Viennese Art Nouveau in the middle of Germany

Joseph Maria Olbrich is one of the most important architects of Viennese Art Nouveau: the Secession building he built in Vienna is an architectural icon. But traces of the architect can also be found in the middle of Germany – namely in Darmstadt. The architectural firm schneider + schumacher has now extensively renovated the exhibition building designed by Olbrich on Darmstadt’s Mathildenhöhe.

A visit to the Naschmarkt is a must when in Vienna. The walk begins at the Kettenbrückengasse subway station and leads straight through two narrow passages, past Otto Wagner’s Majolikahaus, between traders selling their wares, until, after about one and a half kilometers, you get to see fresh air to breathe and sunlight again at the other end. Here, between Getreidemarkt and Karlsplatz, on the left-hand side of Wienzeile, the famous golden canopy of the Secession sparkles. Apart from Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo’s exhibition “Achievement” in the summer of 2024 – in which the artist covered every single golden leaf with black tights – the tree canopy glistens conspicuously in the sun, regardless of the season. One could then take the lettering “VER SACRUM”, which is emblazoned on the left wall of the otherwise plain white cube, literally: “Holy Spring”. However, the artist fathers of the Vienna Secession around Gustav Klimt were referring to the new spring that their art was to bring to society. When the building was completed in 1898, the artists also published an art and literary magazine of the same name, which was to carry the philosophy of Art Nouveau into every household until it was discontinued in 1903. White and gold are the colors that run around the outside of the strictly symmetrical, block-like building. On a tour around the building, the leaf motif crops up again and again, here and there a lizard climbs, or a coiled snake elegantly stretches its length – you can even spot owls – animals and nature in harmony with the architecture. Yes, this is a magnificent example of Viennese Art Nouveau! Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867-1908) is responsible for this.

Viennese Art Nouveau, that of Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos and Joseph Maria Olbrich, is characterized in particular by a subtle objectivity. Here the ornamentation is less florid and clear geometric symmetry prevails. Hoffmann’s Wiener Werkstätte and the architecture of Wagner and Loos (ornament and crime) clearly set themselves apart from the floral ornamentation of German Art Nouveau. One might think that Viennese Art Nouveau only exists here. But there is a small colony in the middle of Germany that can almost be described as a Viennese island. At the age of just 29, Olbrich began planning the exhibition house of the Vienna Secession. The aim was to build a separate exhibition venue for artists (including Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann, Josef Engelhart, Adolf Hölzel and Anton Nowak) who wanted to break away from the conservatism that prevailed in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. Allegedly, Josef Engelhart had an argument with the mayor of the time, Dr. Karl Lueger (Lueger was a staunch anti-Semite and a pioneer of Adolf Hitler’s ideas). After a long struggle – so the legend goes – the mayor gave the artists a free space near the Vienna Kunsthaus. Perhaps alluding to the granting of the small free space on Wienzeile, Joseph Maria Olbrich said the following to his assembled artist colleagues at the opening of the first exhibition in spring 1898: “We must build a city, a whole city! Everything else is nothing! The government should give us […] a field, and then we want to create a world there. It means nothing if someone just builds a house. How can it be beautiful if there’s an ugly one next to it? What use are three, five, ten beautiful houses if the layout of the street is not beautiful? What use is the most beautiful street with the most beautiful houses if the chairs in it are not beautiful, or the parts are not beautiful? No – a field; and that’s where we want to show what we can do; in the whole arrangement and down to the last detail, everything dominated by the same spirit, the streets and the gardens and the palaces and the huts and the tables and the chairs and the candlesticks and the spoons expression of the same feeling, but in the middle, like a temple in a sacred grove, a house of work, at the same time the studio of the artists and the workshop of the craftsmen, where now the artist would always have the calming and ordering craft, the craftsman always the liberating and purifying art next to him, until the two would grow together as it were into one person!” At least this is how Hermann Bahr, writer and Secession brother of Olbrich, retrospectively reproduced his speech in 1901. One could say that this was clairvoyant, as Olbrich could not have known at the time that none other than Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse (1869-1837) had exactly this in mind. He wanted to give the architect and designer his “field”. The field was the Mathildenhöhen in Darmstadt. An artists’ colony was to be established here, with a focus on all the arts from architecture, literature and crafts to design. “Let my state of Hesse flourish and let art flourish in it!” said the Grand Duke, full of hope for an economic upturn in his state, to which the Mathildenhöhen were to contribute. In 1899, he appointed Olbrich as the only Austrian to come to Germany, with whom a friendship quickly developed. He immediately took the reins and began to plan his field. After all, he had a mammoth task on his hands and was (alongside Peter Behrens, who discovered architecture for himself with the Mathildenhöhen) the only trained architect among the artists who together were to bring new life to the small hill in the middle of Darmstadt. Among Ernst Ludwig’s patrons at the time were the Art Nouveau artists Paul Bürck, Rudolf Bosselt, Hans Christiansen, Patriz Huber, Peter Behrens and Ludwig Habich. They all, and the Grand Duke too, wanted to have studios, homes, exhibition rooms, a beautiful park and fountains around them, and Olbrich was to deliver. And he did. Within a few years, Olbrich would transform the field on the hill, where previously only a water reservoir had been built, and erect 23 residential buildings and five large buildings. All of them – very much in the Art Nouveau style – artfully thought out inside and out and designed from the entrance gate to the coffee pot.

