Modern and contemporary Czech art/Architecture

by Antonín Matějček and Zdeněk Wirth

III

ARCHITECTURE

By ANTONÍN MATĚJČEK and ZDENĚK WIRTH

THE Prague Baroque was the last manifestation of great art in Bohemia. After the death of Dientzenhofer, the chief exponent of that style, the stream of invention dried up during the second half of the eighteenth century, and the mere builder’s trade established itself on the soil where Baroque had flourished in all its magnificence. The secularization of the monasteries, those main centres of activity for architects who worked on the grand scale, the partial abolition of forced labour (the corvée), the desertion of Prague by the aristocracy who went to live in Vienna, and finally the general impoverishment of the Czech lands after the Napoleonic Wars—such are the principal causes of a stagnation common indeed to the whole of Central Europe, but more noticeable in Bohemia than anywhere else. For several decades, therefore, men built from strictly utilitarian motives and only as much as was absolutely necessary. As for monumental architecture, all that was done was to adapt to new requirements some monument or other created in the prosperous days of bygone art. Thus there were no imposing schemes, no original ideas at a period when Prague herself, unseated from her throne, was ceasing to be a great city of European importance, and was becoming a sleepy little provincial town, filled with melancholy survivals, still admired, of mediæval and Baroque art, but stifled in the girdle of her fortifications of stone, and in those fashioned for her by her economic and political barrenness.

The intellectual environment in which Czech architecture was to evolve during the first half of the nineteenth century was the outcome, on the one hand, of the counter-Reformation and especially of its Germanising tendencies, and on the other, of the absolutist system imposed by the Holy Alliance. Above the mass of the population, composed of small shopkeepers, peasants and workmen, eighty per cent of whom were of Czech origin—a mass possessing an old culture which, for all its rusticity, had not lost its freshness and colour—there were three upper strata boasting the loftier culture of Central Europe: the Germanised middle class of Prague and the leading towns, the civil and military official caste, numerous and well-disciplined, and finally the international aristocracy with its eyes turned towards Vienna. This threefold society was deeply attached to its country, cherishing the same ideal of a bilingual but geographically united fatherland; yet it was incapable of producing real works of art, unless we can give that name to medleys in the German style, after a pattern made now in Vienna, now in Berlin, now in Munich, according to the vicissitudes of literary and artistic fashion. Nor did the revivalist activity of the Czech intellectuals exert any influence on the development of the arts, being first of all limited to literary and didactic work, as well as to linguistic propaganda. Efforts towards a native art of a definitely Czech character were manifested from the middle of the nineteenth century, and at the beginning of the ’seventies denoted the achievement of the national and cultural revival.

Architectural activity, at this period of inertia, is entirely conditioned by the influence of the Empire style. We find indeed, especially in the provincial towns, some belated manifestations of the Louis XVI style and of Roman classicism and, on the other hand, some few attempts, of no great importance, at architectural decoration of parks in the Romantic manner. As in many other countries, the Empire style is almost the official one, and by about 1820 it had become that utilitarian and monotonous style which Romanticism was to have so much trouble in banishing from the architects’ workshops. The triumph of the Empire style coincided with the organization of the executive power in Government departments. In contrast to the Baroque period, when architects handed down from father to son a complete tradition of art and technique, the Empire period produced a whole bureaucracy of departmental engineers and Civil Service architects, trained at the Prague School of Civil Engineering or the Vienna Academy. Secure in a long administrative experience and wielding enormous power, they were able to force into the background architects employed on landed estates or set up in private practice in the cities. Although we cannot point to any outstanding personalities among them, these officials nevertheless achieved something of value: they exerted a wholesome influence on architectural activity by maintaining a unity of style, thanks above all to their police and health regulations. At Prague, this bureaucratic way of handling matters of art was mitigated by the happy enterprise of the enlightened Governor of the Kingdom of Bohemia, Count Chotek, who contrived to make some ingenious improvements in the architectural scheme of the Baroque Old City. The embankment built by him along the Vltava became for the Praguers a new promenade, from which a fine view of the Castle may be enjoyed. The old František Bridge with its two great stonework gates sand its iron suspension chains, the uniform arrangement of façades and blocks in the Chotek Street and the Egg Market, as well as several parks and a bold avenue that winds up towards the Letná Hill, some monumental statues in well-chosen sites—all these bear further witness to their initiator’s good taste and to his judicious exercise of his dictatorial authority. The provincial towns of Bohemia, especially the district capitals, had as a matter of fact never been better governed from an architectural point of view or more skilfully systematized than under the sway of these departmental engineers, if indeed we except a few blunders made in conformity with official edicts, such as the destruction here and there of old fortifications or of a decorative entrance gate.

So far as original or imposing buildings are concerned, the period was entirely insignificant. The material and spiritual causes of this phenomenon have already been explained at the beginning. In its educational and official organisation, Prague was entirely dependent upon Vienna, and up to the middle of the nineteenth century, the latter city produced nothing except local versions of the great French artists. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the leading personality in this respect was Peter de Nobile, the Court architect and director of the Architectural School at the Viennese Academy. He planned the outer portal of the Hrad (1821–1824) and the charming chapel of These (1823). In contrast to his precise form, the normal bureaucratic style was represented by his pupil, the Court Architectural Counsellor Vil. Paul Sprenger who, as an actual authority, for a long time monopolised all public buildings upon which he imposed that official uniformity of character known contemptuously as “Vice-Governor” style. The adherents of these two leaders, such as Josef Hardtmuth, Josef Kornhäusel, K. Moreau, L. von Montoyer, Josef Schemerl von Laytenbach, and E. L. Pichl produced the average Viennese Empire style without any particular monumental outline. The two chief centres of the Empire style in Western Europe, Paris and Berlin, exerted but an indirect influence on Bohemia: the ideas underlying the Empire style reached us in a diluted form, largely by literary channels and through the agency of Vienna. It is no mere accident then that the principal building in this style in Prague, the Baroque Monastery of the Irish monks, reconstructed as a Custom House, is a copy, very little altered, of Gentz’s Mint in Berlin. Similarly, in the provinces, the residences of country gentlemen, the middle-class dwellings, the churches, the schools, the toll-houses, the farm buildings and so forth are merely variations of the plans issued by the Ideenmagazine and the series of engravings published at the time. Architecturally considered, there is nothing impressive about these buildings, principally for the reason that, in contrast to the solid methods of the Baroque period, their builders were compelled to use materials of inferior quality. Yet the general effect is as a rule pleasing, never commonplace. Before long they were provided with a few set types, which were employed with unfailing certainty in all architectural undertakings, whether in relation to an actual building, or merely the architectural side of constructional engineering such as an iron bridge, fortifications, the equipment of a high road or a railway. This sureness and deliberate imitation of ready models resulted in a high standard of building in the Empire style, a standard which to-day is almost unattainable. Though we cannot speak of a school in their connexion, these provincial edifices are, in their proportions and their character, different from their counterpart in Austria and Germany.

