Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to present the controversial episode of Red Vienna , an outstanding example of European Social Democrat housing policies during the interwar period. In contrast to the internationally recognized Siedlungen built during the Weimar Republic , the Viennese Höfe has frequently been the subject of criticism and debate. The text highlights the importance of understanding the realization of this ambitious plan as a continuation of a deeply rooted Viennese tradition with regards to rented housing, in terms of urban forms, architectural typologies as well as management of rental properties. This urban model, away from political considerations and architectural language, had important consequences for the city of Vienna up until today, which make it worthy of a place among the urban visions of this book.
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Notes
- 1.
In Chap. 9 Blau’s monography (‘Architecture and proletariat’, 342, 343, 344) other outstanding studies can be found, from the first opinions of the interwar period to historians, critics or architects in more recent times. Among them: Haiko and Reissberger (1974), Ungers (1978), Krischanitz and Kapfinger (1980), Pirhofer and Sieder (1982) or Achleitner (1980). See Blau (1999).
- 2.
The choice of Vienna as the Habsburgs’ Residenz and their Court in 1533 required accommodation, which led to introducing a legislative instrument, namely the Hofquartierpflicht (obligation to rent housing to the Court). For the first time, residential buildings became a direct source of revenue, and therefore an item of barter. It was at that moment that the concept of rented housing appeared in Vienna (Fabbri in Aymonino et al. 1975, 1: 215).
- 3.
Between 1934 and 1938, Austrian fascism persecuted social democracy, bringing an abrupt end to its housing policy programme. For further information about other projects of the second half of the twentieth century following similar lines to those of Red Vienna, see Steiner and Peichl (1991).
- 4.
In fact, in the early 1920s Adolf Loos, the director of the Wiener Siedlungsamt (Viennese Office for Construction of Settlements) built the Heuberg settlement and developed several housing typologies in projects following this model. Josef Frank designed many projects for self-managed, cooperative settlements and flats for the City Council, and at the end of the decade was appointed the Wiener Werkbundsiedlung planning director (1930–32), perhaps the most significant demonstration of modern architecture in Austria, the result of contacts with the Bauhaus movement and the Frankfurt and Stuttgart settlement construction programme.
- 5.
The Gürtel (belt) is the second of the ring roads surrounding the historical centre of Vienna. The first is the Ring and the third is the Zweierlinie (jurisdictional enclosure also known as Lastenstraβe). It dates back to 1861 when Emperor Franz Joseph authorized construction of a street 76 m wide. The first buildings started to appear in 1863.
- 6.
In the last third of the nineteenth century, Vienna was the centre of power of the so-called Donaumonarchie (Danube Monarchy). Architecture benefited from economic growth stemming from the Industrial Revolution. During the time of the ‘founders’ or perhaps better said the ‘knights of industry’, known as the Gründerzeit (foundational period), a large number of companies were created, which led to a vast amount of architectural commissions, a lot of them related to the world of industry and technology (industrial equipment and railway stations) or to the development of trade (department stores, banks, stock market buildings, etc.). At that time, a large number of public buildings were also constructed (theatres, art academies, concert halls, universities, museums) and also private buildings, the latter direct commissions from the bourgeois class which was on an unquestionable upward trend (villas). The reference models were based on the highly admired former architecture, which led to development of a historical eclecticism that established the taste of the time. But at the same time, the breathtaking population growth gave rise to the other side of the coin, a world of misery and substandard housing—Vienna then had two million inhabitants. See glossary in Díez Medina (2005).
- 7.
In the room that overlooked the street, regardless of orientation, was the most important part of the house, i.e. the main room which was a combined living room, dining room, bedroom (Zimmer); on the other side, overlooking the courtyard was the corridors of the super-block, surrounding the Hof and from where access to the houses was gained, and between both these zones was the kitchen (Küche) lit from the corridor and a small bedroom (Kabinett).
- 8.
The smallest dwellings had between 16 and 18 m2 (Küche/Kabinett), whereas a normal home (Zimmer/Küche/Kabinett) had between 24 and 26 m2. These dwellings were occupied by an average of six people. Since rent accounted for between 25 and 40% of income, tenants were often forced to sub-rent rooms, either for Bettgeher (literally those who go there to sleep) or people who used the bedrooms during the day and vacated them at night. There is some wonderful literature that illustrates life in Vienna during those years. See, for example Werfel (2004).
- 9.
The average size of the dwellings was now between 8 and 48 m2. Obviously, we have to take into account the housing situation of the time, when in those years 70% of existing housing was below the minimum levels, and construction of this accommodation was an undeniable improvement, in addition to making viable the construction of a large number of housing in a short time, thus effectively halting, and practically eradicating the housing shortage problem. Even so, despite the unquestionable improvement over the previous model, the small size of the homes was, right from the 1920s, the subject of criticism (Reppè 1993).
- 10.
In the Karl Marx Hof, for example, of the total of 1382 homes, 125 were kitchen/bedroom, 748 were kitchen/bedroom/cabinet, 159 were kitchen and two bedrooms and 136 had a kitchen, bedroom and two cabinets. The remaining 200 homes were either smaller or larger than those listed above (Reppè 1993).
- 11.
As was the case in Döbling, a traditional district of villas for the Viennese bourgeois. The Karl Marx Hof, with its 1100 m of ‘red wall’ intercepted the connection between this residential area and Heiligenstadt station.
- 12.
The numerous taxes imposed to finance construction of Red Vienna were called Breitner-Steuern (Breitner Taxes), in reference to the then Treasury Minister, Hugo Breitner.
