The past decade has witnessed an expanding interest in the culture of interwar Vienna, especially in the Anglophone sphere, coupled with recent developments in the field of Design History that seek to integrate cultural, economic, and political histories. In this respect, Michelle Jackson-Beckett’s handsome book on the new Wohnkultur is an essential contribution to a more nuanced and multifaceted understanding of this period of Viennese history, made even more striking by its aesthetically pleasing lens of interior design. Furthermore, by crafting a convincing and sustained argument surrounding the values of affordability, comfort, flexibility, and emotional expression in diverse approaches to dwelling in the First Republic, the author makes an important intervention in histories of European modernism, illuminating alternative articulations of twentieth-century design that place the human experience at their center.
Jackson-Beckett structures the book around key housing exhibitions in the interwar period, predominantly those staged by the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry. This is standard design historical practice, as noted in the reference to the work of British scholars such as Penny Sparke (3); however, Jackson-Beckett uses this as a striking framing device to narrate the intersection of wider Viennese cultural debates in an accessible manner. Building on foundational scholarship in Austrian cultural and design history by figures such as Deborah Holmes, Christopher Long, and Lisa Silverman, as well as more general historical and contemporary discourses of twentieth-century modernism, the book’s introduction presents a useful overview of the context in which Jackson-Beckett’s study has emerged, and how it offers an original take on a wide range of understudied primary source material. It emphasizes how many working-class people sought continuity in Viennese craft traditions and ornamentation in interior design practices as “signifiers of ascending the class ladder after World War I, despite social democratic rhetoric to the contrary” (18). Herein, lies the paradox of Viennese interwar design that the book seeks to untangle; while tackling the question of “How should we live?” on both “collective and individual levels” (21), Jackson-Beckett makes a compelling case for reconsidering vernacular impulses in a period of design history that is often marked by future-oriented experimentation with minimalist forms and technologies. Ultimately, she alludes to the international reverberations of the new Wohnkultur in a call to challenge canonical notions of temporality and historicity in European modernism. This transition from the book’s introduction to the first in-depth case study presented in chapter 1 is effective in guiding the reader to make connections between past and present—a method that was at the very crux of what many Viennese designers strove to accomplish for themselves as creatives as well as for a population of individuals reeling from the aftermath of World War I.
In referencing the critic Max Eisler, chapter 1 focuses on how Vienna’s new Wohnkultur “would be publicly tied to class and politics” (25). Jackson-Beckett expertly examines this point by exploring how the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry grappled with the cultural, economic, and political ruptures following the end of empire and the establishment of the First Republic. In this respect, the museum’s exhibition series Einfacher Hausrat intended to inform public taste by displaying modern furnishings that were inspired by vernacular styles. While such a confluence of historical influences and contemporary design is perhaps best known as the hallmark style of Josef Frank, Jackson-Beckett makes full use of Viennese archival sources to introduce a general readership to the work of less familiar figures, most notably Rudolf Lorenz and Hugo Gorge in this chapter. Chapter 2 builds on the fundamental questions of affordability and eclecticism raised by the Einfacher Hausrat series, with the 1928 exhibition Die neuzeitliche Wohnung as its focal point. Here Jackson-Beckett’s integrative approach to curation, cultural criticism, and design practice truly shines, made even more tangible by her lively analysis of photographed model interior ensembles. The latter half of the chapter considers how Richard Schaukal’s 1907 volume Die Mietwohnung: Eine Kulturfrage translated into interwar discourses of the Frauenfrage (73). A discussion of Maria Maresch’s Institut für Lebenswirtschaft highlights the fact that most Viennese women with families at the time were also working outside of the home, which would have an impact on the direction of educational initiatives, including the Beratungsstelle für Inneneinrichtung und Wohnungshygiene (BEST) developed by architects such as Josef Frank and Ernst Lichtblau. Moreover, the chapter includes a fascinating look at Berta Wolf’s human-centered approach to interior design, revealing how ideas of psychological well-being and comfort were a reaction to the realities of economic instability, while also “maintaining a traditional model of the family” (77). These seeming contradictions, present throughout the book, paint a more nuanced picture of the driving forces behind the new Wohnkultur against the backdrop of Vienna’s complex social fabric.
