Cultural Heritage in a Comparative Approach : In the Name of Aphrodite [1 ed.] 9781443891868, 9781443873116

Citation preview

Cultural Heritage in a Comparative Approach

Cultural Heritage in a Comparative Approach: In the Name of Aphrodite By

Andrea Ragusa

Cultural Heritage in a Comparative Approach: In the Name of Aphrodite By Andrea Ragusa This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Andrea Ragusa All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7311-X ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7311-6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Note of Introduction .................................................................................. vii Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1 Cultural Heritage: Problems of Definition and Methodological Questions Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 23 The Emergence of a Protectionist Sensibility Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 45 War and Destruction: Cultural Heritage between International Conventions and Government Policy Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 65 The Safeguarding and Enhancement of Cultural and Environmental Heritage in Europe: Continuity and Disruption following the Second World War Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 87 A New Edge of the World? Europe, the Cultural Question and the Challenge of the Global World Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 107 Looking to Other Areas: Cultural Heritage in Areas Outside of Europe Index of Names........................................................................................ 127

NOTE OF INTRODUCTION

After a long period of absence, the matter of cultural heritage is becoming today one of the most relevant within cultural and political debates. It appears that national governments and international institutions are giving growing attention to the problem of organization, management, and promotion of their heritage and of their history, as reflected in monuments, museums, and sites of natural, historical, and artistic interest. Numerous new laws and international conventions have also been introduced in these last years, enforcing instruments of protection, but also – and above all – broadening the meaning and the concept itself of cultural heritage. Coming from the idea of beauty as an universal value – dominating the concept of cultural asset in an aesthetic approach at the origins – cultural heritage has today become a very general and inclusive matter within which we can find a range of elements: monuments and buildings, tangible objects and intangible experiences, rites and ceremonies, dance and music, culinary production and tradition. But in contrast with this increasing interest, research about the problem of politics for cultural heritage management has yet to be profoundly considered, especially at a historical level. Many contributions – in terms of books and scientific articles or essays – have been published about the problem of legislative development, and – in particular during these last decades – about the economic aspects of culture. New categories, new key-words, new interpretative instruments have – consequently – been defined in a literature growing and increasing every day. But this literature shows, in the opinion of an Italian researcher, at least two limits, both from a methodological and geographical point of view. The majority of contributions results today as coming from the AngloSaxon area, together with specific contributions from other countries and a much less developed attention in Italy. On the other hand, they are above all essays and books juridicallybased, where the historical aspects appear not so considered in the crucial role they instead play. The work we present would be a first essay to build a general overlook around different ways along which politics for cultural heritage management have been developed in the history of the most relevant areas of the world. In this way it is not a very detailed analysis of each

viii

Note of Introduction

experience but just a very brief and rapid sketch around the crucial elements characterizing the most relevant experiences. We speak of experiences, not of models, a term very common among political scientists and sociologists. In a historical perspective, we prefer to point out differences and similarities linked to different historical, economic, social and cultural aspects. After a first chapter regarding problems of definition and methodology, the book follows, in this way, the problem of nation-building processes as relevant in the definition of the “symbolic stage” of nations, especially the origins of the protectionist movements and sensibilities. The war appears, in the third chapter, as a disruptive moment when attention to cultural heritage and protection, especially in the case of armed-conflicts, emerged at a high level. In this way, the creation of Unesco, and the introduction of the Hague Convention of 1954 were the crucial steps. On another hand, the book tries to propose a reflection on the contemporary world – and the second post-war period in particular – looking at the politics for cultural heritage management in the two different parts of Europe and world as an instrument to better understand different systems introduced after the end of the war. Finally, cultural heritage appears in this work as a new field of research and political action with regard to the new situation created in the globalized world: so with regard to the problem of the new political and economic direction defined by the emergence of the new great economic powers, so with regard to the decline of the West and in particular of Europe. Of course just a proposal of reflection, opening some questions to be discussed in a further and more increased literature in future.

CHAPTER ONE CULTURAL HERITAGE: PROBLEMS OF DEFINITION AND METHODOLOGICAL QUESTIONS

1. A controversial expression Writing in regard to the growing interest in recent years towards the issue of cultural heritage, particularly in a juridical context, Anna Papa observed in 2004 how the various aspects of the matter found a lowest common denominator in the increasingly accentuated process of overcoming an elitist and static concept of cultural assets, which essentially relegates them to a role as vestiges of the past to pass on to future generations, and, consequently, considers as preeminent the activity of conservation of the same, even at the expense of a broader fruition on the part of the community, in favor instead of a dynamic approach tending towards accentuating the activities of valorization1. In an even more general and extensive acceptation of this consideration, there are those who have highlighted this conceptual translation towards the entire category of “culture”, for which, as has been underlined it is considered by many [...] as a depository of memories to conserve under a well-protected case; a collection of signs turned museum specimens, and as such, somewhat mummified….the expectations of those who conceive of culture in this manner seem on the one hand excessive, insisting that culture “returns to the market” and produces earnings just as any manufactured product, on the other hand defective and simplistic, leaving under wraps the infinite and indefinite potential that culture could

1

A. Papa, La definizione del “patrimonio culturale europeo” e la tutela delle “testimonianze nazionali aventi valore di civiltà”, in Scritti in ricordo di Giovanni Motzo, ESI, Napoli, 2004, pag. 213.

2

Chapter One demonstrate if only it was allowed to escape from the cocoon, aristocratic and static, into which it was confined by an uncertain century2.

At the base of the progressive conceptual expansion of the category can be identified the constant recognition on the part of juridical doctrine, of the necessity to bring together and govern phenomena of economic and social complexity in which cultural assets have acquired ever-greater centrality. 3 Following the most recent indications offered by the reflections of scholars of international law, we may identify at least three phenomena. These are related to the transformation which in recent decades has undergone the original definition given by the UNESCO Convention of 1972, related to the global protection of cultural heritage and the environment. In this Convention centrality in the action of protection was placed on cultural heritage, an English expression which comprised the forms of “cultural bequest” but with greater weight, with the intent to protect treasures from threats of deterioration or from modernization. From that moment, in any case, it has been the ever-greater expansion of membership by States belonging to different geographical and cultural areas which has determined a corresponding expansion of the original concept. Secondly, the growing demand of cultural tourism has imposed the consideration of an increasing number and variety of sites and cultural events, together with the opportunities offered by the same. Thirdly, the loss or disappearance of expressions of traditional culture - a consequence of globalization - has called for new strategies of integration of tangible and intangible cultural heritage4. In this direction, the concept of cultural assets, or, in particular, the category of cultural heritage, today more common in international discussions, moves towards ever-broader and uncertain confines, and approaches lexical and interpretive concepts and categories which are fairly distant among themselves. Just to make some examples, cultural 2

M. Trimarchi, Premessa, in Id. (a cura di), Il finanziamento delle associazioni culturali ed educative, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2002, pag. 7. 3 Cfr. for a general outline J. Blake, International Cultural Heritage Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015. 4 A. Buzio-A. Re, Cultural commons and new concepts behind the recognition and management of UNESCO World Heritage sites, in E. Bertacchini-G. Bravo-M. Marrelli-W. Santagata (ed.), Cultural Commons. A New Perspective on the Production and Evolution of Cultures, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham-Northampton, 2012, pagg. 178-179. For an initial exploration of the suggestions offered I cite the brief but useful bibliography attached to this essay, pagg. 192-193.

Cultural Heritage: Problems of Definition and Methodological Questions

3

heritage comes significantly close to the concept of cultural districts as the seats of those cultural properties in which tangible and intangible cultural assets are intertwined, and thus, in this sense, comes close also to the concept of common goods; then again, if the object of protection moves from the sphere of tangible to intangible goods, towards cultural manifestations alongside the more traditional objects of protection (monuments, churches, sites) the concept of cultural heritage ends up spilling over and intertwining itself with that of protection of rights and recognition of diversity, as can easily be confirmed by the fact that UNESCO itself in recent years compiled a Red Book of languages at risk of extinction or disappearance (Red Book of endangered languages). Furthermore, consider the infinite implications that the relationship with processes of economic transformation may open to reflection, regarding the dilemma of opportunity vs risk, with respect to globalization, but also in the face of new perspectives of economic development linked to the promotion and wise management of “cultural and environmental repositories” in an idea of sustainable development, or yet again the possible implications offered by the construction and development of European identity. That the concept is still far from a precise definition of its own perimeters and contents is demonstrated furthermore by the varied terminology with which the concept is declinated in different languages. In the well-known dictionary Vocabolario della lingua italiana edited by Treccani, there is not a precise reference of “cultural heritage”, but rather still to “fine arts”, an ancient denomination which generically included monuments, artworks, structures of historical interest, with an aesthetic meaning of the term. It is instead the Grande Dizionario Italiano dell’uso, directed by the eminent linguist Tullio De Mauro who speaks about heritage in terms of the group of assets having a recognized intrinsic value, precisely: group of spiritual, cultural, social, or material values which through heredity or tradition belong to a community or individual;

in reference to the cultural heritage of a person, the artistic heritage of a population, the natural heritage of a region. And, of world heritage for: that group of assets for which a particular legal protection is reserved, given that, for their characteristics, they belong to all humanity5. 5

Grande Dizionario Italiano dell’Uso, ideato e diretto da T. De Mauro, UTET, Torino, 1999, Vol. IV, p. 875.

4

Chapter One

Both the Dizionario dell’uso and the Vocabolario Treccani dictionaries give a more accurate definition in reference to the concept of cultural asset: the former indicating it as movable or immovable asset, of artistic, scientific, etc. value, protected by law as a part of collective heritage, even if privately owned 6 ; the later refers to artistic, archeological, environmental assets as: the national heritage, both natural and historic, intended as an ensemble of inalienable riches which must be valorized and passed down as a public good, because they satisfy collective needs, thus protected by the laws of the State and not the whims of private citizens7.

The latter also defers to a more precise juridical definition when listing, among the declinations of the adjective ‘cultural’, also cultural heritage next to cultural asset, as: grouping of assets of historical, archaeological, artistical, environmental and natural, archival and book value, and any other asset which constitutes material proof of civilization8,

and making reference to the first definition coming from France - biens culturels used in the 1949 UNESCO Declaration – and the open codification of cultural asset as “material proof of civilization” proposed in Italy by the Franceschini Commission in 1966. No less surprising is the example offered by the 1989 Oxford English Dictionary, in which there is only a very remote reference to cultural heritage or cultural assets, and more precise references to the problems of cultural heritage are connected to the term art and the concept of fine arts. Thus focus is placed on ability, or skill, and the concept of art alludes to practical and pragmatic implications which could even be attributed to the ancient Greek concept of tecnè. Under the entry of art we find in fact some of the entities, public or private, which in the U.K. are involved in protecting or promoting art: art-gallery, art-museum, arthistory; above all, Arts Council or, with the full title, Arts Council of Great Britain:

6

Grande Dizionario Italiano dell’Uso, ideato e diretto da T. De Mauro, UTET, Torino, 1999, Vol. I, p. 644. 7 Vocabolario della Lingua Italiana, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Treccani, Roma, 1986, Vol. I, p. 438. 8 Ivi, pag. 1027.

Cultural Heritage: Problems of Definition and Methodological Questions

5

an organization established by Royal Charter in 1946 to promote and support (esp. financially) the development and appreciation of the arts in Britain9.

However, it is quite significant that the very same dictionary offers a precise definition of cultural diplomacy: the furthering of international relations by cultural exchange; the act of publicizing and exhibiting examples of one’s national culture abroad10.

Apart from the similarity, with respect to the Italian language, in the expressions used in French or Spanish – patrimoine cultuel or patrimonio cultural – a particular case is that of the German language, which offers three complementary but distinct terms: Kunstschätze, Kulturgut, Geistiges gut. The first, in an analogous manner to the English concept of art, alludes to the ability, the capacity put in practice, and thus to the work technically accomplished. The second refers to the Kultur as an area of intellect and reason, according to the well-known Kantian opposition which marked the Enlightenment as the opposition of Kultur to Zivilisation, in other words in opposition to the progress which reason tended to destroy. Finally, the third refers to spirit and ingenuity as a universal dimension, of Hegelian origin, and thus as an affirmation of the universal spirit in works of artistic creation, which historically accumulate themselves. However, in none of the three terms is there a unifying reference to the concept of heritage as a good economically defined as such in virtue of elements of intrinsic value external to the commercialization of the same good11. In reality the definition of cultural property, cultural heritage, good or heritage of cultural interest, becomes gradually clearer and more precise when one enters into specialist lexicon and literature, and as is fairly obvious, especially in that of the juridical-economic fields. Nevertheless, also in this case a certain degree of caution is necessary, because the generic concept of cultural property or cultural heritage, which is specifically accepted and defined, is however inflected in a series of diverse terms of varied contents. Several examples will be sufficient to render evident such multiform variety of meanings. The English-Italian legal dictionary edited by Igino Schraffl, released by Giuffrè in 2011, 9

The Oxford English Dictionary, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 19892, Vol. I°, p. 658. Ivi, Vol. IV°, p. 121. 11 Das Pons Wörterbuch – Dizionario Tedesco-Italiano/Italiano-Tedesco, Zanichelli, Bologna, 20022, p. 438. 10

6

Chapter One

utilizes contemporarily the locution cultural property and world cultural heritage, in both cases meaning the cultural good and cultural heritage. But, the former indicates a subjective condition which recognizes a right of enjoyment, precisely of ownership, to legally hold a good; in the latter, meanwhile, there is the sense of “bequeathment”, of “generational passage”. Again, the first case still underlines the personal, individual confines of ownership of the object, while in the second case the communal liberty of possession and enjoyment; similarly in the first case a property may be single, while the second case contemplates the whole of properties12. Black Law’s Dictionary, edited by Bryan Garner, in reference to culture, speaks instead of cultural property as a concept defined by international law: movable and immovable property that has cultural significance, whether in the nature of antiquities and monuments of a classical age or important modern items of fine arts, decorative arts, and architecture;

thus alluding to a broad meaning which includes both movable and immovable property, both relevant from the historical point of view (antiquities) and in virtue of the recognized artistic value, even if modern. However, immediately after, the entry adds, some writers prefer the term cultural heritage which more broadly includes intangible cultural things such as folklore, crafts, skills13;

referring thusly to a broad concept, which, especially in recent years, has been extended to intangible cultural properties, expression of personal or collective creativity, and as such, and in virtue of being such, has been transmitted to future generations. The consideration of cultural properties as tangible and intangible leads finally to a further opening which today has become particularly relevant to the point of constituting an object of a genuine scientific discipline, that is, of economics. Economics of art, economics of cultural properties, economics of cultural tourism, today represent in fact fields of scholarship in expansion in scientific discussion and political debates, a sign of the great importance that culture, above all when deposited, has acquired in the epochal transformation which the economy has now been undergoing 12

I. Schraffl, Dizionario giuridico Inglese-Italiano, Giuffrè, Milano, 2011, p. 76 and 147. 13 Black’s Law Dictionary, B. A. Garner, Editor in Chief, Thomson-West, St. Paulo, 20048, p. 407.

Cultural Heritage: Problems of Definition and Methodological Questions

7

for two decades14. Not only from the point of view of the relationship between cultural influence and economic development as an element that shapes tastes and trends, but also on the level of the relationship between economic growth and protection of the existing patrimony, the theme appears today more relevant than ever. Especially from the 1980s-1990s, with the development of a specific attention to the problem of sustainable development, the decline of industrial capitalism, and the advance of the scientific categories proposed by Amartya Sen in terms of sustainable development, the relationship between culture and economics has also become a central element in the codification of a new model of development hinging no longer on only material success, but also human well-being15. Despite being the subject of extensive scholarship, and constant attention in scientific and especially in political debate, the issue of cultural heritage is thus still today a concept of uncertain and problematic definition. Said difficulty generally pushes scholars towards two dangerous opposites of excess: limiting the investigation to only the consideration of “artistic and historical treasures”, that is, to those elements that in a more immediate manner are considered as heritage: from a painting to a sculpture, from a museum collection to a monument, from a church to a historic building, and in so doing enacting a conceptual expansion which poses risks; or, to the contrary, focusing attention, according to the indications of the most recent debate and most recent legal codification, on every element which, considered as proof of human action, can represent characteristic aspects of history, evolution, even the present itself. For example, such is the indication of the most recent Italian juridical doctrine, which, though following the disposition of article 2 of the recent Code emanated in 2004, states to consider as cultural assets “movable and immovable objects which, in accordance with articles 10 and 11, present interest of an artistic, historical, archaeological, ethnoanthropological, archival, and bibliographical nature, and the other things identified by law or on the basis of the law as proof of civilization”. It must however be noted that the concept of cultural assets appears for its 14

As confirmation, see the entries art, economics of, and culture and economics, in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, edited by S.N. Durlauf and L.E. Blume, Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 20082, Vol. I, pagg. 245-250; Vol. II, p. 333-340 15 M.F. Peterson-M. Sondergaard, Foundations of cross-cultural management, Sage, Los Angeles, 2008, e D. Harrison-M. Hitchkook, The politics of world heritage: negotiating tourism and conservation, Chanel view publications, Clevedon, 2005.

