Museum Liechtenstein closes down

Of the royal collections of Europe, the princely collection of Liechtenstein is second only to the Royal Collection in Britain and since 2004 parts of it have been exhibited in the Liechtenstein Garden Palace (Gartenpalais Liechtenstein) in Vienna. However, as from the beginning of this year the Museum Liechtenstein has sadly closed its doors to ordinary visitors.
In the future it will only be possible to visit the palace when taking part in occasional guided tours of the collection. The focus will from now rather be on renting out the palace to corporate events and so on. The reason for this sad development seems to be that one had hoped for 300,000 visitors per year, but only managed to attract some 45,000.
Meanwhile the Liechtenstein Mansion (Palais Liechtenstein) in the centre of Vienna, which was the main residence of the Sovereign Prince of Liechtenstein until 1938, is being restored. The plan was that it would serve as a second branch of the Museum Liechtenstein, but this too will now not be generally open to the public after the restoration is completed next year.
The closing of the Museum Liechtenstein means that the website of the princely collections has now also changed to www.palaisliechtenstein.com. The new website will be launched in February.
The photo shows a detail of the ceiling fresco in the Great Hall of the Liechtenstein Garden Palace. The fresco was done by Andrea Pozzo between 1704 and 1708 and shows the entry of Hercules into Olympus.

