Hapsburgs get clean-up

Press, 1 July 1983, Page 14

Hapsburgs get clean-up

From

GUY DINMORE,

Reuter, in Vienna

Damp, cold, and rotting away in a rambling crypt beneath the city of Vienna, the grand sarcophagi of once powerful Hapsburb emperors and empresses are being slowly restored by a dedicated Capuchin monk and two craftsmen.

Magnificent works of art crafted in tin, the coffins must be restored within the next few years if they are to be saved, says Father Wolfram Winkler, Curator and Father Superior to 10 monks in Vienna’s Capuchin monastery above the ancient crypt in the city centre.

“Our biggest enemy is damp in the air and walls,” Father Wolfram says, as he walks among the coffins of 12 emperors, 16 empresses, and more than 100 lesser Hapsburg nobles.

Work to save the remains of rulers, who once dominated Europe and extended their power as far as Mexico, is led by the elderly stooping figure of Father Wolfram whose order was assigned as guardian of the Hapsburg dead in 1617.

The first coffin to be restored took 3200 hours of labour during two years and a half and cost 700,000 schillings ($39,000), he says.

This was the grand Sarcophagus of Empress Elisabeth Christine, who lived from 1691 to 1750, and which now stands resplendent in

contrast to the blackened caskets nearby. Standing more than three metres high, it rests on four eagles, with four veiled women gazing sadly from each corner. An angel and child hold a medallion portraying the empress above the coffin, its sides decorated with scenes of sailing ships. “Money has come from everywhere, including the Vienna Council, but it is only a drop on a hot stove,” Father Wolfram says. He estimates the total cost of restoring caskets and drying out the crypt as many millions of schillings.

Funds raised by a “society to save the Capuchin crypt” has allowed him to employ two restorers.

Josef Ziegler and Leonhard Stramitz explain how damp, cold air, and dust have corroded the upper surfaces of the coffins, and how plaster used to reinforce the hollow moulds has expanded with moisture and cracked decorative figures on the caskets. Ziegler caresses the head of an eagle on the coffin of Emperor Karl VI, husband of Elisabeth,

which had taken him two days to clean and restore. Karl’s coffin wil take about 5000 man-hours to restore, he says. “We could be here until we die,” he adds.

Both Zeigler and Stramitz have worked there since restoration began seven years ago, chipping away for 20 hours a week in a workshop in the crypt itself. The crypt and monastery were founded in 1617 by Empress Anna for herself and her husband Matthias, never knowing it would be extended again and again by future generations. The last wing was built from 1960 to 1962 to make room for coffins piled upon each other. The work was undertaken by the monks, who still consider it their duty to carry out the wishes of the Hapsburgs. The grandest sarcophagus holds both Austria’s greatest Empress, Maria Theresia (1717-1780), mother of 16 children, and her husband, Emperor Franz Stephan. Resting on a marble pedestal, it towers four metres and is five metres long. An angel is about to blow a trumpet to signal the last

judgment above the reclining figures of Maria Theresia and her husband.

The sarcophagus is faced with detailed coronation scenes, and at each corner life-size figures of women hold the crowns of Hungary, Bohemia, Rome, and Jerusalem.

The only non-Roman Catholic buried in the crypt was Arch duchess Henriette (1797-1829), who married into the family and is said to have introduced Christmas trees to Austria from the north. Maria Theresia’s nurse, Countess Karoline of Fuchs, was the only nonHapsburg to be entombed there. Father Wolfram recalls how Austria’s last Empress, Zita, came to the crypt last month to lay wreaths by the coffin of Emperor Franz Josef, who died in 1916 after ruling for 68 years, and by a bust of her husband, Karl. Kar, last ruler of the AustroHungarian Empire which collapsed in the aftermath of the First World War, died and was buried in exile on the Spanish island of Madeira in 1922.

The 91-year-old former Empress, who herself lives in exile in Switzerland but is occasionally allowed to return to Austria, did not disclose her own burial plans, Father Wolfram says. “She only came to pray.”