Christmas at the Viennese Fiaker
(fiaker are horse drawn carriages, driven by a liveried coachman)
The street sign at the entrance to the old courtyard where the fiaker are stationed reads “Zwerchgasse”, but you will not find this street on the map of Vienna.
It existed in the old days, when the coachmen and their coaches and horses were stationed in the Viennese suburbs . Today these same old suburbs are a part of the noisy city with lots of traffic. The “Zwerchgasse” probably was a small street on the border between the suburbs of Ottakring and Hernals.
Even though other cities may also have a tradition with coaches, they are certainly not so thoroughly engrained in the people’s hearts. In Vienna the people and the coaches share a deeply rooted companionship.
The word “Fiaker” means not only the coach for hire (drawn by two horses and bearing a registration number) but also the coachman himself.
There is written documentation from the year 1662 about an inn-proprietor in Paris, in the Rue de Fiacre. The proprietor kept coaches for hire, and they became known by the word fiacre, hence the expression was also adopted in Vienna. Quite soon there were also coaches for hire in Vienna and of course this roused angry protests from the chair carriers and sedan chair carriers, who did not like the competition. The coaches were uncomfortable and expensive, but much faster, and the chair carriers tried to stay in competition by making their chairs more luxurious and comfortable with soft pillows etc.
But nevertheless the question “May we carry you, your honour?” was slowly replaced by “Are we going, your honour?”
Around 1790 there were about 700 Fiaker in Vienna, and in its peak time (1860 to 1908) more than 1000.The Coachmen were very often personalities known for their originality. They may have been coarse but were sincere, loyal and discreet – and their horses were most important to them.
There were constantly difficulties and problems with the law-officers – they were either going too fast, or giving cheeky answers and there was also a song about this describing in a humorous way all the difficulties the Fiakers were facing (e.g. they earned 2 guilders from the client, but had to pay 3 guilders to the “mighty police” for speeding….)
But the old Viennese tradition of “if God does not agree, nothing can be done” has slowly been pushed to the background and is now only something the tourist hear from”the good old days”.
With this nativity scene we want to carry on the old traditions, and with an old song we would like to evoke the spirit of Christmas: “The angels are coming to Vienna for a vacation”
The Viennese songs in particular are very rich in religious contents and they interpret the religion in a rather idiosyncratic way. The theologian Prof. Zulehner said that for a Viennese the Paradise is a transcendental “Heuriger”, and therefore, if the scene of the holy family seeking lodging is set in Vienna, it cannot be wrong to place the nativity scene with the Fiakers.