8

Chapter One

nature, and above all in a comparative dimension, to be polyhedral, multifaceted and undoubtedly complex16. Thus it is fairly clear to see how the concept of cultural heritage is the product of a juridical reflection which has historically continuously evolved, making the effort to adjust interpretative and operative categories to different conditions, varied solicitations, and stimuli coming from quite different areas of social existence. On the other hand, said evolution is characterized by a double trajectory which is useful to keep in mind: one is the relationship between national legislation and the stance taken by juridical entities at the international level. The other is linked to the effort to open the reflection, debate, and action itself around heritage towards opportunities and horizons that release it more and more from an ancient normative significance projected exclusively towards protection from damages, theft, tampering, and thus from a hypothesis of a strongly negative character, towards an action which instead is full of positive contents where promotion and valorization prevail, both of the cultural asset and of the “fact” in a comprehensive meaning that now connects the production of culture to the center of social, economic, and political interest of every state.

2. An evolving definition Thus, if the concept of cultural heritage – so varied and multiform - is the result of a historically deposited progressive evolution, it will be useful, in attempting to trace its perimeters in a more precise manner, to operate in the double direction of distinguishing it from concepts similar but not completely overlapping, and to underline the fundamental stages of the transformations which have taken place over time. An initial aspect to consider in this sense is the problem of defining the confine separating the “sub-whole” cultural heritage from the comprehensive whole of culture; and to contextualize the theme of protection of heritage, as protection of culture, in the broader field of human rights. As has been recently underlined, the recognition and protection of culture as a human right is the result of a kind of “new humanism” growing in recent decades also in response to the lacerating tensions which mark – above all with the end of the bipolar system and the collapse of the Socialist system - the entire planet. In the face of the “clash 16

Cfr. D. Vaiano, La valorizzazione dei beni culturali, Giappichelli, Torino, 2011, e G. Alpa-G. Conte-V. Di Gregorio-A. Fusaro-U. Perfetti (a cura di), I beni culturali nel diritto. Problemi e prospettive, ESI, Napoli, 2010.

Cultural Heritage: Problems of Definition and Methodological Questions

9

of civilization” evoked by Samuel Huntington, to the continuous fratricide wars which have bloodied and continue to bloody vast parts of the world from West to East, and, no less, as can be said, in the face of the economic and social divarication accentuated in recent years by the financial crisis which has struck a West in evident decline, culture appears as a possible terrain of encounter and confrontation, of construction of identity, of renewed civil and religious dialogue, and even of economic revival. If indeed “culture” is what renders us “human”, then unsurprisingly the exponential expansion of our understanding of what is culture and cultural heritage within international law in the last half century has been intimately connected to more nuanced and deeper interpretations of human right norms. The diversity of engagement in international-law making since the end of the Second World War with the influx of new States from every region, augmented by the re-emerging or emerging influence of minorities and indigenous peoples, has propelled this trend17.

The accentuated multidisciplinary nature of research on the theme of culture and human rights, and of culture as human right, and the growing attention towards revendications of cultural identity which hide grave violations of human rights, furthermore confirm the importance of the issue18. On the other hand, the problem of recognition of culture as a human right, and thus of the diversity of culture as a right, involves a problem, that of the relativism and absolutism of moral laws, ancient and yet at the same time today relevant more than ever in light of the above mentioned questions. In the end, as has been observed, even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights can be, and has been, put to debate in virtue of the fact of being not a declaration of rights universally recognized (that is, in every place and time), but rather the result of a historical elaboration of a reflection leading to the recognition as universally acceptable certain rights of a determined culture: that of 20th century Europe and the West. And this certainly conflicts with and opens perspectives of great delicacy for the relationship which human rights must have with the plurality of cultures which is itself recognized as a right19. Regarding cultural heritage, 17

A.F. Vrdoljak, Human Rights and Cultural Heritage in International Law, in F. Lenzerini-A.F. Vrdoljak (ed.), International Law for Common Goods. Normative Perspectives on Human Rights, Culture and Nature, Hart Publishing, OxfordPortland, 2014, p. 140. 18 Ivi, p. 140-141. 19 F. D’Agostino, Pluralità delle culture e universalità dei diritti, in Pluralità delle culture e universalità dei diritti. Studi raccolti da Francesco D’Agostino, Giappichelli, Torino, 1996, p. 33 and following.

10

Chapter One

the problem appears particularly evident in virtue of the recent recognition, continuous and growing, of cultural pluralism as a right and expression of civil living worth protecting. The recognition of the right to self determination and of safeguarding of indigenous populations, the result of a sensibility rooted as far back as 16th-17th century colonialism, has recently brought about the approval of a series of regulations founded on principles which seem inviolable, introduced beginning with the Declaration of Principle approved by the fourth general assembly of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, held in Panama in 1984. It was thus established that the traditional homelands of indigenous peoples had to be respected and raised to a dignified quality of life, as a means for physical, cultural, and spiritual survival of the very same peoples. The council also established that indigenous peoples had the right to practice their traditional customs, and to celebrate their culture and spirituality with all inherent implications; that they should have access to government assistance, health care, education, and social services, that conquering nations should respect treaties; and that indigenous peoples had the right to self determination. From that moment, indigenous peoples have taken important steps forward towards the recognition of their own cultural identity, even though they have encountered difficulties in the relationship with government authorities, and often undertaking an adaptable integration of their own customs and traditions, including certain forms of tribal justice, with government regulations. The lack of recognition of the right to secession or political independence has produced a violent reaction on the part of the Islamist movement of the former ally Ansar Dine against the attempted secession of a faction of the Tuareg in the north of Mali, in 2012. In 2006, the opposition of the member states of the African Union temporarily blocked the approval of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the General Assembly of the United Nations, obtaining the insertion of a preamble according to which the group affirmed that self-determination could not in any way threaten the territorial integration or political independence of a State or constitute an attempt of secession. There is furthermore the problem that the claim of self-determination can often conflict with the interests of the former owners of certain territories, or furthermore against the interests of investors, protected by bilateral treaties, as demonstrated in the case of the interests of German agricultural investors in Paraguay20. But above all, there is the problem of an evident contrast between certain forms of social 20

See S. Wiessner, The Cultural Dimension of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, in F. Lenzerini-A.F. Vrdoljak (ed.), International Law for Common Goods…, cit., p. 175-180.

Cultural Heritage: Problems of Definition and Methodological Questions

11

organization, more precisely of cultural, and those which universally are recognized as values and cornerstones of progress. It is not only the question of maximizing profit, which itself involves delicate problems if for example one considers the fact that many impoverished groups or communities of the so-called “civilized society” do not receive benefits in terms of resources and territory in terms of international treaties or universal declarations. There is also, and above all, the problem of an evident difficulty in protecting and safeguarding practices and social/cultural forms objectively in conflict with values which belong to the unity of culture: violence against women or minors, incest, genetic mutilation, or even cannibalism. Alongside these considerations, there is also a second problem linked to the recognition of rights in favor of individuals, or of communities that do not aspire to acquiring a state designation. Starting from the 1954 Hague Convention, which for the first time introduced the recognition of cultural property in the case of armed conflict, the principal role of protection of heritage was entrusted to the State, even if, as has been observed, the very same convention recognized that said heritage belonged to the population21. The model was substantially replicated in the Paris Convention of 1972, and only in 2003 UNESCO recognized, in the Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage, the possibility on the part of States to insert in the list of protected properties also manifestations present inside their own territory. This, naturally, involves in the protection of heritage actors different from the State, above all actors inside the State, as demonstrated by the case of recognition of safeguarding of the community of Tibet, in which the government of the People’s Republic of China has recognized a role within the process of protection of Chinese silk art. Other examples include the traditional events in the southern neighborhoods of Montevideo in Uruguay. Naturally these actions concern a series of varied implications relative to the typology of subjects that represent the communities, their legitimization, the relationship that they construct with state authorities, and even the means and tools that can be used with the aim of safeguarding these events and their identity. But undoubtedly significant are the results determined by the shift towards a kind of “cultural heritage of people” and of communities, at times internal and together with the State, while at other time external and against the State.

21

L. Lixinski, Heritage for Whom? Individuals’ and Communities’ Roles in International Cultural Heritage Law, in F. Lenzerini-A.F. Vrdoljak (ed.), International Law for Common Goods…, cit., p. 196.

12

Chapter One

3. Definitions and terminology In this varied panorama of cultural heritage, a series of definitions and the use of suitable terminology and conceptual categories can certainly contribute to clarity, in a world that otherwise could risk to remain confused and lacking in certainty. Inside the concept of culture, a universal whole that involves the issue of human rights, a second distinction to make is certainly that between Cultural Property e Cultural Heritage. The first is a concept connected to personal subjectivity, the recognition of a right and thus the individual position that each person occupies within a society and opposite the object of this right. In fact, as has been observed, the laws protecting cultural property offer conceptual categories which above all interest the possessors of the right of enjoyment. It is no accident that these derive from the evolution of international norms since 1945, and in particular from the Hague Convention of 1954 which for the first time recognized protection of cultural property that is a cultural asset in the case of armed conflict. This interpretation, however, soon came into conflict with the fundamental objective of protection of cultural bequeathment, that is, with the concept of heritage which implicated a passage from the protection primarily personal interests towards a social interest in protection of cultural assets22. Legislation continued to be more precisely defined in the consideration of generational bequeathment and in the interest of the entire society much more then towards the possessor or the owner of a particular asset. Thus the concept of cultural heritage took its place in debate and literature especially in the Anglo-Saxon world. This passage, as has been observed, implicates opportunities of further expansion, but also the difficulties of further definition. From the point of view of difficulties, above all it can be noted that the concept of cultural heritage takes many of its elements from disciplines different from juridical science, without however acquiring the theoretical framework of these disciplines. This makes the concept of cultural heritage extremely complex to define at juridical level. Furthermore, to this is added the fact that the juridical concept of cultural heritage comprises national, regional, and local assets, an extremely broad and constantly changing range of elements to consider23. Perhaps the most relevant issue of the concept of cultural heritage is today above all its ample and all inclusive meaning. This likely derives from the convulsive transformation that global culture and technological predominance has imposed on our lives, determining 22

L. Lixinski, Intangible Cultural Heritage in International Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013, p. 5 23 Ivi, p. 6-7.

Cultural Heritage: Problems of Definition and Methodological Questions

13

consequently a greater “social emotional need for the past”, which involves the particular role acquired by cultural heritage, that is, from the bequeathment of culture, in the construction of local, regional and national identity. In fact, these identities are now under pressure much more than ever before24. Furthermore there are also those, especially among anthropologists, who maintain that the concept of ‘property’ is primarily a ‘western’ concept that does not respond to the basic needs of the individual. In this sense, there are many examples of societies that do not recognize property as a “social possibility”: instead of possessing something, the members of these societies believe to belong themselves to the surrounding environment, which in some cases is nothing more than the divinities that the community worships. Nevertheless, it should be observed that cultural assets clearly transcend the very same principle of property. The importance of an object, to which ownership is laid claim, lies not in the object itself, but rather in the value that the object holds for that society, and which gives recognition to the owner within that society. This is demonstrated by the fact that the right of “destruction”, which represents one of the aspects of property rights, is not exercisable by the owner of a cultural asset, precisely in virtue of the necessity to defend the universal value of said object for the entire society. In some cases, the objects that constitute cultural heritage even acquire totemic value, becoming points of reference for the identity and memory of a population or a society, and thus extend definitively outside the very framework of private property. After all, the concept of cultural heritage as a generational bequest involves also the issue of sustainable development, and the idea, connected to it, of an intergenerational equity and of the duty of current generations to guarantee protection of the cultural and natural environment of the planet for the future. This goes together with the idea, also connected, that while we may not know what the needs of the future will be, we must guarantee the current patrimony for a potential successive use25. This is a fact that brings us to consider a second significant difference related to heritage: that is, the distinction between tangible cultural heritage and intangible cultural heritage. Cultural heritage, which was defined by the 1972 UNESCO convention in relation to mobile and immobile heritage, that is, tangible, acquires relevance in virtue of the contribution that it offers in the structuralization of identity of a society or community. In this sense it may also be represented by ‘intangible’ 24

J. Blake, International Cultural Heritage Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015, p. 9. 25 Ivi, p. 8-9.

14

Chapter One

elements: musical manifestations, traditions, habits, customs, that are noteworthy not as objects but as elements of social cohesion. Intangible cultural heritage may in this sense be defined in two directions: in one, linked to the concept of tangible cultural heritage, it refers to that ensemble of processes, creativity, ability necessary for reaching that particular result embodied in the object under consideration. In the other, it refers instead to all those forms of cultural expression which cannot be embodied in tangible objects. In this sense, as has been observed, the concept of intangible cultural heritage has a holistic, unidirectional nature: an object is protected in as much as it is linked to a particular tradition, and is born of the same. However, the reverse is not true: an object is not protected in hopes of protecting that tradition. In second place, as has been remembered, intangible cultural heritage, which intersects the issue of recognition of human rights, tries to balance the safeguarding of certain traditional practices with respect for rights which could be in conflict with those same practices. These practices, according to the statements of the 2003 UNESCO Convention, do not disappear even though in conflict with universally recognized rights. Finally, it should be observed that the concept of intangible cultural heritage is relevant since it is considered necessary for the continuation of life of a certain society or a certain community. The distinction between tangible and intangible cultural heritage implicates an additional difficulty related to the evaluation of the heritage itself, especially for the scholars who work on the second of these two areas. In fact, the field of tangible cultural heritage considers the fact that the objects that make up said heritage have an intrinsic value that does not require any knowledge of their intangible value. In other words, for an object connected to tangible cultural heritage to be appreciated as such, it is not necessary for the object to be connected to a determined cultural group, also because such a connection is immediately recognizable to observers. Those who support the protection of cultural assets in virtue essentially (or usually) of the aesthetic value, seem to take for granted the value, also cultural, of said object. Another point of view connected to this vision underlines how, given that intangible cultural heritage is destined to be lost or in any case to be in constant change, it does not make sense to protect it; rather, protection should focus exclusively on objects of tangible cultural heritage. Or again, in an opinion quite common in academic discourse and among museum curators, that the values connected to intangible cultural heritage would be useful for the consideration and the protection of a particular object but would not represent the object itself. In other words, these are accessory values while the true value of an object derives from

Cultural Heritage: Problems of Definition and Methodological Questions

15

its own aesthetic content, rather than from the connection to a particular cultural origin. These values could thus be described as “values of contextualisation” of an object, even though it is the object itself, in virtue of the aesthetic value attributed to it, that determines the call for protection. On the contrary, scholars who focus attention on intangible cultural heritage consider this the only true object of their study, and the objects or other physical manifestations of tradition as little more than the manifestations of an intangible cultural heritage that the scholars attempt to understand and reconstruct through the examination of these objects. In this sense, tangible cultural heritage becomes a tool and vehicle for the study of intangible cultural heritage and every aesthetic value of the object is only to be considered as incidental. Nevertheless, the consideration of intangible cultural heritage tends to appear as more blurred and above all to reconstruct the meaning of the tradition from which it comes. The category of intangible cultural heritage, in numerous ways, goes beyond the more traditional categories of traditions based on considerations of the physical and monumental aspects of heritage, given that it is a broader, more distended category. An extreme version of this vision goes as far as to conceive all heritage as intangible inasmuch as only the expression of tradition, and the fact that any object is ascribable to a cultural tradition as giving meaning and value to the object. Without this possibility of contextualisation, an object will simply become a work of art, but not also an expression of cultural heritage. For this reason also the distinction between tangible and intangible cultural heritage will be overcome and scholarship will have to concentrate on the reconstruction of memory and the definition of an identity which will only acquire meaning through the consideration of the values associated with that particular object. Nevertheless, two problematic elements contrast this outlook: the first, of an essentially theoretical nature, resides in the fact that the objects of cultural heritage exist in the world independently from the awareness or comprehension of the whole of values of the cultural tradition to which the object is connected; the second, of a juridical nature, resides in the fact that regulatory legislation always requires an exact distinction of the object under consideration and thus a clear boundary must be defined between tangible and intangible cultural heritage, to ensure correct application of regulations26. This consideration of intangible cultural heritage ultimately opens to another innovation, that is, the application, beginning from the 1989 26

L. Lixinski, Intangible Cultural Heritage…, cit., p. 20-22.

16

Chapter One

Recommendation on manifestations of folklore events, of a category, that of safeguarding, that goes beyond the concept of protection, in implying not only that the manifestation must be defended, but must also be kept alive through five typologies of action to be carried out by entities charged with safeguarding: identification, conservation, preservation, dissemination and protection. Thus, safeguarding is a much broader concept that includes not only actions related to protection, such as identification and conservation, for example, but also those actions aimed at creating suitable conditions so that the manifestation or value being safeguarded is kept alive and perpetuated. In this sense, more than the tradition, it is the community itself which is put at the center of the action of protection, as the 2003 convention underlines. The actions which must be taken by government are geared towards ensuring that conditions of life, economics, society, and community are suitable to ensure the perpetuation of said tradition. To conclude, it is in this sense that the frequently cited equation of tangible cultural heritage as a cultural heritage belonging to the West and to its culture, and intangible cultural heritage as a cultural heritage belonging to other parts of the world, seems to fall short. In fact, this equation is built on the base of inserting cultural assets in a list of classification, a typical tool of protection in the West. However, the protection of the conditions suitable for the perpetuation of the culture of indigenous peoples, which are the responsibility of the government having jurisdiction in the territory where these peoples live, means that the concept of cultural heritage and the action of protection involves areas far from the Western world, now tending to make heritage a concept of a universal nature.

