Nearly 63,000 square meters, marvellously green, and featuring 500-year-old lime trees, old ash trees and various exotic plants– a gift one does not receive every day. Not even the City of Vienna. Yet in 1908 Franziska Wertheimstein, the daughter of the famous banker, wanted to present the city with the Wertheimstein Park. Her condition was that the city always keep it open to the general public. The city agreed to these terms, planted even more exotic plants, and reserved 6,000 square meters for later use. In 1959 the first garden for the blind in all of Europe was built, complete with bushes and flowers easy to explore by touch and signs in Braille.

But these times are gone. So too are those of Mr. Koller, who conducted his studies here on all of the four “Billigesser“ (cheap eaters), who filled their stomachs cheaply at the nearby WÖK – Vienna Public Kitchen, as it was then called. Later on, Mr. Koller paced between old ash and old oak trees, pondering his studies. One can read about it in Thomas Bernhard’s novel “Die Billigesser“. What would Herr von Arthaber have said about all of this, being a famous manufacturer of scarves, having built this private garden in 1835, in the middle of the Biedermeier era, having frequented only the most elite circles in the imperial capital city, and having played host to the crème de la crème and where members of the royal family were regular guests at the present-day Villa Wertheimstein, enjoying the magnificent view of the green park.