Architecture and Truth in Fin-De-Si�cle Vienna

Leslie Topp investigates how truth in Viennese architecture at the turn of the twentieth century could be interpreted in a variety of ways, including truth to purpose, symbolist or ideal truth, and ethical notions of authenticity. Drawing on newly uncovered archival materials, Topp offers a new interpretation of familiar buildings, demonstrating how they encompass utopianism, hyper-rationality, and subjectivism. She also explores the relationship between Viennese modern architecture and contemporary painting, psychiatry, fashion, labor issues, and anti-Semitic politics.
In this 2004 book, Topp offers an interpretation of familiar buildings from turn of the twentieth-century Vienna.
Her work is both original and thorough, thus it is one of the best treatments of a subject that has received a great deal of attention.
-Jindrich Vybiral, Austrian History Yearbook
Leslie Topp's book is important for offering new perspectives on well-known buildings, especially for systematically trying to answer the question of who the prople that commissioned them were. As a consistent and comprehensive narrative about four iconic modernist monuments, based at the same time on solid research and creative interpretation, it will also be an excellent teaching tool.
-Vladimi Kulic, Austrian Studies
Topp gets it right, and her meticulous analyses confirm what has been a growing understanding in recent years about the complexity and multifarious nature of early Modernism...Her work navigates deftly through the intricate and meandering course of the idea, and it provides a useful contribution to the literature on the early Modernism in Vienna.
-Christopher Long, University of Texas at Austin, Studies in the Decorative Arts