Austria fountain
The Austriabrunnen is a fountain in Vienna's old town. It is located on the Freyung in Vienna's 1st district, Innere Stadt .
The center of the Austriabrunnen is a column made of hard, white imperial stone , which is crowned by a statue. These are the winning Austria , the personification of Austria , with spear and shield in hand. Around the column are four allegories of the four most important rivers of the Habsburg Empire. These are the Elbe , the Danube , the Vistula and the Po , each of which drains into different seas - the North Sea , the Black Sea , the Baltic Sea and the Adriatic Sea and is intended to symbolize the central position of the Habsburg Empire in Europe.
The Austriabrunnen was designed by the Munich sculptor Ludwig Schwanthaler in 1844 and cast by Ferdinand von Miller in Munich until 1846 . Only the basin, formed from four semicircles (quatrefoil), was made in Vienna from Mauthausen granite . Alma von Goethe , the granddaughter of the famous poet, is said to have been the model for the fountain . An anecdote relates that Schwanthaler had the figures filled with cigarettes before they were shipped . These were supposed to be smuggled into Austria. However, an illness prevented Schwanthaler from taking the cigarettes out of the statues before the fountain was set up. Since the last restoration, this has been refuted as a legend.
Austria in front of the Schottenkirche
Allegorical figure, detail
Central part to the west
Central part to the north
literature
- Elisabeth Th. Winkler: The Austriabrunnen on the Freyung . Association for the History of the City of Vienna, Vienna 1994, ( Wiener Geschichtsblätter supplement 4, 1994, ZDB -ID 43529-6 ).
See also
Web links
Coordinates: 48 ° 12 ′ 41.9 ″ N , 16 ° 21 ′ 55.8 ″ E