Josef Hoffmann

JOSEF HOFFMANN 1870–1956

Progress Through Beauty The Guide to His Oeuvre

JOSEF HOFFMANN

1870–1956

Progress Through Beauty The Guide to His Oeuvre

Edited by Christoph Thun-Hohenstein Matthias Boeckl Rainald Franz Christian Witt-Dörring

Birkhäuser Basel

Emil Orlik, portrait of Josef Hoffmann, 1903 Color woodcut MAK, KI 13740-2-1

Contents

Christoph Thun-Hohenstein Christian Witt-Dörring, Matthias Boeckl, Rainald Franz

Hoffmann’s Dream of a High-Quality Society 150 Years of Josef Hoffmann

A Retrospect of His Oeuvre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

1870–1900 Rainald Franz

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17/28

“It Was No Simple Matter to […] Reach an Understanding of the Real Sense of Building” Josef Hoffmann: Studies at the Vienna Academy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Christian Witt-Dörring

Protestant Materialism Meets Catholic Emotions The English Exemplar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Rainald Franz

“Deeply Honored to Have Been Nominated…”

Josef Hoffmann and the Founding of the Union of Austrian Artists Secession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Christian Witt-Dörring

Interior Design as a Work of Art From “Brettlstil” to Viennese Style 1898–1900 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Matthias Boeckl

From Life Reform to Bourgeois Daily Life The Villa Colony on the Hohe Warte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Contents

1901–1906 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63/80 Matthias Boeckl

In the Modernist Laboratory Josef Hoffmann’s Architecture Class at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts 1899–1918 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Sebastian Hackenschmidt, Wolfgang Thillmann Christian Witt-Dörring

System Designs Josef Hoffmann’s Cooperation with J. & J. Kohn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

From Art Object to Standard Product The Wiener Werkstätte 1903–1918 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Otto Kapfinger

Anatomy of Catharsis Concrete Structure as a Formative Factor for the Purkersdorf Sanatorium . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

1907–1910 Matthias Boeckl

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119/136

Between Surface and Space Atectonic Architectural Innovations at Stoclet House . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

Christian Witt-Dörring

Stoclet House: A Gesamtkunstwerk The Shared Fate of Adolphe Stoclet and the Wiener Werkstätte 1905–1911 . . . . . . . . . 145

Anette Freytag

Plant and Square The Gardens of Josef Hoffmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Christian Witt-Dörring

The Viennese Style Interiors 1900–1918 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Rainald Franz

“Homely Concept of Housing” versus “Decorating over the Bad Skeleton of a Building” From Rental Villa to “Festival Building” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

Rainald Franz

“Chief Architect of the Show of Force of Austrian Ambitions in Art” The 1908 Kunstschau in Vienna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

1911–1918 Rainald Franz

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185/202

A Truly Effective Culture of Taste in Atectonic Classicism The Exhibitions in Rome (1911) and Cologne (1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Ursula Prokop

Josef Hoffmann’s Customers as a Reflection of Social Change at the Fin de Siècle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

211

Contents

Klára Němečková

Freedom from Patronage Josef Hoffmann and the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

Jan Norrman

A Cheerful and Capricious Energy Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte in Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

1919–1925 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rainald Franz

225/242

Continuing to Build for Patrons Josef Hoffmann’s Villas 1918 –1933 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

Christian Witt-Dörring

Luxury Put to the Test The Wiener Werkstätte and Hoffmann’s Interior Designs 1919–1932 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

Matthias Boeckl

Presence despite Permanent Crisis Josef Hoffmann and the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts 1919 –1938 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

Rainald Franz, Markus Kristan

“A Shrine of a Thousand Treasures to Admire and Stroll Through” The Austrian Pavilion at the International Decorative Arts Exhibition in Paris in 1925 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

1926–1933 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Christopher Long

279/294

From Vienna to Hollywood Josef Hoffmann and America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

Matthias Boeckl

The Social Question Josef Hoffmann’s Municipal Apartment Complexes and Housing Developments before 1933 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305

Valerio Terraroli

A New Classicism Josef Hoffmann and His Reception in Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

Matthias Boeckl

At the Zenith of His International Influence Josef Hoffmann and the Competition for the Palais des Nations in Geneva . . . . . . . . . . 321

Andreas Nierhaus

The Decorative Arts Destroyed?

