One of Vienna’s best Art Nouveau landmarks isn’t a building at all, but rather the Ankeruhr, an ornate clock that links two rather ordinary buildings used by the Anker insurance company.
Every day, a series of 12 figures moves slowly across the clock face, showing the hours and minutes; at noon the slow progress is interrupted for a ten-minute show in which all 12 parade across, each with an individual tune.
The clock was built between 1911 and 1914, but its completion was held up by World War I; it was run only twice, on the 1915 and 1916 birthdays of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph. It only entered full-time operation in 1918, with the noon music—the Imperial Hymn—replaced by a selection from Haydn’s Creation. Haydn was also the composer of the Imperial Hymn.
The clock was constructed by what reads like a roster of Vienna’s artistic and artisan community of the time. The painter Franz Matsch designed the clock, the Wiener Mosaik-Werkstätte created the mosaic on the front and the copper pieces were created by Franz Siegel and Heinrich Hauska, well-known at the time. After World War II damage, the original organ was replaced by a modern sound system, but the rest was fully restored.
There are actually 13 figures; 11 is represented jointly by Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Emperor Franz I. Others include several Habsburg emperors and court figures, along with Marcus Aurelius, Charlemagne and, at Number 12, Haydn himself.
Since I didn’t manage to be at the clock at the appropriate time (and I’m not sure my shoulders could have managed 11 minutes of video time anyway), I’ve added two YouTube videos above and below. The first is for those of you with great patience… it is the full parade at its own pace.
The second is for the rest of us… It’s the entire parade, but speeded up to run for only thirty seconds.
