The Former Emperor’s Residence as a Private Studio

Before the permanent repurposing of the Neue Burg in 1924, the state tried to find temporary tenants for the largely empty rooms. Only the top floor had been completed by this time. The rooms on the ground floor, the mezzanine and the first floor were mostly unfinished. Among the first tenants after 1918 was the architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, who soon became internationally known. Trained at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) in Vienna, she began working for herself shortly after graduating. From her studio on the second floor of this palatial building she designed housing estates and apartment concepts for the poorest sections of society. Ernst May, the then city planning director in Frankfurt, was shown around the private studio by the architect in the early 1920s. Forty years later he still remembered the “grotesquely spooky” impression that the Hofburg made on him.

Just under 15 years later, the painter Max Oppenheimer also had a temporary studio in the Hofburg. The space, offered to him by the state in April 1936, was in the junction between the Neue Burg and the Old Hofburg, known as the “Connection Tract”. The spacious rehearsal hall on the ground floor was large enough for the artist to work on his monumental painting The Vienna Philharmonic. Oppenheimer made repeated requests to extend the contract. The final usage permit is dated 12 March 1938. This was one day after the National Socialist seizure of power, which had put the painter, one of the central hate figures of Nazi propaganda in the world of art, in mortal danger. Just eleven days later, the Trade Ministry, which was responsible for the building, evicted the painter from his studio. But by this time he had already been forced to flee to Switzerland. He emigrated from there to the USA. “Oppenheimer is a Jew, who according to a message sent directly and urgently by the Burghauptmannschaft [...] has also been missing from his apartment since 12 March 1938. His request should be rejected and the Burghauptmannschaft should be instructed to make the rehearsal hall vacant at the earliest opportunity.” Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky was also an opponent of the Nazi regime. In 1940 she travelled to Vienna from Istanbul in order to put the Austrian resistance in contact with its allies overseas. Shortly before she was due to return, she was betrayed to the authorities and imprisoned until the liberation in 1945.