And ... We're Back to Vienna!

Returning you now to our look at some of the heraldry that my good friend Katie took for me while she was on her river cruise vacation, we're back in Vienna, looking at some of the armorial memorials on the exterior of St. Stephen's Cathedral there.

Where once again I find myself a bit hampered by the lack of any general armorials or ordinaries (books/publications useful for finding coats of arms) for the area. Still, with a little help from the TinyEye reverse image search website, and a whole lot of hunting around on the intertubes to see if I could find other pictures of these same memorials, ideally with more readable inscriptions, I was able to identify one of the two memorials in this picturec:

The memorial on the left is identified as that of Simon Rückhenbaum, d. 1643. Historical records of Vienna note a Simon Rückenbaum was a member of the Outer Council (äußerer Rath) and a captain in the Miedmerviertel district, active in 1649. Given that the Simon memorialized here died six years before that date, it is more likely that the Simon mentioned in the records was his son, or possibly some other close relative.

The arms carved at the base of the monument contain three roses on branches issuing from the center of a trimount in base. The crest is a demi-man vested and wearing a cap with a long feather in it, holding a branch blasted bendwise.

The memorial on the right is trickier: I've been unable to read the name, but in spite of the fact that the arms look to be identical to Rückhenbaum, the surname is definitely not the same, looking more like "Koobler" or "Bobler" or some other variant, but certainly not Rückhenbaum.

And while the arms are the same, the crest, too, is entirely different, consisting of six rose branches.

The arms, alas, do not appear in Rietstap's Armorial Général, and I have been unable to track them down in any of my other sources on hand.

It seems a shame, but appears to be all too common, that the guidebooks to a site (in this instance, a major cathedral), either in print or on-line, are written more for the general tourist than for someone with an interest in, say, the heraldry of the memorials displayed in or on that site.*  I have found this to be true in so very many places, whether I am visiting in person or via the internet.

* My greatest disappointment in this regard came during a visit some years ago to St. Paul's Cathedral in London, where they don't (or at least didn't at that time; apparently now, with some limitations, like no flash, it is now permissible) allow photographs down in the crypt. So I was unable to take a picture of the tomb of Admiral John Jellicoe which has his coat of arms carved into the top. (His arms are blazoned: Argent three bars wavy azure overall a whale hauriant sable, which I thought very appropriate for an Admiral of the Fleet.) But none of the guidebooks which can be purchased in the gift shop of the Cathedral had a picture of Lord Jellicoe's tomb and arms in them, either. I was most put out.