Josef Hoffmann and the Austrian Werkbund . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327

Lara Steinhäußer

Women’s Clothing as Another Surface Josef Hoffmann and Fashion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

Adrián Prieto

Beauty in Utility The Reception of Josef Hoffmann in Belgium and France 1900 –1939 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341

Contents

1934–1938 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Elisabeth Boeckl-Klamper

347/356

Temporary Career Setback Josef Hoffmann and the Ständestaat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359

Rainald Franz

Austria’s Aesthetic Self-Portrait The Austrian Pavilion in Venice 1933 –1934 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365

Christian Witt-Dörring

Working without the Wiener Werkstätte Decorative Arts 1933– 1938 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371

1939–1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Elisabeth Boeckl-Klamper

377/386

Josef Hoffmann and National Socialism An Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389

Matthias Boeckl

“The Leadership’s Will” Hoffmann’s Projects under National Socialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399

1946–1956 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Christian Witt-Dörring

407/416

Individuality versus Obligatory Conformity Decorative Arts 1938 –1956 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419

Matthias Boeckl

Reconstructing Modernism Josef Hoffmann’s Late Work as an Architect and Curator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425

Eva-Maria Orosz

On the Reconstruction of the Arts and Crafts Österreichische Werkstätten 1948 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431

Markus Kristan

A Pioneer of Modernism Josef Hoffmann and International Arts Journalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435

Matthias Boeckl

The Relevance of the Beautiful Enduring Resonances of Josef Hoffmann’s Oeuvre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439

(Select) Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

List of Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Imprint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

445 448 452 453 454

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Christoph Thun-Hohenstein General Director, MAK

Hoffmann’s Dream of a High-Quality Society

Yoichi R. Okamoto, Josef Hoffmann, 1954 MAK, KI 13740-5

This handbook on Josef Hoffmann’s oeuvre shines a spotlight on the various facets of the multidisciplinary designer’s creative output over the six decades of his career. In this text I would like to take the opposite approach and reduce this design genius, intuitive teacher, and skilled networker to his essence: besides his outstanding buildings like Sanatorium Westend and Stoclet House, what is Josef Hoffmann’s most important cultural legacy?

The answer can be found in the book’s subtitle Progress Through Beauty: Hoffmann’s enduring achievement—and hence an important building block of Viennese Modernity—is his belief in the life-improving, even healing power of beauty.

A joint artistic founder of the Wiener Werkstätte (WW) together with Koloman Moser in 1903, Hoffmann was its spiritus rector until its liquidation in 1932. The cooperative’s program was the distillation of Hoffmann’s artistic and cultural philosophy. What he created before the WW’s founding was at its core an anticipation of his basic ideas for the Wiener Werkstätte; what he brought into the world after the WW’s closure remained—and would remain throughout his life—indebted to its ideals. Is Hoffmann’s oeuvre therefore one-dimensional? Does is lack genuine artistic development? The answer to both is negative if for no other reason than the Wiener Werkstätte comprised not only Josef Hoffmann but also many other creatives and his designs were closely intertwined with the work of or were the product of fruitful discussions with other male designers at the WW, like Moser and later Dagobert Peche, and women artists at the WW. Moreover, both questions disregard Hoffmann’s unique qualities: the unbridled enthusiasm for design

Hoffmann’s Dream of a High-Quality Society

9

1 See the essay I published in June 2020 entitled CLIMATE BEAUTY: The Art of Reimagining Progress, available at https://www.mak.at/jart/prj3/mak-resp/ images/img-db/1591494770589.pdf

that is tangible throughout Hoffmann’s oeuvre, combined with an unwavering desire for reform in order to have a positive impact on people’s lives by means of applied beauty. To achieve this end, he had an almost infinite range of artistic means of expression at his disposal, which he had acquired the fine knack of exploiting to the full without ever falling into a dull routine. Consequently, numerous designs by Hoffmann are inspired—to take an obvious example— by fauna and above all flora and succeed in communicating with us in an entirely unsentimental way through artistically designed beauty.

Of course, the fact is that Hoffmann’s work has not always been considered equally relevant; in the last decades of his life in particular, it was instead deemed outdated and unworldly. How ironic of human civilization that today, in the third decade of the 21st century, it is regarded as more modern than ever before!

Doubly ironic, in fact, because Hoffmann was struggling against the flaws of industrial mass production at a time when the gravely destructive ecological repercussions of fossil fuel-driven industrialization and the resulting global heating were not deemed a big issue. Rather, the main concern was the social impact of inhuman labor in the giant factories, to which Hoffmann counterposed the ideal of artisanal production.

