Leopoldstadt: Where Kreisler, Nestroy and “the Sträusse” lived – DiePresse.com

The nickname comes from the matzah bakeries that made this unleavened bread for Jewish festivals. As is well known, Leopoldstadt is home to the largest Jewish community in Austria. Less well known is how this is related to the district name: inglorious. After Emperor Leopold I drove the Viennese Jews out of the Grätzel in 1670/71, had their synagogue destroyed, and the Leopold Church was later built in its place, the new residents called both after their “advocate”.

We look around in the Karmeliterviertel around the market, and in the late Wilhelminian style Czerninviertel between Praterstrasse and the Danube Canal. “Even during the monarchy, these districts were partly a nightlife, theater, strolling and entertainment area,” says Andrea Linsbauer, pianist and violinist, who is an enthusiastic resident of these districts and would not want to live anywhere else. One of the favorite places: the passage house including the former stable building between Praterstrasse and Czerningasse 7, called Czerninpassage.

In addition to music, she also studied Judaic studies and is particularly interested in the cultural history of the late monarchy. “This area was a hotspot of cultural life at the time with a whole range of artists who lived and worked here.”

»This area is incredibly inspiring because of this concentration of stories and history.«

Andrea Linsbauer

Pianist and Grätzel fan

The list reads like a who’s who, from Nestroy onwards Johann Straussfather and son (→ Crime thriller round), Schnitzler, Schönberg, Jura Soyfer, Fritz Kreisler up to Canetti and Billy Wilder.

“And that’s just a small excerpt from the long list.” And today this still characterizes the multicultural atmosphere and you can feel the touch of history here. Also because different ethnicities and religions live together peacefully here – Jewish shops can be found alongside Turkish and Asian ones, from greengrocers to coffee houses, from bakeries to designers.

“For me, this diversity is the greatest appeal of life here,” enthuses the musician. There are also memorials such as the former synagogue at Tempelgasse 3-5, and art that deals with history, such as the mosaic about the legend “Shave the trunk”, Czerningasse 7a.

But Linsbauer not only loves this area, she also knows it very well and can tell a story about almost every house. “The Dogenhof on Praterstrasse, for example, was built in 1896 as a hotel in the style of a Venetian palazzo as part of the “Venice in Vienna” amusement park in the Prater – one of the first permanent modern theme parks in the world.

The Nestroyhof also has a long history: built in 1898, the “Etablissement Nestroy Säle” was located here, which became one of the most famous entertainment establishments in Vienna with an inn, beer hall and restaurant in the winter garden.

Even a circus, the Renz Circus, had a permanent location here – the Circus Alley is still a reminder of it today. The district here also had a certain reputation for disrepute due to its proximity to the Prater and the train station. Religious places act as a counterbalance to this: the Carmelite and Leopold churches, for example, the synagogue at Tempelgasse 5 and Jewish community centers.

She particularly studied one artist of the late monarchy: Fritz Kreisler. Born in 1875, world-famous violinist and composer, based in New York for a long time from 1939. Linsbauer scientifically processed Kreisler’s entire estate at the Library of Congress in Washington DC and published her research as the first Austrian publication under the title “The Viennese Moment in Fritz Kreisler’s Compositions”. And she is considered one of the best interpreters of his works.

Her concert projects and tours with a musical-literary focus also bring cultural-historical themes to the fore: “Stories from Leopoldstadt” and “On the Road to Galicia”, a multimedia-literary concert project she conceived, with which she collaborates, among others Cornelius Obonya and Radek Pujanek tours through Austria and Europe.

These tours also correlate with one of her biggest hobbies: traveling. A little of their ancestors’ wanderlust may have remained. “My grandmother was born in San Remo, Italy, which was famous for its flowers at the time. Consequently, my grandmother opened the first flower shop in Vienna as a branch and since she also delivered to the emperor, she quickly received the very sought-after title of purveyor to the court.” Her travels are also made possible by “the fact that my partner takes wonderful care of the two eleven and 13 year old children.”

“For me, this area is not only a wonderful place to live and live, it is also incredibly inspiring because of the concentrate of stories and history that it radiates,” sums up Linsbauer.