In hardly any other European city was the urge towards culture as passionate as in Vienna. For the very reason that for centuries Austria and its monarchy had been neither politically ambitious nor particularly successful in its military ventures, native pride had focused most strongly on distinction in artistic achievement. The most important and valuable provinces of the old Habsburg empire that once ruled Europe—German and Italian, Flemish and Walloon—had seceded long ago, but the capital city was still intact in its old glory as the sanctuary of the court, the guardian of a millennial tradition. The Romans had laid the foundation stones of that city as a castrum, a far-flung outpost to protect Latin civilization from the barbarians, and over a thousand years later the Ottoman attack on the West was repelled outside the walls of Vienna. The Nibelungs had come here, the immortal Pleiades of music shone down on the world from this city, Gluck, Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Johann Strauss, all the currents of European culture had merged in this place. At court and among the nobility and the common people alike, German elements were linked with Slavonic, Hungarian, Spanish, Italian, French and Flemish. It was the peculiar genius of Vienna, the city of music, to resolve all these contrasts harmoniously in something new and unique, specifically Austrian and Viennese. Open-minded and particularly receptive, the city attracted the most disparate of forces, relaxed their tensions, eased and placated them. It was pleasant to live here, in this atmosphere of intellectual tolerance, and unconsciously every citizen of Vienna also became a supranational, cosmopolitan citizen of the world.

This art of adaptation, of gentle and musical transitions, was evident even in the outward appearance of the city. Growing slowly over the centuries, developing organically from its centre, with its two million inhabitants Vienna had a large enough population to offer all the luxury and diversity of a metropolis, and yet it was not so vast that it was cut off from nature, like London or New York. The buildings on the edge of the city were reflected in the mighty waters of the Danube and looked out over the wide plain, merged with gardens and fields or climbed the last gently undulating green and wooded foothills of the Alps. You hardly noticed where nature ended and the city began, they made way for one another without resistance or contradiction. At the centre, in turn, you felt that the city had grown like a tree, forming ring after ring, and instead of the old ramparts of the fortifications, the Ringstrasse enclosed the innermost, precious core with its grand houses. In that core, the old palaces of the court and the nobility spoke the language of history in stone; here Beethoven had played for the Lichnowskys; there Haydn had stayed with the Esterházys; the premiere of his Creation was given in the old university; the Hofburg saw generations of emperors, Napoleon took up residence at Schönbrunn Palace; the united rulers of Christendom met in St Stephen’s Cathedral… the university saw countless luminaries of scholarship and science in its walls. Among these buildings the new architecture rose, proud and magnificent, with shining avenues and glittering emporiums. But old Vienna had as little to do with the new city as dressed stone has to do with nature. It was wonderful to live in this city, which hospitably welcomed strangers and gave of itself freely; it was natural to enjoy life in its light atmosphere, full of elation and merriment like the air of Paris. Vienna, as everyone knew, was an epicurean city—however, what does culture mean but taking the raw material of life and enticing from it its finest, most delicate and subtle aspects by means of art and love?