Underground Wrestling at Weberknecht
- Monthly underground wrestling shows in a well-known party location
Artists
Date
- Weberknecht, Vienna, Austria (Enter the bar and go straight ahead to reach the staircase to the basement)
Keywords
Austrian History, Contemporary Culture, Contemporary History, Fighting, Play, Urban History, Viennese Culture, Wrestling
Full Text
Wrestling and Vienna have a history that can be traced back to the year 1900 [1], where public events were staged at Prater and continued in the post-war era, reaching the peak of its popularity in the 1960s. Due to constantly declining visitor numbers, the “Heumarkt-Catchen” eventually ended in 1997 [2]. After the Heumarkt Wrestling had been disbanded, former professional wrestler Gerhard “Humungus” Hradil established the Austrian Wrestling School in 1998, where he trains potential talent to this day. The wrestling shows are nowadays organized by Vienna Underground Wrestling - itself part of the international World Underground Wrestling since 2012 - and take place at Weberknecht, which has turned into a prolific venue for both fighters and the audience. Currently, spectators may enjoy the matches once a month [3]. The club and bar known as Weberknecht has undergone various transformations in a history that spans over 100 years. It was first established as Gasthaus Wunsch, a traditional Austrian pub, later renamed to Gasthaus Weber and eventually rebranded as Weberknecht in the 1990s [4]. The Weberknecht is located on the Gürtel: one of Vienna's main traffic arteries that also serves as a lively nightlife area. The circular main road, hence its name "the belt", is one of the most-frequented in all of Europe and has a rich history as an important part of the city. The street was built in the late 19th century on the site where the “Linienwall” (line wall) had previously confined the outskirts [5] . In 1892, construction finally began on the city railway designed by Otto Wagner, which today connects the north and south of the city as the U6 underground line. In contrast to the development of the Ringstraße as a showcase for magnificent buildings, the Gürtel was neglected in aesthetic terms but became a popular place to live, especially after municipal housing was provided during the Red Vienna era of the city. With the increasing number of cars in the city, the street became more and more frequented. The National Socialists laid the foundations for the prioritization of cars in city traffic with the 1938 Road Traffic Act, the effects of which can still be felt today [6]. In the 1990s, the aim was to regenerate the areas around the Gürtel, for which working groups were set up around the URBAN WIEN Gürtel Plus program. The projects focused on integration, education, networking and other development issues [7]. During this period, as a countermeasure against the social problems and increasingly bad reputation of the area, numerous bars, pubs and cultural centers were established along the busy road: a formative time for the Gürtel as we know it today and as it now serves as the surrounding for the Weberknecht as a ludic space [8]. The lower part of the venue is the space that provides the context for Vienna’s underground wrestling world. What was – according to the bar keeper – a wine cellar at some point, is normally used as dance floor and live stage. On specific Sundays, however, it becomes a space for wrestling events. Weberknecht’s wrestling shows shed light on several interesting aspect of play: As there is no ring in underground wrestling, a sacred space for play must be created for combat, a thought that is prominent in Johan Huizinga’s seminal work Homo Ludens [9]. The magic circle that surrounds the matches is established by the organization team, who place mats on the ground and prepare the old wine cellar for the show. Thus, a location that was used to party the night before, becomes an arena that will host a wrestling show. Further elements that establish the magic circle are a series of events that are related to the audience, who is a core contributor to the make-belief of wrestling. They buy tickets, wait for the show and enter the space collectively to witness the matches and partake with displays of emotion, enthusiasm and contempt. Underground wrestling may be characterized simply as “bad ballet” [10] “spectacle of excess” or a form of highly exaggerated theater play [11] that is “highly intelligible” [12], and may be located “somewhere between circus and performance art” [13] and both “performance and […] theatre” [14]. Its foundation are dualistic narratives and stories with simple morals that, combined with physically taxing choreography, create a “quantitative sequence of compensations” [15] that the audience reacts to and interacts with. Wrestling offers a rule set that engages both the audience and the fighters in “a playful interchange between performer and attendant” by providing a venue for “social play” that is “voluntary” [16]. Play may also be considered something that is in akin to an action that resolves certain (antagonistic) tensions [17] such as a switch between states [18] or as some sort of distance introduced to the game, enabling gap filling by the players [19]. These tensions may be found in the above mentioned unclear status of wrestling itself: it is both playful and serious, moments of tongue-and-cheek clash with potentially injuring physical engagements that leave room for interpretation and interaction. The world of Vienna’s underground wrestling is created by both the characters engaged in the matches and the audience. In the magic circle of Weberknecht’s basement, disbelief is suspended and everyone is “in” (for) the show. The wrestlers themselves are role players, representing characters with certain moral attributes, very intelligible traits and, most importantly, gimmicks. Mirko Panic, “Der Jugo”, for instance is an example for an intelligible humoristic character because his main trait is being from the Balkans, to incorporate a certain mentality, gestures and mannerisms of Viennese migrant cultures. The same may be applied to other wrestlers, such as Diotima, whose instagram description reads “austrias[sic] most intellectual wrestler[,] post-barthes mythos des alltags[,] Sprechstunde nach Vereinbarung”, [20] playing a character trained both in combat and philosophy. Not only the wrestlers are role players but also the audience engages in the practice. Regular people become audience members that are engaged in the cosmos that is created within the magic circle of Weberknecht’s basement. Arguably, all spectating is linked to a suspension of disbelief in order to engage with the spectated. It is also in a certain sense transformative as people who might be introverted or less vulgar might become yelling extroverts (“Hau erm in d’ Gosch’n!”) in the context of the wrestling match. They actively play a role in order to enjoy the universe that is unfolding in front of them to a greater degree. To summarize, wrestling may be considered play as it incorporates many prominent elements of play that can be illustrated with Johan Huizinga’s definition: it is voluntary (all parties involved agree to partake), not serious (albeit with elements of seriousness as pertaining to injury, wrestlers play roles, and so do the audience members), useless (there is a defined outcome, there is nothing to be gained – except for titles), outside of ordinary life, constrained to a specific space (Weberknecht’s basement) and community creating (both audience and wrestlers participate in creating a make-belief lore and story about the world of Austrian underground wrestling) [21].
