Ministry of War (Vienna)
The building on Stubenring in Vienna's 1st district , known as the Ministry of War , was built between 1909 and 1913 under the architectural direction of Ludwig Baumann . For the ministry itself see kuk War Ministry . The building has been officially called the Government Building since 1945 .
Building history
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At the turn of the century, the War Ministry was housed in the Hofkriegsrat building at Am Hof and half of it in private houses and barracks. Already at this time it was decided to build a new war ministry building. Negotiations began with the Ministry of Finance, the municipality of Vienna and the syndicate for the basic transactions. The Reich War Ministry secured an option, limited to the end of 1906, on the approximately 12,000 square meter building site on which the new building was later built. In December 1906, the option was actually exercised with the consent of Emperor Franz Joseph I and the new building was subsequently prepared. The media were informed in detail in early 1907. Also in 1907 an architectural competition for the construction began (see section competition projects).
The winning project “Maria Theresia” was submitted by the architect Ludwig Baumann . In 1902 he built a new building for the Imperial and Royal Academy for Oriental Languages , which is now used as the United States Embassy in Vienna. He was also the construction manager of the New Hofburg during the construction of the new War Ministry . The earthworks began in May 1909, construction management was activated on July 1, 1909 and construction progressed in October of the same year.
At the request of Archduke heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este , who at the request of the emperor took a special part in the military, a bronze eagle (wingspan 16 m) was placed in the middle of the facade as a crowning point that behind the high one that had become necessary Attica another - originally not planned - floor could be accommodated. Furthermore, the two unsightly main gates had to be made stronger.
After completion , the Austro-Hungarian War Ministry (on September 20, 1911, the name Reich Ministry of War had been given up by the monarch at the Hungarian request) on May 1, 1913. In the summer of 1912, the monument to Field Marshal Josef Wenzel Graf Radetzky von Radetz was transferred here. The bells for the now electric tower clock were also taken from the old building. The artistically designed rooms of the old ministry were copied in the new building. The paneling of the banqueting and reception rooms and the furnishings of the tapestry hall, which Empress Maria Theresa originally had decorated for the court war council, were taken away .
The building with a front length of 200 meters has a floor area of 9632 square meters. The rest of the 13,800 square meter building site is spread over nine courtyards, one of which is 40 meters long with a glass roof and served as a riding school. The building has seven floors and the attic floor, and the roughly one thousand rooms receive light from around 2,500 windows.
The ministry was responsible for the command and administration of the common army (called army in war) and the navy . A separate building was erected on the neighboring Vorderen Zollamtsstrasse for the kuk marine section, the section of the ministry responsible for the administration of the navy .
In 1913 a radio system was installed on the roof, which was followed shortly after the start of the war in 1914, but it was not used. With the conversion of the voice transmitter built in 1913 in 1923, the former war ministry became the birthplace of radio in Austria .
The ministry had become obsolete with the collapse of Austria-Hungary at the end of October 1918 and, according to the resolution of the Provisional National Assembly for German Austria of November 12, 1918, was to be dissolved.
The rumor stubbornly persists that an oversized replica of the Austrian imperial crown was originally placed on the large double-headed eagle . This was removed after 1918. There is nothing to prove this, however, and recent restoration work has not found any traces on the monumental double-headed eagle sculpture that would suggest the previous existence of such a crown. (In addition, according to the principles of the dual monarchy adopted in the settlement with Hungary in 1867 and developed in the following decades, the Hungarian royal crown would have had to be attached on an equal footing with the Austrian imperial crown.)
On the back of the building on the attic zone there was a lettering with the motto “ Si vis pacem para bellum ” (If you want peace, prepare for war). This was removed in the course of the renovation of the building after 1945.
In the interwar period the building was from the army uses and 1938-1945 by the Wehrmacht . During the Second World War , the building was hit by a bomb, but it did not cause much damage. The building was not badly damaged until the Battle of Vienna in 1945.
From 1952 it could be used again and was now used by various federal ministries, above all the economics, formerly trade ministries and the social welfare ministries . The dome-like roof structures that existed before 1945, which helped to structure the long, somewhat monotonous facade, were left out in the simplified restoration of the roof.
Today the government building is the headquarters of a total of three ministries; the Federal Ministry for Labor, Social Affairs, Health and Consumer Protection , the Federal Ministry for Sustainability and Tourism as well as the Federal Ministry for Digitization and Business Location .
