In the late nineteenth century the population of the city of Vienna and its suburbs had grown considerably; as a consequence the need for new churches was intensely felt by clerics and the Catholic population alike. Some years before Breitensee became incorporated into the city of Vienna in 1890–92, it was decided to erect a new church. Somebody had the ingenious idea to declare the new building a “Kaiser-Jubiläumskirche,” commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Emperor Francis Joseph's accession to the throne. With the help of a member of the imperial family, the emperor consented to this plan and thus the church at Breitensee became one of the buildings erected for this specific occasion. This meant, among other things, that the church, built in neo-Gothic style, should in one way or another pay tribute to the rule of the emperor or the House of Habsburg in general. The committee in charge of the interior decoration, headed by the parish priest, commissioned a number of stained-glass windows to serve that purpose.

These windows show portraits not only of Francis Joseph and his wife Elisabeth (who was murdered just a few weeks before the official opening ceremony of the new church was to take place), but also other Habsburg rulers: King Rudolf I among his electors, offering them a cross to swear upon (1273); Archduke Ferdinand III (later Emperor Ferdinand II) kneeling in front of a cross asking God for help against Protestant nobles harassing him in his Castle in Vienna (1619); Emperor Charles V on his crusade in Tunis, liberating Christians (1535); Emperor Leopold I praying to the Virgin Mary for the salvation of his capital from the Turks (1683). One also finds the Roman Emperor Constantine, seeing in a vision the Holy Cross promising him “in hoc signo vinces,” and the Hungarian King Stephen I, the first Christian ruler of Hungary (both pictorial representations indicating that Francis Joseph in his capacity as Austro-Hungarian monarch is the true heir to the Holy Roman Empire and the Crown of St. Stephen). Apart from other patriotic scenes and various saints, however, it is the Holy Cross (Christ bearing the Cross, Descent from the Cross, Christ as Supreme Judge) that forms the spiritual center of these stained-glass windows.

But what is the common ground between the veneration of the cross (not uncommon in a Catholic church) and the Habsburgs, Francis Joseph, and his jubilee? The author finds the connection in the “pietas austriaca,” a political-ecclesiastical concept developed in the seventeenth century, the time of the Counter Reformation, in order to legitimize the rule of the House of Habsburg as stemming directly from God, but at the same time binding the rulers to values of justice, mercy, piety, and care for the material and spiritual well-being of their subjects entrusted to them by God. This concept was made visible in different forms; one was the veneration of the cross. Numerous stories relating to events in several centuries were compiled to demonstrate the public significance of the ostensibly private religious attitude of members of the Habsburg family. In the nineteenth century these stories were widely disseminated in schoolbooks or in similarly edifying literature, paintings, drawings, and illustrations. The author rightly stresses that the stories depicted on the stained-glass windows (and others covering similar themes) were well known to the public at large, and he gives ample evidence of precursors and models in the field of literature as well as visual arts.

But there is more to these windows (which are presented to the reader by means of excellent photographs) than being just beautiful decorations of a church or a demonstration of the anchoring of the Habsburg family within the Christian faith. In the course of the nineteenth century, “pietas austriaca,” along with other elements connected with the imperial family or with history at large, became an integral part of creating an “Austrian” patriotism. It aimed to imbue the population with a supranational identity, immunizing them against the threat of national identities and social unrest that might endanger the existence of the multinational Habsburg state. In this context it is interesting to recall that at the end of the nineteenth century more than two-thirds of the population of the fourteenth district of Vienna, where the Laurentius church is situated, belonged to the working classes (generally regarded as a potential threat to the existing social order), a great number of them coming from the Czech Lands. Although it is not known how many of them were actually inclined to jeopardize the existing political and social order, it is nevertheless plausible (even if the author does not speculate on the true motives of the people responsible for the pictorial program of the windows) that the inventors of the program wanted to bring home to the visitors the idea that the alliance between throne and altar was the only guarantee for peaceful and harmonious development. Yet if this was indeed the intention, it is at least doubtful whether it fully met their expectations, considering the declining influence of religion upon large parts of the working population.

Be that as it may, the book not only opens our eyes (in more than one sense!) to new information on specific details all too long overlooked, but also gives us food for second thoughts on questions dealt with by other authors as well. What more can be expected from a good book!