Nevertheless, architecture in Bohemia, even in the metropolis, had long been a mere builder’s trade, in which the official design took the place of living form and style. No important orders were given, and the only problem to be solved was that of the flat-dwelling, which in Prague had become a necessity for the narrow confines of the old city. The first in date was that of Doubek, known as Platýz (1813–22), the largest private edifice in Prague before 1870. Thus from 1830 onwards whole blocks of houses were built in the main streets, with elongated façades, on a plan made to pattern, so plain and bare of aspect that in popular parlance they were soon known as “barracks.” The only works of any value to be found in Prague during the first half of the nineteenth century are those connected with the linking up of the various quarters of the city, such as the Boulevard of the Moats (Příkopy) and that of the New or National Avenue (Národní třída), the parks on the fortifications, the attempt, unfortunately never completed, to shut in the Horse Market (the Wenceslaus Square, Václavské náměstí) by an Empire gate with a large sculptural subject, and, at the very middle of the century, the arrangement of the approach to the monument of King Francis. In the department of town-planning the laying out of the Prague suburb of Karlín is the only thing achieved after the great undertakings of the Josephian period, the fortresses of Terezin and Josefov, and after the completion of designs for the watering-places of North-West Bohemia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Although it remained a torso, what was actually carried out in accordance with the plan of the Board of Works in Bohemia (1816) shows a modern conception of a town, both in plan and elevation, especially in regard to the main thoroughfares and squares. The spirit of modern theory is revealed with equal completeness in the plans of the insignificant community of Starý Tábor, laid out by A. Svateš in 1827.

The large English parks in Bohemia, such as those at Král. Obor, Veltrusi, Ratiborice, N. Hrady, Vlasin and Schönhof, are among the best examples of this type, while the Municipal Park on the ramparts of Prague and in the outskirts of Budějovice and Pilsen do not rise above the average. Although the situation of Prague was not favourable for carrying out extensive designs in the Empire style, nevertheless at the classical period of the English natural park, numerous gardens came into existence there, such as the Kanálka, the grounds of Wimmer and Buček, the Cibulka and Klamovka. Later on, under Pückler’s influence the grounds of Chotek, the Saracinka and the Kinský park were laid out.

As has already been indicated, the Empire period was not rich in artistically significant individualities. There is no need to enumerate the officials of the building departments or the authorised builders, although they were of importance in their immediate neighbourhood, and local history is already beginning to take note of them. The architects who distinguished themselves at least by the formal perfection of their work, were mostly pupils of the Academy at Vienna: the Director and Professor J. Fischer, who planned the Prague Customs House and the Church of the Holy Cross on the Příkopy, Jindřich Koch, who carried out the Kinský villa at Prague, the Mausolea at Budenice, and the Castle at Častolovice, J. Hausknecht, who probably designed the Platýz, and a number of Prague houses, without reckoning here also Peter de Nobile, who was responsible for the rebuilding of the old Town Hall, and C. F. Schuricht of Dresden, the originator of the plan for the Castle of Kačina near N. Dvory (1802), who on the whole fall outside the limits of this group. Of the native artists, reference should be made at least to V. Kulhánek, who designed the Raphael Chapel in the Klara Institute for the Blind, F. Pavíček, architect to the Archbishop, and of the provincial architects, J. Schaffer at Jindřichův Hradec, J. Sandtner at Budějovice, and Fr. Filous at Pilsen. Of the teachers at the Technical Academy of Architecture, excellent work was done in training architects by Jos. Havle and C. Wiesenfeld, in addition to J. Fischer, who is mentioned above.

Nor did the early Romantic period, which shaped the leading outlines of the Empire style, and which accelerated the development of Czech painting by several suggestive influences, on the whole, add any new features to the general aspect of late Empire architecture, as already described. Although from the south of Germany, from Bavaria and Austria, ever since the ’forties there: had penetrated as far as Bohemia various ideas which were prevalent throughout Europe at that time and which, under the guise of a national style, led in the direction of medieval art, the development abroad towards a perfect mastery of forms and notably of the constructive principles of Gothic and Romantic architecture, was considerably in advance of the Czech centres where the elements of mediæval styles were manifested in the poor configurations of secular Prague architecture up to the middle of the nineteenth century, and in the provinces up to the end of the ’seventies, in a free and exact form.

These elements, employed only decoratively for the scaffolding of standardised late Empire architecture, were actually foreshadowed by Czech architects in the Romantic forms unscientifically conceived and naively applied at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In Bohemia, however, at that period, this led to no artistic result such as is denoted in the Baroque-Gothic of the most finished works of Santini. In this respect a real model is afforded by the small castle of Franzensburg in the Laxenburg Park (1801–1836), the work of the Viennese dilettante in architecture, Riedl, and the forms which here proved effective in comparatively superior material, were used most monumentally in the rebuilt villa of the Governor of Prague at Královská Obora in accordance with the plans of Professor J. Fischer.

