Renate Wagner-Rieger

Renate Wagner-Rieger (born January 10, 1921 in Vienna, died December 11, 1980 Vienna, her maiden name is Renate Rieger) was an Austrian art historian with significant research in the fields of architecture and historicism.

Education and career

In 1942 she studied Art History at the University of Vienna under Hans Sedlmayr and Karl Oettinger and received her PhD in 1947 under Karl Maria Swoboda on the architectural facade of the Viennese apartments from the 16th to the mid-18th century. In 1956 she became a lecturer at University of Vienna and in the same year married historian Walter Wagner.

In 1964 she presented to the International Congress of Art History in Bonn her research on early gothic architecture in Italy and a paper on historicism which brought her to international attention.^[1]

In 1971 Renate Wagner-Rieger was appointed full professor at University of Vienna, she was the first woman in the history department to hold this position.^[2]

Wagner-Rieger paid particular attention to previously neglected and partially devalued era of Historicism in architecture (the breakdown in romantic historicism, strict historicism and late historicism stems from it) and important contributions towards the study of Gründerzeit. In 1968 she initiated the large-scale research project called "Wiener Ringstraße", also known as "The Ringstraße: Image of an Era: the expansion of the inner city of Vienna under Emperor Franz Joseph" which studied the ring road in the historic center of Vienna.

Renate Wagner-Rieger died after a brief illness a few weeks before her 60th birthday in 1980.

Publications

• Wagner-Rieger, Renate (1956–1957). Italian Architecture at the Beginning of the Gothic (2 volumes). Austria: University of Graz Austria. 
• Wagner-Rieger, Renate (1957) "The Vienna townhouse Baroque and Classicism"
• Wagner-Rieger, Renate (1962) "The lock to Spittal an der Drau in Carinthia"
• Wagner-Rieger, Renate (1969). The Ringstrasse: Image of an Era: the expansion of the inner city of Vienna under Emperor Franz Joseph. University of Vienna. 
• Wagner-Rieger, Renate (1970) "Vienna's architecture in the 19th century"
• Wagner-Rieger, Renate (1972). The House of Austrian Academy of Sciences, for the 125th Anniversary of the Academy (in German). Vienna. p. 55. ISBN 9783205030225. 
• Wagner-Rieger, Renate; Krause, Walter (1975). Historicism and Palace. Studies on the art of the nineteenth century. München : Prestel. p. 365. ISBN 9783791301037. 
• Wagner-Rieger, Renate; Reissberger, Mara (1980). Theophil von Hansen. Bd. 8, T. 4 (in German). Wiesbaden : Steiner. p. 88. ISBN 3515026762. 

Literature

Fritz Fellner, Doris A. Corradini (eds.): Austrian historians in the 20th century. A biographical-bibliographical lexicon (= Publications of the Commission of Modern History in Austria. Vol. 99). Böhlau, Vienna among other things, 2006, ISBN 3-205-77476-0, p 435

Awards

1976: City of Vienna Prize for Humanities

References