The Grand Duke of Hesse, who was not even thirty years old, had set a tight schedule: the first exhibition at the artists’ colony was to take place on May 15, 1901. In addition to temporary buildings (such as a main portal and a wooden restaurant), eight residential buildings for the artists and the studio building, later christened the “Ernst Ludwig House”, were designed, built and furnished in record time. In addition to Olbrich, who designed seven of the residential buildings and their interiors, Peter Behrens also built and designed his own house and found a new creative direction with this task, which was to steer his career in new directions. The houses Behrens, Deiters, Olbrich, Christiansen, Habich and Keller as well as the Large Glückerthaus and the Small Glückerthaus (formerly the Rudolf Bosselt House) stood in close symmetry with the main building of the first development plan of the Mathildenhöhe, the Ernst Ludwig House, which sits in the middle of the buildings. All but the Christiansen House survived the destruction of the Second World War in whole or in part and can still be visited today. After the residential buildings were built at the expense of the artists themselves, they served as model houses for the 1901 exhibition. In order to assert the buildings as a complete work of art, Olbrich also furnished some or all of them. He designed pieces of furniture, tea sets, wallpaper and lamps. Later, he even designed a grand piano. This was an impressive demonstration of how architecture, interior design, craftsmanship and painting intertwine to create a living and habitable Gesamtkunstwerk. Long before Warhol, Art Nouveau meant bringing art into every home and making it part of everyday life. All the houses are kept in white, have typical Art Nouveau curves and symbols of nature and are richly decorated with golden inscriptions and ornaments. Some of the interiors have been preserved to this day. However, the only large building for the first exhibition is particularly grandiose: the “Ernst Ludwig House”. The nine-axis, strictly symmetrical front is dominated in the middle by two monumental figures flanking the arched entrance. The figures “Strength and Beauty”, strongly staged by Ludwig Habich, stand out in color from the white, rather plain building in their stone gray. Everything seems to be focused on the center, where a saying by Hermann Bahr runs across an omega arch above the golden entrance door: “SEINE WELT ZEIGE DER KÜNSTLER – DIE NIEMALS WAR NO JEMALS SEIN WIRD”. At first glance, the juxtaposition of hard edges and golden curves is reminiscent of the Secession in Vienna, in addition to the quote from fellow countryman and close friend Bahr – even if there are only two potted trees flanking the entrance. Perhaps a final nod to his homeland before the architect turns his attention to new, larger tasks. The building, which now serves as an exhibition space, was to become a studio for the artists of the colony. Today it houses a permanent exhibition of works by former colony artists. Despite enormous financial losses and although almost all the artists left the colony for financial reasons, three years later a new exhibition with new artists and new houses sprang from Olbrich’s pen. He may not have been able to build an entire city, but you could call it a settlement. The third exhibition, which was also the Hessian State Exhibition, was later to be joined by new large-scale buildings that continue to shape the cityscape and, above all, the Darmstadt skyline to this day.

