Speech for Michael Satke upon receiving the Golden Medal of Honor of the City of Vienna on September 14, 2016, which unfortunately I couldn’t give.

Head to the Wall, Reach Your Goals, One and All

Careful, Michael, when you’re honored in Vienna and perhaps even awarded a medal, danger is looming. In Vienna, awards are only handed out to people who are too old and whose energy is too spent to still be a nuisance to the good people of Vienna.

It takes quite long to figure out that doing things by putting your “head through the wall” is impossible in Vienna. If there were a material in construction that compared to the problem-solving abilities of the Viennese, you might call it a rubber wall. A wall that always gives way but never breaks. Combining this rubber wall with the typology of a so-called Durchhaus, a public passageway through a building that connects two streets—where you find yourself back on the street before you reach your actual destination in the building—the Vienna City Hall is the prototype of both strategies.

Some will learn faster that waiting inconspicuously and unhurried—which is to say, with your head to the wall—is a better way to reach your goals here. So, “Make sure to always move along the wall,” is probably good advice. Though moving is dangerous, as Austrians, especially public officials, enjoy playing jackstraws: whoever moves, loses.

Always be subservient, model your conduct on the Viennese Commissionaire from Hans Moser’s repertoire. Some will never learn; and those people are mostly artist or architects or musicians—and are then posthumously named national cultural treasures.

I don’t know in which category to put Michael Satke. Is he still standing by the wall or is he already leaning?

That’s how I met him, Michael Satke: Standing, asleep, with his head rested against the wall. Don’t ask me where it was, I just remember exactly what time it was: 4 in the morning.

I think one requires Michael’s stamina and energy to break through all the antagonisms that our provincial toy-poodle town builds up in an effort to nip in the bud all accomplishments that would show that mediocrity in Vienna is indeed mediocrity.

If you look at the list of successful and unrealized projects, objects, and events—Michael Satke the winemaker and champagne inventor deserves his own accolades—you may recognize how difficult it must have been for Michael to make all his dreams come true. The magazine Wienerin even devoted an entire special issue to Michael Satke, the Viennese man. It’s painful to read just how much hasn’t been built, celebrated, acknowledged in Vienna. We should start making up for that.

Michael was the first client who put his trust in us Himmelblaus, thus rendering us Himmelb(l)au. I will never forget that.

Michael was and still is a big-hearted guy. He is a generous man with a big heart.
When he was our client, he was romantic and impatient, spirited and hot-tempered, but he was always a friend.
And though his ideas sometimes ran counter to ours—instead of Bob Dylan, he invited the singer Ingrid Caven, whom he loved and I hated, to the opening of Roter Engel—we stayed friends over the years. He supported us like he did many artists, but he was never a smug patron, because he always believed in the things he did. And he would do almost anything to help his friends.

Michael may be a better Viennese than André Heller, because he is more diverse and has always thought more about the city than of himself.
I have to admit that as a young architect who grew up surrounded by deniers like Abraham, Pruscha, Pichler, Hollein, this diversity was sometimes too much for me.
But today I see his “head through the wall” strategy—despite some rejections—as exemplary for the new generation who dreams that life is movement, not standstill.

A long time ago, I described to you, Michael, an afternoon with you at the Reiss Bar. It may illustrate the mood of the time:

6 in the afternoon: Empty rooms in the afternoon. Bars. Buffy’s in Tribeca. Nighthawks by E. Hopper. Grabbing the wood.
The wall’s supportive. When the sun has gone: dusk and neon lights. City. Asphalt. The high window. White. Hard. Screws and nails. The text by W. C. Warden. Metal glass by M. Satke.

8 at night: The rupture in the city slicker’s head.

10 o’clock: Those emptying on Neighborsidday. The Nighthawkswooden handles. The wall supports against the sun. City lights demonous dusk. Thehighhardening windowscrew. S atkemex. Metal handle in the head.

1 in the morning: The Sunmetaxhandle-ening screwheander.

Time unknown: Wally head rip. Sheckitout, man. Michael Satke.

 

Wolf D. Prix, 2016