Wittgenstein House

House Wittgenstein in today's environment

The Wittgenstein House is a building in the 3rd district, highway , originally as a residential palace for Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein served. It was designed by her brother, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, in collaboration with the architect Paul Engelmann , a student of Adolf Loos .

Planning started in 1925 and the house was occupied at the end of 1928. Margarethe Stonborough-Wittgenstein lived there until her death in 1958, except for the period of her exile in the USA (1940-1947). Her son Thomas Stonborough sold it in 1971 to the building contractor Franz Katlein, for whom the property value increased threefold after being rededicated for high-rise buildings. A high-rise building for the main association of social insurance institutions was to be built on the property . After violent protests, including a petition from well-known Viennese architects, the Wittgenstein house was placed under monument protection, but the old garden was cut down and the high-rise was built in the immediate vicinity of the villa. In 1975 the People's Republic of Bulgaria bought the house. Today, after some structural changes, it serves as a Bulgarian cultural institute. The neighboring office building of the main association was completely refurbished in 2018-19, it received a bright facade referring to the Wittgenstein House, which puts the building in a new light. This was published in a specialist organ as "Reconciliation with the Wittgenstein House".

The Wittgenstein house follows the modern style and externally is strongly reminiscent of the architecture of the Bauhaus .

“Ludwig drew every window, every door, every bolt of the window, every radiator with an accuracy as if they were precision instruments and in the finest dimensions, and he then succeeded with his uncompromising energy that things were also carried out with the same accuracy "

- Hermine Wittgenstein in "My Brother Ludwig"

Plaque
The Wittgenstein house from the Gesaugasse (neighboring house still with the facade until 2018)
View from the garden

literature

Felix Czeike : Historical Lexicon Vienna . Volume 5. Verlag Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1997, ISBN 978-3-218-00547-0 , p. 542.
Otto Kapfinger : House Wittgenstein - a documentation . Cultural Department of the Embassy of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, Vienna 1984.
Bernhard Leitner : Saving the Wittgenstein House in Vienna from demolition . AMBRA Verlag, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-99043-617-2 . (German)
Bernhard Leitner: The Wittgenstein House . Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2000, ISBN 978-1-56898-251-9 . (English)
August Sarnitz: Wittgenstein's architecture: reconstruction of a built idea. With a photo documentation by Thomas Freiler. Böhlau, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-205-78547-7 .
Jan Turnovsky: The poetics of a wall projection . Birkhauser, Basel 1987, ISBN 9783035601091
Paul Wijdeveld: Ludwig Wittgenstein. Architect . Wiese, Basel 1994, ISBN 3-909164-03-X

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Horst Christoph: Don't I screw it up? On the 60th anniversary of the philosopher's death, Ludwig Wittgenstein's architecture will again be put up for discussion - as a documentation of Austrian intellectual history. In: weekly profile . Volume 42, No. 24 of June 10, 2011, pages 110–111.
↑ On the public debate about the Villa Wittgenstein cf. Die Presse February 28, 1970, June 23, 1971, June 26, 1971, as well as “Stones Speaking” No. 43-44 / 1973 and No. 50/1976
↑ Christine Bärnthaler: Administration building in a new shell. In: Skin: the specialist magazine for the intelligent building envelope . Online resource. Vienna, Austrian business publisher. November 2019. ZDB ID 2897130-9 . (accessed December 25, 2019). Print version under the title “Reconciliation with the Wittgenstein House”: SKIN - the intelligent building envelope , ZDB -ID 2113318-9 . Vienna, Austrian business publisher. No. 9/2019, September 25, 2019. pp. 31–32.

Web links

Commons : Haus Wittgenstein - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Haus Wittgenstein Homepage of the Bulgarian cultural institute in Austria
Bernhard Leitner: The rescue of the Wittgenstein house from demolition - June 1969 to June 21, 1971. A documentation
The Wittgenstein House. District Museum Landstrasse, archived from the original on October 14, 2013 ; accessed on January 3, 2018 .
Otto Kapfinger: House Wittgenstein at nextroom
1928: Haus Wittgenstein, Vienna , Radio Ö1 , from the series Hundert Häuser - The Republic of Austria as reflected in its architecture , July 5, 2018

Photographs

Architectural photographs of the Wittgenstein house by Margherita Spiluttini

Historical photographs of the Wittgenstein House (homepage of the Austrian National Library )

48.203388888889 16.394166666667Coordinates: 48 ° 12 ′ 12.2 ″ N , 16 ° 23 ′ 39 ″ E

[pro-1] Horst Christoph: Don't I screw it up? On the 60th anniversary of the philosopher's death, Ludwig Wittgenstein's architecture will again be put up for discussion - as a documentation of Austrian intellectual history. In: weekly profile . Volume 42, No. 24 of June 10, 2011, pages 110–111.

[2] On the public debate about the Villa Wittgenstein cf. Die Presse February 28, 1970, June 23, 1971, June 26, 1971, as well as “Stones Speaking” No. 43-44 / 1973 and No. 50/1976

[3] Christine Bärnthaler: Administration building in a new shell. In: Skin: the specialist magazine for the intelligent building envelope . Online resource. Vienna, Austrian business publisher. November 2019. ZDB ID 2897130-9 . (accessed December 25, 2019). Print version under the title “Reconciliation with the Wittgenstein House”: SKIN - the intelligent building envelope , ZDB -ID 2113318-9 . Vienna, Austrian business publisher. No. 9/2019, September 25, 2019. pp. 31–32.