Austria and Vienna
The theme this month was the coins of Austria ranging from the euro and going back to kreuzers and hellers. An interesting subject which also includes the Austria Netherlands and Italy.
First two pictures used by king permission of http://www.charlesriley.co.uk/
the medallion is by a Nuremberg goldsmith and medallist Jacob Wolrab.
The Battle of Vienna (German: Schlacht am Kahlen Berge or Kahlenberg (Battle of the
Bald Mountain); took place at Kahlenberg Mountain
near Vienna on 12
September 1683 after the imperial city had been besieged by the Ottoman
Empire for two months. The battle was fought by the Holy Roman
Empire led by the Habsburg
Monarchy and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth,
both under the command of King John III
Sobieski, against the Ottomans and their vassal and
tributary states.
The battle was won by the combined forces of the
Holy Roman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the latter
represented only by the forces of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland (the
march of the Lithuanian army was delayed, and they reached Vienna after it had
been relieved). Historians state the battle marked the turning point in
the Ottoman–Habsburg wars, a 300-year struggle
between the Holy Roman and Ottoman Empires. During the 16 years following the
battle, the Austrian Habsburgs gradually
recovered and dominated southern Hungary and Transylvania, which had
been largely cleared of Ottoman forces. The battle is noted for including the
largest known cavalry charge in history.
Several culinary legends
are related to the Battle of Vienna.
One legend is that the croissant was
invented in Vienna, either in 1683 or during the earlier siege in 1529,
to celebrate the defeat of the Ottoman attack on the city, with the shape
referring to the crescents on the Ottoman flags. This version of the
origin of the croissant is supported by the fact that croissants in France are
a variant of Viennoiserie, and by the French popular
belief that Vienna-born Marie
Antoinette introduced the pastry to France in 1770.
Another legend from Vienna has the first bagel as being a gift
to King John III Sobieski to commemorate the King's victory over the Ottomans.
It was fashioned in the form of a stirrup to
commemorate the victorious charge by the Polish cavalry.
There is an often recited story that, after the
battle, the residents of Vienna discovered many bags of coffee in the abandoned
Ottoman encampment. The story goes on that, using this captured stock, Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki opened the
first coffeehouse in Vienna and one of his ideas
was to serve coffee with milk, a practice that was unknown in the Islamic
world. However, this story was first mentioned in 1783; the first
coffeehouse in Vienna had been established by the Armenian Johannes Theodat in
1685. Another
more likely story is that the captured stock of bitter coffee was mixed with
sugar and steamed milk to produce a drink that was named Cappuccino (or
kapuziner, in German) either in honour of the Capuchin Franciscan Marco
d'Aviano who had inspired the Catholic forces to unity and
defence or because the Capuchin priest had a role in inventing
Photographs
GORNY & MOSCH
Giessener Münzhandlung GmbH
Used by kind permission of https://coinsweekly.com/
Source – Wikipedia
