Zdeněk Wirth: The Life Work of J. M. Olbrich

Studied at the Vienna Academy of Art under Baron von Hasenaur, he received the imperial honorary award in the second year and a special school award, and in the third year an Italian scholarship. A long series of sketches and finished drawings from his trip to Italy has been preserved, particularly of architecture in Rome, Naples, Benevento, Salerno, and Tunis. In 1894, he was called by Prof. Otto Wagner (in May) from Sicily to collaborate on the Vienna city railway. Alongside this work, the studio was competing vigorously and successfully; by 1898 he had won first prizes in the competition for a hospital in Ostrava, second prize for a museum in Opava, first prize for the applied arts museum in Liberec, third prize for the pavilion of the city of Vienna, and first prize for the provincial parliament building in Ljubljana. In addition to a large number of independent studies on minor architecture, interiors, applied art objects, and mainly for the exhibition building of the association 'Vereinigung bild. Künstler Oesterreichs' (1897) and for the artists' house in Krakow (1898), according to his designs, from 1896 to 1899 the following buildings were completed: a club building for the Cycling Club of State and Court Officials in Vienna, villas for M. Friedman in Hinterbrühl, Stifter on Hohe Warte (1899), for Dra Spilzer and Berla in Vienna, H. Bahra in St. Vít, a doctor in St. Hypolith. However, his main work for this period remains the Secession Pavilion and the installation of the first exhibition held there.
In 1899, Olbrich was summoned with six other artists by Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse to Darmstadt, where an artistic colony was founded on Mathildenhöhe. The first works completed here include the Vienna and Darmstadt interiors for the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 and the construction of houses, studios, and exhibition buildings for the colony. By 1901, when the first exhibition of the colony was opened, the complete layout of the exhibition grounds was finished, including the portal, ramps, kiosks, etc., according to Olbrich's design: the exhibition house (Ernst Ludwig Haus), Olbrich's house, Habich's, Christiansen's, Deiter's, Keller's, the house of the commercial councilor Jul. Glückert, and the double house of the firm J. and G. Stade.
From 1901 to 1904, the following were created: the grey house, the blue house, Giebelhaus, Holzgiebelhaus, Predigerhaus, villa Römheld and Stöhrova, the house of the bank director Schwarzmanna in Strassburg, the double house of the firm Aug. Ohl in Hanau, the house of Alb. Hochstrasser in Cronberg in Taunus, Count Metternich's villa in Königswart, a house in Jägerndorf, a small house for Princess Elisabeth, a music hall for the Grand Duke in the Darmstadt castle, and interiors in the castle in Giessen, installation for the IV. Secession exhibition in Vienna, and a salon at the Turin exhibition (1902).
By 1904, the second exhibition in Darmstadt took place, during which Olbrich carried out the entire renovation (restoration) and where he exhibited the group "Dreihäusergruppe" with gardens; he also participated in the World Exposition in St. Louis (design of the courtyard with a fountain). At the garden exhibition in Darmstadt in 1905, Olbrich made a reform impact on architecture with his "colored gardens," and at the exhibition in Cologne in 1907, "der Frauen Rosenhof" was displayed. For the exhibition in Darmstadt in 1908, he constructed exhibition buildings and a new museum with the so-called wedding tower (designs from 1906) and the upper Hesse exhibition house with complete furnishings. Already after his death, two monumental fountains were completed on Luisenplatz in Darmstadt and the Tietz department store in Düsseldorf.
Proposals remained unexecuted for: the railway station in Basel (1904), for the exhibition grounds in Cologne 1905 (gate, overall solution, art pavilion, café, Cologne pub, etc.), the baths and Leonora's tower in Darmstadt (1905), for the building of the art exhibition on Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, for colonnades for Karlovy Vary, for a group of family houses on "Hohlweg" in Darmstadt, for the overall design of gardens, villas, and a hotel in Königswart and for the waterworks in Darmstadt.
An overwhelming number of proposals exist for minor architecture (tombstones), interiors (e.g., the furnishings of the steamboat Kronprinzessin Cecilie, interiors for large furniture companies), textiles (upholstery, carpets, table linen), ceramics, jewelry, and book decoration (for the Darmstadt exhibition in 1901, he even designed the poster himself).

From the obituary by K. Scheffler
Olbrich's enormously talented, agile, soft, easily creative, and also frivolous Viennese nature had an infinitely encouraging impact in the German Empire for ten years and sparked lively movements everywhere. On him, whose work often flowed very easily from his hands, there was much to praise and even more often to condemn. In the modern movement, this architect, burdened with commissions, was undoubtedly the strongest temperament, unless one interprets this term too deeply; and because he managed to attract the youth to new goals, a large gap remains after him. With him, I would say, the youth of the entire movement dies, the necessary inflaming and fertilizing confusion of the agitated century dies. He was a man of impressive decorative ideas; the work of useful limitation, traditional matter-of-factness and productive inventive force, which now must finally begin if modern endeavors are to be lasting, could hardly have submitted to his turbulent self-sufficiency.