Mid-Century Modern – Visionary Furniture Design from Vienna

Caroline Wohlgemuth

Mid-Century Modern Visionary Furniture Design from Vienna

Birkhäuser Basel

For Leopold, Konrad, and Claire This book is dedicated to all those exiled who could not be written about here.

I

A History of Viennese Furniture Design from Its Beginnings to 1960

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Furniture design—a look back: from draftsman to designer From handicraft to industrially manufactured furniture b The Arts and Crafts Movement and its influence on Vienna

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Biedermeier—furniture artistry from Vienna

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Bentwood furniture: Gebrüder Thonet and Jacob & Josef Kohn a Michael Thonet—the success of modern industrial design for furniture b World famous: Thonet’s No. 14 chair c Jacob & Josef Kohn—creativity and innovation

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Vienna 1900 Viennese Modernism—the phenomenon of the fin de siècle b Architects and artists as furniture designers c Wiener Werkstätte d Antagonist and critic of Jugendstil: Adolf Loos e Early product design from Vienna

25 27 28 30 32

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From Bauhaus to International Style The Bauhaus in Weimar, Dessau, and Berlin b Modern tubular steel furniture c Viennese architects and designers in Germany d Banished visions—from the Bauhaus to the US

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Visionary Vienna—letting loose of Loos New Viennese furniture of the 1920s and ’30s b A new image of women: female architects as designers c Haus & Garten—rooms and furniture for the soul d Bauhaus in the middle of Vienna—the Singer & Dicker joint studio e The Wiener Werkbundsiedlung—the culmination of modern furniture design f The bentwood industry in the 1920s and ’30s

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Glamorous Art Deco and Viennese furniture in Paris

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A fissure in time—1938 and the consequences for Viennese furniture design

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50 70 79 88

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The banished visionaries—from Vienna to the US The emigration of Modernism b The early emigrants c Driven from Vienna—a forced new beginning in exile d Organic Style—the furniture forms of the 1950s

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10 Furniture design of 1950s Vienna

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Scandinavian furniture and Viennese furniture design in Sweden: Josef Frank

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12 Bel Design from Italy

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13 Industrially produced furniture in English exile

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14 From Vienna to Palestine—furniture design for the newly created State of Israel

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15 The intellectual message from Vienna

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Contents

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II

Furniture Designers— Biographies

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Oskar Strnad Ella Briggs Oskar Wlach Ernst Lichtblau Josef Frank Paul Theodore Frankl Walter Sobotka Frederick Kiesler Paul Engelmann Richard Neutra Ernst Freud Liane Zimbler Jacques Groag Felice Rix-Ueno Felix Augenfeld Ernst Schwadron Franz Singer Friedl Dicker Bruno Pollak Jacqueline Groag Walter Loos Anna Szabo Dora Gad Martin Eisler Forgotten names

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2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

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148 150 152 156 164 166 168 170 172 178 180 184 188 190 194 198 202 206 210 214 216 218 220 224

III

Interviews with Experts, Collectors, and Designers

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Friedl Dicker & Franz Singer—Georg Schrom on the visionary joint studio

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Five generations of design from Vienna—Maria Auböck on the Carl Auböck workshop

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IV

Glimpses into Apartments, Houses, and Cafés

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A house and garden for the soul—the Krasny house today The house of a hundred steps—Villa Beer Designer living room in a museum: Salonplafond A journey in time back to the 1950s: Café Prückel When time stands still: original furniture design from the 1950s The Guesthouse Vienna—a brasserie with Viennese furniture design A bohemian life above the rooftops of Vienna Mid-Century Modern furniture design in an elegant palace

Bibliography Illustration Credits About the Author Acknowledgments Publishing Information

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Contents

260 264 268 272 276 280 284 290 294

294 295 296

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Introduction

It was one of the world’s most creative metropolises and the city of modern design: Vienna 1900. Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos, the trailblazers of Viennese Modernism, are still renowned all over the world. The world’s first so-called designer chair, the No. 14 chair by Gebrüder Thonet, was created in Vienna as well, with over 80 million sold around the globe. Michael Thonet, the inventor of bentwood furniture, is regarded as a pioneer of industrial furniture production and modern furniture design.

But scarcely anyone today knows Franz Singer, Ernst Schwadron, Bruno Pollak, Friedl Dicker, or Liane Zimbler—all furniture designers from 1920s and ’30s Vienna.

It was the age of Sigmund Freud, Stefan Zweig, Friedrich Torberg, Franz Werfel, and Joseph Roth, whose works were read all over the world; Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg made music history, and Max Reinhardt’s theater productions were internationally acclaimed. The ideas of the thinkers of the Vienna Circle had a decisive influence on the philosophy of the twentieth century. Despite the catastrophic economic and political situation in Austria, the period between the two world wars saw a golden age in art and culture, in music and literature, and in the sciences and the humanities. In this time, Vienna again became an inspiring and visionary cultural metropolis—including in the areas of architecture and furniture design. In addition to Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos, the younger generation of architects, such as Oskar Strnad and Josef Frank, as well as their students—who for the first time also included women—were active as furniture designers. Instead of luxurious, stately villas or apartment buildings, simple residential structures were built and countless apartments renovated. Many architects, aside from their work on social housing projects, became active primarily as furniture designers and interior architects, which led to a flourishing in furniture design. Unlike in turn-of-the-century Vienna, these furniture designers were first and foremost concerned with creating high-quality, elegant, and affordable furniture and thus making the lives of the occupants better and more comfortable.

This new age demanded a new furniture design: with their colorful and lightweight furniture, these designers followed an unconventional, typically Viennese path. Particularly in political unstable times, they endeavored to create spaces and furnishings that helped people feel comfortable and find more peace, serenity, and happiness.

In Vienna, just as in other major European cities, the end of World War I saw the emergence of a completely new image of women: young, independent women, the first to be admitted to universities and academies, made a name for themselves as furniture designers. Austria’s first female architects, such as Ella Briggs, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, and Liane Zimbler, realized their ideas and formal principles with well-conceived, multifunctional furniture and flexible furnishings, and in their work advocated tirelessly for equal rights for women in society.

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The history of Viennese furniture design, however, is also the story of the flight, the emigration, and the exile of Austria’s intellectual and creative elite. The majority of the modern, visionary female furniture designers in Vienna, as well as Austria’s first female architecture students—like Lisl Scheu Close, Ella Briggs, Liane Zimbler, Anna Szabo, and Dora Gad—came from Jewish families. Countless designers, architects, and artists suffered tragic fates during the Nazi regime and were deported and murdered, including the furniture designer, interior architect, and painter Friedl Dicker, who died at the age of forty-six at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Some were able to flee Vienna in time to escape from the Nazis and establish themselves in Sweden, Brazil, or the US, continuing their careers as designers or teaching at renowned universities. The Viennese architect and designer Ernst Lichtblau fled from Vienna to the US in 1939 and taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, influencing an entire generation of young designers there. The architect and furniture and fabric designer Josef Frank emigrated to Stockholm as early as the end of 1933 and beginning in 1942 taught at the famous New School for Social Research in New York. His exuberantly-hued and imaginative furniture and fabrics from Vienna became known all over the world in the 1930s. Walter Sobotka, another architect and furniture designer from Vienna, fled to New York in 1938 and worked as a designer for Thonet Brothers New York; in 1942, he began teaching interior architecture at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Liane Zimbler, as well, fled to the US in 1938 to escape the Nazis. Ella Briggs, Lisl Scheu Close, and Dora Gad left Vienna already in the mid-1930s and had astounding careers as architects and furniture designers in Great Britain, the US, and Palestine, respectively.

By 1938, Vienna had within only a few years lost its best and most creative minds— a fissure in time and an irretrievable loss that ripped through all the arts and sciences, and one that can still be felt today. In addition to all the human tragedies, 1938 spelled an abrupt end to the golden age of Viennese furniture design. As early as the mid-1930s, many architects and furniture designers had left the city in the face of the dire political situation in Germany and Austria and the increasingly unbearable antisemitism there, emigrating to America, Great Britain, or Palestine. After March 1938, it was no longer a matter of emigration but of flight and forced exile—for those affected, leaving the country was possible only under very difficult circumstances. With the banishment of countless intellectuals, scientists, artists, musicians, and their families, the city of Vienna lost its soul in 1938.

