Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  Free Time, Taverns, Feasts and Other Details

  All the details concerning the incredible number of feast days, of processions, the continual absences from work for all kinds of religious observances, the general level of comfort even in the lowliest strata of society, and also the antelucan hours of the start of day, including the call of the night guard (“Now rise O Servant, praise God this morn, the light now gleams of a new day’s dawn”), inns, games, taxes, spies, free time and all other descriptions of life in Vienna, are authentic in every detail, starting with the Hetzhaus and the animal fights.

  As Gerhard Tanzer records in his admirable degree dissertation on amusements in Vienna in the eighteenth century (“In Wienn zu seyn ist schon Unterhaltung genug!” Zum Wandel der Freizeit im 18. Jh., Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Philosophie, Vienna 1988) and in the essay that derived from it (Spectacle müssen seyn. Die Freizeit dr Wiener im 18. Jh., Vienna-Cologne-Weimar 1992), between 1707 and 1717 there was great resistance on the part of innkeepers to the taxing of bowling alleys, exactly as Simonis tells the chimney-sweep when they go looking for Populescu. Those, like the Romanian student, who denounced rule breakers, were as common as mud. The payments handed out to them exceeded the revenues from tax, but people soon resigned themselves to looking on the bright side: the sums won at gambling all added to the money in circulation; the important thing was that money should not be sent abroad! And so in later years, as with dancing, gambling proliferated wildly. People danced and gambled everywhere, grumbled the conservatives, even when the Holy Sacrament was passing in procession outside the tavern.

  The number of taverns in Austria at the time, and the list of dishes devoured at wedding dinners is taken from Franciscus Guarinonius, Die Greuel der Verwüstung menschlichen Geschlechts, Vienna 1610.

  Despite what the reader may think, the scene in which diners indulge in all sorts of wild behaviour, witnessed by Atto, the chimney-sweep and Domenico on the fourth day, is not in any way an exaggeration on the authors’ part; the actions reported (blowing on hot food and spattering oil into other diners’ eyes, pouring wine down people’s shirt fronts, using napkins to blow one’s nose, pulling the tablecloth to bring the roast meat closer etc.) are all amply described – in order to castigate them! – by the famous court preacher, the barefoot Augustinian Abraham from Sancta Clara (cf. also E.M. Spielmann, Die Frau und ihr Lebenskreis bei Abraham a Sancta Clara, typewritten degree dissertation, Vienna 1944, pp. 125–126).

  The incredible secret exchanges of bread and wine between Turks and Viennese during the 1683 siege are historically substantiated too: see K. Teply, Die Einführung . . . op. cit., p. 30. But as Teply points out (p. 35), when the historian Onno Klopp (Das Jahr 1683 und der folgende grosse Türkenkrieg bis zum frieden von Carlowitz von 1699, Graz 1882) dared to question the conduct of the civilians who had defended the besieged city two hundred years earlier, he was immediately silenced by a hostile chorus of journalists, politicians and academics, with questions even being raised in the city council.

  Nothing is invented in Koloman’s account of the incredible variety and quantity of fish that once reached Vienna. It was not until the 1780s that things changed: Emperor Joseph II closed many monasteries – which had previously been the main suppliers of good fish – and did away with many religious feasts with obligatory fasting. The fish recipes created to circumvent this obligation fell out of favour. Very soon the Viennese adopted a saying from the Elizabethan age, with which the Protestants indirectly made fun of the Catholics: “He’s a good person, he doesn’t eat fish.”

  The alehouse known as The Yellow Eagle (Zum Gelben Adler), also known as the “Greek tavern” (Griechenbeisl), situated in the meat market (today’s Fleischmarkt), where Simonis takes Atto and chimney-sweep at the beginning of the sixth day, is still active. It is the famous inn where, according to legend, during the plague of 1679, the storyteller Augustin composed his famous Lied: O du, lieber Augustin, alles ist hin . . .

  The Blue Bottle Café (Zur Blauen Flasche) really existed and was the first place authorised to sell coffee.

  The inn known as the House Goat (Zum Haimböck in German) still exists today. The tavern, which has splendid food and is much loved by the Viennese, is now called 10er Marie (Zehner Marie). It took on the new name in the mid-eighteenth century, combining the street number with the name of the host’s beautiful daughter. Unfortunately it is no longer surrounded by the beautiful vineyards of former days, but by ugly apartment blocks: to rediscover the unspoilt countryside described by the chimney-sweep one has to climb up to The Pulpit (Am Predigtstuhl in German), on the hill now known as Wilhelminenberg, where the chimney-sweep goes on the sixth day.

  A small clarification on the Buschenschank, the hostelries similar to the Roman fraschette: today they are commonly known as Heuriger, taking their name from the new wine that is served there.

  The poor quality of the wines of Liesing and of Stockerau, referred to by Cloridia, is noted in an almanac for the year 1711, Crackauer Schreib-Calender auff das Jahr nach Christi Geburt M.CC.XI durch M. Johannem Gostumiowsky, in der Hochlöbl. Crackauerischen Academia Phil. Doct. Ordinarium Astrologiae Professorem, und Königlichen Mathematicum, Krakow 1710.

  The Viennese have always had a particularly sensitive palate when it comes to wine. It is well known that in 1453 Emperor Frederick III, enraged by a particularly unsuccessful grape harvest, decreed that the wine should be used instead of water to mix the cement needed to build the Cathedral of St Stephen.

