Krieau dairy
The dairy Krieau in Wiener Prater was near the racetrack , formerly in the Grunau ( Krieau ) located 1870 after the Danube regulation built imperial hunting seat . It was located on today's Olympiaplatz near the Stadion U2 station . The former hunting lodge - operated by the forester Carl Lenk and his wife - developed into a popular snack station thanks to Elisabeth, Empress of Austria .
history
The hunting lodge built in 1870 in the Prater Auwald was the first Empress Elisabeth to notice, and she often noticed the house during her morning rides in the Prater. Every morning the Empress had Frau Lenk, the forester's wife, serve her a glass of milk, which quickly got around in the Viennese court. As more and more guests from the court and nobility - including Crown Princess Stephanie of Belgium - showed interest in the hunting lodge, the forester had to procure more dairy cows, but the rush of the nobility had the consequence that Empress Elisabeth withdrew more and more and stayed away as a guest.
From May 1877 the hunting lodge was reopened as Meierei Krieau in what was then called Grünau as "a green, leafy snack bar" known to the aristocracy and middle-class society. If one spoke of the "Krieau" before 1914, it always meant the dairy in the Krieau. In the course of time, guests came on horseback, by coach and later by automobile.
The Gugelhupf from the dairy farm's in-house bakery, as well as the whipped cream from the Krieau, became famous as an aristocratic and home-style specialty of the prewar period. Until 1918, the snack station was mainly visited because of the kuk tradition. But Viennese society continued to change, albeit more because of the fashion line than politically.
Paradoxically, the famous whipped cream and the snack, coffee with whipped cream, have been replaced by tea due to the change in society. That was the case with Princess Pauline von Metternich , who, with the exception of Sundays, came to the Krieau dairy for five o'clock tea in the summer. Your valet served pastries that they had brought with them.
It was not just the change in society that brought tea to the dairy. During the First World War it became quiet in the Krieau, but from 1919 a new company came with the new owner of the Krieau, the Viennese municipal administration, which showed itself to confirm its wealth in the pubs of the old society. Even if Ms. Lenk still thought in the 1920s that business in the Krieau dairy would “run very well”, the old Austro-Hungarian society of the 1870s and 1890s was replaced by the society of the post-war period, which was mainly due to the sporting events at the Trotting track , golf course, dressage riding in the Krieau came. In July 1931, the stadium of the City of Vienna followed as the venue for numerous events and thus the Volksprater developed into a leisure location for everyone.
On the fringes of the history of the Krieau dairy, there were repeated complaints about excessive prices for milk and butter. The respective operators or tenants of the Krieau dairy, Carl Lenk and Franz Burger were convicted by Viennese courts of price gouging in the 1920s. In August 1919, Carl Lenk asked for 30 crowns for 1/8 liter of sour milk. For comparison, a copy of a daily newspaper in 1921 asked for 4 crowns. The dairy leaseholder Franz Burger sold expensive butter and justified himself before the district court Leopoldstadt: "The costs for the direction could only be brought in through higher prices". After the death of the dairy restaurateur Carl Lenk at the age of 60 on September 14, 1924, the management of the dairy was transferred to the municipal administration.
The Viennese dairy "WIMO" took over the dairy in the Prater Hauptallee in 1924, while the Meier Krieau became known as the "Meierei Krieau der Wiener Molkerei" as early as 1901. After the Krieau dairy went to the Viennese municipal administration from 1919, the Wiener Stadion Betriebsgesellschaft as the new owner followed in 1931, which in turn first hired H. Otto Harlass, and then Lina Schöner as the new leaseholder of the Krieau dairy and the restaurants in the stadium and stadium pool. The history of the Krieau dairy ended as a result of severe damage caused by the effects of the war in 1945, which caused the tenants at the time, the Schöner family, to no longer build up and continue the business - albeit for reasons of age. Today's Meiereistraße in Leopoldstadt is reminiscent of the former Krieau dairy.
Josef Schöner, the tenant's son, described the damage from the air raid on March 25, 1945 in his diary as “a single heap of rubble”. The Krieau dairy was not rebuilt.
Meierei Prater Hauptallee
The Krieau dairy is often confused with the dairy at Hauptallee 3 near the Wurstelprater , which was originally built in 1873 as a pavilion for the 1870 World's Fair. Planned as an “American Bar” for the guests of the world exhibition, it was renamed “Leitmeritzer Bierhalle” a short time later. Today the company is called "Cafe Restaurant Meierei im Prater".
In an advertisement by WIMO (Wiener Molkerei) in 1927, the Prater dairy, which was taken over in 1924, is named as the “Milk Cure Pavilion of the Vienna Dairy”. The dairy on Prater Hauptallee has been run by the Holzdorfer family for several generations. Friedrich Holzdorfer, born in 1893, was a legendary Prater king and at the same time the operator of the “ghost palace”. His family still runs amusement facilities in the Wurstelprater today.
literature
- Felix Czeike (Ed.): Historisches Lexikon Wien , 6 volumes, Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-218-00742-9 , ... 743-7, ... 744-5, ... 748-8 , ... 749-6
- "Die Leopoldstadt", a home book of the teachers' working group of the II district "Heimatkunde" section.
- Josef Schöner: Vienna Diary 1944/1945. Edited by Eva-Marie Csaky. Böhlau, Vienna et al. 1992, ISBN 3-205-05531-4