When one looks at the biographies of the furniture designers who were forced to flee from the Nazis, a wide variety of different fates and life stories becomes apparent.

But what they all have in common is that they were uprooted and banished from Vienna, the city where they were born, or where they studied, spent many years, and gained their first professional experience. These are fates that left behind painful scars on the affected families that can still be felt today. Figures like Josef Frank, Ernst Schwadron, and Liane Zimbler had close ties with friends and fellow émigrés from Vienna for their entire lives, and despite their success wrote in their memoirs of how deeply wounded and saddened they were about all that had transpired—but also about their constant homesickness for Vienna. The worldfamous historian and art historian Ernst H. Gombrich said of his native Vienna: “Vienna is my native city, of course, and German my mother tongue. I feel very comfortable with both of them. But when I think for a moment, I would find it ludicrous to say that Vienna is my homeland. I scarcely know anyone there. Who would I call there? I still have maybe two or three acquaintances in Vienna, no more. So while I come from Vienna, it is no longer my home.”01

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With very few exceptions, the exiled furniture designers, the survivors of the Shoah, did not return to Vienna after World War II. Virtually no effort was made by the City of Vienna to invite them back. There was an erroneous impression that these people were very well off in their exile. The returnees were not made to feel welcome in Austria, and Vienna did not attempt to bring the lost families back.

In their exile in Stockholm, London, New York, Los Angeles, or Buenos Aires, the furniture designers for the most part were able to draw on the ideas, experience, formal principles, and skills they had acquired in Vienna and thus build a new life. Through their tireless teaching activities at the world’s top universities, they also trained the next generation in furniture design. Richard Neutra, Frederick Kiesler—the early emigrants—and Josef Frank were far ahead of their time. Their visionary furniture creations inspired star designers such as Charles and Ray Eames, Arne Jacobsen, and Gio Ponti. Josef Frank’s unique furniture, fabrics, and lamps, Frederick Kiesler’s Multi-Use Chair, Richard Neutra’s Boomerang Chair, and Martin Eisler’s Reversível Chair are today twentieth-century design icons and the quintessence of Mid-Century Modern furniture design.02 Originals from the 1940s to the 1960s have become coveted collector’s items, fetching record prices at design auctions. A number of their creations have been continuously produced or reproduced by international design companies.

With their inexhaustible creativity, the furniture designers from Vienna continued working in exile, disseminating their ideas throughout the entire world.

01

https://gombricharchive.files.word press.com/2011/04/showdoc73.pdf (accessed Sept. 20, 2021).

02 This term was coined by the American journalist and author Cara Greenberg. She used it for the first time as the title of her book Mid-Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950s, and today it refers to modern furniture design from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Introduction

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“In every minute of our world, millions and billions of thoughts are thought. But all these millions and billions of thoughts expire and vanish in the space of this minute, and already the next one no longer knows anything about them. But among these millions and billions of fleeting, ephemeral, fruitless, and worthless thoughts, one is sometimes born in this time that is special; one that does not vanish but continues to resonate, stimulating and embracing and sweeping up other thoughts with it—an invention, a discovery, an insight; an active and fertile thought that changes our time, our world.

Such thoughts are immeasurable, rare; only few are thought in each decade. But upon them rests the change of our intellectual, our moral, our real world.”

—Stefan Zweig, On Sigmund Freud, on the occasion of Freud’s 80th birthday.01

01 Stefan Zweig, Über Sigmund Freud. Porträt, Briefwechsel, Gedenkworte (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1989).

A HISTORY of Viennese Furniture Design

from Its Beginnings to 1960

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Design for a desk

from the workshop of Joseph Ulrich Danhauser, Vienna, 1814, © MAK bottom Biedermeier chair; design and execution: unknown, Vienna, 1820 to 1825, © MAK

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Biedermeier—furniture artistry from Vienna

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Bentwood furniture: Gebrüder Thonet and Jacob & Josef Kohn MICHAEL THONET—THE SUCCESS OF MODERN INDUSTRIAL DESIGN FOR FURNITURE

In the mid-nineteenth century, when furniture manufacturers were attempting to use modern carving and turning machines to imitate handcrafted and historic furniture forms, Michael Thonet developed his revolutionary bentwood process, a completely new production method that led to modern forms in the fabrication of wooden furniture. Through the use of steaming processes, the German master cabinetmaker from the Prussian town of Boppard am Rhein was able to bend solid beechwood into a curved shape. The wood was first treated in steam chambers at very high temperatures to make it pliable and then bent through the use of cast-iron clamps. The bent wood was subsequently dried in drying rooms, removed from the clamps, sanded, and its surface treated.18

Michael Thonet, a proponent of industrially made furniture and mass production, pursued the goal of manufacturing high-quality, elegant, and above all lightweight furniture in a cost-effective manner. In the process, he did not conceal the industrial production methods of his wooden furniture but instead made them a principle of his design. As early as 1830, Thonet conducted his first experiments in fabricating furniture from curved wood and continued to refine this process in the following years. However, he was not awarded a patent for his invention in Prussia.19

At an exhibition at the Kunstverein Koblenz in Prussia in 1841, these innovative bentwood chairs came to the attention of the Austrian state chancellor Metternich. At the invitation of Metternich, Michael Thonet traveled to Vienna to present this new furniture out of curved wood to the Austrian imperial court. Michael Thonet was granted the privilege of producing his new bentwood furniture in Austria and in spring 1842 moved to Vienna with his entire family. There, he met the French-British architect Peter Hubert Desvignes, with whom he was to execute large projects such as the renovation and furnishing of the Liechtenstein family’s city palace in downtown Vienna. Thonet also furnished Vienna’s Palais Schwarzenberg with his chairs of bent beechwood.20

In 1849, at the age of fifty-three, Michael Thonet and his five sons opened their own factory for producing bentwood furniture, with its headquarters on Vienna’s Gumpendorfer Straße. The family business soon received large contracts for furnishing coffeehouses, restaurants, hotels, and 18 Mang (1978), 38.

19 Wilhide (2016), 42; Hauffe public buildings. The Thonets, who had perfected their wood-curving pro(2014), 36. cess in Vienna, were able to offer bentwood furniture from solid wood in 20 Wolfgang Thillmann and Bernd outstanding quality and at an unrivaled price. Because other Viennese furWillscheid, Möbeldesign. Roentgen, niture manufacturers were also beginning to use the bentwood technique, Thonet und die Moderne, published in conjunction with an exhibition of the Thonets branded their furniture with a maker’s mark in the form of a the same name (Berlin: Roentgen stamp.21 Museum Neuwied, 2011), 155.

21 Ibid., 19.

In 1851, Michael Thonet participated in the Great Exhibition in London, and the following year the family business opened its first shop in Vienna’s city center. The company grew rapidly: by 1853 it had fifty-three employees and had acquired its first steam engine. Thonet turned the furniture

Bentwood furniture: Gebrüder Thonet and Jacob & Josef Kohn

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left

Poster by Gebrüder

Thonet, Austria, 1876, © MAK/ Katrin Wisskirchen right Chair No. 14; design: Gebrüder Thonet, Vienna, 1859; execution: Gebrüder Thonet, Koryčany, ca. 1900, © MAK/ Georg Mayer bottom Chair No. 14 disassembled; design: Gebrüder Thonet, Vienna, 1859; execution: Thonet-Mundus, after 1919, © MAK

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Bentwood furniture: Gebrüder Thonet and Jacob & Josef Kohn

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Vienna 1900

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VIENNESE MODERNISM— THE PHENOMENON OF THE FIN DE SIÈCLE

29 http://www.archiv-ikg-wien.at/ archives/juedische-gemeinde-wien (accessed July 16, 2021).

30

Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Matthias Boeckl, and Christian Witt-Dörring (eds.), Wege der Moderne. Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos und die Folgen (Vienna: Birkhäuser, 2015), 112.