King and Queen of Sweden to attend Otto von Habsburg’s funeral

According to a spokesperson for President Heinz Fischer of Austria the King and Queen of Sweden have made known their intention to attend the funeral of Otto von Habsburg in Vienna on Saturday.
Among the other dignitaries who have announced their presence so far are, according to media reports, the Austrian President and Chancellor as well as several members of the Austrian government, the Sovereign Prince and Princess of Liechtenstein (of course), the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Princess Michael of the United Kingdom, the President of Georgia, the ex-King of Romania and the Speaker of the European Parliament.
While Otto von Habsburg was born in an era when there, according to King Olav, existed some sort of divide between the Catholic and Protestant monarchies of Europe, ties between the Habsburgs and the Bernadottes were rather close. Queen Josephina of Sweden and Norway was a first cousin of Emperor Franz Joseph I and Empress Elisabeth, making the late ex-Crown Prince Otto a fourth cousin of King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden.
King Gustaf V and Queen Victoria, by birth Princess of Baden, paid a state visit to Emperor Franz Joseph shortly after their accession to the Swedish throne in 1907. Otto von Habsburg himself visited Sweden a couple of times when still a young man and at one stage Princess Ingrid (later Queen of Denmark) was considered a possible wife for him.
In recent years Otto von Habsburg’s ties with Sweden were mainly through his daughter Walburga, who married the Swedish Count Archibald Douglas, settled at a manor in Sörmland and became an MP. During his visits to Sweden Otto von Habsburg met privately with King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia on several occasions and they were among the guests at his 90th birthday celebrations in Vienna in 2002.
Otto von Habsburg was also a fourth cousin of Crown Princess Märtha of Norway, but although they knew each other during their shared exile in the USA during World War II, they lost contact after the war. Austrian media reports that the King of Norway has sent his condolences to the Habsburg family, but that neither the Norwegian nor the Danish royal family will be represented at the funeral.
The funeral in Vienna will be carried out almost as if Otto von Habsburg was still Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary and the Viennese newspapers now report on closure of tram lines and streets during the funeral procession from the Cathedral of St Stephan to the Capuchin Church. There has been some criticism of the fact that the Guard of the republican army will be on parade. I can understand the argument that Otto von Habsburg held no official position in the Austrian republic, but on the other hand there is nothing banning a republic from honouring the country’s great men and women even if they were once members of the same country’s royal family.
Today the coffins of Otto von Habsburg and his wife Regina, who was temporarily buried in her family vault in Heldburg following her death last year, have been reunited in Mariazell, where a requiem mass will be held in the basilica at 2 p.m.
From there the journey continues to Vienna, one of Europe’s most beautiful capitals. Otto and Regina von Habsburg will lie in state in the Capuchin Church on Thursday and Friday (from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day) ahead of the funeral mass in the Cathedral of St Stephan on Saturday at 3 p.m.
It has now also been settled that the ceremony of knocking three times on the door of the Imperial Vault will be carried out. At the first knock Father Gottfried, the Capuchin monk who is custodian of the Imperial Vault, will call out “Wer begehrt Einlass?” (“Who requests entry?”)
The master of ceremonies, Ulrich-Walter Lipp, will respond by giving all the imperial titles once held by the deceased: “Otto von Österreich, einst Kronprinz von Österreich-Ungarn, königlicher Prinz von Ungarn und Böhmen, von Dalmatien, Kroatien, Slawonien, Galizien, Lodomerien und Illyrien, Großherzog von Toskana und Krakau, Herzog von Lothringen, von Salzburg, Steyr, Kärnten, Krain und der Bukowina, Großfürst von Siebenbürgen, Markgraf von Mähren, Herzog von Ober- und Niederschlesien, von Modena, Parma, Piacenza und Guastalla, von Auschwitz und Zator, von Teschen, Friaul, Ragusa und Zara, gefürsteter Graf von Habsburg und Tirol, von Kyburg, Görz und Gradisca, Fürst von Trient und Brixen, Markgraf von Ober- und Niederlausitz und in Istrien, Graf von Hohenems, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Sonnenberg etc., Herr von Triest, von Cattaro und auf der Windischen Mark, Großwojwode der Wojwodschaft Serbien etc., etc.”
“Wir kennen ihn nicht” (“We know him not”), the monk will reply and the master of ceremonies will knock a second time. “Wer begehrt Einlass?” This time the master of ceremonies will reply with the civilian honours acquired by the former Crown Prince during his long post-imperial life:
“Dr. Otto von Habsburg, Präsident und Ehrenpräsident der Paneuropa-Union, Mitglied und Alterspräsident des Europäischen Parlamentes, Ehrendoktor zahlreicher Universitäten und Ehrenbürger vieler Gemeinden in Mitteleuropa, Mitglied ehrwürdiger Akademien und Institute, Träger hoher und höchster staatlicher und kirchlicher Auszeichnungen, Orden und Ehrungen, die ihm verliehen wurden in Anerkennung seines jahrzehntelangen Kampfes für die Freiheit der Völker, für Recht und Gerechtigkei”.
“Wir kennen ihn nicht”.
Then the third knock. “Wer begehrt Einlass?” “Otto, ein sterblicher, sündiger Mensch” (“Otto, a mortal, sinful human being”). “So komme er herein” (“So come here in”), the custodian will answer and the gate will be opened.
When Otto and Regina von Habsburg have been laid to rest, there will only be one available spot left in the Imperial Vault. Apparently this is reserved for Archduchess Yolande, the widow of Otto von Habsburg’s younger brother Karl Ludwig, who was laid to rest there in 2007.

