Klimt Villa

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"Klimt Villa" (2013)

The Klimt Villa (also: Villa Werner ) is a villa building in the 13th district of Vienna , Hietzing , at Feldmühlgasse 11 in the Unter-St.-Veit district , erected in the early 1920s, the structural core of which is the last of Vienna Contains studio of painter Gustav Klimt .

North side with outside stairs (2013)

The connection between the term villa and the name Klimt is unhistorical and has served to preserve the run-down building since the 1990s. Klimt did not live here in a two-storey, upper-class villa, but in an unadorned, single-storey country house.

history

Klimt's studio

Gustav Klimt in a blue painter's smock, drawing by Egon Schiele (1913)

Building research by Helmut and Heide Buschhausen, Mario Schwarz and Gerhard Weißenbacher has shown that in the current two-storey villa building at Feldmühlgasse 11 (former address names: Feldmühlgasse 9, Wittegasse 15), Gustav Klimt's last was actually on the ground floor, from 1911/1912 to 1918 The studio used was incorporated into the building.

In the summer of 1998, further research by Herbert Rasinger and Gerhard Weißenbacher provided conclusive evidence. A considerable part of the ten-year controversy surrounding the sale and demolition or preservation of the building grew around this - long-disputed - fact.

According to the current state of research, it stands to reason that the painter Felix Albrecht Harta , who was friends with Klimt, but also with the owner family of the property, the furniture manufacturer Josef Hermann, recommended that he use the simple one-story country house with high windows (according to Arthur Roessler ) as a studio rent. On August 26, 1911, Klimt wrote to the editorial staff of the Lehmann address book publisher : “My current address is' Gustav Klimt, Maler, XIII., Feldmühlgasse 9, no longer VIII Josefstädterstr. 21 '. “Before that, his studio was from 1892 to 1911 in the garden pavilion of Josefstädter Strasse 21 in Vienna- Josefstadt .

In November 1912, Klimt's fellow painter Egon Schiele , whom he helped as a fatherly friend, rented a studio at Hietzinger Hauptstrasse 101, only four blocks from Klimt's house. In Lehmann's General Housing Gazette , Klimt was only listed with the address Feldmühlgasse (at that time with house number 9) from 1912 to 1915. After the death of his mother Anna, he appeared in the Lehmann from 1916 at her last residential address Westbahnstrasse 36 in Vienna- Neubau .

Klimt's catalog raisonné contains around twelve pictures that he might have painted in Haus Feldmühlgasse if he was not active on the Attersee during the summer . Among other things, the painting Litzlberg am Attersee (1914), which was sold for $ 40.4 million (29.5 million euros) at an auction in New York in November 2011 , was created here after returning from the summer vacation at the lake .

Expansion to a villa

Side view of the "Klimt Villa" seen from Feldmühlgasse, before the change in the roof area (2010)

In 1922, the culturally interested family (including Harta who participated in the founding process of the Salzburg Festival ) began building villas around the preserved walls of Klimt's last place of work, which they apparently had to interrupt for economic reasons. After the death of Josef Hermann, the building was sold as a shell by the now sole owner and widow Helene Hermann in 1922.

The buyer was Ernestine Werner, who soon married the wine wholesaler Felix Klein. She left the villa at the time when kuk (especially Jewish) -nostalgischen upper classes used "Rosenkavalier" style finish as a two-storey neo-baroque building with grand staircase. Felix Klein was entered in Lehmann's Vienna address book for the first time in 1928 and for the last time in 1939 with the address Feldmühlgasse 11. (A presentation by contemporary witness Edith Crossman, née Werner, provides information about the cultivated life in this ambience.)

State property

The Jewish Klein family had to flee in 1939 and sold the villa , which had been restored in 1948, in 1954 for 500,000 schillings to the Republic of Austria, which used the building for school purposes and added modern, single-storey buildings in the area. Shortly before 2000, a citizens' initiative , which was set up as the Gustav Klimt Memorial Association in January 1999 and demanded that parts of the building with the studio and its spacious garden be preserved , turned against the sale of the building, which was carried out by federal agencies primarily for financial reasons . The association received the villa from the state from 2002 to 2007 as a precarious (bit series) and went public with various cultural events.

controversy

Upper floor of the building (2013)

In 2007, the Austrian Gallery Belvedere under its new director Agnes Husslein took over the area for museum use at the invitation of the Ministry of Economic Affairs , but in 2008 refrained from looking after the villa because its plans to return it to the state of construction during Klimt's lifetime were not accepted.

The circles active in the Klimt Villa have always sought to save the building and its park, whereby the existing building stock, possibly traced back to the state of 1923 without the hipped roof added in 1958, should be respected. Husslein, on the other hand, planned to bring the building back to what it was in Klimt's time and to remove the components of the neo-baroque villa building. On the other hand, it was asserted that it was not possible to trace the building status back to Klimt's time due to a lack of documentation. In addition, the largely preserved villa represents an essential and previously disregarded cultural achievement of the Viennese Jewish bourgeoisie.

The public debate held in 2007 about the possible demolition of the villa building and the removal of the remains of Klimt's studio became more acute at the end of the year due to a report about “secret” demolition plans. In March 2008, the Ministry of Economic Affairs finally decided against the Belvedere's preferred project or for the preservation of the villa and its careful return to the state of construction at the time of its construction in 1923 with a flat roof for reasons of monument protection.

