Elana Shapira. Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture, and Design in Fin de Siècle . Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2016. xv + 314 pp. Illustrations. $40.00, paper, ISBN 978-1-61168-921-1.

Reviewed by Leslie Topp

Published on HABSBURG (July, 2017)

Commissioned by Jonathan Kwan (University of Nottingham)

Elana Shapira's book investigates the ways in trend in scholarship, refected also in the series of which Jewish patrons, critics, salonniers, and col‐ Ringstrasse exhibitions in 2015.[1] lectors supported advanced architecture and inte‐ Subsequent chapters focus on overtly innova‐ rior design in Vienna between the mid-nineteenth tive tendencies categorized perhaps somewhat century and the First World War. She convincing‐ rigidly by Shapira as secessionist, modernist, and ly argues that patronage and other types of intel‐ avant-garde. The secessionist chapter presents lectual and social support for innovation in archi‐ rich new research on the critic Ludwig Hevesi tecture and design were deployed by a wide range and the dynamic industrialist and art supporter of Viennese Jews in order to stake a claim for cul‐ Karl Wittgenstein; Shapira emphasizes their piv‐ tural authority in an often hostile context. She otal importance to the Vienna and its usefully rejects pat interpretations of patronage sensational new building on the Naschmarkt de‐ as a tool of assimilation--as a way of blending in. signed 1898 by , while also She argues instead, following Hannah Arendt and arguing that the Secession was crucial to their the literary scholar Rhonda Garelick, that her pro‐ own image formation as attractive outsiders. The tagonists actively reclaimed their Jewishness, ac‐ modernists include Isidor Singer and Heinrich centuating their otherness as an attractive asset Kanner, who worked with to craft an within an exclusive milieu that valued the distur‐ sophisticated modern image for their newspaper, bance of the old order. Die Zeit. This chapter also revisits the well-known The book begins with material from the peri‐ episode of the 1903 foundation of the Wiener od prior to the fn de siècle of the title, looking at Werkstätte, but with the emphasis on the role of models of patronage from the 1860s and 70s, with the man who very publicly provided fnancial and a specifc focus on the Ringstrasse palaces de‐ administrative support, Fritz Waerndorfer, rather signed by the leading Gründerzeit architects Lud‐ than exclusively on the designers Josef Hofmann wig Förster and for Eduard and . Waerndorfer's close identif‐ Todesco and Gustav Epstein. In giving close and cation with the Wiener Werkstätte (as well as the nuanced attention to the architecture and interi‐ dramatic presentation of particularly shocking ors of this period and tracing continuities with the paintings within his and his wife period around 1900, Shapira is part of a wider Lili's house) needs to be seen, Shapira argues, in H-Net Reviews the context of Waerndorfer's performance of his er on their distinctive modern masthead--so strik‐ Jewishness in the form of dandyism. ingly diferent from the conservative font used by comes to the fore in the fnal chapter ("The Avant- their rival, Neue Freie Presse--they found a de‐ Gardists")--both his invocation of Peter Altenberg signer who could conjure up an aesthetic vision of as a kind of down-at-heel patron saint for his the modern, rational world they campaigned for. American Bar (1908), and his close friendship and His 1902 design for the Telegraph Ofce of Die architectural collaboration with father and son Zeit (on the Kärntnerstrasse, now destroyed), Michael and Leopold Goldman (owners of Gold‐ combined technophilia with clarity, transparency, man & Salatsch, the frm that commissioned the and order in a powerful statement of social and Looshaus in 1909) are explored. Each chapter, in aesthetic progress. Shapira shows that the Tele‐ addition to the main case studies, incorporates graph Ofce was much more than a functional new research into other related projects (interi‐ service--its image was used in the newspaper's ors, exhibition designs, posters, and textiles, as self-promotion, and it contained a gallery intend‐ well as buildings) which involved Jewish patrons ed "to champion the founders' socialist idea of and leading progressive designers and architects, transfers between nations, cultures, and social considerably enriching our knowledge of the net‐ classes" (p. 118). It is in conjunctures like this that works and commissioning situations of the time. we see the rich results Shapira achieves by ex‐ What emerges from Shapira's examples is a tending her scope beyond designs and designers very usefully nuanced picture of the Jewish in‐ themselves to encompass clients, patrons, their volvement in the advanced architecture and de‐ ideas, and their varying attitudes to questions of sign of the period. She shows the importance of identity. patronage, but also that commissions, purchases, Note and fnancial support were only some of the ways [1]. The most notable in the context of this re‐ in which Jewish involvement in this area was view was "Ringstrasse: ein jüdischer Boulevard," manifested. Critics such as Hevesi, Berta Zuck‐ held at the Jewish Museum Vienna. Gabriele erkandl, and Karl Kraus were at the center of both Kohlbauer-Fritz, ed., Ringstrasse: ein jüdischer the textual formulation and dissemination of Boulevard = A Jewish Boulevard (Vienna: modern design's principles, and of the personal Amalthea and the Jewish Museum Vienna, 2015). networks formed in cofee houses, in salons, and by marriage. The roguish fgure of Peter Al‐ tenberg is threaded through the narrative; along with Kraus, he provocatively highlighted the con‐ tradictions and pitfalls of identity performance via patronage. A particularly fascinating research fnding concerns Otto Wagner's involvement with Die Zeit, a journal and newspaper founded by the economist (and member of the Jewish haute bour‐ geoisie) Singer and journalist Kanner to promote a gradualist socialism on the model of the British Fabian Society. They also embraced a federalist vi‐ sion of the empire, with autonomy for national minorities. In Wagner, who acted as artistic advis‐

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Citation: Leslie Topp. Review of Shapira, Elana. Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture, and Design in Fin de Siècle Vienna. HABSBURG, H-Net Reviews. July, 2017.

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