At the end of the Empire period, however, actual Gothic profiles and ornaments confer their fundamental character upon the works of Beer and Hluboká, the Church of P. Marie at Turnov by B. Grueber, and the old Town Hall at Prague rebuilt by P. de Nobile (northern façade 1834–48), and by P. Sprenger (eastern façade 1846–1848). Apart from the work of foreign and particularly English architects on the castles at Sichrov and Hrádek, the native work already referred to was produced under English influence, transmitted by way of Munich and Vienna, and the same applies to the Romanesque and Gothic motifs with which the façades of houses were abundantly decorated at that period. Quite a number of such buildings are to be found in the Hybernská ulice, the Havlíčková ulice and the Revoluční třída, the Gothic designed iron suspension bridge at the end of the last-named thoroughfare being the work of English engineers. The transition to the subsequent period of precise academic form does not appear until the monument of the Emperor Francis on the Embankment at Prague, the joint work of the stone-carver J. Kranner and the sculptor J. Max (1844–46); the Harrach mausoleum at Branná (1844–48); and some of the works of B. Grueber and O. Niklas.

The Empire style maintained its supremacy until the middle of the nineteenth century; no doubt this was due to tradition, but still more to the state of mind of that time. It cannot be disputed that the first Gothic architecture which appeared in the nineteenth century, after slow, but sure beginnings, shook the very foundations of the strong convictions that had hitherto obtained in the Empire style. This process continued without any violent opposition until 1840. From that time onwards one can hardly be surprised at what Professor F. Mertens says in his article on Prague architecture in 1845, namely that the Prague Custom House is built in a so-called Etruscan style, which is lifeless and can be obtained only by laborious work. This conception was already familiar outside the artists’ studios. There was a growing conviction that the conventional style was no longer suitable for public buildings and mansions, while the churches were to be constructed in mediæval style, and the châteaux, town halls or schools in that of the Renaissance. These conceptions, both in theory and in practice, resulted in a confusion of styles, which was aggravated still further by the diverse religious, political and æsthetic tendencies of the period. This chaos characterises the second half of the nineteenth century, and continued until the modern style imposed itself. The ascendancy of the historic styles not only attests the exhaustion of the inventive spirit after the Baroque period, but it also reflects very clearly the crisis in which Europe was striving to find a new expression for the plastic arts. To begin with, it was the Middle Ages that prevailed, and academic romanticism invaded even secular architecture more completely than was admitted in theory. Subsequently a very powerful influence came from France: the brilliant personality of Viollet-le-Duc contended in favour of architecture; another influence came from South Germany, where a whole generation of architects of the modernised Gothic School had grown up.

Ecclesiastical architecture fared no better. If the Gothic served as almost the sole basis for lay architecture, the builders of churches preferred the Romanesque, backed as it was by a long local tradition. But they too created nothing great, and they often allowed archeological enthusiasm to prevail over artistic inspiration. Moreover the plans on which their constructions were based were, as a rule, mere engineers’ draughts adapted for architectural use. In the provinces especially, inspiration was drawn from the printed models of Kaura. The church of the Slav apostles Cyril and Methodos, at Karlín, near Prague, which was to unite in a joint achievement, representative of Czech art, the architect Ullmann, the sculptor Levý, and the painter Mánes, is the only monumental project of the age. The project, however, was not carried out in full accordance with the original scheme. The same barrenness of inspiration marks the belated flowering of Gothicized Romanticism towards 1870, when men had already begun to profit more systematically by the lessons of Gothic archæology. It was a fatality for Czech art that the Neo-Gothics of that day devoted themselves mainly to the restoration of ancient monuments, the very inner organism of which they altered. Prague Cathedral, after surviving the Baroque period, was the principal object of these attempts at restoration. About the middle of the nineteenth century a society had been founded with a view to completing the construction of the Cathedral, and after 1860, under Kranner’s direction, several important alterations in the building as a whole were undertaken. The bulk of the work, however, was done some ten years later, when the architect Josef Mocker drew up the general plan of reconstruction. This architect had imported to Prague the purist doctrine of the Viennese Schmidt, who preached the necessity of lopping off from all ancient buildings the later additions that were “not in the style.” In Bohemia, as in fact all over Europe, men accordingly set about amputating the limbs of old buildings or enriching them with details that had no true historical or artistic basis. If indeed the new portion of Prague Cathedral, by Mocker, is perhaps not too unworthy of the rest, the radical rearrangement of the fine Powder Tower (Prašná brána) at Prague, the restoration of the memorable Church of St. Barbara at Kutná Hora and, above all, that of Karlštejn Castle, that priceless jewel among old Bohemian manor houses, have earned just ridicule both for their author and for the period that applauded these distortions. Mocker’s hand transformed Karlštejn into a lifeless thing, divested it of its antique coating and of the characteristic features imposed by wayward Gothic fancy. And as he had found painters and sculptors of his own stamp, he succeeded in spoiling a goodly number of old mural paintings and internal decorations.

This Neo-Gothic purism became in Bohemia a chronic malady which had not entirely disappeared when the Gothic style had already gone out of fashion. Schmidt’s doctrine was still upheld by all who came from Vienna. Thus it was that the aesthetics of Viennese architecture governed the undertakings, often international in character, of Mocker’s contemporary, Josef Hlávka, a great master builder rather than an original artist. This collaborator of Ferstel’s in the construction of the Votive Church in Vienna, the greatest of modern sham-Gothic edifices, built from his own plans the palace of the Orthodox Greek bishop at Černovice, and, in his capacity as master builder, the Vienna Imperial Opera House, while in Prague he conceived and erected the great Lying-in Hospital. In this enamelled brickwork building he utilized elements of the English Gothic, which he adapted with an admirable taste born of his long experience, and still lacking in the bishop’s palace at Černovice, where the variety of styles, slightly tinged with orientalism, has weakened the monumental character of the building as a whole.

