BY JOHN FITZGERALD
As well as appreciating the music of Strauss and Mozart and the merits of a tasty torte, the Viennese have always had a thing about funerals, especially those stylish send-offs they fondly refer to as a schöne Leich or beautiful corpse.
During the last century, when Viennese rites of dying rivalled today's Broadway musicals for glittering effect, the city's newspapers assigned critics to review floral tributes at the internments of Beethoven, Schubert and other bigwigs. A small army of liveried porters, coachmen and musicians--suitably clothed in black--were enlisted to see high-born or well-to-do corpses on their way.
The poor, too, were anxious to orchestrate a showy last hurrah when a relative passed on. Unable to duplicate the expensive productions of the upper classes, they nevertheless scrambled to get burial loans from the banks and sign up for installment plans at the casket maker and florist.
On All Saints' Day at the beginning of November, bereaved family members, armed with candles, wreaths and lanterns descended on the city's dozens of cemeteries to mourn the dearly departed. All Soul's Day would invariably find another rush at the Cemetery of the Nameless, where somber well wishers deposited bouquets against the modest crosses.
Today, although the city still boasts some 52 cemeteries -- the trappings of public grief, what the Viennese-born writer Frederic Morton once described as the "dramaturgy of death" -- are less pronounced. But freelancing members of the city's choirs will croon (for a fee) a few tunes as the coffin is being lowered into the ground. And funeral carriages with four or six horses can be rented for those who prefer a nostalgic passage along the road to eternal peace. For the Viennese, last breath to internment (a comparatively low percentage of the city's inhabitants choose cremation) is an art as well as a necessity.
Traditionally, the hints on style came from the very top. In the crypt of the simple Capuchin church known as the Kaisergruft not far from their former home at the Hofburg in central Vienna, the enormous sarcophagi of emperors, empresses and other member of the Hapsburg family (including Emperor Karl VI, whose tomb sports crown-topped, ghoulishly smirking iron skulls) regularly draws thousands of tourists.
Emperor Franz Josef I, who died in 1916 after more than six decades as head of Europe's second largest empire, is also laid to rest there. Reflecting a life-long penchant for personal simplicity, Franz Josef's tomb, like its occupant, seems comparatively dull, as does that of his wife, the beautiful Empress Elizabeth. In 1898, during one of her incognito jaunts, the restless, narcissistic empress had been stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist on the quayside in Geneva. It was almost nine years after her son Crown Prince Rudolf, heir to the Hapsburg crown, committed suicide at Mayerling.
But the Grim Reaper is really given his due at number 19 Goldeggasse near the Belvedere Palace, where the Funeral Museum of Vienna welcomes scholars, connoisseurs of the macabre and the simply curious -- like the young newlyweds from England I met the day I stopped in -- who'd come for "a bit of a lark."
Located on one of the upper floors of the Municipal Funeral Service, the organization that oversees Viennese burials, the museum has been operating since 1967. Admission is free but visits are by appointment and there is no English-speaking guide.
Heinz Riedel, the museum's jovial, avuncular director, percolates with enthusiasm as he leads visitors through the various exhibits. Now and again, he stops to admire a painted skull with a floral design as pretty as a Laura Ashley print, Haydn's death mask or some of the black "funeral jewels" worn during the protracted mourning period following a Hapsburg death.
As if to calm the squeamish, the collection's tamer pieces are in the first room, including the portcullis or entrance gate from the catholic cemetery of Matzleinsdorf with an hour-glass decorating its steel lattice. Elsewhere, sparkling display cases brim with black flags for the horsemen who led funeral processions; richly-detailed harnesses, horse crowns and tufts; mourning livery; a handful of death emblems--including one dating from 1683--and a 19th century outfit for ladies of the funeral procession.
Another room is given over to palls, all of which are mounted on swinging boards similar to those used to display broadloom samples in a carpet shop. Different segments of society had their own shrouds with distinctive colors: a red one for veterans, silver and blue for persons who were unmarried at the time of their deaths and black and gold with silver embroidery for members of the aristocracy.
Among the museum's hundreds of other objects is a foot-long Memento Mori or meditation coffin enclosing a spry-looking skeleton. As well as its obvious draw as a conversation piece at cocktail parties, the foot-long coffin's real purpose was as a reminder of the inevitability of death.
There's also a model of a tram trailer (complete with miniature coffins) that was used earlier this century to pick up the dead at various hospitals and a safety gadget for rescuing those who had the misfortune to be buried alive. Attached to a long cable connected to a bell in the cemetery-attendant's office, an iron loop was fixed around the deceased's wrist. If it rang, the unfortunate soul six feet under was given a new lease on life.
The real showstoppers, though, are the coffins and sarcophagi, the latter made of copper and gold and including one used for the funeral of the late Austrian president Dr. Karl Renner. And in a downstairs' room, more than a half dozen gleaming coffins are artfully positioned, fan-shaped, against backdrop blow-ups showing a leafy cemetery on a suitably overcast day.
As conveyances go, perhaps the most interesting item is the so-called reusable coffin. Alarmed over the costs incurred by individuals when burying a loved one, Emperor Joseph II decreed in the 18th century that corpses should simply be sewn into sacks.
To get them to their final resting-place, wooden coffins, like the one the museum has, dating from 1784, came with a lever at the foot. Once over the grave, the lever was pulled, the bottom opened, and the body was unceremoniously dumped into the ground.
Such bargain basement dispatching, however, found little favor with the theatrical Viennese, and after six months, the emperor was forced to rescind the decree. When it came to leaving this world, the keynote, although not exactly upbeat, was back to being flash.
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Funeral Museum of Vienna
Goldegasse 19
Open weekdays from 12-3.
To arrange a tour, telephone (01) 501 95/4227