The mother's weltanschauung was based on the premises of "education and property", consequently requiring the sons to be autonomous and economically independent as she regarded those things as bases for social success. Berta Zuckerkandl described Wagner as an "Epicurean, an optimist, a revolutionary, a sceptic, a man of the world, a diplomat" and also as a "daredevil". Wagner was educated by private tutors and French governesses until the age of nine, after that he was educated at the Akademische Gymnasium and at the Benedictine seminary in Kremsmünster. During his childhood he met Theophil Hansen who might have aroused his interest in architecture. From 1857 to 1859 Wagner studied at the Technical University in Vienna. In 1860 he stayed in Berlin to study at the local Bauakademie (Building Academy). From 1861 to 1963 Wagner attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under August Siccard von Siccardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll. Wagner's first marriage to Josefine Domhard in 1863 ended in a divorce in 1880. He left his daughter Susanne and the two illegitimate sons Otto and Robert he had with Sophie von Paupie behind. The reason was his daughter's governess Louise Stiffel who was 18 years younger than he was and whom he married first in Budapest in 1884 and again in Vienna in 1889. His three children Stefan, Louise and Christine were the result of this happy relationship. In 1915 Louise Stiffel died of cancer. In his diary Otto Wagner wrote letters to his wife until his death and he mourned for her at the house altar especially built for that purpose.   The second villa in Hüttelbergstraße 28, Vienna XII (1911-1912) was conceived as a summer residence and a widow's house for his much younger wife and it is situated very close to his first villa. While his first villa opens to the outside, the second one is a cube with a strictly close character. The three nearly identical rows of windows result from the three-storied reinforced concrete construction. Following the inner use of the rooms the entrance is not situated in the central axis any more but on the right side of the building particularly emphasized by the decoration of the surface. The glass windows were designed by Leopold Forstner and produced by the Wiener Mosaik- Werkstätten (Vienna Mosaic Workshops). There is a promenade flat roof and on the right side the villa has been extended by a loggia. The service rooms and an apartment for servants are situated in the basement, an additional personnel entrance is on the backside of the house. A staircase connects the entrance with the upper ground floor via a glazed double door opening to a hall. The hall leads to the loggia located on the right and to the dining room, the largest room located along the street front. The staircase connecting all the floors, is situated parallel to the dining room. On the upper floor there are bedrooms, a wardroom, guestrooms and a studio oriented towards the road, on the side of the garden there is a bathroom situated next to the bedroom as well as a closet for the servant. The toilet is situated at the end of the corridor serving as link between the rooms and the staircase. The only photos of the hall and the dining room have been published in Wagner's "Die Baukunst unserer Zeit" in 1914, from the rest of the furniture there is nothing left. The hall is also used as a living room with a square table (design by Marcel Kammerer) and four armchairs, a cupboard on a projecting basis and an occasional table with the same armchairs placed next to it. Except the cupboard that was designed by Otto Wagner, all the pieces of furniture were made of bentwood and produced in series by Thonet. The dining room is furnished with an extendible dining table, 18 armchairs, a bar and four occasional tables as well as with a small seating accommodation in front of the fireplace. Within this room horizontally divided into two, underlined by the colours red and white, the furnishing is characterized by the "useful arrangement" and the "simplicity and durability". The furnishing makes the hierarchical structure and specific purposes of the rooms visible. Thus the furniture of the dining room is varnished in contrast to the hall and the colours were used to define distinctions as well. Otto Wagner's designs, his "functional decor" and his personal way of life were not characterized by a life-reforming impetus but rather by an haut bourgeois demand of self-presentation and a constant proclamation of the up-to-date going beyond a historical mixture. "...to show again and again that it is possible to be progressive in art by very simple means and by keeping to useful and economic conditions as well". < BACK Monika Platzer