This very anarchy, however, was a sign that new forms of architecture were being aimed at, and Hlávka himself, like so many others, did not devote himself exclusively to any one style. Moreover, the later Romanticism had already struck a blow at the predominance of Gothic, by introducing from time to time features borrowed from the Renaissance. In Europe, the Neo-Renaissance had already made its triumphal entry, the way being prepared by scholars who studied the Italian quattrocento and cinquecento. It did not reach Bohemia till very late in the day, and even then some considerable time elapsed before it was regarded as a true architectural system: not as a mere affair of ornamentation, but a radical re-arrangement of the whole building, calling for the old partnership of architect, sculptor, painter and workman. Hence from 1850 onwards Renaissance motifs are in evidence, but they are applied in haphazard fashion to the façades of flat-dwellings, without any change in the inner arrangement, so that the outer decoration is of no significance. It was only after revolutionizing the old plan and arrangement of the house by modern methods and modern inventions that architects were able to reform their art in compliance with the new ideas. Modern principles of hygiene brought about, though by very gradual stages, new forms of house planning, a new arrangement of spaces and a new method of fitting the house into the framework of the street. These requirements of modern life being satisfied, the private house could become a thing of art. Yet, for want of important orders, progress under this head in Prague and the provincial towns was exceedingly slow.

Until 1870, Czech architects worked side by side with their colleagues of German nationality at the Prague Polytechnic. Literature and public institutions could be regarded as belonging to both nations alike. But with the ardent patriotic impulse of 1870, each nation found in architecture its own stock of original ideas to be followed, and of special themes to be carried out. Thus the architects separated, each group forming its own programme, with a view to creating its national art. With the advent to power of Czech society, the ambition of building on a more lavish scale made itself more and more felt in Czech circles, and with the enrichment of economic life in Bohemia, architects were faced with a whole series of problems in town planning to be solved. It was naturally in Prague, where the Czech element had recently come to dominate the German minority, that the new architectural impetus was displayed in its greatest intensity and brilliance. After remaining too long behind the times, the city of Prague now hastened to ensure her growth in size and beauty. She girded herself with suburbs, demolished her fortifications, improved her means of transit, built bridges and stations for the new railways. Later, theatres, banks and commercial buildings were to be added. To meet the requirements of modern life, Prague once more Czech, had to find adequate means of expression, and we were fortunate enough to light upon a generation of architects already thoroughly versed in the magnificent style nouveau, whose principles Gottfried Semper had established in such sure and penetrating fashion.

The earliest representative of this renaissance is Ignaz Ullmann, trained in Vienna under Van der Nüll and Siccardsburg. More gifted than any of his predecessors, he also stood out from the ruck of his contemporaries by virtue of the freshness of his invention. He had the good fortune to receive and carry out some important commissions. He began with the Bohemian Savings Bank, the first large building erected by the big financiers in Prague. Here he harmoniously blends the useful with the beautiful, adding to an austere but dignified interior a monumental façade chaste and vigorous in design. The defective accommodation that so greatly hampered the drama in Prague was remedied by his provisional Theatre, at once simple and practical in its plan. He excelled in the construction of private town mansions, similar to the smaller palazzi so dear to the Renaissance Italians, such as the Lažanský Palace, where he utilized French Renaissance themes, and the Šebek mansion, for which he was able to employ stone, so much sought after by the nouveau style architects. He also gave the Praguers the great Polytechnic, their first educational building worthy of a civilized nation. But the most attractive of Ullmann’s creations is the charming Girls’ High School in Prague: the solidity of the façade is relieved by lively tracery, in keeping with the special character of the institution, through the addition of sgraffiti which embellish and lighten it, making up for the somewhat inferior quality of the material.

A consummate mastery in handling Renaissance forms, together with a judicious sense of the architectural or decorative functions of this or that element in the building, is also shown by another architect of the same generation, a friend and collaborator of Ullmann’s, Antonin Barvitius. After the same preliminary training in Vienna, he spent some time in Italy, and there acquired a greater variety and delicacy of expression. An admirable draughtsman, with leanings towards artistic refinements, he wielded the Renaissance style with more subtlety than his friend. Ullmann adored the full-blown Renaissance: his particular idol was Sansovino, from whom he derived his love of ornate expressive forms, of large projections, of rich entablature, of powerful round columns, the Attic, the balustrade and so forth. Barvitius, on the other hand, loved the early Renaissance, as had already been proved by his restoration of the Palazzo di Venezia in Rome: he was all for the restrained and rather severe elegance of the Florentines, with their simplicity of surface and pure rhythm of form. He preferred flat walls and intersections, cornices in slight relief and slender pillars, and for his decorative features he chose those introduced by Brunelleschi and his school. As his art made no attempt to satisfy the contemporary clamour for grandiose buildings, his best work was of a type entirely different from Ullmann’s. While the latter excelled in urban constructions, admirably co-ordinated with the general plan of the street, Barvitius devoted himself mainly to pretty rural villas, never out of harmony with their surroundings. The best of these is the Grœbe villa on the hilltop that overlooks the Nusle Valley at Prague. With Schulz and the sculptor Schnirch as his co-adjutors, he here seems to transport us to Italy, in that Italian garden he has laid out round the villa, with its terraces, zig-zag paths, grottos, fountains, and vines planted on the slope. Barvitius’ activities were also directed to the applied arts, and he revived in Bohemia the manufacture of objects of Catholic worship. In this connection he inaugurated at the Christian Academy, which had recently been founded, a fine tradition, afterwards successfully developed by the architects Hilbert and Fanta. On one occasion he matched himself against his contemporaries in a competition for a monumental subject—the St. Wenceslaus Church at Smíchov—and won the day. He put his whole artistic creed into this fine basilica, which has no equal in Prague. Its interior is a work of great beauty, graceful in its proportions and showing a perfect grasp of the decorative element and a thorough plastic and picturesque harmony.

