WIMBERGERs event culture

Wondrous nights
It is said that democracy was invented at the hotel Wimberger in Vienna, at least with regard to entertainment: "The democracy of entertainment started precisely at nine o’clock by an opening polonaise and at midnight had already reached the point that each count had found his washer girl or flower girl. The coachmen danced with the ballet stars of the imperial opera house, who had shown up incognito. And under a flashy domino could be hidden a landlord Casanova as well as a guard officer of high nobility, who had a pass for this night. Not even real "imperial and royal" actors of the Court Theatre could resist the carnival magic of those nights at Wimberger. Hamlet danced with the little milliner from the suburbs, who had been transformed by a costume rental shop, into a columbine of freshly ironed pink muslin. Here, generations of butcher’s daughters fell in love and got engaged. And for gratitude they came back again at a time, when they had already gained 55 kilos of weight and instead of the flummery dress of their first night at Wimberger, they used to wear now the whalebone armoured silk waist, the balloon sleeves and the Cul de Paris of the owners of four-storied houses.

On the road to success
That might have been the same situation in the other entertainment places but on the contrary to them; the social mixture at the event hotel Wimberger was not a more or less tolerated offence but a program that resulted inevitably from the structure of hotel business. The magnificent ballroom had to be used in fact, night and day and day and night, at carnival time as well as before and afterwards. This resulted in the fact that during the day political assemblies "aiming at the saving of the man in the street under considerable consumption of beer" just parted in order to reunite themselves immediately at night to participate in masked balls. The entertainment program of the hotel Wimberger was expanded step by step. The masked balls at carnival time (each Monday and Friday) were replaced by regular "military concerts" (each Sunday and Holiday), until in 1901 Karl Wimberger enlarged his enterprise once again by inventing the show "Munich in Vienna", which became the first permanent event of the city. The remedy for success was: "Bavarian beer, waitresses from Munich, daily concert."

Colourful as life
No chronicle ever described the juxtaposition of political and other assemblies, masked balls, military concerts and the permanent Munich beer festival under the roof of one single hotel, but it is certain that the openness for the new as well as the compatibility of differences is a tradition in hotel Wimberger. Or do you know another house in Vienna in which it might happen that hungry attendants of an Anna Netrebko concert meet the participants of the Tattoo Convention Vienna in the restaurant WIMBERGERs wia z'Haus - and after dinner are dancing together to rock music into the early hours of the next day.

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