German and Austrian Arts and Crafts

1897 - Vienna Secessionist movement founded by painter Gustav Klimt in rebellion against the academia of the time and to give more artists an opportunity to show their works...particularly artists outside of Vienna.

1902 - The Wiener Werstatte (Vienna Workshops) Founded An artisans' guild founded by the Designer/Architect Joseph Hoffman and others based on similar organizations founded in Britain. The Workshops influenced fine design for 30+ years.

1907 - Deutsche Werkbund (German Craft Alliance) Founded - Organized to promote and strive for excellence in design with an emphasis on experimental architecture and industrial design. Although it's ideals were originally derived from the English A&C Movement, a difference was that the Germans were interested in harnessing the power of the machine to improve the quality of mass-produced objects. World War I halted the Werkbund, but it's ideas were taken and carried on by other groups in Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and even England.

1919 - Bauhaus Movement begins.

Germanic Movers and Shakers of the Time:

Painters - Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokochska

Architects - Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Joseph Hoffman, Josef Maria Olbrich

Architect Otto Wagner

Great Buildings Online

Works

Landerbank, at Vienna, Austria, 1883 to 1884.

Majolica House, at Vienna, Austria, 1898 to 1899.

Post Office Savings Bank, at Vienna, Austria, 1904 to 1912.

Biography Otto Wagner

(b. Penzing, Vienna 1841; d. Vienna 1918)

Otto Wagner was born in Penzing, near Vienna in 1841. He studied at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna, at the Berlin Bauakademie, and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In 1894 he supervised and taught at a special school of architecture within the Academy of Fine Arts. Moderne Architecktur, his inaugural address at the school, called for an architecture based exclusively on modern materials and modern construction methods.

In 1890 Wagner designed a new city plan for Vienna, but only his urban rail network was used. This network borrowed from the classical urban monumentality of his early training but adopted the modern construction and functional planning he so adamantly demanded. The buildings within the network exhibited a decorative styling that owed much to the Secession school.

Wagner continued searching for a style which embodied the principles he taught. In his later works he dispensed with almost all ornamentation and used materials in their simplest forms. These works show a simple but effective blending of plan, space and materials.

A highly influential figure in the development of Modern architecture, Wagner died in Vienna in 1918.

Dennis Sharp. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture. New York: Quatro Publishing,1991. ISBN 0-8230-2539-X. NA40.I45.

Architect Adolf Loos

Great Buildings Online

Works

Khuner Villa, at on the Kreuzberg, Payerback, Austria, 1930.

Rufer House, at Vienna, Austria, 1922.

Steiner House, at Vienna, Austria, 1910.

Biography Adolf Loos

(b. Brunn, Czechoslovakia 1870)

Adolf Loos was born in Brunn, Czechoslovakia in 1870. His studies at the Royal and Imperial State Technical College in Rechenberg, Bohemia were cut short by a two year stint in the army. After he attended the College of Technology in Dresden for three years, he worked in the U.S. as a mason, a floor-layer and a dish-washer.

He eventually obtained a job with the architect Carl Mayreder and in 1897 he established his own practice. He taught for several years throughout Europe, but returned to practice in Vienna in 1928.

Adolf Loos gained greater notoriety for his writings than for his buildings. Loos wanted an intelligently established building method supported by reason. He believed that everything that could not be justified on rational grounds was superfluous and should be eliminated. Loos recommended pure forms for economy and effectiveness. He rarely considered how this "effectiveness" could correspond to rational human needs.

Loos argued against decoration by pointing to economic and historical reasons for its development, and by describing the suppression of decoration as necessary to the regulation of passion. He believed that culture resulted from the renunciation of passions and that which brings man to the absence of ornamentation generates spiritual power.

Loos attacked contemporary design as well as the imitative styling of the nineteenth century. He looked on contemporary decoration as mass-produced, mass-consumed trash. Loos acted as a model and a seer for architects of the 1920s. His fight for freedom from the decorative styles of the nineteenth century led a campaign for future architects.

Muriel Emmanuel. Contemporary Architects. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980. ISBN 0-312-16635-4. NA 680-C625. p479-481.

Architect Josef Hoffmann

Great Buildings Online

Works

Moser House, at Vienna, Austria, 1901 to 1903.

Stoclet Palace, at Brussels, or Bruxelles, Belgium, 1905 to 1911.

Biography Josef Hoffmann

(b. Pirnitz, Moravia 1870; d. Vienna, Austria 1956)

Josef Hoffman was born in Pirnitz, Moravia (now Chechoslovakia) in 1870. He studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Carl von Hasenauer and Otto Wagner, whose theories of a functional, modern architecture profoundly effected his architectural works. He won the Rome prize in 1895 and the following year joined the Wagner's office.

Hoffman established his own office in 1898 and taught at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule from 1899 until 1936. He was a founding member of the Vienna Secession, a group of revolutionary artists and architects. He actively supported the group by designing its exhibitions and writing for the magazine Ver Sacrum. In 1903 he helped found the Wiener Werkstate.

Although Hoffman's earliest works belong to a Secessionist tangent of the Art Nouveau, his later works introduced a vocabulary of regular grids and squares. The functional clarity and abstract purity of his later works mark him as an important precursor of the Modern Movement.

A highly individualistic architect and designer, Hoffman's work combined the simplicity of craft production with a refined aesthetic ornament. He died in Vienna in 1956.

Dennis Sharp. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture. New York: Quatro Publishing, 1991. ISBN 0-8230-2539-X. NA40.I45. p76.

Architect J. M. Olbrich

Great Buildings Online

Works Sezession House, at Vienna, Austria, 1896.

Biography J. M. Olbrich

(b. Silesia, Germany 1867; d. Dusseldorf, Germany 1908)

Joseph Maria Olbrich was born in Silesia, Germany in 1867. He studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and won the Rome Prize in his third year. After working in Otto Wagner's office for a short time, he travelled through Europe. When he returned to Vienna he helped form the Secession, an anti-traditionalist forum. Intent on creating "new" art, the Secessionists looked to British architects like Mackintosh and Baillie-Scott for inspiration and direction.

Notable for combining monumentality with delicacy, Olbrich relieved the formality of flat stucco buildings with organic detailing. In 1899 Olbrich was invited by the Grand Duke of Hesse to establish an Artists' Colony at Darmstadt in Germany where he created his own brand of rectilinear, wood-based Art Nouveau. His designs were an inspiration to such initiators of the Modern Movement as Frank Lloyd Wright. Olbrich died in Dusseldorf in 1908.