Fischer von Erlach and the Habsburg imperial historians

Abstract

The Entwurff einer historischen Architectur (Outline of an Historical Architecture, 1721), by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, architect to the Austrian imperial court, is often seen as a milestone in the literature of architecture, and as the first comparative and universal history of architecture. In part because it has been studied primarily as a work of architectural history, rather than imperial history, it has become relatively unmoored from a large body of earlier and contemporary histories of the Habsburgs and the imperial house. These works cumulatively established a distinct historiographical tradition that informs the content and narrative of Fischer’s book and aligns it closely with a deeply ideological narrative in which a historical line leads directly from the Old Testament patriarchs through Greco-Roman rulers to the Holy Roman Emperors, and from Jerusalem and Rome to modern Vienna. To a substantial degree, this historiography, rather than a nascent architectural canon, determined the contents and presentation of the Entwurff.