![]() ![]() This mammoth project was to remain uncompleted.įranz Ferdinand was also an enthusiastic collector of art, buying large quantities of antiques. The elderly emperor eventually delegated the completion of the Neue Burg wing of the Hofburg to his successor, which resulted in a number of changes to the designs. In the field of art Franz Ferdinand was the figure who wielded the most influence in the dynasty, since Franz Joseph scrupulously avoided taking a position. Franz Ferdinand successfully blocked projects designed by Otto Wagner, for example the new War Ministry on Stubenring, where today an ornate neo-Baroque edifice by Ludwig Baumann, an architect much favoured by the archduke, faces Wagner’s iconic Post Office Savings Bank. The archduke’s conservative attitudes also manifested themselves in his taste in art: Franz Ferdinand was a pronounced opponent of the early Viennese Modern movement, today regarded as the ‘trademark’ of the Viennese art scene around 1900. Although very popular in Bohemia, the archduke had little support at the Viennese Court, being seen as ambitious, difficult, irascible and lacking in diplomacy. His favourite country estate at Konopiště in Bohemia became a symbol of his pro-Slav political plans. The walls of his palaces were decorated with dense displays of hunting trophies. A typically Habsburg passion, in him the thrill of the chase took on an almost pathological character: Franz Ferdinand was the most trigger-happy of the Habsburgs, as attested by his meticulously kept hunting ledgers which record a total of 274,511 kills. The heir to the throne represented conservative, feudal Austria.įranz Ferdinand kept up an emphatically aristocratic lifestyle, as expressed in his love of hunting. Anti-democratic and clericalist, Franz Ferdinand was vehemently opposed to modernist tendencies, the industrial age and middle-class parliamentarianism. ![]()
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