4.The cultural economy: an opportunity for post industrial society? It remains to say, in concluding this introductory reflection, that cultural heritage appears today as one of the most debated and monitored topics of the various governmental agencies, and no less by the entities of the European Union and international institutions. The reason for this renewed and growing interest is a question of sizable complexity, which brings together aspects and implications about cultural heritage which cross over a variety of profiles and fields of research. Overall, it can certainly be said that the recovery of the past, of its consideration and worth, and what it can offer to a broad audience, constitutes one of the aspects of reflections “on the crisis” begun with the decline of industrial society and accelerated by the financial meltdown of 2008. The cult of the

Cultural Heritage: Problems of Definition and Methodological Questions

17

past appears in this sense as an attempt to respond to the fading of a paradigm along which Western society organized itself and found its guiding principles in the “glorious thirty years” following the Second World War: a period in which, in a peaceful political situation, technological progress, scientific innovation, and reason applied to action gave humankind seemingly limitless possibilities. The paradigm of sustainable development, which has greatly replaced that initial technological optimism, appears in this sense as the declination of a tangible need for a “return to the past” increasingly represented as a kind of “golden age” in which an orderly and respectful relationship with the environment, with territory, with nutrition, and in this frame also a harmonious organization of civil and human relationships, offered certainties much clearer that the current prevailing disorder. To these “limits of development”, today one of the great political and cultural debates of our time, a response seems to be offered to humankind in the idea of “taking a step backwards”: a return towards the Earth, towards control of the authenticity of production (in particular, but not exclusively, in terms of nutrition). That is, the rediscovery of the tradition and historical sedimentation of one’s own background. While the vectors of development seem to go evermore towards the dimension of “macro”, among the general public there prevails the common conviction of a need to return to the “micro”: from (or against) the great city, growing more and more into a metropolis which swallows up nearby towns, neighborhoods, suburban areas, towards instead the community of a town, small city, even the countryside, an area of recovery of human and civil relations; in opposition to an increasingly atomized society, a return to community, to family, a secure refuge from the uncertainties which plague above all younger generations; against the financial economy, in continued turbulent expansion, a return to the material dimension of small, quality production; against mass markets, of poor quality, the expansion of the demand for production of high quality, prestigious, for market sectors of limited size but wide possibility. Thus cultural heritage today becomes the object evermore elastic and malleable of a culture which counters the “global brand” with a “local brand”, and which designs or even invents a tradition of quality on everything: from clothing to food, from luxury goods to oneof-a kind items, everything becomes a tool to counter massification with a model of development founded on attention to well-being, quality, in a word, to beauty. The degree to which this trend, and thus also the use of cultural heritage, can today represent a component of a possible new, different model of economic development, is a topic which economic literature, and

18

Chapter One

in particular the specific economic discipline defined as “economy of culture”, has been investigating for some time. Most everyone sees in the use of heritage and landscape the prospect of a sustainable economy that offers important opportunities for profit above all to those countries that, while in decline in terms of economic, and especially industrial production, are however in possession of artistic, monumental, and natural riches at least on par, and often superior, to those of more advanced countries. And tracing, albeit in a rapid manner and only to offer further reflections, the indications of the most recent scholarship27, we cannot help but recognize that to the exploitation of a “cultural repository” understood in the broadest, most flexible meaning, are unquestionable linked significant margins of revenue and profit. It is not only the case of direct revenue: that is, those most immediately visible, such as revenue from tickets, single or groups, entrance fees, season passes (above all for cultural events: theater, music, shows, cinema), purchases made at venue book-shops, consumption at internal cafes or canteens. To the valorization of a monument, museum, historic center, are linked a series of indirect revenues and profits which can at times be surprising. In fact, around a museum there is once again a network of operators, direct or indirect, which are essential for the functioning of the institution: custodians, staff, security guards, guides, to name a few. But, in addition, there are also those organizers of exhibits, gallery curators, experts and technicians for conservation and for museum organization, then also those higher level officials who manage the choices of “museum policy”. Then, consider all those figures, such as movers and manual laborers, who can be periodically hired for services of transport and exhibit set up/take down. Next, consider the important contribution for event promotion: a press office, marketing and product/sponsor placement both for the institution overall and for individual events organized onsite. All these elements are decisive in the correct functioning of the institution and of specific events. And, these reflections on museums are naturally valid for any other institution of conservation: libraries, galleries, archives. Among the indirect revenues, mention should be made of that income born of the creation of a “pleasant and welcoming environment” around an institution: if for example a small town hosts a small but important museum, or a noteworthy library, or even just a painting or fresco inside a church or building, the increase in visitors will be favored not only by the promotion and publicity that the monument offers, but also by the fact that the visitor 27

Cfr. ad esempio M. Rispoli-G. Brunetti (a cura di), Economia e management delle aziende di produzione culturale, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2009 e E.F.M. Emanuele, Arte e finanza, ESI, Napoli, 2012.

Cultural Heritage: Problems of Definition and Methodological Questions

19

finds an environment surrounding that cultural product which renders the experience pleasing. In this sense, costs and revenues, allocation of resources and manpower, will go for example towards the side of maintenance of urban decor, cleaning, along with lodging and food services. Furthermore, these latter two aspects lead the discourse towards an additional trajectory of development of the economy of culture; that is, the impressive volume of business revolving around traditional foods, production of quality, and the market of quality products. The sale of a typical dish, or a famous wine, is after all certainly the result of the intrinsic value of the product, but no less of the promotion of the same: as an example, on the label of a wine bottle, there is the synthesis of an environment, a landscape, even a lifestyle, and it is no accident that the promotional opportunities of this type of product are often connected to the promotion of “intangible cultural products” such as events, performances, ceremonies and specific rituals of a place. Among the possible spheres of development revolving around a “cultural repository” there are also several sections which involve much greater dimensions of economic and even industrial policy and which apparently could seem distant from the issues being addressed but are instead closely linked. As an example, it would be completely useless for a town to possess a magnificent medieval castle, rich in history, in legend, in collections and artifacts, if this structure were unreachable by a visitor. Thus to the promotion of that “repository” is linked a policy of infrastructure development (the construction or improvement of a road or railway) that must necessarily involve the government, and that in itself will constitute a further important opportunity of economic growth and job creation. And again, it would be completely useless for a country to possess a rich cultural patrimony if the territory is difficult to reach by international visitors due to poor rail and airplane infrastructures. And this, evidently, should encourage the government of that country to carry forward a policy of infrastructure improvement which will itself generate profit, jobs, and markets. Consider also, as a second example, the economic benefits of the valorization of a historic center: not only for the importance of cultural tourism that it can attract, but also for the growth in value of the real estate present inside or nearby. The brief reflections offered here lead us to say that there exists a real, concrete possibility to utilize cultural heritage as a flywheel of economic growth. There certainly remain two significant problems to resolve: the costs of valorization, and the risks. A cultural enterprise, as underlined in

20

Chapter One

scholarship28 – has objectives that lie outside those of any other type of business. Alongside, and even more than, profit, there is the aim of an educational, pedagogical, recreational, precisely cultural, nature. The mechanisms through which said enterprise functions are nevertheless not unlike those of any other business: a cultural enterprise, if we consider as such any place or activity that produces or conserves culture, or any cultural activity in their being (events, festivals, film or music festivals) has costs and revenues, which if poorly managed determine losses and even the bankruptcy of the enterprise. It is this case that determines the need for decisive intervention by the State, which effectively prevents the collapse of a “place of culture” through the usage of structural or emergency funds, not in virtue of strictly economic motivations but rather in virtue of the intrinsic cultural value of the property. Nevertheless, even the State may encounter significant difficulties in allocating resources for the management of its own patrimony. The intervention of the private sector can be fundamental in this case, as many have already observed and maintained. The risks connected to a sort of “privatization” of the property do not appear in this sense so consistent as to negate the possibility of a public-private partnership, perhaps favored by fiscal exemptions and tax benefits for who wishes to invest in maintenance, recovery, and valorization of a property. And this is because not only the private investor will take an immediate economic benefit from the tax breaks, but also for the multiplier effect for the investor and his/her product brought by the fact of sponsoring this type of initiative. A more complex matter is the business risk, that is, the profit margins possible for an entrepreneur who intends to “sell culture”. As every other product, culture also brings risks at the moment of start-up; when the available budget corresponds to a revenue and thus to an unpredictable profit. Cultural enterprise brings with it the necessity to carefully evaluate, through an analytical financial forecast, the real possibility of profit: for example, how many audience members can attend a cycle of performances in a particular theater? How many visitors can enter into a particular museum or gallery? How many tourists can choose a particular landscape, a particular cuisine, a certain wine? Nevertheless, also in this case we maintain that precisely cultural enterprise can offer an effective economic solution to the current recession. In the first place, in the face of the difficulty of the State to sustain operating costs, organization, and valorization of cultural heritage, and in the face of considerable risks in 28

For a general reference see: L. Dwyer-P. Forsyth, International Handbook on the Economics of Tourism, Northampton, Elgar, 2006.

Cultural Heritage: Problems of Definition and Methodological Questions

21

opposition to private management, a possible alternative can be a third option stably present in the market but with specific characteristics: the spread of cooperatives in charge of management of cultural and natural treasures and culture, could offer, together with an efficient cost-benefit ratio, also a diversification of supply much broader than that guaranteed by the State and by the private sector alone. Secondly, the cultural enterprise must navigate the market in a much more flexible manner than any other type of business: identifying profitable market sectors, the types of visitors, audience, consumer, the parts of a country, and the country itself, and constantly changing proposals to keep at heart the conservation of the past in step with the present and projected towards the future.

CHAPTER TWO THE EMERGENCE OF A PROTECTIONIST SENSIBILITY

1.Setting up systems of safeguarding: European models The results which have just been mentioned in a purely problematic light are that of a development which brought the ancient concept of fine arts to expand its meaning to include those varied elements - objects and manifestations - related to carrying out the cultural sphere of collective life. This evolution reflects the growth of a sensibility which, beginning with the emergence of the first protectionist movements in the mid 19th century, has taken on an ever-greater role in cultural debate, an increasingly evident centrality in the political agenda of governments, and a density of constantly changing conceptual and programmatic implications. At the base of the recognition of the importance of safeguarding of ancient objects and artworks, along with landscape - an element which increases in parallel with the attention towards antiquities and artworks shown by intellectual and politicians, among the first to address the problem - there is also the double process of historicization of the past which marks the fulfillment of Enlightenment rationalism and the affirmation of the modern national territorial state which strongly emerges soon after the Viennese Restoration of 1815. The former corresponds to a search for order, rationality, cognition of time and space and the role of Man in these coordinates; the latter is the expression of Romantic passion which catches fire starting in the 19th century. The former finds its greatest expression in the epochal rupture with the Ancien Regime carried out by the French Revolution; the latter in the historical process of Resurgence of national states after the end of the Napoleonic adventure. The former expresses itself in the plastic clarity of Neoclassicism; the latter in the troubled shadings of Romanticism. The emergence of a protectionist movement is in this sense also one of the aspects marking the fundamental process of transformation culminating in the “triumph of the

24

Chapter Two

bourgeoisie”1 of the 19th century, the true protagonist of the construction of the new world and the new social and cultural landscape marking the industrialized West. If it is the “hammer of the Revolution”, to use a fitting expression of Karl Marx, to destroy the ancient feudal bonds, it is the industrial revolution and modern capitalism which determine a stratified recomposition of class structure. In this, the bourgeoisie, intended as the modern professional, public official, or private entrepreneur as is the case, takes on a hegemonic role which leads to the development of a new, diverse, awareness in relation to time and space. In a present moment lived with the proud fullness of economic, social, and political dominion, looking towards the future with optimistic faith in positivistic constructionism, weighing the past which marks the greatness of the path travelled thus far, it is the 19th century bourgeoisie who perceives the essential importance of separating the three dimensions by protecting, and if possible, valorizing, that past which stretches across the territory of the Nation State, nourishing the identity of belonging to the nation and sedimenting the presence of man and the difficult work thus far carried out. At the origins of the protectionist movement, these philosophical and cultural premises were reflected in an extremely perimetral conceptualization of the object of protection itself, especially in certain countries. It must be said that alongside these countries, other nations developed a different, and in a certain sense more ample, idea of the issue, and thus also of the contents of the protection action. In attempting an initial, general subdivision, we could say that the politics of protection of cultural assets have historically followed, in the western world, three principal models of action. These models correspond to the dictates of legislation emanated in the first important phase of emergence of the protectionist movement, which can be contextualized at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, that is, at the height of the construction of the national territorial state and the affirmation of the bourgeoisie. A first model was typical of an area which, even with several shades of difference, can be indicated in Mediterranean Europe, and which had at its base elements and premises of action coming from the experience in France. The first laws about the issue, appearing in countries like Italy, Spain, and Portugal, indicated attention towards works of art, historical monuments, and archaeological finds, considering them worthy of protection due to their intrinsic esthetic value and the significance they acquired due to their character as elements of national identity. An 1

We use the well-known and fortuitous locution proposed by E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital 1848-1875, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1976.

The Emergence of a Protectionist Sensibility

25

exemplary case was in Italy, where the law n° 364 of 20 June 1909, the well-known Rosadi-Rava law, the first systematic law on the subject, indicated as worthy of protection: [...]immobile and mobile objects with historical, paleoethnological, paleontological, or artistic interest.

archaeological

This law, which actually based itself on models and experiences from the pre-unification States, was characterized by an aesthetic meaning of protection which captured the idea of an objective beauty, and as such liable to be “decontextualized” and even “dehistoricized”. These principles evidently built on the Enlightenment foundation which gave art a universal dimension, such that, wherever there was a beautiful object, said object was immediately perceived and enjoyed as such. On the other hand, uncoupling these objects from their historical dimension, precisely dehistoricizing and decontextualizing them, had been the only way to subtract said objects, buildings, assets, from the devastating fury of revolutionary vandalism, especially concerning ecclesiastical assets. This was the element on which was based an idea of a “collection” in which the object could have stood on its own as part of an assembled group. Or, the idea of a museum, based in particular on the French model, that was to have functioned, and indeed did function at the start, according to the guideline of a progressive accumulation corresponding to the positivist idea of consciousness, which prevailed until the end of the 19th century. Thus in France, after the creation of a Commission of Monuments in 1790, and the creation of a Museum of Monuments in 1793, after the provisions adopted during the period of the July Monarchy, the law emanated on 31 December 1913 placed under protection historical monuments, a hendiadys which synthesized the vision of a patrimony born from the monumental nature of the mobile and immobile objects and their relevance for the history of France2. A second model was instead typical of the German experience, after the creation of the Reich in 1870-71, which brought together the premises of Hegelian historicism in a vision in which culture was considered not as a universal articulation of rationality, but rather as an expression of the 2

Cfr. S. Foà, L’organizzazione giuridica dei musei pubblici in Francia: decentramento e servizio pubblico culturale, in G. Cofrancesco (a cura di), I beni culturali. Profili di diritto comparato ed internazionale, Istituto Poligrafico Zecca dello Stato – Libreria dello Stato, Roma, 1999, p. 85-86. Regarding the RosadiRava law, cfr. R. Balzani, Per le Antichità e le Belle Arti: la legge n° 364 del 20 giugno 1909 e l’Italia giolittiana, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2003.

26

Chapter Two

national spirit historically incarnated. This led to consider as worthy of protection the patrimony within the landscape and the landscape itself as national settings: Heimat, a territory as a national land. Alongside this first element, a second to consider is the fact that the German vision of cultural assets was traditionally that of assets as an expression of the State and as expressed by the State, that is, ascribable to the concept of the State of culture. This explains why the first systematic law passed in Germany, that of the duchy of Hessen-Darmstadt in 1902, indicated as worthy of protection not only those edifices which had particular historical significance, especially for the history of art, but also ‘settings’, that is natural formations of the surface of the land such as waterways, rocks, trees, and others, whose conservation constitutes a public interest out of respect for history, for history of nature, for beauty or particularities of landscape3.

