Paul Sprenger
Personal data
* 20.08.1798 - † 29.10.1854
Gender: m
POB: Zagán
former name: Sagan, Lower Silesia
Country: Poland
former name: Prussia
Place of death: Vienna
Country: Austria
former name: Austria
Title: k.k. Hofbaurat, Sektionsrat
other names: Paul Wilhelm Eduard S.
Religious confession: Rom. - Kath.
Job title: Architect, Hofbaurat
Family environment: Father: Johann Georg S., Sagan'scher castellan
Mother: Johanna Rosalia, née Tschackert
Marriage (1840) to Katharina Patzelt (1816–1895)
Children: Paul Wilhelm (1841–1878), civil engineer; Wilhelmine, verehel. Nowak (*1843)
Education, study trips, international stays
before 1817 School of Arts and Crafts in Wroclaw, PL
1817 Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Erzverschneiderschule
1818–1823 Polytechnic Institute Vienna (1819/1820 interruption)
1820–1824 Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, School of Architecture
1843 Study trip to Germany, France, Belgium, Holland and England (on behalf of the government)
1851 Study trip to England and France (usually the government)
Professional career, teaching activities
1825 Assistant for Agricultural and Hydraulic Engineering, Polytechnic Institute Vienna
1827 provis. Professor of Mathematics, Vienna Academy
1828–1842 Professor of Mathematics and Perspective, Vienna Academy
1841–1844 Professor of Perspective for Painters, Vienna Academy
1842 Hofbaurat
1844 Director of the Hungarian Central Railway Company
1849 Section Councillor at the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Public Works
1850 Head of the Architecture Section at the General Building Directorate
Awards and offices
1818 Gundel Prize (Silver)
1820 Gundel Prize (Gold)
1835 ordentl. Council of the Vienna Academy
1841 k.k. Rat
1842 Honorary Citizen of the City of Vienna
1850 Emperor Franz Josef Order (Commander's Cross)
1853 Member of the Bau- und Kunstcomité for the construction of the Votive Church
n.d. Member of the Central Commission for the Study and Conservation of Architectural Monuments
Memberships
1854 Altertumsverein
n.d. Agriculture. Society in Vienna
n.d. Accademia di Brera, Milan
n.d. Corr. Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects
Paul Sprenger was born in 1798 in Sagan in Lower Silesia (now Poland) as the son of a castle administrator of the Duchess of Sagan. Wilhelmine von Sagan financed his education in Sprenger's youth. She was – as the lover of Chancellor Metternich – one of the most influential women of the Wiener Vormärz, and she probably also played a supporting role in Sprenger's career.
After attending the School of Arts and Crafts in Breslau, Sprenger came to Vienna in 1817, where he completed a course in fine architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in the Erzverschneiderschule and from 1818 to 1823 (with interruption 1819–1820) studied mathematics, chemistry, physics, mechanics as well as agriculture and hydraulic engineering at the Polytechnic Institute. From 1820 to 1824 he attended the Nobile School of Architecture. As a gifted student, he received the silver Gundel Prize for Decorative Draughtsman in 1818 and the Golden Gundel Prize for architectural drawing in 1820. In addition to his studies, Sprenger also worked for Nobile, Moreau and Kudriaffsky.
In 1824 and 1825 he worked as an assistant at the Polytechnic Institute (agricultural and hydraulic engineering), in 1827 Sprenger became on Nobile's recommendation, first provisional, then in 1828 full professor of mathematics and perspective at the Vienna Academy. In addition, he built private buildings (such as the villa of Count Revitzky, 1836). But he received the most important orders from the authorities, so large-scale administrative buildings were built in Vienna according to his plans: Hauptmünzamt (1835), Hauptzollamt (1840–1844) and Finanzlandesdirektion (1841–1847) are together with the Polytechnic Institute of J. Schemerl, the Regional Court of J. Fischer and the k.k. Militärgeographische Institut of F. Mayern the most important public buildings, which were built on the Glacis redge until 1848.
Although he had already received the largest commissions for state buildings before his appointment to the Hofbaurat (1842), Sprenger's name became increasingly identified with this institution over time. In Sprenger's era, the Hofbaurat was the supreme building authority of the time, whose main task was to examine, correct and improve the submitted building plans, and Sprenger's administration did not in the least justify the bad reputation that had already been attached to him during his lifetime. Above all, he was accused (and the accusation is still valid today) of having used the office of the Hofbaurat to suppress architectural statements that he did not like and to send orders for the few state buildings planned in the Vormärz to the Hofbaurat. One of Sprenger's positive sides – according to his followers, he is said to have attracted and trained young, capable forces in his circle – has been little researched to this day.
