Otto Wagner (1841–1918) is one of the internationally most influential figures of early modern architecture. Many of his buildings – for instance, the Vienna City Railway, the Postal Savings Bank and the Church at Steinhof – are now considered key works of twentieth-century architecture because they shed their historical stylistic trappings and speak instead a language appropriate to “modern life”, based on purpose, materials, and construction.
Wagner's early work was influenced by the historicism of Vienna’s Ringstrasse. From the late 1880s onwards, however, he, unique in his generation, became convinced that this architecture was at odds with the political, economic and social dynamics of the time. In 1896 he set out his ideas on “modern architecture” in a treatise of the same name, which met with great acclaim and is now considered one of the most important and influential texts on architectural theory.
