“It cannot be repeated enough that only direct, powerful, unadorned recognition of one’s own time can bring forth true art.“
the formation of a European avant-garde in the 1920s. Unlike Loos, who was convinced that “architects. are never the ones who should invent new forms”, it was a basic necessity for Weinwurm to have “the courage. To use an original. brave and simultaneously personal language”.2
Friedrich Weinwurm, 1924
1 Lukeš, Zdeněk: Most? Ne, kolonáda a funkcionalistický skvost. Lidové noviny, 12 September 2011. http://www.lidovky. cz/most-ne-kolonada-a - funkcionalisticky-skvost-fmw - /ln-bydleni. asp?c=A110911_102004_ln-bydleni_ter 2 Compare Loos, Adolf: “Von der Sparsamkeit”, 1924. and Weinwurm, Friedrich: “Zeitgemässe Baukunst”. Moderne Welt 1924, no. 10, p. 19.
The “Slovak Adolf Loos” is how Friedrich Weinwurm has been characterized by the Czech architectural historian Zdeněk Lukeš, who also described his oeuvre as “perhaps not too imposing, but for all that quite impressive“.1 Indeed, a definite similarity between the works of these two architects was noted even in the previous chapter, in our discussion of Weinwurm’s first completed work in Budapest. Above all, the method through which Loos interpreted the traditional articulation of a building’s volume as a plinth, shaft and capitol was also employed in the designs of Friedrich Weinwurm. Another possible link to a knowledge of Loos’s work could be the use of classicist motifs: both Loos and Weinwurm in their early designs favoured the motif of a simple portico with Doric columns. However, similar motifs were also frequent in the work of Weinwurm’s Dresden professor Heinrich Tessenow: not as an additional imitation of Adolf Loos, but as the logical outcome of the architectural philosophies of the era that found, in Hellenic or the most simple Classicist works, inspiration for creating means of expression that matched the spirit of the new age. Comparable sources also likely shaped the method of using and handling expensive natural materials that marked both Loos and Weinwurm: the working of them into smooth surfaces joined together to give the impression of a single surface. Classicist palaces or even Parisian cafes, in turn, supplied a prefiguration of another motif – checkerboard paving – also to the liking of both architects. Moreover, in comparing the conception of the most basic architectural category, space, the opinions of these two architects radically diverged. While, in the case of Loos, we could speak of an organic spatial concept where the individual rooms are layered and connected into complex, not immediately evident, surprising relationships, Weinwurm worked with space far more pragmatically, even though it remained (in spite of his own rhetoric) far from Functionalist schematism. Loos’s buildings are full of “mezzanine” levels enriching the basic structure of floors, and bringing into existence a wide range of differently composed stairs. Weinwurm also had the staircase as a preferred motif, yet the individual floors are for him unequivocally subordinated to the rules of the structure, such that the stairs serve exclusively to overcome the height differences between them. Perhaps one definite likeness between the two architects could be found in their admiration for Western Europe, their radical rejection of ornament, or their reserved stance towards architectural drafting. The schematic blueprints documenting the designs of Friedrich Weinwurm, as well as even the use of hired draftsmen for preparing perspective elevations, clearly shows his own distant relation to the aesthetic side of the architectonic design. Yet, though we could definitely find a great many additional parallels, it is useful to keep in mind that while Adolf Loos was, without ques-
Rukopis príspevku o výstave Daria Rappaporta a Fritza Weinwurma, Gizela Leweke Weyde 1924 Osobný fond Dr. Leweke Weyde, škatuľa č. 10, Archív hl. mesta Bratislavy
The manuscript of the contribution by Gisela Leweke Weyde on the exhibition of the work of Dario Rappaport and Fritz Weinwurm, 1924 Personal fund of Dr. Leweke Weyde, box no. 10, Archive of the City of Bratislava
Moreover, amid all the many possible connections and differences in the work of both architects, there is one final aspect of their life-works that emerges as crucial. That is to say: the role that each of them played in the process of opening paths towards a new architectonic culture in the immediate region of central Europe. Similarly to the determining effect that is often ascribed to Adolf Loos in Vienna or Ernst Wiesner in Brno, we can find a similar influence, in Bratislava but no less in Slovakia as a whole, on the part of Friedrich Weinwurm. A C lea r, In ter n a lly C o n dit i o n ed Simpli ci ty
tion, a great pioneer of the new understanding of architecture and the architectural profession itself, Weinwurm, being 15 years younger, could see Loos’s oeuvre through his own experience of current international architectural discussion, which led to
In connection with the work of Friedrich Weinwurm, the convention is to invoke two concepts: objectivity and purism. While the term ‘objectivity’ (German: Sachlichkeit, Slovak: vecnosť) occurred regularly in contemporary texts, and was even used by
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