New buildings were to adorn the small hill in Darmstadt in time for the Hessian State Exhibition in 1908. Several villas, workers’ houses and a small housing estate were added. The newly married Grand Duke wanted to give his wife Eleonore a “wedding tower”, which Olbrich was to erect as the city’s crowning glory. The intended site was on a water reservoir built in 1880, which complicated the statics and planning of the construction. In the end, Olbrich opted for a compromise: the tower was placed next to the reservoir and the new exhibition building for the colony on top, which was to be perceived as a balancing element to the tower (its location above the reservoir was to make subsequent renovations of the building more difficult). The building, also known as the “Five-Finger Tower”, extends almost fifty meters into the air and its brick façade clearly sets it apart from its adjacent building. The nickname-giving five-fingered end and its clock, which was designed as a golden mosaic by Albin Müller, are particularly striking. After passing through the entrance gate with its stone relief by Heinrich Jobst, the tower is accessible on several levels and the richly decorated interior is open to the public: the entrance area, which now serves as a store, was decorated with artistic mosaics by Olbrich. The gilded barrel vault lights up as a starry sky, and visitors stand opposite Olbrich’s “Kiss”. A couple kissing harmoniously in absolute symmetry, soaring into the 7th heaven, inspired by happiness. Opposite this, we find another of Olbrich’s mosaics, the “Fortuna” with the names of the married couple Eleonore and Ernst Ludwig. You can now take the elevator or walk up the stairs to the Prince’s Room, whose ceiling painting stands out against the wood panelling in a magnificent blue and gold. Then into the wedding room, where civil weddings can be held today, up to the viewing platform. Here, visitors can enjoy a 360° view of the city from the highest point in Darmstadt.

If you haven’t had your fill here yet, head to the exhibition building next door, which has just reopened in September 2024 after a twelve-year renovation phase. The team of architects led by project manager Astrid Wuttke from schneider + schumacher had the task of renovating the Art Nouveau purpose-built building to make it “energy efficient”. At first, that sounds easier than it actually is. Because in order for the exhibition building, which mainly houses exhibitions with loans, to be able to accept international loans, it had to be equipped with state-of-the-art systems technology to ensure a constant indoor climate. Not only does a hundred-year-old exhibition building no longer meet modern standards in terms of air conditioning and insulation, the layout of the halls and meeting rooms was also fundamentally rethought and redesigned. For the sophisticated thermal technology, rooms were even relocated to the neighboring Ernst Ludwig House and fed back into the exhibition rooms via local heating connections. Thanks to seven geothermal probes between the exhibition building, the plane tree grove and the Russian Chapel as well as the former water reservoir under the building, which now also serves as an energy storage facility, sustainable cooling can also be guaranteed in the future when summer temperatures rise. By using aerogel plaster and modern glass, the rooms have minimal heat loss – without changing the proportions of the building. In addition to this renovation work, there were also the many concerns of the various parties involved. The strict requirements of the sponsoring German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU) had to be adhered to, and constant coordination with the UNESCO World Heritage application, which was ongoing during the construction phase, constantly changed the building project and delayed completion. Existing structures, such as the crawl spaces for the exhaust air from 1908, were repurposed to install modern exhaust air systems behind the scenes. In 2016, a contract was awarded to build a café in the building, where technical facilities had previously been planned. Such constant changes, as well as a pandemic and the war in Ukraine during construction, made it extremely difficult to make rapid progress. An extra effort that was definitely worth it – because in 2021, Darmstadt’s Mathildenhöhe was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the building was able to shine in all its glory on the outside, almost unchanged, even improved. Inside, a modern, flexible white cube is impressive. Nothing now stands in the way of international loans. Ernst Ludwig’s quote in the crown of Olbrich’s entrance pavilion fits perfectly with the reopening of the halls: “Have reverence for the old and the courage to dare the new fresh.” The Viennese writer Karl Kraus once called Joseph Maria Olbrich an “Art Nouveau man in whom even the convolutions of the brain run in the ornament”. That’s how deeply involved he was in his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk. This ornamentation can be experienced everywhere on the Mathildenhöhen. Unfortunately, his early death prevented the universal artist from completing his “entire city”. Shortly after completing the Wedding Tower, Joseph Maria Olbrich died. But when you look at the now freshly shining exhibition building and tower in the plane tree grove and think of the long wish back in 1898 in Vienna, then here in Darmstadt a lot has come true for the young Joseph Maria. The man who brought a great bit of Viennese Art Nouveau to Darmstadt.

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