Today the world is different: As soon as we have Covid under control once and for all—hopefully later in 2021—the outlines of the new Climate Modernity will become perfectly clear. We have already been living in a new modernity for the past two decades, which I have called Digital Modernity because its driving force was digitalization. The advent of a new modernity means that we are challenged to reset the fundamental course for the future. All the digital innovations in the world will not help humanity if we do not tackle climate change and the accompanying general ecological crisis. For that reason, we must develop our Digital Modernity into an ecologically and socially sustainable Climate Modernity. The transition from Digital Modernity to Climate Modernity implies a clear change of focus. In future, digital innovations can no longer be implemented at any cost, but only in order to secure long-term quality of life for humankind and other species in this age of rapid climate change and dramatic loss of ecosystems and biodiversity. Barely anyone still doubts the necessity for a radical rejection of fossil fuelbased industrialization-as-usual. The crucial questions now are: how will we realize the Great Transformation and how do we want to shape Climate Modernity?

It seems to me that we can learn all sorts of things in this regard from the work of Josef Hoffmann and his much-loved (despite its manifold financial troubles) Wiener Werkstätte, whose archive is preserved at the MAK. As the essence of Hoffmann’s artistic and creative philosophy, the WW championed the sustainability, artisanal quality, and longevity of its wares, local production, and social responsibility—values that mutatis mutandis are also extremely important in Climate Modernity. Just as the Wiener Werkstätte’s program of reform was intended to bring beauty into people’s everyday lives through artistically designed, high-quality practical objects, Climate Modernity has a program of reform whose aim is to attain progress through climate beauty1. Climate beauty, a term I have coined, means a society’s aspiration to create a lasting balance with the Earth by means of an ecologically and socially sustainable economy and lifestyle and in appreciation of other species and ecosystems, thereby limiting global heating in line with the Paris Agreement. Both Hoffmann’s idea of progress through beauty, as perfected at the Wiener Werkstätte, and today’s goal of progress through climate beauty share the vision of a high-quality society, which relies not on the mass consumption of disposable items but on high-quality and long-lasting products. Both programs of reform aim to convince people to adopt a fundamentally new attitude toward civilization.

Whether we can and will ever learn from history, we can never know. But from our cultural legacy we can learn countless lessons that will help us to shape the future. Like the major MAK exhibition of the same name that it accompanies, this handbook is an attempt to demonstrate the impact of a reform-minded aesthete and design genius and inspire new approaches to our lives.

To make the dream of a sustainable, high-quality society a reality, we need another avant-garde of designers, architects, and artists who are capable of helping art achieve enduring sociopolitical relevance. Josef Hoffmann was one of the exceptional personalities of Vienna’s avant-garde around 1900. He stands out for having never stopped dreaming. And perhaps the time for realizing his dream of a sustainable, high-quality society has finally come. For him and for us, we can but hope. 

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Christian Witt-Dörring, Matthias Boeckl, Rainald Franz

150 Years of Josef Hoffmann A Retrospect of His Oeuvre

No other 20th-century Austrian architect and designer divided contemporary and subsequent opinion as much as Josef Hoffmann. Even during his lifetime, in 1945, Fritz Wotruba critically assessed him—alongside Adolf Loos and Oskar Kokoschka—to be one of the three incisive and influential luminaries of Austrian art around 1900: “[…] Hoffmann, in equal measure a spoiled and often misunderstood architect, had a not insignificant impact on the world of fashion and taste. He quickly became famous and was just as quickly challenged. His dangerous dual gift, which fluctuated back and forth between solemnity and playfulness, brought this graceful artist into—partly undeserved—disrepute; yet the seed that he spread is still flourishing today, even though he has almost been forgotten.”1

In over 40 articles, this book traces the marks left by this 60-year creative career. The appreciation and interpretation of Hoffmann’s work changed over the years. From the outset his creations—from the largest to the smallest dimension—have been examined and evaluated in the context of the search for a modern style or rather a modern society.2 Their formal interpretation remained the main focus of the Western art world until well into the second half of the 20th century. Only in the late 1970s, with the reinterpretation of the concept of function during the emergence of Postmodernism, does a new appreciation develop for Hoffmann’s oeuvre as a result of the departure from the art historical dogma of purely linear stylistic development and restrictive definition of Modernism that excludes alternative approaches.

