Wilhelm Stiassny

Wilhelm Stiassny (15 October 1842, Pressburg (Bratislava) – 11 July 1910, Bad Ischl) was a Jewish Austrian architect.^[1]

Personal life

From 1857 to 1861, he studied at the Polytechnic in Vienna and afterwards studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Friedrich von Schmidt.

In 1867 Stiassny was appointed delegate to the Paris Exposition by the Ministry of Commerce, and the following year he settled in Vienna as an architect. Until 1905 he oversaw the construction of 180 palaces, schools, residences, factories, hospitals, and synagogues, including the Rothschild Hospital at Währing (1873), the Hall of Ceremonies in the Jewish section of the Vienna Central Friedhof, the Königswarter Institute for the Blind at Hohewarte, the Kindergarten in the second district of Vienna, the Rothschild Hospital at Smyrna, and the synagogues at Malacky, Jablonec nad Nisou, Čáslav, and Weinberge (Vinohrady, now a part of Prague). From 1878 to 1900 Stiassny was a member of the aldermanic board of Vienna and of the Donauregulierungs-Commission. From 1879 he was a member of the board of trustees of the Jewish community of Vienna. In 1895, Stiassny founded the Society for the Conservation and Preservation of Art and Historical Monuments of Judaism, the world's first Jewish museum.^[2] He also served as head of the Jewish Colonization Association in Vienna.

Buildings

Israelitisches Blindeninstitut in Wien-Döbling, 1872
Rothschild-Hospital in Wien-Währing, 1873
Synagogue in Malacky, 1886-87
Synagogue in Jablonec nad Nisou, 1892
Polnische Schul, Orthodox Synagogue at Leopoldgasse 29, Vienna, 1892-93
Stanisławów Synagogue, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine 1895-99
Jubilee Synagogue, today Jerusalem Synagogue in Prague, 1904-1906
Synagogue in Wiener Neustadt, 1902
Hall of Ceremonies in the Jewish section of the Vienna Central Friedhof, Israelitische Abteilung, 1. Tor
More than 100 Apartment buildings
Tombs, among which the tomb for the Austrian branch of the Rothschild family.