31 Eric R. Kandel, The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, From Vienna 1900 to the Present (New York: Random House, 2012), 28.

32 Serge Lemoine and Marie-Amélie zu Salm-Salm, Wien um 1900. Klimt | Kokoschka | Schiele | Moser (Stuttgart: Belser, 2005), 40.

33 Ernst H. Gombrich, Jüdische Identität und jüdisches Schicksal.

Eine Diskussionsbemerkung (Vienna: Passagen Verlag, 2011), 19ff.

34 Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday, trans. Benjamin W. Huebsch and Helmut Ripperger (London: Cassel and Company, 1943), 15.

Vienna 1900

In the period around 1900, Vienna saw an extraordinary intellectual flowering not only in philosophy, painting, music, literature, architecture, and design, but in mathematics, economics, jurisprudence, medicine, and psychoanalysis as well. The city was also experiencing rapid population growth at this time: while some 1.7 million people lived in Vienna in 1900, by 1910 this number had exceeded 2 million. This was the capital of the Habsburg Monarchy, a large European empire with a population of over fifty million people whose countries extended far into the regions of eastern and southeastern Europe. Vienna was the center of power; of media, fashion, and culture; of good taste and design.

People from all provinces and crownlands streamed into the imperial capital in the second half of the nineteenth century, including many Jewish families. Through the constitutional laws passed on 21 December, 1867, regulating the basic rights of citizens, all individuals in this multi-national state, including Jews, were guaranteed equality before the law. The Jewish community in Vienna, which in the mid-nineteenth century had counted some 6,000 members, had grown to about 150,000 by 1900.29 Vienna’s liberal and intellectual upper class financed countless building projects in this period and played a crucial role in Viennese Modernism as patrons of the arts.30

A characteristic feature of “Vienna 1900” was the interconnection between the arts—not only painting, sculpture, architecture, and arts and crafts, but also music, theater, literature, and philosophy. It was the Vienna of Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos, Gustav Mahler, Sigmund Freud, Arthur Schnitzler, and Theodor Herzl. Many intellectuals and artists were drawn to Vienna, where great importance was placed on cultural achievements and intellectual brilliance.31 Th amalgamation of different cultural influences had an enormous impact on the city, with this pluralism becoming its characteristic feature: Vienna was the city of cultural diversity and creative dialogue. 32 This astounding intellectual and cultural wealth in Vienna 1900, the phenomenon of Viennese Modernism, would have been unimaginable without the liberal Viennese Jewish community of that time.33 In The World of Yesterday, Stefan Zweig described this era in Vienna as “the age of reason,” as a time of security and prosperity.34

The flourishing imperial capital was nevertheless also characterized by a growing antisemitic sentiment, one that Vienna mayor Karl Lueger, among others, used deliberately as a political strategy. It was in this period, in 1896, that Theodor Herzl, a very popular journalist and editor of the Neue Freie Presse, published his book The Jewish State, thus establishing the idea of a political form of Zionism and of the founding of the State of Israel.

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Standardized furnish-

ings of the Frankfurt Kitchen: cast-iron double sin, cupboards, work surfaces, and aluminum and wooden drawer-containers; design: Margarete SchütteLihotzky, Frankfurt, 1927; execution: Grumbach, Frankfurt, © Dorotheum Vienna, 2019 bottom Frankfurt Kitchen; design: Margarete SchütteLihotzky, Frankfurt, 1927; photographer: Hermann Collischonn, © KAUAK

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in the areas of social housing and housing developments. In 1926, May hired the young Viennese woman to work with him at the building commission in Frankfurt. It was during this time that Schütte-Lihotzky designed her Frankfurt Kitchen, the first modern fitted kitchen, which made her world famous.82

In the interwar period, this functional kitchen became a central theme in furniture design as well as in the feminist movement. Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s idea was to make daily housework easier and quicker for the working woman; the Frankfurt Kitchen was installed in over 12,000 households, largely in social housing projects in Frankfurt. She thus ushered in the trend toward modern built-in kitchens, which spread throughout the world in the 1950s.83 In addition to her famous kitchen, Schütte-Lihotzky also planned residential buildings, schools, kindergartens, and public facilities. She designed a wide range of furniture as well as devoting herself intensively to the industrial production of furniture.84 d

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BANISHED VISIONS— FROM THE BAUHAUS TO THE US

Maasberg and Prinz (2005) 61ff.

Tulga Beyerle and Karin Hirschberger, Designlandschaft Österreich 1900–2005 (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006), 100.

84 http://www.architektenlexikon. at/de/580.htm (accessed July 16, 2021).

85 Hauffe (2014), 121ff.

86 Fiell and Fiell (1999), 344.

87 Hauffe (2014), 117, 122.

88 Nerdinger (2019), 11.

83

Political battles between the right and left were raging not only throughout Germany in the interwar period but also at the Bauhaus. In 1930, Hannes Meyer was fired, and his successor, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who shifted the educational emphasis to architecture, tried to depoliticize the Bauhaus. But this attempt failed: the art school lacked the required financial resources, and after a short-term move to Berlin, the Bauhaus was closed in 1933 for good by the Nazis, who had in the meantime assumed power.

Most of the Bauhaus instructors were no longer permitted to teach in Germany by order of the Nazis, and teachers as well as students were ousted and forced to emigrate.

By this time, the Bauhaus style was known far beyond the German borders. The new materials in furniture design, such as tubular steel, as well as the typically simple, unadorned forms of the Bauhaus provided impetus for the creation of a modern, international style.85 The International Style in architecture and furniture design had evolved from the ideas of Bauhaus in the 1920s and by the middle of the twentieth century had spread throughout the entire world. The name was first mentioned in 1932 in the title of a book by the American art critic Henry-Russell Hitchcock, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922, which accompanied an exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art under its director at the time, Alfred Barr.86

Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, László Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer emigrated to the US. They taught at the most prestigious American universities and influenced to a great degree the development of the International Style. Before the outbreak of World War II, the center of Modernism shifted to the United States, and the Bauhaus’s impact on design and architecture was particularly great there. The emigration of many of the Bauhaus’s teachers, who then taught at various American universities, perpetuated the school’s influence on an international level. László Moholy-Nagy emigrated to the US in 1937 and that same year founded the New Bauhaus in Chicago, the predecessor to the Chicago Institute of Design. The US, as well, was now to have an educational institution for training designers of the next generation for modern industry.87

Walter Gropius emigrated to London in 1934 and in 1937 moved to the US, where he trained several generations of architects and designers at Harvard University.88

From Bauhaus to International Style

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d

BAUHAUS IN THE MIDDLE OF VIENNA— THE SINGER & DICKER JOINT STUDIO In 1923, after graduating from the Bauhaus, the young designers Friedl Dicker and Franz Singer founded the Werkstätten Bildender Kunst in Berlin, a joint fine-arts studio specializing in stage sets, bookbinding, textiles, graphics, and children’s toys. In the mid-1920s, Dicker moved from Berlin back to Vienna. There, she opened a studio at 2 Wasserburggasse in the ninth district, where she produced woven fabrics and handbags, assisted by Martha Hauska. Singer followed her to Vienna in February 1925. He initially worked in a studio space in his apartment at 18 Schadekgasse in the sixth district but that same year joined Dicker’s studio on Wasserburggasse. Soon the joint studio flourished: together, they planned houses, apartments, shops, and a kindergarten, and designed a great deal of furniture, lamps, rugs, and fabrics. Dicker worked primarily as an interior architect and furniture designer and Franz Singer as an architect. With their interior furnishings, Dicker was responsible for selecting colors and materials; she experimented with new forms, color combinations, and fabrics and created the characteristic atmosphere in the spaces she furnished.160

As furniture designers, both were visionary: together, they designed innovative furniture and fabrics with which they furnished over fifty interiors in Vienna alone. Franz Singer worked out rational, technical solutions and signed the designs with his name. The design, the surfaces, the colors, the fabrics: this, however, was all the influence of Friedl Dicker.

