Architects of a provincial town
Architects of a provincial town

Author(s): Maciej Falski
Contributor(s): Katarzyna Wieleńska (Translator)
Subject(s): 19th Century, Pre-WW I & WW I (1900 -1919), Interwar Period (1920 - 1939), WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Post-War period (1950 - 1989), Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), History of Art
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Osijek; Croatian architecture; Habsburg monarchy; urban modernisation
Summary/Abstract: Architects in the Habsburg monarchy were a highly mobile professional group. The most important academic centres and centres of professional practice were Vienna, Prague and Munich (which already lay outside the state borders). This article traces the professional biographies of architects who were active in Osijek, a medium-sized city on the border of the monarchy, in Croatia-Slavonia. It shows that the provincial town was linked by networks with the rest of the monarchy, while modernisation processes and architectural fashions found their local expression there. The analysis of documents related to the most important investments at the turn of the 20th century makes it clear that the monarchy constituted a common general framework for social practices, and that the professional or economic activities of local social actors did not stop at the borders of the crown lands. It thus appears that the ethno-national perspective, still dominant in the narrative of social history, needs to be modified.

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