Jugendstil: The Youth Style of Viennese Book Art

What began as a pedagogical commitment to children and a brighter future became eclipsed by the refusal to face a new and much-changed world. Against the books’ conservative and backwards-looking contents, the emphasis on style and form felt jarring. In his memoir, Stefan Zweig noted that “such overvaluation of the aesthetic, carried to the point of absurdity, could only exist at the expense of the normal interests of our age.” Writer Karl Kraus went even further, condemning the focus on aesthetics as “corrosive, oppressive and immoral.” If that sounds extreme, consider that when Austrian Emperor Franz Josef I died in 1916, the education ministry designed and printed thousands of copies of an extravagant commemorative book, Kaiser Franz Josef I, Ein Erinnerungsbuch (Emperor Franz Josef I: A Memoir), as a gift for schoolchildren. No matter that the monarchy had long lost its ability to rule and Austria was on the verge of dissolution. Worse even was that the intended schoolchildren were literally starving to death; the shortages caused by the Allied blockade resulted in widespread malnutrition, wiping out as much as 30 percent of the population.

It was only after the First World War and the founding of the new Austrian republic that new opportunities for illustration began to present themselves. The Social Democrats implemented their program of reform teaching in 1918, and Socialism — known as the era of Red Vienna — had begun to set in. One of the most popular youth magazines during this time was the Jugendrotkreuz Zeitschrift (Magazine for the Red Cross Youth), illustrated by the well-known artist Franz Cizek, which was committed to the goals of tolerance, peace and moral rebuilding of young people after the war.

Books like Hoch Die Republik (Exalt the Republic), 1918, were modern and optimistic, with clean lines once again representing hope for a better future. The book was intended as a gift for Viennese primary schoolchildren, but as a precursor of hardships to come, was eventually banned. The Ministry of Education — later dominated by the conservative Christian-Social Party — criticized the depiction of certain social democratic ideals. And many weekly children's publications — including Der Regenbogen, Wochenschrift für Kinder (The Rainbow: Children's Weekly), 1924-27, and Der Weg ins Leben (The Path to Life), 1924, met with the same fate. The latter’s covers exemplified “Viennese Kineticism” with streaks of chalky black, vibrating with energy and spirit. Inside, the texts pondered rational enlightenment, pacifism and an activist view of life.