Iris Meder: Viennese Modernism and Its Relation to Czech Modern Architecture

We cordially invite you to a lecture by Iris Meder at the Tugendhat Villa on Tuesday, October 14, 2014, at 6:30 PM.

Iris Meder: Viennese Modernism and Its Relationship to Czech Modern Architecture

Jewish students in Vienna after 1900 did not attend Otto Wagner's lectures at the Academy of Fine Arts because it was considered anti-Semitic. An alternative was the teaching of Friedrich Ohmann. Generally, however, they preferred the Technical University and its director, Carl König. Some of König's students, who rejected Wagner's school and the aesthetics of Wiener Werkstätte, established a specific "Viennese School" mainly in the field of housing. Its dominant figures, Oskar Strnad, Josef Frank, and Oskar Wlach, were all the sons of parents who immigrated to Vienna from other countries in the monarchy. They were soon surrounded by a circle of like-minded classmates, such as Walter Sobotka, Ernst Lichtblau, Josef Berger, Rudolf Lorenz, Hugo Gorge, Arnold Karplus, and Helene Roth. Almost all were either born in the states of the monarchy or belonged to the first generation of families born in Vienna who had immigrated from Bohemia, Moravia, or Slovakia. Also, most of the students and collaborators of Adolf Loos came from Bohemia and Moravia, for example, Heinrich Kulka, Jacques Groag (who, through the Šlapet brothers, brought influences from Hans Scharoun and Silesian modernism to the Viennese school), Paul Engelmann, Rudolf Wels, Friedrich Ehrmann, Karel Lhota, Kurt Unger, Erich Ziffer, and Ernst Wiesner. Most of them then worked both in Vienna and in Czechoslovakia.

Moravian Jewish and non-Jewish German architects were influenced by the skeptical modernism of the Viennese School much more than their Czech-speaking colleagues, whose classical functionalism was part of the aesthetic self-determination of the Czechoslovak state. While in Czechoslovakia, the works of German-speaking modern architects, such as Kurt Spielmann and Hans Voeth, who did not follow classical functionalism, were not published at all, they were presented in Austrian and German architectural magazines by the critic and art historian Max Eisler (a native of Boskovice), one of the tireless advocates of Viennese modernism.

Iris Meder studied art history and literature in Stuttgart and Vienna. She lives and works as a curator and researcher in Vienna. She is a member of the board of the Austrian Society for Architecture (ÖGFA) and primarily an author of numerous publications and exhibitions on Central European modern and contemporary architecture.

The lecture will be in English and will not be translated.

Admission is 100 CZK; students and seniors 50 CZK

Reservation for the lecture is required by phone: +420 515 511 015 or +420 515 511 017 or by email: [email protected] (limited capacity of 70 people).

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