Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1881 — A Viennese Superstition. [ARTICLE]

A Viennese Superstition.

The bodies of twenty-three more victims of the Ring theater at Vienna have been recovered. The remains of the remaining 600 or 700 victims will be placed ia large metal coffins and interred as found, without further religious ceremony. Of those only the ashes and a few charred bones will ever be recovered. Over the large grave in the Friedhof a monument will be erected, and it is even proposed that theßing theater be razed and in its place a monument erected -to the thousand victims who perished there. Strange to say this proposition meets approval in spite of the value of the ground on which the building stands, for there is a superstition among the people of Vienna that the very site is accursed. When the present beautiful Ring-strasse was formed of the graves of the city walls thirty years ago,.the city executioner' dwelt on the spot. After the revolution of 1847 had been Sut down, it was here that Robert llum was shot, and after him *many others were hanged and shot ,tm the same spot. At that time the legend began that the curse of God would reßt on the place for all time. Perhaps it was this curse that has made the five or six managers of theßing theater bankrupt since 1874. It certainly seems to have rested on Director Janner’s directorship. Of those now buried, only 125 have heen identified; the rest are unrecognizable by their friends and relatives. This is best, for the memories- /of the loved departed are happier than they would have been otherwise. It will be the last resting place of ail, irrespective of their confessions. Catholics, Protestants, Greeks and Jews all rest together. Priests of all four confessions joined in the solemnities at the Central Freidhof, each forgetting their religious rivalries in the common sorrow of the people.