There is an ideological constant running through Josef Hoffmann’s entire oeuvre. Based on the belief in beauty’s capacity to heal society and the economy, which he adopted from the English Arts & Crafts movement, his work is shaped by the primacy of individual artistic expression. Hoffmann did not differentiate between high and low art, between fine and applied art and hence assumed the task of converting people’s everyday lives through his work. In the context of the Vienna Secession, this meant creating a modern Austrian and bourgeois style. Hoffmann remained true to this conviction for half a century, for the rest of his life. Its formal artistic realization remained unaffected by social, economic, or political developments. Therefore, he would later pay no heed to an international modern style emanating from the Bauhaus—an attitude that Hoffmann, if for different motives, curiously enough shares with his opponents Adolf Loos and Josef Frank.

Hoffmann’s immunity to social and economic realities and changes is the defining theme identified by Dagobert Peche in his 1922 manuscript on reforming the Wiener Werkstätte (WW), “Der brennende Dornbusch”:

< Design for the sconces and mirror in the dining room of the Skywa-Primavesi villa, 1914/15 MAK, KI 12112-30

“For now, let it simply be said as the most important point, which will immediately make everything plain for a perceptive person, that this kind of foundation for or rather leadership of the Wiener Werkstätte is absolutely rooted in the nature of Hoffmann’s art, which I call egotistical. Once one has recognized it as such, which is possible by looking at the products of this art at its peak […], once one therefore arrives at the result of egotistical art by viewing Hoffmann’s art, this realization naturally includes all the necessities

150 Years of Josef Hoffmann

and possibilities of making and promoting this art. […] In order to arrive at this clear realization that Josef Hoffmann’s works are egotistical art, that the supporter themselves hence avows an egotistical worldview (something that is at base not a worldview at all because it rests only on oneself, is made for the self-centered purpose ’I,’ and thus plays no part in the world) […].”3

Hoffmann’s adherence to the unity of art and function in the form of the Gesamtkunstwerk—or total work of art—polarized as much as his abandonment of the simple, unornamented form, which had been hard won in the early stages, in favor of developing a specific, modern Viennese ornament. His talent for not pitting construction against individual artistic expression, but rather for leading the way to a new aesthetic defined by unusual proportions, had a similar impact.

He also divided opinion with his preference for luxury artisanal creation over industrial mass production. Nevertheless, his work has the potential to become the point of departure for a further synthesis of contrasting ideas for the next generation. As a testament to this, we can return to Peche: “I myself venerate the idea and the realization of this idea [of the WW as a 20th-century cultural department store; authors’ note]; I owe that to the spirit of Josef Hoffmann. If I owe anything at all in this world to anyone, then I am indebted to the spirit of this artistic titan. Because he was the first to break ground; he was the first to throw the lightning bolt. I am indebted to him and his spirit—after all, where would I be, had he not gone before me? For that reason, but also because I am steeped in all this, I want to protect the fire within me.”4

It is beyond question that Hoffmann, after Otto Wagner, helped the modern form achieve its breakthrough in Vienna. For him, it was not merely an end in itself, but rather the starting point for the free workings of the individual artistic imagination. He replaced the anonymity of the appropriate stylistic form with the subjective quality of beauty.

Josef Hoffmann, who at the suggestion of his academic teacher Otto Wagner became the head of an architecture class at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts in 1899, was able to spend almost four decades imparting this message to several generations of students at the country’s leading design school. Together with Koloman Moser, Alfred Roller, Felician von Myrbach, and other artists of the Vienna Secession, he transformed the school of decorative arts—originally conceived to meet the interior design needs of the city’s late 19th-century building boom—into a laboratory of Modernism where individual creativity superseded compulsory stylistic norms and specializations for the first time. From now on this revolutionary liberation of “Eigenart” (uniqueness), as Hoffmann called individual artistic identity, was able to develop without constraint in an unbounded cosmos of free forms with every task of a comprehensive, identity-building environmental design, from furniture and houses to gardens and urban planning.

In turn, some of his students went on to teach at the University of Applied Arts— as the School of Arts and Crafts came to be known—for decades, handing down Modernist ideals to students of each generation, regardless of regime changes, well into the 1960s.

Exhibiting Hoffmann?

This catalog is being published on the occasion of the first comprehensive museum retrospective of Hoffmann’s oeuvre, presented at the MAK in Vienna in 2021. The exhibition as a medium raises questions: Hoffmann himself was the inventor of the cross-genre modern art exhibition on the basis of a consistent aesthetic ideal. From 1900 it was successfully presented time and again in the form of the novel Raumkunst (or “room art,” i.e. interior design as a work of art) as an example of a comprehensive artistic life reform. Consequently, it is vital that a documentary show on Josef Hoffmann not be staged as an aesthetic event or even as a competing parallel artwork—especially considering that our modern-day customs of exhibition reception in the media age and our limited resources would forbid it. Whereas all Secession exhibitions and the Kunstschau were designed as curated sales exhibitions, in other words as commercial enterprises, today a Josef Hoffmann retrospective in a museum accomplishes a public education mission.

