VIENNA.- The Hagengesellschaft paved the way for Austria’s two most important artist associations—the Secession and the Hagenbund—yet today it is known only to a few.

From 1880 onwards, this group met regularly on Gumpendorfer Straße at Café Sperl and the Blaues Freihaus, whose innkeeper, Josef Haagen, gave the Ha(a)gengesellschaft its name. Its members— including artists, architects, musicians, composers, researchers, journalists, and civil servants—were united by an open minded attitude toward the spirit of modernity. Although they never formed an official institution, they became trailblazers for Vienna’s two key reform movements in the arts: Fourteen members were among the founders of the Wiener Secession in 1897, and many others helped form the Hagenbund in 1900.

In 1905, the Hagengesellschaft donated more than 800 drawings to the Albertina Museum—an act of remarkable artistic self-confidence. This collection is an important historical document of a unique creative network.

Vienna around 1900: A Coffeehouse Culture that Shaped Art History

Viennese coffeehouse culture is usually associated with literature. But in 19th-century Vienna, it also served as a creative hub for artists, actors, and musicians—the Hagengesellschaft found its artistic home in the café. At Café Sperl, their main meeting place, countless drawings were created: spontaneous sketches, portraits, caricatures, humorous images, and grotesque scenes of everyday life. At first, these were drawn directly onto marble tabletops and later wiped away—until 1888, when painter Ernst Stöhr brought along paper so the drawings could be preserved. From then on, they were stored in a portfolio provided by the café owner—most of them eventually made their way into the Albertina Museum.

These drawings are snapshots of the artists’ daily lives: the group reading newspapers, engaging in debate, or quietly observing their surroundings. Particularly popular were humorous, motto-based drawing competitions, where sketches were produced in 20 minutes. A jury made up of members themselves chose the winners, who received food and drink as prizes—coffee, croissants, or schnapps. The everyday merged with the artistic—a fine expression of Viennese Lebenskunst.

Diversity as Strength: Friendship, Irony, and Self-Staging

The Hagengesellschaft was not a formal association with bylaws—it was a circle of like-minded individuals, held together by friendship, humor, and mutual inspiration. Around fifty members met regularly, with many others joining occasionally. Caricature was a central means of expression: members portrayed one another with affectionate exaggeration—small bodies became rounder, large noses more prominent, character traits more pronounced. Family ties further strengthened the network: Josef Engelhart was Kolo Moser’s brother-in-law, Ferdinand Schirnböck was related by marriage to Paul Wittgenstein, and Gustav Frank was a cousin of Gustav Mahler.

Modernist Impulses: From Ver Sacrum and the Secession to the Hagenbund

The Hagengesellschaft’s influence on Viennese art history was profound. The magazine Ver Sacrum, founded in 1898 as the official publication of the Secession, featured numerous drawings from the group’s portfolio—over fifty works were published. The visual style they presented—marked by wit, ornament, fantasy, and sharp observation—helped define the look of Viennese Jugendstil.

The founding of the Wiener Secession is also hardly imaginable without the Hagengesellschaft. Frustrated by the conservatism of the Künstlerhaus, progressive voices—many of them members of both the Künstlerhaus and the Hagengesellschaft, including Klimt and Moser—began meeting from 1893 onward. Their discussions culminated in the founding of the Secession in 1897 at Hotel Victoria. When some members of the Hagengesellschaft were excluded from this new movement, the Hagenbund was established in 1900, becoming the second major institution of Viennese modernism. Both groups remained closely connected to the Hagengesellschaft’s open-minded, humorous spirit— a connection that can still be felt today. The group continued to meet regularly into old age.

The exhibition at the Albertina Museum is the first to fully honor the creative and social potential of this remarkable group. It presents the Hagengesellschaft as a breeding ground for a new kind of artistic practice: playful, interconnected, and avant-garde. The drawings on view offer insights not only into a period of artistic awakening but into a community that deliberately blurred the lines between art, life, and friendship. In a time of social and cultural transformation, the Hagengesellschaft was a laboratory of modernism—and in many ways, it remains one to this day.