Vienna Prater: Traditional Amusement Venue Gets Dedicated Museum
By 2024, a new Prater Museum will be constructed on the Straße des Ersten Mai near the Giant Ferris Wheel. This will provide a more suitable location for the City of Vienna and Wien Museum to display the Prater collection and tell the history of the Prater.
Vienna Mayor Michael Ludwig: "Hardly any other amusement park has become as strongly inscribed in the city's identity and image as the Prater in Vienna." / Picture: © Wikimedia Commons / Various [Public Domain]
By 2024, a new Prater Museum will be constructed on the Straße des Ersten Mai near the Giant Ferris Wheel. In the future, the history of the Prater will be told there. The Vienna Prater represents a special focus of the Wien Museum's collection. For years, the Prater companies have supported the collection of the City of Vienna with selected exhibits of their attractions.
The Prater Museum is currently located in a small room in the Planetarium, and only a small portion of the Prater collection can be shown there. Additionally, since the Planetarium is not a traditional museum building, conservation standards are not met.
Concerning the Prater, Mayor of Vienna Michael Ludwig said, “Hardly any other amusement park has become as strongly inscribed in the city's identity and image as the Prater in Vienna. In contrast to international amusement parks, the Wurstelprater is open and freely accessible to all; this also makes it a unique place. The Prater businesses, with their ever-changing attractions, keep the Prater alive.”
“The Wurstelprater and the green Prater were and are a never-ending source of inspiration for creative artists. Think of Schnitzler or Polgar’s Molnar translation of ‘Liliom,’ in music from Robert Stolz to Ernst Molden or Josef Hader’s ‘Wilde Maus’ - the Prater is always a stimulating subject of artistic works. Not only did different social classes meet in the Prater, but technical innovations were also presented to a broad public here for the first time. In the new Prater Museum, the history of the place as a magical and formative part of our city will be presented in a contemporary way that is sure to inspire numerous Viennese and also tourists,” said City Councillor for Culture Veronica Kaup-Hasler.
What is the Prater?
The Prater is a large, mostly public park in Vienna’s second district, Leopoldstadt. Though people often refer to the amusement park (Wurstelprater) as “The Prater,” the Prater includes more than just that. There are no specific legal boundaries that make up the Prater, but it also includes vast wetlands and forests near the Danube and the “Green Prater,” a forested area that was placed under government protection in 1978.
Prater Collection
The Prater collection can be traced back to the collecting passion of Hans Pemmer. In 1964, the former secondary school teacher and local historian donated his collection to the city, which housed it in the then-new Vienna Planetarium. Since then, the collection has grown steadily, with items provided by the Prater businesses. These include hat horses, a model of the World's Fair, a matchmaking machine, an edition of the typical Watschenmann, an illuminated devil's head, and photographs by Austrian photographer Emil Mayers. The most recent donation is a duck carousel from the 1950s belonging to the Lang family.
Prater as a source of inspiration
Vienna's Prater has been a source of artistic inspiration for artists of all genres for centuries. In literature in particular, important texts were written with the Prater as a setting by authors such as Glaßbrenner, Stifter, Salten, Schnitzler, Altenberg, Zweig, Auernheimer, Veza Canetti, Graham Green, Artmann, Qualtinger, Jelinek, Seethaler and many more. The Prater is also a popular motif in films, for example in the “Third Man” from 1949 or in “Wilde Maus” from 2017.