Enjoying the Culture 165Wiener Werkstätte (1903)
The aim of the Wiener Werkstätte (WW) was to have
contemporary art for contemporary society, and its slogan
was ‘quality before quantity’.
Designers Josef Hoffman, Koloman Moser and a wealthy
young businessman, Fritz Wärndorfer, led the workshop.
Their aim was to design exclusively by hand without the use
of machinery, out of pure materials such as ceramic, glass,
leather, enamel and metal. The Biedermeier era motivated
them, as its focus was on the home; therefore it was a
means to manufacture products for domestic purposes with
style and function. Their inspiration, however, came from
Scottish designers Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife
Margaret MacDonald.
The main aims of the group were to establish contact
between the public, designers and craftsmen to create simple
and elegant articles for household use and objects with a
purpose and need; to gain recognition for the value of work
or ideas; and to unify art, architecture and design. However,
the high cost of WW designs placed them out of reach of all
but the wealthiest patrons.
Music
Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), Alban Berg (1885–1935)
and Anton von Webern (1883–1945) represented the Wiener
Schule (Vienna School). They made use of atonality and
invented the 12-tone technique. Schoenberg’s compositions
reflected the mystery of stillness and the curiosity of the
subject in his own instinctual being.
The music of the Wiener Schule has been described as an
‘emancipation of dissonance’ that destroys harmonic order
and cadence and allows for clusters of tones and enlarged
rhythms and themes. Different and new, the music was
shocking to the Viennese, such that at a performance of it
at the Musikverein, fighting erupted on the floor.
Literature
The Secession also opened doors for new expression in
literature. Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931) was one of the