Hansen’s Musikvereinsgebäude of 1867-9 in the Dumbagasse is academic in an almost eighteenth-century way, both as regards the general organization of the exterior and the restraint of the detailing. In his still later Parlament of 1873-83, as has been noted earlier, he produced the last grandiose monument of the Greek Revival. More characteristic, however, is his contemporaneous Academy of Fine Arts of 1872-6 in the Schillerplatz. This is externally in the Renaissance mode that he presumably preferred after he left Athens, but it has Grecian detailing inside of a delicacy and elegance that recalls the thirties. Especially handsome is the colonnaded Aula in the centre, even though its rich painted ceiling of 1875-80 by Anselm Feuerbach is inappropriately Baroque in a rather Rubens-like way.
Another Austrian architect besides Ferstel was using Gothic for prominent Viennese edifices in this period (see also Chapter [11]). After Ferstel’s Votivkirche the next Neo-Gothic structure was the Academische Gymnasium in the Beethovenplatz; this was built in 1863-6 by Friedrich von Schmidt (1825-91), who had worked earlier under Zwirner on the restoration and completion of Cologne Cathedral. But the school was soon outshone in size and in elaboration by Schmidt’s Rathaus of 1872-83. This stands between Hansen’s Parlament and Ferstel’s University but in a line with the Reichstrasse at their rear. The Vienna Rathaus is certainly not unrelated to G. G. Scott’s Victorian Gothic and that of Waterhouse in England, particularly in the side wings that end, eclectically enough, in high-mansarded pavilions. But the general fussiness of the turreted front recalls rather pre-Puginian Gothic, say Porden’s Eaton Hall of seventy years earlier (see Chapters [6] and [10]).
Despite the total visual unlikeness of the Rathaus to its Grecian neighbour, the Parlament, both have a similarly obsolete air. It is as if Francis Joseph’s presumptive intention in the fifties of outbuilding Napoleon III had been succeeded by a belated and rather provincial desire to outrival the larger structures in other countries in the two leading modes of the previous period, the Greek Revival and the Gothic Revival, neither much represented hitherto in Vienna.
Yet an equally prominent public monument of the seventies and eighties, the Burgtheater, which stands just opposite the Rathaus, is of a Late Renaissance, almost Neo-Baroque order, with a distinctly Second Empire flavour to its bowed front and generally very plastic composition (Plate [73A]). This, the most distinguished of all the public monuments along the Ringstrasse, was built in 1874-88 by Semper, whose international career in Germany, England, and Switzerland wound up in Vienna after he was called there in 1871 by Francis Joseph to advise on the extension of the Hofburg Palace. Except perhaps in its bowed front, this Viennese theatre does not much resemble the rebuilt Dresden Opera House of 1871-8 which Semper had just designed (see Chapter [9]). Perhaps Semper and his Viennese partner Karl von Hasenauer (1833-94), a pupil of Van der Nüll and of Siccardsburg, were somewhat influenced by the plans on which they were working together for the extension of the nearby palace; these were, not inappropriately, in the Austrian Baroque of Fischer von Erlach’s unfinished Michaelertrakt of the Hofburg dating from the second quarter of the eighteenth century. However that may be, the theatre, boldly scaled and tightly composed, is a far more successful building than the very derivative Neue Hofburg projecting out towards the Ring as that was executed in 1881-94 by Hasenauer after Semper’s death. The post-War restoration of the theatre and the rebuilding of its auditorium are by Michel Engelhart (b. 1897).
Semper and Hasenauer’s two vast Museums of Art History and Natural History face each other on a large square across the Burgring from the Neue Hofburg. Of identical design, they were both largely built in 1872-81. In the treatment of the exteriors—they were finished internally only very much later—as also in some of Hansen’s very latest work in Vienna, one senses a conscious rejection of the bold plasticity and the compositional elaboration characteristic of the preceding decades, and most notably of the Burgtheater. The Renaissance detail is by no means sparse, but there is an academic sort of primness and orderliness belonging to the last quarter of the century such as has been noted earlier in Koch’s Roman work.
The Bodenkreditanstalt built by Emil von Förster (1838-1909), Ludwig’s son, in 1884-7 is still more severe in its Florentine quattrocento way, recalling the more Tuscan aspects of the Rundbogenstil. With this may be contrasted the unashamed Neo-Baroque of Karl König’s Philipphof of 1883, introducing one of the modes most characteristic of the end of the century in both Austria and Germany.
Budapest, the second capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was also much embellished with public buildings by Francis Joseph. Stüler from Berlin worked here, using a quiet version of the Rundbogenstil for the Academy of Sciences in 1862-4. But the later and more ornate Rundbogenstil of Berlin and Vienna had already been echoed in Budapest by Frigyes Feszl (1821-84) in the Vigado Concert Hall of 1859-65. This could easily be by Ferstel, so similar is it to his bank in Vienna. The leading Hungarian architect of the period, Miklós Ybl (1814-91), who was trained in Vienna, also used the Rundbogenstil, but of a rather more Romanesquoid sort, for the Ferenczváros Parish Church which he built in 1867-78. However, his Renaissance Revival Custom House of 1870-4 is more nearly up to the best Vienna standards of the day as maintained by Hansen. The Opera House that Ybl built in 1879-84, with its boldly convex mansards, vies in its rich plasticity with Garnier’s, but none too successfully. The Szent Lukásh Hotel by R. L. Ray (1845-99), a Swiss-born pupil of Gamier, is one of the largest mansarded Second Empire hotels anywhere in the western world. On the whole, the dominant influences in Hungary were Austrian and German, however, not Parisian, as is hardly surprising. No autochthonous note was struck; as is true of all Eastern Europe, the architecture of this age is as essentially colonial in character as in the outlying British Dominions or in Latin America, although the models emulated were rather different.
CHAPTER 9
SECOND EMPIRE AND COGNATE MODES ELSEWHERE
In the cities of Germany and of Northern Europe generally there were in this period no such comprehensive urbanistic developments as in Paris and Vienna. Some individual public monuments are, perhaps, not inferior to those that Napoleon III and Francis Joseph obtained from their architects; but these are rarely grouped into such coherent entities as the Marktplatz in Karlsruhe of the first quarter of the century or the Ludwigstrasse in Munich of the second quarter. The domestic building of the period is also considerably less consistent in character than in Paris and Vienna.