Station IX: Egon Schiele Museum
Childhood or: Egon and the rocking horse
Here you can find out: Why Egon played with dolls. What his mother brought him from Vienna. How the steam engine got onto drawing paper. And what books his father gave him to read.
Start of themed circular route: Tulln main station
Distance: 3.6 km
Duration: approx. 90 min.
Difficulty: easy - barrier-free
Schiele Folder EN
Schiele Folder EN
That children need time to play. That they need to discover the world for themselves. That they are not little adults. At the end of the 19th century, this was not yet firmly anchored in everyone's minds. In many families in Tulln, children had to help out at home and school attendance was rarely monitored. Egon and his sisters were lucky. His father's large official apartment in the station has four rooms. Enough space to run around. To ride the rocking horse through the living room. Or to run train sets over the doorsteps. Egon has forty of them. Mother Marie brings back a new gem every time she visits Vienna. Not entirely altruistically. Because if his father has his way, Egon will one day follow in his footsteps. And becomes an engineer and official of the Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Bahn.
Understanding the world.
Adolf Schiele opens the library for his son at an early age. Although the first municipal playgrounds were built in Tulln around 1900, with sandpits, swings, seesaws and merry-go-rounds, Egon did not spend too much time outside with his classmates. The little painting genius is a bookworm. And the bookshelves in his study are full: classics from Goethe to Schiller, illustrated science books and travel guides from all over the world. For his father, literature is a means to an end. It should lead the boy towards a career in engineering. For Egon, it is the gateway to the world.
Donaulände, around 1900
Technical view.
Nevertheless, the educational measure succeeds. Even if not entirely in the spirit of the inventor. While leafing through the photo books and reference books, Egon was given the first important tools for his career as an artist: a technical eye - and a constructive understanding. When he put hundreds of new railroad sketches on paper, he still looked for models in real life: Then he roams through the Tulln station concourse with his drawing pad. And thus takes possession of his strict father's territory in his own way.
[Translate to English:]
General plan
