The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295

thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |1
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |2

The Architectural Wishes of

the Viennese Bourgeoisie
1857-1873
EELKE SMULDERS

Thesis MA History of Politics and Culture

University of Utrecht, Institute of History
Tutor: Dr. Joes Segal
July 2007
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |3

Table of Contents

Preface 4

Introduction 5

Chapter One
Vienna: its Bourgeoisie and its Architecture
Introduction 13
Vienna’s architecture before 1857 14
The specific situation of Vienna’s bourgeoisie 17
Social structure and social change in the second half of the nineteenth century 19
Jews in Vienna 21
The Ringstraβe project 23
The bourgeois palais 27
The organization of Vienna’s building industry 30
‘Wienerberger Ziegelfabriks- und Bau-Gesellschaft’ and the prefabricated ornaments 33
Styles of the Ringstraβe buildings 34
The world exhibition of 1873 and the crash of the stock exchange 37
Modern Vienna, or ‘Fin-de-Siècle Vienna’ 39

Chapter Two
The Builder’s Wishes
Introduction 41
Theophil Hansen 43
Johann Romano and August Schwendenwein 45
Heinrich Ferstel 47
Heinrich Drasche - Heinrichhof 48
Eduard Todesco - Palais Todesco 53
Jonas Königswarter - Palais Königswarter 56
Friedrich Schey - Palais Schey 57
Franz Wertheim - Palais Wertheim 62
Michael and Nicolaus Dumba - Palais Dumba 64
Viktor Ofenheim - Palais Ofenheim 71
Gustav Epstein - Palais Epstein 73
Ignaz Ephrussi - Palais Ephrussi 79
Conclusion 81

Chapter Three
Traces of Relations between Builders and Architects of Dwellings in the
Allgemeine Bauzeitung
Introduction 85
Articles 86
Conclusion 93

Conclusion 95

Epilogue 100

Literature 101
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |4

Preface

Doing a research project on nineteenth-century bourgeois architecture in Austria’s

wonderful city Vienna means to be confronted with the innumerable examples which
are all around. Coming out of one of the metro stations, one immediately becomes
overwhelmed by the splendour of huge and richly ornamented masses of stone. As in
most of the world’s metropolises, one has to put one’s head really far backwards to see a
glimpse of the sky. But Vienna distinguishes itself by consisting primarily of buildings
from one epoch in history: that of the second half of the nineteenth century. So much
less is built afterwards as is left of the periods before. As no other city Vienna is the city
that it was before, in the period under the reign of Franz Joseph. It’s a strange
experience for someone from the North-Western part of Europe, from the country
which for centuries had been decentralized and therefore has many cities of which not
one is a real city. It’s a strange experience too, to research people who were so much
richer than any Dutchman ever has been. Coming from a slightly different culture has
had its advantages too of course. Watching cultural history from a - little - distance can
help to see more. And - what I heard more than once - that it was a shame for the
Austrians that a foreigner had to come to Vienna to research such a Viennese subject, is
therefore not true. Many of the people who are really ‘in’ the matter, were ready to help
wherever they could. Information is not to find on one well ordered pile of course, but
is dispersed over many archives and libraries all around the city. It’s impossible to find
one’s way there without the help of many very kind Viennese people. First of all I have
to thank Dr. Monika Knofler of the Kupferstichkabinett of the Akademie der bildenden
Künste who was so kind not only to answer my questions with all she knew, but also
introduced me to several people and took me with her in her archive which is normally
closed for outsiders. Further Markus Kristan of the Albertina; Dr. Reinald Franz of the
Museum für Angewandte Kunst (MAK); Iris Zechmeister and Karin Hofer of
Wienerberger Ziegelindustrie GmbH; Prof. Walter Krause of the institute of art history
of the university of Vienna; Prof. Gerhard Stadler of the technical university of Vienna
and his student Kyros Hamidi; Dr. Christa Prokisch of the Jewish museum; Dr. Margit
Altfahrt of the Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv; all those referents at the various
archives; and of course my teacher in Utrecht, Dr. Joes Segal for reading this thesis
several times and giving inspiring comments.
Eelke Smulders, July 2007
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |5

Introduction

‘The author of this book cannot conceal a certain distaste, perhaps a certain contempt,
for the age with which it deals [1848-1875], though one mitigated by admiration for its
titanic material achievements and by the effort to understand even what he does not
like.’1 This is what Eric Hobsbawm, the well-known Marxist historian, wrote in the
introduction of his book about the age in which ‘capital’ was dominating the world. The
nineteenth century can be characterized by lots of labels: the ‘age of biology’ no less
than the ‘age of history’; the ‘age of free market’ no less than the ‘age of industry’. But
concerning social history, there was one group which was unmistakably prominent: the
bourgeoisie. The new political situation after the revolutions of 1848-1849 made possible
that not only members of the nobility but also ‘new’ men made their way into industry,
business and - later on - politics. Successful bourgeois got chances to gather enormous
amounts of capital by taking – not less enormous – risks. And with this newly gathered
capital they could buy things, not in the least political power.
The decade after 1848-1849 is generally labelled with the term ‘restoration’ or
‘neo-absolutism’. The old monarchies in Central-Europe which succeeded in
overcoming the ‘monster of revolution’ reaffirmed their power by suppressing all
revolutionary resistance. During this decade however, they were losing their control.
Because of a continual process of industrialization members of the third class became
richer and richer. Some of the most successful acquired such enormous wealth that they
could even devote their time to other things than making money. Culture but also
politics were new fields of interest for those who were well-off. The bourgeois tried to
penetrate the bastions of the nobility and the nobility increasingly had no other choice
than letting them in.
Peter Gay warns us not to speak too easily about the European bourgeoisie.
There are lots of reasons to count them all together, but at least as much to see
differences. Generally one could say that the bourgeoisie in countries in the central part
of Europe was less successful in coming to power than in the Western parts, and that it
was even worse further East. The Western countries - generally speaking - had a longer
tradition in democratising and a less influential aristocratic upper class, and had more
favourable technological and commercial opportunities. These features combined
turned out to have been a good basis for further deployment. Where the nobility was
more powerful and proved more difficult to overrule, it was much harder to get out of
conservative relationships and develop new industrial and commercial methods. This is

1 E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875 (London 1975) 5

The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |6

important to understand, because these social structures were directly linked with the
chances which the bourgeoisie were able to take. Taking those chances, members of the
third class got the opportunity to rise up out from their working lives and become
bourgeois.
But who were those bourgeois? As I have said already, many of them were newly-
rich industrials. Of course there were other ways to work one’s way up: in the financial
world by banking; in the wholesale trading; as merchant; in the administration; even in
the military; and also in the free professions (doctors, lawyers, etc.). But the social class
of bourgeois was not confined to them. Strictly spoken they belonged to the third class
as well as all those people who worked for their living did. Defining the boundaries of
both the nobility and the working class was in theory less difficult than those of the
relatively new class of bourgeois. The nobility was formed by people who – most of
them – since long had a hereditary title or got a great amount of land just by being the
child of a noble father. Although the working class is already less easy to define, one
could safely call those who were employed and worked with their hands members of it.
According to Hobsbawm, one could generally state that the economical definition of
the quintessential bourgeois was a capitalist, socially all the ‘above groups’ could be
included.2
The boundary between bourgeoisie and working class was a broad one. The
most obvious line is economical, although even this line could be freakish. The
bourgeois capitalist considered himself to be fundamentally different from those petty-
bourgeois who tried not to drown in the daily affairs of selling one’s products or
working in some lower department of administration. The difference with the labouring
poor is obvious enough. The contemporary notion took primarily the measure of
capacity to order or master something or someone as decisive. Those people who stood
above others and could command them, counted as individual, as ‘someone’ and
belonged to a different class.3 Being free of orders from above - except those from god
or the state – was a thing to strive for, or as the motto of the Mannheim Bassermann-
family was: ‘Sei dein eigener Herr und Knecht, das ist des Mittelstandes Recht.’4
The boundary between bourgeoisie and nobility was much sharper, although it
was different in character. Was the lower limit of the class defined principally in
economical terms, the upper limit was more traditional. The upper classes saw
themselves clearly separated from the newly rich people. Even if they received a noble

2 E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875 (London 1975) 243

3 ibidem, 244-246
4 Lothar Gall, Bürgertum in Deutschland (Berlin 1989) 74
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |7

title out of the hand of one of the top layers of aristocracy - the queen, king or emperor
himself - they kept being considered different.5
Defining these boundaries of the bourgeois class is not only interesting for
historians in this time, it became of increasing importance for contemporary people who
would like to be seen as bourgeois too. During the second half of the nineteenth
century more and more people fitted the original requirements of being a bourgeois.
Later on we will see how this resulted in a sharpening of the definitions and a
stratification of the bourgeois class. For now we can just establish the fact that the
group of people who could call themselves ‘bourgeois’ was growing. Some of them
reached enormous wealth. The extremely rich Bill Gates-like types of nowadays have
their predecessors in the nineteenth-century businessmen.
It is not unrealistic to call the home the centre of the bourgeois world.
Hobsbawm even calls it the ‘quintessential bourgeois world.’ It was the place where the
bourgeois could feel safe and free of control of the outer world full of social control and
other bourgeois who demanded to wear his bourgeois mask. The home was the place of
his family. The industrial revolution at the end of the eighteenth century started a
process in which urbanization and new division of labour changed most parts of
Europe from rural communities where living and working were not separated, into a
society in which a growing middle-class worked outside their homes. That is to say, the
masculine part of it worked outside the home. Where in earlier times work was divided
between man and wife, from now on it were increasingly the men who went to work.
Their wives stayed at home to run the housekeeping and watch the children.
It was in these circumstances that the typical culture of the home was
developing. Cities were condensing and in the larger cities the normal middle-classes
were forced out of the centres into the outskirts. The urgency of small living was
combined with a general middle-class dislike – in sharp contrast with the time before
and also in contrast with later on in the nineteenth century - of the aristocratic and its
luxurious life-style, and resulted in a very simple style.6 This style was an element of a
whole new middle-class culture which in the central parts of Europe even got an own
name: Biedermeier. It’s specific centrality of the home would be a basis for the rest of the
century.
The home was strongly connected with the family. The little family of two
parents and – as a result of not yet legalized but nonetheless discretely discussed and

5E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875 (London 1975) 243

6Waltraud Heindl, ‘People, Class Structure and Society’, in: Raymond Erickson (ed.), Schubert’s Vienna
(New Haven and London 1997) 42
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |8

practiced birth control - not too many children. As Peter Gay - the famous Austrian-
American specialist on bourgeois culture - wrote in his book on Victorian middle-class
culture: ‘The paradigm of domesticity was no more of recent date than the small family,
but its intensity was unprecedented and its possibilities were idealized as never before.
Bourgeois culture prompted its men to treat their family as their principal motive for
pursuing material success.’7
As already said, the middle-class house was the place where its inhabitants were
safe for the dangerous world outside. It was a place which they loved and where they
would like to be surrounded by all persons and things they loved. Therefore they tried
to get as much as possible from the world outside into it. Typical for this tendency was
the introduction of several things which are, even now, pretty normal. The romantic
love for nature resulted from about 1815 in the tendency to get that nature into one’s
home: flowers, special little tables for those flowers, vases, plants, Christmas trees,
etcetera. And also the standing piano was developed and became one of the standard
pieces of furniture. Played ‘a quatre mains’ it was the solution to get the music of the big
aristocratic orchestras into ones home.8
One could say that bourgeois society was - generally speaking - striving for
more equal rights. One important exception to that rule which is important to consider
when discussing the bourgeois culture of the home, is the permanent inequality of the
sexes. ‘For the wife’, Gay wrote, ‘the Victorian family could be prison as much as
refuge.’9 The role of women in society declined and they were increasingly forced to live
in the restriction of their homes. But nonetheless, they did not become unimportant. In
the safety of the home they had their own mission. Although the working husband was
the absolute master when at home, his wife mastered all things concerning the
household. Gay warns not to believe too easily the general picture of silenced bourgeois
wives, locked in their homes and living their days rather depressed. ‘Normally, the
nineteenth-century legislation that governed relations between spouses was far harder
on women than the practice in thoughtful bourgeois families. An abundant supply of
domestic sketches suggests that wives often participated actively in making familial
decisions, or in goading their husbands into greater efforts at work to better the family’s
financial situation.’10

7 Peter Gay, Schnitzler’s century. The making of middle-class culture 1815-1914 (New York and London 2002) 43
8 Renate Krüger, Biedermeier. Eine Lebenshaltung zwischen 1815 und 1848
(Vienna 1979) 63-64
9 Gay, Schnitzler’s century, 47
10 ibidem, 49
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |9

Depending on how rich her family was, she was helped by one or several maids.
As invisible as possible these maids should help the wives and their families they served.
The spatial requirements for this kind of service are very interesting, especially in the
context of this thesis. Living with one’s family within the protecting boundaries of the
home meant privacy for the family: eating, sleeping and bathing without disturbance.
Simultaneously the wish for this kind of more or less luxurious life meant that they
needed some helping hands to get their meals cooked and served, get their bedclothes
washed and get their bathrooms cleaned. Servants were employed to fulfil these rather
dirty jobs for them. Looking at the plans of more palatial buildings, it is the easiest to
see the structure of big and well-lightened rooms connected with little service rooms
behind through properly hidden doors. These service rooms have their own structure
and are accessible without crossing or even entering one of the ‘to be served’ rooms.
Buildings for the less extraordinary rich had as much of this system in it as possible. It
was this quality of separation of servants parts and owners parts which made the
difference between a simple house for the masses and a more upper-class house. Or
how a contemporary saw it: ‘Der Hauptunterschied liegt […] in der Theilung der Räume
für die Familie und für die Dienerschaft. In gewöhnlichen Wohnhäusern ist diese
Trennung nie so deutlich durchgeführt, während sie selbst in dem kleinsten
Herrenhause nothwendig berücksichtigt werden muss. Mit dem Grade des Ansehens
des Hausherrn steigert sich der Ausdruck und die Darstellung dieser Trennung, indem
dann die Abtheilungen für die Dienerschaft an Grösse zunehmen.’11
The bourgeois homes were in no way the same as the great and famous ‘naked’
industrial steel-buildings, or as Hobsbawm wrote disapprovingly: ‘Beauty meant
decoration, since the mere construction of the houses of the bourgeois or the objects
which furnished them was seldom sufficiently grandiose to offer spiritual and moral
sustenance in itself […]’12 Although I do not agree with this typical Marxist way of
dogmatic attacking one’s enemy, it is interesting to consider this ambiguous character of
the bourgeois buildings as a sign of the ambiguous character of their builders.
‘Appearance’ and how to keep it up was one of the most important things on the
bourgeois’ mind. Covering up the real with a façade of the social desirable was a
nineteenth century way of living.
Discussions about which – historical - styles were considered to be ‘right’ for
those ‘covers’ in general or suitable for one or another specific building filled the books

11 Lothar Abel, Das elegante Wohnhaus. Eine anleitung Wohnhäuser aussen und innen mit Geschmack zu erbauen und

auszustatten (Vienna, Pest and Leipzig 1890) 17

12 E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875 (London 1975) 5
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |10

and articles for and by architects and architecture theorists. For the present-day observer
it is difficult to understand what the use of a specific style and the use of decoration and
ornaments meant for the contemporary observer. In the present post-modern culture,
knowing a time in which most of the new architecture was built without classical style
elements, a lot of the ‘theory’ defending or attacking some style or another seems to be
foreign to us. A contemporary comment on the use of ‘real’ instead of painted
ornaments might illustrate what I mean. Mister Schatteburg wrote in an article about
decorating one’s room, that the use of painting techniques to suggest ornaments and try
to get the same effect as with real ornaments is reprehensible because the observer
would notice a cheat.13 A present-day reader would immediately object that
Schatteburg’s so called ‘real’ ornaments made out of stucco have at least the same
cheating character. Hobsbawm judged in the typical ‘modern architecture’ way of
seeking for truth: ‘[nineteenth-century] architecture expressed no kind of ‘truth’, but
only the confidence and self-confidence of the society that built it.’14 And – almost in a
funny way - trying to take away the last part of respect for it: ‘Attempts have been made
to salvage the reputation of mid-nineteenth-century architecture, and no doubt there
were distinguished achievements. However, when one considers the orgy of building
into which a prosperous bourgeois society threw itself form the 1850s, these are neither
outstanding nor particularly numerous.’15 A good thing it is just an opinion.
In the following chapters I tried to give some insights in the bourgeois upper-
class of Vienna, the so called ‘second society’ of that famous and centuries old capital of
the Habsburg monarchy. When emperor Franz Joseph I in 1857 ordered the
demolishing of the old fortifications around the inner city and initiated a boulevard-like
street in their place, the starting signal was given for a building rush in the following
decades. Franz Joseph wanted to have various monumental buildings along his
Ringstraβe and had a plan to finance those buildings with the selling of expensive
building lots to be used for private purposes. The project came right on time for many
bourgeois nouveaux riches in the city. One after the other they bought a building lot – or
even more than one – to build a house on it which represented their wealth and status.
These houses were one of the best opportunities to represent their builders.
How this representation in architecture took its forms in the first decades of the
building in the Ringstraβe area is the main theme of this thesis. It is interesting to
research this specific aspect of the Viennese architectural history because it is a chance

13 H. Schatteburg, ‘Über unseren Zimmerschmuck’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, Vol. 1890 (Vienna 1890) 93
14 E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875 (London 1975) 289
15 ibidem, 279
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |11

to get an understanding of it from an other side. Architecture historians primarily watch

and describe the final results: the buildings themselves. The various persons involved
with the planning and realization of those buildings are not their main point of interest.
This thesis focuses on these points. Researching the relations of people who ordered the
building of a house, I was interested in the personal written documents and other traces
which could learn us something about these relations.
About the Rinstraβe there has been written a lot already. Especially the life-long
work of the Viennese architecture historian Renate Wagner-Rieger has to be mentioned
here. As general editor of the series Die Wiener Ringstraβe – Bild einer Epoche, she and her
colleagues did a wonderful job. But after the publishing of it in the 1970s and Wagner-
Rieger’s death in 1980, the well organized research came to an end. Of course there
were several individuals who went on researching specific themes, or others who gave
new interpretations of the whole – like for instance Carl Schorske. A specific study of
the representational wishes of the ones who actually ordered to build a house in the new
Ringstraβe area, has not been undertaken yet.
As a historian I tried to focus on written sources and not to conclude things
from the buildings or designs for those buildings. That this wasn’t an easy task may have
been expected, but that there were only a handful of useful sources to find was not. I
chose to focus on the most prominent persons, those individuals and their families who
built on the most prominent locations in the Ringstraβe area and about whom was
known more than only the dates of their birth, marriage and death. But even for this
selection it proved to be very hard to find relevant sources. For some I found some
new, or material which wasn’t used as source to answer my question before. The larger
part of this thesis is based on literature. Something which has not to be considered less
interesting however, because it was the kind of research question which put older
information - mostly only indirectly given – together and in the focus.
The three chapters of this thesis all have their specific approach of the subject.
The first chapter is more or less introducing the reader in the general theme of Viennese
architecture and the Viennese bourgeoisie. It gives a short introduction in the situation
of Vienna until the mid-nineteenth century: Not only the architecture of the city, but
also the social structure and the specific situation of a bourgeois class in a city which for
centuries had been dominated by the nobility and the church. Afterwards the origins
and working out of the plans for Vienna’s ‘project of the century’, the Ringstraβe, will
be discussed. The bourgeois palais - a specific typology between noble palais and
traditional bourgeois house - is the subject of the following paragraph. Of course it is
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |12

interesting – and necessary – to understand something of the organization of the

Viennese building industry: how did plans become real buildings? This will be discussed
in a general paragraph about the Viennese building industry and in a more specific one
about the Wienerberger concern. Architectural styles are not the main theme of this
thesis. They are of only indirect importance for it. But a basic understanding of the
Viennese ‘favourites’ and in what situations and where they were used is necessary
though to understand what contemporaries were talking about and what kind of choices
they had. In 1873 a triumph as well as a disaster happened in Vienna: the long awaited
world exhibition in the Prater opened its doors to show the prosperity of – especially –
the bourgeoisie, but only a few days later the Viennese stock exchange crashed in an
overheated economical climate. The results were disastrous for many of the members of
the ‘second society’.
The second chapter approaches the theme more directly from the side of the
actors. Who were those extremely rich people who could afford to buy one of those
extremely expensive building lots in the Ringstraβe area and could afford to give one of
the famous architectural offices in the city an assignment to build a house on it? Nine of
the most interesting people, nine members of the second society who built in the period
between Franz Joseph’s order and the crash of 1873 are put together in this chapter in
which we also meet their architects. The result is an insight in their society, their way of
living. An incentive for the reader to understand a little of their world.
The third and final chapter has an indirect approach. It tries to learn something
about the theme from contemporary articles about the new houses in the Vienna of the
period as they were published in the most important magazine on architecture and
building, the Allgemeine Bauzeitung. Some articles about the houses which are discussed in
the previous chapter are left out of this chapter because they were used in the previous
one already, but all the articles about other houses are discussed here. The Allgemeine
Bauzeitung gives us a broad insight in the world of building houses and the relations
between architects, their customers and their buildings.
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |13

Chapter One
Vienna: its Bourgeoisie and its Architecture

‘O, Edles Wienn!

Du bist die port und zir alzeit,
Befestigung der Christenheit.
Wer sich zu Wienn nit neren kann,
Ist ueberal ein verdorbener Mann!’16
Schmelzl

‘Es ist Mein Wille, daβ die Erweiterung der inneren Stadt Wien mit Rücksicht auf eine
entsprechende Verbindung derselben mit den Vorstädten ehemöglichst in Angriff genommen
und dabei auch auf die Regulierung und Verschönerung Meiner Residenz- und
Reichshauptstadt Bedacht genommen werde. Zu diesem Ende bewillige Ich die Auflassung
der Umwallung und Fortifikation der inneren Stadt, so wie der Gräben um dieselbe.’ 17
Emperor Franz Joseph I

Introduction
Even nowadays visitors of the city of Vienna are overwhelmed by the splendour of its
buildings. The city’s huge amount of nineteenth-century architecture – generally
enormous, historicist in style and above all showing extraordinary wealth in even its
smallest details – overshadows buildings from earlier and later times. The period 1848-
1914 in the architectural history of Vienna is dominated by the result of the order which
emperor Franz Joseph gave at the end of the year 1857. Franz Joseph was only twenty-
seven years old by that time, but was as ‘kaiserlich-königliche Apostolische Majestät’
powerful enough to order the demolition of the walls surrounding the inner city. The
zone which was separating the suburbs from the inner city consisted of walls and a huge
glacis protecting it for invasions of common people out of those suburbs. Vienna was
one of the last European cities which had not yet demolished this medieval protecting
shield. In its place Franz Joseph wished to develop a mighty boulevard-like street,
showing the splendour of ‘his’ city, but also protecting the inner city against invasions
from the outskirts by making possible fast movements of army troops.
Robert Musil coined the word ‘Kakanien’ in his novel Der Mann ohne
Eigenschaften. It became the widespread and famous word for the Habsburg monarchy
and especially its capital Vienna: ‘wie vieles Merkwürdige lieβe sich über dieses [...]

16 Of the poet Schmelzl, as quoted in: Bermann, Moriz, Alt- und Neu-Wien. Geschichte der Kaiserstadt und ihrer
Umgebungen. Seit dem Enstehen bis auf den heutigen Tag und in allen Beziehungen zur gesammten Monarchie (Vienna,
Pest and Leipzig 1880) 1184
17 Wiener Zeitung December 25, 1857
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |14

Kakanien sagen! Es war zum Beispiel kaiserlich-königlich und war kaiserlich und
königlich; eines der beiden Zeichen k.k. oder k.u.k. trug dort jede Sache und Person,
aber es bedurfte trotzdem einer Geheimwissenschaft, um immer sicher unterscheiden zu
können, welche Einrichtungen und Menschen k.k. und welche k.u.k. zu rufen waren. Es
nannte sich schriftlich Österreich-Ungarische Monarchie und lieβ sich mündlich
Österreich rufen; mit einem Namen also, den es mit feierlichem Staatsschwur abgelegt
hatte, aber in allen Gefühlsangelegenheiten beibehielt, zum Zeichen, daβ Gefühle
ebenso wichtig sind wie Staatsrecht und Vorschriften nicht den werklichen Lebensernst
bedeuten. Es war nach seiner Verfassung liberal, aber es wurde klerikal regiert. Es wurde
klerikal regiert, aber man lebte freisinnig. Vor dem Gesetz waren alle Bürger gleich, aber
nicht alle waren eben Bürger. Man hatte ein Parlament, welches so gewaltigen Gebrauch
von seiner Freiheit machte, daβ man es gewöhnlich geschlossen hielt.’18

Vienna’s architecture before 1857

Although this thesis is mainly dealing with the second half of the nineteenth century –
more specifically the third quarter of it - , for a good understanding it is necessary to
look at the period before too. Building traditions, culture and not in the least the
existing built environment of the ages before influenced our period. The culture in the
aftermath of the Napoleonic wars was dominated by strengthened absolutistic power
and suppression of all risky revolutionary thoughts of the inhabitants of the Habsburg
monarchy. In the introduction I already discussed how this situation could lead to a
culture of the home, generally called ‘Biedermeier’. The Viennese people were strictly
controlled and feared the political police of Metternich and Sedlnitzky, although they
loved their Habsburg emperor Franz I. This ‘Franzl’ - as the Viennese affectionately
nicknamed him - closed the glacis surrounding the city walls which his predecessor
Joseph II - the ‘Volkskaiser’ – had opened to the public for recreation. In his
tremendous fear of revolution, Franz tried to suppress everything which was directly or
indirectly appearing to become one. A renewed control over the zone between the inner
city and its outskirts as military grounds was just one of the many measures he and his
advisors took. Meanwhile the city was growing and to house its inhabitants, lots of
buildings were built.
Where to start an architectural history of a specific period is always difficult.
One could say that each period has a preceding period with its effects on the following.

