Fotoeins Fotografie

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Posts tagged ‘Kirche am Steinhof’

25T60 Otto Wagner’s magnificent Church at Steinhof

E59, V07.

The city bus drops off passengers in front of a building with the words “Otto Wagner Spital”, a legacy of early 20th-century construction for a hospital complex. Many of the former hospital buildings are now art-, music-, and cultural-spaces.

Keeping faith with the accuracy of signs, it’s a short but steep walk on graded gravel paths until a large dome pokes out into the open behind the canopy of trees. On a sunny day, the dome looks like a bright yellow lemon to the city below.

Completed in 1907 to serve patients in the surrounding hospital complex, the Church of St. Leopold at Steinhof by Otto Wagner is one of Vienna’s most important buildings, one of the finest examples of turn-of-the-century Vienna Modernism, and considered to be Europe’s 1st modernist church. Today, the Wien Museum maintains and opens the still-functional church for the public.

Otto Wagner’s architectural and design legacy from the early 20th-century is predominantly secular, remaining visible throughout the city today.

Seated near the top of Lemoniberg hill (345m), the church’s yellow dome can be seen for miles around.
Public entrance.
Interior space; the entire floor is slightly tilted from the entrance towards the chancel in front.
Eyeballs converge onto the high altar. The length of the pews are deliberately short.
The high altar, behind which is a 1913 mural by Leopold Forstner on the wall.
Free-standing high altar made with white marble; design by Otto Wagner.
Angels surround the canopy for the altar; at the top is a circular opening with a view maintained upwards.
0.5x image scaling. The large stained-glass windows on each side are by Koloman Moser. Sharp readers will have noticed a few people seated in the pews.

The first Sunday of the month means that all Wien Museum properties are free admission for the day. I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 6 July 2025. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

My Vienna: Othmar Schimkowitz, 5 sculptural examples

Above/featured: Musenhaus (Muse House), Linke Wienzeile in Vienna – 18 May 2018.

Early 20th-century European artist Othmar Schimkowitz was one of many key figures in Vienna Modernism, an art movement which celebrated its centennial in 2018 in the Austrian capital city. Schimkowitz was born in Hungary and became well-known in Vienna for his architectural sculptures. In 1898, he joined the (Vienna) Secession, a group of artists which included Josef Hoffmann, Gustav Klimt, Max Kurzweil, Carl Moll, Koloman Moser, and Joseph Maria Olbrich.

Sculptures by Schimkowitz are often seen in a variety of architectural creations by Otto Wagner. Here below are four Schimkowitz examples in Vienna; all are accessible with public transit from Wiener Linien (WL) transport authority.

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Vienna: Otto Wagner’s architectural legacy

Above/featured: On the Linke Wienzeile, opposite the Naschmarkt at right. Photo, 18 May 2018 (6D1).

What: Among many are 2 key structures: Post Savings Bank, Steinhof church.
Why: Some of the most important architectural examples of 20th-century modernism.
Where: Many examples found throughout the city of Vienna.
1861–1863: Studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts with August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll.
“Wagner School”:included Josef Hoffmann, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Jože Plečnik.

To visit Vienna is to know Otto Wagner. A first-time visitor to the city will be forgiven for not knowing about Wagner or his creations, but throughout their time spent in the Austrian capital, they’ll encounter Wagner’s early 20th-century “Modern Architecture”.

Vienna is for many the city of Beethoven, Mozart, and Strauss; the city of historic and stylish cafés with coffee and Sacher Torte; the city whose pride is revealed in the combined World Heritage Site that are the classic period architecture within the Old Town and the beautiful palace and gardens at Schönbrunn. Flowing through the city is the Danube river, memorialized in Johann Strauss II’s “An der schönen blauen Donau” (The Blue Danube).

The evolution of architectural style is plainly evident throughout the city. Around the Ringstrasse (inner ring road) is architecture in the Historicism style, with big nods to Neoclassicism in the Parliament, Neo-Gothic in City Hall and the Votivkirche, and a lot of Neo-Renaissance represented by the City Theatre, Art History Museum, Natural History Museum, Opera House, and the University.

But as calendars flipped from 1899 to 1900, the fin-du-siècle heralded a move to bold thinking, different style, and a change in the way and reasons why buildings were put together. Consequently, Vienna is a city of 20th-century modernism whose traces are found in art, architecture, and urban planning. Even with post-war reconstruction in the mid-20th century and a mindful push for environmental rigour in the 21st-century, Vienna still remains in many ways Otto Wagner’s city.

Modern Architecture began with (Charles Rennie) Mackintosh in Scotland, Otto Wagner in Vienna, and Louis Sullivan in Chicago.

– Rudolph Schindler, who studied architecture under Otto Wagner (Sarnitz 2005).

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