  The theory that the Habsburgs might descend from the Roman Pierleoni family, as Atto declares to the chimney-sweep, corresponds precisely to the ancient heraldic treatises in vogue in Vienna in the eighteenth century, including the dishonourable deeds of the Roman family (cf., for example, Eucharius Gottlieb Rynck, Leopolds des grossen Römischen Kaysers wunderwürdiges Leben und Thaten aus geheimen Nachrichten eröffnet und in vier Theile getheilet, Leipzig 1709, I, 9 ff.)

  The Turkish cannonballs stuck in the walls of Vienna, which Ugonio would have liked to steal and then sell, are still visible in the places in the city listed by the corpisantaro.

  The Neuer Crackauer Schreib-Calender, durch Matthias Gentilli, Conte Rodari, von Trient, Krakow 1710, the almanac for 1711, in which the chimney-sweep reads the tally of the days since the birth of Jesus Christ, is kept in the City Library of Vienna (Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek).

  The legend of the Tekuphah is authentic: to read it in its entirety see W. Hirsch, Entdeckung derer Tekuphot, oder Das schädliche Blut, Berlin 1717.

  The system of quartering rights as described by Simonis is entirely accurate: see Joseph Kallbrunner (ed.), Wohnungssorgen im alten Wien. Dokumente zur Wiener Wohnungsfrage im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, Vienna-Leipzig 1926.

  The list of the dead that Atto reads in the Wiennerisches Diarium is taken directly from issue no. 803 of the newspaper, 11–14th April 1711. The statistics on the dead in 1710, reported by the chimney-sweep, are confirmed in a supplement of the Corriere Ordinario of Vienna, 7 January 1711. The same is true of the dead recorded in Rome the same year (see Francesco Valesio, Diario di Roma, t.IV, anno 1710, p. 368 ff.).

  In Vienna news of the sickness of the Dauphin of France arrived on 14th April 1711, the same day on which Cloridia gives Atto and the chimney-sweep the gazette bearing the news.

  There is no element of fantasy in Penicek’s description of Hungary: his account faithfully corresponds to the sources between the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Cf. Casimir Freschot, Idea generale del regno d’Ungheria, sua descrittione, costumi, regni, e guerra, Venice 1684.

  The information on the widespread use of Italian in Vienna is confirmed by Stefano Barnabè’s manual (Teutsche und Italianische Discurs, Vienna, 1660 and Unterweisung Der Italienischen Sprach, Vienna, 1675) and above all by Michael Ritter’s excellent text, Man sieht der Sternen König glantzen, Vienna 1999, p. 9. Ritter confirms that in Vienna Italian was not only the official court language, as the chim
ney-sweep tells us, but the dominant idiom tout court.

  Cardinal Kollonitsch (“Collonitz” is the old spelling) really was one of the pillars of Viennese resistance against the Turks, as Gaetano Orsini recounts, and was indeed in close touch with the family of Pope Innocent XI Odescalchi, who financed the Christian armies that triumphed in the battle of 12th September 1683 (cf. the historical notes in the appendix to Monaldi & Sorti, Imprimatur, Edinburgh 2008).

  The description of the tavern where Hristo Hadji-Tanjov played chess is confirmed in Michael Ehn and Ernst Strouhal, Luftmenschen. Die Schachspieler von Wien 1700–1938, Vienna 1998.

  The Wiennerisches Diarium was indeed sold, as the young chimney-sweep recounts, in the palace known as the Red Porcupine (Rothes Igel). According to the Historisches Lexikon Wien by Felix Czeike (Vienna 2004, III, 300) it was not until 1721 that Rothes Igel hosted the editorial office of the Wiennerisches Diarium. However, in the Wiennerisches Diarium of 1711 one already finds the words “Zu finden im Rothen Igel”, which is to say “it can be found at the Red Porcupine”.

  The Viennese and Their History

  The Viennese – historians, scholars, professors, but also the common people and those residing in the surrounding area – are all highly sensitive to anything concerning the Habsburgs: woe to anyone who casts the slightest doubt on the noble imperial lineage! Joseph and Charles were universally loved, Prince Eugene should have been canonised, and the resistance of the besieged citizens in 1683 was nothing but heroic. While Onno Klopp, as has been seen, takes a rather different approach and is a great historian, Arneth is often unreliable. For example, he takes his information on the death of Joseph I from the biography of Wagner (a Jesuit!), gets the date of the Agha’s departure from Vienna wrong (see above) and constantly tries to convince the reader that Joseph I was surrounded by nothing but harmony and love. Arneth then describes in impassioned language Charles’s presumed grief on hearing of his brother’s death, claims that Joseph bade farewell to his “beloved consort”, but says nothing about the cruel treatment meted out to his young lover, Countess Marianna Pálffy.

  Even today, anyone who dares to contradict the rose-coloured vulgate version is brusquely silenced, almost as if one were dealing with current politics (in a non-democratic regime), and not with history from the remote past. This is a minor defect of the Viennese, but it is also their most valuable quality: in their country everything is always fine, and woe to anyone who makes so bold as to claim the contrary, especially if a foreigner. The good side of this – and by far the most important – is that by dint of believing in and propagating the notion that everything is fine, they have succeeded to some degree in defending their world from the destructive forces of our squalid age, so that in no other capital city in the world can one live so well as in Vienna. It is a factor that writers who criticise Austria harshly, like Elfriede Jelinek, should bear in mind. And these are the words of two authors who have been forced into exile from their beloved homeland, Italy. Thank you, citizens of Vienna.

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