Boy, if I were emperor for a day...

There's treasure everywhere

August 13: Sunday

Well, I was about to sleep in today, buuuuut instead I got invited out. My roommate Jared invited me out with our TA, Joel, to head to the fabled Schatzkammer - the Imperial Treasury Room at the Hofburg Palace. Who needs sleep when you can check out rare and elusive artifacts of a bygone past?

I Love History

Right: If this picture looks slanted, it's because it's huge, practically floor to ceiling. That's Francis I and II, Holy Roman Emperor and first Emperor of Austria. And if Francis looks moody, it's because he just got spanked by Napoleon. But by god are those tights fresh.

Francis is called Francis II and II because he was the second Francis in the Holy Roman Empire, and the first in the Austrian Empire that replaced the HRE. This made Francis the first person in history to speak the phrase "First is the worst, second is the best."

The Schatzkammer is built in a mostly chronological way, beginning back when the Habsburgs were just wee dukes and ending sometime after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. 

I was immediately drawn to the big portraits of emperors, and all their regalia: robes and staffs and ruby-sapphire-emerald-encrusted crowns. Most of the Emperors of the Baroque era had great big portraits - and I mean floor-to-ceiling, again - showing off coronation scenes. These scenes were gigantic pieces of work, showing off hundreds of figures, all of them with their eyes on the emperor being crowned. When I pointed out that some of the figures were more visible than the others (due to lighting or expression), Joel told me that those figures were generally real people - as in, rich folks who paid to be included in the commemoration picture. 

Left: Yes, that's right. A unicorn horn.

See, folks back in medieval times didn't know what a narwhal was. Heck, plenty of people today don't know what a narwhal is. So when a rich merchant brings a huge curled horn down from Norway, why wouldn't you assume that it comes off a unicorn?

But the unicorn doesn't just serve as a curiosity; it holds religious significance. Unicorns were said to represent Christ (Hey... come to think of it, there ARE unicorns in the Bible!). Because they were the symbols of ultimate purity, it was also said that only a virgin could see and touch a unicorn. And maybe that worked in the medieval times, but it could never work now, because a unicorn in America would only be able to be seen by members of the Alt-Right. 

Of similar religious significance is the legendary "Agate Bowl." What separates this bowl from any other carved piece of agate is that it apparently is (or is part of) the fabled Holy Grail. 

Not merely content to have it stand alone as a religious symbol, the Emperors of Austria apparently claimed that the Agate Bowl was the heirloom of the House of Habsburgs, a crafty state-religion association move that everyone let slide.

Thoughts and More

I hadn't given as much thought to this class's essay as I did to the film project and (obviously) the blog, but I think I have an idea now. Out of the two topics, I think I want to write about the first one: art and the Habsburgs. I'm fascinated by the this family and their rise, rule - and especially fall. Seeing all this art made me think a lot about how rulers use the powers of appearance and display to exert power. You know what I mean: "Hey, look at this great church I made!" "Hey, look, the freaking holy grail is also the heirloom of my family!"

I mean, how could a citizen not be convinced by that?!

As a final note, after I returned from the Hofburg, and went grocery shopping, I did overhear a couple of Viennese folks talking pretty intensely about my president, Donald Trump - probably about his reaction to the Charlottesville incident. I noticed one of them was really rolling his eyes as he talked about Trump.

Now, maybe he was saying "Why's everyone being mean to Trump?" and rolling his eyes at other people.

But somehow... somehow I doubt it.