The display includes on the one hand a chronology of his works and on the other an introduction to the artist’s unique, at that time revolutionary methods as a nuclear reactor for his inventions and impact to the present day. The MAK’s

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150 Years of Josef Hoffmann

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large exhibition hall in Vienna was constructed in 1906–1909 not by a Secessionist, but by Ludwig Baumann, whose mellow Neobaroque style was favored by the regime of the time. Its ample space of 1 600 m2 on the ground floor and 1 100 m2 on the upper floor, as well as the ideal proportions of around 40 x 40 m, henceforth served the presentation of 1:1 interiors, such as in the museum’s famous spring and fall exhibitions. Yet these rooms were also host to the Kunstschau in 1920 and the Werkbund exhibition in 1930; both were designed by Hoffmann.

The MAK was also the venue for two anniversary exhibitions on Hoffmann’s oeuvre, namely for his 60th birthday in 1930 and for his 70th birthday in 1940/41.

In reference to this MAK tradition, the retrospective in 2021 also includes the large-format photo panels of which the frugal anniversary shows constituted.

Valuable contemporary documents like this give us a clue how Hoffmann himself wanted his work to be perceived.

They are integrated in our exhibition concept in a concentric system within which visitors can navigate the show freely, whether tangentially or radially (design: Gregor Eichinger). The outer layer comprises a textile covering of the space with essential information about his biography and oeuvre in chronological order.

It accompanies the circular peripheral zone of the exhibition hall, which traces the six decades of Hoffmann’s artistic output with principal works from numerous national and international collections, featuring his wide range of decorative-art objects, photographs and plans, drawings and models. In certain places, visitors can move from here into the central space, where fundamental methods of Modernist architecture and design are identified in several core aspects of Hoffmann’s design work and in an exemplary 1:1 reconstruction of his famous Boudoir d’une grande vedette [Boudoir for a Big Star] from 1937. These core aspects include the ideal combination of an individual creative design with its equally individual execution by a skilled artisan. And Hoffmann’s very extensive attempt to realize the Gesamtkunstwerk ideal in Sanatorium Westend in Purkersdorf and in the legendary Stoclet House in Brussels. As well as the serial design strategy as an artistic reaction to industrialization and the dissemination of all these utterly modern artistic innovations through new decorative-arts organizations and many Raumkunst exhibitions.

It is consistent with Hoffmann’s artistic thinking in endless creative variations and alternatives that there is not just one but several ideal paths through this exhibition. Visitors can immerse themselves in a creative cosmos and navigate through it freely, from the structuring timeline to the exemplary design laboratory and back again. The deep inner connection between Hoffmann’s forms and works, which reveals countless anticipations and recourses, parallels and repetitions, can only be demonstrated in such a matrix and not in a linear sequence.

It also epitomizes the intensely humane and emancipatory dimension of Josef Hoffmann’s oeuvre: We are permitted to define who we are, and we are permitted to use everything that is beautiful to portray our individuality—regardless whether it was invented yesterday or today. And regardless of its dimension between architecture and cigarette case.

Hoffmann Research: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow “Art history will speak especially highly of him.” It was with this closing sentence that the architect and cultural journalist Armand Weiser (1877–1933), editor of Österreichs Bau und Werkkunst, the journal of the Zentralvereinigung der Architekten (Central Association of Architects), paid tribute to Josef Hoffmann in his monograph, which was published in 1930 as part of the series “Meister der Baukunst.” This was already the second, now multilingual monograph after the book released as early as 1927 by Hoffmann’s assistant Leopold Kleiner.5 At 60, Hoffmann was at the peak of his fame in 1930, an internationally renowned architect who had been honored with a solo show at the Triennale in Monza alongside Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier, and who had sat on the international jury of architects for the construction of the Palais des Nations in Geneva. Hoffmann’s oeuvre, having faded into obscurity soon after World War II, was rediscovered in the course of the reappraisal of art in Vienna around 1900, which began in the 1960s.6 A year before Josef Hoffmann’s death, the then Austrian Museum of Applied Arts (today’s MAK) had acquired the Wiener Werkstätte’s estate and with it an assortment of several thousand drawings by the architect. The Viennese avant-garde mentor and author Günther Feuerstein wrote about Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte in 19647—a clear sign

