{"id":1611,"date":"2024-09-10T06:32:09","date_gmt":"2024-09-10T06:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mesh-web.dev\/vienna-guide\/?p=1611"},"modified":"2024-09-10T11:04:46","modified_gmt":"2024-09-10T11:04:46","slug":"wien-um-1900","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vienna-local.guide\/en\/wien-um-1900\/","title":{"rendered":"Fin de si\u00e8cle Vienna\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vienna in 1900 was a shimmering fabric composed of contradictions \u2013 such as \u201cDream and Reality\u201d and \u201cDeath and Eros\u201d \u2013 and some of the most prominent names in the history of European culture. The creative literary, artistic, architectural and musical talent concentrated in the city at the turn of the 20th century was unmatched almost anywhere else.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Urban Growth and Development <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By 1900 Vienna had evolved into the cultural focus of Central Europe, not least thanks to its rapid urban development compared to other great European cities \u2013 London, Paris and Berlin. Vienna had grown enormously in the 19th century as a result of two major urban development projects. The combined effects of these undertakings and high immigration saw the population more than double between 1870 and 1910, from 900,000 to over two million. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first of these development projects started in the middle of the 19th century when the magnificent Ringstrasse Boulevard \u2013 and the monumental buildings that line it \u2013 was constructed on the now defunct old town fortifications (city walls, ramparts, defensive moats, open-field glacis). In the 1860s work started on some 900 buildings spread across 2.5 square kilometers2<\/sup> including monuments to the arts, politics, commerce and education (theaters, museums and galleries, City Hall, Parliament, Stock Exchange, University, and the School of Applied Arts), and most notably residential and retail buildings \u2013 as well as large parks and gardens. Many of the grand mansions and retail pantheons stand out for their architectural majesty typically associated with the Ringstrasse Zinspalais of the day. Known as the Ringstrasse Barons, the owners of these grand mixed use buildings were rich, often Jewish bankers and industrialists. Palais Ephrussi on Universit\u00e4tsring is a perfect example of a Zinspalais, with profitable spaces let commercially on the ground floor, the entire story above set aside for the owners and an equally lucrative revenue stream from the rental apartments on the floors above. This venerable old Ringstrasse mansion shot to worldwide fame thanks to Edmund de Waal\u2019s book The Hare with Amber Eyes (originally published in English in 2010) about the history of the Ephrussi family, which has been translated into around 30 languages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Ringstrasse architectural style was not just confined to the sites formally occupied by the old city walls; a great many of the surrounding buildings were also remodeled, extended upwards or torn down and replaced by new ones, reflecting the new aesthetic. As a result of this process Viennese architecture gained an international reputation and the construction industry prospered, faltering only for a short time as a result of the stock market crash of 1873. The Ringstrasse architects completed the major public buildings, while their successors turned more to private commissions. One major public and essential infrastructural project, the urban rail transit system (\u201cStadtbahn\u201d), was nevertheless put off for so long that it was left to Otto Wagner in 1894 to start building the 45km of track and over 30 stations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Uneasy Cohabitation <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vienna was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which consisted of 15 nations and well over 50 million inhabitants. It was held together by Emperor Franz Joseph I, a symbolic figurehead whose long reign lasted from 1848 to 1916, and by a highly efficient administrative apparatus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Subjects streamed to the capital from all over the Empire, bringing together the most diverse ethnic and religious groups. Their social circumstances also differed considerably and gave rise to conflict, with the immigrants suffering in particular from exploitative laissez-faire working conditions. This all created a fertile breeding ground for workers\u2019 organizations, trade unions and social democratic movements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The term \u201cV\u00f6lkerkerker\u201d (prison of nations) illustrates the nationality problem from the point of view of the Slavs, who made up almost 50 per cent of the population. Whereas the Hungarians had become a second nation state following the compromise of 1867, the Slavs (Czechs, Poles, Serbs, Croats, Ukrainians, etc.) did not enjoy the same status. The tensions of this epoch and the fertile interaction between the different nationalities have had a large number of consequences going far beyond the famous Viennese Cuisine with its Hungarian spice and Bohemian versatility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Architecture: Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Otto Wagner (1841-1918) was Viennese, but almost half of the graduates of the \u201cWagner School\u201d at the Academy of Fine Arts came from the eastern and southern parts of the Empire. Among them were Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956) from Moravia (today part of the Czech Republic), and Josef Plecnik (1872-1957) and Max Fabiani (1865-1962) from Slovenia. Other students from Moravia, with its mixed linguistic population, included Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867-1908) and Adolf Loos (1870-1933). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These figures were responsible for much of the building activity around the turn of the century: the stations, railings and bridges of the Stadtbahn (urban railway), the Majolica House and Musenhaus on the Wienzeile, St. Leopold am Steinhof, the first modern church in Europe, and the Post Office Savings Bank were all designed by Otto Wagner between 1894 and 1910. Then there were the villas by Josef Hoffmann, who founded the Wiener Werkst\u00e4tte in 1903 together with Kolo Moser. One of the Hoffmann villas at Hohe Warte is the semi-detached house for his artist colleagues Kolo Moser and Carl Moll. Two houses on, in Villa Ast, Alma Mahler-Werfel, femme fatale of the 20th century and heroine of Paulus Manker\u2019s theatrical spectacle \u201cAlma\u201d, had a prominent salon in the 1930s. The Secession, designed to give the young artist rebels an exhibition venue, was built by Wagner\u2019s colleague Joseph Maria Olbrich. Wagner\u2019s students Plecnik and Fabiani designed the Zacherl-Haus and Church of the Holy Spirit, and the Artaria-Haus and Urania, respectively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adolf Loos was a contentious supporter of classical ornamentation, believing that the invention of new ornaments was a time-wasting and degenerate manifestation. His criticism was directed in particular at the Jugendstil (Austrian Art Nouveau) ornamentation of Wagner\u2019s students and colleagues and practically everything that came from the Wiener Werkst\u00e4tte. The apartment and office building on Michaelerplatz designed by Loos for the tailors Goldman & Salatsch makes sparing use of classical ornamentation, but most of his contemporaries, accustomed to elaborate neo-Baroque decoration, found it more difficult to accept than \u201cnew\u201d Jugendstil d\u00e9cor and openly denigrated it, sarcastically referring to the building as the \u201chouse without eyebrows\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Literature & Coffeehouses <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cAdolf Loos and I, he literally and I linguistically, have done nothing else than to show that there is a difference between an urn and a chamber pot...,\u201d wrote Karl Kraus (1874-1936) \u2013 another prominent personality born in Bohemia \u2013 regarding the intellectual similarities between himself and his friend Loos. Painters, musicians, architects, poets, journalists, and other intellectuals met in Caf\u00e9 Griensteidl, Caf\u00e9 Central, or Caf\u00e9 Museum. Griensteidl was situated on the site of the neo-Baroque Palais Herberstein on Michaelerplatz, built in 1899. Its rich ornamentation is in stark contrast to the Goldman & Salatsch building, known today as the Loos House, which was erected just ten years later. In the 1890s Caf\u00e9 Griensteidl was the meeting place of the \u201cYoung Vienna\u201d literary circle headed by Hermann Bahr. Karl Kraus, also a regular at Griensteidl, was a vociferous opponent of the anti-naturalistic literary modernists with their penchant for \u201cdecadence\u201d and was particularly critical of Hermann Bahr. In the \u201cFackel\u201d, a magazine written for the most part by Kraus himself and published from 1899 to 1936, he satirized just about everything that displeased him. For decades, Hermann Bahr was a regular target of Kraus\u2019 vituperative tongue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nachdem Kraus ins Caf\u00e9 Central gewechselt war, rechnete er in der Satire „Die demolirte Literatur\u201c mit der im Literatencaf\u00e9 beheimateten \u201eJung-Wiener-Dichtergalerie\u201c ab. Zum Titel veranlasste ihn der Abriss (die Demolierung) besagten Vorg\u00e4ngerbaus samt Schlie\u00dfung des Caf\u00e9s Griensteidl 1897. Nichtsdestotrotz war Karl Kraus Freund und F\u00f6rderer von Peter Altenberg (1859-1919), des Lebensk\u00fcnstlers und Kaffeehausliteraten par excellence. Zu dessen Freundeskreis wiederum z\u00e4hlte auch Alban Berg, ein Repr\u00e4sentant der musikalischen Moderne, der Orchesterlieder nach Texten von Altenberg komponierte.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00a9 WienTourismus – Caf\u00e9 Landtmann \/ Caf\u00e9 Landtmann<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Musical Modernism: Atonality and Anti-Semitism <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The term \u201catonality\u201d aptly describes the irritation experienced by audiences accustomed to late Romantic music when they were confronted by the works of Sch\u00f6nberg and his students (including Berg, Webern and Wellesz), the \u201cSecond Vienna School\u201d. Sch\u00f6nberg, who was later to develop his twelve-tone composition method, conducted a concert in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein on March 31, 1913, which caused a scandal and was to go down in history as the \u201cWatschenkonzert\u201d (ear-boxing concert). The program included works by Webern, Sch\u00f6nberg, Zemlinksy, Berg and Mahler. After the interval, when Berg\u2019s lieder based on the texts of picture postcards by Peter Altenberg were due to be performed, members of the audience attempted to clamber on the stage and box the conductor\u2019s ears, putting an end to the concert and giving rise to legal action. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), also born in Bohemia, was director of the Vienna State Opera from 1897 to 1907 and as such was the crown prince of the European music scene of the time, so to speak. Disputes about his frequent engagements in other cities and anti-Semitic attacks ultimately caused Mahler to resign from this prestigious office. His wife Alma is known well beyond the confines of the music scene on account of her numerous love affairs and marriages. The couple met in Bertha Zuckerkandl\u2019s salon, one of the most prominent meeting places of the Viennese bourgeoisie. Mahler\u2019s difficult relationship with Alma may have been one of the reasons for his attempt to consult Sigmund Freud. Until the year before Mahler\u2019s death, however, all the appointments were canceled. In 1910 the two finally met in Leiden (Netherlands) and for an afternoon Freud analyzed Mahler\u2019s relationship with women. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sexuality, Morality and Society: Freud and Schnitzler <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Analyses normally took place on Freud\u2019s famous couch in Berggasse and lasted much longer than a single afternoon. Freud was born in Moravia in 1856 and his family moved to Vienna in 1860. He studied medicine in his new home and used the term \u201cpsychoanalysis\u201d for the first time in 1896. In 1899 (postdated to 1900) he published \u201cThe Interpretation of Dreams\u201d. The fact that Freud saw sexuality as the driving force behind many actions and wishes disturbed and troubled a lot of people, both then and now. His contemporaries at the turn of the century were all the more uneasy on account of the blatant double standards that prevailed in marital relations, and the fact that sexuality was a taboo subject that aroused both trepidation and curiosity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with Mahler, Freud became acquainted with Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) very late in his life, although they lived in the same city, belonged to the same circles and dealt with similar themes. It was not until 1922 that they met in person, and Freud wrote in a letter to Schnitzler that he had avoided him precisely because of their similarities, since he saw in Schnitzler\u2019s works the same assumptions, interests, and results as his own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schnitzler\u2019s family on his father\u2019s side came from Hungary. Arthur Schnitzler was initially a doctor of medicine like his father, specializing in hysteria and hypnosis. As a writer he dealt with sexuality, seduction, adultery and the associated double standards, but also with the growing anti-Semitism of Viennese society. Many of his short stories and plays, \u201cLieutenant Gustl\u201d, \u201cProfessor Bernhardi\u201d or \u201cLa Ronde\u201d have become classics of German literature. His novella \u201cDream Story\u201d, incidentally, was the inspiration for Stanley Kubrick\u2019s final movie, \u201cEyes Wide Shut\u201d (1999). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Oedipus, Generation Conflicts and Tradition <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The story of Oedipus, who killed his father, has been a literary subject since Antiquity. Freud identified the Oedipus complex as an important stage in development. Simplified and applied to cultural processes, it is also an expression of the need felt by artists to question the works of previous generations. At the turn of the 20th century this process took on a much clearer form than it had in previous centuries, possibly because at the end of the \u201chistoric\u201d 19th century people recognized more than ever that there were other styles than those imposed by earlier generations, which had been frequently studied and categorized. The new generation rebelled against the established institutions such as the Wiener K\u00fcnstlerhaus (Association of Austrian Fine Art) and in 1897 formed the Vienna Secessionists. Among the most prominent members of the Secession were Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), Kolo Moser (1868-1918), Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956), and Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867-1908). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To the dismay of many, Otto Wagner, by this time almost 60 years old and since 1864 Ordinary Professor of Architecture at the prestigious Vienna Academy of Art, aligned himself with the young Secessionists. Many of them had been his students and colleagues. Olbrich, architect of the Secession exhibition building constructed in 1898, collaborated with Wagner in the design of the Stadtbahn buildings. Kolo Moser designed the golden ornamentations on Wagner\u2019s house at Wienzeile 38 and the glass windows for Wagner\u2019s Church of St. Leopold. Hoffmann studied under Wagner and others. In fact, Wagner\u2019s students were firmly rooted in the old traditions, a fact that was often overlooked in the protest against their \u201cHistoricist\u201d predecessors. Even the name of the Secessionist association, Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring), is a traditional one, referring as it does to the ancient rite of renewal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gustav Klimt, who was completely familiar with the Sacred Spring of the turn of the century, discovered the gilding and ornamental richness of early Christian and medieval mosaics while in Ravenna and Venice. His reaction to these impressions can be seen in his \u201cgolden period\u201d, including one of his most famous works, \u201cThe Kiss\u201d (1907\/08). The sensuousness in many of his portraits of women, and his depiction of nudity, pregnant bodies, and daring poses illustrate the themes of death and Eros, the cycle of life that was such a popular notion at the time, dealt with by Freud and Schnitzler in their respective fields. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the years before the First World War, other new young artists attacked conventional perceptions. Prominent among these artists were Egon Schiele (1890-1918) and Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), the most well-known exponents of Austrian Expressionism. Both of them exhibited works in 1908 and 1909 under Klimt\u2019s patronage at the Vienna Art Show. Earlier, in 1907, Picasso had painted the \u201cDemoiselles d\u2019Avignon\u201d in Paris, the first painting in the Cubist style \u2013 one of the few modern movements not to have been born in turn-of-the-century Vienna. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Twilight and Habsburg Nostalgia <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Sacred Spring of the Secessionists was followed not by a summer but by the First World War (1914-1918). During this time all of the ornamental richness of the turn of the century, be it Nouveau or Classical, disappeared together with the culture from which it had been born. To the survivors and following generations \u201cVienna in 1900\u201d may therefore be seen as the glowing twilight of European high culture. Joseph Roth (1894-1939) was also born in one of the outposts of the Empire, Galicia (now Ukraine), shortly before the end of the Habsburg monarchy. Like many of the artists discussed here, Roth was of Jewish ancestry. He wrote \u201cThe Radetzky March\u201d (1932) at a time when anti-Semitism was rampant. This novel was and still is often regarded as a glorifying, nostalgic representation of the decline of the Imperial and Royal Monarchy, though other interpretations are also prevalent. This exiled Austrian Catholic Jew and social democratic monarchist was in the best possible position to distinguish between operetta and reality. And he of all people must have experienced the reality of the 1930s as a step backwards for humanity that put even the most blatant shortcomings of the monarchy in a softer light. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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www.wien.info <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rights to the use of this text are owned by WienTourismus (Vienna Tourist Board). The text may be reproduced in its entirety, partially and in edited form free of charge until further notice. Please forward sample copy to: Vienna Tourist Board, Media Management, Invalidenstrasse 6, 1030 Wien; press@vienna.info. No responsibility is assumed for the accuracy of the information contained in the text. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author: Christa Veigl, freelance publicist and editor <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last updated: July 2022 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wien um 1900, das ist ein gl\u00e4nzendes Gewebe aus Gegens\u00e4tzen wie \u201eTraum und Wirklichkeit\u201c oder \u201eTod und Eros\u201c \u2013 und aus gro\u00dfen Namen der europ\u00e4ischen Kulturgeschichte. Am Beginn eines neuen Jahrhunderts konzentrierten sich in dieser Stadt H\u00f6chstleistungen der Literatur, Malerei, Architektur und Musik in einer Dichte, die ihresgleichen sucht.  Stadtwachstum und Stadtumbau  Dass Wien um […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vienna-local.guide\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vienna-local.guide\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vienna-local.guide\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vienna-local.guide\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vienna-local.guide\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1611"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/vienna-local.guide\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1651,"href":"https:\/\/vienna-local.guide\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611\/revisions\/1651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vienna-local.guide\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vienna-local.guide\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vienna-local.guide\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vienna-local.guide\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}