The rapid upward flight of Czech architecture was to reach its zenith in a monument of universal interest, expressing a whole renascent nation’s will to live: the Prague National Theatre. The successful competitor for the design was Josef Zítek, a young architect who far outstripped his elder rivals by virtue of the wealth and facility of his invention and his untrammelled independence of thought. He too was a pupil of the famous Viennese pair, Van der Nüll and Siccardsburg, and his seven years’ apprenticeship had taught him practically all that Vienna knew in the realm of architecture. After travels in Italy and Western Europe, he settled in Prague, his native city, where the reputation he had won as builder of the Weimar Museum had already made him known. He opened his career in Bohemia with the Mill Colonnade at Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad), but as soon as the first stone of the Prague Theatre was laid, he devoted himself exclusively to this national work.

A national work it undoubtedly was, the outcome of a whole people’s will, raised by the fine patriotic impulse of a subject nation, which paid for this temple out of its own pocket, without any support from Vienna, nay almost in the teeth of Vienna’s opposition. Its builder proved himself worthy of the national confidence, and achieved a striking artistic success.

This “Temple of the Renaissance,” at once a triumph of the Renaissance style and the monument of a nation re-born, clearly betokened that the first stage in the struggle of the Czechs for an independent culture was over. It was also a beacon whose steady light was to pierce the national gloom and give promise of the final victory. Thus the National Theatre has always served as a centre for national festivals and demonstrations, as a place for the reception of friendly guests and, during the World War, as a refuge where a nation in mourning could draw comfort and consolation. At the first glance we realize that here is a building worthy to rank with the finest that adorn any European capital and, as a theatre, one of the best-constructed in existence. Zítek’s main idea was a central block, a single cube, and to this highly daring idea he has sacrificed even the external separation of the stage from the auditorium, so rigorously demanded by Semper’s principles. Zítek aimed at a single, unbroken mass, powerfully enclosed by pylons and crowned with a dome-shaped roof, a stately monument such as the nation desired. We cannot but admire the way in which he even turns to good account the irregularity of the site, the difficult position at the intersection of a street and an embankment, succeeds in setting upon the whole mass a stamp of movement and dominance, and provides the edifice with three façades corresponding to the three aspects of the surrounding streets; a diversity that actually adds to the magnificence of the whole. His work shows throughout a firm adherence to principles, the decorative being harmoniously adjusted to the purely architectural elements, and his ornamentation is carried out with remarkable tact and good sense. The free plastic decoration in the niches of the façades, the attic and the pylons, also bears witness to the logic of the architect’s mind and the purity of style with which, even in this kind of work, he was able to clothe his idea. In the interior, his mastery in the art of arranging spaces and observing proportion is amply evident: the vestibule, the staircases, the corridors and the auditorium form a disciplined, lucid and practical whole, the foyer and the rooms adjoining the auditorium are flawless in their consistency with the rest. In the teeth of determined opposition, he succeeded in obtaining a hard material, the stone that he needed, and he enhanced the brilliance of the interior by the use of varied marbles, of stucco, gilding, ornaments in colour and frescoes. The preceding chapters have set forth how he was aided in this task by the new generation of painters and sculptors.

An architect of the purest Semperian type, handling the historic forms with sovereign mastery, Zítek none the less remained faithful to his own artistic instincts. This rich and spontaneous creative impulse was lacking, however, in his disciples, even in the best of them, his collaborator Josef Schulz, the architect of the two largest museums in Prague, the Bohemian Museum and that of the Decorative Arts. He began by a sort of collaboration with Zítek, when after the National Theatre fire he was commissioned to renovate the interior, destroyed by the fire, and to link up the offices of the management with the main building. Together with Zítek, too, he was employed on another great construction in Prague, that of the Rudolphinum (at present the provisional seat of the National Assembly of the Czechoslovak Republic). The two-fold object of this building—a concert hall and a picture gallery—is represented externally by the different design and arrangement of the two blocks. But this bipartite construction, despite the brilliance of the interior and the splendour of the façades, is not a harmonious work. The Rudolphinum of Prague, it has been written, “is a junction for new and heterogeneous ideas; it stands at the threshold of a period which was already beginning to look upon itself as ‘modern’ . . . and the interest it offers is mainly historic, for here we see the meeting of ideas and currents which appear, some for the first, others for the last time. . . .”

To-day, it is clear that the Prague National Theatre is the culminating point of the Neo-Renaissance in Bohemia, although, at the time it was built, that style seemed to be preparing for a still more magnificent flight. The enthusiasm of master-builders, the ever-growing number of architects loyal to the Renaissance creed, all seemed to foreshadow for Czech architecture a golden age, which the development of this style seemed certain to ensure. Nevertheless, true inspiration had ended with Zítek. The Bohemian Museum by Schulz in the Wenceslaus Square, despite its happy situation and ample dimensions, cannot hold a candle to the National Theatre; its design is ineffective, the masses are badly arranged, the whole aspect is cold and uninviting.