Finally, a third model which generally can be indicated is that one developed in Anglo-Saxon countries, circumscribed to Great Britain and the United States, and without considering, at least for the moment, the translation of related legislation in those countries linked to Great Britain as colonies or which have in any case undergone British influence. At the base of the English experience are situated two fundamental premises, one of cultural order, the other of socio-economic order. The first is the spread of a culture strongly imbued with pragmatism and positivistic constructionism. The second is the fact that Great Britain is precisely the place where first and foremost the industrial revolution and the system of capitalist production developed. This determines the fact that the definition of cultural assets is not particularly linked to theoretical conceptualizations, but rather to an empirical recognition of those assets to protect, and furthermore the affirmation of a quite elastic concept of assets to protect, which however comprises exclusively immobile objects. Meanwhile, mobile objects are instead subject to a free market regime, which, after all, was an expression of the economic liberalism prevailing in late 19th century bourgeoisie England. The second premise determines the fact that in Britain the problem of protection of cultural assets is considered from an early stage as a part of the greater problem of management of urban growth, coherent to this issue and consubstantial4. Thus, after the 1882 3

M. Greco, in collaboration with M. Di Stefano, La protezione dei beni culturali in Germania, in G. Cofrancesco (a cura di), I beni culturali…cit., p. 131-132. 4 G. Cofrancesco, Aspetti diacronici e sincronici nella disciplina britannica di tutela del cultural heritage, in Id. (a cura di), I beni culturali…, cit., p. 177-181.

The Emergence of a Protectionist Sensibility

27

passing of the Ancient Monument Protection Act, which put under protection 29 monuments between England and Wales and 21 in Scotland, 5 the first measure for protection was, just as in Italy, that comprised in the House and Town Planning Act of 1909: a full-fledged urbanistic law which contained specific rules for protection and conservation of historical monuments. In paragraph 45, this law declared in fact that no regulation in the law itself would have authorized in any case the purchase of any land which is the site of an ancient monument or other object of archaeological interest: nor the purchase, for usage as defined by the previous law of 1890, […]of any land[…]which at the date of the order forms part of any park, garden, or pleasure ground, or is otherwise required for the amenity or convenience of any dwelling-house6.

5

As a sign of the privatistic and liberal framework of policies of protection in Great Britain, it is worth noting how the law of 1882 gave owners of a historicalartistic asset the task of asking for the nomination of “Commissioners of work” as “guardians” of the monument itself. These guardians were given the task of “maintenance”, which included, along with the duty of protection and thus intervention against possible acts of damage, vandalism, or destruction, also repairs and cleaning. The law provided for very strict regulations against crimes of damaging and offence to the monument: not so much in pecuniary terms (the law provided for a fine of a sum of not more than five pounds added to the sum that the court had established as necessary for the repair), rather in personal terms, as the convicted could be imprisoned, for a term of at most a month, but potentially also with the sentence of forced labour. Cfr. Ancient Monuments Protection Act – London 18th August 1882, UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws on 14 March 2015 at 11.03. It was preceded by a Parochial Libraries Act from 1708 and followed by a Disused Burial Grounds Act – London 14th August 1884. Then in 1906 a law was passed on the protection of open spaces that were attributed to the maintenance and conservation of local authorities: Open spaces Act – London 4th August 1906. Cfr. UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws on 14 March 2015 at 11.16. 6 Housing and Town Planning in Great Britain being a statement of statutory provisions relating to the houses of the working classes and to Town planning including the Housing, Town planning, etc. Act 1909, by W. Addington Willis LL.B. (London), of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at Law, Butterworth & Co., London, 1910, p. 162.

Chapter Two

28

Compared to the English experience, in the United States the protection movement reflected the strong influence of military culture on which the country was grounded, especially in the period of the Civil War. There was also a strong influence of the myth of the frontier in the American identity. These two elements explain why from 1862 the attention of the Union was focused especially on military cemeteries and battlefields, both put under protection that year. In the same way, in 1864, the concession of the territory of Yellowstone to the state of California was subordinated to the purpose of public leisure, thus marking a fundamental shift in the idea of the use of landscape: from a mere material usage towards a purpose of recreation and leisure, and that eventually in 1872 the first national park was created in Yellowstone. The first overall law focusing on monuments and objects of historical and artistic interest was instead the Antiquities Act of 8 June 1906, which in only 4 articles put assets under protection, establishing in article 1: any person who shall excavate, appropriate, injure, or destroy any historic or prehistoric ruin or monument, or any object of antiquity situated on lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States, without the permission of the Secretary of the Department of the Government having jurisdiction over the lands on which said antiquities are situated, shall, upon conviction, be fined in a sum of no more than five hundred dollars, or be imprisoned for a period of no more than ninety days, or shall suffer both fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the Court;

and in article 2: the President of the United States is authorized, in his discretion, to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments[…]7.

It was finally with the act proclaimed by President Woodrow Wilson on 25 August 1916 that the United States saw the institution of a National Park Service which under the direction of a President would have carried out tasks of planning but also and above all policing in the areas declared

Antiquities Act – Washington 8th June 1906, Unesco Database of Cultural Heritage National Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws on 14 March 2015 ore 11.19.

7

The Emergence of a Protectionist Sensibility

29

as parks of national interest and relevance and monumental areas, 35 at the time, according to the principle by which: the service thus established shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments, and reservations hereinafter specified by such means and measures as conform to the fundamental purpose of the said parks, monuments, and reservations, which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.

To the different definitions of the object of protection, there likewise corresponded, in the three models indicated, different coordinates in terms of action of protection and the administrative organization connected to them. A highly centralized structure characterised the French system, as in Italy, while other areas chose a much more decentralized model of administration and organization, such as in Germany. Rather that creating a central administration under a Ministry, from which would have expanded subordinate offices throughout the entire territory, in Germany the management of cultural assets was largely entrusted, both in administration and in legislation, to the creative adaptability of each Länder. In France and Italy, the Superintendencies played the principal role in the concrete organization of protective action, following a model based on the prefectorial model of Napoleonic administration. Meanwhile, in Germany it was the individual regional departments who had ample discretion in protective action. Thus, after the creation of the “Museum Fridericianum” in 1780, and the first statutes passed by the Hesse, the first unified codification came with Frederick the Great in the realm of codification of Prussian law, with the provision for restrictions on circulation of assets for which: to the extent that the conservation of an object has a significant influence on the conservation or protection of a common good, the State is legitimized to prohibit its destruction or elimination.

But on the basis of the decentralized framework, which attributed a prevailing role to the German Länder in administration of protection, even after 1870 there remained for example in effect a statute desired by the Grand Duke of Hessen-Darmstadt Louis I which provided for the creation of a general inventory to be entrusted to the government of the Land but compiled through the intervention of all the local administrations.

30

Chapter Two

It was above all in Great Britain, furthermore, where the role of municipalities took on an extraordinary importance with the provision that no acquisition would be consented for parts of territory, monuments, historical-artistic assets, belonging to a city, and that cities could intervene to prohibit such transactions. Along with the role of the city, in Great Britain was added an extraordinary role of private associations, spread across the territory as an expression of the prevailing liberal culture. As regards cultural assets, these associations were sustained by the ancient principle, part of British custom, whereby ‘a man’s home is his castle’. It is in this sense that can be explained the creation of organizations which, although not entirely absent in other countries like Italy and Germany, did not have the same force of an organized pressure group, able to intervene directly and with a highly concrete operative role in the field of management of culture and cultural assets. In Italy, for example, there were certainly associations who were ‘friends’ of monuments or of landscape, or cultural associations geared towards the protection and promotion, also through leisure and cultural tourism, of landscape. The ‘brigades of friends of monuments’ which bloomed in the late 19th century and first fifteen years of the 20th century in the principal art capitals, and for example who in Florence favoured the formation of groups of intellectuals and single figures who would be incisive in politics and in the parliamentary debate on the topic (consider Giovanni Rosadi) were certainly an important result of the growth of a sensibility which furthermore was being tempered and explored in the publications, specialist and not, which proliferated in this time period: from “Emporium” to “Marzocco” to offer just two examples. In the same way, the various associations of botany, of agronomist science, or, more simply, “Pro Montibus et Silvis”, aimed at promoting the touristic-recreational aspects of landscape, positioned themselves on top of a technical-scientific culture that in Italy, already in the pre-unification period, had already turned its attention to agriculture, agronomy, along with the risks for hydrogeology disaster, and insufficient policies for the territory. Between the late 19th century and early 20th century, these movements were nourished by the development of a dimension of tourism and vacations rooted in the tradition of the Grand Tour but which now opened itself to the extraordinarily innovative dynamics of mass tourism. But all this development corresponded only in a small part to the force acquired, for example, by the “Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings”, founded in 1877 and presided over by William Morris; by the action of cataloguing carried out by the “Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England” or the “Committee for the Survey of the

The Emergence of a Protectionist Sensibility

31

memorial of Great London”; and above all by the actions of lobbying and direct protection carried out by the “National Trust for Places of Historical Interest or Natural Beauty”, founded in 1895, soon to become a model for many similar organizations created in those countries connected politically or culturally to Great Britain. This analysis thus presents a third element of profound difference among the areas under consideration: that is, a much more restrictive nature, and above all a marked governmental involvement, in the policies of protection in some countries right from the start, compared to other areas in which the defence of monuments or places of historical and natural interest was much more connected to personal responsibility, and thus more easily contextualized in the logic of the market for artistic goods. So it was in France, where the idea of the museum as a public collection and the inventory as a tool for recognition of the regulatory regime; meanwhile, in Great Britain the inventory had more of an indicative nature, for reconnaissance. In France the central government took on the principal role in protection, while in Great Britain local municipalities and private associations represented the first lines of defence of cultural assets. In France the regulatory regime took on a highly repressive and binding character, while in Great Britain there prevailed an approach of prevention and promotion. In the middle of these two extremes, Germany ended up representing a singular synthesis: In a country in which the relationship between society and state was supported by a robust alliance between governmental structure and bourgeoisie, the State, inspired by the French model, favoured the creation of a series of entities of control and inventory, following the example of the Commission for historical monuments instituted in 1837 in France, which had prepared a general catalogue overseen by Prosper Merimèè. So it was for the Konservator der Kunstdenkmäler für den gesamten Bereich der Monarchie – Conservator of artistic monuments for the entire territory of the Monarchy (1843), or the Kommission zur Erforschung und Erhaltung der Kunst denkmäler – Commission for research and conservation of artistic monuments (1853). On the other hand, much of the action of protection was left to municipalities and above all to private associations, which flourished in a great number in all areas of imperial Germany, of which the Verein zur Beförderung des Gartenbaus im Preuȕischen Staat – Association for the promotion of the institution of gardens in the Prussian State (1822) – was but only one of the earliest examples.

32

Chapter Two

2. The emergence of a protectionist sensibility outside of Europe In the areas thus far considered, the fundamental elements that initially marked the experiences of protection were articulated in various ways throughout Europe, where the affirmation of the Nation State saw the construction of the stage of the Nation as one of the most significant elements. This was the case for central-northern Europe (Belgium, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian Peninsula) who borrowed many of the elements present in the French and British examples in putting under protection monuments, buildings, but also ‘environments’ of historical relevance. In 1914, to give just an example, with a decree on 26 March, the Belgian government put under protection the battlefield of Waterloo, prohibiting the planting of trees, the construction of buildings or other interventions of an invasive nature 8 . This was no less the case in Mediterranean Europe, where the legislation of the principal countries followed prior experiences while introducing important innovations, connected to the historical context in which they came to light. For example, in Spain the protection of monuments or objects of relevant historical and artistic interest was originally delegated to the two royal academies present in the country: the Academy of History, founded in 1738 by Philip V with general powers of inspection and inventory of monuments; and the Academy of Fine Arts, instituted by Ferdinand VI in 1752 with specific competency for architectural works. A first attempt at statism of protection was undertaken in 1844 with the creation of a Central Commission for monuments, which controlled in turn provincial Commissions, which was however revoked by the Moyano law of 1857, and finally with the first laws at the start of the new century. In particular, the creation of a Ministry of Public Education saw, analogous with events in Italy, the creation within of a General Direction of Fine Arts, which replaced the Academies. Remaining in the Mediterranean sphere, yet another situation could be found in Greece, which from the moment of independence took steps to protect its cultural assets, consisting fundamentally in archeological sites. The first law came in 1834, relating to classical antiquities, and confirming state ownership and exclusivity in conducting digs. The 1902 law extended state authority over all historical sites and the two laws of 1914 and 1921 put all assets of the Byzantine and 8

Loi du 26 mars 1914 pour la préservation du champ de bataille de Waterloo, in UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws, on 4 March 2015 – at 14.05.

The Emergence of a Protectionist Sensibility

33

Medieval periods under protection, obligating owners and art dealers to declare possession of said assets. The affirmation of the role of the State, along with the projects and attempts of modernization in the individual countries, were at the base, between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, of several experiences of ‘politics for cultural assets’ characterized also by a particular destructive violence, linked to reasons of political order, but above all to ethnic and religious considerations. A particular case was that of Bulgaria, the site of an ethnic cleansing that also corresponded to a cultural cleansing in the period of the Russo-Turkish War in 1877-78. Russian troops, with the consensus of the Bulgarians, destroyed, devastated, and sacked the entire patrimony left by the preceding Islamic domination, after the surrender of Osman Pascià. In this way, mosques, minarets, buildings, and even houses were destroyed. And this was a process that lasted and continued over time. Particularly at the start of the 20th century, when Bulgarians held control of government and institutions, representing the majority of the population, although Turks and Muslims remained as 20% of the population, and Bulgarians controlled schools and education systems, the destruction of Arabic assets continued systematically, precisely because this patrimony embodied a past which was to be completely erased in the process of creating a Bulgarian identity. This process, as Armando Pitassio has opportunely noted, followed two principal trajectories: the negation of the shared past with Turkish and Muslim populations -roughly four centuries of shared history - in the name of the recovery of the tradition of the Medieval princes of Bulgaria, and the desire to “Westernize” themselves. Thus, for example, the Turkish market (the Bedesten) was destroyed, as were the Turkish baths, and the Sofular Mosque in Jambol, built in 1481. Meanwhile, buildings were erected in a Byzantine style, such as the new baths of Sofia, or the Russian interpretation given to this same Byzantine style (the Alexander Nevsky cathedral in Sofia); or again in the destruction of the khan of Plovdiv, the Turkish warehouses. It was precisely this search for identity, however, which explains why Bulgaria is - along with Romania - one of the first countries in Eastern Europe to address the problem of protection, and why, in both countries, after WWI, there was the passage of general laws of protection, notably effective and quite advanced. A partially analogous process can be found in Japan, where the emergence of attention towards protection of monuments was one of the most significant aspects of the political, institutional, and administrative modernization marking the Meiji dynasty. After the appearance, for the first time in 1872, of the concept of “national treasure”, the restructuring

34

Chapter Two

carried out by the ruling class, which had destroyed the shogun system, indeed followed two complementary routes: on the one hand, the separation of Buddhism from Shintoism, with the elevation of the latter to state religion; on the other hand, the search for and construction of a national identity based on two principles “rich nation, strong army” and “civilization and enlightenment”. The first produced a period of iconoclastic violence in which “countless were the de facto suppressions of many Buddhist temple complexes, shrines, and convents in every part of Japan, grievous the destructions of great religious works of architecture, painting, and statuary, both antique, medieval, and recent”9. The other corresponded to the search for national identity in support of the process of centralization and modernization of the State which had destroyed the centuries-old feudal order. After several experiments of reconnaissance carried out by missions involving, among others, many Italian artists and art experts, this process brought about the “Law of Tutelage of Ancient Temples and Shrines”. Passed in 1897, this law would represent the entire regulatory framework on the matter until 1950. With this law, the Japanese State finally assumed the institutional, legal, and financial responsibility for protection of monuments, which were thus connected to the general category of “national treasures”, indicating among these those works of exceptional historical or artistic significance that were to be considered as “artistic models” and in this sense made available in the museums of Tokyo and Kyoto. Their historical-artistic significance made them unique, and thus worthy of protection, while at the same time foreseeing their use in the future development of art and industry, in a remarkably original link between the distant past and the near future. It was thus the affirmation of the modern national territorial state to spark the emergence of movements of interest in tutelage of historicalartistic assets: elements of identity, safekeeping of national history, cornerstone of a political and cultural sensibility which spread throughout many countries through parliamentary and government action and the efforts of pressure exerted by private associations. This helps to explain how, between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in many countries undergoing institutional modernization, important laws of protection began to be passed. If, in a rapid and cursory panorama, we again consider the situation in Europe, it is sufficient to consider the case of Denmark. Here, on 30 April 1893, there was the passage of Rules relative to the National Museum of Copenhagen, which peremptorily established that the 9 D. Failla,, La tutela dei beni culturali in Giappone, in G. Cofrancesco (a cura di), I beni cuturali…, cit., p. 225.

