Zprávy památkové péče 2018, 78(2):124-129 | DOI: 10.56112/zpp.2018.2.06

"Spiritual organism permeated by art": Rudolf Eitelberger and the city planning according to artistic principles

Martin Horáček

Fakulta architektury VUT v Brně

This study discusses the involvement of Rudolf Eitelberger in the debate on the optimal form of a modern city. It concentrates on his key text on the subject, his lecture "Über Städteanlagen und Stadtbauten", printed in 1858. Its content is recapitulated, and some essential elements of the author's argumentation are underlined as an anchoring in history and reference to ancient and medieval habits, keeping parallel with the present with an emphasis on the impetus for the future architectural development of Vienna as well as sharp insights into the benefits of cultivated construction and the motivation of the population. A generation later, his pupil, Camillo Sitte, followed Eitelberger's work in the famous book "City Planning According to Artistic Principles" (1889). There are differences in both authors' approaches: Sitte's book is ingenious and timeless, both in terms of content and formulation. It is a pregnant synthesis of a maximum of intellectual concentration with "common sense". What Sitte claims and proves here, Eitelberger merely suggests; an insight from his lecture on "physical and psychological health" is a mere remark to him, while for Sitte it is the cornerstone of his argument. Eitelberger's greatest concern is about monumental buildings - "Monumentalbauten", while Sitte focuses on the town square. This difference reflects both the shift in the perception of priorities among urban patterns and a shift in the understanding of urban life in the general sense of the word towards a more modern concept. Eitelberger and Sitte both consistently refer to "good" examples of the past, but they do it differently: Eitelberger speaks as a historian who teaches what happened; Sitte speaks as a practitioner who plans while refering to successful examples he has seen in his travels. Sitte's "City Planning" is included in Eitelberger's lecture in its initial form. Like a pioneer, Eitelberger understood the construction of cities as a complex theme deserving a separate debate. He linked historiographical findings with individual psychology and political agenda. Sitte followed up on this method but strengthened the psychological (and scientific) view and somewhat (but not quite) backshelved the political point of view. The idealist model was replaced by a handbook. Eitelberger is also compared with Frederick Law Olmsted: neither of them was a trained architect, and yet both fundamentally influenced the appearance of cities in the second half of the 19th century; Eitelberger in Central Europe and the Balkans, Olmsted in the US. Eitelberger's main talent evidently lay in building social networks whose energy he was able to effectively direct in favor of "civic art".

Keywords: Rudolf Eitelberger, Camillo Sitte, architecture and urbanism of the 19th century

Published: June 1, 2018  Show citation