Registration

Led by David Hausknecht, University of Music & Performing Arts Vienna and Flow House Faculty – Music

Embark on a captivating journey through Vienna’s musical landscape. Our program commences with a 40-minute walking tour of the renowned Stadtpark, where you’ll encounter monuments honoring musical giants like Johann Strauss II and gain insights into the park’s historical evolution as Vienna’s first public green space. This stroll through musical heritage sets the stage for our exploration of the Exilarte Zentrum (Exilarte Center), located at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.

Following the Stadtpark, delve into the stories of exiled composers with a 20-minute guided tour of the “Erich Zeisl” exhibition, shedding light on the impact of displacement on musical creativity. The afternoon culminates at the Exilarte Center in a delightful 20-minute Viennese Music Salon concert, featuring a curated selection of works by composers such as Mahler, Strauss, Korngold and Arlen, offering a poignant reflection on Vienna’s rich musical traditions and the experiences of those forced to leave.

80-minute Walking Tour & Viennese Salon Concert

Faculty Bio

David Hausknecht is a Czech-born pianist who began his musical education in Prague, where he studied piano and conducting. At age 12, he made his debut with the Czech Philharmonic. He earned degrees in Music History, Piano, and Conducting, and completed a Master of Piano Chamber Music at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. He currently works as a collaborative pianist at the mdw, accompanying instrumentalists and vocalists, and performs internationally as a chamber musician. Since 2024, he has also been on the faculty of Wake Forest University in Vienna, teaching a seminar on Austrian and Central European music. 

Led by Martin Schwarz, Consultant & Business Advisor, Flow House Faculty – Economics

Explore the legendary Wiener Prater, known as the world’s oldest amusement park, on this exclusive excursion led by Martin Schwarz, former consultant to the City of Vienna Development Department, Master planner of the “New Prater” and economics faculty at WFU Flow House. Our program will begin with the historical and economic significance of this iconic location followed by a tour through the four segments of the Prater: Vienna Fair & Conference Center, the green Prater “lung of Vienna,” the lively sports and amusement park, the modern campus of Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Experience a highlight of the Prater with a ride on its famous Riesenrad (ferris wheel). Following a tour through the grounds, we will visit the renowned Schweizerhaus, one of Europe’s largest and oldest beer gardens, where you’ll have the opportunity to meet the owner. This tour offers a unique blend of history, economics, culture, and entertainment.

60-90 minute Walking Tour & Ferris Wheel Ride

Faculty Bio

Martin Schwarz earned his master’s degree in Recreation and Cultural Management from the University of Southern California. He is the owner of Schwarzconsult, a consulting agency specializing in events, tourism, creative concepts, theme park development, arts and culture productions, as well as marketing and sponsorship. Schwarz has served as a business advisor for the Austrian government and the City of Vienna, and in management roles with the Austrian Management Club and the Austrian Broadcast Corporation. He has advised successful international brands, such as Cirque Du Soleil, Casinos Austria, the Austrian electricity producer and supplier Verbund AG, Erste Bank, Raiffeisen Banks, The Lippizan Stallions, Vienna Choir Boys, Schloß Schönbrunn Castle and many Austrian museums and tourism regions. He is also the founder of the Austrian Business Committee for the Arts and has published extensively in his areas of expertise around arts, culture, event development, media and tourism. Mag. Schwarz has taught Business, Economics, Arts Management, and Tourism courses at the University of Vienna, IMC, the applied science University in Krems, IES Abroad and Flow House in Vienna.

Led by Christa Colyer, WFU Professor of Chemistry, Flow House Resident Professor spring 2025

Vienna is ranked as one of the “most livable cities in the world.” We will bring this fact to life through death, by exploring the Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery). As we walk through Europe’s second-largest cemetery, we’ll examine how science & sustainability intersect with the stories of those buried here, including famous scientists, composers, musicians, and actors. The cemetery represents a landscape shaped by entropy, a concept well known to chemists as the natural tendency toward disorder described by Austrian scientist Ludwig Boltzmann, whose tomb is just one of many we will visit. And yet, the principles of sustainability and green chemistry – which have been central to the curriculum of our Spring 2025 Flow House students – could be seen as the art of resisting entropy by preserving order and creating a circular economy for energy and materials. In the end, der Zentralfriedhof may not just represent a final resting place, but also a powerful reminder of nature’s cycles, the science of change, and our role in shaping a more sustainable future together.

80-minute Walk & Talk through Zentralfriedhof

Faculty Bio

Dr. Christa Colyer completed her B.Sc. at Trent University (Peterborough, Canada), her M.Sc. at the University of Guelph (Guelph, Canada), her Ph.D. at Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada), and an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada) before joining the faculty at Wake Forest in 1997, where she is currently a Professor of Chemistry and the James and Courtenay Harton Faculty Fellow for Chemical Industry. She maintains an active research program involving undergraduate and graduate students, focusing on the application of nanomaterials in analytical chemistry. She is currently serving as the Resident Professor at the Flow House in Vienna and will begin serving as the Director of the WFU London Program in July 2025. Colyer is the proud parent of a “Double-Deac,” the recipient of the Reid-Doyle Prize for Excellence in Teaching, the WFU Award for Excellence in Advising, and the Teaching Innovation Award, and has served as Department Chair and Associate Dean of Academic Planning in the College.

