CONTEXT: The most determinedly grand façade I saw in Europe (though not as succesful the colonnade of the Louvre), the main frontage of the imperial palace in Vienna, the Hofburg. Built as a suitable setting for august royal ceremony, it would also be the site of one of history’s most ominous spectacles, as described below; a frenzy of xenophobic vainglory. A jolting contrast to all this elegant dignity. There is also a passing reference to sculptural portrayals of strength, noted in other posts, as an apparent Germanic fixation.

The Habsburgs’ main residence, enlarged over six centuries. This handsome, curved façade was its last major expansion, completed in 1913, the year before the Empire provoked The Great War (World War I) that led to its own demise. Nowhere, it seemed to me, was their Imperial, dynastic prestige more manifest than in this literally majestic edifice. But there were so many distracting sights in the vicinity that I forgot about what was probably the worst event it ever witnessed: From its central balcony in 1938, Hitler proclaimed the union (“Anschluss”) of his native Austria to Nazi Germany, to the wild cheers of tens of thousands of enthralled spectators.

Few places of Hitler’s triumphs remain in Berlin, which was largely leveled in World War II, so I wish I’d remembered at the time what had happened on that balcony, and reflected on it even if it made me shudder. The Habsburgs had treated their fellow Austrian-Germans as first among their subject peoples, but not with toxic ethnic chauvinism. It was left to Hitler to replace the primacy of royal blood with the inherent supremacy of German-Aryan genes.

Perhaps it was the loss of the higher status they’d had under the Empire that made so many Austrians so thrilled to be led into the Third Reich, with its seductive promises of restoring Germanic glory and dominion. By the way, the Hofburg is where the hyper-muscled statues I’d earlier contrasted to French ones are. That cultural preoccupation with power seems telling, for Hitler chose this very place to, effectively, extol strength as man’s chief virtue – and the only true determinant of his Fate.