Hardly any other architect had such an impact on the architectural life of the Habsburg Monarchy and its neighbouring countries in the second half of the 19th century as Theophil Hansen (1813-1891). Born in Denmark, Hansen had a considerable influence on the appearance of Vienna's Ringstrasse with large-scale projects in the style of the "Hellenic Renaissance". He also designed Byzantine and otherwise historically inspired buildings for the capital of the monarchy, as well as many of its regional centres from Brno in today’s Czech Republic to Kežmarok in today’s Slovakia and L’viv in today’s Ukraine. Above all, however, Hansen was an extremely effective teacher active between 1868 and 1884, whose students at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna took his design ideas to their home regions within the Empire and to its neighbouring countries such as Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania. Last but not least, Hansen acted as a prolific publicist of his own designs in professional journals and understood how to promote their reception by encouraging the production and distribution of the associated terracotta building ornaments through Viennese brickworks.

Although numerous exhibitions and publications were dedicated to Theophil Hansen on the occasion of his 200th birthday in 2013, his broader transregional impact and in particular its development in the work of his students, collaborators and adepts has so far remained largely unnoticed. In Hansen's case, the interplay between the active dissemination of architectural concepts and design ideas and their widespread reception, which experienced a renaissance after his death - promoted by the Hansen Club of his students - seems particularly suitable for examining the mechanisms of the dissemination and establishment of historicist architecture.

The conference therefore aims to bring together research on Hansen's work and his reception in different regions - from his native Denmark, to Central and South-Eastern Europe, to Greece, where the architect spent formative years and helped shape the capital of the young kingdom. On the one hand, the focus will be on the instruments of dissemination - academic teaching, design office and building site operations, specialist publications, the sale of building ornaments, skilful action in the social arena, etc. On the other hand, the various socio-cultural factors that contributed to Hansen´s reception will be examined. Here, the role of Hansen’s public and private clients and his perception by the general public come into focus. Hansen's antique designs were regarded by contemporaries such as Rudolf Eitelberger to be exemplary for a "Viennese Renaissance" that was "patriotic towards the empire". However, his students included a large number of early career architects from Hungary, a country particularly concerned with its autonomy within the Dual Monarchy. Additionally, it was often non-Catholics who enrolled with Hansen as a Protestant teacher, or as patrons made use of his Byzantine designs for Orthodox or Protestant sacral architecture. Here, processes of appropriation, further development and reinterpretation of architectural forms can be observed. The sometimes mimetic adoption of architectural forms by designers and building component manufacturers, raises questions about the copyright dimension of such processes. Last but not least, the limits of Hansenʼs perception and effectiveness must be explored and their conditionality questioned. In this context, a comparative look at similarly influential contemporaries such as the Prussian architect Friedrich August Stüler or the Viennese proponent of the neo-Gothic style Friedrich Schmidt can be revealing; comparative perspectives also offer themselves with regard to the formation of artistic schools and commemorative practices concerning architects.

In this way, the interplay of dissemination and reception processes can be understood as a decisive factor in the architectural development of the 19th century and beyond. Such a project can reveal the existence of transregional communication spheres, that remain out of focus for a nation-state oriented art historiography, and help define their nature and boundaries.