1815 TO 1848
Vienna in the Biedermier Period
After the Congress of Vienna, there emerged a specific bourgeois culture, known as the Viennese “Biedermeier”, which left its mark on visual art, interior decoration and forms of leisure. As the tastes and the interests of the new urban bourgeoisie came to dominate public life, paintings and crafts acquired a special status. Artists such as Friedrich von Amerling, Peter Fendi and Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller painted portraits, genre pictures and landscapes with characteristic detail. Porcelain object and painted glass were used as souvenirs or as adornments for the functional houses, which were decorated with loving care.
Such an idyllic façade may well have contributed to the cliché – one that has survived to the present day – of the Biedermeier period as the “good old days”. In reality, however, it was an epoch characterized by rapid technological change, social tensions and increased political repression. The Austrian chancellor Metternich personified a system of surveillance and censorship designed to silence new liberal and democratic ideas.
The onset of industrialization led to a rapid increase in population. Between 1800 and 1846 the number of people living in the city and its suburbs rose from approximately 240,000 to some 410,000.
THE REVOLUTION OF 1848
Insurgency and the Restoration of the Old Order
In 1848, the citizens of Vienna, like those of many other European states, rose up against the established political order. On March 13th, a student demonstration was greeted with volleys of musket fire and cavalry charges. When the impoverished masses of the suburbs joined the revolt, Metternich resigned his post and fled the city. The revolutionaries declared freedom of the press, and armed citizens and students formed armed guards. A few weeks later, further uprising ensued when a constitution was published limiting elective franchise to the wealthy. Barricades went up throughout the city, while Emperor Ferdinand and his cource temporarily move to Innsbruck.
As the revolution became increasingly raricalised, it lost the support of the bourgeoisie, and only workers and students were still prepared to defend the newly gained rights. On October 6th, the news that Vienneses soldiers were to be transferred to Hungary in order to suppress the revolution there unleashed a new uprising in Vienna, in which the Minister of War, Theodor Count Baillet, was lynched.
At the end of October, imperial troops surrounded Vienna, seizing the city after severdays of heavy fighting. The old order was re-established by force. Dozens of people were executed by firing squads, and the city remained under martial law for the next five years. On December 2nd 2848, Emperor Ferdinand abdicated in favour of his 18-year-old newphew Franz Josef.
Vienna under Emperor Franz Josef
For almost seventy years from 1848 to 1916, Vienna stood under the rule of Emperor Franz Josef. This period witnessed enormous transformations in the city’s appearance, its politics and its daily life. After the removal of the old walls and gates, the old enclosed city was able to expand. During the period of rapid industrial expansion after 1871, the “RingstraBe” was transformed into a magnificent boulevard with representative public buildings such as the State Opera, City Hall, Parliament, the Burgtheater and the palaces of the ambitious financial aristocracy.
During this period, Vienna grew into a modern metropolis. For decades, the city resembled a giant construction site. Its appearance changed as old buildings were torn down and new ones sprang up in their place. The creation of new energy grids, as well as Otto Wagner’s design of a new local railway system, helpd to modernize the city’s infrastructure. Among the stars to emerge from this epoch were Hans Makart, the “Prince of Painters”, and Johann Strauss Jr., the “King of the Waltz”.
Between 1850 and 1900, the population of Vienna nearly quadrupled under the combined effects of mass migration and the incorporation of the suburbs into the city. Around 1900, Vienna counted some two million inhabitants, making it the fourth largest city in Europe. Czechs and Jews were the largest minority groups. Much of the city consisted of slums and tenement blocks, where people lived in grinding poverty.
The late 19th century also saw the rise of new mass political parties, uncluding the German Nationalists, the Social Democrates and the Christian Socialists. The leader of the Christian Socialist party, Karl Lueger, was a skilful demagogue, whose use of anti-Semitic slogans helped to boost his popularity as mayor.