Military swimming schools in Vienna

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Military swimming school or men's swimming school on the flagpole water of the Danube on a city map from around 1830

Since 1813 the kk or kuk army had its own military swimming schools in Vienna . Successor facilities were in operation until 1955.

Reason for foundation

The reason for the establishment of the military swimming schools, for which Colonel, then General Count Wilhelm von Bentheim-Steinfurt (1782–1839) was particularly committed, was the fact that during the Battle of Aspern , 1809, in which he participated, in the fighting in the Lobau , a widely ramified Donauau, a high proportion of Austrian deaths was not to be mourned from the fighting itself, but from the drowning of non-swimmers in the then unregulated arms of the Danube . The first military swimming school of the Austrian Empire was opened in 1810 in Prague , where Bentheim was stationed.

Old kk military and civil swimming school

On July 6th, 1813 the first kk military and civil swimming school in Vienna was put into operation. Also on the initiative of Colonel von Bentheim, it was built outside the former urban area in the Prater , a Donauau near the city, on the branch of the Danube called Fahnenstangenwasser , northeast of today's Praterstern, which is also used by shipping . Starting from the traffic junction Praterstern on the edge of the suburb Leopoldstadt at the time , the street that was known as "Schwimmschulallee" until 1876 runs, today: Lassallestrasse , from which the distance to the pool was approx. (Former location of the plant:)  . The forest on the land side was named swimming school maize on a map from 1825 (maize or Maiß = young forest). The swimming school was located between two dam spurs on the inside of a floating wooden pontoon , made up of 16 large ships of unequal length , which, connected by beams, formed the floor for the entire building . The wooden parts of the establishment were dismantled before winter and put back together again in spring. If the facility was not used by the military, the swimming school was also available to male civilians. On Sundays women were allowed to watch the swimming men after paying an entrance fee. As a “final exam”, the swimming students had to cross the arm of the Danube . When the city was expanded in 1850, the area was incorporated into Vienna and became part of the 2nd district . The facility fell victim to the Danube regulation in 1874 . World icon

New military swimming pool

The "New Military Swimming Institute" was located on the new main arm of the river, the Danube River, flooded in 1875, on the southern part of the later excavated , today's Marina Wien in Vienna-Leopoldstadt , Handelskai 337–339, former building: Handels-Quai  15. (Former location of the Attachment:) . It was built by the army itself as a replacement for the old kk military and civil swimming school. In contrast to the old swimming school, there was also a swimming pool (68 × 19 m) with standing water next to the stream pool. This swimming school was opened on August 18, 1875, the 45th birthday of Emperor Franz Joseph I. On June 5, 1912, Josef Selmeczy swam here over 400 meters back world record. World icon

In the interwar period, this swimming school, referred to on a city map from the 1920s as "Schwimminganstalt Krieau " and as a military swimming facility in Lehmann's Vienna address book, was not officially used by the Armed Forces of the First Republic . The German Wehrmacht then used the swimming pool again from 1938. After the Second World War , this bath was shut down and the place used as a warehouse.

Old Danube military swimming school

The military swimming school Alte Donau on the former main stream, not a flowing water since 1875, but an oxbow lake of the Danube, was located in the second, since 1938 in the 21st and since 1954 in what is now the 22nd district of Vienna in Arbeiterstrandbadstraße 93. The area today: Bundesbad Alte Donau , opened under Army Minister Julius Deutsch on June 20, 1919 and frequented by the Federal Army of the First Republic. Previously, this was a simple bathing area on the Old Danube , which was used by soldiers who were deployed on the neighboring Kagran shooting range and which was then expanded into a family pool. From 1938 to 1945 the German Wehrmacht used the pool, which became the Bundesbad Alte Donau after the Second World War .

Schönbrunn bath

The water reservoir in Schönbrunn Palace Park , mentioned in 1838 in a letter from Archduke Franz Joseph, then eight years old, to his brother Maximilian , in which one could swim even then, was used as a military swimming school during the First Republic. In the Nazi era it was used by the Wehrmacht , then by the British occupying forces until 1955 , since the 13th district in which the bath is located was part of the British sector of Vienna. Today it is a popular, privately run summer pool. It is located on the wooded slope from the Gloriette to the flower ground floor near the Maria-Theresia-Tor park entrance from Hohenbergstrasse (12th district) and Grünbergstrasse.

Second republic

The Federal Army of the Second Republic, founded in 1955 , did not use any military swimming pools. It uses civilian swimming pools for the soldiers' swimming training.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eder (see literature)
  2. ^ Rittig von Flammenstern: The Imperial and Royal Military Swimming Institution in the Prater , part 2/2, p. 373 f.
  3. ↑ a b Rittig von Flammenstern: The Imperial and Royal Military Swimming Institution in the Prater , Part 1/2, p. 371 f.
  4. ↑ About the institution . In: Carl Heinitz: Instruction in the art of swimming, presented according to the teaching method introduced in the kk military swimming facility in Vienna, especially for the sake of the kk military, along with a booklet with illustrations . Strauss, Vienna 1816, pp. 80–85. - Full text online .
  5. ↑ Theodor Kadařz:  The. kk military swimming pool in Vienna. In:  Weekly of the Austrian Association of Engineers and Architects , year 1876, No. 23/1876 (Volume I), p. 201 ff. (Online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / ina
  6. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated February 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.news.at
  7. ↑ federal bath of old donau . In: burghauptmannschaft.at , March 8, 2016, accessed on March 30, 2016.
  8. ↑ Constantin von Wurzbach : Rittig von Flammenstern, Andreas . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 26th part. Imperial and Royal Court and State Printing Office, Vienna 1874, p. 193 ( digitized version ).

Coordinates: 48 ° 10 ′ 47 "  N , 16 ° 18 ′ 55"  E