Set of Six Armchairs from the Main Building of the University of Vienna on the Vienna Ringstrasse

Rare chairs with muse­um-qual­i­ty Vien­nese history.

The six arm­chairs are beau­ti­ful­ly exe­cut­ed in oak; the seat and back­rest are mold­ed, and the arm sup­ports are orna­men­tal­ly carved. The two front legs of the arm­chairs are turned, while the two rear legs are slight­ly splayed. All four legs ter­mi­nate in brass sabots.

The seat, back­rest, and arm sup­ports are uphol­stered; they have been new­ly restored in our work­shop and cov­ered with Alcan­tara.

A set of six arm­chairs with a very spe­cial Vien­nese his­to­ry from the for­ma­tive peri­od of the mag­nif­i­cent Vien­na boule­vard, the ​“Vien­na Ringstrasse.”
The con­struc­tion of the Vien­na Ringstrasse ulti­mate­ly took more than 50 years to com​plete​.In Decem­ber 1857, the his­toric words of Emper­or Franz Joseph appeared in the Wiener Zeitung: ​“It is My will …”.

The famous impe­r­i­al decree of Decem­ber 20, 1857 marks the his­toric start­ing point of Vienna’s mod­ern urban devel­op­ment. Here Emper­or Franz Joseph wrote to his then Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or, Baron von Bach:

​“Dear Baron von Bach! It is My Will that the expan­sion of the inner city of Vien­na, with due regard to an appro­pri­ate con­nec­tion with the sub­urbs, be under­tak­en at the ear­li­est oppor­tu­ni­ty, and that con­sid­er­a­tion also be giv­en to the reg­u­la­tion and beau­ti­fi­ca­tion of My impe­r­i­al and roy­al cap­i­tal and res­i­dence city.”

A first sec­tion from the Burgtor to the Stuben­tor was cer­e­mo­ni­al­ly opened on May 1, 1865. Only in 1913 was the final build­ing on the Vien­na Ringstrasse, the Impe­r­i­al and Roy­al Min­istry of War at Stuben­ring, inau­gu­rat­ed. The total length of the grand boule­vard is 5.3 kilo­me­ters.
It was prob­a­bly one of the most sig­nif­i­cant and largest con­struc­tion projects in Europe at that time. Only very rarely does one find the oppor­tu­ni­ty to acquire chairs that so beau­ti­ful­ly reflect both the his­tor­i­cal con­text and the aes­thet­ic taste of an era of awak­en­ing.
The mere knowl­edge of sit­ting on arm­chairs that, for more than 140 years, were used on spe­cial occa­sions by dis­tin­guished guests and pro­fes­sors of the Ringstrasse Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na, built by the Ringstrasse archi­tect Hein­rich von Fer­s­tel, lends every invi­ta­tion a very spe­cial flair and gives every guest a dis­tinct sense of appre­ci­a­tion from the host.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion:

The Main Build­ing of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na on the Ringstrasse
Since the win­ter semes­ter of 1884, the mon­u­men­tal main build­ing on the Ringstrasse has been the offi­cial seat of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na. Fol­low­ing the sup­pres­sion of the Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion in 1848, the uni­ver­si­ty lost its for­mer main build­ing, the Neue Aula in the Stuben­vier­tel, and its insti­tutes were sub­se­quent­ly dis­persed across the sub­urbs. Only after 36 years did the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na regain a cen­tral roof under which research and teach­ing could take place. Yet the ​“house” of a uni­ver­si­ty is always more than a mere build­ing; it is above all the place of real encounter between teach­ers and stu­dents, the space in which the aca­d­e­m­ic com­mu­ni­ty — the uni­ver­si­tas — can tru­ly come into being.
Thus archi­tec­ture itself becomes a space of insti­tu­tion­al iden­ti­ty. The expec­ta­tions placed upon the pos­si­ble archi­tects by the var­i­ous mem­bers of the com­mis­sion­ing com­mit­tee were by no means uni­form or con­stant. A close look at the main build­ing reveals which self-under­stand­ing of the uni­ver­si­ty is reflect­ed here.

