Haus des Meeres
Encyclopedia
The Haus des Meeres is a public aquarium
Aquarium
An aquarium is a vivarium consisting of at least one transparent side in which water-dwelling plants or animals are kept. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, marine mammals, turtles, and aquatic plants...

 in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

. It is located in Esterhazy Park in downtown Mariahilf
Mariahilf
Mariahilf is the 6th municipal district of Vienna, Austria . It is near the center of Vienna and was established as a district in 1850. Mariahilf is a heavily populated urban area with many residential buildings....

 district, one block south of the busy Mariahilfer Straße. The Haus des Meeres houses over ten thousand aquatic beings on an area of around four thousand square meters inside a tall concrete flak tower
Flak tower
Flak towers were 8 complexes of large, above-ground, anti-aircraft gun blockhouse towers constructed in the cities of Berlin , Hamburg , and Vienna from 1940 onwards....

 built during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. In 2009 the Haus des Meeres attracted a record high of 353,000 thousand visitors, reaching number ten in the list of tourist attractions in Vienna
Tourist attractions in Vienna
The tourist attractions of Vienna concentrate in three distinct areas. The largest cluster, centreed around Schönbrunn Palace, attracted around five million visitors in 2009, down from six million in 2008. Museums and exhibitions of Hofburg Palace accounted for nearly two million visitors in 2008,...

 in a year when other venues lost visitors in the wake of the global financial crisis. The Haus des Meeres is managed by Aqua Terra Zoo, a private non-profit organization
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 which, according to its web site, receives only marginal financial support from municipal authorities.85 thousand euros in 2009, or 2.5% of the annual budget. - Vereinsvorstand (in German). Haus des Meeres. Retrieved 2010-08-28. However, the maintenance costs for the former flak tower are paid by the taxpayer.

Background

The first public seawater aquarium in Vienna was opened in 1860 by Gustav Jäger
Gustav Jäger
Gustav Jäger was a German naturalist and hygienist.He was born at the historic Pfarrhaus of the village of Bürg, Neuenstadt am Kocher, in Württemberg. After studying medicine at Tübingen he became a teacher of zoology at Vienna...

. Jäger's aquarium, like its contemporaries, relied on regular delivery of natural seawater. It became a reality in 1854 with the construction of the Semmering railway
Semmering Railway
The Semmering railway, Austria, which starts at Gloggnitz and leads over the Semmering to Mürzzuschlag was the first mountain railway in Europe built with a standard gauge track. It is commonly referred to as the world's first true mountain railway, given the very difficult terrain and the...

 linking Vienna with the Mediterranean coast
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...

. After two years of experimenting with small seawater tanks Jäger built a large aquarium for public display. He described the feelings of contemporary people who faced the unknown submarine world: "The first-time visitor ... cannot contain his inner excitement. His curiosity is so great that he can hardly enjoy the moment: I am sorry, but he looks so helpless, as if he has suddenly found himself among people whose language he neither speaks nor understands." Visitors sought new experience, but resisted believing what they saw behind the glass. The aquarium was a financial loss, and Jäger had to close it after four years of operation.

The concrete tower housing present-day aquarium was erected as a fire control flak tower in ten months, October 1943 – July 1944. The tower is 47 meters tall, with a footprint of 31×15 meters, and its gross volume, including extensive foundations, reaches 55 thousand cubic meters. In 1944 it was crowned with a Würzburg radar
Würzburg radar
The Würzburg radar was the primary ground-based gun laying radar for both the Luftwaffe and the German Army during World War II. Initial development took place before the war, entering service in 1940. Eventually over 4,000 Würzburgs of various models were produced...

 dome. In case of imminent air raid threat, the radar could be lowered into a safe concrete shaft with 3.5 meter thick concrete walls. The subordinate gun battery tower is located inside a city block north of Marihilfer Straße. The two towers operated as a single combat unit, in cooperation with two other pairs of flak towers built in Augarten
Augarten
The Augarten is a 52.2 hectare public park in Leopoldstadt, the second district of Vienna, Austria. It contains the oldest Baroque gardens of the city....

 (north) and in Arenberg Park (south-east).Owing to prohibitively high costs of demolition, all six Viennese flak towers stand to date. As of 2009, demolition cost estimates start at 100 million Euro for each tower. - NS-Gedenkstätte im Flakturm (in German). Die Presse. April 5, 2009 (printed edition: April 7). Retrieved 2010-08-28. After the war the tower in Esterhazy Park was temporarily used as a hotel with 38 rooms in a bunker
Bunker
A military bunker is a hardened shelter, often buried partly or fully underground, designed to protect the inhabitants from falling bombs or other attacks...

, and then converted to a fire station.

History

The community of volunteers moved into the flak tower in November 1957. The ground floor and the bunkers were then occupied by the firefighters, which left only one and half habitable floors for the exhibition. The rest of the tower was filled with rubbish and open to the elements. Step by step, the aquarium conquered the empty shaft by building one floor after another. Eventually, when the aquarium expanded to six floors, the firefighters left the buildings, and the aquarium staff was at last allowed to clear the basement of war relics.