18 Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (Hamburg 1978) 33

The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |15

To understand the architectural history of the Viennese Ringstraβe and its bourgeois
builders it is important to get a quick overview of the preceding periods.
Vienna’s history starts in ancient times when on the place where nowadays the
middle of the city’s centre – the Graben – is, a Roman fort called ‘Vindobona’ was
situated. Apart from some underground fundaments, there is nothing left from this
period. Much more influential in the city’s history were the medieval churches, of which
several – like the most important and most famous church of St. Stephan – even
nowadays form essential parts of the city’s silhouette. From the late fifteenth century the
city was the residence of the members of the Habsburg monarchy which came to be
essential to the development of it. From the end of the seventeenth century until
approximately 1740 the splendour of the house Habsburg was reflected in the city’s
architecture. In 1683 the Habsburg troops succeeded in defeating the last Turkish
besieging of the city. Definitively pushing the Ottoman Turks out of the Habsburg
lands, the city of Vienna could come to great wealth. Not only the direct members of
the Habsburg family built their palaces, but also the members of other important noble
families wanted to have their own residences in and around the city. Halfway the
eighteenth century this time of baroque splendour came to an end however. Austria
came to be involved in various wars with Prussia (1740-1748 and 1756-1763), and
whether this was the reason, or, as Thomas Dacosta Kaufmann suggests, it was a
reaction against the excessiveness of the foregoing period, the second half of the
century showed a less extravagant way of building.19 With good reasons one could say
that the whole period between the Viennese baroque until the Ringstraβe-times, is –
architecturally - something like a less great Zwischenzeit between two great epochs.
Although there was built quite a lot – the number of inhabitants was growing with vast
steps – the really big projects had to wait. Under the reign of Maria Theresia (r. 1740-
1780) and her son Joseph II (r. 1780-1790) a different style of building became the
standard. The Allgemeines Krankenhaus which was built by the ‘peoples emperor’ Joseph
II in a slightly decorated and more introvert simple classicism is a good example of it. In
the context of this thesis it is interesting to mention the ‘Schubladlkastenhaus’, a big
house with rented apartments at the Freyung in the city’s centre too. This building has
its ornaments – and is in the eyes of people like Adolf Loos still fully over-decorated –
but it is definitely less pompous. With its ornaments coming slightly out of the face of
the façade and the columns in the central part reduced to pilasters, it is a typical example

19Thomas Dacosta Kaufmann, ‘Architecture and sculpture’, in: Raymond Erickson (ed.), Schubert’s Vienna
(New Haven and London 1997) 147
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |16

of the Josephinian ‘Plattenstil’. Of course there were exceptions to this general picture.
For instance the rich and richly decorated palace of count Rasumofsky - today at the
Rasumofskygasse in Landstraβe, the city’s third district - which was erected around 1800
for this Russian ambassador who became famous through his financial support to
Beethoven.20 But in general the period of the Biedermeier-culture of 1815-1848, with its
cosy little coffeehouses, homes and little theatres for the people had its precursors in the
period before.
Typical for Vienna is its tradition of building houses with rentable apartments.
Earlier than elsewhere – if it happened there at all - this building type was superseding
the old types of (little) houses owned and inhabited by only one family. Ofcourse
Vienna had had its ‘Bürgerhäuser’ before. As Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini in 1442 wrote
about the houses in Vienna: ‘Der Bürger Häuser sind hoch, geräumig, wohlgeziert, gut
und fest gebaut; ein angenehmer Hofraum, mächtige Zimmer, die sie Stuben nennen
und heizen, denn der Winter ist sehr rau. Überall sind Fenster von Glas und Türen,
Gitter meist von Eisen, die Vögel singen in den Stuben und man erblickt zahlreiches
und köstliches Gerät. Den Rossen und jeder Gattung Zugvieh öffnen sie weite Ställe.
Die Häuser tragen ihre Giebel hoch, sie sind mit Geschmack und Pracht verziert, meist
von innen und auβen bemalt, durchaus von Stein, die Dächer aber leider meist mit
Schindeln, wenigere mit Ziegeln gedeckt. Wo du zu einem Bürger gehest, meinst du in
eines Fürsten Haus zu treten. – Die Keller sind so tief und so weit, daβ das allgemeine
Sprichwort gilt, es gebe ein oberirdisches und ein unterirdisches Wien.’21
Kortz mentioned the relative frequent besieging and related destroying of the
city as ground for the loss of most houses from before the seventeenth century.22
According to Bobek and Lichtenberger the phenomenon had its origins in the city’s
function as residence. The connected housing necessity of the court’s staff and other
court-related inhabitants compelled to use more dense types of buildings. The
Barockpaläste of the noble families, drafted after the Italian palaces from the Renaissance,
were leading the way in the centre of the city. But also the big religious cloisters in the
city – since Austria had overcome the religious troubles of the Thirty-Years War lots of
fanatic religious orders were founded – had their influence. Most important however,
was the increasing need for houses for the since the mid-eighteen hundreds growing
class of bureaucrats as well as for a growing class of those who became rich by trade.

20 Rasumofsky ordered the three string quartets opus 59

21 As quoted in: Paul Kortz, Wien am Anfang des XX. Jahrhunderts. Ein Führer in technischer und künstlerischer
Richtung, Vol. 2 (Vienna 1906) 403
22 Kortz, Wien, 403
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |17

The already mentioned ‘Schubladlkastenhaus’ is an example of the type of houses which

were built for these kind of people. Lack of space to build and a simultaneously growing
demand for houses in the city were reasons for the building type which became Vienna’s
standard in the following period.23
That this type of making the city more dense in a vertical manner became more
or less standard, does not say that there were no other houses built in the city. Of course
– particularly towards the end of the century – there were lots of ‘villas’, but even in the
city there were some exceptions, like the family house of Mr. Zumbusch.24
It also does not say that there was no discussion about it. The most famous
discussion was that which was launched by the architects Rudolf Eitelberger - an art
historian - and Heinrich Ferstel - the famous Ringstraβe architect. In 1860 they
published a book called Das bürgerliche Wohnhaus und das Wiener Zinshaus.25 Deeply
inspired by the typical Western-European way of building smaller one-family houses
during a tour Ferstel made in 1851 through the Netherlands, Belgium and England, he
and his colleague pleaded for a similar architecture in their hometown Vienna. But their
and others’ efforts failed for various reasons. In the first place the building land was too
expensive to build only a few floors, secondly the building rules were too obstructive
and finally there was the resistance of the people who ordered to build the houses. The
described building type of rentable houses with four floors profited of this situation.26

The specific situation of Vienna’s bourgeoisie

For several hundred years Vienna – as centre of a huge monarchy - had been the
residence of the nobility. As principal city of the Habsburg empire the city’s centre,
surrounding the ‘Burg’ – the central complex of the emperor and his family – was a
conglomeration of palaces of the leading noble families. As an old aristocratic city,
Vienna had a specific relation to its ‘new’ bourgeois inhabitants. That Vienna had been
the monarchy’s centre for many centuries made that its situation differed from for
instance cities in the then centralizing German countries. Old bourgeois families with

23 Hans Bobek and Elisabeth Lichtenberger, Wien: bauliche Gestalt und Entwicklung seit der Mitte des 19.

Jahrhunderts (Graz 1966) 61-62

24 Out of the description of that house: ‘Die bauliche Entwicklung Wiens hat eine Richtung genommen,

welche kaum eine Abweichung gestattet von der typisch gewordenen Anlage des vierstöckigen
‘Zinshauses von möglichst hoher Ertragsfähigkeit’. Das Ausmaass der Baustellen und die Formulirung der
Baugesetze sind allein auf diese Bauart berechnet; der Bau anspruchsloser Familienhäuser ist daher eine
höchst seltene Erscheinung. Das hier dargestellte Haus [...] ist eine dieser Aushahmen und nur für eine
Familie bereichnet’, in: ‘Wohnhaus des Prof. K. Zumbusch in Wien. Von Architekt G. Niemann.’, in:
Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 41 (Vienna 1876) 68
25 Rudolf Eitelberger and Heinrich Ferstel, Das bürgerliche Wohnhaus und das Wiener Zinshaus (Vienna 1860)
26 Wilhelm Doderer in Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst (1870), as quoted in: George Niemann and Ferd. von

Feldegg, Theophilos Hansen und seine Werke (Vienna 1893) 18

The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |18

old traditions and wealth as were to find in the Reichs- and Hanse-cities in Germany did
not live in Vienna. The group of bourgeois people who competed with the old nobility
was of inhomogeneous composition and was primarily formed by immigrants from all
parts of the monarchy, from the German Empire and even from the Levant.27 In the
next chapter we will have a closer look at several of those immigrant individuals:
Königswarter from Frankfurt, Epstein and Drasche from the Bohemian parts of the
monarchy, Schey and Todesco from Hungary, Dumba from Macedonia and Ephrussi
from Russia.
The Viennese bourgeoisie did not come in only one year in the more important
circles of the monarchy’s residence town, of course. Already in the eighteenth century
under the more or less ‘enlightened’ rulers the bourgeoisie got chances at the
economical level. Already in the first half of the nineteenth century some of them
became extremely successful in spite of the restrictions of the post-Napoleonic era, in
the German lands called ‘Vormärz’. Concerning the place of members of the
bourgeoisie in the social structure of the empire, the main difference in social structure
before and after 1848 was the participation of bourgeois in political affairs. Before they
were not allowed to enter any higher posts of the bureaucracy or the army. Afterwards
these chances were more generally allowed. With the introduction of the constitutional
system – although it did not mean very much in Austria of those days – the bourgeois
wishes to join the ruling classes became easier to fulfil. It is good to keep in mind that
these did not include the wish to chase the nobility: the top of the bourgeoisie just
wanted to join its privileged situation. And to reach this higher status, they tried to
imitate the habits of the noble inhabitants of the old residence city.28
This imitation perhaps first of all included the way of housing oneself: the wish
to live in a palais like the nobility did, to show one’s richness and one’s position in the
society. Already in the first half of the nineteenth century examples of these wishes
existed. The palais of archduchess Marie-Christine, a daughter of Maria Theresia was
becoming the residence of the banker Arnstein.29 But it was in the second half of the
century that the aspirations of the bourgeoisie and the possibilities to fulfil them met
each other.

27 Franz Baltzarek, Alfred Hoffmann and Hannes Stekl, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft der Wiener Stadterweiterung.
Die Wiener Ringstrasse – Bild einer Epoche V (Wiesbaden 1975) 281
28 Jean-Paul Bled, Wien. Residenz-Metropole-Hauptstadt (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar 2002) 232
29 ibidem, 234
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |19

Social structure and social change in the second half of the nineteenth century
Only in the second half of the nineteenth century Vienna grew to the proportions of a
metropolis: in 1840 the number of inhabitants of the agglomeration Vienna - i.e. city
centre, Vorstädte and not yet annexed Vororte - was 400.000, seventy years later - in 1910
- did it pass the two million to reach its top in 1918 with 2.238.000 inhabitants.30
Although the increase of population by a growing birth rate and – later on – a
decreasing death rate was not to overlook, the increase of the city’s population was
principally due to immigration. Not so much from the Hungarian parts of the monarchy
– which, even more since the ‘Ausgleich’ or compromise of 1867 had its own big city
Budapest, a competitor to Vienna - but mostly from other regions. Firstly Germans
from the Sudetenland, most of them bourgeois people who in Vienna came to be
important in manufacture-industrial enterprises, but also in the bureaucracy and in the
intelligentsia. A growing part of the immigrants, secondly, were Czechs and also
Germans from the overpopulated agrarian regions of Bohemia and Moravia. They came
to work in the industry or – as a greater part of them did – found a job as servant in one
of the thousands of Viennese houses. The third group was formed by Jewish
immigrants from the Sudeten lands, Hungary and East-Galicia. They came to be
important players in the trade- and money business of the city. This last group was
generally most successful in penetrating the Bildungsbürgertum - or learned bourgeois
circles - and later on also became important in other parts of the city’s upper jobs. Only
during the last decades before the First World War the increase of population was
slowing down.31
The political situation in the city was rather strange. The general thrust in
progress which was in Vienna as great as in the rest of Europe and the Western World,
inspired and drove the bourgeoisie to a positive way of watching and participating in
political developments. The ‘democratic’ revolutions of 1848-1849 had been abortive in
Central Europe, not in the least because people representing the bourgeoisie withdrew
during the revolutions themselves. In this regions of Europe something else was needed
to implement the liberal ordering of society. Of course the new industrial chances, but
in addition - and in a political sense more important – the weakening of the political
hegemony of the court by several military defeats. In 1859 in Italy (Solferino) and in
1866 (Königsgratz) in a war with Prussia, the Habsburg army endured enormous losses
and with it its supreme general - the Habsburg monarch - lost a good deal of his power.

30 Hans Bobek and Elisabeth Lichtenberger, Wien: bauliche Gestalt und Entwicklung seit der Mitte des 19.

Jahrhunderts (Graz 1966) 31

31 ibidem, 32-33
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |20

The German liberals in the monarchy meanwhile used the confusion to come to power
in Austria. They were in the government between 1861 and 1878 and in the city of
Vienna even longer, until 1894-1895. Although the words ‘liberal’ and ‘democratic’
nowadays have completely other definitions, one could say that the things the liberals
achieved in this period were not unimportant.
In the year 1867 a solution to the Hungarian question was achieved in the form
of a compromise in which the monarchy was divided in an Austrian and a Hungarian
part. Divided by an unimportant little river called ‘Leitha’, these parts were generally
called Cisleithania and Transleithania. Although the compromise is hardly to call a
success of the liberal party itself, an element of it surely is. The Dezemberverfassung was
launched at the same time. In addition to general democratic measures, the liberals
achieved the abolition of several elements which disturbed a free market.32
Vienna as an autonomous city had a particular position within the empire. Here
the liberals had their home and their work. The city was something like a an
autonomous state in the empire. It therefore had special privileges but at the same time
it also was better watched by the central government. A new mayor for instance, had
according to article XXII of the ‘Reichsgemeindegesetz’ to be affirmed by the emperor
himself. Under the political leadership of Adreas Zelinka (mayor in the years 1861-1868)
and even more under his successor Cajetan Felder (from 1868 until 1878) the liberals
accomplished great things for the city, but generally only on the infrastructural level.
The liberal way of governing a city was stimulating the economic and industrial chances
of the city’s inhabitants. Where specific governmental action was required they took
measures, but if possible they chose to hand over the development of the city to the free
market. That this way of governing a city had many positive consequences is of course
out of the question: the liberals organized for instance the education system, the water
supplies (1873), and the regulation of the Danube (1870-1875) better than ever before.
But by putting the city’s transport, the energy supplies and also large parts of the
building practice in the market’s hands, not only great things were achieved for those
who were better off, but also extremely bad conditions of living in the city’s slums
existed without any real measurements taken to improve them. And even those
measurements which – like the new city’s water supplies – were taken for the less
fortunate members of society, were not principally thought in their advantage: a better
organized supply of better water would - as the argumentation went – increase the

32 Peter Csendes and Ferdinand Opll, Wien. Geschichte einer Stadt, part III: Von 1790 bis zur Gegenwart

(Vienna, Cologne and Weimar 2006) 193

The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |21

people’s health and consequently make their working potentials more profitable. In
addition to that, the taxes for water supplies were to be paid per capita, which resulted
in enormous additional costs principally for the poorer inhabitants of the city.33
As we have seen in the previous chapter, the second half of the nineteenth
century was a period in the Central-European states during which some lucky people
from the original ‘third class’ could profit from the new gulf of industrialization and
other developments in the modernization of the region. As principle city of the
enormous Habsburg monarchy, Vienna worked like a magnet: not only to those poor
people who tried to get better livings in the big city, but also to those already more well-
off businessmen of all sorts who decided to move their capital to the city, to enlarge it
to unknown extreme proportions. As competitors to the nobility, they formed what is
generally called a ‘Zweite Gesellschaft’, or ‘second society’. A significant part of those
success stories is linked with the history of Jewish families.

Jews in Vienna
The emancipation of the Viennese Jews was ‘completed’ in 1867 with the new
constitution. The centuries before they had – as elsewhere in Europe – met periods of
harsh oppression, alternated with periods of tolerance. Under the ‘people’s emperor’
Joseph II, Jews in Vienna were allowed all kinds of trade, to attend classes at schools
and the university and in general were motivated to assimilate. However, this was more
inspired by the economical potential of this group of inhabitants than from an
enlightened point of view. It would take decades before Jews were allowed to own land.
To keep the number of Jews in the city small, a distinction was made between ‘tolerated’
and ‘not tolerated’ Jewish families. The first group (66 families in 1787, 197 in 1847) was
allowed permanent living in the city, the second had to apply for it – and pay the
necessary taxes - regularly. Under the reign of the new emperor Franz, the process of
emancipation was slowed down again. Measurements – some of them dating from the
middle ages and already abolished by Joseph I – were taken to renew the control of the
Jews. But along the financial path, some Jews succeeded to increase their position in
society and formed a new ‘financial aristocracy’ already before the revolutions of 1848.
The gap between those richer and tolerated Jews who professed a liberal form of their
religion or even let themselves baptize, and those large amounts of less well-off and
more traditional Jews was widening already then. In the second half of the century this
process was going on. Contrary to the wishes of the government and the mostly

33 Csendes and Opll, Wien, 195-197

The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |22

Catholic petty-bourgeois inhabitants, Jewish immigration in the city proceeded. In 1860

some 6200 Jews lived in the city (2,2 percent of the total number of inhabitants); in 1870
already 40.200 (6,6 percent); and another decade later the Viennese Jews with 72.600
reached 10 percent of the total Viennese population.34
Although the direct results of the 1848 revolts had been rather harsh for the
well-represented Jewish insurgents, the following period was one of ongoing
emancipation – although the ‘Silvesterpatent’ of 1851 restricted some Jewish rights
again. In 1849 the new emperor Franz Joseph I accepted the Israelite parish of Vienna
and during his reign took various other Jew-friendly measures.35 In 1860 finally36 the
long awaited allowance of land owning for Jews was signed.37 By that time, some of
Vienna’s Jews had become extremely rich and could afford to buy one or more of the
expensive building lots in what came to be Vienna’s ‘project of the century’, the new
Ringstraβe area.

The ‘Allerhöchst genehmigter Plan der Stadterweiterung’ of 1860

34 Csendes and Opll, Wien, 155-157

35 Until the fall of the empire, 450 Jewish families were raised to the peerage, 63 of them in the
‘Freiherrenstand’.
36 In fact only with the ‘Staatsgrundgesetz’ of 1867 the assimilation of the Viennese Jews was formally

completed.
37 Csendes and Opll, Wien, 157
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |23

The Ringstraβe project

It was in 1848 at a meeting in Olmütz that emperor Ferdinand I declared his decision to
renounce the Habsburg throne, ‘da es in so bewegter Zeit jüngerer Kräfte bedürfe, das
begonnene Werk fortzuführen und zu gedeihlichem Ende zu bringen.’ 38 At the same
time his brother Archduke Franz Karl renounced the throne and therefore his eldest
son – born August the 18th, 1830 in Franz Karl’s marriage with Princess Sophie of
Bavaria – became emperor Franz Joseph I, at that time only eighteen years old. The
period of his reign would be of almost39 unknown duration: it lasted sixty-eight
turbulent years until his death in 1916, when he as eighty-six year old emperor left his
country in the middle of a war which would finally mean the end of a centuries-old
powerful empire.
Already in the eighteenth century plans to join Vienna’s old inner city with the
surrounding suburbs were made, but only after Napoleon’s destroying of the Burg
bastion in 1809 real plans for the area between the city and the suburbs were made. But
although the fortifications had proved their weakness in 1809, everyone appears to have
been convinced that a kind of fortification was necessary.40 In 1850 the Vorstädte were
joined with the inner city. On the sixth of March of that year the thirty-four suburbs -
the Vorstädte, not yet the Vororte - were made part of the city, not in the least because
of enormous housing shortage.41 But this connection existed only at the administrative
level. The physical connection was limited to twelve gates in the old walls surrounding
the inner city.42 Because of military objections, the larger part of the glacis was kept in
function. It was only two years before after all, that ‘the people’ from the suburbs had
stormed the city and that those old fortifications proved their use. The military
considered itself to be more or less the rescuers of the monarchy since they put down
the Viennese Oktoberrevolution under field Marshall Windisch-Grätz. A - also further
reaching - split between the wishes of the city government and the military obstructed

38 As quoted in: Moriz Bermann, Alt- und Neu-Wien. Geschichte der Kaiserstadt und ihrer Umgebungen. Seit dem

Entstehen bis auf den heutigen Tag und in allen Beziehungen zur gesammten Monarchie (Vienna, Pest and Leipzig
1880) 1123
39 Only the reign of Louis XIV (r. 1643-1715) officially lasted longer, but because the first period of his

reign (until 1661) was under the rule of cardinal Mazarin, one could state that Franz Joseph I has been the
longest reigning monarch in the history of Europe.
40 Elisabeth Springer, Geschichte und Kulturleben der Wiener Ringstrasse. Die Wiener Ringstrasse - Bild einer

Epoche II (Wiesbaden 1979) 77

41 Eugen Meβner, Die innere Stadt Wien. Ein Beitrag zur Heimatkunde des 1. Wiener Gemeindebezirkes (Vienna

and Leipzig 1928) 16

42 Hans Bobek and Elisabeth Lichtenberger, Wien: bauliche Gestalt und Entwicklung seit der Mitte des 19.

Jahrhunderts (Graz 1966) 42

The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |24

new plans.43 Several years later, in 1854, a building permission was given for only a small
part between the Neu- and Salztor – seventy-one building lots in total.44
After a long prepared period of discussion and precarious conversations – in
which primeminister Alexander Bach played the most important role - between the
different parties in the government of both the city and the empire, on the twentieth of
december 1857, a handwriting of emperor Franz Joseph in which he ordered the
demolishing of the walls and other elements of the fortifications was published. Five
days later the whole text was published on the frontpage of the Wiener Zeitung.45
‘Zur Erlangung eines Grundplanes ist ein Konkurs auszuschreiben [...]’, the
emperor wrote. ‘Für die Beurtheilung der eingelangten Grundpläne ist eine Kommission
aus Repräsentanten der Ministerien des Innern, des Handels, ferner Meiner Militär-
Central-Kanzlei, der Obersten Polizei-Behörde, einem Abgeordneten der Nieder-
Österreichischen Statthalterei und dem Bürgermeister der Stadt Wien, dann aus
geeigneten, von dem Ministerium des Innern im Einvernehmen mit den übrigen hier
erwähnten Centralstellen zu bestimmenden Fachmännern unter dem Vorsitze eines
Sektions-Chefs des Ministeriums des Innern zu bilden und sind drei von dieser
Kommission als die besten erkannten Grundpläne mit Preisen [...] zu betheilen. Die
hiernach als die vorzüglichsten erkannten drei Grundpläne sind Mir zur Schluβfassung
vorzulegen, so wie über die weiteren Modalitäten der Ausführung unter Erstattung der
bezüglichen Anträge Meine Entschlieβung einzuholen sein wird.’46
This competition was given as closing date July 31 of the following year. No less
than eighty-five plans were handed in, but only a couple of them were judged to be
suitable. Not a single plan was assessed well enough to be implemented in the city.47 The
price-winning projects were worked out to a new single plan which was finally approved
by the emperor at the eighth of October 1859.48 The plan of course had its opponents,
but was generally judged very positively in the public opinion.49
There are some interesting things to say about the typology of the urbanistic
design of the Ringstraβe. As a broad ‘boulevard’ with rows of trees and closed street
walls of approximately equal height, at first sight it appears to be a typical baroque

43 Elisabeth Springer, Geschichte und Kulturleben der Wiener Ringstrasse. Die Wiener Ringstrasse - Bild einer
Epoche II (Wiesbaden 1979) 78
44 Eugen Meβner, Die innere Stadt Wien. Ein Beitrag zur Heimatkunde des 1. Wiener Gemeindebezirkes (Vienna

and Leipzig 1928) 16

45 Wiener Zeitung, December 25, 1857, frontpage
46 ibidem
47 Moriz Bermann, Alt- und Neu-Wien. Geschichte der Kaiserstadt und ihrer Umgebungen. Seit dem Entstehen bis auf

den heutigen Tag und in allen Beziehungen zur gesammten Monarchie (Vienna, Pest and Leipzig 1880) 1182
48 Springer, Geschichte und Kulturleben der Wiener Ringstrasse, 147
49 ibidem, 105
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thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |25

street. But one aspect of the true baroque version is absent: the vista. The Viennese
Ringstraβe folds itself instead in various straight parts, unequal in length and relative
angle, around the inner city. Of course some of the different straight parts offer a nice
view on some or another monument, but it is clearly not the main theme of it. The
placement of those monuments along the Ringstraβe instead of on its axes, is another
difference. And the whole concept of a street between the inner city and the former
suburbs is different too: to connect those two entities, one would expect several radial
streets which support the movement and link between them, not a street to cross. Carl
Schorske read in this aspect the governmental will to keep military control over the city:
If renewed revolts would arise, the military could quickly be present, transporting itself
easier along a broad road than through narrow alleys.50

The emperor already in 1857 gave some information about the way of financing
the enormous project: ‘Jener Theil der durch Auflassung der Umwallung der
Fortifikationen und Stadtgräben gewonnenen Area und Glacis-Gründe, welcher nach
Maβgabendes zu entwerfenden Grundplanes nicht einer anderweitigen Bestimmung
vorbehalten wird, ist als Baugrund zu verwenden und der daraus gewonnene Erlös hat
zur Bildung eines Baufondes zu dienen, aus welchem die durch diese Maβregel dem
Staatsschatze erwachsenden Auslagen, insbesondere auch die Kosten der Herstellung
öffentlicher Gebäude, so wie die Verlegeung der noch nöthigen Militär-Anstalten
bestritten werden sollen.’51 The selling of separate building lots to private buyers was
finally announced in the Wiener Zeitung of May 23 of the year 1860. Interesting to
consider is the fact that it was in the same year that an important change of the law

50 Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (New York 1981) 30-31

51 Wiener Zeitung December 25, 1857, frontpage
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thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |26

permitted Jews to possess (building) land.52 This is important to know, because many of
the people rich enough to buy one or even several of the very expensive building lots in
the Ringstraβe area were Jews.
To stimulate the building in the city, the government ordered an old method to
get private houses built. A tax-free period of twenty-five or thirty years if finished within
five years (in the other districts this was only eighteen years when finished in five years
and fifteen years when finished in ten years) was offered. This tax-free period must have
been enormously stimulating if one knows that the tax on gross renting yields was no
less than forty percent.53
Mentschl and Otruba learn us something about the restrictions for the
speculators who bought the building lots in the Ringstraβe area. In addition to the
already mentioned measures about building within five years from acquisition, builders
were obligated to entrust the artistic management of their building only to recognised
architects, ‘sodaβ eine Gewähr für die Herstellung schöner und zweckmäβiger Bauten
auf diesem Platze gegeben schien.’54
The Ringstraβe stimulated a new
culture in the city. An interesting
phenomenon for instance, was that of the
‘Ringstraβenkorso’, which was a bourgeois
equivalent of the traditional ‘Praterkorso’. A
mass of well-dressed bourgeois people walked
daily from the Kärntnerstraβe along the
Ringstraβe to the Schwarzenbergplatz. Its aim
wasn’t just strolling. It had a social function too. For the younger persons from rich
families it was the only opportunity to meet each other. Just meeting in a bar or café was
impossible, as was visiting each other at home without an official invitation. The ‘Korso’
along the Ringstraβe meant seeing each other, talking, and hoping to be invited to some
or other soiree.55
Carl Schorske published a nice and very popular book about the Viennese Fin-
de-Siècle, in which one part is dedicated to the city’s architecture. As a preamble to the
famous late nineteenth-century discussion between the ‘modern’ Otto Wagner and the
‘traditional’ Camilio Sitte, Schorske describes the origins and development of the

52 Springer, Geschichte und Kulturleben der Wiener Ringstrasse, 158

53 Bobek and Lichtenberger, Wien: bauliche Gestalt und Entwicklung, 47-48
54 Josef Mentschl, Gustav Otruba, Österreichische Industrielle und Bankiers (Vienna 1965) 114
55 Fred Hennings, Die Ringstrasse. Symbol einer Epoche (Vienna 1977) 59
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Ringstraβe too. Further above I already wrote about an element which he interpreted a
bit too easily, another one is his point about the changing of plans as a result of the
‘bourgeoisification’. They appear more likely to be a construction of Schorske56 than
something corresponding to reality. Of course the period between, say, 1859 and 1873
was a bourgeois period during which bourgeois people did build their palais along the
Ringstraβe, but there is no evidence that some aristocratic or military plans from that
period changed because of it. Probably Schorske mixed this period with the period
before the approval of the plan, during which there was fundamental discussion about
whether or not to build, and keeping or demolishing the fortifications. Times had
changed in a bourgeois period and in the third quarter of the nineteenth century the
power and influence of the Viennese bourgeoisie became stronger than ever before, but
that does not mean that bourgeois buildings were not foreseen and therefore represent a
withdrawing aristocratic power.