Site Selec­tion
A return of the poten­tial­ly rebel­lious stu­dents after the Rev­o­lu­tion of 1848 to the his­tor­i­cal­ly bur­dened Neue Aula — the site of the mur­der plot against the Min­is­ter of War, Count Latour — was out of the ques­tion. Thus, in May 1854, Emper­or Franz Joseph resolved to con­struct a new uni­ver­si­ty build­ing. Yet until its open­ing in Octo­ber 1884, the Alma Mater Rudol­phi­na would remain with­out a cen­ter for anoth­er 30 years.
Since the Fac­ul­ty of Med­i­cine par­tic­u­lar­ly ben­e­fit­ed from prox­im­i­ty to the Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal dur­ing its pro­vi­sion­al accom­mo­da­tion, in April 1854 the Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion com­mis­sioned the two Acad­e­my pro­fes­sors Eduard van der Nüll and August von Sicards­burg to design a uni­ver­si­ty build­ing for a vacant lot direct­ly next to the Schwarzs­panierkirche. On this rep­re­sen­ta­tive site, the main façade of the new uni­ver­si­ty would have over­looked the glacis toward the Schot­ten­tor. At that time, no one yet con­sid­ered aban­don­ing the for­ti­fi­ca­tions or devel­op­ing the open glacis.

How­ev­er, the ris­ing ter­rain of the glacis before the Schot­ten­tor was soon claimed by anoth­er archi­tect for his mon­u­men­tal project. The then 26-year-old pupil of Sicards­burg and van der Nüll, Hein­rich von Fer­s­tel, had won the com­pe­ti­tion for the Votive Church and intend­ed to erect his design for this state-com­mis­sioned build­ing in the most vis­i­ble posi­tion on this site.
In keep­ing with the ​“Catholic char­ac­ter” of the uni­ver­si­ty advo­cat­ed by Count Thun-Hohen­stein, the three archi­tects ini­tial­ly agreed upon an archi­tec­tur­al con­nec­tion between uni­ver­si­ty and church, in which the main build­ing would have formed a ring around the choir of the sacred struc­ture. Yet this civ­i­tas uni­ver­si­tatis also failed to mate­ri­al­ize, and the entire project stag­nat­ed again until 1868, when Hein­rich von Fer­s­tel him­self was com­mis­sioned with prepara­to­ry work for the new build­ing.

Hein­rich von Fer­s­tel (1828 – 1883) and the Palace of Sci­ence
Even Fer­s­tel did not imme­di­ate­ly suc­ceed in achiev­ing an aes­thet­i­cal­ly con­vinc­ing com­bi­na­tion of the two insti­tu­tions on the irreg­u­lar build­ing site. Only with the prospect, from 1869 onward, of the pres­ti­gious loca­tion direct­ly on the Ringstrasse did Fer­s­tel throw him­self into plan­ning with renewed enthu­si­asm, aim­ing to cre­ate a uni­ver­si­ty build­ing appro­pri­ate to the grandeur of the boule­vard. While the first sketch­es still styl­is­ti­cal­ly fol­lowed the neigh­bor­ing Par­lia­ment and City Hall, the sec­ond design envi­sioned a mas­sive mon­u­men­tal struc­ture delib­er­ate­ly refer­ring to Renais­sance mod­els. The few sur­viv­ing doc­u­ments con­cern­ing the styl­is­tic debate reveal that the build­ing — from floor plan to style to dec­o­ra­tion — embod­ies a deter­min­is­tic con­cep­tion of sci­ence, ulti­mate­ly promis­ing a ​“tri­umph of light over dark­ness.” Fer­s­tel sought to express this idea of light in both archi­tec­ture and dec­o­ra­tion and des­ig­nat­ed it as the guid­ing theme for the cer­e­mo­ni­al hall. How­ev­er, when around 1894 the artists Franz Matsch and Gus­tav Klimt were entrust­ed with this task, it result­ed in one of the great­est art scan­dals of the 20^th cen­tu­ry, since Klimt in par­tic­u­lar had already moved away from the 19^th-cen­tu­ry sci­en­tif­ic world­view and did not wish to sup­port the deter­min­is­tic world­view of many pro­fes­sors through affir­ma­tive alle­gories.
On Octo­ber 10, 1884, the uni­ver­si­ty was cer­e­mo­ni­al­ly opened in the pres­ence of the Emper­or. The dec­o­ra­tive pro­gram, how­ev­er, took sev­er­al more years to complete.