In 1991 the building was crowned with a lightweight wraparound box with the slogan Smashed to Pieces .. In the Still of the Night (in English and German), a memorial against war and fascism designed by Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner was a central figure in the formation of conceptual art in the 1960s His work often takes the form of typographic texts.- Life and career :...

. Eventually it became an obstacle to the expansion plans. The city authorities divided whether Weiner's work was a disposable billboard or a piece of artistic heritage, but by 2005 the latter viewpoint prevailed and the city picked up its maintenance costs. The old elevator, installed in 1944, operated without failure until 1997. It was replaced during an extensive renovation that enabled opening of three new floors (7, 8 and 9). The glass wings which house the reptiles and tropical birds, were added in 2000 and 2007. As of 2010, the tower houses ten habitable above-ground floors plus an open sightseeing roof deck. The tenth floor, which recreates a flak turm control vault, houses World War Two exhibits and is open only on weekends, with advance registration of visitors. The expansion had a side effect: the City of Vienna struck the "defaced" tower off the list of protected landmarks but enforced preservation of Weiner's billboard.

In 2007 the Haus des Meeres installed its largest, 300,000 liter tank for sharks. On May 7 the aquarium moved six adult blacktip shark
Blacktip shark
The blacktip shark is a species of requiem shark, family Carcharhinidae. It is common to coastal tropical and subtropical waters around the world, including brackish habitats. Genetic analyses have revealed substantial variation within this species, with populations from the western Atlantic Ocean...

s, properly sedated, to the new tank. All sharks quietly died in a few hours after awakening. Autopsy revealed fatal internal bleeding
Internal bleeding
Internal bleeding is bleeding occurring inside the body. It can be a serious medical emergency depending on where it occurs , and can potentially cause death and cardiac arrest if proper medical treatment is not received quickly....

 which was blamed on stress
Stress (biology)
Stress is a term in psychology and biology, borrowed from physics and engineering and first used in the biological context in the 1930s, which has in more recent decades become commonly used in popular parlance...

 (after the accident other zoos confirmed that blacktip sharks are, indeed, prone to stress injury). The four replacement sharks of the same species that were delivered next month survived without lasting effects. The gravel lining the bottom of the tank was recycled from World War Two concrete which was torn down during the expansion. It is visible on the 55 euro cent
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...

 commemorative stamp
Commemorative stamp
A commemorative stamp is a postage stamp, often issued on a significant date such as an anniversary, to honor or commemorate a place, event or person. The subject of the commemorative stamp is usually spelled out in print, unlike definitive stamps which normally depict the subject along with the...

 50 Jahre "Haus des Meeres" issued by the Austrian Post
Postage stamps and postal history of Austria
This article deals with the stamps and postal history of Austria.- Monarchy, 1850 - 1918 :The postage stamp issues of Austria began on 1 June 1850 with a series of imperforate typographed stamps featuring the coat of arms. At first they were printed on a rough hand-made paper, but after 1854 a...

 in 2007.

The global financial crisis caused an abrupt drop in visitor numbers of Viennese art museums. The Haus des Meeres, on the contrary, steadily attracted more visitors every year: 258 thousand in 2007, 336 thousand in 2008, 353 thousand in 2009. In 2009 it rose to number ten in the list of Vienna's tourist attractions ranked by ticket sales, despite a significant increase in ticket price.

Expansion plans

Further expansion and ownership of the tower is a controversial matter. The property is owned by the City of Vienna, which pays for the maintenance costs, and is determined to get rid of the financial burden. In 2008 the City proposed selling the tower to an outside investor and approved plans to build a private hotel on top of the flak tower. The plans were vocally opposed by the residents of Mariahilf. The Haus des Meeres itself wanted to retain future upward expansion rights. They proposed building three new exhibition space floors inside an all-glass capsule shaped like a manta ray
Manta ray
The manta ray is the largest species of the rays. The largest known specimen was more than across, with a weight of about . It ranges throughout waters of the world, typically around coral reefs...

. As of 2010, both these projects were canceled. The Haus des Meeres received a vote of confidence from local residentsAccording to local Social Democrats
Social Democratic Party of Austria
The Social Democratic Party of Austria is one of the oldest political parties in Austria. The SPÖ is one of the two major parties in Austria, and has ties to trade unions and the Austrian Chamber of Labour. The SPÖ is among the few mainstream European social-democratic parties that have preserved...

, the poll collected 2271 votes out of 8297 eligible residents, a record turnout for such polls. - Ausbaupläne: Dinieren auf dem Flakturm (in German). Die Presse. May 1, 2009 (printed edition: May 2). Retrieved 2010-08-28.
but had to choose a less radical solution. The six million Euro expansion project, scheduled for 2011, will add a million-liter fish tank and an open-air restaurant. The city officials are willing to consider the sale of the building to the Haus des Meeres, on condition that the new owner preserves Weiner's artwork and picks up the maintenance bill from the taxpayers.

See also

  • Jardin d'Acclimatation
    Jardin d'Acclimatation
    The Jardin d'Acclimatation is a children's amusement park with a menagerie, the Exploradôme museum, and other attractions located in the northern part of the Bois de Boulogne, in Paris.-History:...

    , a French zoo with seawater aquarium, opened in the same year as Gustav Jäger's aquarium.
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