The Emergence of a Protectionist Sensibility

35

Museum would not have accepted the acquisition of pieces unearthed in the context of excavations or research carried out for profit; and there was confirmation of the principle of compensation in favour of the owner of a property where acquired antiquities had been found, and the restitution of the property in perfect conditions10.

3.Independence and the construction of South American identity In this context of protection, a case of particular interest was the vast and diversified continent of South America. After the disgregation of the Spanish colonial empire, the creation of the various nations which, through convulsive events, began to appear on the historical scene in the early decades of the 19th century, was also marked by the problem of construction of a South American identity. This effort involved above all the intellectual élites of major cities, coherent, furthermore, with the prevalently urban nature of revolutionary leadership. The effort was subtended by two principal objectives. The first was to free the identity of the various countries from the ancient subjection of the Spanish domination, and from all those elements, directly or indirectly inherited, from this economic, social and cultural backwardness: servitude and even slavery, the burdensome entrenchment of the clergy, the widespread and endemic phenomenon of caudillismo. The other was the distinction with regards to the danger of new colonization exercised by the American market, towards which there was intent to create a South America as a fresh protagonist of a new situation, rich in noble energies and even ingenious, pure in sentiment and in ideals11. In this context, suspended between urban civilization and the already growing “pre-Columbian” myths, there were several important laws already passed in the first period of independence, or even with struggles still in progress. In only 10 years, between 1822 and 1832, Colombia notably passed four decrees instituting rules for managing a national museum in Bogota, founded in 1823 in a structure which would have also housed a prison until 1946, according to Bentham’s model of the Panopticon. At the same time, the creation of a 10

Règles relatives au Musée National de Copenhague, in Extrait de Memoires de la Societé Royale des Antiquaires du Nord – Nuvelle Série – Copenhague, 1899, pag. 244, in UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws, on 10 March 2015, at 10.55. 11 Cfr. R. Nocera-A. Trento, America Latina, un secolo di storia. Dalla Rivoluzione messicana a oggi, Carocci, Roma, 2013, p. 44-48.

36

Chapter Two

university chair in Botany was accompanied by the provision through which works of scientific and naturalistic disciplines would be collected at the National Library12. Then, in 1881 the Republic of Colombia passed two measures which confirmed this charge: the first was the law 34 on 29 May 1881 which called for the constitution of the National Museum and its placement in a building to be selected by government authorities. This law declared unequivocally that the museum would collect: all those objects (able to) exalt the historic memory of the nation and (able to) stimulate and encourage the advancement of sciences. Among these objects, preference (would be) given to those whose use, portraits, arms, and in general as memorabilia of heroes of Independence were (able to be) acquired; keeping in mind also those objects in ceramics, stone, and metals that (could serve) as documents to shed light on the primitive history of the country; and in the same way also any examples of curious plants, animals, and minerals (able) to give an idea of the richness of the Colombian territory.

On the entrance door of the Museum, the inscription A la gloria de los libertadores de Colombia y como homenaje al cultivo de las ciencias. [To the glory of the liberators of Colombia and in homage to the cultivation of the sciences], would have stood out as an admonition to National History and Progress, coherently with the Colombian motto Libertad y Progreso, and the colours (the yellow as a symbol of gold, the blue of the oceans, the red of the bloodshed of struggles) of a flag which, like the other countries born in the dissolution of the Great Republic of Colombia, would have followed the tricolor model of Francisco De Miranda13. The second law, n° 59 approved on 11 June, created a Commission of study by combining, 12

Cfr. Decreto 47 – Bogotà 12 de marzo de 1822 – Que ordena reunir a la Biblioteca Pública las Obras de la Expedición Botanica a Cargo de Mutis; Decreto 106 – Bogotà 6 de octubre de 1823 – Que establece una cátedra de botánica en el Museo Nacional; Decreto 256 – Bogotà 22 de febrero de 1826 – Por la qual se acepta la guirnalda de oro y pedras preciosas presentadas al Congreso por el General en Jefe Antonio José de Sucre; Decreto 235 – Bogotà 16 de noviembre de 1832 – Sobre los gastos para la conservación del Museo Nacional, in UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws, on 10 March 2015, at 13.31. 13 Ley 34 – Bogotà 29 de mayo de 1881 – Por la cual se dispone la formación de un Museo Nacional y se concede autorización al poder ejecutivo para la adcquisición del local en que dicho museo debe ser establecido, in UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws, on 10 March 2015, at 14.14.

The Emergence of a Protectionist Sensibility

37

not without some elements of approximation, interest for the mineralogy, botany, geology, zoology, geography, and archaeology of the country14. Of the group of laws passed by South American states in the framework of affirmation of political independence and construction of identity, it is worth mentioning several laws which put under protection monuments from the same period of colonization and even from the preColumbian period, marking attention for the conservation of a past whose roots were to be rediscovered. For example, this was the case for the 1870 law with which the Dominican Republic declared as a national monument the ruins of the Alcazar de Colon (The Admiral’s house) – the only known residence of the Columbus family, belonging to Christopher’s son Diego on whose massive structure both the assaults of Francis Drake, and above all, the passage of time and negligence had left their mark, and the Chata Column, located on the coast of San Diego15. The preamble declared as praxis of all civilized nations: bestow evident and marked respect for the monuments which reflect the nation’s glory, and which together with tradition and manuscripts compose the purest font from which spout (sic!) the pages of the nation’s history;

and on the basis of this praxis, declared as national monuments were both the house of Columbus, the first edifice constructed in the New World, and during whose construction Columbus himself had taken part, and the Chata Column, which held in its ruins an almost illegible Latin inscription referring to the cult of religion. To give another example, a similar declaration was made through the decrees which, from 1845 to 1892, recognized as national monuments the Mayan finds of the Copán Valley in Honduras. On the basis of the general agreement recognizing their historical - monumental significance-signed on 28 January 1845 - the decree of 28 December 1870 established a mandate for a surveyor nominated by the government to establish the boundaries of the protected territory. Above all, in 1889, there was the creation of a National Museum, initially entrusted to a “Sociedad des Antigûedades Hondureñas” presided 14

Ley 59 – Bogotà 11 de junio de 1881 – Por la cual ordena el establecimiento de una comisión científica permanente paara el estudio de los tres reinos naturales en la República, in UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws, on 10 March 2015, at 14.40. 15 Decreto n. 1164 – Santo Domingo 3 de febrero 1870 – Que declara monmento nacional el Alcázar de Colón asi como la Columna Chata situada en la cuesta de San Diego, in UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws, on 10 March 2015, at 15.33.

38

Chapter Two

over by E. W. Perry, and later to the Peabody Museum in 189116. The same period saw the institution of a National Archive in Costa Rica (1881) and in Nicaragua (1896), which also founded a National Museum of Industry, Commerce, and Science in Managua (1897), and the National Library of San Salvador (1870)17. The attention towards protection of cultural assets was further strengthened in the years prior to the First World War, when, consistent with, and in some cases with notable elements of similarity, with what was happening in Europe, several countries outside of Europe adopted measures of protection in favor of the principle testimonies of their own history. For example, protection of the pre-Columbian past, on the basis of an approach which, as we have seen, aimed to recover the purity of an ancient South American identity, was at the center of the important law adopted by the Bolivian government in 1906 for protection of the Tihuanaco archaeological site. Located on the south - eastern shore of Lake Titicaca and not distant from the capital La Paz, the Tihuanaco complex conserved testimonies of a civilization even earlier than that of the Inca, and in particular, the monumental Gate of the Moon, and the equally impressive Gate of the Sun: the latter a sort of instrument of astronomical observation on whose exact middle rises the sun in the springtime. In fact, the law declared as “national property” : the ruins of Tihuanaco, those ruins (author’s note) existing on the islands of the Lake Titicaca, and all those of the Inca period or prior periods that exist or that will be discovered in the territory of the Republic.18

16

Cfr. Acuerdo n°4 – Santo Domingo 28 de enero de 1845; Acuerdo – 28 deciembre de 1874; Acuerdo – 24 de julio de 1889 – Por el cual se dispone la fundacion de un Museo Nacional en Copán; Acuerdo – Santo Domingo 20 de julio de 1891 – Por el cual se acepta el trapaso de una concesion al Peabody Museum, in UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws, on 10 March 2015, at 16.35. 17 Cfr. per il Costa Rica Decreto n° XXV – San José 23 de julio de 1881 - Crea una Oficina des Archivos Nacionales; per El Salvador Decreto de fundacion de la Biblioteca Nacional – San Salvador 5 de julio de 1870; per il Nicaragua Decreto – Managua 7 de jullio de 1896 - Se crea un Archivo General en la Republica; Decreto – Managua 21 de agosto de 1897 – Se establece un Museo industrial, comercial y cientifico en Managua y se nombra la persona che lo dirijia y organice, in UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws, on 10 March 2015, at 16.58. 18 Ley – La Paz 3 de otuber de 1906 – Regimen legal de las ruinas de Tiahuanaco, de las existentes en las islas de lago Titicaca, y de todas las de epoca incasica y

The Emergence of a Protectionist Sensibility

39

Along with the provision for the crime of exportation and contraband of the objects and the parts comprising these ruins, article 3 of this short but incisive law established the power of the government to give mandate to geographical societies for the purpose of restoration and conservation, and in the same way also the excavations that would be undertaken. However, the law also provided for consent for archaeological excavation to private subjects who would be compensated for possible discoveries. The system of archaeological excavations at the site of Tihuanaco was later regulated in detail with a successive law in 190919. Of the same tenor was the Dominican law of 1903, which declared as national property the “archaeological objects” found in the territory of the Republic, meaning those related to the aboriginal populations (qualified as “our own” to indicate the historical connection to be emphasized) at the time of the discovery of the island by Columbus, or to the periods immediately following, and that were found ‘on the surface’ or ‘in the bosom of’ the earth: in grottos, caverns, mountains, sites of cities destroyed by earthquakes, or among the ruins destroyed by time or abandoned by their inhabitants, as in various other parts [of the territory-author’s note]20.

The law 5207 of 25 March 1913 ultimately created a National Museum in the city of Santo Domingo. And again, connected to the same climate of increasing attention are the two laws emanated by the Honduran government in 1900 (prohibition of exportation and trade of historical assets) and 1917 (regulation of the norms of archaeological digs).

4.The results of colonial administration A reference, albeit problematic, is worth making to a situation in which - though in a completely different context - some measures in the direction anterior, UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws, on 12 March 2015 at 15.07. 19 Ley – La Paz 11 de noviembre de 1909 – Regimen de excavaciones en Tiahuanaco e islas del lago Titicaca, UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws, on 12 March 2015 at 15.18. 20 Decreto n° 4347 – Santo Domingo 15 de diciembre de 1903 – que declara propriedad del Estado los objectos arqueológicos, UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws, on 12 March 2015 at 15.35.

40

Chapter Two

of protection were inserted in the framework of the policies of administrative reform set in motion in the late 19th century. In a manner exactly opposite that which was taking place in those countries freeing themselves from Spanish colonial rule, it was the very colonial administrations themselves that introduced measures of protection in areas dominated by the French presence and especially that of the British. Apart from the case of the small islands of Jamaica and Saint-Vincent and Grenada, where between 1911 and 1913 two important laws were passed related to copyright and even to the nascent art of cinematography, it was above all the most important countries of the British colonial empire to represent examples of astute policies, not without modernity. A first important confirmation of this point was the law approved by the British colonial administration for India in 1878, just two years after Queen Victoria had taken the crown as Empress. The law was framed in a policy of penetration, including cultural, by Great Britain, and the results were immediately evident in the deep entrenchment of Victorian style also among the cultured Indian classes. In line with this action corresponded, in the specific case of cultural assets, the organization of a system to regulate the discovery, the cataloguing, and conservation of that which was defined as “Indian treasures”, indicated as: every object of value hidden under or deposited on the ground.

Furthermore, as a significant step, coherent with the dominant liberal ideology emanating from London, the law also defined as collector every salaried functionary in charge of a district, and every functionary appointed by the local government in the role of “collector”,

together with the owner, a qualification attributed to whomever had title over things considered as treasures21. The law then established a system of control over the objects discovered, through notification of the district functionary or that of the government, along with the obligation of depositing the object at the local treasury, or, alternately, the obligation of the owner to guarantee display of the object to the functionary if and when requested by the same. There also existed penal laws against dispersion

21

Treasure Trove Act 1878 – Act n° VI 1878, UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws, on 12 March 2015 at 18.37.

The Emergence of a Protectionist Sensibility

41

and trade, and laws regulating how the object could be acquired by the government, thus becoming public property. Much less liberal, significantly more articulated and pervasive, was the regime regulating digs and preservation of archaeological finds in Egypt, in accordance with the provisions promoted and obtained by the Minister of Public Works Ismail Sirry, and promulgated in Cairo on 8 December 1912 within the framework of administrative reform introduced by the British governor Lord Kitchener 22 . These were two administrative regulations constructed through application of the general law on antiquities, passed on 14 June 1912, regulating the market and exportation of antiquities, imposing rigid rules of administrative authorization23. The first, The Guidelines for Exportation of Antiquities, established the obligation of administrative authorization for exportation via sea or via land of ancient objects. This authorization was subordinate to a form indicating, along with name, surname, and nationality of the applicant, the port or territorial crossing from which the object would exit the country. At the same time, the objects were examined by the General Service of Antiquities, based on an application accompanied by a list indicating the number of pieces, their nature, their dimensions, their purchase price, and their commercial value. The law further specified that permissible for export were exclusively objects of Egyptian antiquity of the period of the Pharaohs, Greco-Roman, Byzantine, or Coptic; the eventual presence of objects of other periods or styles would be grounds for denial of authorization. The law called also for a series of details of a technical nature for the purposes of guarantees for shipping and safeguarding of objects, valid both for shipment overland by railway, by sea, and even by postal courier24. Analogous authorization from the Ministry of Public Works, given through the Service for Antiquities, upon favorable judgement of a Committee of Egyptologists, was necessary for digs,

22

M.W. Daly, Yhe British occupation, 1882 – 1922, in Id. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Egypt, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998, Vol. 2, Modern Egypt, from 1517 to the end of the twentieth century, p. 244. 23 Loi n° 14 – Le Caire le 12 juin 1912 – Loi sur les Antiquités, UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws, on 13 March 2015 at 11.57. 24 Arrêté ministériel n° 51 – Le Caire le 8 decembre 1912 – Règlement pour l’exportation des antiquites, UNESCO Database of Cultural National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws, on 12 March 2015 at 19.10.

42

Chapter Two

according to provision n° 52 – Guidelines for Excavations – emanated in the same circumstances25. In terms of the administrative policy of colonies, there is finally the general law which regulated the conservation, the trade, and the protection of antiquities and art for the area of Indochina. This statute was passed through decree of the General Governor of Indochina on 9 March 1900 in the framework of the administrative organization of French colonies. Unlike the measures for Egypt, in this case it was an organic law, articulated in four Headings with a much clearer and more detailed definition of the object of protection. Heading 1 - Immobile Objects and Historical Monuments located in Indochina - indicated as objects for protection: immobile objects, by nature or destination, whose conservation may have, from the point of view of history or art, a public interest.

For these objects, the law provided for classification and the ban on transfer without authorization of the General Governor through a proposal of the Superior Council of Indochina; the ban on destruction, but also the ban to carry out on these objects any type of restoration, repair, or modification, without authorization by the Governor himself. Any immobile objects belonging to private citizens would be classified only with the consent of the owner. The law also provided for the possibility of intervention, however unnecessary, by the administration for works of restoration or modification; the law also provided for the institution of expropriation for public utility, but with the sizable limitation of only partial compensation in favour of the owner, since the easements or other rights connected to a partial damage or degradation of the property would not be applied to properties classified as public property 26 . Similar restrictions were provided for those mobile objects which, with a provision of the General Governor, having received the counsel of the Permanent Commission and after the examination of the Director of the French School for the Far East, were classified as being of public interest from the point of view of history and art. The regime of regulation of excavations 25

Arrêté ministériel n° 52 – Le Caire le 8 decembre 1912 – Règlement pour les Fouilles, UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws, on 13 marzo 2015 at 11.50. 26 Arrêté du Governeur Général de l’Indochine sur la conservation des monuments et objets ayant un intérêt historique ou artistique – 9 mars 1900, UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws, on 13 March 2015 at 18.14.

The Emergence of a Protectionist Sensibility

43

followed the same framework. Among the general dispositions, introduced by Title IV° of the law, there was the possibility to bring mobile objects or parts of immobile objects inside the collections of the Museum of Indochina, and that the person in charge of the protection of the cultural assets of Indochina was to be the Director of the French School for the Far East, as further confirmation of the clear prevalence of French officials in the administrative organization of the colonies.