Chapter 3’s exploration of the Wiener Raumkünstler exhibition (1929–30) demonstrates how the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry would showcase both practical and luxurious designs, illustrating the tension between luxury and necessity that had been a critical part of Viennese design debates since the inception of the First Republic (84). Jackson-Beckett animates these polemics through an analysis of Anton Lustig’s review of the exhibition, which drew attention to Lichtblau’s “unhygienic” use of animal skins as a bedspread and the Lilliputian scale of Oswald Haerdtl’s shop design, among other humorous remarks (86). The friction between experimental design and practical solutions in interwar Viennese housing is made evident by Jackson-Beckett’s rigorous research in archival correspondence records, as well as her analysis of Fritz Czuczka’s 1934 manual for furniture modifications, which encouraged the user to adapt existing furniture pieces for their own personal needs and preferences. Alongside contemporary architects such as Czuczka, established companies such as Herrgesell Möbel also looked toward greater agency on the part of the consumer, through the manufacture of modular furnishings that anticipate today’s IKEA systems.
The importance placed on comfort and flexibility directs chapter 4’s engagement with key exhibitions of the Austrian Werkbund, namely Der gute, billige Gegenstand (1931–32) and the Wiener Werkbundsiedlung (1932), as well as the mixed reception of the educational and consultation services provided by BEST, the non-profit interior design advice center with headquarters in the Karl-Marx-Hof. As Jackson-Beckett notes, the term “good design” is “slippery and shapeshifting” (109), and in the Viennese context, was not tied to a specific style or form, but rather the notions of accessibility and personal comfort that form the book’s overall argument. A highlight of this chapter is the economic aspect of Der gute, billige Gegenstand exhibition at the Museum of Art and Industry, “which paralleled BEST by calling primarily for consumer education and cultural paradigm shifts instead of increased consumerism in service to economic growth” (126). The tension between the role of design in bolstering the Austrian national economy and providing a comfortable standard of living for working-class people in the social democratic capital leads seamlessly into the darker trajectory of interwar Austria: studies of domestic hygiene often intersected with those of eugenics, leading to a notion of “bad design” shaped by evolutionary hierarchies and conservative morality (133–34). This culminates in the book’s final chapter on the exhibition Das befreite Handwerk, which explores the direction of the new Wohnkultur under Austrofascism. Unsurprisingly, Jackson-Beckett describes this as being characterized by “a nationalist, rural idealism” (138), blighted even further by the split of the Austrian Werkbund into the old faction, whose many Jewish members, including Josef Frank, would be forced to flee Austria or perish in the Holocaust, and the “new,” conservative faction associated with Josef Hoffmann and Clemens Holzmeister. With Hoffmann as its creative director, Das befreite Handwerk called for the patriotic revival and preservation of traditional craft techniques in modern forms. Holzmeister was especially concerned with designing in a traditional countryside style, Tyrolean in particular. Jackson-Beckett’s investigation into Otto Niedermoser’s model living room for a forgotten exhibition at the Künstlerhaus, which was falsely attributed by Profil magazine as an authentic space in a country house, is a stunning conclusion to this rich book, illustrating the political and aesthetic contradictions that characterized interwar Viennese design and its wide-ranging cultural implications.
As a physical artifact, the book meets high production values that match the rigorous research presented on its pages. It will be of great interest to an interdisciplinary, international readership—not only to those already working in the field of Austrian cultural history but also to historians of design and modernism more broadly. As the epilogue reflects, the new Wohnkultur was in many ways ahead of its time, especially in relation to its subtle consideration of user experience and human emotion, and its aesthetic impact on mid-century modernism and beyond. This book is certain to become the standard publication on the subject and promises to inspire further studies on the Austrian designers, cultural critics, and exhibition practices that Jackson-Beckett has poignantly brought to life.