The belt webbing, furniture upholstery, rugs, and bedspreads were all hand-manufactured

by Dicker, who had studied textile design at the School of Arts and Crafts and attended the workshop for weaving at the Bauhaus.161 According to Leopoldine Schrom, a long-time employee, Friedl Dicker’s contribution in the area of furniture design in the joint studio was considerable. She did not, however, document or sign her work and was overshadowed by her partner.162

Franz Singer and Friedl Dicker, who were not architects themselves, hired students or graduates of Vienna’s Polytechnic Institute to assume responsibility for the technical details. The joint studio in Vienna employed various designers between 1925 and 1938. Bruno Pollak worked there beginning in 1927,163 and Anna Szabo joined the studio in 1929 and became one of Singer and Dicker’s longest serving employees. As the studio was receiving a large number of orders by the end of the 1920s, Szabo also recruited her university friend Leopoldine Schrom to work there. Singer and Dicker left the drawing of the furniture as well as the perspective drawings to their employees. Hans Biel, another graduate of the Polytechnic Institute, worked at the studio from 1931 until his emigration to London in 1934. Euge160 Hövelmann (2018), 106. nie “Jenny” Pillat joined the studio in 1934 and remained until 1936. Be161 Ibid. cause most of the drawings were unsigned, attributing them to a certain 162 Interview with Georg Schrom on employee is difficult. The students designed furnishings, planned commerFebruary 21, 2021; Hövelmann cial renovations, and produced furniture drawings and prototypes for furni(2018), 100ff.

163 Werner Röder and Herbert A. ture; they were very involved in the design process of furniture, room Strauss, Biographisches Handbuch furnishings, and buildings. Szabo, Schrom, and Pillat were among the first der deutschsprachigen Emigration women to study architecture at Vienna’s Polytechnic Institute.164 nach 1933–1945, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Research Foundation

The Singer & Dicker studio produced a remarkable amount of furniture for Jewish Immigration (New York: between 1925 and 1938. The pieces designed in the studio’s first years corK. G. Saur Verlag, 1999), 215.

164 Hövelmann (2018), 117.​ responded to the creative principles of the Bauhaus: the structure made of geometric formal elements, an emphasis on design, the use of various types of wood, the colorful painting, and the use of colored jute belts, woven cane, and hand-woven fabrics are some of these. Franz Singer and

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Visionary Vienna—letting loose of Loos

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Design for a garden room, Friedl Dicker and Franz Singer,

Vienna, c. 1927, Sammlung GS, © FS

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Design for a multifunc-

tional tubular steel chair, Friedl Dicker and Franz Singer, Vienna, c. 1930, Sammlung GS, © FS bottom Design for nesting seating furniture, Friedl Dicker and Franz Singer, Vienna, c. 1927, Sammlung GS, © FS Top R. Design for a bathroom cabinet, Friedl Dicker and Franz Singer, Vienna, c. 1927, Sammlung GS, © FS Bottom R. Design for a stacking tubular steel chair and stool with crossed bases, Franz Singer, Vienna, c. 1930, Samm­ lung GS, © FS

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Visionary Vienna—letting loose of Loos

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Espresso Bar in the

Werkbund exhibition at the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry, Vienna, 1930; design: Felix Augenfeld and Karl Hofmann; photographer: Bruno

The seventy model homes in Hietzing were to serve as examples of modern living and of housing developments of the future.182 Six women participated in the project: As the sole female architect, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky planned houses No. 61 and 62. The Viennese designer Ilse Bernheimer, Oskar Strnad’s personal assistant, designed the entire interior of the houses No. 15 and 16, using Bruno Pollak’s tubular steel furniture. Rosa Weiser was responsible for the interior design of Gerrit Rietveld’s houses. Ada Gomperz and Leonie Pilenski collaborated on the furnishing of the Häring house, while Grete Salzer designed the garden of the house planned by Jacques Groag.183

Over 200 businesses participated in the architecture project, making their products available for model furnishings of the houses, including modern household and kitchen appliances. Furniture by the Thonet company and lamps by J.T. Kalmar were also exhibited. Josef Frank and Oskar Wlach’s interior-design shop Haus & Garten supplied the complete furnishings for three model homes.

In the catalog for the exhibition, Josef Frank expressed his ideas about interior décor and furniture design this way: “As far as the furnishings of a small house go, they are very unproblematic. Cabinets should be installed

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Reiffenstein, © MAK

182

Meder (2008), 62.

183 https://www.werkbundsiedlung-

wien.at/architektinnen (accessed July 22, 2021).

Visionary Vienna—letting loose of Loos

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Poster for the Werkbundsiedlung, Joseph Binder,

Vienna, 1932, © Joseph Binder/MAK

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Werkbundsiedlung, house No. 12, living area; design: Josef Frank,

Vienna, 1932; photographer: Martin Gerlach jun., © Wien Museum

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Werkbundsiedlung, house No. 25–28; design: André Lurçat, Vienna,

1932; photographer: Martin Gerlach jun., © Wien Museum

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8

A fissure in time— 1938 and the consequences for Viennese furniture design

“You all know how the tragedy began. It was when in Germany National Socialism emerged, whose motto from the very first day was: stifle. Stifle all voices except one. Eradicate all manifestations of free speech in whatever form it takes: artistic, literary, journalistic,” wrote Stefan Zweig—who had already emigrated from Salzburg to London in 1934—in 1941 about the devastating consequences of National Socialism.203 Until spring 1938, the renowned Austrian writer had traveled several more times back to his hometown of Vienna. What transpired in the days following the “Anschluss” in Vienna “was unprecedented in Jewish history—Germany was a velvet paw compared with this murderous blow,” wrote Stefan Zweig in spring 1938 in a letter to his friend, the German writer Arnold Zweig. “The Viennese, the Austrian Jews were, after all, much more homogeneous in their structure than the German Jews; they belonged to the city—they had helped create and shape Vienna.”204

The consequences of the Nazis’ entry into Austria in March 1938 were devastating for all the country’s Jews. In his book Stadt ohne Seele: Wien 1938, the historian Manfred Flügge describes with great precision the dramatic upheaval, the radicalization that very quickly took place within society after the so-called “Anschluss” and the tragic fate of the Viennese Jews.205 A few harrowing facts: Immediately after the German troops marched into Austria on May 12, 1938, there were pogroms, brutish riots, countless imprisonments, and deportations all over the country. At the same time, the “Nuremberg Race Laws” were enacted and widespread dispossessions, “Aryanizations” of Jewish property, robbery, looting, and abuse took place.

The violent treatment of Jewish men, women, and children culminated in the November pogroms on November 9–10, 1938, with over 6,500 random arrests in Vienna alone.

In these years, Vienna was home to Europe’s second-largest Jewish population, after Paris, numbering over 200,000, but March 12, 1938, spelled a sudden end to this flourishing community and the city’s cultural golden age. Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Josef Frank, and Franz Singer had recognized the impending danger and left the city already in the mid-1930s.

Between March 1938 and May 1939, some 130,000 Jews fled Vienna to escape the Nazis. Innumerable people did not flee in time: over 65,000 Viennese Jews were deported and murdered; very few survived the Shoah, hidden by friends or relatives in the city.206

Vienna lost its best and most creative minds in 1938. It was a fissure in time that ripped through all the arts and sciences, and one that can still be felt today. Max Reinhardt, Joseph Roth, Friedrich Torberg, Ernst Gombrich, Karl Popper, and Stefan Zweig—to mention only a very few of the names that even at that time were known all over the world—were able to emigrate in time. After March 12, 1938, “escape” was a more apt word. With

94

203 Stefan Zweig in his 1940 essay “Das große Schweigen,” in Stephan Resch (ed.)/Stefan Zweig, “Worte haben keine Macht mehr”: Essays zu Politik und Zeitgeschehen 1916–1941 (Vienna: Sonderzahl Verlag, 2019), 182.

204 Stefan Zweig in a letter to Arnold Zweig in spring 1938, in Stefan Litt (ed.)/Stefan Zweig, Briefe zum Judentum (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2020), 258.

