II. The Artist and his Patrons – Josef Hoffmann and the Primavesi Family The beginnings of the Wiener Werkstätte In his autobiographical sketch Autobiography34, Josef Hoffmann describes the foundation of the Wiener Werkstätte: In 1903 Kolo Moser and he had once again been sitting together desperately at lunch and lamented about the necessity of founding artists’ workshops. The banker and art collector Fritz Waerndorfer, sitting with them at the table, had asked them how much they would need to initiate such an undertaking. When the artists thought 600 crowns might be sufficient, Waerndorfer laughingly had placed the amount on the table. He and Moser had at once been prepared to start the matter, Hoffmann writes. On the very same day they had rented a small apartment and furnished it with a some Biedermeier furniture bought spontaneously. In the evening the two of them had sat in their new studio and had pondered about what had to be done now. The artists concludes his report of the birth of the Wiener Werkstätte: Our funds had been completely used up by what we needed on the first day and we did not know how to convey this debacle to Wärndorfer. Wärndorfer laughed, comforted us and promised to discuss with his mother how they could muster a larger sum for the foundation of comprehensive workshops. Within several days he had an amount of fifty thousand crowns […]35. This story – even if it has only the character of an amusing anecdote36 – still paradigmatically describes the tensions that right from the beginning marked the varied 29-year history of the by now world famous experimental workshop for handicraft: between innovative artistic intentions and the readiness of bourgeois patrons to supply funds because these – doubtlessly having a sincere passion for art37 – in doing so could demonstrate their own understanding of themselves as the future-directed part of society. As is known, the first patron of the Wiener Werkstätte, Fritz Waerndorfer, in 1914 under pressure of the economic conditions (and that of his family) had to take leave with a one-way-ticket via America38, and the Wiener Werkstätte, productive cooperative of handicraftsmen, registered cooperative with unlimited liability, went bankrupt, at the same time was re-founded as Betriebsgesellschaft m. b. H.(with limited liability) of the Vienna Workshop productive cooperative for handicraft items. The largest amount of shares among the associates, almost 30%, were acquired by the member of the Reichstag, Robert Primavesi and his cousin, the Moravian industrialist Otto Primavesi resp. his wife Eugenie (Mäda)39. At this time, Otto Primavesi and his wife Mäda had already been closely attached to Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte. After Anton Hanak, who had designed the Austrian Pavilion at the International Art Exhibition in Rome in 191140, had established contacts between the couple and the Viennese artist41, Otto Primavesi commissioned Hoffmann with the modernisation of his bank in Olmütz, of two rooms in his Olmütz villa, and the building of a country house in Winkelsdorf, whose interior decoration was partly undertaken by Wiener Werkstätte (cf. the chapter on The Country House of the Primavesi Family in Winkelsdorf below). Apart from the traditionally deep relations of the Moravian to the Viennese cultural scene, at this time already existed intensive bonds to the Viennese artistic scene on the side of the Primavesis – Otto Primavesi as vice-president of the Olmütz Board of Trade was the spokesman of the Austrian Werkbund (union of artists, industrialists and craftsmen) for Moravia, as Anton Hanak from 1905 had created many sculptures and handicraft works for the family. From Hanak’s works for Otto and Mäda Primasvesi the family’s understanding of patronage can well be seen, which is based less on economic needs, but rather on the desire to create identity, in this concrete case the idea of the family. Thus Hanak in some of his handicraft work focuses on femininity and motherhood as a centre of the family, for instance in the bronze entrance door Mother presenting her children, created in 1911 for the Olmütz Villa Primavesi, where a woman with open palms proudly presents the two daughters standing behind her, or in the small sculpture Mother with four daughters (1915/16), where from the body of the female figure – who reminds of an archaic mother goddess – four children are growing.46 The portraits by Gustav Klimt Mäda Primavesi (1912) and Eugenia Primavesi (1913/14), commissioned in 1912 and 1913, also underline the importance of femininity in the family. The portrait Eugenia Primavesi shows a front-picture of the four-times mother in a dress strewn with ornaments. Yet whereas – as Gottfried Fliedl analyses – in Klimt’s portraits of women at this time those portrayed are more and more “decorporated”47 by the ornamentation, in this portrait Klimt