In 1843, Sprenger undertook a building science journey through Germany, France, Belgium, Holland and England on behalf of the highest commission. Immediately after this trip (1844) he was appointed director of the Hungarian Central Railway Company and in this function he also designed some buildings (such as the railway station in Pest). From 1846 to 1847 the building for the n.ö. Lieutenancy in Vienna was built.
It was not until the revolutionary year of 1848 that the architectural profession successfully rebelled against the supreme building authority. With the constitution of the architects' association (actually as part of the Österr. Ingenieur-Verein) was guaranteed the assurance of free competition for all major state buildings. The starting point for this event was Sprenger's solo effort and the choice of style for the construction of the Altlerchenfelderkirche. However, it was by no means a unanimous action against Sprenger, as it appears from a later point of view; the Viennese artists were far too divided among themselves. In any case, free competition and the establishment of a Ministry of Public Works (which, however, existed only for a short time) had paved the way for "monumental architecture", which dominated the second half of the century. Paradoxically, it was precisely Sprenger's expert opinion that prevented a shortcoming of the new Competition Act (1849) and in this way even contributed to the improvement of the new regulation. According to the original plan, the architects involved in the competition were automatically to be given a seat and a vote on the jury.
For his colleagues, Sprenger was regarded as the Metternich of the fine arts, and the revolution was also interpreted as Sprenger's downfall. In fact, the revolution of 1848 brought about the abolition of the Hofbaurat, but this was by no means associated with a "fall" of Sprenger. He was held by powerful authorities (perhaps the Empress Carolina Augusta) and was able to establish himself in the public eye as the expert par excellence in all building matters. In 1848 he was commissioned to adapt the Winter Riding School into the meeting room of the Constituent Reichstag. A year later he was appointed to the section council in the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Public Works and in 1850 to head of the section for architecture at the General Building Department. Here he exercised a versatile construction administrative, consulting and managerial activity, in which his practical realism served him perfectly. The Franz-Josefs-Kaserne and the conversion of the Barbara monastery in Postgasse, for example, are among the construction projects he managed. In 1850, Sprenger was included in the academy reform by Minister of Education Thun. In 1850 and 1852 he submitted proposals for urban expansion.
Paul Sprenger died sprightly and busy as a result of a cholera epidemic at the age of 56 in Vienna.
Following the desire to present themselves as the innovators of architecture, the Ringstrasse architects did not hesitate to radically distance themselves from their "fathers". Thus, the merits of her teacher Pietro Nobile were soon forgotten, while Paul Sprenger was assigned the role of scapegoat, not only as the personification of the court architect – and the hated building bureaucracy – but also because of his architectural activity. The critics of the 19th century – above all Rudolf von Eitelberger – fed this negative assessment, and also influenced the following theorists. To this fact we still owe the prejudice against Sprenger and his work, which at least shaped the architecture of the Vormärz. An extensive examination of Sprenger's work is missing, apart from two unpublished dissertations (Cerny 1967; Schmalhofer 2000).
As Hoffmann wrote in 1972, with the almost systematic character assassination of Sprenger by the eminent art historian Rudolf v. Eitelberger, the baton was finally broken over an architectural epoch that in reality provided a solid foundation for the beginnings of the city's expansion. The starting point for Eitelberger's many insults against Sprenger was the process for the construction of the Altlerchenfelderkirche: Springer (1980) believes that the embellishment of the events in a heroic-dramatic manner probably goes back essentially to Eitelberger, who from about 1860 praised the year 1848 as a year of liberation for art in his essays and lectures. His authority is palpable in the following art historiography of Vincenti, Lützow, Bodenstein or partly also Hevesi. Of these, Sprenger was apostrophized as the main representative of a late classicism that had become sterile – preferred only in the sense of the austerity program.
An objective examination shows that Sprenger is to be regarded as the main master of the cubic architecture of the Vormärz, especially in administrative buildings. In his later buildings there are also characteristic features of romantic historicism.
