The debut his father forbade

One evening in October 1844, a nineteen-year-old stepped onto the stage of the hall that once stood here, violin in hand, while half of Vienna sat in the audience waiting for a family feud to unfold.

 

Johann Strauss the Younger wanted to be a musician, and his father, the most famous waltz composer in the country, had expressly forbidden it. The son built his own orchestra anyway and chose the Casino Dommayer for his debut, the ballroom of Hietzing, far enough from the centre to stay out of his father's shadow.

 

It turned into a triumph. The audience called the pieces back time and again, and the next morning's reviewer wrote that Vienna now had a second Strauss. Father and son stopped speaking for years and played their own separate halls, until the elder died in 1849.

 

The ballroom itself was torn down in 1907 and replaced by a hotel. The café that carries on the name stands beside it, with cakes in the display case and newspapers clipped to reading rods.

 

Two streets further on stands the church the village once listened to.