The bourgeois palais

As we have seen, the bourgeois palais, and particularly those palaces in the new
Ringstraβe area, meant a chance for its builders to measure themselves with their noble
fellow citizens. Several specific problems arose though, which must prevent us from
concluding a direct typological connection between the new bourgeois houses and their
noble counterparts. According to Mara Reissberger, the bourgeois (zins)palais, was
rather a combination of two types of building which were clearly distinguished in
previous periods: the noble palais and the eighteenth-century bourgeois house. The
traditional bourgeois means of possessing and acquiring capital, of giving one’s
company or parts of it a place in one’s own house, had to be combined with the
traditionally noble manners of representation in beautifully composed rooms.57 This
combination resulted in bourgeois palais which combined those wishes: the apartments
of the building’s owner at the first floor, or ‘beletage’ were grouped around one or - if
possible - several representational rooms, but usually also housed a - or sometimes even
more than one - company (usually at the ground floor), and at the upper floors several
apartments to rent.
Interesting to consider, is the change of function and names of the
representative rooms of the bourgeois palaces compared to their (baroque) aristocratic
counterparts. The bourgeois wished to integrate and belong to the noble layers of society,

Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (New York 1981) 31

56

Renate Wagner-Rieger and Mara Reissberger, Theophil von Hansen, Die Wiener Ringstrasse - Bild einer
57

Epoche VIII (Wiesbaden 1980) 218

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thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |28

but only very rarely really succeeded in doing so. The old aristocratic traditions of giving
huge parties to show the richness and power of the people who could afford to organize
them, were for the new bourgeois elites on the one side ground to build halls which
resembled the aristocratic party halls in their new houses. On the other side however,
they were hardly ever able to invite the same sort of people to their own parties, and as a
result were obliged to invent bourgeois counterparts of them at home. The
representative halls in the bourgeois palaces are therefore meant for and named after
typical bourgeois ways of living and gatherings. The big halls became ‘salons’ for
welcoming, eating, dancing, playing, making or hearing music, playing billiard or
smoking. What in aristocratic circles had been a demonstration of power - not in the
least in political sense – of a ruler and his family, became in the bourgeois variant rather
a demonstration of personal wealth or cultural ‘Bildung’.58 The Viennese Ringstraβe
palais was the typical built realization of the mixed life of the members of the ‘zweite
Gesellschaft’.
The appearance of a building naturally had to do with more than only the
representational rooms of its interior. The façade was the surface which explained the
passing observers what the one who ordered the building wanted to let them think of
him: the ‘appearance surface’ pre-eminently. The façade of a Viennese palais of the
Ringstraβe area can be fitted generally in a type of classical vertical differentiation,
representing more or less the worlds behind. Above a firmly designed basement, the
beletage of the owner also expressed the richness in the façade with balconies, more
ornamentation and larger windows than the apartments above. This middle part of the
façade was closed by a more or less decorated cornice. The exact design of such a
building and its façade depended on several aspects.
First of all there were the ‘natural’ givens of the form and measures of the
building lot. In the general plan for the Ringstraβe area a possibly optimal proportion
was provided for as many as possible lots, but of course not every parcel had an ideal
form.
Secondly there were the governmental building regulations which had to be
observed. Those regulations were quite strict for the new private buildings in the
Ringstraβe area and contained - apart from prescribed building heights and minimal
heights of the rooms inside - also rules for the choice of the architect of the building.59

58 Wagner-Rieger and Reissberger, Theophil von Hansen, 218

59 Bobek and Lichtenberger, Wien: bauliche Gestalt und Entwicklung, 27
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thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |29

Which – apart from an assurance that the new buildings were to be built safely - surely
had to do with the governmental wish to get ‘nice’ buildings along its Ringstraβe.
As a third aspect which influenced the eventual appearance of the building, we
can consider the wishes of the builders and the way in which they transmitted those
wishes to the design their architect made. This point is of crucial significance in this
thesis and therefore will be explored in detail in the next chapters.
Finally another ‘basic’ aspect has to be mentioned here. To build a building, the
technique of building is of fundamental importance. Of course this point seems to be
evident, but it is interesting to consider it a bit longer. For the nineteenth century - as we
all know - was a century of enormous technical innovation, not in the least in the
building sector. The fabrication of elements for the huge iron constructions of bridges,
towers and other formerly unknown impressive buildings (one only has to think about
the world exhibitions where several impressive achievements were reached: Crystal
Palace in London 1851, the Rotunde in Vienna 1873, the Eiffel tower in Paris 1889)
obliged the building sector to produce their products industrially. And together with the
new chances the new technical innovations offered – one can think for instance about
new possibilities to span larger rooms with less material -, the new industrial production
also had another influence on the building of smaller, technically less prestigious
projects as a Ringstraβe palais. In earlier times ornaments on buildings were designed
and made per piece and generally made out of natural stone. And also for important
monuments build in the second half of the nineteenth century, this expensive option
usually was chosen. For less rich, but not unwise bourgeois builders in – and also
outside – the Ringstraβe area the technical innovations meant a chance to let their
houses decorate with industrially produced ornaments made out of terracotta or plaster
which cost a fraction of those made out of natural materials but had approximately the
same appearance.
Techniques of simulating luxurious building materials were not restricted to the
ornaments. Also the rest of the buildings was what we condescendingly could call ‘fake’.
Contrary to their rich appearance all palais in the Ringstraβe area are built with ordinary
brickwork covered with a layer of pretending plaster.60 Of course it is not the aim of this
thesis to condemn this kind of building. A comprehension of it, though, is necessary
trying to understand anything of the choices builders and their architects had. And the

60see for instance: Paul Kortz (ed.), Wien am Anfang des XX. Jahrhunderts. Ein Führer in technischer und
künstlerischer Richtung Vol. 1 (Vienna 1905) 29
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |30

same is true for another element of the practical aspects of building, that of how the
city’s building industry was organized.

The organization of Vienna’s building industry

That the actual practical building on the place where had been fortifications for
hundreds of years was not an easy job we can imagine. In the Allgemeine Bauzeitung we
can read about problems building some houses at the place of the former Schotten
bastion: ‘Nachdem der Bau dieser Häuser in dem ehemaligen Stadtgraben fiel,
verursachte die Herstellung der Fundamente grosse Schwierigkeit, und wurden
theilweise übereinander liegende Keller ausgeführt; auch mussten alte Fortifikations-
Mauern, welche quer über den Platz liefen, entfernt werden. Dabei wurde ein
unterirdischer, zirka 3 Meter breiter und 5 Meter hoher Gang durchschnitten, welcher
aus der inneren Stadt gegen das glacis in der richtung auf den Platz des gegenwärtig im
Bau befindlichen Rahthauses führte.’61 These and other kind of problems which had to
be solved during or better before the actual building, needed a well-organized building
industry.
To understand the Viennese building industry, it is important to know that in
the year 1848 something happened which would change the kind of obtaining building
land fundamentally. In that year the ‘Grundentlastung’ was ordered, which meant that
the land in the city was detached from its former noble owners, and in the following
years became speculation object as every other property. In the whole city rich people,
but also – especially I should say – ‘Baugesellschaften’ or building companies bought
building land and speculated with it, with or even without having built on it.62 The rich
private people and families which built one or several houses for themselves are subject
of the following chapter. Although some of them were very rich and could afford to
build several houses, most of them didn’t have the same influence in the city’s building
industry as the building companies had. In fact these companies were the actual builders
of the city. Therefore it is good to learn something about them too, before learning
about some individuals in the following chapter.
The general opinion about those building companies was rather mixed. They
were not only competitors on the market of building land where also private builders
tried to come to fortune, but they also speculated with building land in such a hard way
– most of the times without even having built on it – that the prices rose into heaven. It

61 ‘Gebäudegruppe am Franzensring. Von Architekt Emil Ritter von Förster.’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 43

(Vienna 1878) 44
62 Bobek and Lichtenberger, Wien: bauliche Gestalt und Entwicklung, 51-52
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |31

is interesting to know that in the third quarter of the nineteenth century only two
hundred houses were built by building companies63, most of them in the Ringstraβe
area. If one combines that with the fact that in Vienna more than thirty building
companies were active before the depression of 1873 and had a total fortune of 250
million Gulden, we can imagine that their main business in fact was speculation.64
During the whole second half of the nineteenth century Vienna should have
looked like a building excavation, the numbers of built houses and other buildings were
enormous. Bermann gives us some interesting information about the building practice
in the year 1861. For instance about the number of building permissions which were
provided in that year. No less than 768 of those ‘Baubewilligungen’ were provided, of
which 40 for new buildings in the Ringstraβe area: a huge amount for a city which only
counted 9572 houses in the following year.65
But that those successes also had their reverse, may be clear. In the years of the
big building boom in Vienna – as well as in other cities – there were ‘mit förmlicher
Bauwuth allenthalben mächtige Miethskasernen giftpilzartig aus dem Boden
hervorgestampft.’66 And it is not very difficult to conclude from the style of this quote
from an article of Kadisch in the Allgemeine Bauzeitung, that bad building practice was
rather rule than exception in the less luxurious parts of the city. Thousands of very small
apartments were built to house the workers families who had come to Vienna to search
- mostly unfortunately - a better living. The complaints about this situation were
innumerable: ‘Man kann Wohnung für Wohnung abgehen, so fehlt alles, was wir als
Grundlage gesunden bürgerlichen Lebens zu sehen gewohnt sind. Die Wohnung ist nur
eine Schutzdecke vor den Unbilden der Witterung, ein Nachtlager, das bei der Enge, in
der sich Menschen drängen, bei dem Mangel an Ruhe und Luft und Reinlichkeit, nie
dem erschöpften Körper zur Ruhestätte werden kann. Diese Wohnungen bieten keine
Behaglichkeit und keine Erquickung. Sie haben keinen Reiz für den von der Arbeit
Abgemühten. Wer in sie hineingesunken ist oder in sie hineingeboren wurde, muβ
körperlich oder geistig verkümmern und verwelken oder verwildern.’67
There are other relations which have to be discussed in this paragraph: that of
the architects. In Vienna of those days architects were not qualified to hand in their

63 Building companies had their own architecture offices, as we can conclude from the following passage:

‘Das Projekt wurde im Architektur-Bureau der Wiener Baugesellschaft verfasst und der Bau von da aus
geleitet.’ In: ‘Wohnhaus der Herren Lieben und Auspitz. Wien, Franzensring Nr. 14. Ausgeführt von der
Wiener Baugesellschaft unter der Direktion C. Schumann.’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 45 (Vienna 1880) 96
64 Bobek and Lichtenberger, Wien: bauliche Gestalt und Entwicklung, 52
65 Bermann, Alt- und Neu-Wien. 1160
66 M. Kadisch, ‘Moderne Wohnverhältnisse’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, Vol. 1895 (Vienna 1895) 38
67 E. v. Philippovich, as quoted in: Bobek and Lichtenberger, Wien: bauliche Gestalt und Entwicklung, 60
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thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |32

designs to the ‘Bauamt’ without the subscription of a ‘Baumeister’.68 That means that
architects were responsible for the artistic part of the design, but needed a qualified
person to proof the technical aspects. The Baumeister was responsible for the
realisation of a building too. This does not mean that the Baumeister in fact was the
more influential or experienced person.69 In general there was a connection between
architects and Baumeister which lasted longer than only one project.70
The other relations of the architects were those with their customers, which –
for the not-monumental buildings, most of which were ordered by the government -
could be private builders, but also one of the ‘Baugesellschaften’. Architects had to fulfil
the wishes of their customers. If they had to build a house for them, they had to build a
house in which the apartment of the first floor was as nice as possible. The architect
Karl Schumann wrote about the difficulties an architect had in these kind of
assignments: ‘Der Architekt musste selbstverständlich bei der Eintheilung solcher
Wohnhäuser bemüht sein, vor Allem im Hauptgeschosse den Wünschen des Bauherrn
in Bezug auf Anzahl, Grösse und Lage der einzelnen Räume zu entsprechen, durfte aber
nie aus dem Auge verlieren, dass er in den obern Stockwerken bei der Eintheilung der
kleineren Wohnungen möglicherweise auf Hindernisse stossen werde, welche seine,
wenn auch noch so gute Eintheilung des hauptgeschosses unmöglich machen könnten.
Die Lösung der Aufgabe wurde durch die in mancher Hinsicht strengen Vorschriften
der Wiener Bauordnung oft sehr erschwert.’71
But architects could be speculators themselves too. An anecdotic biography will
make clear in what kind of excesses this could result. The architect Karl Tietz was one
of those architects (the later on famous Otto Wagner was another). Tietz originally
came from West-Prussia and worked his way up from unimportant bricklayer’s pupil to
employee of Theophil Hansen. He worked extraordinarily hard to fullfill his desire to
buy the whole Ringstraβe and build on it, without having enough money to do that
though. In only one year (1869) he built no less than thirty-six houses. Two years later
he had to pay for this exploiting his own body: he became mad and had to be admitted
in a madhouse where he died a couple of years later, only fourty-two years old.72 Of

68 Wagner-Rieger and Reissberger, Theophil von Hansen, 205

69 In the official documents about the realization of the Palais Epstein in the archive of the Viennese
Baupolizei, we can read (Letter of the ‘Magistrat der k.k. Haupt- und Residenzstadt Wien’, Vienna,
February 6, 1872) that the young Otto Wagner (who only later on would become well-known for his own
buildings) was the Baumeister.
70 Friedrich Pannosch, Die Wohnbauten der Architekten Julius Romano und August Schwendnwein in Wien 1860-

1865 (Magisterarbeit of the University of Vienna, 2005) 12

71 Karl Schumann, ‘Wohnhaus des Herrn Ludwig Ladenburg in Wien. Opernring Nr. 17.’, in: Allgemeine

Bauzeitung, 31 (Vienna 1866) 341

72 Fred Hennings, Die Ringstrasse. Symbol einer Epoche (Vienna 1977) 56
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thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |33

course it is possible that he became mad for other reasons, but the anecdote shows how
extremely hard some people worked to ‘keep in the race’.

‘Wienerberger Ziegelfabriks- und Bau-Gesellschaft’ and the prefabricated ornaments

At the end of the 1860s, Vienna had thirty-two building companies, of which the most
famous were the ‘allgemeine österreichische Baugesellschaft’, the ‘Wiener
Baugesellschaft’ and the ‘Wienerberger Ziegelfabriks- und Baugesellschaft’.73
As we have seen, the enormous building boom in the sixties and seventies of the
nineteenth century required new methods for the production of the historicist
ornaments. Were ornaments and other architectural parts in earlier periods made by the
many hands of sculptors or, if not made out of natural stone, at least produced by hand,
from the nineteenth century on, a trend of mechanised production is discernible. With
the Viennese building boom of the Ringstraβe, it became the standard, not in the least
in the hands of Heinrich Drasche as director of the Wienerberger concern.74
To learn about the building practice and the choices architects and their
costumers had, is of great importance in the scope of this thesis. If we know what the
possibilities were for the decoration of a house, we may come to understand something
of the choices the ‘building couples’ of architects and customers made. And this
understanding is important if we want to learn something about their relation, about
their cooperation in making a building which represented its owner and principal
inhabitant.
As they wrote in their own publication of 1873, Wienerberger made ornaments
in all styles, drawn - most of them - by renowned architects. Among those architects
were Theophil Hansen and Heinich Ferstel. But they didn’t only design ornaments for
the Wienerberger concern, they themselves used the prefabricated (and pre-designed!)
ornaments in their designs too.75 Special catalogues with hundreds of prefabricated
ornaments were made to offer the firm’s clients a wide choice. These books contained
pages with drawings of the ornaments and corresponding pages with lists of further
details about measurements, weights, materials and prices.76 About the ornaments
factory in Inzersdorf: ‘Die reiche und werthvolle Sammlung der schönsten Modelle in
allen Stylarten, durchgängig nach Zeichnungen der renomiertesten Architekten

73 Bermann, Alt- und Neu-Wien, 1168

74 Johann Kräftner, Wienerberger Bau- und Kunstkeramik (Vienna 1996) 8
75 Die Wienerberger Ziegelfabriks- und Bau-Gesellschaft zur Zeit der Wiener Weltausstellung 1873 (Vienna 1873) 28
76 In the archives of the concern Wienerberger Ziegelindustrie GmbH, we can find some of those interesting

books. Most of the ornaments used in the city’s buildings we can find in these catalogues.
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thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |34

angefertigt, ermöglicht es, aus dem vorhandenen Formenvorrathe rasch für die meisten
Fälle passendes liefern zu können.’77
In the general enthusiasm about the new plans for the Ringstraβe project, some
damping comments were made by an author of Die Presse. This August Zwang warned
for becoming too enthusiast, because as a result of a monopoly position of the brick
production factory78 no solution for the housing shortage could be expected: ‘Die
Fabrication der Ziegel ist nämlich gegenwärtig in Wien zu einer Art von Monopol
geworden, welches ein einziger Industrieller durch allmälige und geschickte Beseitigung
aller seiner Concurrenten thatsächlich ausübt. Wenn nun, in Folge einer Ausdehnung
der steuerfreien Jahre um 15 oder 20% mehr Häuser als bisher gebaut würden, so stiege
unser Industrieller höchst wahrscheinlich von 22 fl. per Tausend auf 26 fl. und die
neuen Häuser wären trotz des Opfers der Regierung grade so theuer wie früher. Der
ganze Unterschied bestände darin, daβ die Steuer statt in den Staatssäckel in einen
Privatsäckel flieβen würde.’79

Styles of the Ringstraβe buildings

Although writing about style is not the main subject of this thesis, it is important to
discuss the essentials of the various styles in the Ringstraβe area also in this context.80
The contemporaries were talking about style and a specific architectural style was
generally chosen to indicate something about the building it was ‘covering’. The
historicist styles which were used in the Ringstraβe area became so typical of the time
and of the place that one could generally speak of one ‘Ringstraβenstil’, although in fact
it were many at the same time.
So historicism is the name for a style which in fact was more than one style. And
it was this multiform character which also distinguished it from other – older – neo-
styles. Because of course it was not a new phenomenon that older styles were revalued
and reused. One should only think about the origin of the word ‘renaissance’ to
understand what I mean. But not only the Renaissance in its fifteenth-century form of
revaluing the classical examples from Athens and Rome was a renaissance. Several other
periods showed a revival of older styles as a means to renew with older values. But

77 Die Wienerberger Ziegelfabriks- und Bau-Gesellschaft zur Zeit der Wiener Weltausstellung 1873 (Vienna 1873) 28
78 Although the name of the factory wasn’t mentioned directly, we can suppose the authors meant the
Wienerberger concern.
79 August Zang, in: Presse, January 6, 1858, frontpage, as quoted in: Elisabeth Springer, Geschichte und

Kulturleben der Wiener Ringstrasse. Die Wiener Ringstrasse - Bild einer Epoche II (Wiesbaden 1979) 105
80 Fundamental works on styles in the Ringstraβe area are written by Renate Wagner-Rieger. Most of her

work – see for instance: Wiens Architektur im 19. Jahrhundert (Vienna 1970) – is obtainable in most libraries.
It is not necessary therefore to repeat her work on here.
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generally we could say that those former neo-styles were orientated towards one
historical style and period. Historicism was not, and instead oriented rather in functional
terms to historical periods. As we have seen, the public buildings around the Viennese
Ringstraβe are a good example of this phenomenon. The Viennese Rathaus was built in
a Gothic style to reflect the proud character of for instance its Belgian precursors. The
pure Hellenistic forms of the Parlament were the ‘democratic’ answer to the monarchy’s
Baroque plans for the Kaiserforum. So styles were not chosen in the first place for artistic
wishes. A specific style rather functioned as a sign, a reference to a specific historical
epoch and its connected values. It was Gottfried Semper who thought and taught that
enlightened and historically educated people could understand a building built in a
specific style by connecting the impression of it with what they had in memory of
typologically related buildings.81
But it was not only typology of the building which defined which style was
considered to be appropriate. Contemporaries also saw a development in styles during
the period. In Vienna a transition from the Gothic style to the Renaissance was judged
positively. In a piece which was written in honour of Heinrich von Ferstel - who we will
encounter again in the following chapter – the authors explain this development in
connection with the development in Ferstel’s work: ‘Von der Votivkirch zum
Universitätsgebäude, […] auf jenem knappen Raume zusammengedrängt tretet die
architektonische Bewegung in Wien während eines Zeitraumes von dreissig Jahren uns
verkörpert gegenüber. Von der Gothik zur Renaissance! […] die grosse
baugeschichtliche Strömung eines Menschenalters folgt derselben Richtung, welche
durch eine von dem ersten zu dem letzten Werke Heinrich v. Ferstel’s gezogene Linie
bezeichnet werden kann.’82 And further about Gothic architecture more generally in
Germany and Austria: ‘[…] im Sinne der geistigen Bewegung, welche zu Anfang unseres
Jahrhunderts die Wiederaufrichtung der deutschen Nation vorbereitet und begleitet,
durch Auffrischung der Erinnerung an grosse Zeiten der Vergangenheit die Begriffe
Volksthum und Vaterland wieder zum Bewusstsein gebracht hatte, suchte man nun
nach einem nationalen Baustile und meinte ihn in dem gothischen, und nur in diesem,
gefunden zu haben.’83 And also the technical aspects pointed to progression from one
style to the other according to these authors: ‘Heutzutage betrachten wir es als
selbstverständlich, dass bei einem monumentalen Baue die künstlerische

81 Hermann Fillitz, ‘Der Traum von Glück. Das Phänomen des europäischen Historicismus’, in: Werner
Telesko (ed.), Der Traum vom Glück. Die Kunst des Historicismus in Europa (Vienna 1996) 15-16
82 Wiener Bau-Gesellschaft, Heinrich Freiherr von Ferstel. Festschrift zur feierlichen Enthüllung seiner Büste in der

K.K. Universität zu Wien (Vienna 1886) 1

83 ibidem, 1-2
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thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |36

Steinmetzarbeit, die Verkleidung der Wandflächen mit Stucco-lustro, Mosaik, Terracotta

und Sgraffito, Kunstschlosserei, Bronzeguss und Tischlerei nun wieder zu Hilfe gerufen
werden; aber als Ferstel zu bauen begann, lebten wir noch im Zeitalter des Verputzes
und des Gusseisens, und war so manche von den genannten Arten der Technik kaum
mehr dem Namen nach bekannt.’84 Also Niemann and Feldegg in their book on
Theophil Hansen – one of those other great architects we will encounter below - wrote
about the transition of the (neo-) gothic to the (neo-) renaissance as a positive
development: ‘Die unzureichende künstlerische Befähigung der Architekten der alten
Schule began sich in empfindlicher Weise geltend zu machen und wurde von ihren
Spitzen sehr bald durch eine Rückkehr zu der früher beinahe verachteten Renaissance
documentirt’.85
The reaction of Otto Wagner in his Moderne Architektur (1895) can learn us
something about the typical view of the period of historicism which was from Wagner’s
times on more or less the standard, but also about historicism itself: ‘Grosse sociale
Umwälzungen haben immer neue Stile geboren. Stets war also die Kunst und ihr
sogenannter Stil der ganz apodiktische Ausdruck des Schönheitsideals einer bestimmten
Zeitperiode [...] Es ist wohl als erwiesen anzusehen, dass Kunst und Künstler stets ihre
Epoche repräsentierten. Dass unsere so stark bewegte zweite Hälfte des Jahrhunderts
auch den Ausdruck, die Form für eine ihr ureigene Kunstanschauung suchte, ist
selbstverständlich. Aber die Ereignisse liefen schneller als jede Kunstentfaltung. Was
war daher natürlicher, als dass die Kunst in der Uebereilung, das Versäumte
nachzuholen, das Heil allerorten suchte und zu finden glaubte [...] Das Durchpeitschen
aller Stilrichtungen in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten war das Resultat der erwähnten
Strömungen’.86
More than a century later, Moritz Csáky came almost to the same conclusion as
Otto Wagner, but now in a slightly different, more positive manner: ‘Die Pluralisierung
der Lebenswelt war […] eine Folge eines sozialkulturellen Differenzierungsprozesses,
den die sozio-ökonomische Modernisierung bewirkt hatte, und der Versuch, diese

84 Wiener Bau-Gesellschaft, Heinrich Freiherr von Ferstel. Festschrift zur feierlichen Enthüllung seiner Büste in der
K.K. Universität zu Wien (Vienna 1886) 3-4
85 George Niemann and Ferd. von Feldegg, Theophilos Hansen und seine Werke (Vienna 1893)
86 Otto Wagner, Moderne Architektur (1895), as quoted in: Moritz Csáky, ‘Geschichtlichkeit und

Stilpluralität. Die sozialen und intellektuellen Voraussetzungen des Historicismus’, in: Werner Telesko
(ed.), Der Traum vom Glück. Die Kunst des Historicismus in Europa (Vienna 1996) 30
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thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |37

Pluralität historisch zu rechtfertigen, sich in dieser Vielfalt mit der Rückorientierung auf
die Vergangenheit anzueignen versuchte, ihre Entsprechung.’87
Historicism wasn’t only used for the more important - monumental – buildings
of the city. Also the less prestigious – private - building projects in the city were
designed in one of the styles of Historicism. However, most of those buildings were not
designed in a very explicit style. Most of them are a combination of more than one style.
One could see that none of those buildings is designed as purely neo-Gothic as the
Rathaus, or the Votivkirche, as purely neo-Hellenistic as the parliament. The range was
rather narrow, between neo-Renaissance and neo-Classicism, sometimes – later in the
century -slightly supplemented with neo-Baroque elements.

