This is one kind of “The Viennese Central Cemetery Part 2,5,” or the outtake. Two shots I really liked but which didn’t fit into. In the second picture, you see the fabulous Karl-Borromäus church in the center of the cemetery. Plus, another shot from Vienna’s streets captures autumn’s colors.
The second part of my photo series was shot in the Viennese Central Cemetery on Friday. This one contains pictures from the Jewish cemetery and other parts of it. If you want to know more about this Nekropolis (and a city by itself it certainly is), you are invited to read the foreword to part I.
Traditionally, the Viennese have a somewhat morbid relationship to death. In the second half of the 19th century, when Vienna was an international metropole, a “high culture” of dying emerged. Suddenly, it became popular to have big funerals and fancy gravestones. We say “A schöne laich,” a beautiful corpse in Vienna. In this vain 1874, a new cemetery was built in the south of the city, so large indeed that it would accommodate the next few generations of Viennese. It still does its job very well due to the sheer size of the area, which is as large as the whole old town of Vienna (there is even a graveyard bus line). But it is not the scope that makes it so fascinating, but the gloomy atmosphere and the beautiful work of art done here. It is a monument to the past days of Vienna. The imperial town has a special relationship to dying.
Part I was shot at the old Jewish part of the cemetery.
Michael Hoffman Photography 