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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.
“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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Vienna Hietzing Cemetery: F.Grillparzer, G.Klimt, K.Moser, O.Wagner

Previously, I provided short biographies for artist Gustav Klimt, artist and designer Koloman Moser, and architect Otto Wagner, and why they are important figures to the arts and culture scene in early 20th-century Vienna. These three figures are buried in Hietzing Cemetery in the 13th district of Hietzing at the city’s western periphery.

Located to the southwest of the former imperial summer residence Schönbrunner Schlosspark, Hietzing Cemetery is modest in size with an area of over 10 hectares (25 acres) and containing over 11-thousand graves. With the present site inaugurated in 1787, the cemetery has seen several expansion phases and survived damage from the Second World War.

I highlight the final resting places for Alban Berg, the Fröhlich sisters, Franz Grillparzer, Hans Hollein, Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Strauss women, and Otto Wagner.

Friedhof Hietzing, Hietzing Cemetery, Friedhoefe Wien, Hietzing, Wien, Vienna, Austria, Oesterreich, fotoeins.com

2018 was the 100th anniversary of the deaths of Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), Koloman Moser (1868–1918), and Otto Wagner (1841–1918). Photo, 16 May 2018.

13. Bezirk, Hietzing, Friedhof Hietzing, Hietzing Cemetery, Friedhoefe Wien, Hietzing, Wien, Vienna, Austria, Oesterreich, fotoeins.com

Inside the front entrance – 15 May 2022.

Visitors to the cemetery can look northwest to see the glowing golden dome of Otto Wagner’s Steinhof Church at a distance of 4 km (2.5 mi). Photo, 16 May 2018.

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Vienna: Disrupting Historicism with Modernism (1918-2018)

Above/featured: Modernism at Steinhof Church: building by Otto Wagner, angels by Othmar Schimkowitz, stained glass by Koloman Moser (HL).

Vienna is as much a present-day cultural capital city as she was for decades and centuries. Many will get a peek and taste of long-established aspects of the city by walking the streets of the Old Town for the atmosphere, chatting in cozy cafés with coffee and cake for the ambience, and swaying to the rhythms of the waltz under the spell ofOlbr the (blue) Danube.

The early years of the 20th-century were troubled by greater calls for more autonomy from multiple ethnic groups within the patchwork of the Austro-Hungarian empire, by destruction and loss of life from The Great War (World War I), and by subsequent dissolution of the Empire. The capital city became an open theatre for socioeconomic and political changes across all class divisions within an environment where rebellion and revolution were the big talking points against the dogma of long-held traditions. Deep longing for the stability of the old and familiar mingled with equally enthusiastic desire for the radical of the new and mysterious.

Many in the arts, design, and cultural scene were questioning the excessive persistence of past styles, and were seeking something new to better represent changes happening all around them in Vienna. In 1897, a group of artists and architects resigned from the established Künstlerhaus to form the Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs (Union of Austrian Artists), known also as the Vienna Secession. Architecture moved towards a sharper focus to geometry and abstraction, and art flowed to the decorative with organic floral-like designs in the Jugendstil, Art Nouveau’s chapter in German-speaking lands. To promote their new ideas, the Secession group produced an official magazine called Ver Sacrum (“sacred spring” in Latin, 1898) and constructed the Secession building (1897) as an exhibition hall to display their work. The Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops) was created in 1903 as an association of artists whose thinking and applied arts creations were a precursor to the Bauhaus movement. Members of the Werkstätte worked with Vienna’s architects to broaden and unite the various concepts for a complete artwork, or Gesamtkunstwerk, as applied to a living space: the house, its rooms and furnishings, the interplay of light and space, and the tools and utensils for every day aspects of living.

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