emphasises the self-assured motherly corporeal physique of the figure with two circular body forms from shoulder to wast resp. from waist to knee48. The Vienna Workshop under the management of Otto Primavesi Through their friendly contacts with Gustav Klimt and especially Josef Hofmann – to which presumably Hanak had contributed, too49 – Otto and particularly Mäda Primavesi began more and more to be interested in contemporary handicraft, till on 22 June, 1915 Otto Primavesi took over the management of the Wiener Werkstätte. Otto Primavesi moved the headquarters from the 7th to the 1st district, and about the turn of 1917/18 the Wiener Werkstätte opened a shop in the Kärntnerstraße which exclusively offered products from the textile branch. Under Primavesi’s leadership the firm began regularly to participate in fairs and enlarged their marketing net by a representation in Berlin (1916) and branches in Marienbad (1917), Zürich 1917),Velden (1922) and New York (1922).50 In March resp. May 1918 Otto Primavesi took over the basic investments of most partners and deposited 150.000 crowns in cash for the partner shares of the Wiener Werkstätte Productive Cooperative – presumably to increase the liquid assets of the firm.51 The continuous financial problems – thus the turnover of the branches for instance remained far below expectations – in the end caused Josef Hoffmann to commission his former pupil and assistant Philip Häusler with the reorganisation of the works of the Vienna Workshop, organisationally, artistically and technically. The conflicts arising from Häusler’s reorganisation attempts which, after far-reaching differences of opinion with the Primavesi family, in 1925 led to his leaving the firm, prove the dichotomy between artistic programme and economic management that existed right from the beginning. The work programme, published in 1905 and presumably written by Josef Hoffmann, complains about the boundless damage which bad mass production on the one hand and the thoughtless imitation of old styles on the other has caused on the field of handicraft to arrive at one of the fundamental statements of the programme: We wish to establish an intimate contact between audience, designer and craftsman and produce good simple goods for the house. We start from the purpose, functionality is our first condition, our strength will be good proportions and high-quality treatment of the material. Where possible we will decorate, but without force and not at any cost. […] The value of artistic work and idea shall be recognized and appreciated again. The work of the artistic craftsman shall be appraised by the same standards as the painter’s or sculptor’s. We cannot and do not want to compete with this cheapness which above all affects the craftsman, and to achieve the joy of creating and a dignified human existence for him again we consider our most noble duty. All this can only be achieved step by step.53 Already one year after publication of the programme when the first financial straits came up – which ultimately led to Moser’s leaving the firm54 – it was obvious that the Vienna Workshop had missed its aim to achieve an aesthetic education of the masses (and hence a clearing out of their apartments, stuffed with historic furniture) with the artistic design of household items. Their products hardly ever reached a larger clientele, on the one hand because they showed little understanding for the radical stylistic form of the products, on the other hand because the handicraft production of the items caused prices which – particularly after World War I could not be met by the impoverished average Austrian citizen.55 From the – as Werner J. Schweiger emphasizes – rather few sources can be concluded that the customers of the Wiener Werkstätte mainly recruited from the environment of the artists themselves; also the progressive (financially potent) bourgeoisie were potential customers; and a certain snob appeal may be seen as a motive for buying as well […].56 The transformation of the Vienna Workshop into a company led to an increase in the number of customers, yet Schweiger points out that at the same time the partners were also debtors and that this circle partner – customer – debtor contributed to the mostly tense financial situation57. When Philipp Häusler tried with a number of licence contracts with the industry – the Wiener Werkstätte artists provided designs for the industrial production of wallpaper, picture and mirror frames, services etc. – to achieve an economically sound basis for the firm, he met with strong opposition by Josef Hoffmann who insisted on the exclusiveness of the products.58 Even in 1929, in the Wiener Werkstätte anniversary publication at the 25th anniversary, Hoffmann emphasised that since the foundation of the Vienna Workshop it had been clear that manual work and machine work would have to look quite differently, that