Fotoeins Fotografie

location bifurcation, place vs. home

Posts tagged ‘14. Bezirk’

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.

( Click here for images and more )

25T62 Vienna’s Museum of Science & Technology: my picks

E61, V09.

In Vienna’s Museum of Science and Technology, I get to nerd out over things like cameras, calculators, radios, televisions, and telephones: all of which are now contained in some compact form within a mobile “smart” phone. Much of the history for the development of gadgets large and small is both long and fascinating.

But there’s also regulation of the Danube river, fresh- & waste-water management, computers & data management, bookmaking & block-type, print-making & lithography, tools & equipment “at home”, national radio & television broadcasting, telegraph & telephony, power generation, engines & automobiles, aircraft & airports, industrial-scale smelting, elevators & funiculars, transport signals, hygiene practices, et cetera, et cetera.

No surprise, really, that it’s a wae difficult to see everything available in the museum’s general collection inside a single visit.

TMW: Technisches Museum Wien.
Ebene 4 (4th level).
Ebene 3 (3rd level).
Typewriter: one of the earliest prototypes, by Peter Mitterhofer in Partschins (Italy) in 1864.
Top view: one of the earliest typewriter prototypes, by Peter Mitterhofer in Partschins (Italy) in 1864.
Arithmetic (mathematics) book from Johann Hemeling, printed in 1678 by Johann Görlin in Frankfurt, Germany. At right is an example of compound interest of 5-percent applied annually over 20 years on a principal of 10 million; that is, 10^7 * 1.05^20 =26532977.
Hewlett-Packard HP-35 electronic pocket scientific-calculator: USA, 1972.
Texas Instruments SR-40 electronic pocket scientific-calculator: USA, 1975.
Rolleiflex reflex camera with cut film adapter: Franke & Heidecke, Braunschweig (Germany), around 1929.
Zeiss Ikon Contax 35mm camera: box with camera, film, lenses. Zeiss Ikon AG, Dresden (Germany), 1934-1935.
Front view, Leica I 35mm-camera: Ernst Leitz GmbH in Wetzlar (Germany), 1930. The word “Leica” is constructed from “Leitz” and “camera”.
Top view, Leica I 35mm-camera: Ernst Leitz GmbH in Wetzlar (Germany), 1930.
Front view, Leica IIIa 35mm-camera: Ernst Leitz GmbH in Wetzlar (Germany), 1938.
Top view, Leica IIIa 35mm-camera: Ernst Leitz GmbH in Wetzlar (Germany), 1938.
Left: Western Union, internal memo, 1876. Right: purple Telekom/Magenta telephone booth with a large digital screen and webcam.
Würfeluhr (Viennese cube-clock), 1930 to 1960s. This style of city clock can be found throughout the city of Vienna.
On Ebene 1 (level 1), the public can make their own thermograms: images in the thermal infrared at wavelengths around 10 microns. Red to orange are the warmest temperatures.
The hope is real: to live long and prosper (in the thermal infrared) with my trusty X70 (in the optical/visual). Thankfully, my glasses and camera remain “cool”.

I received neither support nor compensation for this piece. Except for the final two frames, I made all remaining images with an iPhone15 on 8 July 2025. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

24T50 Vienna Hütteldorf station

E49 V16

I’m passing through the station, because I’m looking for the location where a well-known Viennese writer, Doderer, was born. After multiple stops here over multiple years, I know this station well; perhaps, the station knows me well, too.

“Diese Station wird videoüberwacht.” (This station is under video surveillance.)

Hütteldorf is not only the terminus station for the green U4 line, but also a major transfer point to S-Bahn and regional trains.
1x (26mm).
5x digital (133mm).

I made the photos above with an iPhone15 on 26 Jun 2024. This post composed with Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.