205 Manfred Flügge, Stadt ohne Seele. Wien 1938 (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 2018), 10ff.

206 Ibid.

207 Oswald

Oberhuber, Gabriele Koller, and Gloria Withalm, Zentralsparkasse und Kommerzialbank Wien (eds.), in cooperation with the Academy of Applied Arts Vienna, Die Vertreibung des Geistigen aus Österreich. Zur Kulturpolitik des Nationalsozialismus (Vienna: Academy of Applied Arts Vienna, 1985), 197.

208 Ibid.,

624; Stadler (2004), 623.

Bois and Bernadette Reinhold (eds.), Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. Architektur. Politik.

Geschlecht. Neue Perspektiven auf Leben und Werk (Vienna: Edition Angewandte, book series of the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Birkhäuser: 2019), 42.

210 Boeckl (1995), 349.

211 Röder and Strauss (1999), 215.

212 Boeckl (1995), 327ff.

213 Ott-Wodni (2015), 359.

214 http://www.architekten lexikon.at/de/1437.htm (accessed August 1, 2021).

215 https://www.architektenlexikon. at/de/468.htm (accessed July 1, 2021).

209 Marcel

the expulsion of countless artists, writers, journalists, university professors, politicians, teachers, doctors, lawyers, philosophers, actors, musicians, theater owners, operators of coffeehouses, restaurants, and shops, industrialists and entrepreneurs, artisans and craftspeople, students, and families with their children, the city of Vienna lost its soul in 1938.

Many great names from the field of architecture and furniture design— such as Josef Frank, Franz Singer, Friedl Dicker, Bruno Pollak, Ernst Freud, and Ella Briggs—left the city as early as the mid-1930s because of the unbearable antisemitism and political situation in Germany and Austria. The majority of the architects and furniture designers who at the beginning of the 1930s represented the modern and progressive Vienna, the leading figures of Wiener Wohnkultur, were forced to flee Vienna after the “Anschluss.”207 By 1938, Vienna had in the course of only a few years lost nearly its entire intellectual, modern, and visionary architects and furniture designers.208

Oskar Strnad died in 1935 in Bad Aussee and was spared the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis. Ella Briggs had moved from Vienna to Berlin at the end of the 1920s. Life became unbearable for her after the Nazis seized power; she returned to Vienna in 1935 and in 1936 emigrated to London.209 Jacques Groag and his wife, Jacqueline Groag, fled from Vienna to Prague in 1938 and the following year on to London. Many of the creative minds behind the visionary joint studio Singer & Dicker left the Austrian capital in the mid-1930s. Franz Singer, Hans Biel, and Bruno Pollak moved to London in 1934 and after 1938 never returned to Vienna. Anna Szabo fled from Vienna to Budapest and survived the war there in hiding. Karola Bloch moved from Vienna to Prague in the mid-1930s, where she designed furniture and interior décor together with Friedl Dicker. In 1937, the entire Bloch family emigrated to the US.210 Dicker also left Vienna for Prague in 1934, but the highly talented designer and artist did not survive the Shoah: she was murdered at the Auschwitz concentration camp on October 9, 1944.211

After Josef Frank’s emigration to Stockholm, Oskar Wlach continued to run their joint business Haus & Garten in Vienna; it was “Aryanized” in 1938. The Frank and Wlach families survived the Holocaust in New York City, as did Walter Sobotka and Ernst Lichtblau. On February 21, 1938, only a few weeks before the “Anschluss,” Liane Zimbler became the first woman to pass the civil engineering exam in Vienna. Her studios in Vienna and Prague were both closed down in 1938; in April 1938 she fled with her family to the US by way of London. Felix Augenfeld and Ernst Schwadron were also able to leave in time, emigrating from Vienna in 1938, first to Paris and London and then to the US.212

Otto Breuer’s entire estate and business were confiscated by the Nazis after the “Anschluss.” The architect attempted to take his own life on November 9, the night of the November pogroms in Vienna, but was unsuccessful. Only a few days later, he hanged himself at the Sanatorium Purkersdorf. He was forty-one years old.213

Viktor Lurje fled from Vienna to Shanghai in fall 1938 and in the early 1940s moved to India, where he was active as an interior architect and furniture designer. He died in Jaipur in 1944.214 Together with his wife, Anna, Ernst Plischke emigrated to New Zealand in 1939. Walter Loos and his wife, Fridl, were able to flee from Vienna via London to New York in March 1938. In 1940 the couple moved to Buenos Aires. The 25-year-old Martin Eisler also fled to that city from Vienna in 1938.215

A fissure in time—1938 and the consequences for Viennese furniture design

95

left

View of the Abstract

Alberto Giacometti’s Femme égorgée on

a Multi-Use Chair by Frederick Kiesler in the Sur-

design by Frederick Kiesler, New

realist Gallery, Art of this Century, New York, 1942;

York, 1942; photographer: K. W.

photographer: K. W. Herrmann, © Austrian Frede-

Herrmann, © Austrian Frederick and

rick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna

Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna

104

Top

Gallery, Art of This Century exhibition;

bottom Frederick Kiesler in front of a picture by Jean Hélion, New York, 1942; © Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna

The banished visionaries—from Vienna to the US

105

106

Top

Unidentified woman in the Painting Library of Art of This Century, New York, 1942; photog-

rapher: K. W. Herrmann, © Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna

c

DRIVEN FROM VIENNA— A FORCED NEW BEGINNING IN EXILE

The “Anschluss” in March 1938 was a painful turning point for countless people from Vienna—it meant expulsion, fleeing their hometown, forced emigration, and thus a complete uprooting. Many fled under extremely trying conditions from Vienna via Paris to London and from there by ship on to New York City. These new immigrants were faced with an uncertain situation in the US: very few had a mastery of the English language, and after months on the run, they often arrived in the country with very little money.

This made friendships and networks among the refugees all the more important; they were critical for survival and absolutely essential for the designers from Vienna living in exile in this new land. Architects who had emigrated earlier and were now established in the US often offered employment to their professional colleagues and friends from Vienna arriving in 1938.

Walter Sobotka, fifty years old at the time, fled with his family from Vienna to New York City in July 1938. That same year, he began working as a furniture designer for Thonet Brothers New York. In addition to this job—in which he primarily designed bentwood furniture—he also worked for the American designer Russel Wright. In 1941 he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to teach interior architecture at the Carnegie Institute of Technology.

Sobotka started there as a teaching assistant for architecture, textiles, and decorative arts and in 1946 was then given a professorship for interior architecture. In addition to his teaching activities, he continued to make a name for himself as a furniture designer, interior architect, and set designer. One of Sobotka’s commissions was furnishing a house for the famous film actress Hedy Lamarr. The Vienna-born designer taught until his retirement in 1958 and continued working as an independent architect and designer in the US until his death in 1972.254

Ernst Lichtblau fled from Vienna via London to New York in August 1939 under extremely difficult circumstances. The then 56-year-old designer initially worked for Macy’s in Manhattan as an artistic consultant, designing presentations and exhibitions for the venerable department store. In 1945, he began teaching textile design at the Cooper Union School of Art, a university for architecture and design in Manhattan. In fall 1947, he became a lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, Rhode Island, and later a professor for interior architecture. Lichtblau was soon promoted to head of the Department of Interior Architecture at the university and in the mid-1950s was named dean of the Faculty of Architecture. In 1950 and 1953 he participated in an exhibition series at the MoMA called Good Design and received several awards for his metal works. In the 1950s, he mounted the exhibition Furniture of Today at his university’s museum, presenting modern furniture and interior design. Lichtblau influenced a large number of young American designers through his tireless teaching activities and numerous exhibitions.255

Felix Augenfeld fled from Vienna to London following the “Anschluss.”

254 http://www.architekten A year later, at the age of forty-six, the furniture designer emigrated to New lexikon.at/de/612.htm York City. Not long after his arrival in the US, he was granted an architecture (accessed August 1, 2021).

