Matthew Rampley’s Visions of the Future offers a wide-ranging study of the cultural significance of modernist church design in Central Europe in the interbellum context. In historiographic terms, Visions of the Future recognizes the significance of modernist churches for understanding the nature of architectural modernism itself. As Rampley observes, although certain architects and buildings have received international recognition (e.g., Rudolf Schwarz’s work, whose church commissions appear in Rampley’s book) and have been covered in architectural histories of the region, these have tended to be reduced to either regional studies, hagiographical exercises, or analyses of individual buildings (94). Beginning with a critical reflection on Max Weber’s secularization thesis, Visions of the Future expands both the geographic and conceptual scope of inquiry to investigate some of the problems these buildings might pose for models of history framed in a linear and secularizing fashion (1–2).
Chapter 1, “‘A Beautiful Future’: Reading the Past, Reclaiming the Present,” offers a panoramic perspective of the political, ideological, and intellectual context for the Catholic rejection of modernity. The chapter then focuses on figures such as Ottokár Prohászka (1858–1927) and Ignaz Seipel (1876–1932), who placed the issue of redemption at center stage of their political program for reclaiming the present.
Chapter 2, “In What Style Shall We Build? Reaction and Modernism in the Church,” relates the conceptual issues of chapter one to the design of churches. While some commentators argued against the use of modernist form—such as the Swiss artist Alexandre Cingria (1879–1945), who complained of the thoughtless and lifeless character of contemporaneous religious art in The Decline of Religious Art (1917)—others, such as the Munich-based Carl Muth (1867–1944) (54) celebrated modernism. Muth argued that if the Catholic Church intended to remain relevant, it would have to constructively respond to the secular present (56).
Chapter 3, “The Suspension of History: Modernist Medievalisms,” examines the arguments of Catholic critics inspired by modernism, such as German architect Dominikus Böhm’s (1880–1955) defense of expressionism. Up until the 1920s, Rampley argues, Catholic art critics were hostile toward functionalism because it was an architectural style associated with an anticlerical ideology, articulated by architects such as Walter Gropius (1883–1969) and Adolf Behne (1885–1948).
However, this attitude changed by the end of the 1920s, when Catholic actors developed theological justifications for aesthetic functionalism. This is the focus of chapter four: “The Question of Technology: Catholic Reponses to Functionalist Architecture.” Rampley’s narrative centers on the surprising inversion of the conservative condemnation of functionalist (Sachlichkeit) aesthetics, foregrounded in responses to the St. Jude the Apostle Church, a building that resembled much of the architecture of Red Vienna.
Chapter 5, “Fascinating Fascism: Aura, Myth, and Cultural Diplomacy,” explores how cultural diplomacy between fascist Italy and Hungary lay the groundwork for the justification of aesthetic modernism within the latter. Crucial to the interrogation of the transnational ramification of fascist aesthetics is Rampley’s analysis of the “italianità”: a mythic ideology that celebrated the classicism of ancient Rome, undergirded by a sacralized idea of the nation state. The philosophy of “italianità” was adapted in Hungary to the religious semantics of “aura” in churches such as Aladár Árkay(1868–1932) and Bertalan Árkay’s (1901–71) Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Budapest-Városmajor (1932–33).
Chapter 6, “Deproletarianizing the Poor: Churches, Mass Politics, and the City,” investigates how Catholic actors responded to mass urbanization in the early twentieth century. Rampley zooms in on Vienna because the city was the site of both a secularization initiative under the Social Democratic municipality in the 1920s and was later followed by a “re-Catholicizing” transformation of social space from 1933 onward (143). Rampley unpacks the intellectual history of Catholic social thought (e.g., Rerum Novarum, 1891) and associated architectural forms appealing to the Austrian working class that were conveyed in, for example, Karl Holey’s Church of St. Gertrude in Vienna-Währing (1934).
Chapter 7, “Building Utopia: Towns, Villages, and the Countryside,” focuses on rural architecture. The intellectual impetus behind this style stemmed from the German conservative theologian Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936), particularly his conceptual distinction between the premodern community (Gemeinschaft) as a bastion of religious virtue and the morally degraded and atomized society in the city (Gesellschaft). Notable examples include István Medgyaszay’s (1877–1959) Church of St. Emeric in Balatonalmádi (1930–31) and Robert Kramreiter’s (1905–65) Parish Church of Edlach an der Rax (1936–39).
Finally, in “Values, Object Choice, Method: Religious Architecture and the Historiography of Modernism,” Rampley grapples with the potential reasons for why modernist churches have been omitted from canonical accounts of modernist architecture. This chapter is important in terms of its contribution to the growing historiography that breaks away from the long-held tendency to either analyze modernist churches as merely indices of an antimodern and reactionary political culture or as markers of an institution that was slowly coming to terms with and eventually endorsing modernity, reaching its apex with Vatican II.
Although Visions of the Future adds important nuance and depth to the historiography of twentieth century architectural modernism, it also suffers from certain shortcomings regarding the analytical distinction between different forms of transcendence. This becomes apparent in the discussion of Le Corbusier’s approach to church aesthetics. In this context, Rampley claims that Le Corbusier became less interested in the question of the spiritual significance of his later architectural commissions. This is questionable given that Le Corbusier did in fact go to considerable lengths to convince his Dominican interlocutors that his architectural commissions were spiritual buildings (see, e.g., Le Corbusier, Le Poème de l’angle droit [Éditions Verve, 1955]). Le Corbusier’s appeal to the transcendent was an example of what scholars often refer to as the post-Romantic sublime. What is therefore lacking is a more extensive analysis of how secular ideas of transcendence differed from Catholic perspectives.
Despite this, Visions of the Future offers an enriching and original account of Central European modernism and will surely become an important reference point for future studies.