the machine would possess other, unlimited techniques and would never be allowed to imitate handicraft, whereas the handicraft worker, not limited by anything could give free room to his imagination, and the marvellous work of his hands would acquire its value solely through a well skilled feeling for material and tools.59 This handicraft worker, not limited by anything, who in artists’ workshops that presumably had existed since 1913 worked without caring about production costs, demand or sales60 was Häusler’s constant problem child in the same way as the complicated techniques with which Dagobert Peche requested the working hours of many members of staff he complains about as extravaganzas in a letter61. Like Hoffmann, the Primavesi family, who naturally as a major partner of the Vienna Workshop could block all decisions made by Häusler, were sceptical towards his attempts to slow down the artists’ experimental enthusiasm and introduce a market-oriented economic concept directed towards mass production. Neither Fritz Wärndorfer nor Otto Primavesi, writes Jane Kallir, the Wiener Werkstätte’s two principal financiers, ever viewed his investments in business terms. […] Primavesi’s daughter recalled, “Our only wish was to make it possible for the artists to do what they wanted, it had nothing to do with business. When you have a lot of money, you think you always will have money”62 Otto Primavesi, she continues, for his part, had no illusions about the impracticality of the Wiener Werkstätte’s ideals, but he also recognized that there was no other way to run the workshops and still remain true to their original purpose.63 Kallir’s description of Otto Primavesi’s naïve patronship that withstood the time and the economy must rather be attributed to Mäda. Margareta and Götz Primavesi confirm Werner Schweiger’s hints that in respect of the economic management there were fierce arguments between the two and it was Mäda really that clung to the concept of manually produced luxury goods.64 Whereas Otto Primavesi, worn down between the management of the Wiener Werkstätte and the administration of his other firms, did not want to invest (and lose) his whole property in the Wiener Werkstätte, Mäda viewed the Wiener Werkstätte from a different angle: Mäda, thus Jane Kallir, considered the preservation of the Wiener Werkstätte not only an artistic, but a patriotic duty […]65 The difference of opinion ended in an irreconcilable estrangement of the couple so that Otto on 25 June 1925 retired as manager, separated from Mäda, and passed his shares on to her.66 Shortly one year later, in May 1926, the insolvency procedure was opened67. The financial crash of the firm was preceded by Otto Primavesis’s death in February and the bankruptcy of the Primavesi Bank in Olmütz in April 192668. The Viennese newspaper Der Abend (The Evening) in a spiteful article on the bankruptcy of the bank, accused the Primavesi family as it were of a “fahrlässige Krida” (negligent impairment of creditors’ interests): Otto Primavesi, the owner of the bank, without being an expert seized the Wiener Werkstätte and brought all his relatives, especially his wife into leading positions. […] and it was actually this clan that without expert knowledge completely ran down the firm, once Vienna’s pride.69 Doubtlessly the blame the that family had given positions in the Wiener Werkstätte to artistically resp. economically incompetent relatives is justified. Philipp Häusler already complained in 1922 to Joseph Urban about that crowd of amateurs, related or friendly with the Primavesi family70 who hampered his attempts of reorganisation, and the textile industrialist Kuno Grohmann, too, who from October 1927 acted as manager of the Wiener Werkstätte, reports in his memoirs Geschichtlicher Rückblick auf die Ereignisse der Wiener Werkstätte (Historic Retrospective on the Events of the Wiener Werkstätte) of difficulties with Mäda Primavesi’s son-in-law who, according to Grohmann, repeatedly even had his fingers in the till […].71 Such undifferentiated accusations as the ones just quoted usually omit that the artistic conception of the Wiener Werkstätte could only be realized by patrons like Fritz Waerndorfer or Otto Primavesi who neglected the economic aspect. In order to produce individual pieces and luxury articles, the artists needed a generous financier , in Jane Kallir’s diction the perfect Milchkuh or milk cow – the one who would never run dry.72 A certain carelessness in the business conduct of the Wiener Werkstätte actually might have existed right from the beginning on account of slapdash calculations and incompetent staff in the business department73, moreover it must be considered that both Otto Primavesi as well as the later manager Kuno Grohmann because of the administration of their own firms were unable to carry out the management of the Wiener Werkstätte full scale.
