INTRA call 2021
SECULAR SPIRIT AND FEMALE PARTICIPATION. THE VIENNA VOTIVKIRCHE AS NEW SYMBOL OF AN OLD ORDER
Contact: Brigitte
Felderer
Taking a back-stage look at Votivkirche and the artefacts this church holds
the project brings to light the biographies of women who once donated those objects. The life stories both reflect and form
the political and social development of Vienna in the 19th century. “Secular Spirit and Female Participation” investigates
the participation of women in the erection of Votivkirche as the last sanctuary of the Habsburg Empire, as a “monument of
Austria’s dynastic love”, to understand which roles women were granted, took or strived for in society at the time.
Women’s
love – for god, for the dynasty and for the poor – and women’s work and labour – from care-work, handicrafts to spiritual
and political work – is forever inscribed in the Votivkirche and its treasures, which are the project’s starting point of
investigation. Between the wealth of the emperors, the nobility and the up- and coming bourgeoisie and the blight of the streets;
between the belief in divine grace, the semblance of popular piety and coarse culture of the streets; between adoring the
self-promoting rulers and the struggle against the patriarchy and monarchy; between spiritual or political feminism and a
growing antifeminism: “Secular Spirit and Female Participation” tells stories of a polarized society of the late Habsburg
Empire through a female perspective.
The research involves an object-centered approach, oriented on the principle of
“object biographies”. These take their place in the field of material culture studies and have their origin in the sociology
and anthropology of the 1980s. Based on the so-called “material turn” of recent years, this approach has also become significant
in the history of art and culture, addressing questions such as: where does an object come from? Who made it? What has its
history been until the present day? How have its function and significance changed? These questions target also relations
between people and objects and spotlight the stories behind them.
The preoccupation with the material witnesses is linked
to studies of written and pictorial historical sources. The relationships and history associated with the objects also permeate
the holdings of other museums in Vienna, first and foremost the Wien Museum, where numerous portraits and photos of the donors
could be found.
The aura and the views of the oratory of the Votivkirche, where the donated objects are displayed, will
be integrated into the presentation concept. Excerpts from private correspondence, newspaper articles, prayer books, personal
dedication texts, diary entries, Imperial Court protocols, the architect’s notes will be spoken by different voices, historic
original film footage and photos collated, and the church bells, the organ, the resonance of the church interior re-recorded.
The recordings are audible in the exhibition space in various places in a timed choreography. Thus, narrated past becomes
an audible present.
Abb. Title: Bau der Votivkirche, viertes Baujahr
Heinrich von Ferstel (Architekt), k.
k. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei Wien (Fotograf), Bau der Votivkirche, viertes Baujahr, 1859, Wien Museum Inv.-Nr. 165302/44, CC0
(
https://sammlung.wienmuseum.at/objekt/801107/)
Abb: Ludwig Czerny (Lithograf), Ferdinand Tewele (Künstler), "Simbolografisch-historisches
Denkblatt zur feierlichen Grundsteinlegung der Votiv-Kirche am 24. April 1856 durch Seine Apost. Majestät Franz Josef I. Kaiser
von Oesterreich", 1856, Wien Museum Inv.-Nr. 107080, CC0 (
https://sammlung.wienmuseum.at/objekt/615520/)
Abb: Vinzenz Katzler (Künstler), "Das Kaiserfest in Wien: Die Einweihung der
Votivkirche.", 1879, Wien Museum Inv.-Nr. W 2567, CC0 (
https://sammlung.wienmuseum.at/objekt/377956/)