Oskar Wittek

Oskar Friedrich Wittek was born in Krnov to Edmund Wittek, headmaster of a middle school and later district school inspector, and his wife Marie, née Weiss. His elder brother was the journalist and writer Bruno Hans Wittek (1895–⁠1935). Oskar studied architecture at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts under Clemens Holzmeister, a leading figure of architectural expressionism in interwar Vienna, and briefly (1928–⁠1930) worked as his assistant when Holzmeister taught at the Academy in Düsseldorf. Around the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, Wittek settled in Krnov, where he opened an architectural studio. From 1930 he taught at the Anhaltische Bauschule (Anhalt Building School) in Zerbst, Germany. In 1936, he married Helmtraude Obeth, the daughter of the noted Silesian sculptor Josef Obeth. The wedding took place in Travná.
Only a handful of Wittek’s designs and realizations are known today. For Krnov he prepared a design for a cloth factory, published in 1929 in Moderne Bauformen but never realized, and he designed a house for Leopoldina Mildnerová on Žižkova Street (1935), inspired by Mediterranean architecture. At that time, he also maintained professional contacts with Opava. He became a member of the Vereinigung bildender Künstler Schlesiens (Silesian Artists’ Associaion), founded in 1926 by the painter Adolf Zdrazila. In 1930, at the invitation of Mayor Ernst Franz, he prepared a study for a municipal representative municipal house for Opava. With its modern outlook and expressive massing, the design held its own against proposals by Leopold Bauer and Otto Reichner, although the project was never executed. Wittek’s only completed building in Opava – and his best-known work – is the administrative and residential building for the company Fiedor (1932), designed in the spirit of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) and repeating the bay motif Wittek had introduced in the municipal house study.
The small number of Wittek’s known buildings includes the Krnov villa mentioned above, the Fiedor building in Opava, the evangelical church in Krasov (1935), and the chapel on Velký Roudný (1933). In 1936, he collaborated with Josef Obeth on a memorial on Cvilín Hill near Krnov dedicated to three Silesian artists: Eduard Schön Engelsberg, Bruno Hans Wittek, and Viktor Emanuel Heeger. His unrealized projects are more numerous, among them the Opava municipal house, a theatre and square plan for Krnov (1926), a study for the town’s expansion, a spa pavilion (Trinkhalle) in Baden (1927, 2nd prize in an architectural competition), Church of St. Hedwig and a First World War memorial on náměstí Svaté Hedviky (St. Hedwig Square) in Opava (1931–⁠1932, 2nd prize), and a group of weekend houses in Ježník (1935). His early work reflects the influence of Holzmeister and combines expressive force with the pared-down clarity of New Objectivity, enriched by neo-romantic motifs and elements of Art Deco.
Wittek was also an accomplished draughtsman who frequently exhibited his designs and studies: with the Opava art association at the House of Art in Ostrava (1929) and at the Silesian Museum in Opava (1930), and with the Silesian Artists’ Association in Jeseník (1936). In the late 1930s, he joined the Bund der Deutschen, a nationalist cultural and homeland-protection association.
During this period, Wittek’s earlier style, rooted in New Objectivity and expressionism, gave way to the influence of the National Socialist architecture of Nazi Germany – both in its monumental form (e.g. his 1944 design for the Hans Kudlich Memorial Hall in Úvalno) and its historicizing variant (e.g. his 1939 design for the reconstruction of the Opava town hall, which won third place in an architectural competition). He also engaged in urban planning, such as the redesign of the main square in Moravská Třebová in 1940. In the 1950s and 1960s, he worked in Füssen, Germany (projects included the remodelling of the Zächerlhaus, the construction of a church between 1963 and 1966, and a cinema) and in Mittelberg, Austria.

RR