What to see: The Imperial Vault, Vienna

On Saturday Otto von Habsburg will be laid to rest in the Imperial Vault beneath the Capuchin Church in the New Market (Neuer Markt) in Vienna, thus literally joining his forebears.
It was in 1599 that the first Capuchin monks came to Vienna and only eighteen years later Empress Anna, consort of Empress Matthias, granted the Capuchins a church in the New Market and stipulated that she should be buried in its crypt. The Empress died a year later and was followed by her husband three months later. However, it was only in 1633 that work on the church had progressed to the extent that the imperial coffins could be transferred there.
Emperor Ferdinand III soon had to have the crypt enlarged and several expansions have followed throughout the centuries to give room for the coffins of generations of Habsburgs. Joseph II had it closed and walled up, but reopening it was one of the first acts of his brother Leopold II.
The Imperial Vault now consists of nine crypts and nearly 150 people are buried there. Only one of them is not a Habsburg relative: Countess Caroline von Fuchs-Mollard (1675-1754), who was the governess of Maria Theresia, on whose express wish she was interred with the imperial family.
The oldest of the crypts is the Founders or Angel Crypt, which contains the coffins of Emperor Matthias and Empress Anna. It is followed by the Leopold Crypt, built by Leopold I; the Karl Crypt, built by Karl VI; the Maria Theresia Crypt, built by Franz I Stephan and Maria Theresia; the Franz Crypt, built by Franz II/I; the Ferdinand and Tuscany Crypts, built by Ferdinand I; the New Crypt (built 1960-1962); and finally the Franz Joseph Crypt and the adjacent Crypt Chapel (built 1908-1909).
Emperor Matthias (1557-1619) was as mentioned the first Habsburg ruler to be buried there. He has been followed by Ferdinand III (1608-1657), Joseph I (1678-1711), Leopold I (1640-1705), Karl VI (1685-1740), Franz I Stephan (1708-1765), Maria Theresia (1717-1780), Joseph II (1741-1790), Leopold II (1747-1792), Franz II/I (1768-1835), Ferdinand I (1793-1875) and Franz Joseph I (1830-1916). The remains of the last Habsburg emperor, Karl I (1887-1922), are still in Madeira, where he died in exile following the downfall of the Empire. There is, however, a bust to his memory in the Crypt Chapel.
Another notable absentee is Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in Sarajevo in 1914 unleashed World War I. He and his morganatic wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, is buried in the crypt of Artstetten Palace, but the vault has a plaque commemorating, as it says, “the first victims of World War I 1914-1918”.
The most sumptuous of the memorials is perhaps the double sarcophagus of Franz I Stephan and Maria Theresia (third photo), commissioned from Balthazar Ferdinand Moll long before their deaths. The sarcophagus has reliefs showing great moments of their reigns and their love for each other is symbolised by how their sculptures look each other in the eye.
The last Holy Roman Emperor and first Emperor of Austria, Franz II/I (first and fourth photos) lie in the middle of the Franz Crypt, surrounded by the coffins of his four wives. His grandson the Duke of Reichstad, aka Napoléon II, was also buried there until he was transferred to Paris in 1940.
In the adjacent New Crypt is the coffin of Empress Marie-Louise of the French (fifth photo), the faithless second consort of Napoléon I and mother of Napoléon II. Just across from her is her unfortunate nephew Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, who was executed in 1867 (sixth photo).
Visitors tend to be drawn to the Franz Joseph Crypt (second photo), where several floral tributes are normally to be found at the sarcophagi of Emperor Franz Joseph I, whose 68-year-reign spanned the times from Metternich to World War I, the restless Empress Elisabeth, who was assassinated in 1898, and Crown Prince Rudolph, who committed suicide at Mayerling in 1889.
Burials in the Imperial Vault did not cease altogether with the fall of the Astro-Hungarian Empire in 1918 (Archduke Karl, the current head of the house, actually proposed to his wife during a visit to the vault, asking her how she would like one day to be buried there!).
While the last Emperor, Karl I, is still buried where he died in 1922, his widow Zita was taken to Vienna and buried in the Imperial Vault when she died in the momentous year 1989. Her coffin is to be found in the Crypt Chapel, where her son Otto, the last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, will be laid to rest by her side on Saturday, nearly 95 years after he walked between his parents in the funeral procession of his great-great-uncle Franz Joseph in November 1916.
Perhaps this will be the last time that the ceremony of three knocks on the door to the vault will be carried out. This was how it was done for ex-Empress Zita in 1989:
At the first knock at the door, the Capuchin custodian would ask: “Who requests entry?” The master of ceremonies would announce: “Her Majesty Zita, by the Grace of God Empress of Austria, crowned Queen of Hungary, Queen of Bohemia, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slovenia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Illyria, Queen of Jerusalem etc., Archduchess of Austria, Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Cracow, Lady of Lorraine and Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Krajina and Bukowina, Grand Duchess of Transylvania, Margravine of Moravia, Duchess of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Modena, Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, of Auschwitz and Zator, of Teschen, Friaul, Ragusa and Zara, knighted Countess of Habsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, Görz and Gradiska, Lady of Trent and Brixen, Margravine of Upper and Lower Lausitz and in Istria, Lady of Hohenembs, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Sonnenberg etc., Countess of Trieste, of Catarro and on the Windish March, Great Voyvod and Voyvodship of Serbia etc., etc.”. “We know her not”, the custodian would reply.
A second knock. “Who requests entry?” “Zita, Her Majesty the Empress and Queen”. “We know her not”.
A third knock. “Who requests entry?” the custodian would call again and the master of ceremonies would reply: “Zita, a mortal, sinful human being”. “So come here in”, the Capuchin would say and open the gate.

