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The Austrian Postal Savings Bank and the architect Otto Wagner
Otto Wagner was born the son of a
notary to the Royal Hungarian Court
on 13 July 1841, who died only five
years after the child’s birth.
So it was the mother who wielded a
decisive influence on her son in the
following decades: coming from a
well-to-do bourgeois background, she
wanted to see him trained as a
lawyer. Yet, after having completed
his basic humanistic education at
the age of sixteen, the young man
began to study at the Polytechnic
Institute in Vienna. It was Theophil
Hansen on whose recommendation
Wagner was able to proceed to the
Königliche Bauakademie in
Berlin. Yet, in 1861, at the age of
twenty, Wagner already returned to
Vienna where he completed his
studies at the Academy of Fine Arts
just one year later where he had
found two teachers he greatly
respected: von Sicardsburg and van
der Nüll. After leaving the
Academy, he worked in the studio of
Ludwig von Förster, the
Ringstrasse architect, where he was
given an executive function from the
start.
At his mother’s urgent
request, Wagner married Josefine
Domhart in 1863. In the following
years, he became a successful
Gruenderzeit architect. He built
apartment houses, which he planned,
financed, used, and sold, as well as
villas and participated in a number
of competitions. Shortly after his
mother’s death in 1880, he
escaped from the “moral
prison” of his first marriage
by divorcing his wife. He married
Louise Stiffel whom he adored and
almost idolized beyond her death in
1915.
In 1890, Wagner self-published the
first volume of “Einige
Skizzen, Projekte und
ausgeführte Bauwerke”
(‘Some Drafts, Projects, and
Executed Buildings’). This and
the further volumes issued in 1897,
1906, and 1922 respectively already
documented the architect’s
most important works during his
time. Otto Wagner was increasingly
fascinated by the new developments
in science and technology. In 1883,
he received one of the two first
prizes in the competition for the
new “general regulation
plan” for Vienna. The motto he
had adopted for this project,
Gottfried Semper’s
“Artis sola domina
necessitas,” should remain
crucial for him throughout his life.
On the suggestion of the
Künstlerhaus, he subsequently
became an adviser to the Viennese
Transport Commission and the
Commission for the Regulation of the
Danube Canal in matters of art. This
led to his landmark Stadtbahn and
Donaukanal designs and buildings.
In 1894, Wagner was appointed full
professor and director of a special
school of architecture at the
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. He
published the revolutionary
principles of his approach for the
first time in his book
“Moderne Architektur”
(“Modern Architecture”)
in 1896. The fourth and last reprint
published during his lifetime in
1914 was already titled “Die
Baukunst unserer Zeit”
(“Architecture Today”).
The visionary projects of the
“Wagner school” became
legendary, and a number of important
architects such as Rudolph M.
Schindler, Jan Kotéra,
Jože Plečnik, Josef
Hoffmann, and Ernst Lichtblau were
to be found within its ranks. When
Otto Wagner retired from the Academy
in 1912, his successor was rejected
by his students. So Wagner went on
teaching them in rented classrooms.
Otto Wagner’s main works date
from around 1900: the Postal Savings
Banks and the Steinhof Church. The
vigorous attacks launched by
conservative groups are to be
primarily attributed to these
successes. Many of his further
designs such as that for the Emperor
Francis Joseph Municipal Museum, the
Technological Museum of Trade and
Industry, a new Academy of Fine
Arts, the Ministry of War, and the
Ministry of Trade were not realized.
In the last years of World War I,
Wagner designed hospitals,
soldiers’ barracks, and
interim churches. He died on 11
April 1918.
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