150 Years of Josef Hoffmann

of young Viennese architects’ reemerging interest in his oeuvre. That paved the way for the first comprehensive accounts in book form: the design-oriented publication by Daniele Baroni and Antonio d’Auria Josef Hoffmann e la Wiener Werkstätte from 1981 and the monograph devoted to his architectural work by Eduard F. Sekler from 1982 (published in English in 1985), which is still recognized as a standard reference work to this day. The major exhibition Traum und Wirklichkeit [Dream and Reality] at Vienna’s Künstlerhaus (1985) and the show organized at the MAK called Josef Hoffmann. Ornament zwischen Hoffnung und Verbrechen [Josef Hoffmann: Ornament between Hope and Crime] (1987) made Hoffmann’s work accessible once again to the general public.8 Symposia like Ornament und Askese (1985), and here primarily the contribution by Peter Gorsen, provided the research basis for an analysis of Josef Hoffmann’s significance for his productive period and for new Postmodernist approaches.9 It is as a result of this revaluation of Josef Hoffmann that the engagement of the MAK Vienna and the Moravian Gallery in Brno should be understood, which have developed a packed exhibition program for the Josef Hoffmann Museum in the house where he was born in Brtnice (CZ), which has been open since 2005. This engagement has led to new publications like the reedition of Josef Hoffmann’s Selbstbiographie/ Autobiography (2009). In the 2000s it was the traveling exhibition on the Wiener Werkstätte Yearning for Beauty (MAK, Vienna, 2003, and BOZAR, Brussels, 2006), which subjected Josef Hoffmann’s creative work to an in-depth analysis, while in his volume Junge Meister Jindřich Vybíral expressly focused on the discord between or rather the synthesis of Domestic Revival and urban mundanity in Hoffmann’s oeuvre and centered his observations on the architect’s Moravian “foothill architectures.”10 The exhibition Josef Hoffmann: Interiors 1902–1913 (Neue Galerie, New York, 2006) concentrated on the Raumkunst of this period.

It questioned: “Space as a framework of action that is defined by human beings and serves them, or as an aesthetic Gesamtkunstwerk that conditions them?”11 The exhibitions/publications Ways to Modernism: Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos, and Their Impact (MAK, Vienna, 2014/15) and Wiener Werkstätte 1903–1932: The Luxury of Beauty (Neue Galerie, New York, 2017/18) made a start at establishing a new view of Josef Hoffmann side by side with his contemporaries.

This catalog fills many gaps in the existing research into Hoffmann. It spotlights his as yet less well-known late work with equal intensity as his revolutionary early work. In new research, it evaluates much more archive material than was previously known. For the first time, it documents in detail Hoffmann’s activities in the shadow of the dictatorships of the 1930s. And it contextualizes his creative work within its period, circumstances, and the international avant-garde by means of articles written from a wide range of perspectives. A desideratum for future investigations of Hoffmann’s oeuvre would include—also in light of these new findings—a revised and augmented edition of the catalogue raisonné by Eduard F. Sekler from 1982.12 Given the enormous number of previously unknown texts, manuscripts, and newspaper articles written by Hoffmann, which were discovered during the research for this catalog, there is a strong argument for publishing a volume of “collected writings” with editorial classification. The preconception that Josef Hoffmann was adverse to theory must be challenged, as must the notion that he had left little to compete with the vociferous invectives of the likes of Adolf Loos or the fundamental writings of his teacher Otto Wagner. Hoffmann’s theorizing often took place in concert with trusted authors like Berta Zuckerkandl-Szeps, which would warrant research dedicated to these creative relationships. Josef Hoffmann’s statement from a RAVAG interview on this is well known: “There are two types of artist: those who construct something rationally and develop it systematically, and those who dream something up—I prefer the dreamers.” Hence an aesthetic theory should be developed that explains Hoffmann’s work better than the currently dominant theories of ornament. It should analyze the social functions of the beauty produced through individual creativity in which Hoffmann believed and which was not intended to benefit the upper classes alone. Hoffmann’s works deserve further, in-depth study in all areas of arts-and-crafts design, where his achievements were groundbreaking—for example, in ceramics and in glass design for the School of Arts and Crafts, but also in furniture in collaboration with Koloman Moser. Moreover, the international impact of Josef Hoffmann’s work on architecture and design into Postmodernism, in all its diverse incarnations, could also be explored more systematically than in existing research. As a first step along this path, this publication offers ample material for a new insight into the life and work of Josef Hoffmann. 