Led by Peter Kairoff, WFU Professor of Music

Pianist Peter Kairoff presents a recital of brief works by four of the greatest composers in music history, each of whom lived and worked in Vienna. Spoken comments between selections will illustrate how Viennese musical styles evolved over time, and how those styles reflect broader aesthetic and cultural trends of their times.

60-minute Performance Lecture in the Flow House Living Room

Faculty Bio

Dr. Peter Kairoff is Professor Emeritus at Wake Forest, having taught in the Department of Music for 36 years and serving as Director of the WFU Venice Program for 25 years. He has performed throughout the world to great acclaim, and was recently inducted into the Steinway and Sons Hall of Fame, for outstanding contributions to the field of piano performance and pedagogy.

Led by Rebecca Thomas, WFU Professor of German and Flow House Program Director

The coffee house tradition in Vienna reaches back to the Turkish siege of the city in 1683. Viennese coffee houses, though not the first in Europe, soon took on a characteristic Austrian flair. Wit, charm, quality, and unhurried ease are its trademarks. The opulent selection of local pastries and the wide variety of classic Viennese coffee preparations are just the beginning. Our gathering will take place in the historic Café Landtmann, dating from 1873 when the first proprietors strove to establish the most elegant café in the city. Landtmann soon became the regular café of patrons such as Sigmund Freud and Gustav Mahler. Enjoy an afternoon coffee and pastry in relaxed, old-world surroundings while learning the stories behind the varieties of coffee and their presentations. Explore the origins of the coffee house and its evolution to the status as both a second living room to the average Viennese and a refuge and stage for prominent artists, intellectuals and provocateurs from Klimt to Trotsky. Here, music, poetry, philosophy, psychology, and history were all made to order amidst lively debate, fierce rivalry, and deep comradery. The coffeehouse is still a timeless place to share news, culture and friendship. Let us enjoy, Viennese-style!

75-90 minute Historical/Cultural Talk & Afternoon Coffee

Faculty Bio

Dr. Rebecca Thomas, Professor of German and Kenyon Faculty Fellow, is the Program Director for the Flow House. Professor Thomas has been at Wake Forest since 1993, has taken numerous groups to Flow House since 2002 and served as its program director since 2019. In addition to a long and deep relationship with the Vienna program, Professor Thomas has also served most summers since 1988 on the German language faculty of the American Institute for Musical Studies in Graz, Austria. Thomas’s primary research focuses on modern Austrian literature and culture with a particular emphasis on living Austrian authors. Her secondary research concerns programming to facilitate student adaptation abroad in second-language contexts. Austria is Professor Thomas’s home away from home and she is passionate about sharing her enthusiasm and knowledge of all things Austrian (including coffee, food and hiking) with the Wake Forest community.

Led by Chuck Thomas, WFU Professor of History

Although the standard adage is that the victors write the history, this evidently doesn’t apply in the case of museums. Since the time of Napoleon, Austria was on the losing side in nearly every major conflict in which it participated, yet the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (Army History Museum) is one of the finest in the world. Conceived as an acknowledgement from the celebrated emperor Franz Joseph “to his loyal army,” the museum houses memorabilia from the 17th through the 21st centuries. Highlights include an exquisitely embroidered commander’s tent from the Turkish wars, the oldest surviving military aircraft in the world, and the dress uniform of Captain Georg von Trapp, the hero of The Sound of Music and Austria-Hungary’s most famous submarine commander. Particular focus for this guided tour will be the recently renovated First World War collection, including the personal artifacts and automobile of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, the unfortunate couple whose assassination in 1914 sparked the war.

75-minute Guided Tour of the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum

Faculty Bio

Chuck Thomas is a Professor of History with more than 40 years of teaching experience at Georgia Southern University, at the United States Naval War College, and, most recently, at Wake Forest. He combines a general interest in modern American and European military history with a specialization in Germany and Austria’s roles in the two World Wars. He has taught a wide variety of students, ranging from undergraduates through military and naval officers, to enrollees in the WFU Lifelong Learning program. A native of Georgia (the state, not the nation), he speaks fluent eighteenth-century military German with a Southern accent and has found his second home in Austria.

Led by Günter Haika, German Language and Literature, Flow House Faculty & Administrator

Join Günter Haika for a walking tour that will acquaint you with history and lore you rarely read about in common guidebooks. Prepare to discover the ugliest house of Vienna, see a painting by Da Vinci (or is it?), find the secret code of the Austrian resistance against Fascism, learn how people got lost in the Bermuda triangle without ever leaving Vienna, and admire a tree without a forest. 

This is an invitation to experience parts of the Innere Stadt through the eyes of a Viennese. And if you wish, Günter will point out the teahouse that arguably serves the best hot chocolate in Vienna.

Mobility Level: This is a moderate walking tour including cobblestone streets. Comfortable walking shoes are recommended.

90-minute Walking Tour through the Innere Stadt

Faculty Bio

Mag. Günter Haika has taught U.S. students since 1978 with multiple study abroad programs such as IES Abroad, SLU and summer programs. Haika has worked with Wake Forest University since the inception of the Flow House Program in 1999 in multiple capacities ranging from instructor to House Manager to Resident Director. He has taught German Language at all levels, Literature, a popular course on Viennese and Austrian Culture, and Photography.