While rising out of a fundamental need for more space, the Ringstrasse achieved that, for the middle and upper classes, but its application was less practical than it was frivolous. With the creation of the Ringstrasse, Vienna, a city reputed to be the cultural capital of Europe, had a larger forum with which they could display that culture, and to some extent, equalize it. The building of enriching structures such as the Burgtheater and the Opera House in the Ringstrasse granted accessibility to worldly functions that had previously existed only among the aristocracy.
Despite their military intention, the walls of Vienna and the landscaped grounds that lay in close proximity had become a favorite destination for the aristocracy to stroll and promenade. Because parkland had existed on the vorstadt side of the linnienwall however, the lower classes were afforded an opportunity to promenade just like their aristocratic countrymen. But with the abolition of the walls and the creation of the vast Ringstrasse promenades, the lower classes no longer had a forum. The Ringstrasse streets and parks became ground zero for social display. On a given spring afternoon, these places were rife the newest carriages, the most fashionable bags and the most expensive suits. And since the bourgeois used these venues as opportunities to dress and act their way into the upper class the lower classes, who couldn’t afford even the pretensions to elitism that were so essential to bourgeois life, were implicitly excluded from the Ringstrasse parks. Ironically, one of the most popular landscaped, upper class destinations was the Volksgarten. The Volksgarten is strewn with small buildings, monuments, an octagonal café and various pools. One of these buildings is the Temple of Theseus, built by the architect Nobile in 1820. A small replica of the Theseion at Athens, the building should be a monument to democracy, as it commemorates Greek architecture and therefor democratic ideals. But it exists solely for its aesthetic value to the upper class, as the lower classes of Viennese society were denied entrance to it.
The café had always been n intricate part of Viennese society. As it has throughout history, Greenwich Village in the nineteen sixties, Paris at the time of the revolution, the café was a hotbed for intellectual and ideological discussion in Vienna leading up to 1848. But with creation of the Ringstrasse and the cramped living arrangements that its value on social ascension entailed, the café became much more than a haven for intellectuals. In order to escape their tight domestic quarters whole families took to the cafes, finding in them a social outlet and making them, in effect, a necessity for coping with current conditions of bourgeois Viennese life. This idea of the café as an extension of the home is evidenced by Olsen: “[T]heir [cafes] decline exactly paralleled the rising standards of spaciousness and comfort of the ordinary Viennese dwelling.[i]”
It was in these cafes that prominent Austrian musicians, such as the two Johann Strauss’, got their start. The cafes offered musicians a chance to develop a fanbase and achieve both public and critical acclaim. The classical period of the eighteenth century was perhaps Vienna’s most famous musical time, producing such luminaries as Mozart and Haydn. And the pre-eminent styles that followed, romanticism and the post-Romantic era, exalted the past in a manner consistent with the bourgeois’ attitude toward the aristocracy in nineteenth century Vienna. First popularized by Strauss the elder, the waltz was to become Vienna’s most popular dance. In true Viennese fashion the waltz, which derives from the terms walzen (to turn around) and walzerisch tanzen (to dance turning around), first became popular with rich and was, in turn embraced by the bourgeoisie and lower classes. Nowhere was the waltz more popular than at the balls, a staple of Viennese (and European, for that matter) life for centuries. The funnel effect of Viennese culture and the somewhat egalitarian waltz are illustrated in this passage from a modern day Vienna guidebook: “[R]ight from its beginnings in the nineteenth century, the waltz was danced as often in the emperor’s palace as in the dance halls of the workers and the bourgeoisie.[ii]” Despite the widespread appeal of the waltz and the balls where it was danced, the balls of Vienna didn’t exist outside of class divisions. As every region of Austria held its own ball, so too did every profession. Balls were given by such specific professional groups as the “Association of Workers and Employees of the Administrative Section of the Conservative Party,” the Zuckerbackerball for the wholesalers and retailers of sweets and sweetmeats and the Apothekenball thrown by the pharmacists[iii]. These grand parties highlighted the Viennese capacity for fun while also re-enforcing the notion of Vienna as a strictly stratified society.
[i] Olsen, City as a Work of Art, P.243
[ii] Knopf Guides, Vienna, P.58
[iii] Knopf Guides, Vienna, P.58