This article investigates the motif of the antique columns of honor with a circumferential pictorial frieze in the work of the architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, who was able to study Trajan’s Column and the Column of
Marcus Aurelius intensively during his long stay in Rome. At that time, Bernini had already presented suggestions for their artistic and political realization—both in Rome and in Paris—with which Fischer was supposedly familiar, but the use of the triumphal columns in his own work demonstrates a handling of the significant motif that is quite comparable. Fisher used triumphal columns repeatedly and, at the same time, always at crucial points
in his designs. The first time was in 1690 in the triumphal arch of the Fremden Niederleger (foreign abdicator), and the most monumental one was in Vienna’s Karlskirche, which gives the two gigantic columns—junctions of
architectural and programmatic concepts—their unique appearance and effect.