Guido Karl Anton List was born in Vienna on 5
October 1848 to Karl August and Maria List (nee Killian). His father was a
fairly prosperous dealer in leather goods, and we can assume that Guido's early
life was lived in comfortable and nurturing surroundings. The List family was
Catholic, and we also presume that Guido was trained in that confession.
From the start of adolescence we have evidence of
some of his propensities in life. He was fascinated by the landscape of his
native Lower Austria and by the cityscape of his native city, Vienna . His
sketchbook - which has drawings from as far back as 1863 (when he would have
been fifteen years old) - demonstrates his interest in such sites. Some of
these sketches were later used to illustrate the Deutsch-mythologische
Landschaftsbilder (German Mythological Landscape Scenes, published 1891.) *4.
In conjunction with the romanticising of his environment, young Guido, by his
own account, *5 also had developed a strong mysto-magical bent of no orthodox
variety.
'It was in the year 1862 - I was then in my
fourteenth year of life - when I, after much asking, received permission from
my father to accompany him and his party who were planning to visit the
catacombs [under St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna] which were at that time
still in their original condition. We climbed down, and everything I saw and
felt excited me with a kind of power that today I am no longer able to
experience. Then we came - it was, if I remember correctly, in the third or
fourth level - to a ruined altar. The guide said that we were now situated
beneath the old post office (today the Wohlzeile House No. 8). At that point my
excitement was raised to fever pitch, and before this altar I proclaimed out
loud this ceremonial vow: "Whenever I get big, I will build a Temple to
Wotan!" I was, of course, laughed at, as a few members of the party said
that a child did not belong in such a place… I knew nothing more about Wuotan
than that which I had read about him in Vollmer's Woterbuch der Mythologie. '
*6
Despite these artistic and mystical leanings, Guido
was expected, as the eldest child, to follow in his father's footsteps as a
businessman. He appears to have fulfilled his responsibilities in a dutiful
manner, but he took any and all opportunities to develop his more intense
interests.