- 13.
Several authors (Steiner, Blau, Tafuri) have observed that the great project for Red Vienna was possible, among other reasons, because the generation of architects in charge of designing these huge urban estates (H. Aichinger, H. Gessner, E. Hoppe, O. Schönthal, R. Perco, K. Ehn, etc.) had been educated in great city urbanism at the Wagnerschule, a school where they had also acquired a wide formal repertoire.
- 14.
‘Dal 1920 al 1934, Vienna diviene comunque un vero ‘Stato nello Stato’, grazie anche all’autonomia del suo Landrat all’interno della nuova repubblica federale: la città è pronta a divenire il banco di sperimentazione della democracia socialista’ (Tafuri 1980, 10).
- 15.
Red Vienna has generally been censored by architectural critics for proposing a rhetorical model that aimed to take advantage of the boost of Austro-Marxism, rather than the innovative research that was being carried out at the same time in the Weimar Republic and other Central European countries such as Holland, creating a powerful image that permitted extolling the victors, more specifically the Austrian Social Democrat Party (SPÖ) (Díez Medina 2015).
- 16.
The Italian architectural historian clearly explains the paradoxes that this ideological strategy entailed: ‘Ne discende un nuovo ‘dovere’ per la città che si risveglia dopo la ‘seria Apocalisse’ delle mitologie asburgiche. Bisognerà realizzare un ‘rotes Wien’, una Vienna rossa, a costo di negare—sulla base dell’assurdo político ed económico imposto dalle contingenze—le funzioni specifiche della metropoli moderna, a costo di fare dell’anacronismo e del carattere parassitario di una capitale che concentra in sé un terzo circa della popolazione dell’intero paese, la condizione stessa di un’esperienza urbanística eccezionale’ (Tafuri 1980, 10). (A new ‘duty’ is imposed for the city (Vienna) that awakes after the ‘serious Apocalypse’ of the Habsburg myths. It will be necessary to build a ‘rotes Wien’, a Red Vienna, at the price of denying—on the basis of the political and economic absurdity imposed by the contingencies—the specific functions of a modern metropolis, at the price of making the anachronism and parasitic nature of a capital where approximately one third of the country's population is concentrated, the same condition of an exceptional urbanistic experience).
References
Blau, E. 1999. The Architecture of Red Vienna, 1919–1934. Cambridge, London: MIT Press.
Díez Medina, C. 2015. Viena azul, Viena roja. Morfologías urbanas de vivienda colectiva. ¿Revolución o evolución? In Otra historia. Estudios sobre arquitectura y urbanismo en honor de Carlos Sambricio, ed. J. Calatrava, C. Díez Medina, S. Guerrero, and R. Sánchez Lampreave, 188–205. Madrid: Lampreave.
Reppè, S. 1993. Der Karl-Marx-Hof: Geschichte eines Gemeindebaus und seiner Bewohner. Wien: Picus-Verlag.
Steiner, D. 1988. De los Höfe a la rehabilitación. La vivienda vienesa desde los años veinte. Viena Pálida, A&V, Monografías de Arquitectura y Vivienda, 18–23.
Steiner, D., and G. Peichl. 1991. Neuer Wiener Wohnbau/New Housing in Vienna. Wien: Löcker Verlag.
Tafuri, M. (ed.). 1980. Vienna Rossa/La politica residenziale nella Vienna socialista 1919–1933. Milan: Electa.
Werfel, F. 2004. The Man who Conquered Death [Der Tod des Kleinbürgers, 1926]. Kila: Kessinger Publishing.
Further Readings
AA.VV. 1988. Viena Pálida. A&V, Monografías de Arquitectura y Vivienda.
Aymonino, C., G. Fabbri, and A. Villa. 1975. Le città capitali del XIX secolo: Parigi e Vienna, vol. 1. Roma: Officinaedizioni.
Bauer, O. 1919. Der Weg zum Sozialismus. Berlin: Freiheit.
Díez Medina, C. 2005. Ferdinand von Feldegg, Der Architekt y la metamorfosis del historicismo en la Viena fin-de-siècle. In Der Architekt, 1–12. Zaragoza: Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Aragón.
Díez Medina, C. 2003. El modelo vienés de vivienda colectiva: el Hof. In ed. C. Sambricio, Un siglo de vivienda social (1903–2003), vol. 1, pp. 172–175. Madrid: Nerea.
Lampugnani, V.M. 2011. Die Stadt im 20. Jahrhundert. Visionen, Entwürfe, Gebautes. Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach.
Olsen, D.J. 1986. The City as a Work of Art: London, Paris, Vienna. Yale: Yale University Press.
Schorske, C.E. 1981. Fin-De-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sieder, R. 1985. Housing Policy, Social Welfare, and Family Life in ‘Red Vienna’, 1919–34. In Oral History vol. 13, pp. 35–48. Oral History Society.
Spiel, H. 1994. Glanz und Untergang. Wien 1866–1938. Dtv Verlag.
Tafuri, M., and F. Dal Co. 1979. The attempts of urban reform in Europe between the wars. In Modern Architecture [Architettura Contemporanea, 1976], pp. 153–73. New York: Electa–Rizzoli.
Zweig, S. 1964. The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography [Die Welt von Gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europäers, 1944]. Lincoln, London: University of Nebraska Press.
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Díez Medina, C. (2018). Social Democracy and Housing Policies (1919–1934). In: Díez Medina, C., Monclús, J. (eds) Urban Visions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59047-9_3
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