"Klimt Villa" since 2012

The reconstructed reception room (2013)

In 2008, the Ministry of Economic Affairs transferred the fruit enjoyment of the property to the Board of Trustees for Artistic and Curative Education (Comenius Institute, President Elisabeth Rössel-Majdan) with the condition that the former Gustav Klimt studio rooms be made accessible to the public as a memorial.

The Burghauptmannschaft Österreich renovated two outbuildings according to the needs of the new users. In 2009 the Comenius Institute opened a workshop for the disabled, and in the same year the villa was listed as a historical monument. In 2010 the new users presented a concept for the operation of the Klimt memorial and put the necessary budget at 1.8 million euros. The renovation work began in spring 2011. On September 30, 2012, the rooms were presented to the public.

The rooms on the ground floor have been renovated and designed in such a way that visitors can get an impression of the conditions at the time it was used by Klimt. The reconstruction of the facility was based on photographs by Moriz Nahr from 1918, traditional descriptions by Egon Schiele and Kijiro Ohta, and existing original samples of objects. In the front area is the reception room with furnishings based on designs by Josef Hoffmann , which were originally produced by the Wiener Werkstätte (reconstruction of table and chairs: HTL Mödling , carpet: Backhausen ).

Klimt's reconstructed studio (2013)

In addition to four smaller rooms in which Klimt's years of his life, especially his models and relationships, are explained with information boards, exhibits and several drawings, the reconstructed studio on the north side forms the focus of the exhibition. As can be seen in a photograph of Nahrs, reproductions of the paintings Lady with a Fan (1917/18) and The Bride (1917/18, unfinished) are exhibited on easels.

  • Dress designed by the Sisters Flöge salon

  • Gustav Klimt: Girl's Head with Eyes Closed (1913)

  • Gustav Klimt: Half-length portrait of a female nude (around 1916)

literature

  • Herbert Rasinger, Gustav Klimt's 3rd studio in Vienna XIII, Wittegasse 15 / Feldmühlgasse 11 ; Gerhard Weissenbacher: Notes on the building history of the Gustav Klimt Atelier ; Mario Schwarz: Old Art - New Art ; Heide Buschhausen, Helmut Buschhausen: The Ensemble Klimt-Atelier as a monument of Art Nouveau in: Stones Speaking , Austrian Society for the Preservation of Monuments and Sites , No. 112, Vienna 1999, pp. 3–9, 13–15, 16–20. (New edition 2000, No. 118a)
  • Gerhard Weissenbacher , Built in Hietzing ", Architecture and History of a Viennese District , Volume II (Published 1998, 2nd improved edition 2000), 547 pages, 835 illustrations, ISBN 3-900518-93-9 , Verlag Holzhausen
  • Robert Streibel : When the Klimt Garden was still in bloom (...). Visiting Edith Crossman in the past. On the trail of the Klimt studio in Hietzing . In: Spurensuche , magazine for science popularization (reason for termination: »Non-Aryan«), 11th year, 2000, issue 1–2.
  • Heide and Helmut Buschhausen: Gustav Klimt… because he loves solitude… . In: stones speak , Austrian Society for the Preservation of Monuments and Sites, No. 124/125, Volume 41, Issue 2–3, Vienna 2002.

Web links

Commons : Klimt-Villa  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Herbert Rasinger, Gustav Klimt's 3rd studio in Vienna XIII, Wittegasse 15 / Feldmühlgasse 11 in Steine ​​Sprechen, Austrian Society for the Preservation of Monuments and Sites, No. 112, Vienna 1999, pp. 8–9, (new edition 2000, No. 118a ).
  2. ^ Gerhard Weissenbacher: Comments on the building history of the Gustav Klimt studio; in Steine ​​Sprechen, Austrian Society for the Preservation of Monuments and Sites, No. 112, Vienna 1999, pp. 3–7. (New edition 2000, No. 118a).
  3. ^ Postcard in Klimt in person , exhibition from February 24 to August 27, 2012 in the Leopold Museum , Vienna; Exhibition catalog Klimt personally , Verlag Brandstätter, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-85033-657-4 , p. 249
  4. ↑ Lehmann's General Housing Gazette on the website of the Vienna Library in the City Hall
  5. ↑ 29.5 million euros for Klimt painting: Late legacy brings money blessing , in: Süddeutsche Zeitung daily , Munich, November 3, 2011 .
  6. ^ Lehmann, edition 1928, part I, p. 715
  7. ↑ Robert Streibel : When the Klimt Garden was still in bloom (...). Visiting Edith Crossman in the past. On the trail of the Klimt studio in Hietzing . Reason for termination »Non-Aryans« , in: Search for traces , Journal for Science Popularization, 11th year, Vienna 2000, Issue 1–2
  8. ^ Association "Gustav Klimt Memorial", ZVR number 395391338, Auhofstrasse 43, 1130 Vienna.
  9. ↑ The press : Klimtvilla demolition: Monuments Office brakes , June 26, 2007
  10. ↑ Die Presse : Klimtvilla: Demolition stopped ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), March 17, 2008
  11. ↑ Klimt Villa Vienna opens! Retrieved September 30, 2012 .

Coordinates: 48 ° 11 ′ 19 ″  N , 16 ° 16 ′ 59 ″  E