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Anthologies are primarily known from the literary sector. The approach of telling the history of a city using authentic documents from the areas of architecture and urban culture may seem surprising. Ruth Hanisch, Harald R. Stühlinger and Iain Boyd Whyte dared this experiment with Vienna and compiled 306 stories from the period 1850 to 1945. First of all: the attempt was successful.
The 710-page book “Metropole Wien” is not for your pocket. You'll need a smaller backpack, but that's not the point. What makes anthologies is the mix. And it succeeded. The editorial trio masters the herculean task with 29 thematic, chronologically arranged chapters, which form a meaningful whole that describes Vienna in a multifaceted original tone.
The range of authors ranges from Anonymus to Stefan Zweig, from well-known feature writers such as Daniel Spitzer or Raoul Auernheimer to writers such as Joseph Roth, Hermann Bahr, Robert Musil, Heimito von Doderer, to name just a few, and politicians. In addition to Mayor Andreas Zelinka, Emperor Franz Joseph should also be mentioned here. Among the women you can find Lina Loos, Grete Lihotzky and Gina Knaus. Of course, Karl Kraus, Felix Salten and Max Winter are also represented.
In the introduction, Harald R. Stühlinger, co-editor and full professor of art history at the Vienna University of Technology, outlines the history of the city from the “restricted municipality to the host of the world”.
In the middle of the 19th century, Vienna was the third largest city in Europe after London and Paris. While around 440,000 people lived in Vienna including its suburbs around 1840, by the time of the 1873 World's Fair the number had doubled. The demolition of the city wall from 1858, the construction of the Ringstrasse, the regulation of the Danube and the first high-spring water pipeline were formative urban development milestones, without which Vienna in the 21st century would be unthinkable. These and hundreds of other moments, milestones, opinions, criticisms, observations and reports can be found in "Metropole Wien" in the original wording and style of the respective time.
The Emperor's "All-Highest Handwriting" to his minister Bach (1857), with the order to demolish the fortifications (p. 100ff), is also represented, as are excerpts from travel guides such as "The New Vienna" from 1864 (p. 148). Also worth reading is Chapter 18, "Local Recreation and Landscape" with "Wiener Sommerbild. Schwarzenberggarten" by Theodor Herzl (p. 455ff) or an excerpt from Felix Salten's classic "Wurstelprater" from 1911 on page 467.
Another look at Chapter 20, “Vienna as the capital of the First Republic”. Eugenie Schwarzwald's contribution: "How do you think about the future of Vienna" is almost timelessly relevant. Her lines appeared in the "Wiener Fremden-Presse" on January 16, 1922. Here she writes, among other things: "What future do I want for Vienna? I wish Vienna would be the great city of art for the whole world, where you can see the best theater next to the Albertina, hear the most wonderful music [...] I want the whole world to come to us if they want to enjoy high, pure joys, if they want to educate themselves, elevate themselves, and enrich themselves spiritually." (p. 510) Yes, we want that in 2025 too.
The final book contribution (No. 306) comes from Josef Hoffmann, the well-known architect and designer. The Wiener Zeitung published his "Thoughts on the Reconstruction of Vienna" on December 23, 1945. Hoffmann developed visionary ideas for the center, the inner city, that are almost utopian (p. 678f): "How would it be if this inner [sic!] district were completely evacuated and cleared out? [...] Only artists, scholars, art lovers and particularly original people should live in this district. [...]". The entire text is available here.
The cityscape of Vienna, like that of other cities, is not only characterized by the massive building boom of the second half of the 19th century, but also by the loss of cityscape and the disappearance of historical buildings. In the best case scenario, this created architectural icons such as the legendary Loos House on Michaelerplatz in the center of the city.
But what role did monument protection play in this? Did he look away? Birgit Knauer explores these and other questions in her book about the “Healthy City”. The time window is the years of the corporate state (1934 to 1938). At that time, “urban health measures” were deliberately implemented with the “renovation fund” and the “house repair fund,” which manifested itself in the demolition of houses and new buildings (p. 10). The funds were used to support 55 housing projects in difficult economic times with high unemployment. Lighthouse projects were the construction of the Höhenstrasse and the Reichsbrücke, which opened in 1937.
One of the stated goals was to remove traffic obstacles such as protruding houses. The best-known case is the historic Freihausviertel around the TU-Wien in Vienna Wieden. In the area of Wiedner Hauptstrasse, Operngasse up to the Nachmarkt, a large part of the historical building structure had to give way to plain, functional rows of high-rise buildings.
A striking renovation building is the house “An der Bärenmühle”, where Operngasse and the Recht Wienzeile meet in a pointed corner (see 68f). In place of the two-story classicist house that was once there, the architects Heinrich Schmid and Hermann Aichinger created a striking, tall building with reddish conglomerate slabs on the ground floor. A look out of town along the right side of Operngasse shows the result: a tall, straight line of six-story houses with smooth facades (p. 121).
In January 1938, those who saw the historic building stock dwindling formed a group under the title "Saving Old Vienna" and collected 30,000 signatures and handed them over to the mayor, the Federal President and the government with a request to stop the reckless destruction. Co-signatories included the architects Josef Hoffmann, Oswald Haerdtl and Clemens Holzmeister. The latter himself had built a renovation building on the Freihof grounds (p. 120). In the final chapter, international trends are shown using the examples of fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany.
Conclusion: “Metropolis Vienna – An Anthology on Architecture and Urban Culture 1850–1945” is fascinating due to the colorful diversity of the texts in various literary genres. “Healthy City – The Renovation of the City of Vienna (1934–1938)” impressively shows how the cityscape was permanently changed within a narrow time frame, something that hardly anyone was aware of until now. (Thomas Hofmann, January 24, 2025)