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150 Years of Josef Hoffmann

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JH, design for twelve brooches for the Wiener Werkstätte, 1905–1908 MAK, KI 12144-45

1 2

3

4 5

6

Wotruba, Fritz, Überlegungen. Gedanken zur Kunst, Zurich 1945, 49.

Thun-Hohenstein, Christoph/Boeckl, Matthias/ Witt-Dörring, Christian (eds.), Ways to Modernism: Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos, and Their Impact, Basel 2015.

Peche, Dagobert, “Der brennende Dornbusch” (1922), in: Noever, Peter (ed.), Die Überwindung der Utilität. Dagobert Peche und die Wiener Werkstätte, Ostfildern 1998, 169–191: 180 f.

Ibid., 187.

Weiser, Armand, Josef Hoffmann, “Meister der Baukunst” series, Geneva 1930; Kleiner, Leopold, “Einleitung,” in: Josef Hoffmann, “Neue Werkkunst” series, Berlin 1927.

The then Austrian Museum of Applied Arts (now the MAK) played a crucial role in this rediscovery.

After inventorying the Wiener Werkstätte Archive that had been acquired by the museum in 1955, its director Wilhelm Mrazek jointly organized with the Federal Ministry of Education the exhibition Die Wiener Werkstätte: modernes Kunsthandwerk von 1903–1932 [The Wiener Werkstätte: Modern Arts and Crafts from 1903 to 1932] in 1967, which showed objects after Josef Hoffmann’s design at the museum again for the first time.

7

Feuerstein, Günther, “Josef Hoffmann und die Wiener Werkstätte,” in: Der Aufbau. Fachschrift der Stadtbaudirektion 19 1964, 177 ff.

8 The MAK exhibition, one of the first under Peter Noever’s direction, was only able to present the holdings of the museum and the University of Applied Arts on Josef Hoffmann and drew attention to the necessity of comprehensive research into his oeuvre.

9 Gorsen, Peter, “Josef Hoffmann. Zur Modernität eines konservativen Baumeisters,” in: Pfabigan, Alfred (ed.), Ornament und Askese im Zeitgeist des Wien der Jahrhundertwende, Vienna 1985, 57–68.

10 Vybíral, Jindřich, “Labyrinth der Großstadt und Paradies der Heimat: Josef Hoffmann,” in: id., Junge Meister. Architekten aus der Schule Otto Wagners in Mähren und Schlesien, Vienna 2007, 225–261.

11 Witt-Dörring, Christian (ed.), Josef Hoffmann: Interiors 1902–1913, Munich 2006, 12.

12 Witt-Dörring has been working on the revised edition of Eduard F. Sekler’s publication for over a decade and was doing so in collaboration with Sekler until the latter’s death in 2017.

1870 1900

Students at the State Technical School in Brünn/Brno, 1889 Josef Hoffmann is standing on the far right Josef Hoffmann Museum, Brtnice

1870–1900

Fig. 1 JH, cover sheet for Ver Sacrum, 1899, issue 7

Fig. 2 JH, designs for interiors, 1899 DI (1) 1899, plate 32

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1870–1900

19

Fig. 3 JH, design for a study, 1898 DI (1) 1899, plate 2

1870–1900

20

Fig. 4 JH, desk for Paul Wittgenstein’s Bergerhöhe country house, 1899 Oak, stained green, brass, copper Private collection © MAK/Georg Mayer

Fig. 5 JH, armchair for the Bergerhöhe country house, 1899 Oak, buckskin

Fig. 6 JH, armchair for the Bergerhöhe country house, 1899 Oak, stained brown

Private collection © MAK/Georg Mayer

Private collection © MAK/Georg Mayer

1907 1910

Stoclet House, Brussels © Alan John Ainsworth

1907–1910

120

Fig. 1 JH, étagère for the living area in Eduard Ast’s villa, 1910 Marquetry made of Makassar ebony and boxwood Galerie Yves Macaux, Brussels © Photo Studio Philippe de Formanoir/ Paso Doble

1907–1910

121

Fig. 2 JH, pendant light for the library in Dr. Hermann and Lyda Wittgenstein’s apartment, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1905 Brass, nickel-plated, glass Galerie Yves Macaux, Brussels © Photo Studio Philippe de Formanoir/Paso Doble

