Für Elise’s sake! They are shutting down Beethoven’s favourite store
NewsThe composer was a regular visitor to Dorotheergasse for music paper, pencisl and gossip. Doblingers, the music shop has survived every political and financial strom since 1817. But the freeholders are now threatening to close it down.
The lease has been terminated and the occupants have been o4rdered to vacate within six weeks.
They are challenging the order in court.
The freeholders are a foundation linked to a financial services company, faceless and conscience free.
We may need to start demonstrating soon.
More here.
Great content! The list of tools at the end was a lovely bonus.
The mind boggles anew.
Demonstrating? Pfft, Norman, c’mon. The Viennese already closed down the iconic EMI Music Store in the Kärntnerstraße 30 and opened a hideous cannabis shop instead. Nobody protested back then, nobody will ever protest. Now they just gotta replace the Doblinger store with a strip club or a McDonald’s, that would certainly fit the current Viennese “Stadtbild”.
McDonalds must have made them a better offer.
It sounds like the shop and lease need to be taken into community ownership, rather than be answerable to such faceless, insensitive corporate action.
Incredible story. Difficult to believe that even in music hub Vienna such crazy thing can happen.
Such a ‘shop’ should be on the UN heritage list and the government should step-in, it’s a historic monument.
Money for the sake of money is a plague wherever it infects human activity.
I believe that Beethoven has not been a customer for a while.
He had not heard of all the recent developments.
This is awful. What are they thinking? Doblingers is one of my first stops every time I get to Vienna. The most knowledgeable staff I’ve ever dealt with. The shop should have some protected status as a huge piece of Viennese legacy.
During the past decade, the area around Dorotheergasse has been changed from one where many of the shops sold things that were useful to ordinary inhabitants of Vienna, to a collection of stores also to be found in Fifth Av, NY, and Bond St, London. Many have security guards outside to screen and admit the international hyper-rich. Round the corner in Kärntnerstrasse the former HMV Record Store is now a cannabis shop. I only know of two shops still selling „classical“ sheet music in Vienna. Sic transit…
And don’t forget that the good bookshop that was EMI’s neighbour was replaced by a shop selling hideous artefacts for tasteless tourists.
Between the ploutocrats who seem to want the same luxury brands everywhere, and mass tourism, Vienna loses its soul to make a quick buck. Some areas of Paris, where I live, are going the same way. Yuck.
I’ll be in Vienna in 10 days, I’ll go buy something at Doblinger. I can’t do anything else, alas
It happens everywhere. Since Nietzsche had spent a couple of summers in Sils-Maria, a small alpine village, the place is now flooded by Chinese tourists buying little Nietzsche puppets, T-Shirts with N’s portrait on the back with the words ‘Never look back!’ and pipes with the head sculpted like the author of Also sprach Zarazustra.
I happened to be in Vienna last week and walked by Doblinger (taking a peek at the window displays). Dorotheergasse remains a relatively quiet and classy street. Jewish Museum, Reinthaler’s Beisl, Graben Hotel, various antique shops. There is a somewhat off-key “Billiardcafé” but I don’t think Dorotheergasse has the foot traffic to support a McDonalds. I’m an optimist.
Dont forget Trzesniewski, also in Dorotheergasse.
Oh yes, best Brötchen of the galaxy !
That’s really sad because when I was studying in Vienna or visiting on holiday. I loved going there as it was an old fashioned music publishers. It’s so difficult now to find a music publisher where you can just browse.