Gründerzeit

Gründerzeit (ˈɡʁʏndɐˌtsaɪt; "founders' period") was the economic phase in 19th-century Germany and Austria before the great stock market crash of 1873. The so-called Gründerzeit or the age of the founders lasted for just three years, from 1871 to 1873. The term was used to describe a short-lived economic boom and the economic rise of the German Empire, when hundreds of new businesses, banks and railways were founded. German writers of the late 19th century used the term Gründerzeit as a pejorative, because the cultural output of that movement is associated with materialism and nationalistic triumphalism. The cultural historian Egon Friedell complained, that stockmarket fraud was not the only Gründerzeit swindle. Historicism (art) The need for housing rose in consequence of industrialization. Complete housing developments in the so-called Founding Epoch Architecture style arose in previously green fields, and even today, Central European cities have many buildings from the time together along a single road or even in complete districts. The buildings have four to six stories and were often built by private property developers. They often sported richly-decorated façades in the form of Historicism such as Gothic Revival, Renaissance Revival, German Renaissance and Baroque Revival. Magnificent palaces for nouveau-riche citizens but also infamous rental housing for the expanding urban lower classes were built. The period was also important for the integration of new technologies in architecture and design. A determining factor was the development of the Bessemer process in steel production, which made possible the construction of steel façades. A classical example of the new form is the steel and glass construction of the Crystal Palace, completed in 1851, which was then revolutionary and inspired subsequent decades. In Austria, the Gründerzeit began after 1840 with the industrialisation of Vienna, as well as the regions of Bohemia and Moravia. Liberalism reached its zenith in Austria in 1867 in Austria-Hungary and remained dominant until the mid-1870s.