Chief Rider Moritz Herold

It is amazing just how many great equestrians were airbrushed out of history - even with the SRS there were many many names that are lost - usurped and buried. We are going to breathe life into them again one by one.

Many of us have been led to believe that Podjasky saved the SRS, well before his time Chief Rider Moritz Herold who saved it after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1918.

What first piqued my interest about Herold was not that he was a Chief Rider of note at the SRS but also a great friend of Schmit-Jensen, (we have his saddle here)/

In Vienna in 1918, with famine, and conditions, where the country had lost the sources of its food and raw material, a relic of the Monarchy such as the SRS, was not popular.

The horses were headed for Auction and the SRS would disappear

At the time the SRS was the only surviving school of horsemanship in the world.

Herold, its Chief Rider dedicated himself to saving the institution and put forward ideas as to how the SRS might be saved. He had cards printed (which I have in the archive) and he began to sell them. The proceeds went towards essential items. He marketed the school to worked education societies inviting them to lectures. The school gave its first public performance in 1920 the entire proceeds going to charity.

By the end of the war, it was placed under the Ministry for Agriculture.

In addition to this Herold was an exceptional horseman and Master. Another name airbrushed out of history.

Pictured Herold by the exceptional Ludwig Koch

Letters from Einar Schmit-Jensens' Archive : from Herold

Verbiage courtesy of Hans Handler's chapter on Herold in his book The Spanish Riding School in Vienna