Rudolf von Eitelberger (1817-1885) was a central actor within the emergence of numerous art historical institutions and initiatives in cultural politics and is known, among his other positions, as the first Professor of Art History at the University of Vienna, as the founding director of the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry and its affiliated School of Applied Arts (1867).The 19 essays in this volume differentiate his influence, i.a. his art-theoretical attitude towards the aesthetics of autonomy and the academic education of artists, his architectural critical positions between research on the history of architecture and ideologically influenced style preferences, his cultural-political interventions within the Habsburg monarchy and in exchange with Prussia, his role in the bourgeois womens’ movement and so forth.These essays are supplemented by the first list of Eitelberger’s writings aiming at completeness, comprising nearly 600 positions, as well as a newly researched list of books formerly in Eitelberger’s collection, which are now preserved in the MAK library.