What to see: The Liechtenstein Gold Coach

The princely family of Liechtenstein owns one of the greatest art collections in Europe. Parts of it are on display in the Liechtenstein Garden Palace in Vienna, in whose vestibule one may also see one of the best surviving examples of eighteenth century French rococo carriage-making.
This golden coach, designed by the architect Nicolas Pineau (1684-1754), was made in Paris in 1738 on the orders of Prince Joseph Wenzel of Liechtenstein, who had been appointed the Holy Roman Empire’s ambassador to the court of Louis XV by Emperor Karl VI.
It is a so-called berlin, a new sort of carriage which was developed in the second half of the seventeenth century, and soon gained popularity for use in cities and for ceremonial events. It is 610 centimetres long and weighs 1,400 kilos. The painted decor, possibly by the studio of François Boucher, represents the four seasons.
The Prince of Liechtenstein arrived in Paris in December 1737 and immediately began planning for his official arrival – it says something of the importance accorded to this kind of ceremony that the preparations lasted for an entire year.
The ceremonial entry into Paris eventually took place on 21 December 1738, followed by a public entry to Versailles on the 23rd. The procession was made up of no less than 23 carriages and the Duke of Luynes recorded in his memoirs how he had been impressed by the “extraordinarily rich” carriage of the ambassador.
The new gold coach was however empty on this occasion, as the ambassador, according to the court etiquette, rode in one of the French royal carriages together with the introducer. The gold coach was again seen at Versailles when it was used for Princess Anna Maria’s audience with Queen Marie on 4 May 1739.
Such carriages were mostly sold to local agents when the ambassador’s tenure ended as one generally avoided transporting them over long distances. That Prince Joseph Wenzel took his new carriage with him back to Vienna says something about its quality.
In 1760 Prince Joseph Wenzel used the coach when he went to Parma to act as a proxy for the future Emperor Joseph II at his wedding to Princess Isabella of Parma. It was again used when he escorted the Princess into Vienna the following month. In 1764 he also took it with him to Frankfurt when he acted as Joseph II’s ambassador at the imperial election.
It was first displayed in a museum as a work of art in the twentieth century.