The world exhibition of 1873 and the crash of the stock exchange
The year 1873 meant both the top of bourgeois success in Vienna and its deepest
disaster. That year booming Austrian industry planned to organize what can be
considered the bourgeois event par excellence: a world exhibition. As reaction to the
successful foreign editions, Vienna would become the location for the first world
exhibition in the German speaking lands. In the Prater two hundred pavilions
surrounded a huge main building of which central hall – the ‘Rotunde’ – was the biggest
single spanned hall (it had a span of 108 meter without colums) of that time and long

87 Moritz Csáky, ‘Geschichtlichkeit und Stilpluralität. Die sozialen und intellektuellen Voraussetzungen

des Historicismus’, in: Werner Telesko (ed.), Der Traum vom Glück. Die Kunst des Historicismus in Europa
(Vienna 1996) 31
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thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |38

after. But this exhibition - which should have become the pride of the country – in fact
became an enormous disaster.
A metropolis – which Vienna tried to become, and with the new Ringstraβe
perhaps really became – ‘had to’ organize a world exhibition. The principal cities of
Western Europe had launched this trend and Vienna couldn’t fall behind. Principal
motivation to organize it was therefore to put back the monarchy on the map of Europe
after the defeats against Italy and Prussia. Other motivations were to promote Austrian
art and to promote Vienna as the bridge between Europe and the (far) East.88 The pride
Viennese showed models, plans and sketches of the new important buildings along the
Ringstraβe in the ‘Pavillon des Amateurs’.89
The coming of the exhibition was another stimulus for the already booming
Viennese economy: infrastructure projects and new hotels for the expected visitors were
started; lots of Viennese invested in the exhibition or dared to put huge amounts of
their money in other branches of the overheated market. The exhibition was opened on
the first of May and also the emperor was present. But already a couple of days later the
Viennese stock exchange crashed.90 That ‘Black Friday’ the ninth of May meant the end
of many Viennese hopes. Although the crash in fact could have been foreseen since
some months, the coming world exhibition had postponed the final blow for some

Chaos after the crash of the Viennese stock exchange: ‘Black Friday’ the 10th of May, 1873

88 Jutta Pemsel, Die Wiener Weltausstellung von 1873: Das gründerzeitliche Wien am Wendepunkt (Vienna 1989)
16-17
89 ibidem, 68
90 ibidem, 41-42
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |39

time. Many rich Viennese investors lost all or large parts of their capital and were forced
to give up their loved property. Many even saw suicide as the only way out.91 Johann
Strauss’ ‘Rotunden-Quadrille’ was followed by his ‘Krach-Polka’.92 The world exhibition
- furthermore troubled by a cholera epidemic which kept away even more visitors93 –
had been an economical fiasco, but – according to emperor Franz Joseph – had been
successful for the international relations of his country.94

Modern Vienna, or ‘Fin-de-Siècle Vienna’

If someone knows anything about Vienna, the modern Jugendstil of Klimt, Olbrich, of
the mature Otto Wagner, will be part of his list of most impressive impressions of the
city. Together with the Ringstraβe Vienna’s Secession was the city’s most prominent
result of the second half of the nineteenth century. But although the movement of the
Secession may have been an inevitable conclusion of the preceding period and became
tightly connected with it, the Ringstraβe and its buildings principally are a product of
that preceding period of historicism. In the Ringstraβe-area we encounter only rarely
Secessionistic architecture. According to Klaus Eggert, this is logical because the
Ringstraβe is historicist in all its features: ‘[…] die Stadterweiterung ist im wesentlichen
ein Werk des Historicismus, er hat sie geprägt. Innerhalb des Stadterweiterungsareals
entstand später, meist nach Zerstörung historistischer Vorgängerbauten, auch eine
relativ geringe Zahl von Gebäuden der Secessions-Richtung. Diese hat sich mit
entschiedenster Klarheit als Gegnerin des Historicismus, sowohl erklärt als erwiesen.
Beispielsweise wendete sie sich grundsätzlich dem Neuen an sich als Wertmaβstab zu
und negierte schon damit die Grundvoraussetzung des Historicismus, nämlich die
Kontinuität von Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft. Natürlich wurde das in
Theorie und Praxis in verschiedener Gradation manifest. Jedoch, obwohl
Übergangslösungen die Secession zuweilen etwas zum Historicismus rückverbinden, ist
die Secession ihrem Wesen nach Vorläufer von gegenwärtig verbreiteten Richtungen.’95
After the few years in which the Secession-style was flourishing in Vienna, a new area of
historicism in Vienna existed. But generally this was influenced by the Secession-style.96
Most authors therefore choose to let this period out of their works about historicist
architecture in Vienna. And that is what I do in this thesis too. The main Ringstraβe

91 Pemsel, Die Wiener Weltausstellung, 79

92 ibidem, 60
93 ibidem, 78-79
94 ibidem, 82
95 Klaus Eggert, Der Wohnbau der Wiener Ringstrasse im Historicismus 1855-1896. Die Wiener Ringstrasse -

Bild einer Epoche VII (Wiesbaden 1976) IX

96 ibidem
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |40

builders of the third quarter of the nineteenth century had many choices if they wanted
to build a house for themselves, also choices in styles, but the secessionist styles were
not on the drawing tables of their architects yet. Those builders and their relations to
their architects and architecture are subject of this thesis. So although Vienna is well
known also because of its large amount of secessionist buildings, those are explicitly left
out in this study.

Page from one of the catalogues of Wienerberger. Architects could find the technical details and the price of all the
ornaments in a supplement.
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |41

Chapter Two
The Builder’s Wishes

‘Viele Bürger opfern den Frieden ihres Familienlebens und ihre Lebensfreude dem
Wunsche, ihr Leben dem irdischen Himmel der Aristokraten wenigstens ähnlich zu
gestalten.’’97
Friedländer

Introduction
Baltzarek, Hoffmann and Stekl made one of the first steps to sketch a picture of the
upper classes of the Habsburg monarchy. In their study of the economy and society of
the Viennese city extension, they tried to give a new view on those classes, passing over
the many clichés which exist about them. The authors emphasized the specific situation
of the bourgeoisie: ‘In der Wertskala der ‘achieving society’, der entstehenden
bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, stand die Bewährung des Individuums im Wirtschaftsprozeβ
an erster Stelle. Zur Gewinnung und Aufrechterhaltung des Ansehens einer Person
drängte das erworbene Kapital zu einer Synthese zwischen kluger Anlage und
ostentativer Zurschaustellung.’98 How this synthesis was manifesting itself in the
Ringstraβe area in Vienna is the subject of this chapter.
The general picture which has been drawn of the newly rich Ringstraβe-barons,
who didn’t like to talk about politics but did love to spend their money to the arts, is
that of self-made men who were proud of their personal achievements. Concerning
their relation to the arts, they generally were considered to be too easily satisfied, their
function as Maecenas was rather like someone who collects horses, or cars in
contemporary terms. ‘His’ artist was part of his own pride. Often the whole period is
accused of having a weak understanding of all artistic achievements. Or as Hennings
wrote: ‘Die Ringstraβenzeit hatte zu viele materielle Chancen wahrzunehmen. Daher
mangelte es ihr an ästhetischer Tiefe. Sie litt jedoch eher an einer Über- als an einer
Unterschätzung des Künstlerischen.’99

97 Friedländer, Märchenstadt, as quoted in: Franz Baltzarek, Alfred Hoffmann and Hannes Stekl, Wirtschaft
und Gesellschaft der Wiener Stadterweiterung. Die Wiener Ringstrasse – Bild einer Epoche V (Wiesbaden 1975)
285
98 Franz Baltzarek, Alfred Hoffmann and Hannes Stekl, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft der Wiener Stadterweiterung.

Die Wiener Ringstrasse – Bild einer Epoche V (Wiesbaden 1975) 259

99 Fred Hennings, Die Ringstrasse. Symbol einer Epoche (Vienna 1977) 57
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thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |42

The Viennese nouveaux riches who succeeded to penetrate in the highest circles of
society had many difficulties how to behave in their new environment. The Viennese
mayor Cajetan Felder wrote in his memoirs about them more than once. There are
innumerable little anecdotes about the ‘new’ members of the upper class. But
notwithstanding the truth of these specific anecdotes, they have had a negative effect on
the general picture. As I will show in this chapter, the ‘second society’ was far more
various than that general picture suggests. The nine dicussed individuals differed in
many ways from each other.
As general architecture-historical principle for the whole Ringstraβe-area we
could see the vertical differentiation of the façades and the buildings behind. In general
the owner of the building lived in a well decorated first floor, the ‘beletage’ above a
ground floor and under several rentable floors which generally were smaller and less
decorated the higher in the building they were situated. What in the eighteenth century
was the differentiation between house lord an his staff who lived above him, in the
Ringstraβe buildings – and of course more general in buildings of the second half of the
nineteenth century – it became the social differentiation between house owner and
renters above which was to be represented in the architecture of the building. The
façade was of great importance in this context. Above a mostly ‘rusticated’ basement, a
well decorated first floor with high or sometimes even higher windows - sometimes
even with balconies - was expressing the rooms which the owner of the building
destinated for himself. This façade and how it was designed was of great importance
because it formed the confrontation point between the public street and the inner world
of the house it covered. And just this façade could tell the observing public world much
about the inner world of the building, about its inhabitants.
Hobsbawm, who could appreciate the urbanistic quality of the building practice
of the third quarter of the nineteenth century but was frankly negative about the
architecture which gave it its form, was not the only one. There were many more
authors who thought the same about the matter. In 1906 Kortz wrote for instance that
the ‘in der Hast massenhaft errichteten Spekulationsbauten’ in the Ringstraβe area ‘ein
ideales Wohnen nicht gewährten’.100

Paul Kortz (ed.), Wien am Anfang des XX. Jahrhunderts. Ein Führer in technischer und künstlerischer Richtung,
100

Vol. 2: Hochbauten, Architektur und Plastik (Vienna 1905) 404

The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |43

It is definitely not the aim of this chapter to give a complete description or

interpretation of the various builders, their architects and their buildings.101 To read
about one specific person there are – for most of them – several sources. This chapter
tries to give an overview over the lives of various representative persons – from the
group of Viennese bankers and industrials - who ‘made’ the culture of the Ringstraβe.
By putting them together, by presenting the most relevant information about them, I try
to give the reader a glimpse of that culture, to make possible a broader and therefore
more thorough understanding of it. Interpretations are only given if they are very
evident, most of the information is given in as ‘clean’ a form as possible, to induce an
objective interpretation by the reader. But before we meet the principal actors in this
chapter, I will give a short introduction of the persons whose customers they were: the
architects. As we have seen in the previous chapter, it was stimulated by the government
to choose one of the prominent architectural offices for the design of one’s private
Ringstraβe buildings. The nine buildings in this chapter are built by only three famous
offices: those of Theophil Hansen; Johann Romano and August Schwendenwein; and
Heinrich Ferstel.

Plan of the Southern part of the Rinstraβe: 1. Schey, 2. Heinrichshof, 3. Königswarter, 4. Todesco, 5. Wertheim, 6.
Ofenheim, 7. archduke Ludwig Viktor, 8. Dumba, (not on the map: Epstein and Ephrussi)

Theophil Hansen
Hansen (1813-1891) was born in Kopenhagen where he lived until he finished his
studies in 1836. Afterwards he travelled through Germany and lived for eight years in

101 An interesting architecture-historical description of most of the houses in the Ringstraβe area can be

found in: Klaus Eggert, Der Wohnbau der Wiener Ringstrasse im Historismus 1855-1896. Die Wiener
Ringstrasse - Bild einer Epoche VII (Wiesbaden 1976)
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |44

Athens where he realized his first buildings. In 1846 he came to Vienna to work in the
office of his father in law, Ludwig Förster. With his design for the weapon museum,
part of the Arsenal complex, he became well-known in Vienna and many orders for
buildings followed.102 Of the three architectural offices discussed in this thesis, Hansen’s
is generally considered the best. And even in general Hansen’s quality as Ringstraβe
architect is never really doubted.103 The verdict of being ‘eclecticist’ which so many of
the Ringstraβe architects got, was never levelled at Hansen.104 Interesting to consider is
that Hansen designed all sorts of buildings during his whole life. Even in his most
successful years he also took orders for smaller buildings. His principal building
undoubtedly is the Viennese parliament, with which he showed his love for pure
Hellenistic design.
It is known that Hansen loved his
buildings more than his customers, in the sense
that he even was willing to pay personally if he
thought his customer wanted to economize on
the wrong parts of his building.105 How Hansen
came into contact with his customers is
unfortunately unknown. That he will have had a
good connection with Sina becomes clear if one
sums up the buildings Hansen built for him. As
an influential personality in the bourgeois world
of Vienna, Sina – who did not build directly in the
new Ringstraβe area though – may have introduced him. And also his relations with the
Förster family may have offered him some contacts in this world of extremely rich
builders.106
Hansen had a special relationship with the Wienerberger concern too. Already
during the direct aftermath of the 1848-1849 revolts, Alois Miesbach was, as spokesman
of the as a result of these revolts seriously harmed building sector probably in direct
contact with the architects Hansen and Förster. For the Arsenal (partly designed by
Hansen) the Wienerberger concern delivered fourteen million bricks for ornaments and

102 Historisches Lexicon Wien 3 (Vienna ) 51-52

103 Renate Wagner-Rieger and Mara Reissberger, Theophil von Hansen. Die Wiener Ringstrasse - Bild einer
Epoche VIII (Wiesbaden 1980) 1
104 ibidem, 7
105 Friedrich Dahm, ‘Die Baugeschichte des Palais Epstein – Zur Rolle des Bauherrn und Architekten’, in:

Heinz Fischer, Andreas Kohl a.o., Das Palais Epstein. Geschichte, Restaurierung, Umbau. Ein neues Haus an der
Wiener Ringstraβe (Vienna 2005) 48
106 Wagner-Rieger and Reissberger, Theophil von Hansen, 204
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |45

covering during the years 1849-1854. It was the direct ground for founding the
terracotta factory in Inzersdorf (1850). It was for this factory, which was mainly
concerned with the production of ornaments, that Hansen – among several other artists
- designed most of the standard ornaments. The relation between the Wienerberger
concern (after Miesbach’s death in 1857 lead by Heinrich Drasche) must have been an
interactive one: Most of the buildings Hansen built in Vienna got a façade made out of
uncladded and unplastered brickwork with several terracotta ornaments, all made by
Wienerberger.107 Hans Berger wrote ‘daβ die aus Terracotta gebrannten Detailformen
die Karyatiden, Balustraden oder Vasen der Wienerberger Ziegelfabrik käuflich zu
entwerben waren denn Hansen dachte nicht daran, seine Autorrechte über die
zahlreichen Entwürfe und Modelle für Glas-, Metall-, Holz- oder keramische Arbeiten
geltend zu machen. Selbst Zeitgenossen mit uns geläufigen Namen, wie Karl Zie,
Heinrich Kaus, Georg Niemann, Otto Thienemann, verwendeten gerne Typen aus den
Musterlagern der Fabrikanten, die Hansen beschäftigte, als dekoratives Rüstzeug für ihre
Bauten.’108 If there was any personal – financial – advantage for Hansen in this relation
is unclear. It seems logical that he got paid for the designs of the ornaments (perhaps
per used piece?), but the fact that he used these Wienerberger products as frequently as
he did, does suppose that there was more in it for him than that.

Johann Romano and August Schwendenwein

Johann Julius Romano (1818-1882) and August
Schwendenwein (1817-1885) had one of the
most successful architectural offices in Vienna
during the first period of the building of the
Ringstraβe area. They primarily built private
buildings – houses – for the rich.109 Both the
newly rich people of the ‘Finanzaristokratie’ as
the older ‘Blutadel’ belonged to their customers.
110

Romano lived his first years in Italy as Johann Romano

107 Elisabeth Springer, Geschichte und Kulturleben der Wiener Ringstrasse. Die Wiener Ringstrasse - Bild einer

Epoche II (Wiesbaden 1979) 170

108 Hans Berger, ‘Hansen und die Gegenwart. Zum hundertsten Geburtstag Theophil Hansens am 13.

Juli.’, in: an unkown newspaper, probably Neue Freie Presse, in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, map
Autogr. 200/79
109 Kortz, Wien, Vol. 2, 9
110 Fred Hennings, Die Ringstrasse. Symbol einer Epoche (Vienna 1977) 55
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the son of a tradesman. In 1833 he came to Vienna to study at the Polytechnisches

Institut and later on at the Akademie der bildenden Künste. Already in 1840 he started
an architectural office together with August Schwendenwein. Becoming successful and
well-known, Romano got a lot of honourable positions in the monarchy, of which the
worthiest mentioning were that of member of the Viennese Baukommission (1859-
1860); member of the jury for the Viennese city extension, the Hofmuseums and the
plans for the Rathaus; in 1866 he became Baurat; in 1869 even Oberbaurat; and in 1871
he was raised to the peerage – probably because of his work for the Ringstraβe – and
was allowed to add ‘von Ringe’ to his name.111
Although Romano was the more well-known of the two, also Schwendenwein
played an important part in their joint office. He appears to have been the one who
worked most of the time in the office and therefore was less widely known in Viennese
society than his associate. He was born as son of poor people but managed to study at
the Polytechnisches Institut and the Akademie der bildenden Künste – where he
apparently met Romano. Though less well-known in the general public, he nonetheless
was awarded several impressive decorations: member of the Akademie (1866);
Oberbaurat (1874); member of the building committee for the Justizpalast (1875-1881);
and Schwendenwein too was raised in the peerage (1870) with the title ‘von
Lanauberg’.112
As stated above, their joint office was one of the most successful architectural
offices of Vienna in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. In the first five years
after the ‘start’ of the race of building houses in the Ringstraβe area, Romano and
Schwendenwein built no less than thirty-two houses, in that period mostly for members
of the ‘second society’. Of the nine builders I discussed above, four were costumers of
Romano and Schwendenwein – not without reason of course.
According to the literature, the style of the designs they made was something
between romantic- and strict historicism. The romantic historicism was itself a transition
between the late Classicism - with its cubic forms and big smooth surfaces - and the
strict historicism – with its opulently decorated and picturesque way of decorating.113
This is exactly what we can see if we look at the four palais above.
Paul Kortz wrote about the style which Romano and Schwendenwein
introduced and promoted in Vienna: ‘Ohne tiefergehende Stilabsichten, war es [...]
zuvörderst auf Geschmack im Arrangement, auf gefällige, womöglich effektvolle

111 Pannosch, Die Wohnbauten der Architekten Julius Romano und August Schwendenwein, 5-6
112 ibidem, 7-8
113 see for instance: Renate Wagner-Rieger, Wiens Architektur im 19. Jahrhundert (Vienna 1970) 145
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Erscheinung abgesehen. Aus einer derartigen Auffassung resultierte denn für das
baulustige Wien dieser Epoche eine eigene, fröhliche Richtung der Renaissance, teils
von italienischer, teils von französischer Herkunft der Motive, mit dem
ausgesprochenen Zug nach Opulenz, mit einem glücklichen Geschick für wechselreiche,
dekorative Inszenierung. Man kann dies als Merkmale der ‘Wiener Renaissance’
bezeichnen.’ 114

Heinrich Ferstel
Heinrich Ferstel (1828-1883) was born in
Vienna as the son of a bank employee. He
studied at the Polytechnikum and the
Akademie der bildenden Künste and finished
his studies in 1850. During the last year of his
studies, he met Rudolf von Eitelberger, who
taught at the Akademie. Their contact later on
would result in the famous book about the
possibilities and necessities to build family
houses in the English and Dutch way in
Vienna.115 From then on he worked three years in the architectural office of his uncle
Fritz Stache. In 1854 Ferstel took part in the competition for the design of the
Votivkirche. A church which should be built on the place where the year before a -
failed - attempt on the emperor had taken place.116 He won the competition and started
to build the church in 1856 (it would be finished in 1879). Ferstel was a very successful
architect who built – apart from various houses – more than one of the famous
Ringstraβe monuments. After the Votiv church, his second giant assignment was that of
the new building for the university of Vienna along the Ringstraβe.117 In the previous
chapter we already saw what kind of development the contemporary architecture
theorists saw in the work of Ferstel, primarily considering these two most impressive
works.
Typical for an architect of romantic historicism, Ferstel was searching for a
‘Gesamtkunstwerk’. He did not stop designing when the principal lines of the design

114 Kortz, Wien, Vol. 2, 9

115 Eitelberger and Ferstel, Das bürgerliche Wohnhaus und das Wiener Zinshaus (Vienna 1860), see previous
chapter
116 On February 18, 1853 the Hungarian Janos Libeny attacked emperor Franz Joseph I who survived the

attempt and was only wounded.

117 Historisches Lexicon Wien, part 2 (Vienna) 284-285 and Norbert Wibiral and Renate Mikula, Heinrich von

Ferstel, Die Wiener Ringstrasse - Bild einer Epoche VIII 3. Heinrich von Ferstel (Wiesbaden 1974) 1-2
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were finished, but wanted to make a complete unity. Therefore he even designed and
prescribed the smallest details.118
That Ferstel - apart from the designer of these famous works - also was a
popular architect for the members of the ‘second society’, can be concluded from the
fact that he built no less than ten houses for them in the Ringstraβe area. Did Hansen
also build some less luxurious apartment blocks – ‘Zinspaläste’ -, Ferstel built only for
those very rich customers who had equally rich renters for the upper apartments - if
they had some at all. A good example is the already discussed palais Wertheim at the
Schwarzenbergplatz.119
Another interesting point in which Ferstel differed from Hansen, was his lack of
interest to make one big structure out of more buildings. What Hansen did with his
Heinrichhof or the Palais Ephrussi at the Schottengasse and the next building, was
apparently not the way Ferstel tried to do it. He even did the reverse when he designed
the houses for Leon at the Schottenring. These houses, built at the same time on
building lots next to each other, were given a deviating exterior, apparently to keep the
individuality of both houses.120
The styles in which Ferstel built his houses differed from period to period. His
houses built behind the Votiv church were built in German Renaissance style, however
most of his houses from the 1860s and first half of the 1870s were designed in the
Italian Renaissance style: a style which, according to Wibiral and Mikula ‘auch von den
Bauherren aus repräsentativen Gründen gewünscht wurde.’121 Whether this is an
interpretation of the authors, or if it is something they concluded from other sources
unfortunately is not mentioned.

Heinrich Drasche - Heinrichhof

In the context of this thesis Heinrich Drasche is an outsider as well as a useful subject
and good representative of the here considered group of people. Drasche was born in
1811 in Brünn (nowadays Brno) as the eldest son of a successful tradesman. Although it
would have been logical if he would have joined in the concern of his father, his uncle
Alois Miesbach persuaded him to come to Vienna to prepare himself for a job in his
very successful brick factory. He studied commercial and technical subjects at the
Polytechnikum and afterwards (1830) he joined his uncles concern ‘Alois Miesbach’.

118 Norbert Wibiral and Renate Mikula, Heinrich von Ferstel, Die Wiener Ringstrasse - Bild einer Epoche
VIII 3. Heinrich von Ferstel (Wiesbaden 1974) 27-28
119 ibidem, 151
120 ibidem, 152
121 ibidem, 27-28
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After a period of further learning and travelling, Heinrich became director of the
mountain building departments.122 As Alois Miesbach died in 1857 he left his concern –
and the rest of his fortune - to his nephew Heinrich Drasche, who went on making it
even more successful than it had already been. From September 1858 the firm was
called ‘Heinrich Drasche’.123 In 1867 Drasche also inherited the capital of war industrial
Josef Parkfrieder which made him one of the richest men in the monarchy. Although he
was only 58, it appeared to him superfluous to work in his firm any longer, and in 1869
he made a limited liability company out of the brick production departments of his
concern.124
When in 1857 with the start of the demolishing of
the city walls a boom in Vienna’s building industry started,
also the brick producers could profit. Between 1857 and
1860 the city’s annual brick production more than
doubled to 135 million per year. Not in the least because
of the 1859 law which offered a thirty years exemption
taxes on new buildings if they were finished within five
years after the purchasing of the building land. Further
growing demand of bricks in the following years resulted
in a production of 112 million bricks in the year 1861 to be produced only in Drasche’s
factories.125 Drasche’s production increased during the next years. After a little dip it
flourished again from 1867, the year of the compromise.126 Interesting in economical
perspective is the point which Grete Merk underlines when she discusses Drasche’s
place in the structural development of the monarchy’s economy. In the years between
1861 and 1867 the whole western economy was in a depression. Just in this period
Drasche chose to invest millions in the rationalization of the production in his concern,
convinced that at the end of the depression a renewed huge quest for building materials
would emerge. This kind of long-term economical investments was new for his time and
shows the insights of Drasche.127
As a rich industrial in the building industry sector, Drasche bought several
building lots in the Ringstraβe area (ten lots) - but also outside this area: ‘Im Weichbilde

122 Grete Merk, Zwei Pioniere der österreichischen Industrie. Alois Miesbach und Heinrich Drasche (Graz, Vienna and

Cologne 1966) 21-22

123 ibidem, 51-52
124 Gustav Holzmann, Unternehmer aus Niederösterreich. Handwerker, Kaufleute und Industrielle aus 5 Jahrhunderten

(Vienna 1967) 89
125 Merk, Zwei Pioniere, 53
126 ibidem, 55
127 ibidem, 88
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Wiens habe ich auf meine Rechnung 350 bis 400 Häuser errichten lassen’.128 It was in
the southern suburbs (Vororte) of Vienna that he bought enormous amounts of
building land. He built plain rentable houses on it which he sold with good profits after
they were finished.129 He considered it a good chance to gain new capital to speculate
with, and with the help of his factories, building was probably not as expensive as it was
for other people. And simultaneously the building practice offered him the opportunity
to have an outlet for his own products in times of low prices, as in the years 1861-
1867.130
The 1857 handwriting of emperor Franz Joseph had been a chance for Drasche,
not only to speculate with newly formed building lots and to produce enormous
amounts of bricks for the new buildings along the Ringstraβe, but also to profitably
acquire the governmental brickworks next to his works in Inzersdorf. The ‘k. k.
Fortifikationsziegelofen’ had become superfluous with the demolishing of the city
walls.131

Heinrichhof (Opernring 1-5), built by Theohpil Hansen for Heinrich Drasche (1861-1862)

128 Memoirs of Drasche as quoted in: Grete Merk, Zwei Pioniere der österreichischen Industrie. Alois Miesbach und
Heinrich Drasche (Graz, Vienna and Cologne 1966) 60
129 Gustav Holzmann, Unternehmer aus Niederösterreich. Handwerker, Kaufleute und Industrielle aus 5 Jahrhunderten

(Vienna 1967) 88
130 Merk, Zwei Pioniere, 89
131 Josef Mentschl and Gustav Otruba, Österreichische Industrielle und Bankiers (Vienna 1965) 114
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The most impressive dwelling Drasche built, was the famous ‘Heinrichhof’132 -
named after its builder – in front of the new opera building of Sicardsburg and Van der
Nüll, across the Ringstraβe. Built in 1861-1863 by Theophil Hansen it was with its
450.000m2 footprint one of the most impressive private buildings along the Ringstraβe.
Drasche had a specific aim building his Heinrichhof. He himself wrote about it: ‘Ich
hoffe, daβ der Bau, den ich auf diesem Terrain aufrichten lieβ und der den Namen
Heinrichhof trägt, einen beachtenswerten Platz innerhalb der Privatbauten der Stadt
einnimmt, und daβ er meinem Unternehmungsgeist Ehre machen wird.’133
Ofcourse the most important magazine of the building sector in the German
speaking lands, the Allgemeine Bauzeitung, also wrote about it: ‘Bei der Gestalt und Lage
[...] konnte dem Architekten der Gedanke nicht ferne liegen, hier ein dem äussern
Anscheine nach aus einem Gusse hervorgegangenes Werk zu bilden, und es wurde
desshalb beschlossen, die sechs Bauplätze in drei solche zu theilen, um die Anlage für
drei Durchhäuser durchzufüren, die mitsammen den Anblick eines einzigen grossen
Baues gewähren, was auch die Genehmigung des Bauherrn erhielt, dessen Sinn für
Schönheit und Zweckmässigkeit in architektonischen Angelegenheiten sich bei jeder
Gelegenheit bewährt, wo es sich für ihn darum handelt, mit seinem reichen Mitteln
einzugreifen. [...] Da es die hauptsächlichste Aufgabe des Architekten war, mit Rücksicht
auf die Wiener Verhältnisse ein rentables Gebäude herzustellen, ohne hinsichtlich der
Kosten besondere Opfer bringen zu müssen, so wird man leicht die Schwierigkeiten
erkennen, die mit der Lösung einer solchen Aufgabe verbunden sind, wenn man so
bedeutende Massen wie hier beherrschen soll, ohne dass sie in den charakter einer
Kaserne verfallen.’134
Built by the famous Ringstraβe architect Theohpil Hansen, the Heinrichhof was
of great importance for the stylistic design of many following buildings along the
Ringstraβe. According to Kortz, this ‘second style’ of Hansen, the Hellenistic style, even
came to be the preferred style of the building speculation market: ‘er wurde bald der
Normalstil für die Baugesellschaften. Kalkül und Geschmack verständigten sich da sehr
rasch.’135 That the building was generally considered to be one of the most beautiful
‘Zinshäuser’ along the Ringstraβe, was also noted by Bermann: ‘Es wurde […] der
Heinrichhof, eigenthum Drasche’s, nach den Plänen des Professors Hansen, erbaut; es
ist das prachtvollste Zinshaus der Ringstraβe, im dritten Stockwerk mit Fresken von