CHAPTER THREE WAR AND DESTRUCTION: CULTURAL HERITAGE BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL CONVENTIONS AND GOVERNMENT POLICY

1.The Great War and the destruction of artistic heritage: new problems and new perspectives After the first phase of affirmation of a protectionist sensibility, linked above all to the problem of the construction of identity of nation-states, it was above all in the years of the Great War that the issue of artistic and monumental heritage returned to the centre of political and cultural debate. This was due essentially to the dramatic impact of the damages produced by the conflict, and the sizable blow delivered precisely to historical and artistic assets in the context of the destruction of entire parts of the European urban fabric. The reflections which followed, in particular in relation to the monstrous effects that the destructive possibilities of the new techniques of combat, and the new weapons introduced had brought to light, brought about a series of important results in terms of the creation of policies for safeguarding. There was also new attention in the scientific and political cultural debate surrounding the concept of beauty. The first, and for many aspects the most important of these results, was certainly the consolidation of those international conventions which dealt with the limits of ius belli ac pacis, which had already taken shape in previous decades, but which now laid out a regulatory framework much more precise and better articulated precisely in reference to damages to monumental and historical-artistic assets (included in the general category of “civil assets” and thus not functional for military necessity) during armed conflicts. Resting on the balance between military necessity and respect for the right of war, international regulation geared towards the protection of cultural assets had its roots proper in the very same advent of international law, and thus inserted itself within the frame of a culture,

46

Chapter Three

dominated by Natural Law, that recognized the existence of inviolable natural rights, among which the enjoyment of beauty was implicitly but clearly identified. It was first Emmer De Vetter (1758) who recognized the futility of destructions which struck objects and goods bringing “honour” to humankind (tombs, monuments, churches, public buildings, buildings of notable beauty). Then, in the years of the Civil War, the drafting of the so-called Lieber Code (1863) in the United States had further specified the concept of military necessity calling for the obligation for belligerents to avoid damaging works of art, scientific collections, libraries, and hospitals. The Declaration of Saint Petersburg (1868), the Declaration of Brussels (1874), and the Oxford Manual (1880) had all defined war within the confines of necessity which had to be balanced with the needs and rights recognized by all of humanity. In any case, it was the 2nd Convention on Laws and Customs of War on Land stipulated at the Hague in 1899, and the similar fourth convention 8 years later, which precisely defined the limits of military necessity affirming for the first time the legal principle, valid on an international level, of the protection of cultural assets in armed conflicts. Article 27 of the 1899 Convention, in particular, established that: in sieges and bombardments all necessary steps should be taken to spare as far as possible edifices devoted to religion, art, science and charity, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not used at the same time for military purposes1.

Article 27 of the regulations attached to the 1907 convention confirmed these principles by inserting historical monuments among the places to protect from damage. As has been recently observed, upon a closer look the two conventions effectively called for limited protection, due to a series of evident contradictions that the two regulations had not covered. For starters, protection was provided for these indicated places, and above all for buildings, only in absence of a possible use for military purposes, and furthermore the prohibition of damage was subordinate to the clause as far as possible, which included a broad margin of discretion. Furthermore, these regulations did not recognize individual responsibility for damages, even though a large part of the doctrine has consolidated the opinion of an implicit recognition of said responsibility in the provision of 1

Convention – Hague – 29 july 1899 – Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague II) – Annex to Convention, The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, consulted on the website www.avalon.law.yale.edu on 31 March 2015, at 17.20.

War and Destruction

47

national responsibility. But above all, the application of the Conventions, which was limited only to those participant States, called for the application of mechanisms of protection in cases of warfare technically recognized as such, and thus in the presence of a declaration of war by a State, while nothing was contemplated for potential undeclared conflicts. No less important was the fact that the Conventions in no way impeded retaliation. Nevertheless, it is quite true that even with these limits, in the period of the first World War the two Conventions constituted fundamental regulations of reference in regards to the protection of heritage on an international level. Furthermore, it should be said that if until 1914 attention towards cultural assets can be read as the result of an attempt to humanize conflicts, after 1914 precisely the use of new military technologies, new armaments, and in general the monstrous bloodbath which took place seems instead to signal a clear retreat of this stance. In the end, it can be said that renewed attention to the issue, at the end of the conflict, is certainly linked to attempts to recreate order in civil relationships after these dramatic four years of war, but also to the need to recover at least the residual presence of the heritage of a civilization which precisely in that war had been destroyed. Thus the attention to protection of heritage, in the years immediately following the conflict, is also the result of the dramatic attempts by Europeans to cling to the memories of their lost civilization. The damages to cities such as Ravenna or Venice, the bombardment of the Cathedral of Reims, and the misfortunes of cities like Lovanio, Ypres, Arras, all serve as examples to explain why even already in April 1918, with the war still to be finished, the Dutch National Archaeology Society was entrusted to draft a report, based on a questionnaire, which would provide suitable proposals for cultural protection. Together with urging for the preparation of defence of cultural assets and monuments in times of war, the report asked for the creation of an intergovernmental Office which would compile an inventory of sites and assets to protect, and proposed the inviolability and the demilitarization of entire urban centres in view of their historical and monumental worth: Bruges, Florence, Nuremberg, the Cité of Paris, Rome, Venice, Rothenburg. Above all in the presence of aerial warfare and the new extraordinary possibilities of destruction that it had highlighted, and that would be highlighted even further during World War II, are to be understood two attempts, with different results, carried out between 1922-23 and 1935. The first was the drafting of "Rules on the control of radiotelegraphy in time of war" at the Hague in December 1922, to be applied starting from

48

Chapter Three

the beginning of the next year. These rules called for recognition of the possibility of aerial attack exclusively for military targets by overcoming the previous distinction between defended and undefended cities. Also, with respect to the generalities of the indications of the two Conventions from 1899 and 1907, the new rules underlined the importance of defence of monuments of “great historical value”, envisaging, for their protection, a series of “special rules”2. The second was the so-called Roerich Pact, stipulated in Washington on 15th April 1935 and drafted by the honorary president of the Roerich Museum of New York Nicholas Roerich. Unlike the Rules of the Hague from 1922, this pact was binding for participant States. In particular, the pact recognized Neutrality as a condition for the protection of cultural assets, historical monuments, museums, institutions of science, the arts, education and culture present in the territories of member states. The pact called for a series of operative measures geared towards guaranteeing neutrality, though underlining in Article 5 the annulment of this principle in the case of use of said sites for military purposes. In the same vein, already after the outbreak of war in Spain, was the project of the Convention that the “Office International des Musées” drafted by request of the United Nations. Based on the principle of following the protection of heritage in view of the absence of every relevant interest in destruction, the project envisaged that, without precise references to the obligations of the enemy State, already in times of peace each nation should prepare measures for the defence of its own monuments. Among these, the isolation of those sites considered to be of relevant interest, and the notification of assets placed under protection. Furthermore, there were plans for the stipulation of bilateral agreements and the institution of International Commissions of investigations for verifying the status of assets. With the war already begun, also the International Association for the protection of civilians and historical monuments in times of armed conflict “Lieux de Genève” drafted a further project engaging the State not to use historical protected monuments for military aims, and engaging the enemy State in collaborating to respect these sites. Once again the project called for notification, the provision of distinctive signs for protected areas, and the institution of Commissions for monitoring. Developing several principles already present in nuce in the Hague Conventions, this additional proposal called for the introduction of the notion of “open city” 2

A. F. Panzera, La tutela internazionale dei beni culturali in tempo di guerra, Giappichelli, Torino, 1993, p. 25.

War and Destruction

49

for which an absolute inviolability was reserved, through demilitarization. However, this was a notion rarely applied due to the objections of enemy States in individual cases of conflict.

2.The emergence of a protectionist sensibility: associations, organization and management, museum policy A second relevant aspect, a consequence of the growing attention to the problem of cultural heritage in the period between the two World Wars, was the consolidation of a protectionist sensibility. Already emerging in the late 19th century, the sensibility acquired greater visibility in this period between the wars, responding to broader processes of modernization and administrative organization of the state, along with a more accurate approach to museum policy. Also in this case, it was a broad, transversal phenomenon, and was particularly evident in some areas of Europe and the Western world. In Italy, for example, the phenomenon of associations geared towards protection of monuments, art, and landscape was already evident prior to the creation of the unified state, and the same happened in those European countries which were consolidating their identity in those years. In other countries, the phenomenon happened later and more slowly, though reaching levels of significant interest. In Italy the “ Beloved face of the Patria” was the object of growing, operative attention on the part of organizations generally created at a local level. Consider for example those associations called “Friends of monuments” or “Groups of friends of monuments” which throughout the 19th century and the first 15 years of the 20th century took root in the principal art capitals of Italy, Florence above all, based on the model of the “Brigades”, that is, associations, sometimes of a spontaneous nature, which gradually began to formalize their organizational structure defining functions, objectives, and statutes. The protectionist sensibility was certainly the result of the presence of profound roots that in terms of culture grounded themselves in a reflection on the problem of the relationship between humans and nature developed in European philosophy. As previously underlined, in this sense it would be difficult to underestimate the weight, in the emergence of attention towards protection, above all of nature, of a work such as Kosmos by Wilhelm von Humboldt, published for the first time in Italy in Venice in 1846, or of Man and Nature by George Perkins Marsh, published in 1864, one of the first works translated from the new world in a country unified only three years prior. Another important author to remember was Ernst Haeckel, the

50

Chapter Three

principal translator of Darwin into the vernacular3. Furthermore, at the same time important contributions were made by academies, scientific societies, culture circles, which starting in the 18th century had participated in the Italian debate about the correct balance in agrarian policy, introducing for the first time the theme of the management of the relationship between man and the natural ecosystem. Thus, in the late 19th century the proliferation of organizations more or less formally structured marked the culmination of this cultural and intellectual thrust: the “Pro Montibus et Sylvis”, represented, from 1899, the most striking example of an association for the protection of mountains and forests. No less important was the experience of groups such as the “Società per l’arte pubblica” [society for public art] (1898), “Associazione per la difesa di Firenze antica” [association for the defence of ancient Florence] (1900), “Brigata degli amici dei monumenti di Firenze” [brigade of friends of the monuments of Florence] (1902), that developed in Florence, and based on these models in the Tuscan capital, also in other areas in Italy. It was in this cultural mass that cultural competencies and vocations grew. With a common antipositivist root, this sentiment helped define statutes and procedures for protection, above all tying objects to an aesthetic conception in which also natural sites, landscape, and the environment, were protected for their relevant function in the “narration of the history of the patria”, much more than for their intrinsic beauty. In this view, cultural heritage was defined in reference to the issue of “universal beauty” as introduced by French rationalism, rather than in reference to interest in knowledge of the past as an element of structuring civil society. This was the case for the 1905 law, imposed for the protection of the pinewood of Ravenna in virtue of its importance as a testimony of the memory of Dante; similarly was the 1909 law, promoted by Luigi Rava and Giovanni Rosadi, who, not by chance, was Florentine and came from the environs of the “Brigades”. In the final analysis, this was also the case even for the three laws approved in the years following the First World War: that of 1922, promoted by Benedetto Croce for protection of landscape, and which bore the stamp of his philosophy; those of 1939, promoted by Bottai and drafted by a figure formed in the crucible of early 20th century idealism. In fact, this was an experience that favoured the selection of political and administrative personnel of great technical competency, working in 3

On this topic, see the incisive pages of L. Piccioni, Il volto amato della Patria. Il primo movimento per la protezione della natura in Italia 1880-1934, Tipografica Editrice TEMI, Trento, 2014 (Second edition, updated and expanded), p. 40-47.

War and Destruction

51

the field of raising public awareness and of communication of the problem with the means and the tools that new technologies made available: specialized newspapers and magazines were important elements: from the “Marzocco” to the “Emporium”, from the “Nuova Antologia”, to major daily papers. Also, a function of particular interest and significance in this new area was offered by those techniques with creative and sophisticated implications such as photography, which was certainly a tool for raising awareness of the territory and its monuments and landscape, just as it was a mean of study and knowledgeable organization of protection. From Corrado Ricci to Luigi Parpagliolo, from Alfredo D’Andrade to Giulio Cantalamessa, from Giovanni Rosadi to Luigi Rava, just to mention a few names, this particular élite group marked the era of Italian liberalism with a robust awareness of the problems that modernity was bringing, and with a similarly robust projection towards the European and international scene, where, at the same time, and often with greater precocity, the phenomenon was taking, or had already taken, shape. On the one hand, the movement for protection was the result of the ambivalent position that marked the confrontation of modernity with these intellectual circles: fascinated but intimidated; full of hopes but swollen with fears; attentive but also diffident, above all in terms of the risks to the environment and to monumental heritage produced by the development of the new dimension of mass tourism. Mass tourism, and the industrialization that involved the country starting from the late 19th century, represented threats to an enjoyment of heritage. Such enjoyment, even though universal in theory, in practice was marked by signs of tangible elitism and even snobbism, as evidenced by certain tones of investigative journalism, or confirmed by the refined analysis of competent art experts and the very same professional figures of protection. On the other hand, this same tourism was for many aspects a means for raising awareness of the territory, which had a significant contribution towards the development of a sensibility and love for the country. Even if we don't consider the growth of a sport such as cycling, through the Giro d’Italia, not by chance organized on the model of the Tour de France, and just a year later, in 1909, we cannot help but note the relevance of tourism of excursions and hiking grounded in the tradition of the Grand Tour, updating it with the help of those guidebooks which were spreading, based on the model of the Swiss Baedecker. In the same way should be considered the organizational growth of the Club Alpino Italiano [Italian Alpine Club], created in 1863 along with that of Switzerland, preceded only by the English Club of 1857, and the Austrian Club of 1856.

52

Chapter Three

The phenomenon whose general characteristics we've been describing is, in fact, as we’ve said, neither provincial nor is it an expression of italic taste. Rather, it can be said that in this field Italy demonstrates delays or even differences compared to the experiences of other European countries, where protection was consolidated earlier and more clearly organized. The most evident example in this sense was the “Société pour la protection des paysages”, founded in 1901, and the French Touring Club, founded in 1890: two associations able to significantly influence frameworks, contents, and tools of the 1906 French law Pour la protection des monuments et des sites naturels d’interêt artistique, based on the centrist model of Napoleonic Administration (with departmental commissions for control and a general catalogue) and the aesthetic-patriotic acceptation of the definition of the categories of protected assets. Equally important was the spread of organizations for protection in Germany, where the problem of protection responded particularly to a culture strongly saturated with idealism and patriotic sensibility. Consequently, initial efforts were for protection of the nation's native lands, of the Heimat, symbol of the bloodlines through which the German bourgeois recognized itself in the State. The protectionist sensibility emerged in fact in Germany also as an expression of that process of authoritarian modernization evidenced by a sociologist such as Gerhard Ritter, which determined the affirmation of the State as protector of culture as a representation of national strength, and at the same time a liberal sovereign able to favor the development of free enterprise precisely with the aim to reinforce the authority of the very same State. This helps to explain, even prior to unification, the creation of a Konservator der Kunstdenkmäler für den Gesamten Bereich der Monarchie (1843), of a Kommission zur Erforschung und Erhaltung der Kunst denkmäler (1853), of a Verein zur Beförderung des Gartenbaus im Preuȕischen Staat (1822). However, the most significant example of private association was certainly that of the National Trust, founded in 1894 and able immediately to carry out an incisive action of pressure on political policy but also on concrete organization of protection and locating financial resources. After all, this corresponded to the particular characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon context, in particular Britain, where, as has been opportunely observed, private initiatives for protection preceded government action4. At the same time as the foundation of the National Trust, there were a series of other initiatives completing the panorama of English associations starting from 4

C. Desideri-E.A. Imparato, Beni ambientali e proprietà. I casi del National Trust e del Consevatoire de l’espace littoral, Giuffrè, Milano, 2005, pag. 7.

War and Destruction

53

the second half of the nineteenth century: in 1865 the Commons Preservation Society; in 1885 the Selborne Society for the Protection of Birds, Plants and Pleasant Places; in 1891 the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds; then, in the early 20th century, the Society for the Promotion of Natural Reserves (1912); the Norfolk Naturalists’ Trust (1926). The National Trust was founded as a charity, that is, a private association with public aims, with a statute, singular in the world, disciplined by law. In fact, in 1907 the English Parliament approved a proposal presented by Robert Hunter, founder of the organization, along with Octavia Hill and Canon Hardwick Rawnsley, exponents of associations for the protection of nature. The primary attention towards natural sights, landscape, and efforts to control the risks of the difficult governance of modern industrialization (especially in the growing suburbs of large cities where the industrial proletariat settled upon moving from the countryside) was reflected in the fact that also in the 1907 law, among the aims of the National Trust there was indicated the protection of natural spaces of particular beauty, so as to safeguard them as open spaces for public access. The protection of historical monuments and sites of historical-cultural interest came only in second place and in a position of subordinate importance. From a technical point of view, the National Trust was given ample powers relative to the acquisition of properties considered to be of natural interest, and later, starting in the 1930s when the powers and prerogatives were extended with a new 1937 law, also and above all historical country estates. This same 1937 law also recognized the power of acquisition of properties and buildings not considered of historical-cultural interest, but simply of relevant interest for the nation. In 1920 the National Trust counted just 731 members, with the board of directors primarily, if not exclusively, aristocratic. It would continue to consolidate its vocation as an organization somewhere between a lobby group and entrepreneur, extending its activity beyond the initial realm of England and Wales to include Scotland (where in 1931 was founded the National Trust for Scotland for Places of Historic Interest and Natural Beauty) and finally, in 1946, in the United States.

