Graz

The Herz-Jesu-Kirche is the largest church in Graz, Austria. It was designed down to the last detail by architect Georg Hauberrisser and constructed... from 1881 to 1887. The church was designed in the Neogothic style, with a large, high nave and under-church. The tower is 109.6 meters tall, making it the third-highest church tower in Austria. Of special note are the stained glass windows, which are among the few extant examples in Austria of Neogothic stained glass. The altar area was remodelled in 1988 by Gustav Troger, just after the centenary of the church. Apart from that, everything is still according to the architect's concept.
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The Baroque Mariatrost Basilica on top of the Purberg hill in Mariatrost, a district of Graz, is one of the most famous pilgrimage sites of Styria in... Austria. The pilgrimage church stands prominently on top of the Purberg hill in the northeast of Graz. It can be reached using the 216 steps of the Angelus stair. The basilica is classified as a Baroque building. Two front towers and a dome, visible from a great distance, are the characteristic attributes of the church, which is enclosed by two projecting wings of a former monastery once occupied by the Pauline Fathers and later by the Franciscans . The building was begun in 1714 by Andreas Stengg and his son Johann Georg Stengg and finished in 1724. The pulpit by Veit Königer is the masterpiece of the furnishings. The frescoes on the ceiling by Lukas von Schram and Johann Baptist Scheidt are of particular importance. The main altar includes a statue of the Madonna originally created in the Gothic period around 1465, but altered to the Baroque style in 1695 by Bernhard Echter. On 28 October 1999 the church was nominated as a basilica minor.
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The Landeszeughaus, also known as the Styrian Armory, in Graz, Austria, is the largest existing original armoury in the whole world and attracts... visitors from all over the world. It holds approximately 32,000 pieces of weaponry, tools, suits of armour for battle and ones for parades. The Landeszeughaus was built from 1642 - 1645 by a tyrolean architect called Antonio Solar. Styria desperately needed such a large armoury to host a massive amount of weaponry and armour for the defence of styria against the invading Ottoman Empire. There was a defensive perimeter, 100 km south of Graz in nowadays Croatia/Hungary to defend styria against the Turks. The weapons stored in the Landeszeughaus were needed in order to equip the soldiers at this perimeter. After about 100 years in use, Austrian empress Maria Theresia wanted to close down the armoury, because she centralised the defence of Austria. She wanted to bring all the weapons and armour to Vienna.
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Gerhard Gruber is an Austrian composer and piano player. As accompanist for silent movies he has become the leading authority in Austria since 1988.... He has performed for about 450 different films . Since 1983 Gerhard Gruber is working and performing as a composer and musician for theatre. He was awarded the Nestroy-Theaterpreis in 2006 and the Bühnenkunstpreis des Landes Oberösterreich in 2008.
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Marisa Mell was an Austrian actress who became a cult figure of 1960s Italian B-movies. She was born as Marlies Theres Moitzi in Graz, Austria. In... 1963, she was involved in a violent automobile accident in France. For six hours, she lay unconscious, unaware that she nearly lost her right eye. The disfigurement extended to her lip as well. She spent the next two years undergoing plastic surgery, and no damage remained in her face, except for a distinctive curl of her upper lip. She turned down a seven-year Hollywood contract, saying that while the payment would have been great, "the contract was a whole book. I think that even to go to the toilet I would have needed a permission." In 1967, she performed the title role in the "utterly calamitous" musical Mata Hari alongside Pernell Roberts. After a preview performance in Washington, D.C. that became infamous for its numerous technical problems, producer David Merrick decided to close the production before its scheduled Broadway run. She is best known for the role of Eva Kant in Danger: Diabolik .
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Joseph Rupert Rudolf Marx was an Austrian composer, teacher and critic. Marx pursued studies in philosophy, art history, German studies, and music... at Graz University, earning several degrees including a doctorate in 1909. He began composing seriously in 1908 and over the next four years he produced around 120 songs. In 1914 he joined the faculty of the Vienna Music Academy, later becoming the institutions director in 1922. When the school was reorganized as the Hochschule für Musik in 1924 he was appointed to the position of rector, holding that post for three years. Some of his notable students include Johann Nepomuk David and Paul Ulanowsky. From 1931 to 1938 he was music critic for the Neues Wiener Journal and following World War II he was critic for the Wiener Zeitung. A collection of Marx's criticisms and essays, Betrachtungen eines romantischen Realisten was published in Vienna in 1947. Just before he died he published a book on acoustics, tonality, aesthetics and musical philosophy entitled Weltsprache Musik .
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Mick Blue is an Austrian pornographic actor and director. Mick Blue was born Michael Omelko,on September 9, 1976 in Graz, Austria, which is the... capital of Styria. Blue shot his first movie in September 2000 in Paris for the German company Videorama. Blue was nominated for the best foreign performer of the year at the 2003 Venus convention in Berlin. Working in the United States, he did not attend the convention. In 2005, Blue started directing, first for Zero Tolerance and then for Third Degree Films. As of 2011, Blue has appeared in over 1000 adult DVD titles.
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Robert Elisabeth Stolz was an Austrian songwriter and conductor as well as a composer of operettas and film music. The great-nephew of the soprano... Teresa Stolz, Stolz was born of musical parents in Graz. His father was a conductor and his mother a concert pianist. At the age of seven, he toured Europe as a pianist, playing Mozart. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory with Robert Fuchs and Engelbert Humperdinck. From 1899 he held successive conducting posts at Maribor , Salzburg and Brno before succeeding Artur Bodanzky at the Theater an der Wien in 1907. There he conducted, among other pieces, the first performance of Oscar Straus's Der tapfere Soldat in 1908, before leaving in 1910 to become a freelance composer and conductor. Meanwhile, he had begun to compose operettas and individual songs and had a number of successes in these fields. After serving in the Austrian Army in World War I, Stolz devoted himself mainly to cabaret, and moved to Berlin in 1925.
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Viktor Pfeifer is an Austrian figure skater. He is a six-time Austrian national champion. Pfeifer represented Austria at the 2006 and 2010 Winter... Olympics, where he placed 22nd and 21st accordingly. Pfeifer began playing the cello as a child and attended a music conservatory in Austria before deciding to focus on skating. He currently resides in Newark, Delaware. He studies economics at the University of Delaware.
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Sissy Löwinger was an Austrian actress, director and theatre manager. She was the daughter of Austrian actor and director Paul Löwinger.... She worked in public relations and dramaturgy for the family theatre "Löwinger Bühne" together with her brother, Paul. Later she also directed plays. After her father's death she became manager of the theatre, again with her brother Paul. She directed and edited television comedies and also wrote eight plays. She appeared in the role of Walpurga in the Franz Josef Gottlieb directed German production of Saison in Salzburg . She was married to the very popular Austrian television presenter Peter Rapp, and later to Peter Blechinger, with whom she lived in a house in Neulengbach in Austria. Löwinger had a daughter from her first marriage. Löwinger died on 25 September 2011 in Altlengbach, Lower Austria. She was 70.
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