With Zítek and Schulz, the Renaissance style had become the national one par excellence in Bohemia, and favourable circumstances enabled it to show itself to full advantage. In the workshops of the two masters, as well as in their class-rooms at the two Prague Polytechnics (the Czech and the German) a generation of successors was already springing up, destined to spread the gospel of this more or less official architecture. Moreover there were still some architects influenced now directly by Vienna, now indirectly by Zítek, whose devotion to the Renaissance style they shared. Some, like František Schmoranz, though showing little boldness or originality, did good journeyman-work in the applied arts and in minor architecture. They were as a rule well-versed in theory, and their wide studies led them to borrow from the architecture of other lands in all ages. This eclecticism tended to break up and disperse all unity of style, as was indeed inevitable for purposes of evolution. The discipline of the Renaissance school relaxed with the increase in the number of architects and the growing differentiation of tastes and talents. One new development is worthy of attention, for at a time when the Renaissance style was disintegrating, it added an important and interesting page to the history of Czech architecture. Antonín Wiehl, in the Communal Savings Bank at Prague, had already given proof of his talent and his erudition; but he had subsequently become convinced that the international Renaissance style, based on the Italian schools, might be replaced either by a style derived from the old buildings of Renaissance style in Bohemia, or by an adaptation of the old Renaissance forms surviving in the popular art of the Czechoslovak peasant. Wiehl accordingly studied Czech architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the period when local tradition had blended with inspiration drawn from Northern Italy, and of which abundant examples are still to be found in the little towns of Bohemia, especially in the south. He thus proclaimed the “Czech Renaissance,” feeling assured that he had discovered the proper national style, based on the national history: and he used it for a whole series of constructions, above all for rows of houses with a combined frontage, a type formerly much in favour in Bohemia. This experiment did not fail to bring with it a real advance in the conception of urban architecture, leading as it did to the adoption of simpler methods to façades stripped of luxuriant decoration, to the abandonment of all pretexts for a sham monumental style, of all pompousness. Doors and windows henceforth received plain, energetic frames, walls remained flat without any superfluous jointing, cornices were made prominent, and on the roofs there appeared little gables, attics adorned with turrets, pyramids and vases. Sgraffiti by Ženíšek and mural paintings by Aleš give the finishing touch to the attractive aspect of the streets which the Czech “Renaissance” has endowed with an air of cheerfulness and novelty. On the other hand, the efforts made by Wiehl to create a national Czech style by utilising the elements of rustic architecture and adapting them for modern buildings, did not meet with the expected success. Nevertheless, there were a few smaller buildings at the exhibition of 1891 and 1895, which were not lacking in a certain cachet. Later on, this tendency was pursued even to the point of bad taste, by imitating the designs of wooden peasant dwellings on the fronts of houses in large towns. Wiehl’s chief merit, however, lies in his having adapted the middle-class house to the conditions of modern life, to the requirements of the tenants and of public health regulations.

Wiehl had disciples: Jan Zeyer, his collaborator, who helped him to organise the new domestic architecture, Rudolf Štech, who disseminated the new style in the provinces, J. Vejrych and others. But even the zealots of the official Renaissance style could not always resist the temptation to apply Wiehl’s forms to the town houses or country villas that they built.

By the side of Wiehl, whose practical instinct exceeded his skill as a designer and decorator, honourable mention must be accorded to Jan Koula. A theorist and a propagator of the Czech Renaissance, the Prague Baroque and the Czechoslovak popular art, a brilliant draughtsman and painter in water-colours, and a learned archeologist and museum director, he had neither the fire nor the spontaneity of his eminent contemporary. None the less, he exerted a considerable influence on the development of Czech architecture down to the end of the century. Above all he fertilized by his erudition the decorative arts of every kind, his “Old Czech” furniture and ornaments being a counterblast to the “Old German” (altdeutsch) style which was then threatening to invade our homes.

With Wiehl’s death, genuine enthusiasm and unity of style vanish from Czech architecture. As commissions flow in rapidly, every architect has his turn of busy output, but the general activity is of a rather superficial order. The period that now ensued was one of inferior successors to the great masters. The “Czech” style, which seemed to have gained a firmly accepted position, disintegrated beyond repair. The craving for luxury grew, sham grandeur and sham sentiment were affected in dimensions and decoration, and the true sense of proportion was lost. About 1890, architecture became more and more a decorator’s business, and the façade claimed the architect’s chief interest and attention. But as the resources of Renaissance themes seemed to be exhausted, an attempt was made to reinvigorate architectural decoration on two different lines. On the one hand, earlier styles were exploited—a tendency that met with approval from all the pseudo-Gothics who had survived the Renaissance fashion; on the other, a new ornamentation was devised, taken direct from the forms of Nature. The historic style is no longer regarded as compulsory, and men begin rather to use it as they think fit, without any scrupulous observance of historic or artistic principles, accepting whatever suits their fancy at the moment, combining diverse elements without taking account of their original functions. Unhappy examples of this tendency may be seen in Prague on both sides of Mikuláš Street or of the Rieger embankment. On these composite façades, Gothic clashes with Renaissance, East and West, the rustic theme with subtle detail, the fanciful with the realistic. The Baroque once more came into favour, that style which the Renaissance school had so vigorously combated in theory and in practice, although about 1860 it was already employed, with rocaille, for the decoration of interiors. The quaint old quarters of Prague seemed to inspire the new fashion: their existence did something to encourage it, but in point of fact it came to us rather from abroad, from South Germany. More plastic than the Renaissance style, and moreover hallowed by native tradition, the Baroque was soon welcomed even by the Renaissance school, as was made evident at the Architects’ and Engineers’ Exhibition of 1898. When the work of sanitary improvement in the old quarters of Prague involved the sacrifice of more than one precious relic of the past, an attempt was made to repair these losses by the erection of impossible flat-dwellings in the forms, often so delicate, of this Old Prague style. From time to time even architecture in metal was undertaken, such as the iron palace of the great Industrial Exhibition of 1891 or that imitation of the Eiffel Tower which disfigures the Petřín Hill.

In this welter of anarchy and pretence, only a handful of architects trained in the stern discipline of Zítek and Schulz succeeded in maintaining their dignity. Thus Osvald Polívka contrived to give a monumental character to his Bohemian Bank, a block consistently developed and tastefully arranged. Václav Roštlapil, a pupil of Hansen, managed to turn to good account even the difficult situation occupied, on the embankment of the Malá Strana at Prague, by the great mass of his Straka Academy, a mass well organised and with Baroque features that are in excellent taste. Antonín Balšánek, following in Schulz’s footsteps, erected the highly commendable Prague City Museum; but he lost all sense of proportion when, already a whole-hearted champion of the modern style, he built the vast Prague Municipal Hall (Obecní dům), a mere congeries of trite and heterogeneous forms.