132 Sometimes incorrectly called ‘Heinrichshof’, according to the Historisches Lexicon Wien 3, 127
133 Baltzarek, Hoffmann and Stekl, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft der Wiener Stadterweiterung, 303
134 ‘Der Heinrichhof am Opernring in Wien. Von dem Architekten Theophil Hansen.’, in: Allgemeine

Bauzeitung, Vol. 1867 (Vienna 1867) 1

135 Kortz, Wien, Vol. 2, 9
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Rahl und Eisenmenger geschmückt.’136 But not everyone was as enthusiastic as he was:
‘Diese Façade, von dem genialen Architekten Th. Hansen, dem Wien manches schöne
Gebäude schon verdankt, ware wahrhaft eines besseren Innern würdig gewesen, statt
die Hülle eines sehr unzweckmässig eingetheilten grossen Zinshauses zu sein! Die
Bewohner dürfen nicht Licht- und Luftfreunde sein.’137
The Heinrichhof was a huge ‘Mietpalais’ with several dozens of apartments. But
it also housed the central management office of his concern.138 If Drasche himself lived
in the Heinrichhof too, is unknown to me. He had a castle in Inzersdorf where he
probably lived during most of the time.139
Although most of the apartments in the Heinrichhof were not as big as the
principal houses of the richest people in the Ringstraβe area, it should not be
misunderstood, that everyone who could rent an apartment in a building along the
Ringstraβe, was financially well-off. The same of course is true for the apartments in the
second and third floors in the other Ringstraβe houses. The poor people lived in the
slums around the city, in the specific type of the ‘Küche-Zimmer-Wohnungen’, if they
had the luck to have a place of their own at all. The ‘normal’ people from the third class
lived in the town’s ‘Vorstädte’, or quarters around the city’s centre. Very rich people
could afford to rent an apartment in the new Ringstraβe area, and only the top of those
group lived in those fine apartments at the ‘beletage’ of the several buildings which were
nice enough to be called ‘Ringstraβenpalais’.
Heinrich Drasche had extraordinary opinions on the ‘social question’: ‘Ich halte
es fast für eine patriotische Pflicht, bekanntzumachen, daβ man sich auch in Österreich
damit beschäftigt, mit allen möglichen Mitteln das Los der Arbeiter – dieser ständig
mehr Beachtung fordernden Klasse – glücklicher zu gestalten.’ And in connection with
this view, he thought that the only right way to house one’s workers, was to offer them
houses near the fabrics where they worked.140 In a booklet of the Vienna world
exhibition of 1873, Drasche himself wrote about his achievenments: ‘Sowie ich mit allen
Kräften bemüht war, die Kohlenindustrie in Oesterreich und Ungarn zu fördern, das
Aufblühen und Entwickeln anderer industrieller Unternehmungen, die des
mineralischen Brennstoffes bedürfen, zu unterstützen und durch Entdeckung und den
Aufschluss vieler mächtiger Kohlenflötzen in langjährigen und kostspieligen

136 Moriz Bermann, Alt- und Neu-Wien, 1161

137 ‘Die Neubauten der Ringstrasse in Wien’, in: Joseph Herr (ed.), Zeitschrift des Österreichischen Ingenieur-
Vereines, XVI (Vienna 1864) 172
138 Merk, Zwei Pioniere, 89
139 ibidem, 99
140 ibidem, 73-74
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Schürfungen den Nationalreichthum des Landes zu heben, so habe ich auch für meine
Beamten, mein Aufsichts- und Arbeitspersonale in materieller und intellectueller Weise
gesorgt, um ihnen ihre Berufspflichten zu erleichtern und sie und ihre Familien bei
eintretenden Unglücksfällen vor Noth zu schützen.’141
Unfortunately there is very little known about the artistic preferences of
Drasche. Both the Heinrichhof and the castle in Inzersdorf are destroyed in the Second
World War. What however, according to Merk, became clear from the
‘Verlassenschaftsabhandlung’, is that Drasche also owned several works of
contemporary art.142
When in 1873 the Viennese stock exchange crashed and ruined so many rich
entrepreneurs, Drasche wasn’t touched very hard thanks to his land possessions.143
When Drasche died in 1880, his concern was managed by his younger son. His elder
son, who according to the original plan should succeed his father, had died in 1865 in
one of the mountainworks. The successor of the great industrial Drasche however, had
different interests than his father. In the two decades after his father’s death he sold the
various parts of the concern to devote himself to his own missions: those of painter and
researcher of nature.144

Eduard Todesco – Palais Todesco

One of the other ‘money barons’ of the Ringstraβe was
the man who built a luxurious house next to the opera
building and had the illustrious – although only a
Romanisation of ‘the German’145 - name ‘Todesco’. The
Todesco family originally came from Milan, but father
Hermann was born in Pressburg and became a successful
industrialist after he started a silk- and thread firm. Of the
three sons who died after him, Eduard Todesco was as
director of the concern ‘Hermann Todescos Söhne’ the

141 Heinrich Drasche, Bericht des Ausstellers Heinrich Ritter Drasche von Wartinberg in Wien über den Besitz,

Umfang, die Erzeugung, den Betrieb und die sonstigen Verhältnisse seiner Kohlenbergbaue in Oesterreich-Ungarn (Vienna
1873) 6
142 Merk, Zwei Pioniere, 99
143 Mentschl and Otruba, Österreichische Industrielle und Bankiers, 116
144 Merk, Zwei Pioniere, 99
145 Hanns Jaeger-Sustenau, Die geadelten Judenfamilien im vormärzlichen Wien (Vienna 1950) 174
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most successful and was the one who was raised to the peerage after loyal relations to
the governmental finances in the years after the revolutions of 1848-1849.146
Contrary to for instance Königswarter, who lived only a few meters farther on,
Todesco was a hospitable man. His salon was even loved by the always critical Eduard
Hanslick. In his interpretation of it, we can learn something about the Viennese salon
culture in general too: ‘Im allgemeinen kein Freund von Soireen, habe ich doch
zeitweilig mit Vergnügen in einigen ausgezeichneten Häusern verkehrt. Vor allem bei
Todesco, Wertheimstein und Ladenburg. Sie gehörten zur Finanzaristokratie Wiens. Die
Anziehungskraft ging natürlich von den Frauen aus. Man hat wohl nicht bloβ in Wien

Dancing hall in palais Todesco

die Wahrnehmung gemacht, daβ in den Familien der groβen Bankiers die Frauen und
Töchter feingebildet, von anmutigem Benehmen und für alles Schöne empfänglich sind,
während die Herren ihren Geist meistens nur für die Börse geschult haben und
ausschlieβlich dort verwenden. Dies galt auch von den obengenannten Familien, deren
Salons zu den umworbensten Wiens gehörten. Die Herren des Hauses störten nicht;
genug, wenn sie freundlich gelaunt waren und sich nicht viel einmischten.’147

146 R. Granichstaedten-Cerva, J. Mentschl and G. Otruba, Altösterreichische Unternehmer (Vienna 1969) 122-
123
147 Memoires of Eduard Hanslick, as quoted in: Fred Hennings, Die Ringstrasse. Symbol einer Epoche (Vienna

1977) 31-32
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Another interesting anecdote about Todesco’s ignorance of things outside his

profession we learn from Vasili: ‘Er ist kein Mann von Geist […] Man macht ihm sogar
den Vorwurf grober Unwissenheit in Allem, was nicht zum Gebiete der Börse und Bank
gehört. Er war es, der eines Abends bei einem Souper unter Theatergröβen sich
schüchtern an das Ohr einer Dame, seiner Nachbarin, wandte, um sie zu fragen ‘Wer ist
nur jener Shakespeare, von dem hier so viel gesprochen wird? Ich habe den Namen
dieses Herrn noch niemals gehört’.’148 Eduards brother Moriz Todesco was the
discerning one of the two brothers. He lived next to his brother (Walfischgasse 4), but
even in his salon the females made the soirees.149
Also for contemporaries the Todesco palais was important enough to list it in an
overview of the city’s architectural history. In a book (1880) by Bermann: ‘Im Jahre
1861 […] wurde das schöne Palais des Bankiers Eduard Freiherr von Todesco im
Renaissancestyl nach Plänen des Architekten L. Förster erbaut; die überaus groβartig
ausgestattete Wohnung des Bankiers enthält Fresken von K. Rahl. An diesem Gebäude
erinnert eine Gedenktafel, daβ ‘hier einst der Kärntnerthurm stand und daβ Donnerstag
den 14. October 1529 an dieser Stelle Hector von Reitschach und Wilhelm von
Roggendorf auch den letzten und befestigten Angriff des Sultans Soliman
zurückwiesen’.’150 That also Theophil Hansen was - next to Ludwig Förster - one of the

148 Vasili, as quoted in: Baltzarek, Hoffmann and Stekl, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft der Wiener Stadterweiterung,
294
149 Hennings, Die Ringstrasse, 32
150 Bermann, Alt- und Neu-Wien, 1158
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architects of the palais, was apparently unknown to Bermann. Förster had designed the
exterior of the building and Hansen was giving the assignment to design the
approximately ten rooms which were inhabited by Eduard Todesco himself. According
to Niemann and Feldegg (1893), it was ‘damals in Wien etwas sehr Ungewöhnliches,
wenn nicht ganz Neues, die hohe Kunst zum Schmucke einer Wohnung heranzuziehen,
wie es hier geschah.’151
The author in the Zeitschrift des Österreichischen Ingenieur-Vereines thinks the palais is
nice, but almost too nice: ‘Das gegen das Opernhaus gekehrte Haus wird seiner reichen
Ausstattung wegen besonders auffallen, indem des Guten beinahe zu viel gethan
erscheint; es ist das auch im Innern auf’s Prächtigste ausgeschmückte Wohnhaus des
Banquiers Eduard Todesco; und wiewohl die Architektur nicht fehlerlos ist, muss die
würdevolle Anlage immerhin befriedigen.’152
Important to note is the mistake Reissberger made in the book about Hansen.
She wrote about the Todesco Palais as if it was a design of Hansen, to use it in a
discussion about style development in Hansen’s work. Only in a note she justified
herself with: ‘Die engen stilistischen Beziehungen zwischen Ludwig Förster und dem
‘jungen’ Hansen erlauben es, hier über den Individualstil hinaus auf den Zeitstil zu
verweisen und dazu den Bau von Ludwig Förster heranzuziehen.’153 If it would have
been so evident that this was ‘allowed’ to do – of which I am not in the least convinced,
than she should have put it in the normal body text, and not in a note.

Jonas Königswarter – Palais Königswarter

Jonas Königswarter was born in 1807 in
Frankfurt am Main. In 1829 he was employed in
the Viennese bank of his uncle and stepfather
Moriz Königswarter. And from then on, a
successful career in the Viennese banking world
was launched. Jonas became very rich and was a
well-known, although hard banker.
In his plea for getting honoured the title
of ‘Freiherr’, so becoming member of the
‘Freiherrenstand’, Jonas Königswarter wrote to

151 Niemann and Feldegg, Theophilos Hansen, 52

152 ‘Die Neubauten der Ringstrasse in Wien’, in: Joseph Herr (ed.), Zeitschrift des Österreichischen Ingenieur-
Vereines, XVI (Vienna 1864) 173
153 Wagner-Rieger and Reissberger, Theophil von Hansen, 259 (note to text on page 224)
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the emperor: ‘Jonas Ritter von Königswarter, geboren Frankfurt am Main 1807. Chef
des im Jahre 1810 begründeten Bankhauses Moriz Königswarter. K.k. Börsenrat, Präses
des Vorstandes der Wiener israelitischen Kultusgemeinde, Präsident des
Verwaltungsrates der privaten böhmischen Westbahn, Direktor der Kaiser-Ferdinands-
Nordbahn, Verwaltungsrat der privaten Theiβ-Eisenbahn, Ausschuβ der privaten ersten
Donaudampfschiffahrtgesellschaft, Bürger von Wien.’ It is to be taken for granted that
he thought his addressee was acquainted in that way with his further personal successes
and merits that he could leave them out.154 That does not say that he did not do
anything for the well-being of his fellow townsmen. His most important achievement in
this field was the founding of the Israelite institute for blind people on the Hohe Warte
on his costs.155
Of all the here described builders of the Ringstraβe, Königswarter appears to be
the least ‘aristocratic’ in the sense of culture loving and manners. Although
Königswarter was extraordinarily rich, his palais – built in 1860 by Romano and
Schwendenwein - along the Ringstraβe was rather small and plain. He organized salons,
but - and that distinguished him from the other great Ringstraβe-lords – not of the
more highly intellectual sort. Königswarter appears to have been rather more uncultured
and straightforward than his neighbours. One of the famous anecdotes around his
person can illustrate his attitude towards the ruling class. When the Viennese stock-
exchange was menaced to be closed by the Polizeiminister Kempen von Fichtenstamm
because of overheated and stressful speculation, Königswarter told him: ‘Exzellenz, Sie
kommen mir vor wie einer, den das schlechte Wetter ärgert, und der das Barometer
zerbricht, damit wieder gutes wird.’156
His son Moriz (1837-1893) who joined his father’s concern in 1860 and became
director in 1872, however, differed from his father in the sense that he loved art. He
became one of the well-known art collectors in the city of Vienna.157

Friedrich Schey - Palais Schey

The family Schey was one of those prosperous families which had come to Vienna in
the first half of the nineteenth century. They came from Hungary, that part of the
Habsburg monarchy where since the foregoing century a group of particularly dynamic
Jews had lived. The hometown of the Schey family was Güns (nowadays Köszeg) and it

154 Bittgesuch as quoted in: Hennings, Die Ringstrasse, 30

155 Historisches Lexicon Wien, 3, 568
156 Hennings, Die Ringstrasse, 30-31
157 Granichstaedten-Cerva, Mentschl and Otruba, Altösterreichische Unternehmer, 66
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was here that father Joseph Schey († 1848),

tradesman in that city was born. More important
for the family though, was his brother Philipp
Schey (1798-1880), a banker who was given a
noble title in 1859 because of his pro-Habsburg
behaviour in the revolutions of 1848-1849, which
had been an exception for a Hungarian Jew. In
the decree is written: ‘[…] hat er sich stets und
selbst zu den schwierigsten Zeiten als einer
Unserer treuesten Untertanen bewährt,
namentlich während der ungarischen Wirren in den Jahren 1848 und 1849 seine feste
Anhänglichkeit an Uns und Unser Kaiserhaus offen und furchtlos zu Tage gelegt und
Unseren Truppen vielfältige Dienste geleistet. […] Er hat stets einen regen
Wohltätigkeitssin für die leidende Menschheit ohne Rücksicht auf die Verschiedenheit
des Religionsbekenntnisses gewahrt.’158
Philipp did not have any children, and therefore this nobilisation was meant also
for his nephew Friedrich Schey (1815-1881). Friedrich became one of the most
important Jewish bankers in Vienna, the central figure of the family in the city. His
uncle’s testament tried to give Friedrich and his generation a moralistic lesson: ‘Durch
unausgesetzten Fleiβ, durch rastlose Thätigkeit habe ich ein Vermögen erworben,
welches ich Euch mit meinem Segen und dem Wunsche, Ihr möget mein Andenken in
Ehren halten, zurücklasse. Vergesset nicht, dass mich der Erwerb desselben viel bittere
Stunden, viele schlaflose Nächte und ein Leben augesetzter Sorge gekostet hat, […] es
werde Euch behilflich sein, die Ehre Eueres und meines Namens, welche ich stets
unbefleckt zu erhalten getrachtet habe, zu befördern und zu befestigen.’159
Friedrich came in 1835 together with his wife Emilie and his brother Carl to
Vienna where he worked in the Ladauer family firm and even married with three
daughters of the same family (after each other of course: except the last one they died
shortly after the marriage). When he got in 1855 a ‘Groβhandlungsbefugnis’, he founded
his own firm: ‘Friedrich Schey, k.k. priv. Groβhändler’. According to Altfahrt, Schey
exemplifies the typical mid-nineteenth century entrepreneur: ‘eine dynamische
Persönlichkeit, die sich Gewinne in vielerlei Arten von Geschäften holt, wenn sich eine
günstige Gelegenheit dazu bietet. Er trifft als Unternehmer strategische Entscheidungen

158 Margit Altfahrt, Die jüdische Familie Schey (Vienna 2007) 5-6
159 ibidem, 6
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und setzt langfristiges und Risiko tragendes Kapital zur Vermehrung der
Geschäftswinne ein.’160 The banking sector was flourishing in the period of the city’s
expansion and also Friedrich Schey was taking part in this boom. The new private banks
(in the five years between 1868 and the crash of the Vienna stock exchange in 1873 not
less than seventy banks were founded in Vienna, of which no less than six were co-
founded by Schey) for the greater part were dealing with the state’s finances and those
of the higher aristocracy.161 The crash of the Viennese stock exchange in 1873 hit
Friedrich Schey as wholesaler hard, although this was noted only later.162
Friedrich Schey was a well-known and generally rather liked person who was
successful was in cultural and philanthropic matters as he was in his own firm. He was
one of the founders and subsidisers of the Viennese Trade Academy163, gave ten
thousand Gulden for the Israelitische Blindeninstitut on the Hohe Warte, founded by

Picture of the palais Schey (left Burggarten)

Königswarter, and in addition was a culture loving man who not only owned a private
gallery of 180 paintings, but also helped with the founding of a Schiller and Beethoven
monuments, the building of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and the Künstlerhaus.
He also was a member of the imperial commission for the Viennese world exhibition of
1873. His most impressive achievement though, is his engagement in the founding of

160 Altfahrt, Die jüdische Familie Schey, 8-9

161 ibidem, 10
162 ibidem, 13
163 ibidem, 10
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the Viennese Stadttheater in 1872, which had to become the bourgeois equivalent of the
Burgtheater.164 Friedrich Schey’s involvement had in addition much to do with his
personal friendship with the actor Heinrich Laubes, who had to leave the Burgtheater.
Schey tried everything to keep him in Vienna. The new theatre at the Seilenstätte was
the rescue.165
Although Philipp Schey in his testament emphasized the importance of the
Jewish religion – he practiced it himself passionately too – the generations after him
were more liberal. Their success in business, their ongoing assimilation and trust in a
humanistic world view separated the generation of successful Jews like Friedrich Schey
from that of their ancestors. More interesting may be the fact that it also set them apart
from the masses of poor Jews in the dirty and overcrowded suburbs of Vienna. Those
people were much more orthodox in their religion than their wealthy fellow believers in
the inner districts. The assimilated, almost secularized Jews showed less and less
resemblance with them.166 This may have been the reason why the Jewish families like
the Schey family could live with the idea that thousands of people suffered while they
thought about subsidizing a plan for adding one or another statue to the city’s over
complete collection.
Before Friedrich Schey got the palais at the Ringstraβe built, different parts of
his firm were located in houses at the Wipplingergasse 28, Czerningasse 3-5 and
Augustinerstraβe 12/Dorotheergasse 19.167 In the year 1863 he bought a building lot of
1260 square meters from Archduke Albrecht for 149 Gulden per square meter. On it he
let the architects Johann Romano and August Schwendenwein build a palais for him
which got the address Opernring 10/Goethegasse 3.168 The Palais – which still exists in
a nearly unchanged form – is considered one of the best examples of the typical
Ringstraβe architecture.
Bermann wrote (1880) about the house: ‘Hervorragend ist auch das Palais des
Bankiers Friedrich Freiherr von Schey, von den Architekten August Schwendenwein
und Romano ausgeführt’.169 And also Eugen Meβner thought the house to be relevant
enough to name it in his list of ‘bemerkenswerten Häuser und Denkmäler’ (1928).170

164 Altfahrt, Die jüdische Familie Schey, 12-13

165 Hennings, Die Ringstrasse, 61
166 Altfahrt, Die jüdische Familie Schey, 19
167 Altfahrt, Die jüdische Familie Schey, 9
168 ibidem, 11
169 Bermann, Alt- und Neu-Wien, 1161
170 Meβner, Die innere Stadt Wien, 158
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An article in the ‘Zeitschrift des

Österreichischen Ingenieur-Vereines’ of 1864
about the Ringstraβe gives some interesting
information about the palais Schey: ‘Schade dass,
wie es scheint, Wünsche des Bauherrn
berücksichtigt werden mussten und dass nach
dem grossartigen Eindruck, den das Portal macht,
über welchem in der Belle-Étage ein stark
ausladender Balkon von vier korinthischen Säulen
getragen wird, der in das Vestibul Eintretende
einige Täuschung erfahren muss, obwohl die
Anordnung der Architektur einigermassen diesen
The entrance of the palais Schey
Eindruck zu verwischen sich bemüht.’171
Friedrich’s children and grandchildren were typical examples of the second and
third generation wealthy Jewish banker family members. The Schey children found their
ways in the sciences and arts. Their fathers wealth enabled them to choose their jobs
beyond those of their father’s.172

The difference between the stairs for the servants (left) and those for the occupants of the luxurious apartments (right) in
palais Schey is clear.

171 ‘Die Neubauten der Ringstrasse in Wien’, in: Joseph Herr (ed.), Zeitschrift des Österreichischen Ingenieur-

Vereines, XVI (Vienna 1864) 171

172 Altfahrt, Die jüdische Familie Schey, 14
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Franz Wertheim - Palais Wertheim

Franz Wertheim was born in 1814 in Krems
as son of a not very rich tradesman. After a
period of learning trades in Vienna, he
undertook a big tour around Europe. He
visited Germany, France and England, where
he was interested particularly in various
mechanical instruments. Back in Vienna he
tried to set up a concern for international
trade in those instruments. When he bought
the instruments forge of Anton Gruber in
1842, his concern started to become
successful. Five years later he also participated
successfully in the concern of his father-in-
law, producing paper for cigarettes. When there was a burglary at his office in 1848, he
got the luminous idea which would make him very rich. Looking for a better safe in
Austria, he was surprised not to find any good products. He saw a chance and when he
saw the model of a good safe at the world exhibition of 1851 in London, he bought the
patent for Austria. With it a glorious future was launched. Approximately a decade after
he showed the fireproofness of his safes to the Viennese public in a commercially well
organized show, he sold his twenty thousandth safe, for which occasion there was
organized a enormous party in the flower halls of the Gartenbaugesellschaft at the
Parkring,173 the typical location for such parties of the ‘zweite Gesellschaft’. Johann
Strauss took care of the music and composed his famous polka ‘Feuerfest’ for it.174 In
1872 Wertheim made a limited liability company of his concern. In 1878 though, it
already became a trade partnership. After the crash of the Viennese stock exchange
namely, he was able to buy back the shares he had expensively sold before for much
less.175
Between 1864 and 1868 Heinrich von Ferstel built a palais for him at the
Schwarzenbergerplatz, opposite the palais of archduke Ludwig Viktor, the youngest
brother of emperor Franz Joseph. Together with this palais, the palais Ofenheim and a
fourth palais, the palais Wertheim was designed as one of the four prominent buildings

173 Historisches Lexicon Wien, part 5, 617-618; Mentschl and Otruba, Österreichische Industrielle und Bankiers,
127-132
174 Hennings, Die Ringstrasse. Symbol einer Epoche, 53
175 Gustav Holzmann, Unternehmer aus Niederösterreich. Handwerker, Kaufleute und Industrielle aus 5 Jahrhunderten

(Vienna 1967) 101

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which closed the square around Hähnel’s statue of prince Carl Schwarzenberg. The
buildings in between (one at Ludwig Viktor’s side and one at that of Wertheim and

Heinrich Ferstel’s masterplan for the Schwarzenbergplatz

Ofenheim) were set back a little, which made the four corner-buildings even more
prominent. The urbanistic site of the palais Wertheim was thus as important as that of
archduke Ludwig Viktor, both on a corner with the Ringstraβe. This situation was made
even more interesting by the fact that Heinrich von Ferstel was the architect of both the
palais for the archduke – member of the highest nobility – as that of Wertheim –
member of the ‘second society’. When it was clear in 1863 Ferstel would be the architect
of those two buildings, he was also asked to make a master plan for the total square.
That this plan finally did not come to be realized, was – according to Wibiral and Mikula
– the result of the different wishes of the various architects and their customers of the
buildings around the square.176
Equally in urbanistic design, the architectural design of the two buildings is quite
dissimilar. Both the façade and the interior is designed simpler and less representational
for Wertheim’s palais than for its neighbour. Ferstel was aware that ‘der Palast [needed]
eine andere äuβere Charakteristik als ein bürgerliches Wohnhaus.’177 Of course the
differing wishes of the two customers were leading the way. The archduke needed more
representational rooms and – important too – did not need to rent several parts of his
palais. In Wertheim’s palais there had not only to come several apartments to rent to
other bourgeois, but even some room for shops at the ground floor. The unity of the

176 Wibiral and Mikula, Heinrich von Ferstel, 82-83

177 Heinrich von Ferstel, as quoted in: Wibiral and Mikula, Heinrich von Ferstel, 84
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outer envelop (contours) of the two buildings, didn’t restrain Ferstel - for instance – to

Two similar façades at the Schwarzenbergplatz: of the noble palais Ludwig Viktor (right) and its bourgeois equivalent
palais Wertheim (left), both designed by Heinrich Ferstel

make two floors (one of them as a mezzanin) where in the opposite building only was
one.178
Interesting in the configuration of the Wertheim palais, is the part along the
Canovagasse. It housed a private theatre for Wertheim and his guests, but Wertheim
also gave it in conjugation to a theatre school which he supported. According to Fred
Hennings, it was a contemporary who said that ‘Wertheim habe das schwierige Problem
gelöst, wie man zugleich ein Menschenfreund und ein Geizhals, ein Ignorant und ein
Mäzen sein kann.’179

Michael and Nicolaus Dumba – Palais Dumba

Nicolaus Dumba was one of the most famous
Maecenases of Vienna of his time, perhaps he
actually was the most famous. His involvement
in the city’s musical-, artistic- and political life
was unsurpassed.
The family Dumba originally came from
Blatsa, a village in the Northern part of Greece.
Sterio Dumba (1794-1870) came to Vienna in
1817 where he at first worked in a Greek
concern. Only two years later he started his own
concern together with his two brothers. After their death he became the only chef. The

178 Wibiral and Mikula, Heinrich von Ferstel, 84

179 Hennings, Die Ringstrasse, 53
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Dumba firm did very well and played an important role in the trade between the
Ottoman- and the Habsburg empires. Sterio’s success laid the basis for his family’s
famous role in the support of the cultural life of Vienna. Although he got more than
one honourable noble title, he chose to live like a ordinary bourgeois. His two sons,
Michael (1828-1894) and Nicolaus (1830-1900) were at least as successful as he was
himself, although their style of living was rather different. Michael, although as director
of the Austrian National Bank he became an important expert in the banking- and
industrial sector, and would - as we will see - build the Dumba Palais at the Ringstraβe,
was for the cultural life less important than his younger brother Nicolaus.180
The critic Eduard Hanslick wrote about Dumba: ‘Obgleich Privatmann, wird er
doch überall gesucht und gefunden, wo man einer gewichtigen Stimme und einer
erfahrenen Hand bedarf. Er ‘sitzt nicht bloβ vor’, sondern arbeitet in der Direktion der
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, des Wiener Männergesangvereines, des Kunstvereines,
des Gewerbemuseums und wo nicht sonst! Handelt es sich um die
Konkurrenzausschreibung für ein Monument, überall ist Dumba die organisierende und
stetig arbeitende Kraft. Seine Künstlernatur hat ihn niemals zu unpraktischen
Vorschlägen verleitet, überall repräsentiert er den gesunden Menschenverstand, das
richtige Maβ, den klaren Ausdruck. Woher der vielbeschäftigte Landtags- und
Reichsratsabgeordnete, Fabriksbesitzer und Landwirt noch die Zeit nimmt zu allen
jenen freiwillig übernommenen Arbeiten, das ist sein Geheimnis, oder richtiger sein
Talent.’181
Nicolaus, who got a well-considered ‘Bildung’ as a travel- but even more art-
loving man, was, as well as successful in business, an interested and talented man in
more than one aspect of culture. During the years he stayed with Graf Prokesch-Ostens
in Athens, he became a life-long lover of music, and even appears to have been a good
singer. When he came back in Vienna after several other travels, he got the leadership of
one of his cousin’s factories. Doing well there, he also found time to become leader of
the Viennese Kunstverein, a rather young institution founded in 1850 by Graf von
Waldstein and Rudolf Ritter von Arthaber. Interesting, because it was one of the
bourgeois institutions which took over the function of supporting the arts from the
ruling noble classes. After the Napoleonic wars, which hit the noble classes also
financially, this task, which had primarily been their business for centuries, more and

