The Bird´s Eye View of Vienna by Bernhard Georg Andermüller

Largely unnoticed by historical research, the Royal Library of Brussels holds a very impressive birds eye view of Vienna which is dated 1703 and up to now has been erroneously attributed to B. G. Andermaller. Its real author, the Dessau councillor Bernhard Georg Andermüller (16441717), presents the early modern city of Vienna as seen from the north and viewing southwards. From 1699 to 1703, the well-educated Andermüller spent the whole length of four years in Vienna as an envoy of the princes of Anhalt, whose claims to the heirship of the territory of Sachsen-Lauenburg he had to plead and defend at the Aulic Council of the Holy Roman Empire. His weekly reports sent to Anhalt offer detailed insights in Andermüllers work as an envoy, and they are used as a prime source in this book, apart from the biography contained in his obituary. The birds eye view drafted and drawn by Andermüller himself allows two possible tracks of interpretation: on the one hand, the map may have been a truly representative present for the princes of Anhalt; on the other hand, it may have served as a kind of guideline for his expected successor in Vienna, as it shows the urban palaces of the most important decision-makers at the Viennese Court and of members of the Emperors Privy Council. Unfortunately, the map does not offer any conclusive information to decide the matter, so both options remain possible. Andermüllers birds eye view proves an excellent source for various aspects of the citys development at the dawn of the 18th century. Whilst the suburbs were experiencing a massive building boom after the Ottoman siege of 1683, comparable construction activities were hardly possible in the city itself, presumably due to the high density of buildings. Many garden palaces and summer residences sprung up in the suburbs of Vienna and noblemen were the foremost building patrons in the city as well. While in the 17th century the predominant building tasks were the implantation of new monasteries within the city and the extension of the Habsburg residence (Hofburg), only the following period saw the building boom reaching the level of citizens. Andermüllers map of 1703, however, does not represent the developed baroque city but covers just the beginnings of this later development, when bourgeois property developers were rare and some urban quarters still consisted predominantly of gabled houses with medieval appearance. Andermüllers birds eye-view of 1703 turns out to be a multi-layered source for the beginning of baroque Vienna.

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