What to see: Palais Caprara-Geymüller, Vienna

Palais Caprara-Geymüller is a Baroque mansion located at 8 Wallnerstrasse, in an area of Vienna which is close to the Hofburg and filled with noble and princely mansions. This house was built by an unknown Italian architect in 1698 and at one stage it belonged to the princely family of Liechtenstein.
It came to play a dramatic part in the history of the Bernadotte dynasty when the army contractor Wimmer in 1798 rented it out, for an astronomic amount of money, to the French state to serve as its embassy after diplomatic relations between France and Austria had been restored by the peace of Campo Formio. General Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte was appointed French Ambassador in Vienna, although the Austrians would have preferred a more low-key representation, meaning a diplomat with a lower rank than that of Ambassador.
Bernadotte’s diplomatic career in Vienna was a short one – a mere 66 days. The representatives of revolutionary France had difficulties being accepted by the Viennese and it all culminated when the Ambassador ordered a sign to be put up outside the gate stating that this was the French Embassy. While waiting for the sign to arrive he on 13 April put up a French flag with the text “The French Republic’s Embassy in Vienna”. Back then it was not common for embassies to display their flags and the sight of a Tricolour in Marie-Antoinette’s hometown was a red rag to the Viennese.
Serious riots followed, with a mob attacking the Embassy, Bernadotte haranguing the crowds on the street and the mob eventually forcing their way into the Embassy and smashing everything they could get their hands on. Despite repeated pleas from the Ambassador it was five hours before the Austrian authorities intervened and dispersed the mob.
Bernadotte considered the riots the result of a conspiracy against France by the Austrian Foreign Minister Franz von Thugut and the ambassadors of Britain and Russia, but there is no evidence to support such a claim. The Austrians on their part thought France had deliberately provoked the riots to use them as an excuse for declaring war on Austria. The result was that Ambassador Bernadotte left Vienna in a fury, but after a period of tension war between the two countries were averted.
Although this was the end of Bernadotte’s short diplomatic career it meant that he now appeared on the stage of great politics. And it was also the first time he came into close contact with a Swede, namely that distant kingdom’s chargé d’affaires, Fredrik Samuel Silfverstolpe. Bernadotte was to return to Vienna only once, as a Marshal of the French Empire following the Battle of Wagram in 1809. The following year he was elected Crown Prince of Sweden and soon he would join forces with, among others, Austria to defeat France. He did not attend the Congress of Vienna in person, rather sending the diplomat Carl Löwenhielm.
Today the former French Embassy apparently serves as an office building.

What to see: The State Hall of the Austrian National Library, Vienna

The State Hall of the Austrian National Library is rightly considered one of the world’s most beautiful libraries and also one of the best Baroque interiors in Europe. It was built for Emperor Karl VI after plans drawn up by his court architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1665-1723). It was however Fischer von Erlach’s son Joseph Emanuel (1693-1742) who saw the plans through in the years 1723-1726.
The State Hall measures 77.7 by 14.2 metres and is 19.6 metres high, except for the cupola, which reaches nearly 30 metres to the sky. The allegorical ceiling frescoes were done by Daniel Gran and completed in 1730. The motif on the central cupola shows the apotheosis of Karl VI and beneath it is a statue of the Emperor as “Hercules Musarum” by the brothers Peter and Paul Strudel.
The nutwood bookcases hold some 200,000 books printed between 1501 and 1850. The 15,000 books placed in the library’s oval centre belonged to Prince Eugen of Savoy. Altogether 7.8 million books and other items are to be found in the collections of the Austrian National Library. The Austrian National Library’s website: www.onb.ac.at

