SPANISH RIDING SCHOOL, VIENNA,
MARCH 6, 1945
The scene down at the Franz Joseph train station was chaotic. Tracks were jammed with unmoored cars. Both of Vienna’s other major train stations, the Südbahnhof and Westbahnhof, had been damaged during the air raids, and everyone trying to get out of the city was bottlenecking through the remaining viable egress. In the heart of the chaos stood two unattached train cars carrying a restless cargo: fifteen Lipizzaner stallions from the Spanish Riding School. Their master, Alois Podhajsky, flew around the station imploring every official he could find to hitch those two cars to a locomotive that could transport them out of Vienna.
These were the last fifteen stallions left in Vienna. Among this final group were Podhajsky’s two personal mounts, Africa and his barn mate, Pluto, kept there to continue daily training. Rumors swirled that the Russians would arrive within days. Podhajsky felt overwhelmed, afraid he had waited too long to escape with the last of the stallions.
A few hours earlier, two large cargo trucks had pulled up outside the riding school, ready to transport these remaining few horses. Podhajsky watched the stallions walking obediently up the ramps into the trucks, which had been fitted out with simple standing stalls softened with a bed of thick clean straw. When the last stallion was loaded, for the first time in more than three centuries, the imperial stables stood empty and eerily silent.
Once the last of his stallions was safely aboard, including his own precious Africa, Podhajsky hurried through the covered walkway to take a final look inside his beloved riding school. As soon as he stepped indoors, the sounds of the city fell away. The two-foot-thick walls blocked out all the noise. Inside, the hall was dark—several of the windows were papered over with cardboard after shattering during the bombings. The crystal chandeliers were gone; their absence made the riding hall seem more ordinary. Despite his relief that he had found a way to get the horses out of the city, Podhajsky was melancholy. Never in the long history of the riding school had the horses fled the city. Would they ever come back? The future was completely uncertain—hopefully, the horses would live, but the institution might not survive. In spite of these misgivings, as the trucks pulled away, headed for the train station, Podhajsky felt satisfied, on balance. At last, every one of his horses was headed toward safety. His wife, Verena, had packed up a few belongings, and together they would rejoin the horses at the train station.
But several hours had passed since they had arrived at the station, night was closing in, and the stallions remained marooned in their train cars. One official said that he could not let them pass without a permit that Podhajsky could not produce; once that obstacle was cleared away, the locomotive driver refused to hitch up Podhajsky’s cars with the jittery cargo—the horse cars were too heavy and would put too much strain on his engine. Podhajsky’s relief at having finally secured transport for the rest of the horses turned increasingly to agitation as the two cars sat on the tracks for hour after hour, unmoving.
He begged and cajoled until the locomotive driver finally shrugged and hitched up the cars behind his engine. The grooms rode along with the horses, while Podhajsky, Verena, and several riders boarded a passenger car. By the time the engine pulled out of the station, it was close to midnight. Their route would take them west across Austria, then north toward their final destination, St. Martin im Innkreis, a small town in Upper Austria.
Their progress was agonizingly slow. The train would heave into motion; then, with a lugubrious grinding of gears and a sharp jerk, it would stop unexpectedly. Podhajsky peered anxiously out the train windows, unable to see what was causing the repeated delays, but all he could discern was the inky darkness of the blacked-out countryside. As dawn broke, Podhajsky was shocked by the sign in the station where they had just arrived. Despite traveling all night in fits and starts, they had come only as far as Tulln—normally a half-hour train trip from Vienna.
Podhajsky tried to stay calm and wait out the halt, but finally he went to investigate. To his horror, he discovered that all three of their cars were no longer attached to the locomotive. The conductor had unhitched and pulled the locomotive away without them.
Podhajsky rushed to speak to the stationmaster, who met him with the bland incomprehension of a bureaucrat. He had no knowledge of their train cars. He didn’t understand why they were there. He had received no instructions from Vienna. In short, Podhajsky, his wife, the riders, grooms, and fifteen stallions were stranded in unmoored train cars—without even the sheltering walls of the Spanish Riding School to protect them.
The air raid sirens, followed by all-clears, came and went relentlessly, as Podhajsky’s pleas were shrugged off by the stationmaster, firm in his opinion that there was nothing he could do, since he had no instructions from Vienna.
