The Club Techniker-Cercle

Founding

Even though certain activities of the "Techniker-Kränzchen" committee reach back further, the first association structures of the technicians' ball committee have been known and documented since 1874. A group of technology students took on the first structures of an association and called themselves the technicians' ball committee). This committee organised an annual societal ball. Its proceeds were used to pay stipends to auditors of the Technische Hochschule who were in financial need.

The objectives of the association were as follows:
  • Enhancing the reputation of engineers in comparison to other, established academic professions
  • Cultivating friendships
  • Organisation of the annual ball, whose proceeds were intended to offer financial support to needy engineering students.



    • Industrialisation marked the TC founding period

    The year of the founding of the TC coincided with the opening of Vienna's first high spring water supply line (Hochquellwasserleitung), the opening of the rack railway on the Kahlenberg, the start of construction of the Reichsrat building (today’s parliament), the installation of a pneumatic letter chute system in Vienna, and the success of the Payer Weyprecht expedition to the North Pole. Shortly before, the first Böhler steel plant was founded in Kapfenberg, the city of Steyr was equipped with Europe’s first electrical street lighting system, and the construction of the University building on the city ring and the stock exchange had begun. The Vienna World Exhibition was held, and essential, ground-breaking inventions and innovations were introduced in a dizzying number of technological and scientific areas.


    "An association of like-minded people, liberal, without national, religious or political prejudices, conservatively tied to tradition, and modest in the objectives it has set for itself.“


    This principle was embedded in the statutes of the Techniker-Cercle, which was created on November 12, 1912 out of the technicians' ball committee and the old Gentlemen's Association. By the way, this took place exactly 6 years before the 1st republic was founded. This new association, which from this time on goes by the name of Techniker-Cercle, has since then organised the annual Ball of Industry and Technology.

    In 1930/31, the General Assembly decided to seek closer contact with the industry and to hold the 56th Technicians' Ball as the “Ball of Technology and Industry” in the concert hall again for the first time.


    The period after 1945

    Amid the reconstruction of Austria, the Techniker-Cercle was also revived in 1946. After several interim solutions, in 1949 rooms in the Palais Pallavicini on the Josefsplatz (Rennverein) became the new Techniker-Cercle meeting point, and young engineers were granted a permanent bar and premises in 1950. Today, the club life is marked by lectures and social events. In addition, there are joint organised excursions with technical and cultural topic under professional supervision.