255 August Sarnitz, Der verlorene license for the State of New York and became a member of the American Alltag—Ernst Lichtblau, in Boeckl Institute of Architects.256 In 1941, Augenfeld opened an architecture office (1995), 291ff; https://www.moma. on 66th Street in Manhattan but worked primarily as a furniture designer org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/ and interior architect, establishing himself as a designer specializing in difpress_archives/1487/releases/ MOMA_1951_0005.pdf (acficult room situations. In this regard, Vienna and Manhattan had something cessed August 1, 2021). in common: living space was tight and rents were high. Augenfeld was able 256 Hanisch, quoted in Boeckl to draw on the expertise he had gained as an interior architect and furniture (1995), 240. designer in Vienna to furnish small interiors in an optimal manner and to create flexible, multifunctional furniture. He designed furniture for Thonet Brothers New York and interiors for fellow émigrés, many of whom had

The banished visionaries—from Vienna to the US

107

Top

Furniture in the Werk-

bund exhibition at the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry, Vienna, 1950, © MAK Top

Stadthalle chair; de-

sign: Roland Rainer; execution: Wiesner-Hagner, Vienna, c. 1950, Sammlung CW

114

The banished visionaries—from Vienna to the US

10

Furniture design of 1950s Vienna

The years after 1945 in Vienna were dominated by the rebuilding of the city. Immediately following the war, furniture design was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind—buildings and apartments had to be constructed, and furnishings and furniture were largely improvised.

There was a dramatic housing shortage in Vienna, and the city reinstated its public housing program to mitigate the problem. Some 40 percent of Vienna’s buildings and much of the urban infrastructure had been destroyed; cultural institutions and historic landmarks such as the State Opera, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and the Burgtheater also sustained heavy damage in the final days of the war.

In 1952, in a collective effort by the City of Vienna, the Chamber of Labor, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Austrian Trade Union Federation, a furniture project called Soziale Wohnkultur (literally “social living culture”) was established. Low-income residents were to be able to purchase attractive, functional, and practical furniture for small apartments at affordable prices. An entire line of furniture was designed at the time for this purpose, ranging from shelves, beds, settees, and lamps to kitchen furniture. The designs came from, among others, Oskar Payer, Roland Rainer, and Franz Schuster. The Soziale Wohnkultur (SW) association contracted with furniture manufacturers, determined designs and quality standards, and prefinanced the furniture production. All furnishings were marked with the SW logo; the brand stood for inexpensive, high-quality, modern furniture design.278

In the 1950s, the architects who remained in Vienna provided the area of furniture design with crucial impetus. In their designs, they drew on the artistically productive period of the 1920s and ’30s and thus on the visionary ideas and formal principles championed by the leading figures of Wiener Wohnraumkultur, architects who had been expelled or murdered.

Only very few of the surviving architects and designers who had been driven out by the Nazis returned to Vienna after the war. Ernst Lichtblau returned from the US to the city of his birth only in 1961, at the age of seventy-eight, and resumed his work as an architect; he died of a heart attack shortly thereafter.279 Ernst Plischke moved back to Vienna from New Zealand in 1963 and was appointed professor for architecture at Vienna’s 278 Eva B. Ottillinger (ed.), MöAcademy of Fine Arts, but he no longer received any major contracts as an beldesign der 50er Jahre. Wien im internationalen Kontext (Vienna: architect. Oskar Payer also returned to Vienna after the war, in his case Böhlau, 2005), 48ff. from Palestine. With his interior-design shop, he significantly influenced 279 http://www.architektenlexikon. the furniture design of the 1950s. In the post-war period, Payer, who had at/de/357.htm (accessed July 15, 2021). trained as a cabinetmaker in Vienna and attended the State Trade School 280 Marianne Payer, Oskar Payer, (Staatsgewerbeschule), became a proponent of social housing projects and Peter Payer, Payer-Decor. Die and modern furniture design. He also wrote a number of books about home Wiener Einrichtung (Vienna: self-published, 1957); Oskar Payer furnishings, such as Die Wiener Einrichtung and Praktische Wohnungsand Peter Payer, Praktische kunde, and was involved in the development and organization of the SoWohnungskunde (Vienna: self-pubziale Wohnkultur project.280 At the beginning of the 1950s, he and his wife, lished, 1960).

Marianne Payer, opened the interior-design shop Die Wiener Wohnung, which in the early 1970s was renamed Payer-Decor. In 1958, Marianne Payer acquired Haus & Garten from Julius Kalmar, who had run the business

Furniture design of 1950s Vienna

115

left

126

Dresser; design: Josef Frank,

right Chair, wood, bamboo, and leather;

Stockholm, c. 1938; execution: Svenskt

design: Josef Frank, Stockholm, c. 1947;

Tenn, © ST

execution: Svenskt Tenn, © KAUAK

Top l. Estrid Ericson and Josef Frank at the Svenskt Tenn shop at 5 Strandvägen in Stockholm, 1964; photographer: Lennart Nilsson, © ST top R. Drawing for the Naschmarkt fabric by Josef Frank, Vienna, c. 1920, © MAK Bottom R. Primavera fabric; design: Josef Frank, Vienna, c. 1920; execution: Svenskt Tenn, © ST Bottom L. Floor lamp; design: Josef Frank, Vienna, c. 1930; execution: Svenskt Tenn, Sammlung K

Scandinavian furniture and Viennese furniture design in Sweden: Josef Frank

127

He was one of the few Austrians who was able to study at the Bauhaus. His experience as a set designer was very valuable in his staging of the spaces he designed. Franz Singer’s furniture designs were incredibly versatile and produced only in small series. After his emigration, he was able to continue and expand his work as an architect and furniture designer.

198

1896 – 1954 †

Bauhaus student

Franz SINGER Vienna Berlin

Dicker in founding the Werkstätten Bilden-

Franz Singer was born on February 8, 1896,

Architect

into an upper-class Jewish family in Vienna.

der Kunst in Berlin in 1923, where they

Furniture designer

His father, Siegmund Singer, had a textile

collaborated on the design of interior fur-

business and owned a dyeworks in Stockerau;

nishings, handicrafts, and stage sets.166

he was married to Hermine, née Haurowitz.

In 1925, Singer returned to Vienna and joined

Franz Singer had a younger sister, Frieda,

Friedl Dicker’s studio at 2 Wasserburg-

and two elder brothers, Julius and Paul. His

gasse, in the district of Alsergrund. Despite

father died at an early age; Franz was only

the economically difficult times, their joint

fourteen at the time. Franz Singer’s drawing

studio became very successful in the en-

talent became apparent early on, and in

suing years.167 The two designers specialized

1905, he began attending a drawing class at

in designing apartments, commercial pre-

the studio of the painter Emma Schlangen-

mises, and furniture. In their joint projects,

hausen taught by the painter and set designer

Singer was responsible for the architecture

Alfred Roller.164

and Dicker for the atmosphere, color schemes,

Singer served in World War I, then began study-

and fabrics.168 Together, they created fold-

ing philosophy and art history at the Uni-

able, stackable, and multifunctional furniture,

versity of Vienna but dropped out before gra-

lamps, and other home-furnishing objects.

duating. Starting in 1919, he attended

In his designs, Singer experimented with

Johannes Itten’s private art school in Vienna,

plywood and tubular steel. The result was a

where he also met his later partner Friedl

series of stacking chairs and cantilevered

Dicker. When Itten closed his art school in

chairs for children as well as adults with a

Vienna to go to Weimar to teach at the Bau-

special feature typical for Singer: the crossed

haus, Franz Singer and Friedl Dicker fol-

base. These objects were also produced

lowed him there in 1919. Singer stayed at the

in small series beginning in the early 1930s.169

Bauhaus until 1923, attending cabinetmak-

Singer and Dicker were also involved in

ing and set-design classes and working

projects for the common good: they worked

on various theater productions. On March 17,

on social programs for the City of Vienna,

1921, while Singer was still studying at the

furnished kindergartens, and developed

Bauhaus, he married the Vienna-born singer

stacking furniture for very tight spaces.170

Emmy Hein, who was eleven years his se-

After private conflicts with Singer, Friedl Dicker

nior. It was her second marriage. She gave

left the joint studio in 1931, but the two

birth to a son, Michael—known as “Bibi”—

creative artists continued to work together

who died at about the age of ten in Vienna.

on interior design projects. Singer’s wife,

165

At the beginning of the 1920s, Franz Singer

Emmy, lived in England as of the early 1930s

worked with Dicker for various theater pro-

and later emigrated from there to Canada.

ductions in Dresden and Berlin, most no-

Beginning in 1934, Franz Singer lived primar-

tably for Berthold Viertel’s theater Die Truppe.

ily in London but continued to work for

After completing his studies, Singer joined

the studio in Vienna from his home in Great

Furniture Designers—Biographies

199

Britain. In addition to his freelance work as an

01

architect and furniture designer, in 1934,

Franz Singer, Vienna, 1929,

Lamp, brass: design:

Sammlung GS

Singer also began serving as a consultant to the John Lewis and Peter Jones home fur-

02

nishings companies in London. In 1936, his

design: Franz Singer, Vienna,

brother Paul invited him to participate in an

c. 1925, Sammlung GS

architecture project in Palestine.

