Viennese School of Climatology

Vienna was a metropolis in the middle of the Danube monarchy of Austria-Hungary and under the rule (1848–1916) of Emperor Franz Joseph I (1830–1916) the city experienced rapid growth and an unprecedented flowering of culture, the arts, architecture and science. The capital of the monarchy, an intellectual melting pot, was a city of distinguished personalities who formed the Second Viennese School of music, the Austrian School of economic thought and many more doctrines, including the ideas of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Vienna clearly reflected the zeitgeist of the fin de siècle in its economic, scientific, and cultural heyday. At the end of the 19th century, meteorology and climatology became recognized scientific disciplines, and dynamical meteorology developed during the first quarter of the 20th century. The fact that imperial Austria took a leading position in these developments mostly owes to the work of renowned scientists of the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik, ZAMG) in Vienna. The institute was founded in 1851, and the astronomer Karl Kreil (1798–1862) became the first director. One of Kreil’s goals was to ensure that both the central meteorological station and the growing number of new meteorological stations across the entire territory of the Austrian Empire were equipped with all the appropriate instruments. Another important goal was the processing of the existing observations to publish in the institute’s yearbooks. In truth, that was the starting signal for all further scientific developments, including that of the Viennese School of Climatology. During the first decade of the 1900s, Julius Hann (1839–1921), the third director of the ZAMG, was already being acknowledged as a renowned meteorologist and climatologist. He was a pioneer in gathering and synthesizing global climatological and meteorological data, and his Handbook of Climatology (Handbuch der Klimatologie; Hann, 1883 [Hann, J. (1883). Handbuch der Klimatologie. Stuttgart, Germany: J. Engelhorn]) and Textbook of Meteorology (Hann, 1901 [Hann, J. (1901). Lehrbuch der Meteorologie. Leipzig, Germany: C. H. Tauchnitz]) were standard setters (Davies, 2001 [Davies, H. C. (2001). Vienna and the founding of dynamical meteorology. In C. Hammerl, W. Lenhardt, R. Steinacker, & P. Steinhauser (Eds.), Die Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik 1851–2001: 150 Jahre Meteorologie und Geophysik in Österreich (pp. 301–312). Graz, Austria: Leykam Buchverlagsgesellschaft]). In Hann’s era, one began to speak of a “Viennese or Austrian school.” Heinrich Ficker, who later became director of the institute, defined its distinguishing characteristic as a school that did not simply adhere to one direction but promoted each direction, every peculiar talent, and the ideas that a meteorologist with necessary characteristics was always present at key turning points in meteorological research.