A day later, the situation was unchanged. The stallions were restless, unused to being cooped up for long periods of time. Podhajsky was at his wits’ end and insisted that the stationmaster put a call through to von Schirach, intimating that the powers would not be happy to know these valuable horses were stuck. He had no idea how the Gauleiter would react, but he was so desperate he was willing to take the risk.
When the stationmaster attempted to put the call through, there was no response but a dead line. A series of damaging Allied air raids on Vienna had cut off all communication with the city. Podhajsky continued to threaten consequences if the horses were not allowed to pass. In between his exhortations, he circled back to the train cars, where the horses stood, fidgety but patient, their eyes so trusting—showing a faith in their master that he desperately feared might not be warranted. He fished into his ever-present leather pouch and fed sugar lumps to each stallion, whispering comforting words in a low voice, trying to project a confidence that he did not feel. He lingered next to Africa for an extra moment, thanking him for his patience in this trying situation. The animal’s dark eyes were so wise and understanding; even in this most gloomy predicament, the horses endured like stoic old soldiers. Hours of endless waiting and frustration stretched on, time still punctuated by the shrieks of the intermittent air raid signals. Night had turned to morning once again before, at last, the stationmaster signaled to an engine driver to attach the three cars. The locomotive pulled them out of the siding and their journey restarted. Eventually, they made progress as far as Amstetten, about fifty miles west of Vienna.
But when the train pulled into the station and Podhajsky saw the conditions around them, his heart sank. Military transports lined the tracks and anxious people milled around the platforms, certain they were about to become the target of a bombing attack.
The grooms led the horses off the train carriages and out onto the platform to stretch their legs, and to lay down fresh straw in the stalls. People crowded around, mesmerized by these exquisite animals, so revered in Austria that observers recognized them on sight, reminded of a simpler and happier time. Podhajsky tried to take advantage of people’s obvious sentiment toward Austria’s beloved stallions to persuade the stationmaster that the horses needed to be given priority in the general escape from danger. Either his plea, or the sight of the beautiful horses calmly parading in the chaos at the station, managed to convince the stationmaster that they should be allowed to continue. As the train pulled away from Amstetten, Podhajsky heaved a sigh of relief when he heard the sirens receding in the distance. They had gotten away just in time.
His relief was short-lived. About an hour later, as they approached the train station in Linz, the air raid sirens were already wailing. Shortly before they reached the station, the transport officer jumped up and shouted orders: “Unhook the engine and drive it to safety. Passengers disembark and go directly to the air raid shelters.”
The engine, stopping before it reached the station proper, quickly uncoupled and zoomed away. Since bombers targeted the stations, the locomotives were vacated during air raids to prevent them from being hit. However, there was no way to get the horses off the transport that quickly and with nowhere for them to go. Podhajsky watched the people scurrying toward the shelters as the sirens wailed in his ears, but he stood his ground. Instead of joining the throng, he turned and headed toward the car where Pluto and Africa were confined. Ignoring the screech of the air raid signal and the mad gestures of the stationmaster, Podhajsky climbed into the train car with his stallions. Without saying a word, Verena and the grooms loyally followed him.
Even before the bombardment began, they could feel the train car vibrating as the bombers approached. Soon the ground was shaking and the air was filled with deafening booms. Then the car started to buck and shudder as if it were about to be tossed entirely into the air. Podhajsky could see the horses trembling in terror; his own knees were shaking so much he could scarcely stand. Verena clutched tightly to her husband, her eyes seeking his for some sign of reassurance. The firestorm that erupted around them seemed ten times more deafening and shattering than what they had experienced within the walls of the riding school.
Podhajsky watched as Pluto huddled up against Africa. White ringed their eyes, their nostrils flared, and their breath trumpeted in fear. Unable to flee, the horses could only snort or paw the floor. Podhajsky murmured reassurances, but in truth, all of them, equine and human, were terrified. The only comfort was that they were together. Earth-splitting booms ripped through the air, each one seeming like the one that would tear them apart. All Podhajsky could do was hold his wife and try to communicate silently to his horses that even in this terrible moment, he would not desert them.