3. The Recognition of a public right to enjoyment of beauty and a new legislative phase A third relevant aspect which marked the maturation of a growing protectionist sensibility was the widespread recognition of a public right to the enjoyment of beauty in the period spanning the two World Wars. The result of a debate that involved European legal doctrine around the new

54

Chapter Three

prerogatives of the State, directing the old vision of the liberal State towards the new and much broader competencies of a State that began to define itself as “social”, characterizing the contemporary era and above all the era following the end of the Second World War. This recognition had its model in the constitution of 11 August 1919 which delineated the framework of the neo-constituted Weimar Republic. Article 150, in particular, specified: artistic, historical, and natural monuments as well as landscapes enjoy the protection and care of the state. It shall be the duty of the Reich to prevent the removal of German artistic treasures to foreign countries5.

Thus, to the state was attributed a power of protection which correspond it to the right of citizens to enjoy the cultural patrimony of the state, in an organic conception that included the reciprocal recognition, and the dialectic, between the individual and the community. As Costantino Mortati already observed in 1946, “the characteristic framework that separated the Weimar Constitution from previous documents is the overcoming of the individualistic principal and the affirmation of the priority of the social”6. This principle of public good was recognized not only in the organization of economic life, but also in the recognition of new rights and new liberties among which, together with protection for the free time of workers, also the enjoyment of beauty, and thus the care for and protection of beauty, all important innovative elements. An interesting example of application of these principles was the 1937 Irish Constitution, which recognized private property and free enterprise and commerce, but also specified, in the long article 10 1. All natural resources, including the air and all forms of potential energy, within the jurisdiction of the Parliament and Government established by this Constitution and all royalties and franchises within that jurisdiction belong to the State subject to all estates and interests therein for the time being lawfully vested in any person or body. 2. All land and all mines, minerals and waters which belonged to Saorstát Éireann immediately before the coming into operation of this Constitution belong to the State to the same extent as they then belonged to Saorstát Éireann.

5 6

C. Mortati (a cura di), La Costituzione di Weimar, Sansoni, Firenze, 1946, p. 141. Ivi, p. 59.

War and Destruction

55

3. Provision may be made by law for the management of the property which belongs to the State by virtue of this Article and for the control of the alienation, whether temporary or permanent, of that property. 4. Provision may also be made by law for the management of land, mines, minerals and waters acquired by the State after the coming into operation of this Constitution and for the control of the alienation, whether temporary or permanent, of the land, mines, minerals and waters so acquired.7

Analogous to the Weimar Constitution was the regulation contained in article 45 of the Constitution of the Spanish Republic of 1931: all artistic and historic wealth of the country, whoever may be its owner, is the cultural treasure of the nation and shall be under the protection of the State, which may prohibit its sale and export and the legal expropriations considered appropriate for its defense. The State shall organize a record of artistic and historical wealth, and ensure their safekeeping and attend to their perfect conservation. The State shall protect the sites also notable for their natural beauty or their recognized historical or artistic value.8

Provisions relative to public property and expropriation were then recognized in the 1937 Constitution of Estonia (article 25) and the 1921 Polish Constitution, while of notable interest were the ordinances approved respectively in Austria in 1930 and in Romania in 1938. The Federal Constitution of the Republic of Austria, introduced on January 1st 1930, called for federal oversight among other things also in matters of mines; forests, including the pastures; right to water; regularization order and maintenance of the water to ensure runoff without alluvial flood damage, or for the purpose of navigation and rafting; damming of streams; construction and maintenance of water ways [...];

and further on: scientific and technical services of the Archives and Libraries; collections and artistic and scientific works; matters relating to the Federal Theatre, where however is not involved the architectural footprint of the building,

7

P. Biscaretti di Ruffia (a cura di), La Costituzione dell’Irlanda (EIRE), Sansoni, Firenze, 1946, p. 40. 8 F. Pierandrei (a cura di), La Costituzione spagnola del 9 dicembre 1931, Sansoni, Firenze, 1946, p. 105.

56

Chapter Three nor the execution of restoration that they touch the outward appearance of the building; protection of monuments[...]9.

The 1938 Romanian Constitution, in article 16, called for expropriation, inserting also cultural interest among cases of public utility10. In the framework that was being developed at a constitutional level, there was then a phase of legislative renewal which above all involved European countries, but which also involved in important ways areas outside of Europe. This was the result of the process of modernization in progress, or as an effect of political choices made in the context of administration on the part of the principal colonial powers. In consolidation of the liberal, decentralized, and highly privatistic framework of the Anglo-Saxon area, between 1920 and 1939, there were 13 measures on the part of Her Majesty's government, aimed at regulating different sectors and situations of British cultural heritage. Among these, the most important in terms of general regulation of Antiquities was the Ancient Monuments Act passed on 11 June 1931 to amend the previous law of 1909. After a first title dedicated to exemplifying the framework, the articulated measure hinged in fact on a central body of amendments followed by Miscellaneous Provisions and a series of Supplementals. The document called for the preparation of a preservation scheme to apply to every area considered relevant for its monuments, or for every area adjacent to areas considered relevant. This plan, prepared by government commissioners would go on to define prohibitions and limits for each of the issues below: a) for prohibiting or restricting the construction, erection or execution of buildings, structures and other works above ground within the controlled area, or the alteration or extension of any such buildings, structures or works in such manner as materially to affect their external appearance; b) for prescribing the position, height, size, design materials, colour and screening and otherwise regulating the external appearance of buildings, structures and other works above ground within the controlled area; c) for prohibiting or restricting the felling of trees, quarrying and excavations within the controlled area;

9

A. Traversa (a cura di), La Costituzione della Repubblica Austriaca, Sansoni, Firenze, 1946, p. 126-127. 10 V. Mazzei (a cura di), La Costituzione rumena, Sansoni, Firenze, 1946, p. 44.

War and Destruction

57

d) for otherwise restricting the user of land within the controlled area to such extent as may appear to the Commissioners to be expedient for the purpose of preserving the amenities of the monuments; e) for such other matters as appear to the Commissioners to be incidental to or consequential on the foregoing provisions of this section or to be necessary for giving effect to these provisions11.

Underneath this restrictive regulation, there were also measures aimed at protection of private property. In fact, regulations established that any person whose property was damaged (injuriously affected), by a provision of protection, had a right to a suitable compensation. On the other hand, it was also established that any person violating a provision of protection could be sentenced to the payment of a fine up to 20 Pounds Sterling for every day the violation took place or continued. If the violation continued after the period determined by the court, commissioners would have the power to take every step they considered necessary to stop the damage and the behaviour causing it. Powers of inspection and intervention were given both to government commissioners as well as local authorities, in conformity with the provisions of the 1925 Town Planning Act del 1925. The law also gave local authorities the power to establish regulations for the various sites under their competency, within the frame of the rules introduced by this, and for commissioners the possibility to receive funds for the management of monumental sites or to make accords with owners for the management of monuments. Access to monumental sites was connected to the request of governmental authorization or permission of the owner. The measure also called for the application of a special regime, with authority both formal and substantial; there was the possibility for management of monument all sides also on the part of institutes or of ears who entered into position of the site, for monuments located in Scotland. In a certain sense the 1931 British law referenced a law passed the previous year in Ireland, also entitled National Monuments Act and also divided in four sections or parts respectively dedicated to Preliminary and General, Guardianship, acquisition etc. of National Monuments, Protection and preservation of National Monuments, Miscellaneous. Even before the concrete organization of the system of protection, of great interest are the definitions given at the beginning of the law, which clarified in great detail the perimeter of action, the subjects and the objects of action, limits and 11

Ancient Monuments Act – 1931 – June 11st 1931, UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted on the website www.unesco.org, consulted on 25 May 2015 at 13.20.

Chapter Three

58

prerogatives. For starters, there was the interesting fact that the action of protection was delegated to the Ministry of Finance and the directors of the sector of Public Works, in an acceptation which closely linked protection to urban development and territorial planning. In second place, of interest was the significant role reserved for local authorities, understood as councils of a county or councils of urban districts. Finally, of interest was the broad and comprehensive definition of the concept of monument and National Monument: the former indicated in fact, according to the definition, any artificial or partly artificial building, structure or erection, whether above or below the surface of the ground and whether affixed or not affixed to the ground, and any cave, stone or other natural product whether forming part of or attached to or not attached to the ground which has been artificially carved, sculptured or worked upon or which (where it does not form part of the ground), appears to have been purposely put or arranged in position and any prehistoric or ancient tomb, grave or burial deposit, but does not include any building which is for the time being used habitually for ecclesiastical purposes;

And the latter: a monument or the remains of a monument the preservation of which is a matter of national importance by reason of the historical, architectural, traditional, artistic or archaeological interest attaching thereto and also includes (but not so as to limit, extend or otherwise influence the construction of the foregoing general definition) every monument in Saorstát Eireann to which the Ancient Monuments Protection Act, 1882, applied immediately before the passing of this Act, and the said expression shall be construed as including, in addition to the monument itself, the site of the monument and the means of access thereto and also such portion of land adjoining such site as may be required to fence, cover in, or otherwise preserve from injury the monument or to preserve the amenities thereof12.

Also interesting was the provision related to finances and control and maintenance of monuments: the first was linked to income from general revenue when there were expenditures covered by the national government; or from taxes on the poor when dealing with expenditures by local authorities; or the use of the taxes on poor, for costs supported by local 12

National Monuments Act – 1930 – February, 26th 1930, UNESCO Database of Cultural Heritage National Laws, consulted at the website www.unesco.org, on 25 May 2015 at 15.30.

War and Destruction

59

authorities. The latter was linked to administrative action by the State, but also to positions given to private citizens as curators or even to private citizens who were in the condition of inhabiting buildings considered to be of monumental interest. The ordinance of protection could be emitted by the Ministry in cases where the Ministry determined, for a particular monument, risks of destruction, damage, removal, or if the monument itself was in a condition of decay or abandonment. The ordinance determined, until further notice, that a ministerial commissioner could and should enter and inspect the monument, verifying conditions; could entrust care of the monument to inhabitants different from the family of the curator. The monument could be donated by a private or be purchased by the government through its own commissioners. These provisions were applied also in the case of “maintenance” of the monument, which in the initial part of the law was defined as an action comprising: the cleaning, repairing, railing off, fencing and covering in of such monument and the doing of all such other acts and things as may be necessary or expedient for the preservation or protection thereof, and cognate words shall be construed accordingly13.

For damages or destructions the law called for a pecuniary fine up to 50 pounds Sterling but also incarceration for up to 6 months. Maintenance works or restorations could also be carried out directly by the owner, provided there was a request and communication to the Ministry. Public access to the monument was regulated by rigid terms that called for the payment of an entrance fee in the case of publicly owned monuments, and the authorization or at least the consent of the owner in the case of privately owned monuments. For churches considered to be of monumental interest, there was also the prohibition of burial, which could be altered only in the case of figures recognized as important and in any case with authorization. Finally, for all monuments there was the prohibition to affix any type of advertising, as already determined by the 1907 law. From the point of view of management, the principal role was entrusted to government commissioners, together with a council instituted by the government, the National Monuments Advisory Council, composed by the director of the section of Irish Antiquities of the National Museum, and representatives of the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, and the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, 13

Ibid.

60

Chapter Three

whose terms in service lasted three years and who could be re-elected. Also local authorities could constitute Advisory Councils composed of at least three and at most five members chosen among those people who had practical experience or particular competence in the fields of architecture, archaeology, art, and who, on the local level, carried out the same functions of consulting and coordination as the National Council. Restrictive provisions were also introduced for archaeological finds, defined as: any chattel whether in a manufactured or partly manufactured or an unmanufactured state which by reason of archaeological interest attaching thereto or of its association with any Irish historical event or person has a value substantially greater than its intrinsic (including artistic) value, and the said expression includes ancient humans and animal remains and does not include treasure trove in which the rights of the State have not been waived.

Anyone finding an object of archaeological interest had the obligation within fourteen days to present a detailed, signed report of the discovery, the nature of the object, the place and circumstances of the find, and characteristics of the same. It was forbidden and considered as a violation punishable by a fine of up to 10 Pounds Sterling the failure to consign the report or to present a false report. In the same way, heavy restrictions were placed on the export and commerce of archaeological objects, and for the initiation of digs. Thus, in the Anglo-Saxon world, the regulations for the management of cultural heritage were delineated as a balanced construction bringing together elements of protection determined by the role of central institutions, also significant elements of decentralization which attributed in particular to local authorities and private citizens a function not only of political power but also administrative and even fiscal organization. In this sense, it is significant to see how this approach reflected itself in a series of specific provisions related to individual sectors of cultural assets or two some new institutions created following the First World War. For example, there were rigid rules for the conservation of documents of the English Chancellery as per the provision of 1922. All the documents fell, according to ancient tradition, under the supervision of the Master of Rolls, the second judge in order of importance in the British system after the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, even though the documents were entrusted, in ordinary management and conservation, to the lord of the castle or the to which that document belonged.

War and Destruction

61

Among the powers of the master of rolls was that of inspection, vigilance and access in every circumstance deemed necessary14. Then, in 1923 in the direction of conferring increasing autonomy to the Irish state, a law was passed which put under the control of the Irish Ministry of Finance all the public measures passed by the government15. A similar measure was passed in 1937 in favour of Scotland16. As part of the reconstruction of British identity following the first World War, there was the foundation of two important museums. In 1920 the Imperial War Museum opened, with a collection that began to be gathered even during the war itself. The aim of the museum was to transmit right from that moment the memory of the efforts and sacrifices made. The original home of the museum was the Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill, then it moved four years later to the spaces of the Imperial Institute in South Kensington and finally, in 1936, to Southwark, in the building of the former Bethlem Royal Hospital. The measure of July 2nd 1920 put the museum under the control of Board of Trustees, conceived as a corporate body with duties of control and management. In relation to these duties, the Board was given the following powers: a) make such rules as they think necessary for securing the due administration of the Museum and preserving the objects conserved therein, including rules requiring payment to be made for admission to the Museum; b) with the consent of the Lord President of the Council, acquire land for the purposes of the Museum, and sell…any land vested in them which is not required for that purpose; c) exchange, sell or otherwise dispose of any duplicate objects belonging to the Museum, and with the consent of the Lord President of the Council exchange, sell or otherwise dispose of any objects belonging to the Museum which the Board consider unfit to be preserved or not to be required for the purposes thereof; d) subject to the consent of the Lord President of the Council, apply any money received by them on the exchange, sale or disposal of any objects, or on the sale…or by way of payment for admission to the Museum, or by way of gift or grant or otherwise, in the purchase of 14

Law of Property Act – 1922, UNESCO Database of Cultural Heritage National Laws, consulted at the website www.unesco.org, on 26 May 2015 at 11.30. 15 Public Records Act – Northern Ireland – 1923, UNESCO Database of Cultural Heritage National Laws, consulted at the website www.unesco.org, on 26 May 2015 at 11.35. 16 Public Records Scotland Act – 1937, UNESCO Database of Cultural Heritage National Laws, consulted at the website www.unesco.org, on 26 May 2015 at 12.20.

62

Chapter Three any object which in the opinion of the Board is desirable to acquire for the Museum or otherwise in defraying any of the expenses of the Board; e) omissis; f) subject to the consent of the Minister for the Civil Service, appoint officers on such terms and subject to such conditions as the Board think fit; g) subject to the provisions of this act, do such other things as appear to them necessary or expedient for furthering the interest and increasing the utility of the Museum17.

The Board was composed of a President, which for the first nomination would be the Prince of Wales and then a person chosen by him, and by 21 members nominated respectively by the Prime Minister (10 members), Secretary of State for Defence (1), Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and the Commonwealth (1), Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (1), Government of Canada (1), Government of Australia (1), Government of New Zealand, Government of South Africa (1), Government of India (1), Government of Pakistan (1), Government of Sri Lanka (1), Government of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (1). The members stayed in service for the time that the Board deemed as necessary, could be re-elected, and established rules of internal selfgovernance conferring to the body the character of a real and true autonomous entity. With a similar measure, and similar organization, in Greenwich in 1934 opened the National Maritime Museum, the most important English museum of naval history, created from the generous donations of James Card and inaugurated in 1937 by George VI18.

