The Arc of History Lecture Series: Austria 1900 - 2020
We are excited to continue our series of lectures launched in 2024, reflecting on Austrian history, identity and creativity over a turbulent 120 year span.
The lectures will be of particular interest to those who have recently acquired Austrian citizenship, or are considering applying.
For new Austrian citizens: In case the event is sold out, please write an email to office@acflondon.org to join the waiting list.
Lecture 5: Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky – Architecture, Politics, Gender
By Dr Bernadette Reinhold
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897–2000) is considered one of the first female architects in Austria and a pioneer of social architecture, a women's rights activist and last but not least, a heroine of the resistance to the Nazi dictatorship. With her most famous and internationally acclaimed design project, "The Frankfurt Kitchen" (1926/27), she entered the modernist canon.
The lecture will give insight into the fascinating biography of the Viennese-born Schütte-Lihotzky, who also lived and worked in Frankfurt, the Soviet Union, Japan, China, London, Paris, Turkey and Cuba. Her architectural work is inextricably linked with her social and political commitment, throughout her 103 years of life – an icon of architectural history and pioneering role model.
Dr Bernadette Reinhold is director of the Oskar Kokoschka Centre, and Senior Scientist at the Institute Collection and Archive at the University of Applied Arts Vienna – where Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s estate is located – since 2008.
She studied art history, history and philosophy at the University of Vienna and has held research positions at the Federal Monuments Office (1991-97), at the Commission for Provenance Research (1997-2008) and the Austrian Academy of Science (2004-08). She has completed numerous research projects, publications, conferences, and teaches architecture (19/20th century), modern art and cultural policy in Austria.
Recent publications: Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. Architecture. Politics. Gender. New Perspectives in Her Life and Work (2023, co-ed. M. Bois, German ed.: 2019); „Sonderfall“ Angewandte. Die Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien im Austrofaschismus, Nationalsozialismus und in der Nachkriegszeit (2024, co-ed. Ch. Wieder); Oskar Kokoschka und Österreich. Facetten einer politischen Biografie (2023).
Katherine Klinger is the initiator of the lecture series The Arc of History. Previously, she was director of Second Generation Trust, a UK-based charity specialising in post-Holocaust generational consequences. She organised a number of ground-breaking conferences in London, Berlin and Vienna in the nineties, aimed at bringing together descendants of both victims and perpetrators. Katherine ran the Education Department of the Wiener Holocaust Library for a decade. She has recently acquired Austrian citizenship.
About the Arc of History Lecture Series:
The series commences with the last decades and the onset of Modernity from 1900. This was a profoundly significant period both artistically and intellectually, with far-reaching influence and importance, both nationally and internationally. Against this backdrop, the lectures consider significant Jewish contributions to the period, alongside the darker forces gathering momentum, culminating in the tragic fate of Austrian Jewry and other victims.
Austrian complicity, together with a postwar victim narrative, led many to shun a country that formally had nurtured some of the greatest achievements and minds of the early 20th century. With a growing recognition of the need to reassess its history, Austria finally commenced, in the mid-nineties, its own unique process to repair some of the mid-century rupture. The announcement in 2020, enshrined in law, that all Austrian descendants of NS persecution have the right of citizenship, is an important and significant contribution to this process. To date, over 35,000 people from across the world have acquired Austrian citizenship and it is estimated that the numbers will rise considerably in the next decade.
The final lecture in the series will reflect on the implications and meaning of citizenship in a country where connection has often been associated with tragedy and ambivalence, and many have rarely, if ever, even visited. As a new chapter opens, perhaps a new sense of purpose, opportunity and responsibility emerges.