Again, it would be unjust to pass over in silence the pioneer work of Balšánek in the construction of towns. In Prague, in the course of his labours, he often met with opposition from those who wished to preserve the ancient character of certain quarters of the town, but he manifested so great an idealism that this part of his work remains the most important of his career.

Echoes of the great battle then raging in European architecture began to reach even Bohemia. Those who looked upon the decorative side as essential to architecture, encouraged by the School of Decorative Arts, still thought that a slight reform would suffice. They began to tinge their conventional structures, still conceived in the old spirit, with a surface addition of “modern style,” by clothing them with a rich impressionist decoration, furnished principally by the ornamental sculptor, Celda Klouček. Under the hand of this virtuoso in clay, a copious efflorescence of ornaments began to overspread the houses of Prague. Here Klouček reproduced Nature only in very general features, and mingled with these plant-forms the human figure in all the crudity of his studio naturalism. Thanks to these devices, the crisis was only aggravated, and the younger men who were now coming on the scene speedily realized that this universal chaos could be ended only by a thorough-going operation or even by a revolution.

Josef Fanta, who with the School of Decorative Arts and Koula, represented in 1900 “Czech Decorative Art” at the Paris Universal Exhibition, may be regarded as the typical architect of this stage of crisis. Trained by Zítek, he followed in his youth his master’s ideals, then passed through a “Czech Renaissance” phase and finally based his principal work, the Wilson Station in Prague, on a compromise between the old and the new. In this work, the first of its kind to be entrusted to a Czech artist, he took over the new forms ready-made, without any effort to create, and he let it be clearly seen that he had no intention of joining the younger band of enthusiasts. Moreover, his taste for the picturesque was the governing factor in all his architectural conceptions. This clever designer of sgraffiti and of overloaded interiors was scarcely capable of investing his creations with nobility and strength.

Near the close of the century, Friedrich Ohmann, a teacher at the School of Decorative Arts, Polish by birth and Austrian by naturalization, hastened the end of the crisis by a decisive thrust. Of a lively temperament, but a thorough artist, he demonstrated, by his unscrupulous perversion of historic styles, his ingenious re-casting of their various features in his own mould, and by his boldness in the invention of decorative motifs hitherto unknown, that the supremacy of archaic styles was on the wane, and that a new order was already forming here and there out of the general chaos. Ohmann did but little building in Bohemia, but his imagination, which found an abundant outlet on paper, delighted the younger men, and above all, his pupils. Remarkably skilful in adapting his art to the genius loci, he renovated the Prague Baroque at his will. He saturated his mind with its local colour, re-handled its elements in accordance with the demands of the new sensitiveness to impressions, and covered the old forms with the quivering tracery of his modern decoration, often called at the time by the name of “secession style.” The fulness and luxuriance of his plastic ornamentation of façades and interiors, his use of every kind of material, metal, wood, glass and porcelain, in order to strengthen the general effect, as well as a cheerful and discreet colouring, won him warm approval from Praguers when he decorated the interiors of the Industrial Exhibition of 1891, built the Central Hotel in co-operation with his pupils Bendelmayer and Dryák, and above all, when he improvised the dazzling ornamentation of the auditorium at the Theatre of Varieties. His pupils disseminated his art in the provinces, and the “Secession” began to be a serious rival to official architecture. This decade, marked by the nervousness and tension of a transitional period, during which Ohmann played the part of leader to the younger men, brought about a temporary improvement in Prague, but without striking at the root of the general poverty that afflicted architecture.

Some artists, however, had already felt the breath of modern art pass over them. Kamil Hilbert, ordered to complete Prague Cathedral in succession to Mocker, but won over to the modern principles of the conservation of monuments, set himself to repair the errors committed by his predecessors. He finished the building of the cathedral, filled in the gaps with motifs of his own devising, but was careful to protect the older part of the edifice, restoring with piety and tact what was dilapidated. Commissioned to build a modern church at Štěchovice, he proved himself an original architect by a creation in which the traditional form and plan received an entirely novel expression. In the same way Dušan Jurkovič, the best artist that Slovakia produced, harmoniously combined, especially in his numerous villas, the new teaching with the peasant inspiration derived from Moravian and Slovak popular art.

It was still necessary, however, to find a rallying cry and a leader. The leader for the younger generation soon appeared in the person of Jan Kotěra, newly arrived from Vienna, where he had just completed his studies. In Vienna, he had entered the Academy of Fine Arts at the very time when Otto Wagner was revolutionizing architecture. Kotěra belonged to the famous circle of Wagner’s pupils, Olbrich, Hoffmann and Plečnik, and with them collaborated in several of the master’s works. Then he came to Prague to replace at the School of Decorative Arts Ohmann, who was leaving for Vienna. He built a flat-dwelling in the Wenceslaus Square, and this was the first attack on official architecture. But as in Prague all were still under the spell of Ohmann’s personality, Kotěra himself hesitated for a while. Although he had already subordinated the decorative side to the purely architectonic conception of masses, and loved flat surfaces, he studied decorative effects for a time, as if he were seeking to measure his strength with Ohmann. This temporary check was not without its value for architecture. As the need of a new style of ornamentation was universally felt, Kotěra met it in an original fashion. The fine Czechoslovak Ethnographical Exhibition of 1895 having just revealed the inexhaustible wealth of peasant art, he utilized the resources of popular ornamentation in order to invent decorative themes in which the peasant element was transformed and adapted, to suit the requirements of the new technique. Furniture and decorative knick-knacks gained enormously in freshness. Among Kotěra’s creations of this period, the most important is his Czech interior shown at the St. Louis Exhibition of 1904. It was not long, however, before the architect returned to his first path. By word and deed he disseminated Wagner’s principles. More important than decorative effect, according to him, was technical construction in keeping with its object, the nature of the materials, and the technical aspect. In the “Mánes” association of Czech artists, the centre for painters and sculptors who followed the new tendencies, some young architects grouped themselves about him, and the Society’s periodical Volné Směry (Free Tendencies) became the mouthpiece of the new doctrines. Later, the same society issued a special architectural review, Style. Still more fruitful, however, was Kotěra’s direct teaching at the School of Decorative Arts, where a band of enthusiastic and enterprising young men was springing up. The master himself, without attaching himself to any academic system, was unwearied in his attempts to reach a balance between the architectonic and the decorative side of his art, and in the end declared for the former, devoting himself to the cult of pure architectural form. At Prague, where the official architects, mainly associated with the Polytechnic, still held absolute sway, Kotěra had little chance of building, so that his early creations are nearly all in the provinces. The theatre at Prostějov in Moravia revealed for the first time his profound grasp of the mass to be dominated and the space to be divided, the vigour of his arrangement, the charm of his simple decoration, thoroughly adapted to the architectonic functions. Another example is the Králové Hradec Museum, though unfortunately only a partial execution of a magnificent plan. In the end, Kotěra won universal acceptance. He erected, in Prague, the Institute for retired railwaymen, built a charming settlement of working-class houses at Louny, transformed the Castle at Radboř into a comfortable modern residence, and worked in Jugoslavia. The founder and first leader of modern Czech architecture, he still remains one of its most energetic and original representatives.

