Ringstrasse Project and Image Politics of Modern City in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

There have been different views among the cultural historians about the historical status of the Ringstrasse Project in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, even if this old and historical street was publicly considered as the most famous boulevard in the world cities. Usually the main position about the historical status of this urban development project can be divided into two stances. Firstly, it can be named as traditionalist, conservative and absolutist stance,secondly on the contrary as modernist, progressive and civilian position. These directly-opposed ideas have each different answers about the three important questions: Was the Emperor Franz Joseph I, as the proposer of the city development project, absolutist or reformist monarch? Was the basic character of the Ringstrasse Project as a road-widening project conservative or progressive scheme? Were the new public buildings on this street the architectural symbol of absolutist or civil politics? In my viewpoint, we don't have to think both sides separately, but we must consider them simultaneously in order to find proper answers. In this critical perspective, Chapter II takes the background of the Ringstrasse project and its main contents into consideration. Here the emperor Franz Joseph I cut a conspicuous figure as project initiator. As soon as he seized his political power, he ordered that his new government should positively contemplate the city development scheme which originally belonged to the urban reform project considering the city government and its municipal politics during the 1848’s revolution. Chapter III sheds new lights on the general planning of the Ringstrasse project and its realization process. In this analysis it is mainly stressed that the Ringstrasse project was not a short-term scheme but a long-term modern urbanization policy. Especially the Jews in Vienna actively engaged themselves on this urban project to buy up many parts of the building sites on the street. It simply provided more fodder for another attack on the viennese jews. Chapter Ⅳ puts emphasis on the public buildings on the street in oder to enunciate the urban image politics of modern Vienna through illuminating its symbolic characters. The public architectures were composed of three parts—Emperor Forum, Civil Forum, and Army Forum. These buildings respectively represented the empire politics and the civil politics, and the army politics not in harmony but in tension. In conclusion, the Ringstrasse project was the result of the unstable coexistence of tradition and modernity, conservation and progress, state and civil society in the late 19th century of Austria.