the Hotel am Kahlenberg. Despite this literary importance, the Mons altissimus, the highest of the Vienna mountains, is the neighboring Hermannskogel at 544 meters and makes the mountain top of the Kahlenberg at 484 meters appear small.
Such considerations literally demand a book about Vienna's mountains. This one, written by Matthias Marschik and Edgar Schütz, has finally been published. In the introduction, the team of authors speaks of the "city of a hundred mountains", before well-known but also lesser-known mountains are briefly touched upon in a thoroughly humorous but thoroughly researched tour through the Viennese mountains (pages 6 to 12). The highest elevation in Leopoldstadt, the only seven meter high Constantine Hill (page 22) next to Prater Hauptallee, is also mentioned here. Its creation is not due to tectonic forces, but rather the result of an emergency solution in the 1870s: it consists of the excavated material from the rotunda.
Thanks to such approaches and considerations, it doesn't matter whether the number 100 is officially confirmed. In Vienna, people were and are not embarrassed to call every conceivable elevation in the cityscape a mountain. If you're looking for summit crosses here, you won't find them, but some lookout towers offer montane views far beyond the city, to real mountains, such as the Little Carpathians in Slovakia.
The book does not begin with a mountain, as one would expect, but with a path to the mountains, the Höhenstraße, built in the 1930s. It opens up the Kahlenberg, its "brother", the Leopoldsberg (425 meters) and the Kobenzl (382 meters), for private transport as well as for the bus 38A.
A total of 31 mountains are depicted across the city with a mix of historical and current images. While the images from past decades often still show the undeveloped mountain peaks and historical uses, most of them are now largely built-up and forested. Some of the mountains are known in the Viennese consciousness primarily as street and alley names. Everyone knows - not least because of the two stationary radar devices - the busy Grünbergstrasse (page 38) on the border between the 12th (Meidling) and 13th (Hietzing) districts. But who knows that the name does not come from a wooded peak, but from Josef Freiherr von Grünberg, who built the first houses here in 1790?
The illustrated book proves to be an informative source. We learn, for example, that the first parallel slalom of the Ski World Cup took place on the Hohe Wandwiese in Vienna Penzing in 1967. Yes, at one time – when there were still “real” winters with snow – Vienna also had three (!) ski jumps (page 128).
Anyone who looks from the viewing platform of the Leopoldsberg over the Danube to the northeast will see it lying there, the 358 meter high Bisamberg. The long ridge looks more like a giant whale lazily rising out of the water than a proud elevation. The transmitter once located here, for a long time the largest building in Austria, was used from 1959 to 2008 before it was blown up on February 24, 2010 - in the presence of numerous amateur photographers. The fall of the proud iron mast can be seen on page 97 of the picture booklet "The Bisamberg - The Transdanubian Guardian", for which Matthias Marschik is also responsible, this time with Gabriele Dorffner as co-author.
The station in question was on the border between Vienna and Lower Austria. So it is adopted by the Viennese, especially those who live in the Transdanubian 21st and 22nd districts, as their mountain. The fact that you can easily hike it via Stammersdorfer Kellergasse is a great match for Viennese wine and tavern bliss. The author duo also takes this fact into account with numerous images, specifically in the chapters Heurige (page 98ff) and cellar alleys and vineyards (page 104ff).
But Lower Austrians also get their money's worth from the depiction of the villages in the chapter "Around the Bisamberg" (page 18ff.) with Bisamberg, Klein-Engersdorf, Langenzersdorf and Hagenbrunn. As far as local history is concerned, starting on page 50 the military past is discussed, starting with the War of 1866 and the two world wars. The field name Alte Schanzen including the remains of concrete walls is one of the pieces of evidence.
The 358 meter high Bisamberg also brings together prominent names. The Elisabethhöhe, with the wayside shrine erected here in 1899, commemorates the Empress ("Sisi"), who was murdered in 1898. The poet Joseph von Eichendorf, who went from Vienna over the Bisamberg to Seebarn to Count Wilczek's castle in 1811 (monument on page 82), is also mentioned, as is the natural healer Florian Berndl (page 84ff), who built his "Berndl-Alm" here. There were also political rallies, such as German national solstice celebrations, on Bisamberg; there is a caricature of this in the satirical magazine "Muskete" from 1921 on page 64.
Conclusion: The two books impress with the wealth of historical images that open up a long-forgotten panopticon of sunken worlds of the Vienna mountains, on either side of the Danube. In many cases, personal memories may be awakened, because no one has come and will miss the Viennese mountains with their excursion restaurants. (Thomas Hofmann, December 20, 2024).