Mäda Primavesi and Kuno Grohmann — Saviours of the Wiener Werkstätte? After the bankruptcy of the Wiener Werkstätte had been averted in August 1926 by a 35% compensation quota, Kuno Grohmann, a distant relative of Mäda’s, together with two other industrialists made money available to the firm. His motivation to invest in the Wiener Werkstätte was based on two reasons. On the one hand he appreciated it as an important cultural factor and considered its downfall as a great loss for the world of art74, on the other hand there was also the attempt to help Mäda Primavesi. The trade register entries of 1925 indicate that the latter transferred her Wiener Werkstätte shares to Eduard J. Wimmer and Ludwig Gallia as trustees one month after Otto had signed them over.75 When Grohmann one year later met her by chance, he writes, she told him that a year before she had made a contract with a Wiener Werkstätte manager before a major operation who now abused his rights and did not put any money at her disposal.76 With his help Mäda succeeded to get her mortgaged shares free again77, and after he had taken over the management, Mäda Primavesi was appointed artistic advisor of the firm with a considerable salary.78 However, there had been constant differences of opinion between her and the other members of staff: These differences already revealed that it was difficult to work with Frau Primavesi […] as she, completely ignorant in business matters, gave vent to her energy in these personal fights with the individual directors without caring for any objective or economic moments.79 It is difficult to judge Mäda Primavesi’s real economic or social competence in dealing with staff members, as there are only sparse sources, and one must always be sceptical towards personal memories, especially when, as in this case, the relationship between Kuno Grohmann and Mäda Primavesi ended in open hostility80 and one has to consider the resentments that are reflected in the typescript. It is true that the completely different views of Mäda Priavesi and Kuno Grohmann on the Wiener Werkstätte led to very different assessments regarding the management of the firm. Whereas Kuno Grohmann, for instance, rejected the 25th Anniversary Celebrations – he did not want to burden the tense financial situation of the firm with what he considered unnecessary costs – Josef Hoffmann and Mäda Primavesi understood the big social event, planned on account of the jubilee, and the anniversary publication on the Wiener Werkstätte – impressive in its relief-printed cover, its innovative layout and its unusual typography – as a show that was to demonstrate to the public the firm’s accomplishments and importance for the international handicraft scene. And the large costs, caused by the feast and the anniversary publication, resp. the disorder in the firm because of the two month preparations for the celebrations, which Grohmann criticised from his viewpoint, from the point of view of modern public relations work – numerous articles appeared in the press on account of the celebrations83 – can be seen as sensible investment into a successful image campaign. Two years later Kuno Grohmann as well as Mäda Primavesi withdrew from the firm – the input of outside capital in 192884 could not stabilize the finances of the Wiener Werkstätte which moreover in 1929 were again under pressure through the new Berlin branch, and also an attempt by the federal ministry of trade and traffic to rescue the firm failed85. From the trade register files of 1931 it can be concluded that Mäda’s shares went to Alfred Hofmann, director of the Austrian Likrusta Works.86 In 1932, Josef Hoffmann also left the Wiener Werkstätte, after his contract had not been prolonged.87
