Fotoeins Fotografie

Vienna Steinhof Church: city- & Wagner-landmark

Above/featured: East side of the church, in afternoon light. Photo on 28 May 2023, X70 with wide-field WCL-X70 lens attachment, image corrected for geometric distortion.

Building: Steinhof church, also St. Leopold Church, 1907 // Kirche am Steinhof, Kirche zum heiligen Leopold.
Address: Baumgartner Höhe 1, in Penzing, the city’s 14th district.

Up on the city’s Baumgartner Heights is an example of Europe’s first modernist church at Steinhof. Dedicated to St. Leopold, the structure is one of the city’s finest examples of turn-of-the-century architecture, and one of the world’s most important churches in the Jugendstil or Art Nouveau architectural style. The church was designed and built by architect Otto Wagner, inaugurated in 1907 for patients and staff within the surrounding hospital complex the Lower Austria state, sanatorium, and nursing home for the mentally ill (Niederösterreichische Landes-, Heil-, und Pflegeanstalt für Geistes- und Nervenkranke) which included over 30 buildings and room for over 2000 beds. The bright, airy, and spacious modern design was met at that time with skepticism and criticism by local church officials. Of utmost importance on Wagner’s mind were the hospital patients: his church design was about gentle solitude, not fire and damnation.

The church was a collaborative effort with other Viennese artists, including mosaics and stained glass by Koloman Moser, angel sculptures by Othmar Schimkowitz, and exterior tower sculptures by Richard Luksch. The church roof is topped with a dome covered in gold-plated copper plates, whose bright yellow appearance in daylight merits the nickname “Limoniberg” (lemon hill) that’s visible in different parts of the city. The Steinhof church is an example of a “Gesamtkunstwerk“, where every detail and fixture contributed to a “total and functional work of art”; an architectural masterpiece of the period; and one of Otto Wagner’s most important creations.

I included this building as part of my description of Otto Wagner’s architectural legacy in Vienna and of the recent centenary celebration in Vienna of the city’s 19th- to 20th-century architectural transition from historicism to modernism.

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25 for 25: fotoeins fotos in 2025

Above/featured: “Göttin” (goddess), by AlfAlfA, also known as Nicolás Sánchez, for One Wall 2017. Photo, 17 Jun 2025 (P15).

In continuation of high spirits and enthusiastic support of leading choices, I’m very grateful to significant time spent:

in the Bay Area, to visit mum’s family in Sacramento and long-time friends in the South Bay;
in Vienna for the 4th consecutive summer; and
in Berlin for the 1st time in 4 years, as set up for a repeat in the new year.

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Fotoeins Friday: Jasmund National Park, 🇩🇪 UNESCO WHS

In their day, medieval architects were inspired by what they saw in the beech forests where trees seemed to reach endlessly into the sky, creating “hallowed halls” in the hinterlands. The massive vertical spaces are to cathedrals what those trees are to the forested lands. The primeval beech forests like those found in Jasmund National Park on the island of Rügen in northeast Germany are inscribed as a UNESCO World Nature Heritage site across 18 European nations since 2007.

I made the image above on 3 Jun 2024 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime and the following settings: 1/125-sec, f/4, ISO2000, and 18.5mm focal length (28mm full-frame equivalent). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-wIN.

Berlin: S-Bahn S15 on the way, soon.

Above: Berlin S-Bahn S15 icon, from Wikimedia, by users F84 (original) and Minoa (rework).

For me, living memories of countless times in Berlin since 2002 include public transport with her U-Bahn and S-Bahn trains and routes. Like many, I never want that S-Bahn three-tone door-closing signal to go away, but that only comes with the older Baureihe 481-482 vehicles used for the trains, which will go away with the requirement to comply with European Union regulations.

On my first visit in 2002, I immediately asked: why isn’t there a U-Bahn connection or an S-Bahn connection with the shiny Berlin central train station? The U5 finally answered the first question in 2020, whereas the S-Bahn connection is coming up in 2026. The S-Bahn line provisionally labelled S15 is part of the larger long-term S21 project to connect the north and south parts of the S-Bahn Ring with the central station, and helping to alleviate traffic along the existing north-south S1-S2 route. In late-2025, news came out with a scheduled opening: on 28 March 2026, the S15 will open for public service between Gesundbrunnen and Hauptbahnhof via Wedding, although I’m unsure why the latest map update doesn’t mark S15 service between Westhafen and Hauptbahnhof; see below.

Announcement items in German: RBB24 — Entwicklungsstadt.

In this coming summer of 2026, I’m looking forward to seeing how this works out.

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Fotoeins Friday: Bayreuth Opera House, 🇩🇪 UNESCO WHS

Bayreuth, Germany: inside the main hall of the Margravial Opera House (Markgräfliches Opernhaus) during guided tour. The building was inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012.

I made the image above on 9 Jun 2024 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime and the following settings: 1/30-sec, f/2.8, ISO6400, and 18.5mm focal length (28mm full-frame equivalent). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-wBK.