171

After the “Anschluss” in 1938, Singer was no longer permitted to work in Vienna. He continued to be active in London as an architect and furniture designer, specializing in children’s furniture and toys, and was involved in social housing projects.172 After the war, Franz Singer spent several years in Salzburg but never returned to his native city of Vienna. He died on October 5, 1954, while visiting his long-time friend Margit TéryBuschmann in Berlin.173

01

200

02

Franz Singer

Lamp, brass and glass;

03

Chair, pearwood with black

jute belts and Viennese mesh; design: Franz Singer and Friedl Dicker, Vienna, c. 1927, © Dorotheum, 2019 04

Prototype of a V armchair,

tubular steel, wood, and Viennese mesh; design: Franz Singer, Vienna, 1933, Sammlung GS 05

Stacking chair, beech

with jute belts; design: Franz Singer and Friedl Dicker, Vienna, c. 1930, © KAUAK 06

Stacking chair, red-paint-

ed tubular steel and plywood with crossed base in an X form; design: Franz Singer, Vienna, 1936, Sammlung GS 07

03

04

05

06

08

09

Protype of a side table,

tubular steel and wood; design: Franz Singer, Vienna, 1936, Sammlung GS 08

Hériot cantilevered chair,

tubular steel with a crossed base, wood, and Viennese mesh; design: Franz Singer, Vienna, 1932, Sammlung GS 09

Stacking plywood chair

with crossed base in an X form; design: Franz Singer, Vienna, 1936, Sammlung GS

07

Furniture Designers—Biographies

201

Walter Gropius and Johannes Itten called her one of the most gifted of the Bauhaus students. Her drawing talent and creativity became apparent even when she was a child. She enjoyed great success as an interior architect and furniture designer and was able to draw on her manifold talents. She herself grew up without a mother and never had children of her own, but Friedl Dicker devoted her entire life to art education and giving drawing lessons to young talents. After World War II, the children’s drawings by her students from the Theresienstadt concentration camp became known all over the world.

202

1898 – 1944 †

Bauhaus student

Friedl DICKER Vienna Auschwitz

Friedericke “Friedl” Dicker was born in Vienna

lithography. In 1921, her favorite painter, Paul

Interior architect

on July 30, 1898, to a Jewish family. Her

Klee, joined the teaching staff at the Bau-

Designer

father, Simon, came from an area that is now

haus. She saw him every day in that period,

Painter

part of the Ukraine and worked at a paper

watching him paint and attending his lec-

Art educator

shop; her mother, Karolina, née Fanta, was

tures on the essence of art and childlike fan-

from Vienna. Dicker did not have an easy

tasy. Her acquaintance with Klee and his

childhood; her mother died when Friedl was

art would influence Dicker’s entire life. At this

only four years old. She had no siblings,

time, she worked together with her boy-

and she was raised lovingly by her single

friend Franz Singer in the theater department

father. She discovered her creative and

of the Bauhaus as well.178

artistic talent at an early age. The young girl

Walter Gropius wrote enthusiastically about the

spent her free time in her father’s paper

young artist: “Miss Dicker was a student

shop, and she found there everything she

at the State Bauhaus in Weimar from June

needed to give her imagination and creativi-

1919 until September 1923. During this

ty free rein: clay, pencils, paint, and paper.

time, she consistently distinguished herself

She went to a vocational girl’s school and

through her rare and exceptional artistic

from 1905 to 1907 attended a private draw-

talent and drew the particular attention of

ing class for children in Vienna taught by

the entire teaching staff to her works. Owing

Alfred Roller.174 From 1912 to 1914, she at-

to the diversity of her talent and her great

tended Vienna’s Higher Institution for Graph-

energy, her achievements and works were

ic Education and Research, which had

among the very best of the entire institute,

begun accepting women in 1908. She then

and she could be utilized as an instructor

studied at the School of Arts and Crafts from

while she was still a student. As the founder

1915 to 1916 and attended Rosalia Rothansl’s

and former director of the State Bauhaus

textile class.175 To earn extra money, the

in Weimar, I follow the artistic activities of

young student worked for theaters, sewing

Miss Dicker with great interest.”179

costumes and assembling props.

After they completed their studies, Dicker and

176

From 1916 to 1919, Dicker attended Johannes

Franz Singer founded the Werkstätten Bil-

Itten’s private art school in Vienna, where

dender Kunst in Berlin, specializing in toys,

she also met Anny Wottitz as well as her

jewelry, bookbinding, textiles, graphics,

later business partner and lover Franz Singer.

and above all in designing stage sets for the

When Itten closed the school in 1919 and

theater. In 1925, Dicker returned to Vienna

began teaching at the Bauhaus in Weimar, a

and opened a studio, where she designed

number of his students from Vienna followed

fabrics and did bookbinding work. Singer

him there, including Anny Wottitz, Franz Sing-

soon followed, and in 1926 they began work-

er, and the then 21-year-old Friedl Dicker.

ing together at a joint studio on Wasser-

177

At the Bauhaus, Dicker did bookbinding work, produced toys, and learned the technique of

Furniture Designers—Biographies

burggasse, in the district of Alsergrund. In their joint projects, Dicker was primarily

203

responsible for the interior design, furniture

the couple to emigrate, and Franz Singer,

design, color schemes, and fabrics, and

who had already moved to London, wanted

Singer for the architecture. Dicker also ma-

them to join him there. Friedl Brandeis ob-

nually produced furniture upholstery, rugs,

tained a visa for Palestine, but because her

and bedspreads in the studio. They jointly de-

husband did not have one, she remained

signed a great deal of interior furnishings,

with him. On December 16, 1942, she and

and above all multifunctional furniture. The

her husband were deported to the There-

visionary designs from the Singer & Dicker

sienstadt concentration camp. Pavel Brandeis

studio, which clearly displayed the Bauhaus

worked there as a carpenter, while Friedl

influence, soon became the quintessence

became a caretaker at one of the girls’

of modern furniture design in Vienna and were

homes at the camp. She organized secret

shown at many exhibitions and in interna-

drawing classes for hundreds of impris-

tional design magazines such as Domus.180

oned children there, also working with them

The collaboration and relationship between the

as a costume designer for a stage play,

two furniture designers were complicated,

Käferlein (The Little Beetle). Friedl Brandeis

however, and marked by personal conflicts

hoped that the art classes would help the

as well as a dramatic love affair. In 1921, Franz

children better cope with their emotions and

Singer had married the singer Emmy Heim,

their environment. Even at Theresienstadt,

with whom he had a son who died at about

she utilized very simple means to try to make

the age of ten. After Dicker separated from

the rooms of “her” children a bit warmer

Singer, she opened her own studio in Vienna

and more comfortable, coloring their bed-

in 1931. It was at this time that she also be-

sheets with them and decorating the walls.184

gan devoting herself to art education, teach- In September 1944, Pavel Brandeis was deing drawing to kindergarten teachers and

ported to Auschwitz. Friedl insisted on

children.181

staying with him and volunteered for the next

Friedl Dicker became a member of the Com-

transport in order to follow her husband.

munist Party in Vienna in 1931. After a search

Before leaving Theresienstadt, she gave

of her studio in 1934 that revealed falsified

Raja Englanderova, one of her students, two

passports, Dicker was arrested.

