Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...

156
Observing the Landscape
Roland Tusch
University of Natural Resources and Applied Life
Sciences, Institute of Landscape Architecture,
Peter Jordan Straße 82, 1190 Vienna, Austria
(e-mail: roland.tusch@boku.ac.at)
Abstract
In the middle of the 19th century, it was one of the
major challenges of the Industrialisation to overcome
the Alps by train. In Austria, the turmoils of the March
Revolution initialised the construction of the Semmering
railway. New views of the romantic Semmering
landscape became possible. The external view, as a
view through the site tourists’ eyes, was characterized
by looking from the valley up to the site. It shows the
large-scale infrastructural project in the landscape
leading through three valleys. The internal view, seen
through the signalmen’s eyes, shows the railway
worker and his house being dominated by the railway,
the system that they are a part of. The view out of
the compartment window turns the landscape into a
motion picture. It separates the passenger from the
surrounding landscape. The three different perspectives
onto the landscape show that the interaction between
the manmade infrastructural intervention and the
landscape can be an aesthetic enrichment for a region.
Together, the railway and the landscape formed the
base for the development of the Semmering region.
Key words
Infrastructure and landscape, landscape perception,
landscape change, railway
Introduction
At the beginning of the 19th century, the countryside can
be characterised as a self-developing system without
any influences from the outside. “This condition could be
described as paradisiacal but with the snag – as usual
in paradise – that those living in it cannot appreciate
it.” (Achleitner 1997: 165) Due to the Industrialisation,
man’s regard to his environment changed strongly. Small
industries were the starting point of new human settlement
in the countryside. The means of transportation of
the Industrialisation was the railway, which launched the
development of a number of today’s tourist regions in
Austria. The changing situation through Industrialisation
made the countryside appear to be paradisiacal on the
verge of destruction.
The construction of railway lines in the alpine region presented
a major challenge. The landscape, marked through
a rough topography, was not the ideal place for the new
means of transportation. It was a challenge to overcome
the Alps by train. One of these railway lines – over the
Austrian Alps – was the Semmering railway. It was supposed
to connect the royal seat of the Danube Monarchy,
Vienna, with its most important seaport, Trieste. While the
railway lines from Vienna to Gloggnitz (1842) as well as
from Graz to Mürzzuschlag (1844) had already been finished,
the connection over the Semmering, the last branch
of the Alps, was still missing. The train journey from Vienna
to Graz had to be adjourned and the Semmering had to
be overcome via horse and cart. The towns of Schottwien
and Mürzzuschlag became increasingly important for the
region; they became locations for blacksmiths, horse and
cart enterprises, and accommodation facilities. During the
construction of the Semmering railway, Schottwien, where
the site office of the railway construction was located, had
a short upsurge.
In spring 1848, Vienna was also shattered by the turmoils
of the March Revolution, and the challenge was to provide
a lot of people with work outside of the capital. While
the planning work for a railway over the Semmering had
long since been begun, it was, eventually, the Revolution
that initialised the beginning of the railway construction
across the mountain. The railway as an infrastructural
element provided new opportunities in order to observe
the landscape.
Material and methods - three main materials
Already during the construction period, especially the
Viennese people were interested in the progress of the
railway through the Semmering. Several weekend trips
took place with the railway site as their destination. 1851,
in the third year of the railway construction, Melchior
Edlen von Schickh published his travel guide for the site
tourism already in the second run. The guidebook is
dedicated to those advocating progress. In the conclusion
Edlen von Schickh describes that overcoming the Alps
by railway and thereby connecting two seas, which were
a long distance apart, is a grand progress in the history
of mankind. Thereby, he sees the railway project in a
meaningful, big scale context. Considering the available
time of the tourists, the author suggests three different
types of site trips. The first one takes an entire day, the
second one night and one day, and the third one takes
three days.
Observing the rail track was the main task of one profession:
the signalmen. Already in 1847, seven years before
commissioning the Semmering railway, the southern
national railway of the Danube Monarchy edited a small
booklet named ”Instructionen für die Bahnwächter auf
der k.k. südlichen Staats-Eisenbahn”. It is a precise description
of the signalman’s job, which focuses on a lot of
points the careful observation of the whole rail track.