180 Elvira Konecny, Die Familie Dumba und ihre Bedeutung für Wien und Österreich (Vienna 1986) 2
181Eduard Hanslick, as quoted in: Hennings, Die Ringstrasse, 58
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more became to depend on private bourgeois circles like the Kunstverein.182 Among
several other functions in Vienna’s cultural life, Nicolaus Dumba was also engaged as a
member in the Genossenschaft der bildenden Künstler. That he was a successful
member can be concluded from the fact that he was given an honorary membership in
1882: ‘Die hervorragenden Verdienste, welche sich Euer Hochwolgeboren, um das
Zustandekommen und die glückliche Durchführung der I. internationalen
Kunstausstellung erworben haben, die wohlwollenden Gesinnungen, die Euer
Hochwolgeboren stets den Künstlern Wien’s, bei allen ihren Bestrebungen gütigst zu
Theil werden lieβen, haben alle Mitglieder der Genossenschaft der bildenden Künstler
Wien’s in dem Gedanken vereinigt, Euer Hochwolgeboren zum Ehrenmitgliede dieser
Genossenschaft zu ernennen, und damit die höchste Ehrenbezeugung
entgegenzubringen, welche diese Corporation zu verleihen in der Lage ist.’183
But also on the bigger architectural scale Dumba has been an influential person:
‘Man rühmt den Glanz Neu-Wiens, seine stolzen Monumentalbauten, seine
lichterfüllten Straβenzüge. Nun, Dumba war einer von den Männern, welche diese
Herrlichkeit geschaffen haben, er stand in ihrer vordersten Reihe.’184 Many of the
famous public buildings along the Ringstraβe are in one way or another connected with
the name of Nicolaus Dumba. As vice-president of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde,
he had decisive influence in Theophil Hansen’s plans for the society’s new building.
And as a member of the house of delegates, he also was concerned with the planning of
the parliament, likewise a building of Hansen. Interesting in this context is the fact
which Konecny found in the Sitzungsprotokolle of the Reichsrat. In the minutes of
January the 1st 1879, it becomes clear that it was through Dumba’s efforts that the
ornaments at the outside of the building were made out of marble instead of some
artificial stone: Dumba found it ‘vom künstlerischen und ästhetischen Standpunkte ganz
und gar unzulässig, ja verwerflich […], daβ zur äuβeren Ausschmückung eines
Gebäudes, welches 7 Millionen kosten wird und dessen Fassade […] aus Granit und
[…] Marmor bestehe, ein so unedles Material wie Terrakotta verwendet wird.’185 And
also the new building of the university of Vienna, as well as the Votivkirche were in
some way influenced by Dumba.186

182 Konecny, Die Familie Dumba, 3-4

183 Hans Makart, document in the Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, as quoted in: Konecny, Die Familie
Dumba, 7-8
184 Hugo Wittmann, ‘Feuilleton. Mäcenas.’, reprint of the article which was published on March 25, 1900,

then for the death, now for the 100st birthday of Nikolaus Dumba, in: Neue Freie Presse, probably July 7,
1930
185 Sitzungsprotokolle quoted in: Konecny, Die Familie Dumba, 43
186 Konecny, Die Familie Dumba, 44-45
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An interesting thing to consider, is

that Nicolaus Dumba as one of very few
of his colleagues never applied for a noble
title, although he was swamped with all
sorts of honours.187
In 1865-1866 Nicolaus’ brother
Michael188 let the architects Johann
Romano and August Schwendenwein
build a four storey palais for the family at
a nice parcel of about 834m2 along the
new Ringstraβe (Parkring 4, ‘Baustelle
No. 6 der Gruppe VI’). Responsible for
the realisation of the plans was
Baumeister Eduard Kaiser. He built the
Palais Dumba, Parkring 4
house for 300.000 Gulden after the
Baukonsens was given at the 17th of May in 1865.189 Already in the following year the
project was finished190 and the family Dumba, at that moment existing of Sterio, Michael
and Nicolaus with his wife and their daughter, could occupy the house. Also the
concern ‘Gebrüder M. Dumba’ got a place in the new palais.191
Nicolaus’ brother Michael decided to build the house at the Ringstraβe.
Nicolaus, however, was the one who did most for the interior of the house. One of the
most famous works of art he ordered, was a whole room designed by the artist Hans
Makart. It was the first big commission Makart got, but was a big one. It started with
Dumba’s order: ‘Gehen Sie nach Venedig und tun Sie dort nichts als schauen, und dann
machen Sie mir ein ganzes Zimmer.’192 In the autumn of 1871 the paintings were ready
and publicly – after paying an entrance fee - presented, but only in 1873 the whole
‘Makart-room’, which was to become the most famous room in whole Vienna, was
finished. Every little detail was designed by the artist. The total would have been more
impressive than the parts of it, or as probably Hugo Wittmann wrote in his article in

187 Fred Hennings, Die Ringstrasse. Symbol einer Epoche (Vienna 1977) 58
188 According to Baltzarek and Stekl the house was ordered by Nicolaus’ father Sterio Michael Dumba, see:
Baltzarek, Hoffmann and Stekl, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft der Wiener Stadterweiterung, 297
189 Baukonsens of May 17, 1865, document of the Magistrat der k.k. Reichshaupt- und Residenzstadt

Wien, in: MA 37 (Baupolizei)

190 Benützungsconsens of August 9, 1866, document of the Magistrat der k.k. Reichshaupt- und

Residenzstadt Wien, in: MA 37 (Baupolizei)

191 Konecny, Die Familie Dumba, 19
192 Wiener Zeitung, March 23, 1950 p3, quoted in Konecny, Die Familie Dumba, 11
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1915: ‘Es scheint, daβ sie Allegorien der Industrie, des Ackerbaues, der Kunst, der Jagd
darstellen wollen, die ganze Lebenstätigkeit ihres Eigentümers. Der Beschauer fragt aber
nicht viel nach dem gedanklichen Inhalt dieser Malereien: er steht betäubt von so viel
Farbenluft, die ihm aus allen Winkeln und Ecken des nicht sehr groβen Raumes
entgegensprudelt, und er bewundert den Mann, der sich hier, umbraust vom
Wirbelsturm dieser flott hingepinselten Daseinsfreuden, nachdenklicher Arbeit zu
widmen vermochte.’193

Nicolaus Dumba’s ‘Makart-room’

In the same feuilleton Wittmann wrote about the financial part of the order for
decorating of Nicolaus’ room: ‘Makart soll siebzigtausend Gulden dafür erhalten haben.
Und merwürdig, Dumba besaβ damals gar nicht so viel Geld, er war noch nicht
selbständig, noch der Sohn seines Vaters, und als er diesem von seinen Plänen zur
Ausschmückung des Familienhauses sprach und den Preis eines einzigen Zimmers
nannte, soll der Alte von seinem Kontorsessel beinahe heruntergefallen sein. Ein
Vermögen für ein paar Meter bunte Wand, das ging über alle seine Rechenkunst. Die
Gründer dieser groβen Kaufmannsdynastien sind zumeist haushälterische Leute, drehen

193W. [probably Hugo Wittmann], ‘Feuilleton. Die Dumbas.’, in: an unkown newspaper, probably Neue
Freihe Presse October 31, 1911, in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, map Autogr. 234/14
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den Groschen sechsmal um, bevor sie ihn ausgeben.’194 It is interesting again, to see the
difference between the two following generations. The father who worked for the
money himself and did much to keep and enlarge the acquired capital. The next
generation was used to having money and had less problems spending it. The famous
Viennese story of father and son Sina may have been suitable for the Dumbas too:
‘[Sina] , den ein Fiaker nicht für zwei Gulden fahren wollte, weil ja doch der Sohn des
Herrn Baron für dieselbe Fahrt fünf Gulden zu bezahlen pflegte: „Mein Sohn kann sich
das erlauben,“ antwortete der alte Herr, „der hat einen reichen Vater.“’195
During the rest of his life, Nicolaus was occupied with the embellishing of the
interior of the palais. In addition to the Makart-room he also ordered the decoration of
a ‘Schubert-room’ (a couple of years after the Makart-room was finished) with paintings
of Friedrich Schilcher, and in 1893 Dumba ordered Franz Matsch and Gustav Klimt to
decorate two of the palais’ rooms, of which the music room was to become the most
famous. It contained one of Klimt’s most loved paintings: the ‘Schubert am Klavier’.196
Klimt also made the design for some of the more architectural elements of the room. In
a letter from which we could learn something about the relation between Klimt and his
customer we can read: ‘Werde mir erlauben am Samstag zwischen 9-10 Uhr sämmtliche
architektonische Skizzen für Euer Excellenz Musiksalon vorzulegen […] Die
Zeichnungen sind alle fertig ich brauche sie nur ein wenig zu colorieren, weil sie in
Farben doch den Eindruck besser geben.’197
Dumba not only was a financial supporter of various artists, as a respected
amateur his opinion was asked many times too. Even already famous artists as Rudolf
von Alt and Caspar von Zumbusch – the artist who made the Viennese Beethoven
statue – asked for Dumba’s help.198
Dumba’s good relations with artists also was a pleasure for him, according to
Konecny. How he was honoured by the artists in return is well illustrated by the letter
who was sent him by the artist Constant von Wurzbach: ‘Sie sind auch so freundlich mir
im zweiten Theile Ihres Briefes so Liebes und Gutes über mein Werk zu sagen. O wenn
Sie wüβten geehrter Herr wie das dem Autor wohl thut, der im Übrigen im Vaterlande
systematisch todtgeschwiegen wird. Ein Lob aus solchem Munde thut so wohl richtet so
auf und das braucht eine Arbeit wie die in Redestehende vor allem. Trotz aller

194 W. [probably Hugo Wittmann], ‘Feuilleton. Die Dumbas.’, in: an unkown newspaper, probably Neue
Freihe Presse October 31, 1911, in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, map Autogr. 234/14
195 ibidem
196 Konecny, Die Familie Dumba, 19-22
197 Handwriting of Gustav Klimt to Nicolaus Dumba, in: Handschriftensammlung der Wienbibliothek,

quoted in: Konecny, Die Familie Dumba, 24

198 Konecny, Die Familie Dumba, 15
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Selbstlosigkeit, mit der ich vorgehe, ist doch dieses absichtliche Ignoriren in der eigenen
Heimath empfindlich, schmerzlich. Mich hat das Verhalten der Wiener Presse – nicht
gegen mich sondern gegen mein Werk – geradezu aus dem Lande gefegt. Können Sie
Sich sehr geehrter Herr nur vorstellen, wie glücklich mich Ihre Zeilen gemacht? Also
Dank tausend Dank für jede Zeile, ich und meine Frau wir waren beide so glücklich als
wir Ihre herrlichen Zeilen lasen.’199
The same is to find in letter of Heinrich von Ferstel in which he thanks Dumba
for his visit to the building excavation of the new university: ‘Hochverehrter Herr und
Freund! In Ansehung des hervorragenden Interesses welches Sie und die verehrten
Damen gestern bei Besichtigung des Universitätsbaues für dieses Objekt an den Tag
gelegt haben, wollen Sie mir gestatten zwei Exemplare von Reproduktionen der
allerdings noch mangelhaften Pläne verehren zu dürfen. Indem ich versichere daβ mir
Ihr Besuch aufrichtige Freude bereitet und mich für manche bittere Stunden welches
das mühevolle Werden eines Bauwerkes mit sich bringt, entschädiget hat, zeichne mit
wahrer Hochachtung aufrichtig ergeben v. Ferstel.’200
Another source in which we get a view of the personal life of Nicolaus Dumba
is a nice anecdote in a Feuilleton about the Dumba family: ‘Ein offenes Herz, eine
offene Hand, beides hatte Dumba für die Kunst. Nur wenn, nach seiner Ansicht, der
Künstler selbst in seiner Forderung zu weit ging, erwachte bisweilen der angeborne
kaufmännische Sinn und reizt ihn zum Widerstand. Es lebte damals ein sehr berühmter
Porträtmaler in Wien, den man den modernen Apelles nannte und der zehntausend
Gulden für jeden Kopf berechnete, keinen roten Heller weniger. ‘Mich wird er billiger
malen’, wettete Dumba mit einem Freunde. Der aber schüttelte ungläubig den Kopf:
einem so reichen Manne würde der Künstler eher das Doppelte abverlangen, und mit
Recht. Bald darauf feierte Dumba ein fünfundzwanzigjähriges Jubiläum als Präsident
eines Pensionsvereines, und dieser Verein entsendete zu ihm einige Mitglieder, die ihn
wegen einer Ehrengabe um seine Wünsche befragen sollten. ‘Ich möchte von Apelles
gemalt werden’, sagte er, ohne sich zu besinnen, und als sie den Namen hörten, erging
es den Herren, wie einst dem alten Sterio, sie fielen beinahe um, denn sie wuβten, es galt
da eine bedeutende Summe, um welche das Gut der Witwen und Waisen gekürzt
werden sollte. Sie erkannten ihren Freund und Gönner nicht mehr. War denn der
Dumba plötzlich ein anderer geworden? Doch sein Wunsch muβte erfüllt werden, und

199 Letter of Von Wurzbach dated Berchtesgaden, February 2, 1876, quoted in: Konecny, Die Familie
Dumba, 17-18
200 Letter of Heinrich von Ferstel in the Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, quoted in: Konecny, Die

Familie Dumba, 44
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zum Glück war auch der Maler nicht so hartherzig, als sie befürchtet hatten, sondern
gewährte groβmütig einen Machlaβ von fünfzig Prozent. Am Tage der feierlichen
Uebergabe aber zeigte sich der Jubilar hocherfreut über das herrliche Geschenk, dankte
aus überströmender Seele, und nur ganz zum Schluβ, beim Abschied zwischen Tür und
Anael, lieβ er in seiner gemütlichen Art die Bemerkung fallen: „Die Bezahlung ist
natürlich meine Sache, ich kenne die vereinbarte Summe, der Künstler wird sie noch
heute erhalten.“ Jenem Freunde aber schrieb er: „Wette gewonnen, Apelles hat mich um
den halben Preis gemalt.“’201

Viktor Ofenheim - Palais Ofenheim

Viktor Ofenheim was born in 1820 as son of the Viennese wholesale trader and founder
of the first Viennese gas-society Alexander A. Ofenheim (1789-1850). Although he
originally should become a diplomat, he became involved in the railway sector. Firstly
he held office under the government, but from 1856 on he chose to work for the
Gallician Karl Ludwigsbahn. He succeeded in getting this line built up to the city of
Lemberg (today’s Lwow in Ukrain). His great merit was that he succeeded to attract the
necessary capital for this line from foreign countries. In 1864 he left the Karl
Ludwigsbahn to become general director of the Lemberg-Czernowitz-railway, which
line he built. Apart from his occupations in the railway industry, he took part in several
other industrial and financial businesses. It made him a typical man of the
‘Gründerzeit’.202
His Palais along the
Schwarzenbergerstraβe - built for
him by Romano and
Schwendenwein - became known
as ‘Die Sorgenburg’, because of
the trial which was - after years of
preliminary investigations -
brought against him in 1875 for
various abuses at the Lemberg-
Czernowitz railway. From the Palais Ofenheim, Schwarzenbergplatz 15, principal façade
moment on that Banhans became
minister of trade, Ofenheim was involved in a growing conflict with the government. In

201 W. [probably Hugo Wittmann], ‘Feuilleton. Die Dumbas.’, in: an unkown newspaper, probably Neue
Freie Presse out of 1915, in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, map Autogr. 234/14
202 Österreichisches Biographisches Lexicon 31 (Vienna 1976) 215
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1872 the Lemberg-Czernowitz railway was seized. In the process Ofenheim was partly
blamed for the crash of 1873. And although a lot of his businesses would have been
rather indelicate, he surely was not the only one. According to the Österreichisches
Biographiches Lexicon, the government was so keen on this trial probably because this was
its chance to obscure its own responsibility in it. Ofenheim was plead free and minister
Banham had to resign. In 1879 Ofenheim was elected in the Reichsrat, but only one
year later he had to abdicate again because of suspicion of election fraud.203 Bermann
reviews the palais: ‘Architekt Julius Romano baute das schöne Palais des Ritters Victor
von Ofenheim (Schwarzenbergerstraβe 18), während dessen Processes (1875) im
Volksmunde ‚Die Sorgenburg’ genannt.’204
Interesting is the transformation of the original design of 1865 in the years 1868
and 1869. On the plans which are in the archives of the Magistratisches Bezirksamt 37
of the first district (Baupolizei) it says that some changes were made ‘at the wishes of
the customer’. Interesting in the context of this thesis is for instance that the middle part
of the first floor – where Ofenheim’s apartment would come – would be made a bit
bigger. ‘Veränderungen. Nachträglich wurden auf Wunsch des Bauherren die Zimmer im 1ten Stock
III mit der Aussicht gegen den Schwarzenberg-Platz welche 20’. tief angetragen waren auf 24’ vertieft
[...]’ The position of the façade was already defined, so the wall between the ‘Festsaal’,

203 The explaining

Österreichisches text on theLexicon
Biographisches drawings of the
Vol. 31 adapted
(Viennadesign
1976)(Magistratisches
215 Bezirksamt 37, Baupolizei)
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the room behind and the stairs had to be built somewhat further behind.205
Unfortunately there is no additional correspondence between Ofenheim and his
architects left. Of course we could ‘read’ many things in this ‘auf Wunsch des
Bauherren’. We could expect for instance that Ofenheim visited a room of 20’
somewhere else and found it too small, or visited a room of 24’ in a friends home and
did not want to have a smaller room in his own house. But all this would be too
speculative.

Drawing of the adapted design, first floor (Magistratisches Bezirksamt 37, Baupolizei)

Gustav Epstein - Palais Epstein

At the age of twenty-one, Gustav Epstein (1828-1879) became leader of his father’s
cotton printing factory in Bohemia. Six years later he was deputy manager in his father’s
Viennese wholesaler’s and at his father’s death, he was a wealthy man with a fortune of
approximately ten million Gulden. It was his grandfather Israel Epstein who brought
the fortune in the family. In 1803 he established a linen- and cotton printing factory in
Prague. It flourished, not in the least because of the supplying of the Habsburg army
uniforms during the Napoleonic wars. Israel’s son Lazar (who called himself Leopold in
Vienna) extended the concern he inherited from his father to one of the biggest textile

204Bermann, Alt- und Neu-Wien, 1161

205‘Auswechslung Plan des neuerbauten Wohnhauses des Herrn Victor Ritter von Ofenheim an der
Schwarzenberger Platz Bauparzelle No. 7’, in: Archiv of the Magistratisches Bezirksamt 37 (Baupolizei)
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firms in Bohemia. In the 1840s he opened a shop at the Judengasse in Vienna, but more
and more engaged himself in banking. Gustav Epstein married the eight years younger
Emilie Wehle, a girl from an equally fortuned Jewish family from Prague and in 1859
they got their first son, Friedrich Epstein.206
During the time of the demolition of the
old city walls and the construction of the
Ringstraβe, huge amounts of capital were
needed. Gustav participated in the boom of
founding banks which was the result of it. He
sold the factories of his father and in 1864
founded a private bank, the ‘Bank Epstein’.
With this bank, Gustav Epstein was the first
who financially supported the emperor in his
war against Prussia. And even after that fateful
loss of Austria’s centuries old hegemony in
Germany with the Battle of Königsgratz (1866),
Epstein kept supporting his emperor. Therefore
he was honoured with a noble title at the end of
the same year.207
After the ‘Staatsgrundgesetz’ of 1867, which took away the last discriminating
measures for Jews, Epstein, as one of the richest Jews and bankers in the city, bought
the most expensive of the 101 building lots in the Ringstraβe area, that at the present-
day Dr. Karl Renner ring crossing the Bellariastraβe. The place on the part of the
former glacis was probably not without reason called ‘bell’aria’, or ‘beautiful air’. An
interesting detail is that the project’s Baumeister was the man who would become so
famous for his own buildings: Otto Wagner.208
Niemann and Feldegg (1893) discussed the Palais Epstein in their book about
Theophil Hansen and his works after they discussed Hansen’s design for the Palais of
the Deutschordensmeister archduke Wilhelm. This is interesting, because of the
comparison they make between the two buildings. The palais Epstein is ‘weniger
blendend in der äusseren Erscheinung, wie dies schon durch die Anwendung der

206 Brigitte Hamann, ‘Der Bauherr Gustav Ritter von Epstein’, in: Heinz Fischer, Andreas Kohl a.o., Das
Palais Epstein. Geschichte, Restaurierung, Umbau. Ein neues Haus an der Wiener Ringstraβe (Vienna 2005) 42
207 ibidem, 43-44
208 Letter of the Magistrat der k.k. Haupt- und Residenzstadt Wien, Vienna, February 6, 1872, in: Archive

of the Viennese Baupolizei MA 37

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Terracotta statt des Marmors bedingt is, an die Monumentalität des Palais Wilhelm nicht
hinanreichend’.209
Highly interesting - although unfortunately not annotated – is Niemann’s and
Feldegg’s remark about the critical opinion and influence on the final design of Gustav
Epstein himself: ‘Das Projekt erhielt die Genehmigung des Bauherrn erst nach
mehrfachen Umwandlungen, welche sich sowohl auf die Anzahl der Stockwerke als auf
den Stil der Façade bezogen; vielleicht ist auch der Umstand, dass Hansen hier
ausnahmsweise auf jede Gruppirung verzichtete, auf den Wunsch des Bauherrn
zurückzuführen.’210 Probably they only base this conclusion upon the overlay which
Hansen made for the drawing of the facade, or on differences between drawings of the
first and the adapted version of the façade. In that case they will not bring us any
further, because those drawings – without any textual comments – can be seen
nowadays too.211 But because they wrote their book only slightly more than two decades
after the design was made, we may expect that their sources were more comprehensive.
In his preface Feldegg complained about the lack of written sources from Hansen
himself, but referred to his personal relation with him - together with the works which
‘speak for themselves’ - as principal source for the biography.212

Hansen’s designs for the facade of palais Epstein: left the first design and right the final design

The same thing about the interference of Epstein with the design of his palais, is
concluded by Friedrich Dahm in his article on the building history and the role Epstein
himself played in it. The first design Hansen made for the façade of the palais, was not
carried out and substituted by another one. According to Dahm it appaers ‘schwer
vorstellbar […] dass Hansen selbst sein Werk verworfen hätte.’213 Dahm concludes that
the original plan had enough artistic quality, so that the mutations must have been

209 Niemann and Feldegg, Theophilos Hansen, 74

210 ibidem
211 In the Kupferstichkabinett of the Viennese Akademie der bildende Künste
212 Niemann and Feldegg, Theophilos Hansen, VII
213 Friedrich Dahm, ‘Die Baugeschichte des Palais Epstein – Zur Rolle des Bauherrn und Architekten’, in:

Heinz Fischer, Andreas Kohl a.o., Das Palais Epstein. Geschichte, Restaurierung, Umbau. Ein neues Haus an der
Wiener Ringstraβe (Vienna 2005) 50
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initiated by Epstein. Also the transformed design for the façade (Hansen made an
overlay for a part of the original drawing of the façade214) was – according to Dahm -

Ground plans of the ground floor (bottom) and first floor (top) of palais Epstein. Watch the separation of service
structure and structure of rooms for the bourgeois occupants of the palais. Interesting are the three staircases: top left
for the servants; middle left for the first and second floors; and right for the upper floor.Epstein’s bankoffice was in
the right part of the ground floor. The first (and second) floor contains a real ‘enfilade’. (source: ABZ 36, picture
71)

not good enough for Epstein. Only when Hansen made a whole new design, Epstein
gave his permission.215 Unfortunately also Dahm only interpreted the drawings which

214 Both the first drawing and the overlay are kept in the Kupferstichkabinett of the Akademie der
bildende Künste
215 Friedrich Dahm, ‘Die Baugeschichte des Palais Epstein’, 50-51
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are left from the design process. Of course it appears to be logical that it was Epstein
who gave the order to transform the design, but that is not sure. And his reasons for
this are even less known. Dahm speculated about these reasons. The final design of the
façade shows a formal equalization of the first floor – the beletage - and the second
floor. According to Dahm, Hansen would not have dared to propose such a design in
which the beletage for his customer Epstein was designed equally luxurious as the floor
above. And thus - concludes Dahm – this will have been the influence of Epstein. Of
course, it could have been like that. And the same holds true for the expected reasons
for it, namely that Epstein wanted to make the above apartment to be appropriate later
on for his son and his family. This would also be the explanation for the principal
staircase which opened up not only the first, but also the second floor.216 Alas, no single
word of Epstein.
A contemporary source may help
us a bit further. In the Allgemeine Bauzeitung
Hansen himself published an article and
some drawings of the palais. Hansen:
‘Dem Programme gemäss sollte der 1.
Stock als Wohnung des Bauherrn selbst,
der 2. Stock im Gesammten für eine
Miethpartei und der 3. Stock für 3
Miethparteien eingerichtet werden.
Diesem zu Folge wurden zwei Stiegen
angebracht, die eine, geradarmige, führt zu
den Prunkgemächern des 1. Stockes und
weiter bis zum 2. Stock und kann mit
Bewilligung des Bauherrn auch von der in
diesem Stockwerke wohnenden Partei Letter of Hansen to Hoffmann (source: Hansen’s
217 inheritance in the Wienbibliothek)
benutzt werden.’
The apartment of Epstein was designed by Hansen too: ‘Die Gemächer des 1.
Stockes sind als Wohnung des Bauherrn bis in das kleinste Detail künstlerisch
ausgestattet. Die Renaissancedecken sind plastisch in Stuck mit reichen Ornirungen
ausgeführt und durch Freskogemälde sowie durch Malereien und Vergoldungen

216 Friedrich Dahm, ‘Die Baugeschichte des Palais Epstein’, 53

217 ‘Palais Epstein in Wien’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung 36 (Vienna 1871) 422
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218
prunkvoll verziert.’ An interesting source which is to find in the inheritance of
Hansen, is a letter of Hansen to the painter (not to confuse with the architect) Josef
Hoffmann. Dated September 15, 1870, Hansen wrote that the paintings he made for the
palais ‘Herrn Epstein sehr gut gefallen haben’. 219 We may conclude from this letter, that
there had been moments of contact during the process of design.