What to see: The Parliament Building, Vienna

It was in 1857 that Emperor Franz Joseph I decided that Vienna’s so-called Glacis would be the home of new monumental buildings for parliament, university and city hall. The plan was that there would be separate buildings for the House of Deputies and the House of Lords, which at the time made up the Council of the Realm, but in the end the Danish-born architect Theophilius Hansen (1813-1891, later ennobled as Baron Theophil von Hansen) won the commission with a plan for a building incorporating both chambers in one building, which was more to the frugal Emperor’s taste.
Work began in 1874 and the building was completed in 1883. Unusually for such a late date the Austrian Parliament is in Greek neoclassical style. Hansen had spent a long time in Athens, where he and his brother, Christian Hansen, were responsible for several important buildings after the independence of Greece. The neoclassical style was often chosen for 19th century parliaments because of democracy’s Greek “roots”, but this style was quite outdated in the second half of the 19th century – when Theophil von Hansen in 1884 was asked to design a new palace in Copenhagen after the second Christiansborg had burnt down, his plans for a grand neoclassical structure were immediately put away. The grandiose, unfashionable parliament building in Vienna could perhaps be read as a metaphor of the once so great Austro-Hungarian Empire’s beginning decline.
Hansen viewed the building as a “Gesamtkunstwerk”, which meant that he was himself in charge of all decoration, furniture and fittings. He also planned the huge statue of Pallas Athene in front of the main entrance (first and second photos), but it was only executed by the sculptor Carl Kundmann eleven years after Hansen’s death. Above the entrance’s columned portico is a tympanum with a relief showing Emperor Franz Joseph granting his subjects the right to participate in the legislative process.
A rear view of a model of the building (photo 4) shows how the grand Columned Hall is placed in the middle of the building. The idea was that the members of House of Deputies and the House of Lords could meet in this hall, but in reality this rarely happened – for the simple reason that the members of the two chambers did not really want to meet. Hansen’s idea that the Emperor would perform the State Opening of Parliament by reading a Speech from the Throne in this hall also fell to the ground because Franz Joseph I declared that he “had not been educated for a constitutional monarchy” and therefore could not be expected to feel any enthusiasm for it.
The semi-circular room to the right on the model is the former House of Lords, a room which is now used by the 192 members of the National Council, the elected representatives of the Austrian people (fifth picture). The hall was hit by two bombs during WWII and rebuilt in 1956 by architects Max Fellerer and Eugen Wörle, making it one of the ugliest parliamentary chambers in Europe.
Across the corridor is the rather small room which was originally an anteroom for the House of Lords, but is now used by the Federal Council (sixth photo), which is made up of representatives of the nine provincial assemblies and has certain delaying powers over legislation.
The large chamber seen to the left on the model and in the seventh and eighth photo was formerly used by the House of Deputies and retains Hansen’s original décor. It is now used for the quite rare joint sessions of the two chambers, which are then called the Federal Assembly, and for ceremonial events such as the inauguration of a new president – were the President to be impeached, the trial would also take place in this hall.
Towards the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire the current plenary hall was a rather noisy place. The imperial Austrian Parliament had 516 members speaking a total of eleven languages with no translations provided, German being the official language supposed to be used. While one MP spoke, for as long as he pleased, the other MPs would slam the drawers of their desks, shout, heckle him, sing, throw inkwells and play the musical instruments they had brought along. Today Austria is governed in a more polite way.

What to see: The Imperial Furniture Collection, Vienna

Half hidden away in a backyard off the bustling shopping street Mariahilfestrasse is the Imperial Furniture Collection, a large museum dedicated to the pieces of furniture and loose items available to the Kaiserliches Hofmobiliendepot, founded by Empress Maria Theresia inn1747. With only the Viennese palaces permanently furnished, it fell to the Imperial Furniture Collection to equip the many other imperial residences when they were to be used, making this the Habsburg equivalent of Sweden’s Royal Collections Department (Kungliga Husgerådskammaren) with its roots in the 16th century.
The imperial collection has been supplemented with furniture from the post-imperial time, making this also a museum of the history of Austrian furniture and interiors up to the present date. But the imperial pieces are in majority. And they are many – 165,000 to be exact.
Among them are rococo chairs and a desk from the reign of Maria Theresia (first picture) and the funeral regalia including a replica of the Imperial Crown of Austria, made of brass, false pearls and glass stones (second picture). As the third photo shows, there is a huge number of chairs of all styles, including the throne of Emperor Franz Joseph I (fourth photo) and the two 18th century folding chairs for use on travels (photo 5). There are also whole interiors, such as an imperial bedroom from the reign of Ferdinand I (sixth photo), and one may also find row upon row of mirrors, chandeliers, vases etc. (last photo).
To make the collection come alive there are screens here and there showing excerpts from some of the many films which have been made about Empress Elisabeth where one can see how the original pieces of furniture were used in the films.

Official website:
http://www.hofmobiliendepot.at/en/home.html