Elana Shapira – författare

The first biography of an extraordinary woman and architect who left her mark on world capitals and reshaped modern designElla Briggs (1880–1977) was a talented architect, designer, and writer whose influence was felt on both sides of the Atlantic. She trained with the Viennese Secessionists and brought their radical ideas to Gilded Age New York. She designed modernist housing for the masses in Austria, was jailed as a suspected spy in Mussolini’s Italy, and thrived in Weimar Germany before suffering persecution under the Nazis. Fleeing to London, she contributed to England’s postwar reconstruction. Yet despite a long and prolific career, her name is largely forgotten today. Finding Ella Briggs restores Briggs to her rightful place in the history of modernist design.Despina Stratigakos and Elana Shapira bring together an international team of historians to provide the defining biography of this boldly unconventional designer. Whether she was fighting for integration at Europe’s architecture schools or writing about innovative houses for American women’s magazines like Good Housekeeping, Briggs embodied the transatlantic flow of modernism. This panoramic book uncovers new findings about Briggs, her networks, and projects, recovering the many facets of a life that spanned global borders and cultures.Beautifully illustrated and drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished research from archives around the world, Finding Ella Briggs is the inspiring story of a woman who defied all obstacles to pursue her dream of designing for the modern client.With contributions by Megan Brandow-Faller, Celina Kress, Dörte Kuhlmann, Ulrike Matzer, Christine Oertel, Eva B. Ottillinger, Barbara Penner, Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber, Monika Platzer, Ursula Prokop, Sabrina Rahman, Katrin Stingl, Carmen Trifina, and Christine Zwingl.

This new volume addresses the lasting contribution made by Central European émigré designers to twentieth-century American design and architecture. The contributors examine how oppositional stances in debates concerning consumption and modernism’s social agendas taken by designers such as Felix Augenfeld, Joseph Binder, Josef Frank, Paul T. Frankl, Frederick Kiesler, Richard Neutra, and R. M. Schindler in Europe prefiguredtheir later adoption or rejection by American culture. They argue that émigrés and refugees from fascist Europe such as György Kepes, Paul László, Victor Papanek, Bernard Rudofsky, Xanti Schawinsky, and Eva Zeisel drew on the particular experiences of their home countries, and networks of émigré and exiled designers in the United States, to develop a humanist, progressive, and socially inclusive design culture which continues to influence design practice today.

Jewish designers and architects played a key role in shaping the interwar architecture of Central Europe, and in the respective countries where they settled following the Nazi's rise to power. This book explores how Jewish architects and patrons influenced and reformed the design of towns and cities through commercial buildings, urban landscaping and other material culture. It also examines how modern identities evolved in the context of migration, commercial and professional networks, and in relation to the conflict between nationalist ideologies and international aspirations in Central Europe and beyond.Pointing to the production within cultural platforms shared by Jews and Christians, the book's research sheds new light on the importance of integrating Jews into Central European design and aesthetic history. Leading historians, curators, archivists and architects present their critical analyses further to ‘design’ the past and push forward a transformation in the historical consciousness of Central Europe. By reconsidering the seminal role of Central European émigré and exiled architects and designers in shaping today's global design cultures, this book further strengthens humanistic, progressive and pluralistic cultural trends in Europe today.

Jewish designers and architects played a key role in shaping the interwar architecture of Central Europe, and in the respective countries where they settled following the Nazi's rise to power. This book explores how Jewish architects and patrons influenced and reformed the design of towns and cities through commercial buildings, urban landscaping and other material culture. It also examines how modern identities evolved in the context of migration, commercial and professional networks, and in relation to the conflict between nationalist ideologies and international aspirations in Central Europe and beyond.Pointing to the production within cultural platforms shared by Jews and Christians, the book's research sheds new light on the importance of integrating Jews into Central European design and aesthetic history. Leading historians, curators, archivists and architects present their critical analyses further to ‘design’ the past and push forward a transformation in the historical consciousness of Central Europe. By reconsidering the seminal role of Central European émigré and exiled architects and designers in shaping today's global design cultures, this book further strengthens humanistic, progressive and pluralistic cultural trends in Europe today.

Bringing together an interdisciplinary cast of scholars, this volume explores national and nationalist identification(s) in Austria, as they were represented through culture and design, in response to the political environment in the first half of the 20th century. Austrian Identity and Modernity addresses the processes of evolution, conflict, destruction, and critical reassembling of interrelated Austrian cultures. It discusses:- The transformation of liberal ideologies, scientific leadership, technology and social inclusion- How professional women shaped alternative collectives, art and design movements- Socialist cultural projects and national unity- The Catholic Church and politics- Antisemitism and memory culture in context- Political shifts and modern architecture and music- Migration, remigration and pluralism in Austrian cultureDivided into four chronological parts, the book surveys the period from the late-19th century through to the post-WWII era. It serves to offer up innovative approaches to the concepts of nation and nationalism, as well as ground-breaking research on the roles played by regionalism, Europeanism, and migration in culture, design and the shaping of Austrian identities.