suitcases filled with some 4,500 drawings

182

Franz

Singer intervened on her behalf, and she was

by the children. On October 8, the train

released. She immediately fled to Prague,

arrived in Auschwitz. One day later, on Oc-

where her aunt Adela Brandeis lived with

tober 9, 1944, Friedl Brandeis was mur-

her three sons. Dicker fell in love with her

dered; she was forty-six years old.185 Her

youngest cousin, Pavel Brandeis, who was

husband, Pavel Brandeis, survived the

nearly seven years her junior, and they

Shoah. Her father died on August 13, 1942

married in 1936. Friedl, who thereafter went

in Theresienstadt.186

by the name Brandeis, continued working

Raja Englanderova hid the suitcases with the

as an architect and furniture designer in

children’s drawings until Theresienstadt

Prague, signing her works with “FB.” She de-

was liberated and then turned them over to

signed interior furnishings, renovated apart-

Willy Groag, a nephew of Jacques Groag

ments in collaboration with Karola Bloch

who had been imprisoned there as well.187

and Greta Bauer-Fröhlich, a former Bauhaus

After the end of the war, these drawings by

student, and designed textiles with Frieda

the children of Theresienstadt, done under

Stork, Franz Singer’s sister. In addition, she

the guidance of Friedl Brandeis, were shown

taught drawing classes in which she also

at exhibitions all over the world. They are

worked with art therapy. Friedl Brandeis con-

now preserved at Prague’s Jewish Museum

tinued to work on joint projects with Franz

and are indelible documents of lives lived

Singer in Vienna as well.183

in fear.188

In summer 1938, she and her husband moved to Hronov, a small Czech city near the Polish border. Friends attempted to persuade

204

Friedl Dicker

02

Chair, maple and beech, partially red-painted with belt

webbing; design: Friedl Dicker and Franz Singer; execution: Möbelfabrik Prof. A. Hartmann & Co, Vienna, c. 1927, © MAK/ Nathan Murrell 03

Drawing of an armchair with colorful, woven belt webbing

by Friedl Dicker and Franz Singer, Sammlung GS

02

01

01

Design for the Anna Selbdritt sculp-

ture by Friedl Dicker, Sammlung GS

03

Furniture Designers—Biographies

205

In the 1950s, he became one of the most prominent furniture designers of Brazilian Modernism. Martin Eisler arrived in Buenos Aires at the age of twenty-five with no money but a degree in architecture, and began working immediately as a furniture designer. The son of the famous Viennese art historian Max Eisler became one of the leading interior architects in Argentina and Brazil, designing the furnishings for Oscar Niemeyer’s buildings. Today, his furniture fetches record prices at auctions.

220

1913 – 1977 †

Architect

Martin EISLER Vienna Brasilia

Martin Eisler was born on October 27, 1913,

and opened another branch in Buenos Aires,

Furniture designer

into a Jewish family in Vienna. His father,

which is still operating today under the name

Entrepreneur

Max Eisler, a prominent professor of art

Interieur Forma.230

history at the University of Vienna, founding

Eisler was excited by the Brazilian tropical

member of the Österreichischer Werk-

woods and by the modern painting and coat-

bund, journalist, and staunch Zionist, was

ing techniques on wood, glass, and bronze,

married to Elsa, née Tieber.226 Max Eisler

which he often used in his designs. At the

was close friends with Oskar Strnad and

end of the 1950s, he came to the attention of

Josef Frank and through his many essays

Knoll International. Knoll sold Eisler’s furni-

about modern living became the unofficial

ture designs in the US, helping to make him

spokesman for the Neue Wiener Wohn-

an internationally known designer. At the

kultur (literally: “new Viennese living culture”).

same time, the building boom in Brasilia was

Eisler, who because of his family environ-

reaching its climax, and Eisler, in collab-

ment came into contact with art and design

oration with the Brazilian architect Oscar Nie-

theory at an early age, began studying

meyer, furnished numerous buildings with

architecture in 1931 with Oskar Strnad at

furniture of his own design. Among Eisler’s

Vienna’s School of Arts and Crafts, from

best known designs are the Reversível and

which he graduated in 1934.

Costela chairs, which were awarded the

227

His father died in Vienna in December 1937, and shortly thereafter, in March 1938, the young architect fled to Argentina to escape

Compasso d’Oro, a design prize established

by Gio Ponti.231 In exile, Eisler married the Stuttgart-born Rosl

the Nazis. After months on the run, Eisler

Wolf, whose entire family had fled Germany

arrived in Buenos Aires with no money and

to Buenos Aires to escape the Nazis. The

began working immediately as a furniture

couple had two children, Ruth and Alberto.

designer.228 As early as 1940, he presented

Martin’s mother, Elsa Eisler, was murdered

his designs at an exhibition at the Mueller

on September 23, 1942, at the age of fifty,

Gallery. Together with Arnold Hakel, Eisler

at the Treblinka killing center. The couple

founded Interieur in 1945, a company that

never returned to Vienna. Martin Eisler died

sold furniture by both designers. On a trip to

on April 21, 1977, at the age of sixty-three

Brazil in the early 1950s, Eisler met the

in Brasilia.232

Italian-born furniture designer Carlo Hauner, Today, his furniture is again manufactured by and in 1955, the two launched the furni-

the Italian firm Tacchini.233

ture-design company Forma in Brasilia. 229 Carlo Hauner returned to his native Italy at the end of the 1950s and sold his share of the business to Eisler. Eisler and his brother-in-law Ernesto Wolf continued to run Forma in Brasilia with great success

Furniture Designers—Biographies

221

01

Reversível Chair; design:

Martin Eisler, Brazil, c. 1950; execution: Tacchini, © Tacchini/ Andrea Ferrari 02

Shell Lounge Chair;

design: Martin Eisler, Brazil, c. 1955, © H. Gallery 03

Sideboard; design:

Martin Eisler and Carlo Hauner for Forma, Brazil, c. 1950, © Dorotheum Vienna, 2018 04

Costela Chair; design:

Martin Eisler, Brazil, c. 1953, © H. Gallery 05

Costela Chair; design:

Martin Eisler, Brazil, c. 1953;

01

execution: Tacchini, © Tacchini/ Andrea Ferrari 06

Coffee Table; design:

Martin Eisler, Brazil, c. 1950, © H. Gallery

01

01

222

02

03

04

05

06

Furniture Designers—Biographies

223

260

2

The house of a hundred steps— Villa Beer

At the beginning of the 1930s, the two architects Josef Frank and Oskar Wlach realized their philosophy of an open floorplan and a harmonious unification of house and garden in this nearly 650-square-meter villa in Hietzing. Various ceiling heights, oversized windows, countless steps, and a breathtaking, open living room make walking from one place to another through the house a one-ofa-kind experience. The center of the villa is modeled after a ship’s bow, complete with a railing. On the second level stood the grand piano of the mistress of the house, Margarethe Beer; she was a keen pianist and her playing was intended to be heard throughout the house. Josef Frank and Oskar Wlach planned the entire house, the interior architecture, and the garden, furnishing the house with furniture and fabrics from Haus & Garten. The complete interior design, down to the individual pieces of furniture, has been preserved in its original form: all staircases, bathrooms, kitchen cabiLeft

Thanks to the over-

sized, original windows, the occupants of the Villa Beer seem almost to live in the garden. The window seat and the wingback chair from Haus & Garten are from 1931.

nets, wall units, and door handles are the creations of Josef Frank and Oskar Wlach. The Villa Beer stood empty for a long period but in 2021 found a new owner in Lothar Trierenberg, who now wants to turn the house into a unique museum.

Glimpses into Apartments, Houses, and Cafés

261

Top

The open living room

with staircase in the Villa Beer.

Bottom The tea salon on the second level of the Villa Beer with a round window; right next to it stood the grand piano of the former mistress of the house.

Right The open living room, designed like a ship’s bow, complete with a railing, connects all living spaces and the second level.

262

Glimpses into Apartments, Houses, and Cafés

263