Here is the interesting story of a rare affordable housing project that did not turn into a well located slum and the radicals that made it possible. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
The stamp today is Austrian. At the-philatelist.com we have featured several stamps printed in Austria, but this is our first actual Austrian stamp. See https://the-philatelist.com/2017/11/29/not-a-country-long-enough-to-get-the-stamp-issued/ and https://the-philatelist.com/2017/11/24/well-we-think-we-are-independant-we-have-a-constitution-a-flag-and-austrian-stamps/ Both stamps were very well printed by the standards of the day. This one not so much. It was less of a commemorative and more for bulk postage. That and the other side of the iron curtain look and subject matter perhaps show the in between status of Austria in 1959.
Todays stamp issue is A176, a 50 groschen stamp issued by Austria in 1959. The stamp features the Karl Marx Hof, an affordable housing complex in the Heiligenstadt area of Vienna. It is part of a 16 stamp issue of various Austrian architecture. According to the Scott catalog, it is worth 25 cents used.
Heiligenstadt is an area on the outskirts of Vienna. It was formerly a summer spa for Viennese to go and there was a hot water spring. The place had some reverses including being plundered twice by the Turkish during their two sieges of Vienna. It’s biggest claim to fame was when the composer Beethoven went there to recover after going deaf. He wrote his brother the famous Heiligenstadt Testament discussing suicide. The stay though was good for Beethoven and he resumed his career afterward. The area was incorporated in Vienna proper in 1892.
Vienna was an exciting place after World War 1. It was the capital of a small country instead of a large empire as before. On the other hand there was an influx of people from the east escaping changed borders and many veterans of the old imperial army who chose to build a new life in Vienna. These included many Jewish people from former Austrian Galacia that brought their politics with them. Vienna was sort of a left wing bastion in a fairly conservative country so it attracted many intellectuals and artistic types.
The problem was where to house the new arrivals. During the war, rent control had been established and this made private construction of apartments uneconomical. The socialist local government had passed a series of taxes on luxuries that was to be used to construct affordable housing. Otto Wagner, a local proponent of modern architecture was, along with his students, an inspiration of what was coming. The Karl Marx Hof was built in 1927-1930 an a large tract of land that had been drained. 1382 apartments were built on about 20 percent of the land with room left over for playgrounds, gardens, a library, and a kindergarten. The apartments, at 300 -600 square feet sound small to modern American ears. It was designed to be the home to 5000 people. Interestingly with the rest of the country more conservative, in 1934 there was an attempt to bring the lefties of Vienna more into line. The rebellion that followed was centered on the new Karl Marx Hof. During the following right wing period, the apartments got a new name, the Heiligenstadt Hof. Interestingly the city planner of the big red apartment projects kept working in Vienna till 1951. Even the Nazis can’t fire a civil servant, even if his big projects were behind him.
It still stands today, back to the old name since 1945 and was recently refurbished. It can be seen in the controversial film “The Night Porter”.
Well, my drink is empty. I wonder who lives there now, young singles? refugees? old people? I can’t imagine young families. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018.