Cornice of palais Epstein with various terracotta ornaments of Wienerberger

The further biographical story about Epstein is too interesting to be left out. In
the last phase of the building process (1871), the then only forty-three years old Epstein
became too ill to work and left his bank in the hands of attorneys, which offered him
the possibility to dedicate all his time to his art loving. In January 1872 the beletage of
the palais was ready and Epstein and his family moved in. Slightly more than one year
later, the Viennese stock exchange crashed. At this ‘Black Friday’ the tenth of May,
Epstein was - for medical reasons - in Italy. When he heard about the news, he
immediately travelled back to Vienna to be directly confronted with the widespread
suicidal mood which was all about. Arriving in Vienna, he found the dead body of Adolf
Taussig, treasurer of his own bank on the pavement in front of the palais Epstein,
deadly wounded after jumping from a window. In shock he told the already present

‘Palais Epstein in Wien’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung 36 (Vienna 1871) 422

218

Letter of Theophil Hansen to Josef Hoffmann,Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek –

219

Handschriftensammlung, code 77.007

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correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse, ‘daβ er eine Untersuchung durch die Strafbehörde
nicht wünsche, und verzichtete auf einen Schadenersatz.’ Taussig had lost all his fortune
in one day and with him took Epstein into poverty. The loving Epstein guaranteed the
money and capital of his employees and friends but with it lost his last money. He had
to sell most of his possessions and closed his bank. His palais he could keep - heavily
mortgaged – only another couple of years. He and his family lived in the palais until the
death of his son in 1877, after which they moved to a small rented apartment elsewhere
in the city.220

Ignaz Ephrussi - Palais Ephrussi

The Ephrussi family came from Odessa at the Black Sea. Ignaz Ephrussi was born there
in 1829 as son of Joachim Ephrussi (1789-1864) and Henriette Halperson. He
successfully founded various banks (the Commercial Bank in Odessa; the Bessarabian-
Taurian agrarian bank in Petersburg; the international Diskontbank; and the Russian
trades bank) and transferred his capital in 1856 to Vienna where he founded the bank
Ephrussi & Co. The Ephrussi family was a typical bankers family which married and
lived in the Viennese (and through the branches in Paris and London) and Parisian and
London world of bankers. Both his sons married a banker’s daughter: Moritz with

Façades of palais Ephrussi: combined façade palais Ephrussi and neighboring house (left) and main façade (right)

Beatrix von Rothschild in Paris and Viktor (who continued the Viennese department of
Ephrussi & Co.) with Emilie von Schey-Koromla in Vienna.221 Although Ephrussi
remained Russian citizen during his whole lifetime, he was in 1871 – exceptionally -
raised in the peerage in Austria.222
The palais Ephrussi was built in 1872-1873 by architect Theophil Hansen. An
interesting fact is the similarity with the buildings next to it. The reason we find in

220 Brigitte Hamann, ‘Der Bauherr Gustav Ritter von Epstein’, 45-46
221 Granichstaedten-Cerva, Mentschl and Otruba, Altösterreichische Unternehmer, 30-31
222 Baltzarek, Hoffmann and Stekl, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft der Wiener Stadterweiterun, 298
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Neumann and Feldegg (1893). When Hansen was given the assignment to build the
palais for Ephrussi, simultaneously the two building lots with which that of Ephrussi
forms a block, were to be built. Hansen contacted the architects of the houses to be
built on those lots to adjust their designs to his one, so that the whole block of buildings
would visually become one. One of the architects was willing to cooperate, the other
only took over the height of the horizontal lines.223 Unfortunately it is not clear if the
customers had any influence in this matter.
Concerning the
design of the façade, there is
something interesting to
discuss. Here we find a
disconnection between the
façade and the rooms behind.
As we have seen before,
generally the apartments of
the house owner were in the
first floor above the
basement. In the Palais
Ephrussi the basement of the
façade is one floor higher and
therefore also covering the Cross section palais Ephrussi. We can see the separate stairs to the
beletage. Notice the lower ceilings in the upper apartments.
first floor where the
representative house owner’s rooms are. What from outwards appears to be the beletage
is in fact already the first floor of the rented apartments. Here we thus encounter a total
break between outer and inner worlds.224 Also in palais Dumba we find the apartment of
the beletage (Dumba’s apartment) behind the upper part of the basement, but there the
basement is designed less heavy what made the disconnection less clear.
If we look at the plans of the palais, there are two interesting things to see.
Firstly we can see that only in the lower floors bathrooms are foreseen in the plan.225
Here we meet another way to save on the luxury of the apartments in the upper floors.
Secondly we can see a separate stair for the apartment on the first floor:226 an additional
way of making the apartment on this floor more special and comfortable. In the

223 Niemann and Feldegg, Theophilos Hansen, 76

224 Wagner-Rieger, Reissberger, Theophil von Hansen, 225
225 Kortz, Wien, 417
226 See plans in archive of the Magistratisches Bezirksamt 37 (Baupolizei).
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Allgemeine Bauzeitung we read a third interesting point in this context: ‘Die Wohnung des
Bauherrn im I. Stock wurde mit grosser Sorgfält ebenfalls nach den Zeichnungen des
Verfassers dekorirt, während die übrigen Wohnungen, wie es in Wien üblich ist, von
den verschiedenen Miethparteien selbst gemalt oder tapezirt wurden.’227 So the
apartments in the higher floors are not only decorated in a less luxurious way, they even
had to be finished by the new inhabitants themselves.

Conclusion
Is it possible to conclude something general about all those different persons? Can we
state there is a general ‘type’ of second society Ringstraβe-builder? I think that would be
rather difficult. Of course there are some things they had in common, but I hope that
the short biographies of this chapter have made clear that there have been a lot of
differences too. The general picture which in the last one and a half century has been
drawn of the newly rich Ringstraβe-barons was not only negative, but also – and that is
worse of course – too general.
As we can read in many works about the ‘typical’ Ringstraβe-barons, those
people didn’t like to talk about politics but loved to spend their money - which they
earned with not completely kosher business – to many things which put them any closer
to the habits and lives of the old nobility. Proud as they were on their personal
achievements they thought it was possible to get everything they wanted with money.
Supporting artists as real Maecenases they did rather for their own benefit than for that
of those artists. And they wrongly thought building a palais in the new Ringstraβe area
would mean a chance to come really close to the old nobility. Ordering some
representational rooms in the most prominent parts of such a palais proved not to be a
guarantee for being able to organize the same sort of parties as the nobility was used to.
So far the general picture.
What we have seen however, watching the lives of nine of them, is the variety of
how different persons handled more or less general situations. They all were extremely
rich and had become that rich for a large part because of their own doing. None of
them descended from old noble families, but all of them were raised to the peerage
during their lifetimes. Most of them were Jewish.228 They all built one or several houses

227 ‘Das Haus des Herrn Ritter von Ephrussi in Wien. Von Architekt Th. Hansen.’, in: Allgemeine
Bauzeitung, Vol. 1874 (Vienna 1874) 15
228 Of the nine persons discussed only Drasche and Dumba were not Jewish. Ephrussi isn’t listed in the

study of Hans Jaeger-Sustenau (Die geadelten Judenfamilien im vormärzlichen Wien (Vienna 1950)) but because
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in the new Ringstraβe area of which one principal house – a palais – in which they lived
with their families in an apartment at the prominent first floor.
The last point of resemblance already has to be modified. Heinrich Drasche -
the builder of the famous Heinrichhof – didn’t build a palais but a huge complex with
many apartments. The head-office of his Wienerberger concern was located there, but
he probably didn’t live there himself. His Heinrichhof was interesting because it meant a
different kind of representing its builder. Where other rich builders primarily were
searching for a design which could underline their importance by emphasizing the place
where they lived (the location of their house and the location of their apartment in that
house), Drasche explained the reasons for building his house opposite the opera in
slightly different terms: he hoped the Heinrichshof would honour his entrepreneurship
by being impressive.229 Heinrich Drasche was a ‘typical’ nouveau riche in the sense that he
succeeded in acquiring an enormous fortune thanks to his own talents. His point of
departure as nephew of Alois Miesbach was not a very bad one of course, but the
extreme successes the Wienerberger concern gained, were possible thanks to the
personal qualities of Drasche. Whether his personality was ‘typical’ too, we can only
speculate about. Of course he did a lot for poor people in the city. But one has to say
that the people he helped, were the families which worked for him. He built houses for
them to live in better circumstances than they would have had without him, but of
course there was something for Drasche to win with that too. The contemporary
sources about the personality of Drasche were rather flattering. He apparently never
made a mistake which proved his lower origins or less thorough cultural education. The
Viennese bourgeois were permanently trying to become part of the nobility and so was
Drasche. There is nothing known about for instance pretentious parties organized by
him, but of course he did ask the emperor to raise him to the peerage.
Eduard Todesco was a different person. He organized salons in which the
female members of his family made the evening, himself he didn’t know much about
arts and culture. Who didn’t know the name of Shakespeare was some one and a half
century ago as uncultured as nowadays. Todesco’s qualities appear to have been banking
rather than beyond. What his order to build a palais for him was like, is unfortunately
unknown and we only can speculate about his artistic wishes. But interpreting the little
facts we know about him, those wishes won’t have been very profound and the rather

of the marriages between the Ephrussi family and several other well-known Jewish families (Rothschild,
Schey) we can suppose also the Ephrussi’s were of Jewish religion.
229 See the quote of Drasche in: Baltzarek, Hoffmann and Stekl, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft der Wiener

Stadterweiterung, 303
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negative general picture about the Viennese ‘second society’ will be partly based on
Todesco’s person. Someone so ‘uncultured’ not to know Shakespeare as Todesco was
outdone by Jonas Königswarter who apparently didn’t give anything for ‘high’ culture.
His palais was kept rather sober.
Friedrich Schey appears to have had more wishes for his palais at the
Goethegasse. Its design was everything but ‘sober’. Schey was a proud man who liked to
show what he had. And ‘what he had’ wasn’t only pure money. Schey owned a private
gallery of some 180 paintings. Of course that doesn’t say he also understood them –
although that is difficult to define anyhow – but we can conclude that he liked to spend
his money to other things than his concern too. And that is what Gustav Epstein – one
of the other important bankers – liked to do too. Epstein owned a private gallery too
and also appears to have been tightly involved with the planning and design of his
palais. Many of the aspects of the tough character and behaviour of Königswarter will
have been common in the world of successful businessmen, but that some of them had
other qualities too, we can conclude for instance from the way Epstein behaved after
the 1873 crash of the Viennese stock exchange.
Most of the persons discussed in this chapter were immigrants of the first or
second generation but became real Viennese by assimilating as much as possible. Ignaz
Ephrussi came from Odessa in Russia and remained Russian citizen also after his arrival
in Vienna. Unfortunately there is nothing known about Ephrussi’s artistic preferences.
Interesting however, is that the façade of his palais forms a unity with that of the
adjacent building. We may conclude that Hansen’s wish to choose for this solution
wasn’t blocked by Ephrussi. Another interesting point is the disconnection between the
façade and the rooms behind. What appears to be the beletage in the façade, in fact is
already the second floor. That means that Ephrussi’s own apartment was behind the
basement of the façade and did not represent the prominence of its owner to the public.
Franz Wertheim and Viktor Ofenheim were two of the successful Viennese
industrials who both built a palais at the Schwarzenbergplatz. Ofenheim was a railway
entrepreneur who was very successful until he became entangled in a trial in which he
was accused of various abuses at the construction of one of his railways. Of his artistic
preferences is unfortunately rather little known. In one of the governmental archives
one can find some interesting text though, which learns us something about a changing
of the plans for his palais at his personal order.
As son of a not very rich tradesman, Wertheim had acquired his enormous
possession only because of personal success. He had the fruitful combination of insight
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in business and commercial talent. His palais architecturally is very interesting because it
formed the real bourgeois counterpart of the opposing palais of a member of the high
nobility. Wertheim’s personality was a combination of a hard industrial and a man who
felt the duty to do something for society, maybe for his own status.
Nicolaus Dumba differed from all the other persons described in this chapter in
the sense that he was the real Maecenas par excellence. Notwithstanding that he worked
to get enough money to spend, he took part in every possible cultural commission.
Giving highly valued artistic comments, he also personally assigned young artists to
work for him and was the financial or mental supporter of various others.
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Chapter Three
Traces of Relations between Builders and
Architects of Dwellings in the Allgemeine
Bauzeitung

Introduction
The most important magazine about architecture and building in the German speaking
countries undoubtedly was the Viennese Allgemeine Bauzeitung, founded by Ludwig
Förster in 1836. Fifty years later, Siegmund Feldmann wrote in an article in memory of
the magazine’s tenth lustrum jubilee: ‘Um der Mitwelt einen Ueberblick zu ermöglichen,
gilt es, was räumlich getrennt ist, mühselig nebeneinander zu rücken; durch den Stift des
Zeichners die Anschauung, durch die Feder die Kenntniss all’ der Leistungen und
Strebungen zu vermitteln, die erst in ihrer Vereinigung Klarheit über Ziel und Schaffen
der Gegenwart gewähren. Der Wunsch, diese Vereinigung zu erleichtern, ein
Zentralorgan für das gesammte Bauwesen zu schaffen, hat seinerzeit zur Gründung der
‘Allgemeine Bauzeitung’ geführt.’230 Published in Vienna the magazine was closely
concerned with the developments connected with the city’s project of the century: the
Ringstraβe. ‘Diese grossartige Baubewegung konnte auf den Inhalt der ‘Allgemeinen
Bauzeitung’ nicht ohne Einfluss bleiben. Sie wurde der Moniteur derselben, in gewissem
Sinne ihr offizielles Organ, der publizistische Vertreter jener ‘Wiener Schule’, die in den
letzten vier Lustren internationale Ehren geerntet und zumal im Zinshausbau weit über
die Grenzen Oesterreichs richtungsgebend geworden ist.’231
That last point is of course of great importance in the context of this thesis.
Feldmann went on writing about the leading position of the Viennese architecture of
dwellings: ‘Der ‘Zinspalast’, der, den Bedürfnissen unseres prunkfreudigeren
Bürgerthums folgend, das nüchterne Massenquartier der vormärzlichen Tage abgelöst
hat, ist ein ganz modernes Problem, das nur durch einen Kompromiss zwischen Kunst
und Nothwendigkeit, zwischen einer ästhetischen Idee und einer finanziellen
Berechnung zu lösen war. Dieser Kompromiss vollzog sich gerade auf dem Boden
Wiens in der befriedigendsten Form und darum hielt es die ‘Allgemeine Bauzeitung’ für
ihre Pflicht, den Instanzenzug dieses alle vorhandenen Stylformen durchlaufenden
Entwickelungsprozesses auf hunderten von Blättern gewissenhaft zu verzeichnen.’232

230 Siegmund Feldmann, ‘Nach fünfzig Jahren. Ein Gedenkblatt der ‘Allgemeinen Bauzeitung’ gewidmet’,
in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 51 (Vienna 1886) 1
231 ibidem, 2-3
232 ibidem, 3
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During this important era in Vienna’s architectural history, the editor-in-chief,

Ludwig Förster died (1863). He was succeeded by his two sons Heinrich and Emil
Förster. Interesting to know too, is that Theophil Hansen was from his arrival in Vienna
in the 1840s onwards one of the editors of the magazine.233
This chapter is entirely dedicated to articles in the Allgemeine Bauzeitung. Because
of its prominent position in the contemporary architectural world, it can be an
interesting source for us to learn something not only about the critiques on newly
finished buildings, but also about the process of designing and realization. In the
preceding chapters I already used some material from the magazine as source. This
chapter deals with the relevant articles about other Viennese houses than those nine
which were discussed more thoroughly in the last chapter.

The house of Eduard Wiener and next to it the house of Albert Klein next to the opera
Wiener would like to have an apartment for himself at the beletage, the rest should be
suited for renting. The house of Klein was completely meant as Zinshaus. ‘Die Lage [...]
ist eine der schönsten und besuchtesten in den neu zu schaffenden Stadttheilen. So wie
aber die meisten der daselbst zu errichtenden Gebäude hauptsächlich auf hohes
Zinserträgnis angelegt werden, so sollten auch die beiden Häuser [...] hauptsächlich dem
Zwecke entsprechen, das darauf verwendete Kapital auf möglichst hohe Zinsen zu
bringen. Bei alle dem war dem Architekten die Aufgabe gestellt, die Grundrisse so
anzuordnen, daβ das 1. und 2. Stockwerk zu herrschaftlichen Wohnungen zu
verwenden sei und das Aeusere, die Vestibule und die Treppen einem imponirenden
Eindruck hervorrufen.’234 So as we have seen in more cases, the more public parts of the
houses should appear luxurious. The same is wanted for the main apartments at the first
and second floors. Because the design of the rest of the apartments was not mentioned
separately, it will probably have been ‘normal’: limited to the basic conditions to be
rented.
There is another interesting thing to read about the design of the façade: ‘Die
beiden Hausbesizer einigten sich auf freundschaftliche Weise so zu bauen, daβ beide
Häuser als ein Ganzes erscheinen und eine groβ und kräftig wirkende Faβade gegen das
Opernhaus darstellen’235 We have seen the same with the Palais Ephrussi, but there the

233 Feldmann, ‘Nach fünfzig Jahren’, 2

234 ‘Wohnhäuser in Wien. Ecke der Ringstraβe am Ausgange der Kärntnerstraβe links. Architekt Ludwig
Förster’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 27 (Vienna 1862) 27
235 ibidem
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wish to build one façade for more houses not owned by one person came from the
architects, not from the customers.
Interesting too is the special wish of Albert Klein: ‘bei dem Klein’schen Hause
wurden auf Verlangen des Hausbesizers, dem als Eigenthümer groβer Eisenwerke die
Einführung des Eisens in Gebäuden erwünscht war, gewalzte 9 Zoll hohe I Schienen in
Entfernungen von 6 Zoll von Mitte zu Mitte über die Zwischenweiten der Säulen und
Pfeiler gelegt’236
That the façade should be nice, but that appearance and little costs were more
important for the customers, we can conclude from the comment that the façade facing
the Ringstraβe was ‘ziemich reich dekorirt’, but that this was only possible because ‘die
Verzierungen wenig gekostet haben, indem sie gröβtentheils aus Cementguβ hergestellt
sind, der sich in Wien seit 15 Jahren vollkommen bewährt hat’237

The house of Klein at the Jägerzeile

Another house of Albert Klein was built for him at the Jägerzeile. The instructions for
the façade of this house – where he probably lived himself – were given in detail in the
magazine: ‘Die Faβade an der Jägerzeile sollte den Ausdruck eines herrschaftlichen
Wohngebäudes erhalten; es wurde daher ein hoher Unterbau zur Gewinnung eines der
groβen Anlage entsprechenden Einfahrtsthores und Vestibuls angeordnet; die 12
Figuren unter dem Hauptgesimse beuten die verschiedenen Industriezweige an, welche
der Hausherr betreibt. Die Ausstellungsart dieser Figuren hat die senkrechte Theilung
der Architektur veranlaβt.’238

The house of count Von Hohos-Sprinzenstein at the Ringstraβe

In the article about this noble house, we learn that also noble builders built houses
partly to rent: ‘Durch die Ausführung des […] Baues beabsichtigte das jezige Haupt der
[…] Familie, Herr Ernst Karl Reichsgraf Hohos-Sprinzenstein, theils die Stiftung eines
Majoratshauses mit den nöthigen Wohnungen für die gräfl. Familie, theils die
Herstellung von Räumen zum Vermiethen, um auf diese Weise auch ein entsprechendes
Zinserträgniβ zu erzielen.’239 However, there was of course a difference in how luxurious
the interior of both parts was made: ‘Was nun die innere Anordnung der Gebäude

236 ‘Wohnhäuser in Wien. Ecke der Ringstraβe am Ausgange der Kärntnerstraβe links. Architekt Ludwig

Förster’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 27 (Vienna 1862) 28

237 ibidem
238 ‘Wohnhaus des herrn Albert von Klein in Wien. Architekt Ludwig Förster’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 27

(Vienna 1862) 240-241

239 ‘Das Majoratshaus der Grafen von Hohos-Sprinzenstein auf der Ringstraβe in Wien. Architekt

Professor L. Förster.’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 29 (Vienna 1864) 3

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betrifft [...]; das Majoratshaus ist den Bedürfnissen und Wünschen der gräfl. Familie
gemäβ und das Zinshaus nach der in Wien üblichen Gewohnheit eingerichtet’240

The house of Mr. Ludwig Ladenburg at the Ringstraβe

The architect Karl Schumann got a detailed list of wishes of his customer Ladenburg,
who wanted to build a representational palais along the Ringstraβe in which he wanted
an apartment on the first floor for himself and his family. Schumann described
Ladenburg’s wishes for his own apartment: ‘Es war verlangt, dass man von dem
Vorzimmer aus direckt in den Saal, in den daneben befindlichen kleinern Saal, in das
Frühstückzimmer und in die Schlafzimmer, ferner von der Küche aus, ohne den
Speisesaal zu passiren, in die Wohräume gelangen könne. Ein Bedientenzimmer sollte
unmittelbar neben dem Vorzimmer liegen, ferner sollte sich das Comptoir in demselben
Stockwerke befinden, doch nicht von der Hauptstiege aus zugänglich sein. Endlich
sollte das Eckzimmer, welches für die Frau des Hauses bestimmt ist, in solcher Weise
angeordnet werden, dass man von demselben und dem daselbst anzubringenden
Balkone aus die nach allen Seiten reizende Aussicht [...] möglichst geniessen könne. Was
die übrigen Stockwerke betrifft, so sollten im zweiten Stock zwei, im Entresol und
dritten Stock aber drei Wohnungen eingetheilt werden.’241

The house of Moriz Faber, Schwindgasse

As we can see more often, it was not unusual for a builder to ask a separate staircase to
reach his own apartment without having to encounter some of the tenants of the other
apartments in his house: ‘Das erste Stockwerk wird vom Eigenthümer selbst bewohnt,
und führt eine von Säulen getragene, architektonisch reich geschmückte Stiege allein zu
dessen Wohnung. Ausserdem sind noch zwei Treppen angebracht, welche zu den im
vorderen und rückwärtigen Trakte gelegenen Wohnungen führen.’242

The house of the brothers Thonet

In some houses the commercial function at the ground floor was more important than
the representational qualities of the apartments above. The Thonet brothers stimulated
their architects to maximize the commercial possiblities by using new technical ways:

240 ‘Das Majoratshaus der Grafen von Hohos-Sprinzenstein auf der Ringstraβe in Wien. Architekt
Professor L. Förster.’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 29 (Vienna 1864) 3
241 Karl Schumann, ‘Wohnhaus des Herrn Ludwig Ladenburg in Wien. Opernring Nr. 17.’, in: Allgemeine

Bauzeitung, 31 (Vienna 1866) 341

242 ‘Wohnhaus des Herrn Moriz Faber in der Schwindgasse in Wien. Von den Architekten Claus und

Gross.’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 40 (Vienna 1875) 82

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‘Bei dem Entwurfe des Projektes zu dem [...] Hause der Herren Gebrüder Thonet in der
Kärnthnerstrasse in Wien war zunächst die Idee maassgebend, unter Zugrundelegung
der reichen Erfahrungen der beiden Architekten den berechtigten Wünschen der
Inhaber grösserer Verkaufslokalitäten bei diesem Baue so weit als möglich zu
entsprechen. Demzufolge wurde, um dem Parterre-Lokale eine entsprechende
Höhenentfaltung gewähren zu können, auf eine eingeschobenes Mezzanin verzichtet
und dieses als selbständiges Stockwerk hergestellt; es wurden ferner, um eine durch
Pfeiler möglichst wenig unterbrochene Schaufenster-Fronte zu schaffen, alle
Tragstützen auf das Minimum reduzirt und statt der noch immer eine ziemlich grosse
Basis erfordernden Steinpfeiler Eisenstützen verwendet’243

The house of Mr. Gutman

A very interesting phenomenon we find reading the article about this house of Gutman.
It appears not to have been usual - but according to this article practised though - to
organize an architects competition before giving the final order to an architect: ‘Zu
Ende des Jahres 1874 beauftragte Herr D. von Gutmann mehrere Architekten, Pläne zu
einem Familienhause auf dem von ihm erworbenen Grund, Ecke der Heu- und
Schwindgasse, zu entwerfen, und erwählte sich den Plan der Vorgenannten zur
Ausführung. [...] Es war dem Architekten vorgeschrieben, das Haus so zu gestalten, dass
der Zugang zu dieser Wohnung in keiner Weise mit den Zugängen zu den übrigen
Wohnungen in Verbindung stehe. Es führt daher eine eigene, in farbigem Marmor
ausgeführte Separatstiege in die reich im italienischen Renaissance-Style dekorirten
Räume des ersten Stockes.’244

The house of Franz Fischer

The usual orders for architects apparently were accompanied by the request to keep the
design as cheap as possible. Some builders made an exception: ‘Der Bauherr Franz
Fischer hatte die Absicht ausgesprochen, auf seinem erworbenen Grunde am Hof, als
auf einem der schönsten Plätze Wiens, etwas über dem Niveau der Alltäglichkeit
Stehendes herzustellen, und dokumentirte dies dadurch, dass er uns [article obivously
written by the architects] mit den Geldmitteln fast in keiner Weise beschränkte.’245

243 ‘Haus der Gebrüder Thonet in Wien. (“Eisernes Haus”). Von den Architekten Fellner und Helmer.’,
in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 42 (Vienna 1877) 59
244 ‘Wohnhaus des Herrn Gutmann in Wien. Von den Architekten Claus und Gross.’, in: Allgemeine

Bauzeitung, 44 (Vienna 1879) 30

245 ‘Haus des Herrn Franz Fischer am Hof in Wien. Von den Architekten Fellner und Helmer.’, in:

Allgemeine Bauzeitung, Vol. 1879 (Vienna 1879) 46

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The house of Hugo Ernst

An interesting situation arose when the person who ordered a design, was an architect
himself too: ‘Der Bauherr, in diesem Falle selbst Fachmann, d. h. Architekt, der jedoch
durch eines der bedeutendsten Steinmetzgeschäfte Wiens, dem er als Meister vorsteht,
daran verhindert war, das Haus selbst im Detail durchzubilden, hat nichtsdestoweniger
durch zahlreiche Skizzen [...] dem Ganzen den Stempel seines Charakters aufgedrückt.
[...] Dem gegebenen Programme wurde vollständig entsprochen. [...] Der Wunsch des
Eigenthümers war: Alles möglichst einfach, die wenigen Zierden der Facade jedoch als:
Kapitäle, Sohlbank-Untertheile, Erker etc. in Stein durchbilden zu lassen.’246

The house of Mr. Hollitzer

It is not clear which reasons Mr. Hollitzer had to order a house of higher technical
standards, but it is not impossible that the sometimes very bad technical quality of the
buildings in Vienna247 stimulated him to ask his architect to pay special attention to it:
‘Den Absichten des Bauherrn gemäss wurde das Gebäude mit besonderer Rücksicht auf
solide Arbeit ausgeführt.’248

The house of Franz Regenhart Ritter v. Zápory

All the ‘usual’ demands were made on the design for this house. The complicated
circumstances of the building lot did not restrain Mr. Zápory to ask his architect to
design a real palais for him: ‘Hier war dem Architekten die schwierige Aufgabe gestellt,
ein palastartiges Wohnhaus für ein vornehmes Ehepaar zu schaffen, das zugleich in
seinem oberen Stockwerken einer Miethwohnung Raum gewähren sollte, für welches
überdies nur der Platz einer mässigen Zinshaus-Parzelle zur Verfügung stand und die
ganze Anlage einem gegebenen Rahmen (Risalitbreite, Stockwerks- und
Hauptgesimshöhen) angespasst werden musste, um den Bedingnissen am Votivkirchen-
Platze zu entsprechen. Wie aus den Grundrissen zu entnehmen, ist bei
grösstmöglichster Raumausnützung die Aufgabe zweckentsprechend und zur
Zufriedenheit gelöst. Die Hauptaufgabe war, die gesammten Räume des Hausherrn,