The functionalist architecture of the Vormärz, coined by Sprenger, was strongly influenced by J. N. L. Durand and his theories on the importance of the inner truthfulness of building, and Sprenger thus became an important precursor for modern architecture in Austria. As Wagner-Rieger emphasized in 1972, the cubic building forms preferred in the sense of architectural objectivity determined the entire achievement of Sprenger, who, as a mathematician and teacher of geometry, actually found it irrelevant whether motifs of classicist or already romantic-historicist character settled on the surface of the buildings. Today he is regarded as a master of internal construction, for whom the comfortable and manageable distribution of space as well as the practicality was the supreme law. Notwithstanding his vivid feeling for the great and beautiful, the façade was to be "built only as a result of the internal construction [...] express more that corresponds to the purpose than the purely painterly beautiful". Thus, its facades are of noble proportions, simple and any unmotivated decoration is avoided.
Sprenger's main works are the ärarischen buildings. Over the course of a decade (1835–1846), the Main Mint, the Main Customs Office, the Regional Finance Directorate and the N.ö. Lieutenancy were built according to his plans – at a time that was still suffering from the consequences of the French Wars and in which the limited financial resources of architectural tonic activity set limits. These buildings are characterised by the regular arrangement of the floor plans, the generous structuring of the spacious staircases and the central access to the individual rooms through a well thought-out corridor system – all motifs that correspond to the objectivity of Durand and ensure an architectural balance for these buildings with little ostentation.
The main mint (Vienna 1835, Am Heumarkt 1838), built between 3 and 1, was commented by contemporaries as a magnificent building. The undecorated masses of the cubic building rise above a regular floor plan, in which a rectangular courtyard forms the core of the broadly supported block. The main façade is rhythmized by a five-axis central risalit, crowned by an attic with tablets and figures. In the façade composition, the windows closing with semicircular arches, which are reminiscent of Italian Renaissance motifs, stand out. Only the portico presented to the three-part portal with double columns supporting a balcony sets a sculptural and representative accent.
The former main customs office was built between 1840 and 1844 according to plans by Sprenger by the city architects A. Korompay and L. Mayer. The building site was located in the floodplain of the Vienna River and the Danube Canal as well as next to the harbor basin of the former Wiener Neustadt Canal and therefore many difficulties had to be overcome during planning. The building comprised two courtyards and was united with the Finanzlandesdirektion to form a spacious complex by means of arcade arches. The building of the former Finanzlandesdirektion was built between 1841 and 1847. The type is still committed to late classicist mass construction. On the other hand, both in the portal zone accompanied by crowning figures, as well as in the window frames, motifs appear that go beyond classicism and take up forms of Renaissance provenance. The sculptures of the Finanzlandesdirektion remained a singular phenomenon in Sprenger's design in Vormärz, which was otherwise limited to simply profiled window frames and cornices. According to Wagner-Rieger in 1972, romantic-historicist architectural ideas were already incorporated into Sprenger's world of forms, which were then to be condensed to a considerable extent in all his subsequent works.
In the works of Paul Sprenger, which he planned shortly before the March Revolution, transitions from the cubic style to a richer, decorative façade design are already emerging. The stylistic elements that Sprenger used for the decoration came mainly from the Italian early Renaissance. At the Hofkammerarchiv in the Johannesgasse (built as a conversion and extension of the old Mariazellerhof 1843–1844) and especially at the Lower Austria. Lieutenancy at Herrengasse 11 (executed by I. Lössl 1846–1847), round-arched windows as well as decorative terracotta frames implemented Italian suggestions on a structurally still cubic and unaccentuated building. However, this change of style did not find favour in contemporary criticism and was quickly and pejoratively referred to as the "k.k. Statthaltereistil".
Sprenger's turn to an almost strictly historicist attitude can only be found in his unrealized projects. In 1845 the turning point took place with the design for a memorial building for Emperor Franz in neo-Gothic forms. At the request of the parish leaders for the Altlerchenfelderkirche, Sprenger first also wrote a Gothic design, but it was approved by the Lower Austrian Church. In 1847, Sprenger drew up a plan in the – more cost-effective – "Jesuit style". In view of the fierce controversy provoked by Sprenger's design, it is remarkable that the difference to the building carried out by J.G. Müller was by no means so principled. On the contrary – in both cases these are typical achievements of romantic historicism, which attached great importance to large areas for fresco decoration. That Müller's design was not so far from Sprenger's intention is proven by the fact that Sprenger unreservedly emphasized the excellence of J.G. Müller's new plan and advocated increasing the construction cost for the much more elaborate building.
From 1848 to 1849, Sprenger also made an approach to pure Renaissance forms in his design for a new court opera theatre at the Kärntnertor. The architecture is less strictly classicist compared to other of his buildings and presumably he wanted to build a brick building – following the general tendency to real material construction.
