Die Idee der josephinischen Residenz : Die Architekten Isidore Marcel Ganneval und Johann Christoph Fabich in Mährisch Kromau

In 1772 Moravský Krumlov became the seat of an aristocratic residence once again, after a lengthy break, when Prince Karl I Borromäus von Liechtenstein (1730–1789) and his wife Marie Eleonore, née Princess von Oettingen-Spielberg (1745–1812), established the junior princely dynastic line of the Liechtenstein family there. The adaptations resulting in the new princely residence were thus able to become a manifestation of "Josephine" courtly taste at the end of the great period of Central European Baroque. Until recently, however, only a few basic details were known about the history of these adaptations. It was only the chance discovery of the plans in the collections of the central workplace of the National Heritage Institute in Prague that has enabled us to have an almost complete idea of the course of the building work in 1772–1789. For on the reverse of the individual drawings we find contemporary descriptions of the plans, thanks to which we can piece together what might be called "the history of the Moravský Krumlov chateau in pictures". The article publishes eighteen plans, drawn up partly by the director of the Liechtenstein building office, Johann Christoph Fabich, and partly by the court architect Isidore Marcel Ganneval (1729/1730–1786). Ganneval's inventiveness can be seen above all in the spatial design of the interiors of the first floor of the chateau. On the façades, by contrast, Fabich's flat, drily decorative style predominated, a style that the author of the article links with the term "engineering mode" of late Baroque architecture. In the second phase of the adaptations in Moravský Krumlov a greater change in the stylistic emphasis gradually occurred. Ganneval's high-quality designs for the chapel and the great hall anticipate by almost two decades the work of Louis Montoyer (1749–1811), in which he introduced the new Classicism into the imperial court in Vienna.