The Imperial Mews and Coach Building in Vienna (1740-1918)

Research project P 14226 The Imperial Mews and Coach Building in Vienna (1740-1918) Monica KURZEL- RUTSCHEINER 06.03.2000 The Royal and Imperial Mews and Coach Building in Vienna (1740-1918) The role of carriage and livery for princely representation, and as part of European artistic, cultural, technical and every-day history As many aspects of the history of coach building have so far been neglected by international research the subject may be considered an important desideratum. of scholarly research. Until the middle of our century, horse-drawn carriages were every-day things and as such rarely perceived as objects of artistic and historical value. Thus even those museums which, like the Kunsthistorisches Museum, house the remains of a princely mews, undertook no scholarly research of their exhibits. It was Heinrich Kreisel who introduced the carriage as an object of art historical research in his book on state carriages and sleighs ("Prunkwagen und Schlitten") published in 1927, but for a long time he had no successors. A change was only noticeable in the period after the Second World War: the great collections of carriages started to take an inventory of their collections and make their findings available to the wider public through suitable publications. A few monographic works, such as Rudolf Wackernagel`s study on the French coronation carriage published in 1966, proved that at least state carriages designed and executed by important artists for the ruling dynasties should rightly be seen as an important expression of a period`s artistic aspirations and style. This realisation led to an increased desire to research the carriage` s, role and development, and to undertake extensive surveys and studies placing it in its cultural, technical, every-day life and art historical context. Catherine Rommelaere`s five-volume study on 18` and 19` century Belgian coach building (1997/98), and the cataloguing project at the Marstallmuseum Nymphenburg under Rudolf Wackernagel (since 1998) are exemplary in this context. In Vienna too, with its very large collection of carriages of the highest quality and its history as one of the most important centres of coach building in Europe, a wide-ranging research project promises excellent results. For the first time, the Kunsthistorisches Museum`s Collection of Carriages, which houses the extant carriages used by the imperial court, would be extensively studied and researched, by systematically analysing the papers in the archive of the office of the royal and imperial equerry (HHStA) and drawing on numerous sources for formal representation, art and craftsmanship. The results of this research are to be published in two volumes, a scholarly catalogue of the collection (vol. 1), and an overview study on Viennese coach building as part of European artistic and cultural history (vol. 2).

Vienna`s "Wagenburg" at the Palace of Schönbrunn numbers among the world`s best-preserved collections of historical courtly carriages. Until recently, the historic and cultural significance of this collection has stood in stark contrast to the insufficient knowledge of its objects, their origins and history of use. This research project offered the first opportunity to systematically catalogue in an electronic database, as well as to evaluate, collection-relevant documents from the "Oberststallmeisteramt" [Office of the Master of Horses] which are stored in Vienna`s (Habsburg) Family, Court and State Archives. The results arrived at are varied in nature. They are relevant to many of the ca. 2,000 coaches and sleds of various types that were produced between 1740 and 1918 for the imperial fleet. But earlier vehicles were also taken into account, to the extent that they could be confirmed by the sources. In this way, coaches from the Kremlin Museum in Moscow were identified as the oldest extant products of Viennese Baroque carriage building. They were built in 1726-28 as gifts to the Russian court. The history of their production shows the enormous art-historical and political role of Baroque display coaches. For the final years of the monarchy, the introduction of Court automobiles into the imperial fleet was reconstructed. In so doing, the widespread belief that the Viennese Court resisted automobiles could be modified. Furthermore, the history of the Imperial and Royal Court Saddlery has now been completely documented for the first half of the 19th century: It was originally only a maintenance workshop, and was expanded in 1820 to become a coach factory, producing its own coaches which compared favourably to the most important private Viennese makes. In 1842, for reasons of cost, the Court Saddlery was reduced once again to a small workshop for minor repairs. Research also brought the surprising revelation that the beginning of the Wagenburg`s history as a museum was significantly earlier than had been assumed up to now - namely as early as the mid-19th century. Another focus was on the history of the Court Livery, which was part of the overall appearance of equipages and of which numerous examples are still kept in the Department of Court Uniforms. Due to their sheer bulk, only around half of the archival materials could be evaluated - for which reason a follow- up project was submitted and approved. Many partial results have already been published in the form of articles. An overview in the form of the completion of the first scholarly catalogue of the Wagenburg collection will only be available after the conclusion of the second research project.