The Simmering crematorium with its urn grove and later extensions in the 11th district was built in 1922 as the first Austrian crematorium directly opposite the central cemetery. The facility with influences of German sacred architecture is considered one of the most famous buildings by the Austrian architect Clemens Holzmeister.

The construction was based on a municipal council resolution under the first democratically elected mayor of Vienna, Jakob Reumann, and was preceded by a controversy with the Christian-socialist federal government until the Constitutional Court ruled in favor of the crematorium. Until the Second Vatican Council in 1963, cremation was still considered forbidden by the Catholic Church. More than 7,000 cremations are carried out there every year, and the adjacent cemetery contains around 42,000 graves and a pet cemetery.

Clemens Holzmeister, born in Tyrol in 1886 with Brazilian citizenship (his father had previously emigrated to South America), is considered one of the most important and internationally renowned Austrian architects of the 20th century. His work, comprising around seven hundred buildings, is characterized by the immense creative power of his 60 years of activity, particularly in Austria, Germany, Turkey and Brazil.

The listed and recently renovated Villa Schmutzer in the Cottage Quarter in the 18th district was commissioned by Prof. Ferdinand Schmutzer in 1909/10 and built in country house style by the innovative Viennese Art Nouveau architect Robert Oerley.

Schmutzer came from a family of artists; his great-grandfather founded the „k.k. Kupferstecher-Academie“ in Vienna, a building block of the later founded „k.k. Academy of the United Fine Arts“. Like his grandfather and father, he started out as a sculptor and then studied painting at the academy.

Schmutzer was extremely successful as a portraitist of Viennese society: his contemporaries included Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, his neighbor Arthur Schnitzler, Emperor Franz Josef I and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and the villa of Ferdinand and his wife Alice was a meeting place of cultural Vienna.

The equestrian statue of Emperor Joseph II from 1807 on Josefplatz in the 1st district was commissioned by his nephew Emperor Franz II/I from the sculptor Franz Anton Zauner and is modeled on the Roman statue of Marcus Aurelius on the Capitol in the Palace of the Conservators in Rome. In addition to the exemplary style of the model, the Roman emperor also plays a role in Vienna in terms of content, as he is said to have died near Vienna.

The bronze cast was made in the imperial canon foundry on Wieden and was considered the largest cast outside France at the time. The statue stands on a pedestal made of polished Mauthausen granite, which features reliefs and medallions with scenes of trade and agriculture.

A model of the statue from 1797 can be found in Schönbrunn Palace Park.

The Grillparzer monument by Carl Kundmann (figures), Rudolf Weyr (reliefs) and Carl Hasenauser (architecture) in the Volksgarten in the 1st district was unveiled in 1889, around 17 years after the 81-year-old’s death. It depicts the famous 19th century Austrian playwright together with scenes from his literary works (left: Die Ahnfrau, Der Traum ein Leben, König Ottokars Glück und Ende
Right: Sappho, Medea, Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen).

Grillparzer was also employed as a civil servant from 1813-1856. Although it was customary at the time for a trainee to wait 12 years for his first salary, he was paid more quickly, receiving his first salary after just four years. As a minor civil servant in the Court Chamber, he celebrated his early literary successes; later in the Ministry of Finance, he was already a famous poet and became director of the Court Chamber Archives.

Grillparzer, like many other greats, constantly changed his lodgings. While in his youth he had to move from one poor dwelling to the next with his impoverished mother, who was widowed at an early age, later inner restlessness, imbalance and severe depression were the cause of many changes of location.

Located directly behind the main railway station in the 10th district, the Favoriten substation from 1931 is a monumental functional building of the municipal electricity works in red Vienna, probably influenced by the constructivist industrial architecture of the Soviet October Revolution.

The Austrian arch. Eugen Kastner and Fritz Waage grouped massive, rectangular and round structures on the triangular spandrel plot to form a ship-like building. The industrial building, which is still in operation, was also used as a control center for the power supply in the south of Vienna and beyond until it was renovated in 1999/2000.

Due to its gloomy and deserted appearance, the site is also often used as a prison setting in feature films.

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The architecturally attractive Meidling telephone exchange in the 12th district was built in 1913 by the „Bauleitung der k.k. Telefon-Zentrale“ before it went into operation in 1926 as a secondary exchange of the telephone network that had been built in Vienna since 1881.

The listed building with its arched window axes and vertically accentuated façade is exemplary of early 20th century industrial architecture in Vienna, the actual purpose of which is not apparent from the outside and which stands in stark contrast to the historicist tradition.

Initially, only 154 subscribers were switched manually in Friedrichstrasse, but by the 1920s the telephone network already had over 100,000 main lines – thanks in part to the automation of switching. By using underground long-distance cables and amplifiers, long-distance connections over 200 km (e.g. Vienna to Nuremberg) could be put into operation for the first time at this time.

Around 25 years after the formation of a prominent committee, the Lessing monument on Judenplatz in the 1st district was unveiled for the first time on June 15, 1935. The Viennese sculptor Siegfried Charoux was responsible for the bronze sculpture on a cubic stone plinth, also known for the Suttner monument at the courtyard of the same name and other monuments, often in municipal buildings.

Just four years later, the monument to the famous playwright and representative of the German Enlightenment, which probably also commemorates his main work „Nathan the Wise“, was dismantled by the Nazis and melted down for armaments. In May 1968, a new sculpture was unveiled by the artist, who had returned home from emigration in the meantime, before it was unveiled again at its current location in October 1981.

The reminder of the Ring Parable with its appeal to the idea of tolerance, directly opposite the entrance to the Jewish Museum and the Holocaust Memorial, could not be more topical.

The Albertina Art Museum in the 1st district is one of the most important and extensive collections of graphic art in the world. Founded in 1776 by Duke Albert of Saxony-Teschen and his wife Archduchess Marie Christine, the collection was moved in 1792 to today’s Palais Erzherzog Albrecht, which was then also used as the family’s residence.

This was subsequently also the case for his adopted son Archduke Karl („Victor of Aspern“ against Napoleon), his son Archduke Albrecht (to whom the equestrian monument on the ramp was later dedicated) and his adopted son Archduke Karl Ferdinand, who lived in the palace until the end of the monarchy in 1918.

I would be happy to provide further information on the history of the palace and the collection during a guided tour of the state rooms, which were restored during a general renovation in 2003, and a visit to a current exhibition and the Batliner Collection, which has also been housed there since 2007.

Completed in 1901, the building of the former Portios & Fix company – important furniture manufacturers in Austria-Hungary – by Max Fabiani in Ungargasse in the 3rd district shows the full skill of this extraordinary architect of functionalist modernism. The attic with its semicircular, wrought-iron eaves lattice and the strikingly geometric, colorful tiling of the grid-like façade is considered an important early work by Fabiani, a student of Otto Wagner.

Among the best-known buildings of his extensive oeuvre are the „Urania“ public education center, the Artaria publishing house on Kohlmarkt and several private villas in Vienna and Slovenia.