As he huddled in the train car, surrounded by frightened horses, listening to the explosions, his mind flashed back to his days of combat during the Great War, a dark time in his life that he tried to avoid thinking about. He had fallen in love with a brave seal-brown horse, Neger, his cavalry mount during those years. In the midst of a furious firefight, Neger had galloped off the battlefield, bringing his rider to safety. No sooner had Podhajsky realized that the horse had saved his life than the valiant animal stumbled and fell. Thrown from the saddle but unhurt, Podhajsky saw that the gallant Neger was severely wounded by shrapnel and was dying. He had held on just long enough to transport his rider away from harm. Podhajsky, only eighteen at the time, sat cradling the horse’s head in his arms as the light dimmed from his eyes. The horse had saved his life. This unspoken truth lay underneath everything Podhajsky had done since then. He would never underestimate a horse’s courage or loyalty.
Now, as the bombs fell like rain from the sky, the fates of Podhajsky and his precious horses, Pluto and Africa and the others, were inextricably intertwined. He had spent the last few months tirelessly trying to ensure their safety, and it had come down to this. For two straight hours, Podhajsky, his wife, the grooms, and the horses crouched in the confines of the train car as the world exploded around them.
When the all-clear sounded, they cowered for a moment longer in silence. Then everything whirred back into motion. Podhajsky felt the bump and jostle as the locomotive hitched up their cars and pulled them the short distance into the Linz station.
Before any of them even had time to breathe a sigh of relief, the sirens ripped through the air again. The stationmaster ran out and shouted to the driver: “Uncouple the trains and draw away from the station! Passengers disembark and go directly to air raid shelters!”
In a frenzy, Podhajsky realized that they were about to be plunged back into the same terror they had just escaped. He begged and pleaded with the stationmaster not to uncouple the locomotive and leave the horses stranded. Here, inside the station proper, the danger of being struck was even greater. The bombers were clearly returning to try to score a direct hit.
Podhajsky felt the boxcars roll forward with a jerk. Disobeying the stationmaster, the engine driver had shown mercy on the horses. He pulled away from the station with the horse cars still attached.
By nightfall, they had escaped two more raids, and the sky was blood red from the burning of so many fires. At last, around midnight, the train pulled off the main line onto the northerly local line that would carry them the rest of the way to their destination. The constant air raid sirens ceased.
Podhajsky, Verena, the grooms, Pluto, Africa, and the thirteen other stallions spent four days together on that train, traveling a total distance of 190 miles before arriving at the small village of St. Martin. The quiet country roads leading away from the station could not have provided a starker contrast to the inferno from which they had escaped. Podhajsky managed a smile as he saw the stallions, just released from their cramped, dirty stalls, sniffing the air and looking around their new surroundings, city mice on a visit to the country. The exhausted group of horses and men walked up the narrow country lane, their arrival greeted by the chirping of birds and lowing of cows in distant pastures. When they arrived at the spacious stables, part of the grand estate of Count Arco auf Valley, Podhajsky hadn’t slept in over thirty-six hours. The stallions whinnied greetings, joyous to rediscover their comrades from Vienna after the long separation. At last, the seventy-three stallions of the Spanish Riding School were gathered safely under one roof.
The sounds of guns and falling mortar bombs still echoed in his ears as Podhajsky led Africa and Pluto into their stalls for the night; he took heart from their kindly faces as the horses nuzzled up their treats and circled around their box stalls, taking in the unfamiliar sights and sounds. The new stables were so much less grand than their home in Vienna, yet Podhajsky couldn’t help but feel that the horses somehow understood. At least no bombs fell on this isolated hamlet.
By now, Podhajsky knew that the war would end with Germany’s defeat. Beyond that, he could not predict the future. The stallions would live, but without the survival of the institutions that supported them—the Spanish Riding School and the stud farm for the mares and foals—Podhajsky would have won the battle only to lose the war.
By March 1945, communications in the German Reich had grown undependable, and news from Hostau, where the mares were stabled, was spotty. Podhajsky had lost all contact with Rau and suspected that his empire had been shattered—and who knew what had become of his horses. The Russians were advancing from the east, with Hostau most likely in their direct path, in which case the mares and foals would be in mortal peril. The Russians had been ruthless in their treatment of the horses—drafting them for war use, shooting the uncooperative ones, and worse yet, slaughtering livestock, including horses, to feed their hungry armies. If the Russians arrived in Hostau, Podhajsky had no doubt that the horses would be lost to Austria and might very well lose their lives. And there was nothing he could do about it. The fate of the mares was completely out of his hands.
Podhajsky was haunted by the image of his beloved stallions growing older in this isolated hamlet like the exiled royalty of a former country, the last representatives of a dying breed. The institution of the Spanish Riding School had endured through centuries, but it was not at all clear that it would survive the last few weeks of the war.