The Kahlenberg (in English literally means bald mountain) is a hill 484 m asl located in Vienna, Austria (Döbling) and lies in the Vienna Woods. Jan III Sobieski, King of Poland launched his attack on the Turkish forces during the second siege of Vienna from here on the 11 and 12 September 1683. A huge Muslim army had Vienna surrounded and were ready to take the city by storm. Their final target was Germany.
Battle of Vienna (painting by Jan Wyck 1698)
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Battle of Vienna (painting by Jan Wyck 1698)
The small church on top of the Kahlenberg was built in 1639. Two plaques on its front are in German and Polish: one records that King of Poland John III Sobieski prayed there before leading his Polish troops together with the imperial forces under Charles of Lorraine to relieve Vienna from the Turks in 1683; the plaque on the right recalls a visit that the Polish-born Pope, John Paul II, paid to the church 300 years later to the day. The Turkish name of the mountain is Alamandağı.
St. Josefskirche am Kahlenberg in Wien
Short History
Kahlenberg was uninhabited until the 18th century. Originally, the mountain was called Sauberg (sow mountain) or Schweinsberg (pig mountain), after the numerous wild pigs that lived in the pristine oak forests. In 1628, Ferdinand II acquired the mountain from the Klosterneuburg monastery and called it Josephsberg (Joseph's Mountain). Only after Emperor Leopold I renamed the original Kahlenberg (the neighbouring mountain) to Leopoldsberg was the name "Kahlenberg" given to the "Josephsberg".
King Jan III Sobieski commemorative plaque placed on the facade of the Polish church on Kahlenberg. King Jan III Sobieski (1629–1696) was king of one of the largest nations in Europe called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
After acquiring the mountain, Ferdinand II allowed a hermitage for the Kamaldulenser, an order of Catholic hermits, to be built. A few houses were built around the Chapel of Saint Joseph, which earned the name Josefsdorf.
Inside St. Josefkirche Church, Kahlenberg
The Kahlenberg mountain is also notable as the place where Albert Einstein, Otto Neurath, and other mathematicians and physicists made the first plans, around 1920, for what would later become the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science.
St. Josefkirche Church at Kahlenberg today led by Polish priests, the Resurrectionists and it is an important pilgrimage site - the miraculous image of Black Madonna.
Source text: www.nytimes.com, Wikipedia.
Photos courtesy Piotr Piekarski and public domain.