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THE SPANISH RIDING SCHOOL TODAY
There is a timeless quality to the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. Nowadays, the school resides at the heart of a bustling modern city that still boasts Old World charm. Tourists flock to see the horses perform: The formal performances sell out months in advance, and tickets to watch the morning rehearsals are sometimes standing room only. Sunlight softly filters through the high palladium windows, and the crystal chandeliers, once dismantled piece by piece and hidden away by Alois Podhajsky, hang again in resplendence from the frescoed ceilings. As the horses practice their timeless movements, the riders continue to share their technique the same way they always have, through word of mouth handed down in an unbroken chain that goes back hundreds of years. That chain of wisdom, based on partnership, love, and kindness, has lasted much longer than any of the successive governments that have controlled this institution.
Go to visit the horses in their stables, and for a moment, you might think you’re back in the Habsburg Empire. You might expect to see Alois Podhajsky coming around the corner, calling out to each of his beloved stallions by name. Perhaps you will think for just a moment that you have seen Neapolitano Africa or Pluto Theodorosta, looking over their stall doors with lively eyes, ready to whinny a friendly greeting to their friend and master. But no.
Podhajsky, Africa, and Pluto are gone. But their memory lives on. Every time a rider mounts a Lipizzaner, he reflects some of the wisdom that Alois Podhajsky passed along, wisdom that he acquired in more than six decades of working with horses; and each stallion retains some of the genetic makeup passed down through the lines of the original six stallions. Each horse is still named according to his bloodline and wears a brand that denotes his lineage, as has been the custom for hundreds of years. The Spanish Riding School shows a reverence for tradition but has also repeatedly proved that it is able to reinvent itself. One of the biggest changes since Podhajsky’s day is that some of the riders are women.
In the end, it is not only the horses’ DNA that determines their ability to perform the brilliant quadrilles and statuesque poses. It is not the gender or race of the riders, nor any precise quality of the bloodstock alone, that allows such extraordinary achievement. In 1945, in a time of war, it was a love of horses that enabled men to rise above their differences and find a way to cooperate. And so it is at the Spanish Riding School today. The discipline embodied in the long, quiet, dignified partnership between man and beast is a feat of deep cooperation and silent harmony; it is the antithesis of the Nazi philosophy that once threatened to destroy this beautiful legacy.
FEMALE RIDERS AT THE SPANISH RIDING SCHOOL.