Haus des Meeres

The first public seawater aquarium in Vienna was opened in 1860 by Gustav Jäger. 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 linking Vienna with the Mediterranean coast. 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 subordinate gun battery tower is located inside a city block north of Mariahilfer Straße. The two towers operated as a single combat unit, in cooperation with two other pairs of flak towers built in Augarten (north) and in Arenberg Park (south-east). After the war the tower in Esterhazy Park was temporarily used as a hotel with 38 rooms in a bunker, and then converted to a fire station. ==History==

In the 1960s the underground part of the bunker was used as a youth hostel, named Stadtherberge Esterhazypark. 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 debris and open to the elements. Step by step, the aquarium expanded over the empty floors. 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. 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. , Austria In 2007 the Haus des Meeres installed its largest, tank for sharks. On 7 May the aquarium moved six adult blacktip reef sharks, properly sedated, to the new tank. All sharks quietly died in a few hours after awakening. Autopsy revealed fatal internal bleeding which was blamed on stress (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 commemorative stamp 50 Jahre "Haus des Meeres" issued by the Austrian Post in 2007. The 2008 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. ==References==