In his career, Sprenger also dealt with restorations. The understanding of the Gothic heritage in Austria was very poor in the first half of the 19th century: 1841–1842 (according to other sources 1836–1844), the spire of St. Stephen's tower was stiffened by an iron skeleton according to Sprenger's plans, regardless of the original substance. Friedrich Schmidt had to wait for a restoration attitude that was considered authenticity: 20 years later, the reinforced spire was removed by Schmidt due to severe rust blasting and replaced by stonemasonry.
The neo-Gothic spire of the Augustinian Church, which Sprenger constructed between 1848 and 1852 as a replacement for the Baroque helmet destroyed by fire in 1848, better withstood the dangers. The founding father of Austrian art history, Eduard Melly, commented, however, that Sprenger "[is] incapable, since his design for the Augustinian Tower expresses a complete ignorance of the simplest Gothic concepts of form".
With more success, Sprenger campaigned for the promotion of the applied arts. He was a founding member of the n.ö. Gewerbeverein and on Sprenger's initiative a department for architecture was founded in this association, as a forum for all architects and civil engineers. He also opened a "Copiranstalt für Gewerbedraughtsmen", for which he brought plaster casts from Paris.
In his buildings (from coins to the Lieutenancy to the projected Kaiser Franz Memorial Church, Altlerchenfelder Church and Opera House), Sprenger adapted post-antique forms from several epochs and cultures, thus opening the doors to historicism in Viennese architecture. What seemed so classicist to his equally romantically thinking and creative contemporaries was the blocky, non-plastic design of his architecture.
Paul Sprenger exerted a significant influence on the later generation of architects: Hansen followed his preference for terracottas as architectural ornamentation, and his opera house design undoubtedly served as a model for the competition projects for the court opera by Hasenauer and Kirschner as well as the Carltheater by van der Nüll and Sicardsburg.
top
Works
RESIDENTIAL/COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS:
1835 Country house of Count Revitzky, once Obermeidling near Vienna (demolished)
1836 Miethaus Pazelt, Vienna 1, Freyung (demolished)
1838 Apartment building Gostischa, Vienna 1, Bognergasse (demolished)
1840 Miethaus, Wien 1, Bauernmarkt (demolished)
PUBLIC WORKS:
1835–1837 Sudhaus, Ebensee, Upper Austria (demolished)
1835–1838 Main Mint, Vienna 3, Am Heumarkt 1
1836–1838 Salinengebäude, Ebensee, Upper Austria
1840–1841 Amtshaus der Salinen, Bad Ischl, Upper Austria
1840–1844 Hauptzollamt, Vienna 3 (demolished after war damage)
1841–1847 Finanzlandesdirektion, Vienna 3, Vordere Zollamtsstraße 3
1841–1842 Reinforcement of the spire of St. Stephan in Vienna (renewed by F. Schmidt)
1842 Institute for the Blind, Pest / Budapest, H (cancelled)
1843–1844 Hofkammerarchiv, Vienna 1, Johannesgasse 6 (as conversion and extension of the old Mariazellerhof)
around 1844 Train stations in Pest / Budapest, H; Waitzen / Vac, H; Sollnock / Szolnok, H
1845 New Pavilion on the Promenade, Linz, Upper Austria (demolished)
1846–1847 n.ö. Lieutenancy, Vienna 1, Herrengasse
1847–1848 Old Town Hall, Prague, Bohemia / Praha, CZ (extension on the east side; demolished after war damage)
1848 Conversion of the Winter Riding School of the Hofburg into a meeting room of the Reichstag
1848–1852 Augustinerkirche, Vienna 1, Augustinerstraße (neogot. Tower helmet)
1849 Parish Church St. Johann ob Hohenberg, Styria (new tower)
1850–1851 Prison (former Benedictine monastery), Garsten, Upper Austria (adaptation)
1850–1852 Barbarakirche, Vienna 1, Postgasse
1850–1854 Postdirektion (formerly Barbarastift), Vienna 1, Postgasse (conversion, with F. Kirschner)
INDUSTRIAL/COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS:
1830 Factory building, Schlöglmühl, Lower Austria
1839 Water tower (engine house) of the water reservoir of the Kaiser-Ferdinand-Wasserleitung
INTERIOR DESIGN:
1840 Monument to Archduke Rudolph, Bad Ischl, Upper Austria
1849 Monument to General Hentzi, Ofen / Budapest, H (with H. Bergmann; demolished)
1853 Monument to Colonel Kopal, Znojmo, Bohemia / Znojmo, CZ