Tour through the Volksheim Ottakring

“Workers, citizens and university lecturers founded the Verein Volksheim as a place of higher scientific education and rich artistic pleasure for broad sections of the working people.”

With these words, the founding principle of the “Volkshochschule “Volksheim" Ottakring” – today’s “Volkshochschule Ottakring” – was recorded in a document on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone for the building of this adult education centre. The amount required for the building of the establishment was raised in only a few months thanks to the organisational skills of Ludo Moritz Hartmann, a great educator of the people and Volksheim functionary, and the generosity of donors from the fields of industry and commerce. On November 5th, 1905 the first Evening Adult Education Centre in Europe was finally opened in Vienna’s 16th District. Intensive scientific and popular scientific activities “for everyone” developed within the spatial and organisational context of various scientific, cultural and humanities sections and so-called “cabinets”.