Bringing together an interdisciplinary cast of scholars, this volume explores national and nationalist identification(s) in Austria, as they were represented through culture and design, in response to the political environment in the first half of the 20th century. Austrian Identity and Modernity addresses the processes of evolution, conflict, destruction, and critical reassembling of interrelated Austrian cultures. It discusses:- The transformation of liberal ideologies, scientific leadership, technology and social inclusion- How professional women shaped alternative collectives, art and design movements- Socialist cultural projects and national unity- The Catholic Church and politics- Antisemitism and memory culture in context- Political shifts and modern architecture and music- Migration, remigration and pluralism in Austrian cultureDivided into four chronological parts, the book surveys the period from the late-19th century through to the post-WWII era. It serves to offer up innovative approaches to the concepts of nation and nationalism, as well as ground-breaking research on the roles played by regionalism, Europeanism, and migration in culture, design and the shaping of Austrian identities.

This new volume addresses the lasting contribution made by Central European émigré designers to twentieth-century American design and architecture. The contributors examine how oppositional stances in debates concerning consumption and modernism’s social agendas taken by designers such as Felix Augenfeld, Joseph Binder, Josef Frank, Paul T. Frankl, Frederick Kiesler, Richard Neutra, and R. M. Schindler in Europe prefiguredtheir later adoption or rejection by American culture. They argue that émigrés and refugees from fascist Europe such as György Kepes, Paul László, Victor Papanek, Bernard Rudofsky, Xanti Schawinsky, and Eva Zeisel drew on the particular experiences of their home countries, and networks of émigré and exiled designers in the United States, to develop a humanist, progressive, and socially inclusive design culture which continues to influence design practice today.

A recent surge of interest in Jewish patronage during the golden years of Vienna has led to the question, Would modernism in Vienna have developed in the same fashion had Jewish patrons not been involved? This book uniquely treats Jewish identification within Viennese modernism as a matter of Jews active fashioning of a new language to convey their aims of emancipation along with their claims of cultural authority. In this provocative reexamination of the roots of Viennese modernism, Elana Shapira analyzes the central role of Jewish businessmen, professionals, and writers in the evolution of the city’s architecture and design from the 1860s to the 1910s. According to Shapira, these patrons negotiated their relationship with their non-Jewish surroundings and clarified their position within Viennese society by inscribing Jewish elements into the buildings, interiors, furniture, and design objects that they financed, produced, and co-designed. In the first book to investigate the cultural contributions of the banker Eduard Todesco, the steel tycoon Karl Wittgenstein, the textile industrialist Fritz Waerndorfer, the author Peter Altenberg, the tailor Leopold Goldman, and many others, Shapira reconsiders theories identifying the crisis of Jewish assimilation as a primary creative stimulus for the Jewish contribution to Viennese modernism. Instead, she argues that creative tensions between Jews and non-Jews—patrons and designers who cooperated and arranged well-choreographed social encounters with one another—offer more convincing explanations for the formation of a new semantics of modern Viennese architecture and design than do theories based on assimilation. This thoroughly researched and richly illustrated book will interest scholars and students of Jewish studies, Vienna and Viennese culture, and modernism.

This book reconsiders standard narratives regarding Austrian émigrés and exiles to Britain by addressing the seminal role of Sigmund Freud and his writings, and the critical part played by his contemporaries, in the construction of a method promoting humanized relations between individual and society and subjectivity and culture.

This book reconsiders standard narratives regarding Austrian émigrés and exiles to Britain by addressing the seminal role of Sigmund Freud and his writings, and the critical part played by his contemporaries, in the construction of a method promoting humanized relations between individual and society and subjectivity and culture.

Gestalterinnen played a decisive role in the development of modernism in Vienna. This publication presents new research on women designers, ceramicists, fashion designers, graphic artists, garden architects, photographers, art historians and patrons. The contributions illuminate the eminent importance of these women for Viennese modernism and show how traditional role models were challenged during the interwar period. The Gestalterinnen confronted existing prejudices and created new visual languages in order to forge successful careers. At the same time, they contributed to critical discourse on the emancipation of women. The Gestalterinnen of Viennese modernism included among others: Emilie Flöge, Mathilde Flögl, Jacqueline Groag, Fanny HarlfingerZakucka, Yella Hertzka, Else Hofmann, Hilda Jesser, Maria Likarz, Madame d’Ora, Pauline Metternich-Sándor, Bertha Pappenheim, Marie ReidemeisterNeurath, Lisl Weil, Vally Wieselthier and Helene Wolf Introduction and two chapters in English

Psychoanalysis, the study of the unconscious, has provided artists in the 20th and 21st centuries with both a visual language and valuable psychological tools to address the social phenomenon of violence against women. The volume presents groundbreaking research on various representations of gender-based violence in art. The book aims to examine the cultural constructions embedded in this phenomenon and to explore the different strategies that have been developed on different continents to counteract it. The artists featured are Oskar Kokoschka, María Izquierdo, Grete Stern, Dorothea Tanning, Ana Mendieta, Kiki Kogelnik, Marina Abramović, Soli Kiani, Sigalit Landau, and Hava Raucher, as well as the filmmaker Ruth Beckermann and the philosopher Hélène Cixous. Look insideWith contributions in English and German and German and English abstracts

Between 9 and 933, many Viennese writers, artists, theater directors and psychoanalysts settled in Berlin, playing a key part in the development of modernism in both cities. The contributions in this volume explore the extent to which a Viennese School developed in Berlin during this period and examine the role of those participating in cultural transfer between Vienna and Berlin. They included writers such as Vicki Baum und Felix Salten, people from the world of theater such as Elisabeth Bergner and Max Reinhardt, designers like Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and Emil Orlik, and scientists like Sigmund Freud and Otto Neurath. Through innovation, they transformed their self-image as 'outsiders' into artistic freedom and social utopia.