Attempts to reanimate the Wiener Werkstätte by Josef Hoffmann and Mäda Primavesi On 3 June, 1933, nine months after the final ruin of the Wiener Werkstätte, the Wiener Tag (Vienna Day) under the heading Firma Hoffmann-Primavesi oder die “Neue Wiener Werkstätte” (The Hoffmann-Primavesi firm or the new Vienna Workshop) announced its intended reanimation by Josef Hoffmann and Mäda Primavesi as art and business directors. The reanimation would presuppose, thus the paper, that the former directors in recognition of the good that perished and of the coming things that are now necessary – themselves first have to be transformed and renovated. From the old characteristics in first place the taste, the good sense of form and colour can be preserved. Far more important, however, it appears to find a way from the original luxury production that only wanted to satisfy the individual consumer to mass consumption and the formation of a mass taste which is the touchstone for the new experiment […].88 Presumably Josef Hoffmann’s and Mäda Primavesis’s project failed because of lacking financial means since in September 1937 the company that in January 1933 had been entered into the trade register was deleted again for reasons of inactivity.89 Even afterwards Hoffmann as well as Primavesi did not abandon the idea of a reanimation of the Wiener Werkstätte. Josef Hoffmann pursued his idea of artists’ workshops in the Versuchswerkstätte für künstlerische Formgebung (Experimental workshop for artistic form) that had been instituted under the National Socialists, and Götz Primavesi remembers that his grandmother even after 1945 – if in vain – tried to convince the Austrian authorities of the necessity to reanimate the Wiener Werkstätte.91 Josef Hoffmann and Mäda Primavesis remained friends till Hoffmann’s death in 1956. Thus Hoffmann in his autobiography of 1950 remembers full of gratitude and warmth the determination with which Mäda Primavesi after her husband’s retirement resp. death fought for the survival of the Wiener Werkstätte: Yet Frau Primavesi did not want to give up her fight and tried to carry on with the Wiener Werkstätte. In the beginning her enthusiastic, devoted activity seemed to be successful, but the deteriorating economic situation in Europe and the completely different circumstances brought new sorrows and difficulties daily. Our production, indeed, had to solve a lot of problems and there was no lack of ideas or surprising experiments. The production of actually quite unique printed textiles, wallpapers and fashionable items of all kinds had reached a high quality and found recognition all over the world, the financial yield, however, could not be mastered by us who were inexperienced in all these necessities.92
The so far unknown bookplates and bookplate designs which the artist
designed for his friends and patrons Otto and Mäda Primavesi and
which are presented in the following part, confirm these bonds in a
mutual endeavour for the applied arts.
Footnotes 34. Josef Hoffmann: Selbstbiographie. In: Hilde Spiel u. a. (Hrsg.): Ver Sacrum, Neue Hefte für Kunst und Literatur, 4.1972, Ausgabe B, Wien 1972, 104-123. 35. Josef Hoffmann: Selbstbiographie (s. ann. 34), 111. 36 Hoffmann’s idea of a workshop for handicraft can be retraced till 1902, cf. Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 22ff. and Baroni, d'Aurio: Josef Hoffmann und die Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 12), 50f. 37. Baroni, d'Aurio: Josef Hoffmann und die Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 12), 56, footnote 9. 38. Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 96; it would go beyond the scope of this article to report about the history of the Wiener Werkstätte in detail, cf.: Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22) and Herta Arbeithuber: Die Wiener Werkstätte von 1903-1932. Ein Unternehmen im Spannungsfeld zwischen künstlerischem Idealismus und wirtschaftlicher Pragmatik - Eine Chronologie der Unternehmensgeschichte. Dipl. Arb., Linz 1995; Baroni, d. Aurio: Josef Hoffmann und die Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 12); Jane Kallir: Viennese Design and the Wiener Werkstätte, London 1986. 39. The capital stock of the company amounted to 830.000,- Crowns, consisting of 660.000,- Cr. cash deposits and 170.000,- Cr. deposits in kind (from the cooperative) together. Robert Primavesi’s capital stock was 100.000,- Cr., those of Otto und Mäda 50.000,- each. Apart from the artistic staff of the Wiener Werkstätte, Josef Hoffmann, Otto Prutscher und Eduard J. Wimmer, above all clients and customers acquired shares. Cf. Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 96f., resp. Herta Arbeithuber: Die Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 38), 65f. The Primavesi family came from Lombardy, settled in Olmütz towards the end of the 18th century and soon commanded one of the highest positions in the Moravian financial and economic world. Otto Primavesi (Olmütz 1868-1926 Wien) according to Kuno Grohmann was one of the richest Moravian industrialists who together with his brother possessed a 2/3 majority of the society of Moravian sugar factories, the flax spinning mill in Würbenthal and a bank in Olmütz. (Kuno Grohmann: Geschichtlicher Rückblick auf die Ereignisse in der Wiener Werkstätte, without year, 1. The copy of the 30 page typescript, dated 1930 by Werner J. Schweiger, was kindly made available to us by the Kunstarchiv Werner J. Schweiger). Eugenie Primavesi (Wien 1871-1962 Wien), nee Butschek, descended from the family of a railroad official that around the middle of the 19th century moved to Langenzersdorf. After training to be an actress she played in Prague and Olmütz under her artist’s name Mäda – which she kept also in the future. In Olmütz she became acquainted with Otto Primavesi whom she married in 1894. From the marriage of Otto and Mäda Primavesi sprang four children: Otto (1898-1985), Lola (1900-?), Mäda (1903-2000), and Melitta (1908-?). Cf. Pavel Zatloukal: Anton Hanak und die Mäzenatenfamilie Primavesi. In: Friedrich Grassegger, Wolfgang Krug (Hrsg.): Anton Hanak (1875-1934), Wien, Köln, Weimar 1997, 114 and Franz Planer (Hrsg.): Das Jahrbuch der Wiener Gesellschaft 1929. Biographische Beiträge zur Wiener Zeitgeschichte, Wien 1929, 492. 40. Cf. Sekler: Josef Hoffmann (s. ann. 13), 143 338ff. resp. 41. Cf. Zatloukal: Anton Hanak (s. ann. 39), 123. 42. As far as can be seen from literature, Otto’s cousin Robert Primavesi might have possessed shares of the Primavesi bank, cf. also the interview with Margareta and Götz Primavesi from 16 November, 2000. 43. Cf. Sekler: Josef Hoffmann (s. ann. 13), 127. 44. Cf. Zatloukal: Anton Hanak (s. ann. 39), 116. 45. Cf. Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 96. 46. On Anton Hanak’s sculptures and handicraft works for the Primavesi family cf. Zatloukal: Anton Hanak (s. ann. 39), 112-130, or Sabine Aggermann-Bellenberg: Bildhauerei zwischen Historismus und Moderne. Zum bildhauerischen Werk von Anton Hanak vor 1918, 105-111, both in: Friedrich Grassegger, Wolfgang Krug (Hrsg.): Anton Hanak (s. ann. 39). 47. Gottfried Fliedl: GustavKlimt 1862-1918. Die Welt in weiblicher Gestalt, Köln 1993, 213. 48. As to further commissions by the Primavesi family to Gustav Klimt cf. Zatloukal: Anton Hanak (s. ann. 39), 123, footnote 29. 49. Cf. Zatloukal: Anton Hanak (s. ann. 39). 123. 50. Cf. Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 97; Arbeithuber: Die Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 38), 69ff. 51. After these transcriptions, Otto Primavesi with his capital stock of 700.000,- rowns, possesses more than 80% of the total capital stock of 830.000,- crowns; cf. Arbeithuber: Die Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 38), 70f. 52. On the biography of PhilippHäusler cf.: Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 112. 53. Work programme of the Wiener Werkstätte, Wien 1905, quoted after Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 42. 54. Cf. Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 68. 55. Kolo Moser formulated the impossibility of reconciling the sophisticated conditions of production with an only halfway cost-effective calculation of prices already in 1907 in a letter to Hoffmann; cf. Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 68 resp. footnote 262. 56. Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 69. 57. Schweiger: ibid., 72f. 58. Cf. Schweiger: ibid., 113f. 59. Josef Hoffmann: Die .Wiener Werkstätte. In: Die Wiener Werkstätte 1903-1928. Modernes Kunstgewerbe und sein Weg, Wien 1929, without page numbers. 60. According to Schweiger the artists’ workshops were singular in the history of handicraft. Artists who did not own a workshop or were lacking the means of production could experiment there without their own materials and free of personal costs. The Wiener Werkstätte only reserved the right to acquire those products that met their qualitative demands and make them part of their range of goods. Cf. Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 97ff. 61. Letter of 13 June 1922 by Philipp Häusler to Joseph Urban, p. 6, quoted after: Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 113. 62. Kallir: Viennese Design and the Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 38), 37. 63. Kallir: Viennese Design and the Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 38), 39. 64. Interview with Margareta und Götz Primavesi on 16 Nov. 2000. 65. Kallir: Viennese Design and the Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 38), 150, fn. 50. 66. Cf. Arbeithuber: Die Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 38),74. 67. On the insolvency procedure of the Wiener Werkstätte cf. Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 121f. and Arbeithuber: Die Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 38),77. 68. Otto Primavesi died on 8 Februar 1926 in Vienna from a pneumonia; cf. Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), fn. 538. 69. Die Wiener Werkstätte und das Olmützer Bankhaus Primavesi. In: Der Abend, 9. April, Wien 1926, 4. 70. Letter of 13 June 1922 by Philipp Häusler to Joseph Urban, p. 6, quoted after: Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 112f., also s. fn. 480. 71. Kuno Grohmann: Geschichtlicher Rückblick auf die Ereignisse in der Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 39), 14. 72. Kallir: Viennese Design and the Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 38), 38. 73. Carl Otto Czeschka, for instance, in a letter to Hans Ankwicz-Kleehoven criticized the insufficient planning and calculation of Fritz Waerndorfer during the work for the Palais Stoclet, causing chaotic working conditions; cf. letter by Carl Otto Czeschka to Hans Ankwicz-Kleehoven of 15-19 October, 1954 in: Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, Handschriftensammlung, I. N. 158.576. Also Kuno Grohmann in his historic retrospective remembers the unclear resp. faulty bookkeeping in the in the WienerWerkstätte; cf. KunoGrohmann: Geschichtlicher Rückblick auf die Ereignisse in der Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 39), 13. 74. Grohmann: Geschichtlicher Rückblick ibid., 7. 75. Cf. Arbeithuber: Die Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 38), 74: transfer to Eduard J. Wimmer 280.000,- crowns, to Ludwig Gallia 420.000,- crowns. 76. Grohmann: Geschichtlicher Rückblick (s. ann. 39), 2. 77 Cf. Grohmann: Geschichtlicher Rückblick ibid., 3. 78. Grohmann: ibid, 11. 79. Grohmann: ibid., II. 80. Interview with Margareta und Götz Primavesi on 16 Nov. 2000. 81. Die Wiener Werkstätte 1903-1928 (s. ann. 59). 82. Grohmann: Geschichtlicher Riickblick (s. ann. 39), 13. 83. On the 25th anniversary of the Wiener Werkstätte cf. Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 123ff. and fn. 572. 84. Cf. Arbeithuber: Die Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 38), 80f. 85. Cf. Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 26 and fn. 586. 86. Cf. Arbeithuber: Die Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 38), 82. 87. Cf.: Josef Hoffmann und die "W. W.". Das Scheiden des Künstlers aus der .“Wiener Werkstätte". In: Neues Wiener Tagblatt of 21. Jan., 1932, Wien 1932, 5. 88. Firma Hoffmann-Primavesi oder die „Neue Wiener Werkstätte". In: Der Wiener Tag of 3 June, 1933, Wien 1933, 4. 89. Cf. Schweiger: Wiener Werkstätte (s. ann. 22), 127 and fn. 593. 90. Cf. Sekler: Josef Hoffinann (s. ann. 13), 219f. and: Ehrenvolle Berufung Prof Hoffmanns, Völkischer Beobachter, Viennese edition, of 8 June, 1941, 5 and Neues Streben im Kunsthandwerk, VB-Gespräch mit Prof Hoffmann. Völkischer Beobachter, Vienna edition, of 2 June, 1941. 5. 91. Interview with Margareta und Götz Primavesi on 16 Nov. 2000; Mäda Primavesi died on 31 May 1962 in Vienna, not - as wrongly asserted by Pavel Zatloukal – in New York. Zatloukal presumably confused Eugenie (Mäda) Primavesi with her daughter Mäda, who died in Canada in 2000; cf. Zatloukal. Anton Hanak (s. ann. 39). 130. 92. Josef Hoffmann: Selbstbiographie (s. ann. 34). 122.
|
