| The Hohe Warte is a hill in Vienna’s 19th
district, best known as the headquarters of the Federal Institute for
Meteorology. In the 19th century, a villa district was established, displacing
the vineyards so typical of the Vienna Woods' edge. It became a refuge for
industrialists and bankers, artists and intellectuals, patrons and
philanthropists. Around the turn of the 20th century, Vienna’s most influential
architect and designer, Josef Hoffmann, brought Classical Modernism to the
area. The hilly plateau became the site of an ambitious Secessionist building
project, an artists’ colony. Novelist Franz Werfel and his wife Alma Mahler,
the painter Carl Moll, and the construction magnate Eduard Ast resided in this
exclusive artists' colony. Theatre and film director Max Reinhardt and novelist
Thomas Mann were frequent guests.
Nearby were the Rothschild Botanical
Gardens, Vienna's largest football stadium and one of the city's most original
open-air swimming pools, all of which attracted thousands of visitors. The
collapse of the monarchy, two world wars, Nazi terror, and the Holocaust
destroyed this unique world. |