The group of moderns in the “Mánes” Society, with Kotěra at its head, soon felt itself strong enough to bid defiance to official architecture. The School of Decorative Arts and, later, the Academy of Fine Arts, to which Kotěra had gone on as professor, giving up his former post to his friend, the Slovene Plečnik, besides arranging exhibitions abroad and competitions, served the militants as centres for the organization of their offensive. Pupils of Ohmann, like Bendelmayer and Dryák, were among them, and newcomers from Wagner’s School, like Josef Engel, author of the improvements on the Letná Hill in Prague, and Bohumil Hübschman, the adroit exponent of civic architecture, lent their support to the movement. Among Kotěra’s direct disciples, the architects Otokar Novotný and Josef Gočár were in the vanguard of the fighters. In the ensuing struggle, the younger men gained ground but slowly, and not without losses. True, it was only an episode in the great battle of modern architecture that had spread from England to Belgium and from there extended itself to us by way of Germany. The new school threw overboard the ballast of traditional forms and instead of imitating, aimed at sober expression, developing the form only so far as was essential with reference to the object, the materials and the logic of the construction. They boldly entered for all the competitions and attacked all the problems necessitated by the sanitary improvements and other reconstructions in Prague—problems harder to solve in Prague than elsewhere, because of the valued antique features of the city. Paradoxically enough, these revolutionaries were more ardent champions of Prague antiquities than the official architects, who were often guilty of demolishing valuable relics of the past. At competitions, the younger men won prizes but did not obtain commissions. In the new streets driven through the old quarters, and on the great squares there arose a commonplace architecture of compromise, while the new school had to be satisfied with building in side streets or exhibiting abroad. It is only quite recently that they have succeeded in making their presence felt even on important sites.

During the past few years, however, by a perfectly natural evolution, even the new architecture has changed in character. At first fairly uniform, it has become diversified in accordance with varieties of temperament, and, since its triumph, has become richer in colour. If the principles we have set forth above are still followed in the main by all these artists, each individual is travelling by a different path towards the same goal. In the streets of Prague, in the provincial towns and the country resorts, we find buildings diverse in their aspect, yet closely akin. Gymnasia of the Sokols, with fine monumental lines adapted to a provincial environment, town halls, villas in the heart of the lovely Czech countryside, big factories at once original and practical in their plan, bathing establishments, bright and well-ventilated, flats and business offices in Prague—all these new erections have wrought a perceptible change in the appearance of Czech town and country.

From now onwards, modern Czech architecture shows a very rapid evolution, but one with its feet on solid earth. Wagner’s geometrical methods, his doctrine of the true material and the useful form, have been given up, and a new outlook, already apparent in the latest painting and sculpture, has also come to govern architecture. Stress is laid on the plastic suppleness of the material, and more is demanded of it than geometric stability, the symbolical expression of static forces, and the balance of thrust and weight. The architect’s medium is no longer that passive material which modern craftsmen handled with rigid orthodoxy, it becomes more supple in the hands of daring innovators who want to get more out of it; the plan is an idea, the façade ceases to be in automatic correspondence with the interior and becomes an independent organism, space is plastic, the wall and the ceiling having equal value. The admirable theorist and practician of the new æsthetic, Paul Janák, is at the head of these movements towards unity and grandeur, and he is ably seconded by Josef Gočár. Vladislav Hofman, an artist of restless and unstable temperament, dreams of a beautiful civic architecture of the future. They all love applied architecture, the thousand-and-one articles of luxury or common utility, from the massive piece of furniture down to the smallest knick-knack. The “Artěl” Corporation already boasts ten years’ activity in this direction, and the “Prague Workshops,” presided over by Janák and Gočár, have already given rise to a school. All these artists are in the prime of their working powers, the number of good architects is growing, and they hope that the economic crisis through which Europe is passing, as a result of the World War, may soon be over, in order that they may devote their fullest activities to new work in every field of architecture and decorative art. Meanwhile the younger men are busily engaged on the theoretical side, and in their review Style, whose publication has been resumed, they discuss the innumerable problems of town-planning, of the reform of art-teaching, and so forth. Thus they may be ready, when the economic revival permits, for the task of enlarging and beautifying their capital, of regenerating the provincial towns, and of endowing their country with such beauty and such opportunities for healthy and energetic life as its new-found freedom deserves. Then the last battle with reactionary architecture will be fought, and it will end in a victory of the younger generation.

 

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