Kaiserforum (Vienna)

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Gottfried Semper, floor plan of the Kaiserforum at the level of the bel étage, December 20, 1869, The Burgtheater is still connected to the forum in this plan
Design by Gottfried Semper (1870)
The old and the new Burgplatz in Vienna with the project of the Kaiserforum (watercolor by Franz Alt , 1873)
Drawing after Rudolf von Alt (1873)
Aerial view of Heldenplatz and the Hofburg (around 1900). The mirror wing of the New Castle would have been on the left.

The Kaiserforum was an architectural project in Vienna that should have crowned the Ringstrasse project . It was about the expansion of the Hofburg and its connection with the buildings that were intended to be built for the Habsburg collections.

history

There were plans for a central museum for these collections when the first plans for the Ringstrasse were made. In 1864 the decision was made that two buildings should be built opposite the Hofburg: the Art History Museum and the Natural History Museum . There was a competition to which four architects were invited: Carl Hasenauer , Theophil von Hansen , Heinrich Ferstel and Moritz Löhr . However, all four drafts were considered impractical, so Gottfried Semper was called in as arbitrator, who not only criticized the individual projects, but also the mode of the tender.

Semper drafted a general plan for the entire area from the Hofburg (the Leopoldine wing) to the court stables (today's MuseumsQuartier ) Fischer von Erlachs , which was conceived as a huge square under the name Kaiserforum . This plan was approved by Emperor Franz Joseph in 1870 and construction began in 1871. He envisaged two museum buildings across the Ringstrasse, which would correspond to two wings to be attached to the Hofburg. In the middle, in front of the old Hofburg, a festival and throne room wing was planned. Originally there was even talk of a connection via the ring road with two arches, but this was soon abandoned in the interests of traffic.

Semper Hasenauer, whose project appealed to him the most aesthetically, helped build the museums. The exterior of the two museums was completed in 1880 and the grand opening took place in 1891.

The corresponding work on the Hofburg dragged on, however, in 1913, by order of the emperor, the northwest wing and the central wing were given up, so that the imperial forum project remained a torso. The other wing of the castle, now known as the New Castle , saw a number of architects as site managers, including Friedrich Ohmann and Ludwig Baumann , until the exterior was completed in 1913. Since it had no real function other than representation, its use changed again and again over the next few decades. The Neue Hofburg now houses the Ephesus Museum , the collection of old musical instruments, the Vienna World Museum , the court hunting and armory and the main part of the Austrian National Library .

For the part of the Imperial Forum facing the castle, the name Heldenplatz is in use today; it merges into the Volksgarten where the other wing of the New Hofburg should have been . The square between the museums is called Maria-Theresien-Platz after the Maria-Theresien-Statue by Kaspar von Zumbusch .

There was renewed debate on the completion of the forum around the planned construction of a house of the history of the republic . The President of the Federal Chancellery, Manfred Matzka , thought of building this museum across from the Neue Burg.

literature

Web links

Commons : Kaiserforum  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The standard | Completion as Forum of the Republic (November 7, 2008)


Coordinates: 48 ° 12 ′ 18 ″  N , 16 ° 21 ′ 43 ″  E