Fig. 3 JH, pendant light for the hall of Stoclet House, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1908 Galerie Yves Macaux, Brussels © Photo Studio Philippe de Formanoir/Paso Doble

1907–1910

Figs. 4a, b JH, exhibition building for the Kunstschau, Vienna, 1908 Der Architekt XIV, 161; MBF (7) 1908, 363

122

1907–1910

123

Fig. 5 JH, electric samovar from a tea and coffee set, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1909 Silver, ivory Private collection © MAK/Georg Mayer

Fig. 7 JH, vinegar/oil carafe, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1909 Silver, malachite, glass bel etage Kunsthandel GmbH

Fig. 8 JH, vase, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1909 Silver MAK, WI 970 © MAK/Georg Mayer

Fig. 6 JH, samovar owned by Dr. Hermann and Lyda Wittgenstein, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1909 Silver, ivory MAK, GO 2010 © MAK/Katrin Wißkirchen

1907–1910

124

Fig. 9 JH, brooch, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1909 Silver, gold-plated, coral, lapis lazuli, malachite, and opal GALERIE BEI DER ALBERTINA ZETTER p

Fig. 10 JH, brooch, executed

by Eugen Pflaumer, 1908–1910 Silver, gold-plated, agate, amethyst, bloodstone, jasper, turquoise, moonstone, and coral Private collection

Fig. 11 JH, linoleum sample panel, design no. 1402, Erste österr. Linoleumfabrik, Trieste, 1910

Fig. 12 JH, linoleum sample panel, Inlaid II, Delmenhorster Linoleumfabrik, 1910

Technisches Museum, Vienna, 60581/12

Stadtmuseum Delmenhorst (DE)

1911 1918

JH, designs for a flacon, wine glass, and champagne bowl with bronzite decoration, 1910 J. & L. LOBMEYR

1911–1918

186

Fig. 1 JH, coffee set, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1918 Silver, ivory, and ebony GALERIE BEI DER ALBERTINA ZETTER p

Fig. 2 JH, tea set, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1927 Silver and ivory MAK, GO 2035 © MAK/Georg Mayer

1911–1918

187

Fig. 3 JH, smoking room in Prof. Dr. Otto Zuckerkandl’s apartment, 1912/13 DKuD (34) 1914, 140

Fig. 4 JH, salon in Erwin Böhler’s apartment, 1917/18 Courtesy of the Michael Huey and Christian Witt-Dörring Photo Archive

1911–1918

Fig. 5 JH, brooch, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1912 Silver and malachite Private collection

188

Fig. 6 JH, brooch owned by Emilie and Gertrude Flöge, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1910 Gold, mother-of-pearl, moonstone, opal, lapis lazuli, tourmaline, garnet, and chrysoprase Private collection, courtesy of the Klimt Foundation, Vienna

Fig. 7 JH, fabric Theben [Thebes], executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1910 Silk, printed MAK, WWS 784

1919 1925

JH, freestanding chest of drawers for a smoking room (detail), International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, Paris, 1925 © MAK/Georg Mayer

1919–1925

226

Fig. 1 JH, fabric Ozon [Ozone], executed by Gustav Ziegler for the Wiener Werkstätte, 1923 Silk, printed MAK, WWS 557-2 © MAK/Branislav Djordjevic

Fig. 3 JH, lidded box, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1913/24 Stoneware, glazed white, black and green decoration Dr. E. Ploil Collection © MAK/Georg Mayer

Fig. 2 JH, fabric Gotemba, executed by Gustav Ziegler for the Wiener Werkstätte, 1925 Silk, printed MAK, WWS 280 © MAK/Kristina Wissik

Fig. 4 JH, goblet, executed by the Staatliche Porzellanmanufaktur Berlin for the Wiener Werkstätte, 1922 Private collection © MAK/Georg Mayer

1919–1925

227

Fig. 5 JH, pastry bowl, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1919 Silver MAK, GO 2079 © MAK/Katrin Wißkirchen

Fig. 6 JH, tea set, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1923 Silver and ivory bel etage Kunsthandel GmbH

Fig. 7 JH, tea set, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1923 Brass and ebony MAK, ME 846 © MAK/Tamara Pichler

1919–1925

228

Fig. 8 JH, table lamp, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1925 Brass, silk MAK, ME 867 © MAK/Georg Mayer

> Fig. 11 JH, centerpiece, executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1924 Brass MAK, GO 1987 © MAK/Georg Mayer