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In western Vienna, in an affluent area of private houses, a key work of Viennese modernism, the historic Villa Bear has been rescued from obscurity. After a five year restoration costing €10 million, it was built in record time between 1929 and 1930 by Austrian Design icon Joseph Frank. And almost a century on, from the 8th of March, the villa will finally open to the public. You're listening to Tall Stories, a monocle production brought to you by the team behind the Urbanist. I'm Andrew Tuck. In this episode, Alexi Korolev got a preview of this modernist gem in Vienna.
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Joseph Frank said, I have to think, how do you get that in English? He said, the architecture is a permanent fight for room and time, meaning that it's a fight for gaining back some comfortable space for us, a space where we can relax and where we can reconnect to nature.
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And here's another line from one can use everything that can be used.
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He opened this strict dogma of functionalism. For him, it was more about the inside and not so much about the outside, not about representation, much more about how do you feel as a person or a human that is living here and what are your needs? Much more than representation. You wouldn't find any marble or very expensive materials in this house. Compared to Ms. Van der Rohe, who was building at the exact same time Villa Tugenthard, this is a completely different approach in that respect.
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Even so, the Villa Bear is unmistakably modernist, just not in the way Bauhaus architects like Mies van der Rohe understood it. In 1930, the year he completed the villa with fellow architect Oskar Vlach, Frank published an influential book called Architecture as Symbol. In it, he took aim at radical German functionalism, which he said stood in direct contradiction with real life. Modern German architecture may be objective, practical, principally correct, often even attractive, but it remains lifeless. For his part, Frank tried to inject life not only into architecture, but also into furniture and textiles. Over the course of his career, he created around 200 fabric patterns, most of them for the Swedish home furnishings company Sphengst 10.
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So my name is Katharina Eckert. I'm managing Willa Bear. He designed those patterns mostly later in the Villa Pierre. There was only one textile design that was already designed at that time that we had also here in the house. All the designs here now in the guest rooms are later and are mostly commissioned for Svenskten. But in principle, in the total view of his work, this is also part of his being against a rigid modernism that is Very minimalistic, he says. Colors and patterns calm the mind. It makes you feel comfortable. Everything that you can see here is Joseph Frank's designs, how you can buy them today and how they are still produced by hand by Svensk Den in a very high quality today. In the rest of the house, everything is the way it was. We didn't reconstruct furniture, historic furniture, in the rest of the house, even though if we could, because we wanted to leave the spaces empty. Also for reflection and to tell the story of the family. I mean, we didn't want to act as if nothing had happened.
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The villa was originally built for Julius and Margarete Baer. Julius came from a wealthy Jewish family that had made his fortune in rubber soles. But soon after moving in, he ran into financial trouble and had to sell the house back to the insurance company that had financed it. The family were allowed to stay, but to make ends meet, they rented out parts of the villa. That too was short lived. In 1938, Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany. The bears were able to emigrate, but their youngest daughter, Elizabeth, was deported and killed. The house then changed hands several times until in 2021, it came into the care of a foundation run by entrepreneur Lotte Trichenberg. I asked him what it feels like to be responsible for. Is, he says, a privilege to spend time here. He has even stayed overnight with his family. The entire top floor has now been converted into three guest rooms, primarily for researchers, though others may book by request too. Managing director Katharine Eckhardt.
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Again, the intention is also to open the house to further extend the research on Joseph Frank, on Viennese modernism, on his companion Oskar Vlacht. And we want to invite researchers to stay at the house to work on these questions. This is why there is guest rooms, but at the same time, we also want to enable people to really live here and to experience living in a house, in a modern house of the 1930s, how it feels to be in this room also overnight and maybe having a dinner here.
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From 8th March, the villa opens for guided tours and individual visits. There will also be concerts, readings and discussions. All of it, as Frank might have approved, intended to fill the house with life once again.
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Tall Stories is a monocle production from the team behind the Urbanist. This episode was written and edited by Alexei Korolyov and produced by David Stevens. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to receive new episodes every week. I'm Andrew Tuck. Goodbye and thank you for listening. City Lovers.