Competition projects
In 1901 an internal competition between military engineers was held. The resulting “General Project for the New Construction of a War Building” by Feldzeugmeister Joseph Edlem von Ceipek , the deputy general civil engineer , was the guideline for the architectural competition announced on December 15, 1907.
166 architects ordered the competition documents, 66 of which had submitted their designs by April 15, 1908. Here is a brief outline of some of the projects, including the one that ended up being:
- "Homo" project
The project "Homo" of the architectural rebel Adolf Loos (he did not stick to the officially valued historicism , see his house built a little later without eyebrows ) was eliminated in the first session because facade plans, evidence of the built-up area and the enclosed space as well a cost estimate was missing.
- "Pallas" project
The project by Otto Wagner , who is now considered to be the most important architect in Vienna around 1900, was officially withdrawn due to non-compliance with important tendering conditions and requirements of the building program. Wagner justified this by stating that this was the only way to get an approximately symmetrical floor plan and to be able to arrange the rooms more appropriately.
Shortly before the competition, Wagner had set up the kk Postsparkassenamt , which is axially opposite the main entrance to the War Ministry. The heir to the throne, however, was known as an opponent of the early Viennese modernism, of which Otto Wagner was the most famous representative.
In an unpublished answer to a newspaper article about the new building of the war ministry, Ceipek criticized the irregularities in the program, but also the, in his opinion, monotonous design of the facade by Wagner.
- Project by Leopold Bauer
Leopold Bauer's project (he began building what is now the Austrian National Bank in 1911 ) tried to make the military purpose of the administration building clear by suggesting medieval fortifications and a mighty tower. It was this tower that drove the expected costs too high. Therefore, the design was bought but not implemented.
- Project "Eugenio of Savoy"
Max von Ferstel , son of the prominent architect Heinrich von Ferstel and quite busy, designed the "Eugenio von Savoy" project, which was neither awarded nor bought nor praised. He tried to design the main front of the Ringstrasse in Vienna, which is over 200 meters long, with a multifaceted facade division.
- Winning project "Maria Theresia"
The “Maria Theresia” project was submitted by the architect Ludwig Baumann , who at the same time acted as the construction manager for the expansion of the Hofburg to include the Neue Burg , along with the heir to the throne as the client's representative . The fact that Baumann gave his design the project name “Maria Theresia” could have had something to do with the fact that the heir to the throne had described Maria Theresa's architectural style as the most beautiful. Baumann could have been motivated to stimulate Franz Ferdinand's approval with the project name.
literature
- Verena Hahn-Oberthaler, Gerhard Obermüller: 100 years of government buildings. A house and its history , ed. from the Burghauptmannschaft Austria , Vienna 2013.
- Federal Ministry of Economics and Labor: A house tells history. Festschrift for the 90th anniversary of the government building at Stubenring 1 , Vienna 2004.
- Renata Kassal-Mikula, Christian Benedik: The unbuilt Vienna. 1800 to 2000. Projects for the metropolis. Historical Museum of the City of Vienna, December 10, 1999 to February 20, 2000 . Special exhibition of the Historical Museum of the City of Vienna, Volume 255, ZDB -ID 881004-7 . Historical Museum of the City of Vienna, Vienna 1999.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Construction news. Vienna. The new war ministry. In: Wiener Bauindustrie-Zeitung. The prospective builder, year 1900, No. 9/1899 (XVII. Year), p. 58, top left. (Online at ANNO ). .
- ↑ a b Little Chronicle. The new war ministry building. In: Neue Freie Presse , Morgenblatt, May 31, 1913, p. 8 (online at ANNO ).
- ^ The new building of the War Ministry. In: Neue Freie Presse , Morgenblatt, January 4, 1907, p. 9 (online at ANNO ).
- ^ The new building of the War Ministry. In: Neue Freie Presse , Morgenblatt, January 5, 1907, p. 9 (online at ANNO ).
- ^ F – n .: The new building of the War Ministry. In: Wiener Bauindustrie-Zeitung , year 1913, No. 36/1913 (XXX. Year), p. 325. (Online at ANNO ). .
- ↑ Verena Hahn-Oberthaler, Gerhard Obermüller: 100 years of government buildings. A house and its history , ed. from the Burghauptmannschaft Österreich , Vienna 2013, p. 87
- ↑ Daily report. (...) GM. August Edler von Ceipek † .. In: Reichspost , Morgenblatt (No. 490/1917, XXIV. Volume), October 23, 1917, p. 5, bottom left. (Online at ANNO ). .
Coordinates: 48 ° 12 '35 " N , 16 ° 22' 59" E