Description
REFERENCES [1] UNKNOWN: Die Internationalen Ringkämpfe in Wien. In: Wiener Bilder. Illustriertes Sonntagsblatt. July 1st 1900, p. 2. [2] cf. MEISINGER Agnes: 1947: Catchen am Heumarkt. Massenunterhaltung in der Nachkriegszeit. URL: https://hdgoe.at/catchen (last opened: January 30th 2024). [3] cf. WRESTLING SCHOOL AUSTRIA (2023): WSA/WUW History. URL: http://www.wrestlingschoolaustria.at/ (last opened: January 30th 2024). [4] WEBERKNECHT: Weberknecht Vienna // Club + Lounge + Livestage. URL: https://www.weberknecht.net/weberknecht-club/ (last opened January 31st 2024). [5] cf. BURI Alice: Der Wiener Gürtel. Transformation einer städtischen Verkehrsachse. TU Vienna: Diploma Thesis 2021, p. 23. URL: https://doi.org/10.34726/hss.2021.62040 (last opened: February 6th 2024). [6] cf. ibid., p. 44-48. [7] STADT WIEN, MAGISTRATSABTEILUNG 27: 2001: Schlussbericht über das Programm URBAN WIEN Gürtel Plus im Zeitraum 1995-1999. 2021, p. 27. URL:https://www.oerok.gv.at/fileadmin/user_upload/Bilder/3.Reiter-Regionalpolitik/4.EU-SF_in_OE_95-99/URBAN/1995-1999_URBAN_W_Schlussbericht.pdf (last opened February 6th 2024) [8] BURI: Der Wiener Gürtel, p. 77. [9] HUIZINGA Johan: Homo Ludens. Vom Ursprung der Kultur im Spiel. Hamburg 2019: Rowohlt, p. 110. [10] RADL Raphael, NITSCHE Manon: Der Wrestler. In: C/O Vienna, 2023. URL: https://www.co-vienna.com/de/leute/der-wrestler/ (last opened February 6th 2024). [11] BARTHES Roland: Mythologies. New York 1991: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 13. [12] ibid., p. 18. [13] CHOW Broderick, LAINE Eero, WARDEN Claire: Introduction: Hamlet doesn’t blade. Professional wrestling, theatre, and performance. In: CHOW Broderick, LAINE Eero, WARDEN Claire (Eds.): Performance and Professional Wrestling. London/New York: Routledge, p. 3. [14] ibid., p. 4. [15] BARTHES: Mythologies, p. 19-20. [16] BENEDETTO Stephen Di: Playful engagements. Wrestling with the attendant masses. In: CHOW Broderick, LAINE Eero, WARDEN Claire (Eds.): Performance and Professional Wrestling. London/New York: Routledge, p. 34. [17] HUIZINGA: Homo Ludens, p. 58. [18] FIZEK Sonia: Playing at a Distance. Borderlands of Video Game Aesthetics. Cambridge, MA 2022: The MIT Press, p. xii. [19] ibid., p. xiv. [20] DIOTIMA [@dtma_philosowrestler]: Profile Description [Instagram Profile]. n.d. URL: https://www.instagram.com/dtma_philosowrestler/ (last opened: February 10th 2024). [21] HUIZINGA: Homo Ludens, p. 22.
Activity List
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- Janine Scheer-Erb - Text Contribution, Interviewer
- Nikola Supukovic - Text Contribution, Camera
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Location
Address
- Weberknecht, Vienna, Austria
- Lerchenfelder Gürtel 47
- 1160 Vienna
- Austria
Associated Media Files
Image#1- Image#2
