Stiegleopold
The Stiegl Brewery and the Leopold Museum
For our last day in Salzburg, it was time to head to the Stiegl Brewery and see where they make one of Austria's top-selling beer brands. But, first, we had to head to Balkan Grill for an early Bosna Lunch.
I am no stranger to the sausage stands of Vienna but this one blows them all away. Balkan Grill isn't the first and certainly isn't the only Bosnastand in Salzburg but it is far and away the best one which explains its long line despitebeing tucked away in a tiny alley. The sausage is thin and covered in a blend of mustards, ketchup, and curry powder before being covered with more curry powder, cilantro, and onions. Each bite of this tasted better than the last and I was wishing that this stand was at the 49 stop at Ring Volkstheatre where I usually get sausages.
After this delicious excursion we headed to Stiegl. It was difficult to find our way into the brewery which was surrounded by a giant wall as though they had to be defended from Ottakringer attacks or something but, once we finally found an entrance, we were able to join an English language tour of their history museum and brewing facility (with a fair few tastes along the way). Our guide showed us many rooms with different uses in the beer brewing process and we were able to try their original Goldbräu, Zwickl, Grapefruit Radler, and Gin IPA. I don't love gin and I hate IPAs so that last one was probably the worst drink I've ever had but that didn't detract from the lovely tour of the facility or the great tastes of the other beers.
Photos were allowed during the whole tour but videos were not in any of the rooms that were actively processing beer including the stills and bottling areas. Naturally, as the social media manager for the program and the UC Davis History Department, I wasn't going to let that slide and got enough footage to make a walkthrough reel of the whole brewery. Nothing like Instagram Reels to turn someone into a rulebreaker.
After our tour was complete, we grabbed pretzels and hit the road to make it back to Vienna. This morning, it was time for our tour of the Leopold Museum with Gretl as well as my friend Nika's birthday! The Leopold Museum was a far less pretty building than the Kunsthistorisches or the Belvedere but had just as extensive and interesting an art collection. Here are a few highlights:
These are designs done by the Secession. The Secession was an Austrian art movement started by some members of the Brotherhood of Durer, a society Klimt and others were in dedicated to upholding Durer’s legacy. They felt it was creatively constraining to remain in the group because they wanted to advance art beyond Durer so they seceded from the group to form their own modern art school.
Their motto means “to every age, its own art, and to every art its freedom”. According to them, art should not be constrained by reverence of old, established styles. Rather than revisiting past techniques, artists need to create new art that taps into the zeitgeist of the time. This is why everything from their building, to their orgies, to their modern art was created in such a way as to break free from tradition and create something new and undefinable.
Gustav Klimt was the older brother of Ernst Klimt. When his father and brother both died, Gustav was financially responsible for caring for Ernst’s widow and children. At that point he was also reassessing his artistic style and what he wanted his art to be/where it will fit in to the Brotherhood of Durer landscape.
Klimt’s gold era is when he became obsessed with applying gold leaf to paintings and creating a more graphic artistic style. While this painting, Death and Life does not have the same gold leaf as The Kiss or The Woman in Gold, it uses a similar mosaic style and shows Klimt breaking out of the Durer tradition he had followed in his earlier career. It was painted over by Klimt in 1915 and he added more figures on the "Life" side as well as changing "Death's" demeanor into a more curious and joyful one.
This is a portrait of composer Arnold Schönberg. Schönberg worked in athematic 12 tone composition making his music harder to listen to and generally unpleasant to the ear. All 12 notes are equally represented in all of Schönberg’s compositions as he was deeply mathematical.
Schönberg was terrified of the number 13. In a stunning coincidence, a card reader contacted him just before his birthday on Friday the 13th, 1951 and gave him a warning. 13 minutes before midnight he let out a scream and died.
Schönberg is also the grandfather of Randy Schönberg who served as Maria Altmann's lawyer during her legal battle with the Belvedere over The Woman in Gold.
While other museums we've been to have had a lot of Klimt representation, this one was full of works by Egon Schiele, an artist whose style I don't personally find appealing. Egon Schiele was Klimt’s most important protégée and is rather controversial. One famous anecdote says that Schiele’s professor at the academy of fine art shouted at him because he was aggravated and said “Schiele, the devil himself shat you out into my classroom”
Wally Neuzil, the woman depicted in one half of this pair of paintings, was a model for Klimt who met Schiele through him. They began a long friendship and romantic relationship where she would help him manage his finances and get bookings in galleries. Because she was a model, which was viewed as close to a prostitute at the time, Schiele could not marry her. He proposed to a woman named Edith, had a sit down with her and Wally, and said he wanted to marry Edith but keep Wally in his life as a romantic partner. Both women said no.
In 1915, Schiele was starting to get renown and rented an apartment about a half day train ride from Vienna in a small town. The studio where he worked and lived with Wally in this town had small local children come by to visit and the couple would feed the children while Schiele would paint the kids nude. A twelve year old girl came forward at this time reporting that Schiele had had sex with her. The police raided his studio and found his many nude portraits of children. His statutory rape charge was dismissed by the magistrate but he was charged with distributing pornographic material to children.
When we were done learning that horrifying story at the Leopold Museum, we returned home to get ready for Nika's birthday celebration. We got to go to a club next to the Opera House called Tipsy Tuesday to dance the night away and listen to some great, mostly American music while we celebrated Nika's birthday late into the night. Thankfully, since Dr. Stuart knew we would be out late tonight, she switched tomorrow morning's lecture to Zoom and pushed it back an hour. I had a great time at the club but am very thankful that Dr. Stuart isn't making us go to class 7 hours after I got home.
