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What It Was Like to Attend the Imperial Hofball
Every January, the Viennese court put on its finest to party at the Hofburg Palace. But some people just bitched about the food.
During the reign of Emperor Franz Josef (1848–1916), the hofball was the biggest party of the year. Of the two royal balls held during Carnival season, the hofball was the larger and less exclusive.
No one got an invitation. A royal announcement was simply posted, and anyone eligible to attend court could show up. That included diplomats, nobles, churchmen, politicians, and soldiers of the Vienna garrison. For non-royals, this was their best — and possibly only — chance to see what life was like behind palace walls.
The Setting
The ball was held in the Hofburg, home of the Habsburg dynasty.
In the early years of Franz Josef’s reign, they used the Rittersaal ballroom. If you arrived by 8:30 pm, you got to see the simultaneous lighting of every candle in the room. How on earth did they pull this off? They connected the candles with a cellulose nitrate (gun cotton) thread. When you lit the end of the thread, a series of fiery bursts lit each candle’s wick. Pretty…
