Cemetery visits are the most useful, they teach about tranquility and peace like nothing else. Nowhere else can a distracted head concentrate better. - Thomas Bernhard, Heldenplatz

Death has always been at home in Vienna. Most Viennese stories, legends and myths deal more or less directly with it. Whether dressed up as Pestilence (which visited Vienna several times) or in the famous folk song “Es wird a Wein sein…”, where the author laments about all the happy drinking days that will be gone once we’re dead, death is real and active in the daily life of Vienna. The Liebe Augustin (dear Augustin), the legendary Viennese gleeman, who once fell in a plague dump while drunk, but got out the next morning only with a huge hangover, became the ancestor of the genuine Viennese, who just doesn’t “go under”.

Vienna is one of those places where people have an almost too cosy relationship with death. If you are skeptical, just visit the Vienna Zentralfriedhof (central cemetery) on Allerheiligen (the day of the dead, 1. November), when all of Vienna remembers their “dear dead”. There is an old joke that compares the Zentralfriedhof with Zurich: half as big but twice as jolly. It could be that death, as an “evening out” phenomenon, has always had fans among the common folk since monarchy times. The knocking ritual of the Habsburgs is certainly worth mentioning. The king’s casket would be brought before the Kapuzinerkirche, the traditional Habsburg gravesite. The ceremonial officiant would knock and proclaim all the noble titles of the deceased for minutes, and get an Ignosco (do not know) in return. Only at the third knocking, when the answer to the “who is there” question was “a poor sinner”, would the casket be admitted into the church.

There are about 46 cemeteries in Vienna for all the “poor sinners”. In the last 150 years new grave sites have moved from the city center to the surrounding districts, even into the hills of the Wienerwald. The central cemetery has about 3 million “inhabitants” and belongs to the largest cemeteries in Europe. Wolfgang Ambros, Austrian musician, has written a truely Viennese song about it, where he praises the Zentralfriedhof where you don’t need a ticket to get in, where it may be cold outside, but underground it’s nice and cosy. This cemetery also houses the remains of the imperial family, and it is good for a history walk in general. But the Zentralfriedhof is not the only cemetery worth visiting. There is also the St.Marx, an almost perfectly preserved Biedermeier cemetery, the only one left from the times of the Emperor Joseph II. A special category are the Jewish cemeteries in Vienna. They were badly damaged during the nazi times, and they are in desperate need of restauration up to this day. The irony is that, in a land where space is limited, most cemeteries house catholics, protestants, greek orthodox and Jews side by side, in somewhat separated sections. In death there is peace, and it is possible that a fierce anti-Jew grave lies right opposite a Jewish one. A Muslim cemetery has also been built, after two decades of negotiations with the islamic community, another victory of the ever increasing Muslim population in Austria.

Strange and certainly fitting with the whole morbid death cult is the story of Mozart’s burial. The Zentralfriedhof has a grave in his honor, presumingly empty. However, the real Mozart, or most of him, is buried in St.Marx. His head, after having been analyzed and measured, is well preserved in Salzburg, in the Mozarteum. But wheather you are Mozart, or the chancellor of Austria, or just dust in the wind, in Vienna you can be burried with all the pomp fitting an emperor or modestly in a cemetery corner, with prices starting at just 13 euro (for a wooden cross), because the business with the dead is also a business built on profits like any other. And, like in every industry, there are trends. The trend this year seems to be the “American way” of cremation, as it is “sanitary and eco-friendly”. However, a “schöne Leich” (literally: a beautiful corpse; meaning beautiful funeral), with a large group of mourners, can elicit rapturous descriptions by participants, and can overshadow any other society event.

Yes, Death must be Viennese, just as Love must be French, ’cause who else could get you to heaven’s gates on time but a Viennese, as Georg Kreisler once said:
Der Tod, das muß ein Wiener sein,
genau wie die Lieb’ a Französin.
Denn wer bringt dich pünktlich zur Himmelstür?
Ja da hat nur ein Wiener das G’spür dafür.