246 ‘Wohnhaus des Herrn Hugo Ernst. Von Architekt Schachner.’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 44 (Vienna
1879) 91
247 see chapter ‘Vienna: its Bourgeoisie and its Architecture’ of this thesis
248 ‘Wohnhaus des Herrn Hollitzer auf dem Maximiliansplatz Nr. 10 in Wien. Architekten Heinrich Ritter

v. Ferstel u. Karl Köchlin.’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 47 (Vienna 1882) 86

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welche im Souterrain, Hochparterre und ersten Stock untergebracht sind, von jenen der
Miethparteien ganz zu isolieren, daher die Nothwendigkeit je einer eigenen Treppe.’249

The department store and the house of August Hückel

Just like Mr. Gutman (see above), August Hückel organized a competition to get the
best design for his building lot: ‘Der Bauherr hatte unter einigen Architekten eine
Konkurrenz eingeleitet. Dass alle Pläne in Folge der Parzellenfigur schiefe,
unregelmässige Räume zeigen mussten, war selbstverständlich. Wir [the authors
apparently are the architects of the described building, Claus and Gross] unternahmen
es, in erster Linie die Parzellirung umzugestalten, wodurch die Grundform wesentlich
verbessert und mit Rücksicht auf den Concordiaplatz eine würdigere, bessere Situation
geschaffen wurde. Diese Idee wurde dem Gemeinderathe der Stadt Wien unterbreitet
und fand nach vielen Mühen endlich dessen Genehmigung. Den Beifall des Bauherrn
aber hatte sie in dem Maasse gewonnen, dass es hauptsächlich diesem Umstande zu
danken ist, dass unser Plan als der beste unter den Konkurrenzarbeiten erkannt, und uns
der Bau übertragen wurde. Das Haus, dessen Bestimmung die eines Wohn- und
zugleich Waarenhauses ist, enthält ein Souterrain, Parterre, Untertheilung und vier
Stockwerke. Das Souterrain, das Parterre, die Untertheilung und der erste Stock dienen
zu Geschäftszwecken, die drei oberen Stockwerke zu Wohnräumen.’250

The Haas-house at the Stock im Eisen Platz

Architects of course had not only to fulfil the wishes of their customers. They had an
‘artistic duty’ too. That these two could come into conflict with each other is not special
for those times of course. Specific problems were, however. And if a fine solution was
found, there was a ground to be proud: ‘Bei allen Häusern, welche im Parterre,
Mezzanin und ersten Stock grosse Verkaufsauslagen enthalten müssen, ist es den
Architekten unendlich schwer gemacht, eine organische Façaden-Entwickelung zu
schaffen, weil entgegen allen Baugesetzen die darüber stehenden Geschosse, wo kleinere
Fensteröffnungen, den Wohnräumen entsprechend, daher breitere Pfeilerflächen sein
müssen, auf die beinahe zum Nichts geschwundene Pfeilerbreite des Unterbaues im
Parterre zu stehen kommen. Dieses moderne Problem für unsere Architektur, das
bisher miest in einer höchst anti-ästhetischen Weise gelöst wurde, scheint uns nun in

249 ‘Wohnhaus des Herrn Franz Regenhart Ritter v. Zápory, Wien, IX., Maximilianplatz 10. Architekt:
Ludwig Tischler.’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 48 (Vienna 1883) 56
250 ‘Das Waaren- und Wohnhaus des Herrn August Hückel, Ecke der Heinrichsgasse, Concordiaplatz und

Salzgries in Wien. Von den Architekten Claus und Gross im Vereine mit dem k. k. Ober-Ingenieur
August Hückel.’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 48 (Vienna 1883) 88
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dem letzten dieser Art in der Kärntnerstrasse erbauten Hause Nr. 5 von den Architekten
Claus und Gross in weit befriedigenderem Maasse gelöst zu sein, was dadurch erreicht
wurde, dass die Architekten den ganzen untern Theil des Hauses, soweit er für
Waarenauslagen bestimmt ist, mit einem über die ganze hausbreite gehenden reichen
Balkon gekrönt und abgegrenzt haben.’251

Two houses at the Rathhausstraβe

The building lots in the Ringstraβe area were extremely expensive252 which left the
builders no other option than ordering their architects to build as efficiently as they
could: ‘Wie leider in Wien bei allen theuren Baugründen, musste auch hier auf eine
grösstmöglichste Ausnützung gesehen werden, und war gleichzeitig vom Bauherrn die
Bedingung gestellt, dass die Eintheilung derart geschehe, dass zwei möglichst gleiche
Häuser mit gemeinschaftlichen Höfen gebaut werden, welche entweder beisammen
bleiben sollen oder über Wunsch durch Aufführung einer Hoftrennungsmauer leicht
vollständig geschieden werden können.’ Building blocks were scaled to enormous
proportions. Sometimes to such an extent that the architects had to put in artifices to
make an acceptable design. ‘Was die Façade betrifft, so war deren Komposition durch
die Anordnung von sechs Stockwerken bedeutend erschwert, und half sich der
Architekt in der Weise, dass er die ganze Höhe in zwei gleiche Theile theilte, den
unteren Theil durch Verwendung einer kräftigen Rustik zu einem massiven Unterbau,
den oberen theil jedoch in leichterer Weise gestaltete.’253 The way the report about the
design for this house was written seems to indicate that this design was made without
much interesting conversation between the architect and the customer.

Double house at the Wallfischgasse

This house, designed by Ludwig Tischler for Bernhard Hoffman apparently had only
one purpose: making money. ‘Besonders hervorzuheben ist noch, dass der Aufgabe des
Architekten, das Augenmerk besonders auf Rentabilität und praktische
Grundrisseintheilung zu richten, in jeder Hinsicht Rechnung getragen wurde.’254

251 ‘Wohn- und Waarenhaus der Herren Georg Haas & Joh. B. Cziczek, Kärntnerstrasse 5 in wien. Von

den Architekten Claus und Gross.’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 49 (Vienna 1884) 7-8
252 See chapter ‘Vienna: its Bourgeoisie and its Architecture’
253 ‘Zwei Wohnhäuser. I., Rathhausstrasse und Landesgerichtsstrasse, Gruppe B, Parzelle 2, in Wien.

Architekt: Hermann Krackowizer.’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 49 (Vienna 1884) 96

254 ‘Doppel-Wohngebäude auf den Stadterweiterungs-Gründen in Wien, Wallfischgasse, Akademie- und

Krugerstrasse. Architekt: Ludwig Tischler.’, in: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 49 (Vienna 1884) 103
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Conclusion
Considering the whole of the articles from which I quoted above and in chapter two, we
could state that there is still a lot unclear about the Viennese way of building, about the
architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie. But about some of its aspects we
learned something though.
An interesting point is the organization of a competition to choose the architect
with the best design. We saw in the articles about the houses for Gutman and Hückel
that such a competition was organized. In both cases it was the builder himself who
chose the design he liked the most. Although I didn’t find any indications for such
competitions studying the more principal houses of the Ringstraβe area in chapter two,
in two of the articles used for the current chapter there has been written about this kind
of (semi?) public tender. It could be possible that the governmental restrictions255 on the
choice of an architect for buildings in the most important parts of the city extension
prevented this free choice there. But where such a competition was organized, we note
an involvement of the builder. His choice for one specific design out of several says
something about his own preferences. To learn more about those preferences, we
should also study the alternative designs however. But unfortunately those will probably
be very hard to find, if they still exist at all.
The general principles of the typological lay-out of Viennese houses were
confirmed by most of the articles. The vertical differentiation with commercial rooms at
the ground floor, one or few luxurious apartments at the first floor or beletage for the
owner of the house, and several apartments (the more per floor, the higher in the house)
above. The wishes the builders ordered their architects principally concerned the façade,
the lay-out of the first floor, and the entrance. The rest of the house mostly had to be
designed as profitable as possible. We saw that Mr. Ladenburg had a detailed list of
wishes for the design of his own apartment. The separate staircase for the principal
apartment was a usual order of the builders of the more prominent houses. We saw it
for instance in the articles about the houses for Faber and Regenhart.
The design of the façade appears - according to some of these articles - to have
been less important than one could have expected. In several articles – about house
Ernst and house Hoffman for instance - we can read the order to design it as cheap as
possible. But we have to be careful here. Other sources indicated – although only
indirectly - the importance the builders attached to the design of the façade. The fact
that the façade for Klein’s house at the Jägerzeile should look like that of a noble house

255 See chapter two, paragraph The Ringstraβe project

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and thus represent the honour of its owner indicates the contrary. And also the
agreement between Wiener and Klein to make one design for the façade covering their
two houses facing the opera indicates the importance these builders attached to it. Of
course we should not forget that it was all about appearance. That a façade could be well-
designed but built with cheap materials we read again in the same article: most of the
decoration on the houses of Wiener and Klein was made out of ordinary cement.
A whole new thing concerning the relation between architect, builder and
government we learn from the article about the house of Hückel. The original complex
form of his building lot was changed to make it possible to make a better design for it.
Hückel was very positive and after tough negotiations with the local council, the change
of the lot was admitted. Usually the boundaries of a building lot were – and are – very
strict. For a simple extension of several centimetres on behalf of for instance an
entrance, one had to ask official permission.256
Another important thing considering the representational wishes of the builders
is the practicing of technical innovations. Klein ordered to use iron constructions. As
owner of some factories which produced iron, he was an advocate for introducing iron
in the construction of houses. Of course he wanted to set an example in one of his own
buildings. That these techniques were used more often a couple of years later – but then
not for that purpose – we read in the article about the house and shop for the brothers
Thonet. They apparently asked for a design of the ground floor with as little as possible
space taken by the construction. The architect chose iron for the construction to fulfil
their wish.

256See for instance the official approval for the extension for the entrance of palais Epstein in the archive
of the Magistratisches Bezirksamt 37 (Baupolizei)
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Conclusion

At the end of this story it is interesting to consider the whole, to ponder on it for a
while and give an overview of the purport of the previous chapters. With this thesis I
tried to upset, to break down the general - above all negative - picture of the
architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie during the years 1857-1873 by giving a
new, broken picture in which one can read above all the diversity of the people and the
period. Even if we focus on such a short period – the two decades after Franz Joseph’s
order to demolish the city walls – and little area – that of the Ringstraβe – we see many
differences. Of course it would be possible to conclude some generalities - which is
even very tempting of course - but I tried not to do that though. It may seem very post-
modern, but it was not a wish to write a post-modern piece which drove me. It was the
material, the sources – or the lack of them - which obliged me to do so. Although not
giving any strict conclusions, I did try to give some interpretative conclusions in
addition to the presentation of the relevant material. At the end of chapters two and
three I gave some conclusions which are meant as an initiative to an understanding of
the subject.
In the first chapter I sketched the general situation in Vienna: the bourgeoisie
and its architecture. Vienna had been residence of the monarchy for centuries. For years
and years the court and the nobility had lived in the city. Not only the social structure,
but also the built environment was signed by this fact. Vienna’s bourgeoisie - whose
members only after the revolutions of 1848 got real chances to become serious
competitors to the nobility - had a different position than in for instance the cities in the
German countries. Important to know, is that the Viennese bourgeoisie was far more
heterogeneous in composition. Because of immigration from different parts of the
monarchy and abroad, it was rather mixed. Generally we could say that the new
bourgeoisie tried to assimilate. Not chasing but imitating the nobility was their way to
reach the social top. Their houses reflected this wish. When emperor Franz Joseph gave
the order to demolish the fortifications around the city and at the same time launched
what came to be the project of the century - the building of the Ringstraβe -, the
bourgeois saw their chance and built as much as they could. Within the typical Viennese
tradition of apartment houses in four or five floors, various rich bourgeois built big
houses which resembled their noble equivalents in several ways. Some aspects however
couldn’t be copied and therefore were transformed to typically bourgeois alternatives.
The bourgeoisie was more successful than ever before. The economy flourished as
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never before and appeared to grow for ever. In 1873 that dream proved not to be reality
though. The city’s stock exchange crashed and lots of people lost everything they had,
or even more. The disaster of 1873 put an end to many builder’s dreams too. The first
gulf of building in Vienna came to an end.
The second chapter describes the lives of nine builders of this period. They all
belonged to what came to be called the ‘second society’ and they all built a palais in the
new Ringstraβe area. What we see though, is that there were – apart from various
similarities – many differences between them.
Heinrich Drasche was an extremely successful industrial who as owner of the
largest brick factory in the monarchy was directly involved with the building industry of
the city. He built several houses of which one – the Heinrichhof opposite the opera
along the Ringstraβe – was the most famous. Eduard Todesco was a banker with
amiable manners but little understanding of arts and other forms of culture. He built an
impressive palais next to the opera. Jonas Königswarter – a banker too – was a different
kind of person: a hard banker, disinterested in culture who built a rather simple palais
next to the Heinrichhof. Friedrich Schey was one of the most successful ‘Ringstraβe
barons’. As banker he came to great fortune which he liked to show with the building
and furnishing of his excessive palais on the corner Ringstraβe-Burggasse. Franz
Wertheim was one of those industrials who after successful business got the chance to
directly measure himself with the high nobility by building his palais opposite that of
one of the emperor’s brothers, archduke Ludwig Viktor. Nicolaus Dumba was a
particularly well–known supporter of arts in the city. He owned a palais at the Parkring,
for its interior he gave well-paid assignments to famous and not-yet famous artists.
Viktor Ofenheim was a railway entrepreneur who built a palais at the
Schwarzenbergplatz but became ‘famous’ because of the trial which was waged against
him. Gustav Epstein was a former wholesale trader who later on became a successful
banker. He built a palais at one of the most beautiful places along the Ringstraβe but
could live there only for a couple of years because of great losses during the crash of the
stock exchange in 1873. Ignaz Ephrussi was a Russian banker who came to Vienna after
successful trade abroad. He built a palais at the place of the former Schotten bastion.
All these individuals had similar lives indeed, but their characters and the way
they behaved was very different. They did different things with their money and with a
different meaning. Some of them may have fitted in the general picture of the
uncultured too rich Ringstraβe baron - I think about for instance Todesco and
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Königswarter –, others surely have not and the rest only partly. I only discussed nine
people of a much larger group. Extrapolating these histories to those of many more, one
can imagine the diversity of that group.
Apart from those who ordered the building of a palais, I discussed the persons
who actually designed, the architects. Theophil Hansen who designed – parts of – four
of the discussed palais. This Danish architect was probably the most famous and
respected architect of the Ringstraβe era. In addition to various palais for rich members
of the ‘second society’ he also built for noble customers and built several of the
principal monuments along the Ringstraβe too. Johann Romano and August
Schwendenwein had an architectural office together. They were the architects of the
‘second society’ par excellence and built innumerable houses for its members. Heinrich
Ferstel also had a rather different clientele. He built for the nobility more often. In
addition he had built the two of the principal monuments along the Ringstraβe: the
Votiv church and the new university. These architects actually made designs of the
wishes of the nine described individual bourgeois. We saw that there were many
possibilities to do that.
The third chapter is the result of researching all the articles about the building of
houses in Vienna in the Allgemeine Bauzeitung, the most important contemporary
magazine on architecture and building in the German speaking lands. The articles about
buildings separately discussed in the previous chapter where used in that chapter
already, but the magazine offered a lot more articles about other houses built during the
same era. These articles give important insights in the world of building, in the relations
between architects and their customers, and therefore are discussed in a separate
chapter. We encountered several interesting things, which could be summarized in five
points. Firstly the occurring of the practice of competitions organized by builders
among several architects to choose the one with the best design. Secondly we found
several other confirmations of the practising of building typology of vertical
differentiation in bourgeois houses. Thirdly the articles give some examples of the
wishes of builders for the façades of their houses: nice but possibly cheap. As fourth
point we saw the – probably exceptional – possibility of changing of the boundaries of
the building lot after negotiations with the city council. The last point is an example of
how technical innovation – iron constructions - in the building industry was stimulated
by producers in their own buildings and used by others afterwards. Generally we could
conclude that the involvement of the builders was high. Unfortunately there is nothing
to find about the artistic preferences of the architects’ customers. I would conclude that
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the artistic design was provided rather by the time and the architects. The builders had
their wishes, but those were more generally focused on representation. So rather in
terms of a wanted ‘separate staircase’, a ‘room for this, a room for that’ or a ‘luxurious
appearance’, than specific stylistic instructions.
Finding information is always difficult. Most persons in history were not aware
that they would become the object of historians’ research years and years later. Some of
them – or their descendants – were, and left information and personal documents. But
those personal documents are a selection of course of all what a person has written in
his life. Fortunately on the one hand of course: it would probably be unfeasible to read
all someone has written, but unfortunately on the other hand, because conversations
probably considered less relevant were not always saved. The result of the conversation
about the building of a palais – the finished palais itself - will probably have been
considered to be more interesting than the conversation about its planning and design.
Or it is possible too that many of these conversations were not written down at all.
Another reason for the lack of relevant material which is to find in the Viennese
archives has a more dark side. Many of the builders discussed above (Todesco,
Königswarter, Schey, Wertheim, Ofenheim(?), Epstein and Ephrussi) were Jews.
According to Dr. Prokisch of the Jewish museum in Vienna, many of the personal
documents of members of Jewish families were considered interesting by the Nazi-
regime too. With their search for familial relations in the city, they used – and thereby
unfortunately lost - the same sources as would have been interesting for historians
nowadays – with completely other reasons of course.
A recommendation for further research on this theme – which would definitely
be useful – is to research the private family archives of both builders and architects. For
this thesis I researched the material which is available in the public archives. They
contain many personal documents, but there will probably be much more. Those
personal archives are less easy to visit of course. This was one of the reasons why I have
not been able to research their material yet.
And what about the use of this historical thesis for the present? History is
interesting, history is exciting, history is trying to understand the past. But history is
history, and neither the present, nor the future. Or is it? Many traces of history are
constantly among us. Architecture not in the last place. The people who built, who
dwelled, who lived at the time are dead, but they left their sceneries as parts of their
lives. Nowadays we live between those traces of life. Isn’t it a great experience to walk
along streets which were walked along by millions of others before? To be in the room
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where Johannes Brahms composed his fourth symphony? Yes, even to stand at the
place where Adolf Taussig, Epstein’s treasurer, found his death jumping out of a
window in his employer’s Ringstraβe palais after loosing all his money at ‘Black Friday’?
We, as temporal inhabitants of cities which are compiled of the sceneries of ages and
ages before us, have the power to do whatever we like with those historical facts. A
couple of hours proved to be enough to demolish whole cities. Transforming them
gradually is the usual way though. Setting up new sceneries for the present time,
sometimes replacing parts of the old ones, but conserving the larger part of the old
stuff. Which buildings should be kept and how much attention they get of conservers
depends on their ‘importance’. This importance is defined by their artistic quality -
which is judged by architecture historians – and by the function they played as scenery
for the play which history is. That’s what this thesis tried to do: giving an insight in the
origins – the culture, the people, the tools and the wishes they had – of a part of that
scenery. Without pretending to be able to offer a crystal clear picture of those origins, I
tried to show some aspects of them on the basis of the life story of some of those who
built, of who built for them, of what they built – although this was not the main theme
of interest – and in what kind of social circumstances.
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Epilogue

Austria was so lucky to become a sovereign state again a few years after the end of the
Second World War. It escaped the poverty of the ‘red side’ of the iron curtain and
therefore not had to deteriorate its built environment. Where other Central-European
cities like Budapest and Prague literally rotted, Vienna – only about a hundred
kilometres west of the curtain – was able to safe most of its buildings. Since the fall of
the empire with the First World War the city - which before had been the capital of a
huge empire which fed it not only with new inhabitants but also with huge amounts of
money - came in a difficult position. The rather strange situation arose in which Vienna
only was the capital of a marginalized state and in fact was too big. With the popularity
of Modernism after the Second World War, the architecture of previous periods passed
hard times. Only in the last quarter of the twentieth century a renewed interest for older
buildings rose again. The large-scale demolishing of the previous decades which had put
down so many parts of historical cities elsewhere, fortunately wasn’t practiced in Vienna
on that scale. Vienna wasn’t touched by gigantic urbanistic renewals. Many old buildings
‘only’ were stripped: many of nowadays smooth façades were taken off their ornaments,
having become too expensive in maintenance. So no enormous losses, but on the other
side the city had to wait until the very end of the century before really great interest in
the city’s huge amount of nineteenth-century architecture became widespread. Only
then the architectural qualities were used in commercial ways. The present-day hype –
let us hope it will last longer than only a few decades – of living in old buildings results
in a booming industry of renovation. For some buildings right in time.
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Articles from contemporary newspapers and magazines

> Allgemeine Bauzeitung (ABZ)
‘I. Das bürgerliche Wohnhaus und das Wiener Zinshaus; II. Wie soll Wien bauen’, book
review in: ABZ 25 (Vienna 1860) 288-293
‘Der preisgekrönte Konkurrenz-Plan zur Stadterweiterung von Wien’, in: ABZ 24
(Vienna 1859) 1-13
‘Die Erweiterung der inneren Stadt Wien. Notizblatt’, ABZ 23 (Vienna 1858) 141-149
Feldmann, Siegmund, ‘Nach fünfzig Jahren. Ein Gedenkblatt der “Allgemeinen
Bauzeitung” gewidmet’, in: ABZ 51 (Vienna 1886) 1-3
Kadisch, M., ‘Moderne Wohnverhältnisse’, in: ABZ 60 (Vienna 1895) 37-40
Schatteburg, H., ‘Über unseren Zimmerschmuck’, in: ABZ 55 (Vienna 1890) 92-93
Trzeschtik, L., ‘Zur Geschichte und kritik des Wohnhauses. Aphorismen’, in: ABZ 42
(Vienna 1877) 69-73
‘Wohnhäuser in Wien. Ecke der Ringstraβe am Ausgange der Kärntnerstraβe links.
Architekt Ludwig Förster’, in: ABZ 27 (Vienna 1862) 27-28
‘Wohnhaus des herrn Albert von Klein in Wien. Architekt Ludwig Förster’, in: ABZ 27
(Vienna 1862) 240-241
‘Das Majoratshaus der Grafen von Hohos-Sprinzenstein auf der Ringstraβe in Wien.
Architekt Professor L. Förster.’, in: ABZ 29 (Vienna 1864) 3
Karl Schumann, ‘Wohnhaus des Herrn Ludwig Ladenburg in Wien. Opernring Nr. 17.’,
in: ABZ 31 (Vienna 1866) 341
‘Der Heinrichshof am Opernring in Wien. Von dem Architekten Theophil Hansen.’, in:
ABZ 32 (Vienna 1867) 1
‘Palais Epstein in Wien’, in: ABZ 36 (Vienna 1871) 422
‘Das Haus des Herrn Ritter von Ephrussi in Wien. Von Architekt Th. Hansen.’, in:
ABZ 39 (Vienna 1874) 15
‘Wohnhaus des Herrn Moriz Faber in der Schwindgasse in Wien. Von den Architekten
Claus und Gross.’, in: ABZ 40 (Vienna 1875) 82
‘Haus der Gebrüder Thonet in Wien. (“Eisernes Haus”). Von den Architekten Fellner
und Helmer.’, in: ABZ 42 (Vienna 1877) 59
‘Wohnhaus des Herrn Gutmann in Wien. Von den Architekten Claus und Gross.’, in:
ABZ 44 (Vienna 1879) 30
‘Haus des Herrn Franz Fischer am Hof in Wien. Von den Architekten Fellner und
Helmer.’, in: ABZ 44 (Vienna 1879) 46
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‘Wohnhaus des Herrn Hugo Ernst. Von Architekt Schachner.’, in: ABZ 44 (Vienna
1879) 91
‘Wohnhaus des Herrn Hollitzer auf dem Maximiliansplatz Nr. 10 in Wien. Architekten
Heinrich Ritter v. Ferstel u. Karl Köchlin.’, in: ABZ 47 (Vienna 1882) 86
‘Wohnhaus des Herrn Franz Regenhart Ritter v. Zápory, Wien, IX., Maximilianplatz 10.
Architekt: Ludwig Tischler.’, in: ABZ 48 (Vienna 1883) 56
‘Das Waaren- und Wohnhaus des Herrn August Hückel, Ecke der Heinrichsgasse,
Concordiaplatz und Salzgries in Wien. Von den Architekten Claus und Gross im
Vereine mit dem k. k. Ober-Ingenieur August Hückel.’, in: ABZ 48 (Vienna 1883)
88
‘Wohn- und Waarenhaus der Herren Georg Haas & Joh. B. Cziczek, Kärntnerstrasse 5
in wien. Von den Architekten Claus und Gross.’, in: ABZ 49 (Vienna 1884) 7-8
‘Zwei Wohnhäuser. I., Rathhausstrasse und Landesgerichtsstrasse, Gruppe B, Parzelle 2,
in Wien. Architekt: Hermann Krackowizer.’, in: ABZ 49 (Vienna 1884) 96
‘Doppel-Wohngebäude auf den Stadterweiterungs-Gründen in Wien, Wallfischgasse,
Akademie- und Krugerstrasse. Architekt: Ludwig Tischler.’, in: ABZ 49 (Vienna
1884) 103

> Neue Freie Presse

Wittmann, Hugo, ‘Feuilleton. Mäcenas.’, reprint of the article which was published on
March 25, 1900, then for the death, now for the 100st birthday of Nikolaus Dumba,
in: Neue Freie Presse, probably July 7, 1930
W. [probably Hugo Wittmann], ‘Feuilleton. Die Dumbas.’, in: an unkown newspaper,
probably Neue Freihe Presse, October 31, 1911, in the Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, map Autogr. 234/14

> Wiener Zeitung

[Franz Joseph’s handwriting] Wiener Zeitung December 25, 1857 (Vienna 1857) frontpage
[Dumba] Wiener Zeitung, March 23, 1950 (Vienna 1950) 3

> Zeitschrift des Österreichischen Ingenieur-Vereines

‘Die Neubauten der Ringstrasse in Wien’, in: Joseph Herr (ed.), Zeitschrift des
Österreichischen Ingenieur-Vereines, XVI (Vienna 1864)
The architectural wishes of the Viennese bourgeoisie 1857-1873 Eelke Smulders UU 0244295
thesis MA History of Politics and Culture University of Utrecht, tutor: Joes Segal |106

List of archives
Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek (Wienbibliothek)
- Inheritance Theophil Hansen (letters, official documents)
- Inheritance Nicolaus Dumba (letters, offcial documents)
Magistratsabteilung 37 - MA 37 Bezirksstelle für den 1.und 8. Bezirk
- Palais Todesco: Kärntnerstraße 51/Walfischgasse 2/Mahlerstraße 1 (official
documents, drawings)
- Palais Schey: Opernring 10/Goethegasse 3 (official documents, drawings)
- Palais Wertheim: Schwarzenbergerplatz 17/Kärntnerring 18/Canovagasse 18
(official documents, drawings)
- Palais Dumba: Parkring 4 (official documents, drawings)
- Palais Ofenheim: Schwarzenbergerplatz 15 (official documents, drawings)
- Palais Epstein: Burgring 13/Bellariastraße 2 (official documents, drawings)
- Palais Ephrussi: Dr. Karl Luegerring 14/Schottengasse 11 (official documents,
drawings)
Archive of Wienerberger Ziegelindustrie GmbH
- Catalogue (pictures and price tables) of terra-cotta products
- Memoirs of Heinrich Drasche
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek – collection of handwritings
- Theophil Hansen (letters and other handwritings, newspaper articles)
- Dumba family (letters and other handwritings of Nicolaus Dumba, newspaper
articles)