Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867-1908) was a leading architect of the Austrian Art Nouveau and one of the founders of the Vienna Secession.

Joseph Maria Philipp Olbrich was born in Troppau (Opava), then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now the Czech Republic, on December 22, 1867. He attended school there but left without graduating. In 1882 he enrolled at the building department of the Staatsgewerbeschule (State Trade School) in Vienna. In 1886 Olbrich returned to Troppau and worked for the contracting firm of August Bartel, but in 1890 he was back in Vienna studying at the special school of architecture of the Academy of Fine Arts under Carl von Hasenauer. In 1893 he worked for a few months for Otto Wagner, the great Viennese architect who succeeded Hasenauer as professor at the academy.

The following year Olbrich won the Rome Prize and left for Italy, but his trip was cut short when Wagner called him back...