4. Centralization and protection If we shift our attention to North-Central Europe, the regulatory framework, even though consolidated in the 1920s and 1930s as a result of the new institutional framework created after WWI, appears decisively characterized by an approach geared towards governmental management of cultural assets, which then developed along the alternatives of 17 Imperial War Museum Act, July 2nd 1920, UNESCO Database of Heritage National Laws, consulted at the website www.unesco.org, on 2015 at 12:27. 18 National Maritime Museum Act – 1934, UNESCO Database of Heritage National Laws, consulted at the website www.unesco.org, on 2015 at 12.30 pm.

Cultural 26 May Cultural 26 May

War and Destruction

63

centralization/decentralization in a manner coherent with the constitutional and political arrangement of each individual country. There is also a difference in the type of object and category of goods placed under protection, which, especially in the Germanic countries, hinged prevalently on the defence and valorization of territory and environment, still understood as Heimat, and thus still imbued with the Romantic-era heritage which had permeated these countries. Let’s consider the legislation passed in various phases, between 1918 and 1928, in the Republic of Austria, collected in 1929 in a volume prepared by the federal office for heritage, under the generic title related to principle laws and regulations on heritage in Austrian federal organization19. The definition given to the first section, related to the competencies of government, was for starters quite broad, and included the care for and protection of archives and libraries of scientific and technical nature, and the care for and protection of collections and services related to artistic and scientific activity. The law of 26 June 1928, however, extended the duty of protection also to nature as generically understood. On the other hand, the organization of the Austrian federal system connected the duty of protection to necessities of development and growth of knowledge in the fields of history and art, in an acceptation connected primarily to the Romantic-Idealistic conception of heritage. Competencies and responsibilities were connected to a federal office that had jurisdiction over those collections and objects of any epoch which had importance from the point of view of national history, history of culture and history of national art. This office would have headquarters in Vienna but there would be conservators (Konservator) nominated for the individual Lander or for some of these. The office for heritage would depend on the Ministry of Education, and alongside this office was created an Institute for art history (Kunsthistorisches Institut). The very same Ministry of Education could nominate conservators for three-year missions on specific questions related to art history, the protection of historical-artistic assets or natural sites, and the office for heritage could in turn make use of consultancy from architects, technicians competent in specific fields related to conservation, or experts in art or art history. These entities were entrusted with application of instructions related to protection of cultural heritage

19

Bundesdenkmalamt, Wien, VIII, Auerspergstrasse 1, Wichtigste Gesetze und Verordnungen über Denkmalpflege, Heimat und Naturschutz in Österreich, I. Heft, Gesetze und Verordnungen des Bundes betreffend Denkmalpflege, III. Auflage, 1929, UNESCO Database of Cultural Heritage National Laws, consulted at the website www.unesco.org, on 26 May 2015 at 14.08.

64

Chapter Three

collected in the successive paragraphs and which analytically forecasted a series of cases of intervention. In conclusion, of a decidedly idealistic imprint were the two laws approved in 1939 under the Ministry of Giuseppe Bottai: one, n° 1089, related to historical-artistic treasures, the other, n° 1497, related to landscape, which evoked the concept of an object of relevant historicalartistic interest as an expression of art (thus in an aesthetic acceptation) and which subjected the entire management of cultural assets to the Superintendency and General Direction of Antiquities and Fine Arts, a department of the Ministry of Education, as a sign of the incidence of the pedagogic function which was attributed to knowledge and protection of cultural property. Likewise, in the same direction was the Greek law of 1926 which even declared as State property any discovery of historic interest; in the same sense that the Maltese law of 1925 aimed to do.

CHAPTER FOUR THE SAFEGUARDING AND ENHANCEMENT OF CULTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL HERITAGE IN EUROPE: CONTINUITY AND DISRUPTION FOLLOWING THE SECOND WORLD WAR

1. Safeguarding of cultural heritage after 1945: the image of a new world In the aftermath of the Second World War, the issue of the safeguarding of historic-artistic heritage emerged as a specific dimension of the problem of reconstruction, amid the rubble and ruin left behind by aerial bombings and combat. As such, it involved technical and historic-artistic culture, as well as politics, in a broader reflection on the organization and rational management of urban development. On the other hand, the problem of heritage was tied to the emergence of a growing international sensitivity to the matter, culminating in the establishment of the “United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization” (UNESCO) in November 1945, just a few days after the creation of the United Nations (UN). The various successive Conventions that UNESCO would later adopt on this topic – from the 1954 Hague agreement to the 1972 Paris one – confirmed the centrality that the theme of art, protection of artistic heritage and art education took on in the effort to construct a new world capable of banishing the specters of war. In the interconnection between the growth of an international perspective and the permanence of national governments’ actions, the sphere of safeguarding proved to be a sector in which the divergence of new logics arising in world geopolitics became particularly clear, materializing in the relationship between the continuity of government legislation and the impact of international regulation, and above all in terms of reflecting the political-institutional logics that had

66

Chapter Four

abruptly come to divide the world, and Europe in particular, into two halves, along the iron curtain. A possible test of these research hypotheses, and in particular of the different approaches to heritage management policies in the two areas of Europe, may lie in consideration of the development of legislation on the subject in the various countries, particularly those where sensitivity to safeguarding cultural heritage had already been consolidated prior to the war, and where the role of institutions was more substantial. From this point of view, observation of the major laws regarding the safeguarding of cultural heritage offers scholars the opportunity to draw an overall picture of the underlying political strategy, and thus the elements of continuity and disruption that characterize it. A further element is examination of the no less relevant role of private organizations in many countries, and, by contrast, of the very different situation of these subjects in the private or civil sphere as compared to other countries. In the former, private associations – which had already become the subject of public interest and held significant sway in terms of legislative and other actions over the previous fifty years – increased their influence to the point of becoming part of a virtuous system that extended from centralized institutions out to the farthest edges of the territory, guaranteeing across-the-board and in many ways successful action. In other countries, associations progressively and rapidly became tied to centralization-oriented policies, and were incorporated into mass organisms directly emanating from the parties in power. In this general framework, new phenomena of new types of subjectivities were slotted in and, particularly in the 1960s, began to integrate with classic political actors on new battlegrounds, including that of a new way of using culture that was taking on considerable weight. In this regard, the case of the youth movement in Italy and its role in the safeguarding and promotion of culture, especially following the 1966 Florence flood, in a framework of new aims for economic planning and regionalism, is perhaps the most interesting one. Moreover, it should be noted that this framework, already quite broad and problematic, took on a further dimension where it was implemented together with the element of concrete reality that developed in the ambit of safeguarding actions after 1945. Said reality was the “institutional reality,” that of the organisms dedicated to safeguarding – Superintendencies, Ministries and specially-established Committees – which underwent processes of profound change, including generational change, but continued to maintain elements of continuity with the preceding period; the “organizational system” of conservation and protection – museums, galleries, archaeological sites – where the problems

The Safeguarding of Cultural and Environmental Heritage in Europe

67

discussed reflected on in this volume were most concretely experienced. The “landscape of protection” that the experience of the past fifty years now offers to visitors, interested observers and scholars testifies to the many opportunities and positive aspects that have characterized this highly complex sphere, leaving an open question that may constitute a fourth and final key to interpretation: what remains of that experience, and what new prospects are presented to those operating in the cultural sphere in the continuously-changing world we live in? Or, ultimately, can historicallyaccumulated culture – which we admire in the various places where it has been preserved – represent an innovative opportunity to deal with the challenges of a changing world, or, on the contrary, is it destined to remain a poignant vestige of a world and a civilization now in inexorable decline?

2. West/East: two models of organization of safeguarding The first aspect to underscore in a comparative analysis of cultural heritage management policies in Western and Eastern Europe is the completely different conceptualizations of cultural heritage itself as defined in legislation approved after 1945. In the Western zone, this conceptualization had elements of substantial continuity with previous legislation and represented a consequent development of it, albeit in light of a few innovations arising in juridical debates and in the new scenario created at the political level by equilibriums established at the end of the war. In the Eastern zone, on the contrary, it was characterized by a disruption at the theoretical level, which reflected socialist regimes’ efforts to innovate on the institutional, juridical, economic and cultural level. The Western zone can thus be read as the terrain of a continuation of experiences that had been developing in individual countries since the early stages of the protectionist movement, and perhaps even a modernization aimed at linking those experiences to dynamics of social development that were making rapid headway during the phase of capitalistic development that marked the golden age. In contrast, the Eastern area of Europe was the terrain of a political, social and institutional conflict that was wholly reflected in the attitudes towards cultural and environmental heritage of the governments of democratic republics set up in countries where the Red Army had penetrated. This conflict translated into an effort to break away not only from mechanisms of organizational management, but primarily from the aesthetic canons behind the concept of safeguarding. In Western Europe, reflections on the theme of cultural assets produced a progressive conceptual openness that disengaged the concept from

68

Chapter Four

ancient boundaries of aesthetic beauty and pedagogical functionality, leading it towards a much broader and more inclusive definition. This openness is clearly visible not only in the first laws approved in the various countries after the end of the war, but also in the wider debate that accompanied these legislative actions in the 1950s and ‘60s. The French law of May 2, 1930 – to give an example – established the protection of natural monuments and sites of artistic, historic, scientific, legendary or picturesque value, safeguarding natural formations as well as natural and even urban landscapes, like Place des Invalides1. The law of February 25, 1943 extended that safeguard to zones pertaining to historic monuments, comprising in this notion all structures within the field of visibility of a monument2. There was an analogous progression in Italy, where in the mid-1950s, two laws were approved to safeguard the historic centers of Venice and Assisi, as a prelude to the wider debate that developed around the question of historic city centers during those years, culminating in the establishment of the Association for the Safeguarding of Historic Centers in 1960. The contribution between 1964 and 1967 of the parliamentary inquest Commission Per la salvezza dei beni culturali in Italia, led by the Christian Democratic Member of Parliament Francesco Franceschini and including some of the most illustrious figures from the fields of art history and law, was fundamental. In fact, the most important result among the Commission’s 84 Declarations introducing the lengthy examination it conducted and published in three volumes in 1967 was recognition of the cultural asset as “material testimony of civilization” 3. This concept – which some antagonists considered excessively broad 4 – marked the definitive abandonment of the idea of a cultural asset as being tied to an intrinsic aesthetic value or a national educational function, and led towards the recognition of such assets in terms of testimonies of man’s presence in the territory and its consequent anthropization. Not coincidentally, there arose in concomitance with this innovation the problem of managing the territory and the environment as an inclusive entity, within which cultural heritage was also to be considered and safeguarded. On one hand, the urban development and massive real estate construction speculation that blighted Italian cities during the economic “miracle” and on the other the 1 L. Bobbio-S. Lagache-V. Patin, La politica dei beni culturali in Francia, in L. Bobbio (ed), Le politiche dei beni culturali…, cit., p. 74-75. 2 Ivi, p. 75. 3 R. Cecchi, I beni culturali: testimonianza materiale di civiltà, Spirali, Milan, 2006, passim. 4 M.S. Giannini, I beni culturali, “Rivista Trimestrale di Diritto Pubblico”, n 1/1976, p. 10-18.

The Safeguarding of Cultural and Environmental Heritage in Europe

69

impact of a few catastrophic events, such as the 1966 Florence flood, and the 1967 Agrigento landslide, brought the issue of safeguarding the territory to the forefront of the political agenda in a new way. The key impetus for legislative and political action was no longer the idea of a “postcard landscape”, but rather that of an environment to be safeguarded in its naturalistic dimension – particularly accentuated by environmentalist movements that were emerging in these years and especially in the following decade – and a terrain of reference of individual and collective human presence and activity. The phenomenon of progressive increase in the number of safeguarded assets and the conceptual expansion of the idea of heritage was present in other countries as well, like Germany, where it had historically served the aim of national education. For example, on August 6, 1955, the West German government approved an act regarding control of the exporting of art objects from national territory (Gesetz zum Schutz deutschen Kulturgutes gegen Abwanderung – Act to Prevent the Exodus of German Cultural Property), which listed, among other items subject to safeguarding: works of art and other cultural objects – including bibliographic works in libraries – the exodus of which from the area of application of this act would constitute a significant loss for German cultural heritage5. In 1961, it was the Danish government that approved a law for the protection of the natural environment that was intended to deal first and foremost with problems linked to urban development and phenomena of deterioration that came with modernity, for example by prohibiting the affixing of advertising posters in protected areas. Another important regulation in Scandinavia was law n. 50 of June 9, 1978 – Act concerning cultural heritage – which included in the category of cultural heritage to be safeguarded all ancient and Medieval monuments, antiquities and maritime artifacts, found above or below the surface of the land, oceans or bodies of water, and all constructions or groups of constructions that have value from the architectural or cultural history point of view. In the countries around the Mediterranean, attention to safeguarding the environment led to the 1978 stipulation of a convention, signed in Greece, for the protection of the Mediterranean Sea against the risks of pollution, motivated by an awareness of the economic, social and cultural value of the marine environment and of the opportunity to preserve this heritage for future generations. And accordingly, Spain, where during the entire Franco period there had been only a few minimal legislative 5 Gesetz zum Schutz deutschen Kulturgutes gegen Abwanderung – Act to Prevent the Exodus of German Cultural Property, Bonn, August, 6, 1955.

70

Chapter Four

interventions, saw the promulgation of a law that introduced the notion of “protected natural spaces”6 just a few months after the death of Caudillo. In the face of this sort of expansion in Western Europe, the system of safeguarding in countries where the Red Army had penetrated and which became part of the socialist bloc featured not so much a tendency toward reduction as a real transformation in terms of both conceptualization and organization of safeguarding practices. In fact, the Soviet concept of “social property,” i.e. ownership by the people that denied any space for the existence of private property, had at least two important consequences. The first was the subjection of cultural assets to exclusive State ownership and control, through a system which (not without a certain efficacy) was a harbinger of a tendency towards bureaucratization and self-referential management. The second was the paradoxical phenomenon of failure to apply numerous laws that existed in the socialist system because they were in conflict with the concept of social property. More generally, the lack of a precise definition of the concept of cultural asset, and the presence of the State as a subject authorized to carry out safeguarding, led to a complex situation in Eastern European countries in which the principles of law often corresponded to a completely different reality, guided by political decisions that outweighed them or even ran counter to their rationales. Legislation in Eastern countries conformed to a model exemplified not, as one might be led to think, by a Soviet law, but rather – as evidenced in the still-meager literature on the subject – by the February 15, 1962 Polish law that introduced the concept of “monument of culture,” as opposed to cultural asset, with a reference to evidence of the historic, scientific and cultural value of the object. It declared that monuments of culture were: all those moveable or immovable objects that are of interest to posterity and cultural development due to their historic, scientific and artistic value; and included in the category objects listed in the public register, those included in the catalogues and inventories of public museums, libraries and archives, and those that were clearly cultural monuments. The concept hinged on the idea of the conservation of memory as an instrument of transmission of the values of the State and of society, projected towards the construction of a new State and a new society, and thus an education that took on a revolutionary as well as nationalistic character. Consideration of the artistic value of protected objects was also ultimately based on these ideas. Proof of this can be found in the Regulation on social safeguarding of monuments promulgated 6

L. Bobbio-T. Romeo Garre, La politica dei beni culturali in Spagna, in L. Bobbio (ed), Le politiche dei beni culturali…, cit., p. 219.

The Safeguarding of Cultural and Environmental Heritage in Europe

71

by the Polish Ministry of Culture and Arts on January 26, 1963, implementing the principle of article 71 of the law. In fact, the social safeguarding of monuments called for maintaining the monument and its surroundings with a certain sufficient level of dignity, ensuring an adequate presentation of the monument, and propagandizing the monument’s value from an historic, scientific or artistic point of view for educational and teaching purposes. It should also be noted that the principle of social property that underpinned the 1962 Polish law drew on an already-established idea of art history and safeguarding policies, at least as much as a few early examples of legislative interventions that tended towards this new conceptualization. It is worth recalling the 1956 contribution by the Polish scholar Jan Zachwatowicz – who around this time directed numerous restorations of Polish sites and entire zones of the city of bombardmentdevastated Warsaw, as coordinator of the Committee for architectural restoration and as co-director of the office for the Warsaw reconstruction – dedicated to The protection of historic monuments in the people’s Poland. In the first lines of his insightful introduction to this pamphlet, Zachwatowicz indicated works of art, architectural monuments and other objects linked to the development of society in Polish territory as the country’s cultural heritage. This was motivated by the fact that as a whole they reflected “the development of means of production and social forms”7. Similarly, with regard to legislative action, Provision 165 promulgated by the Bulgarian Council of Ministers on August 5, 1958 and concerning The conservation of monuments of culture and the development of museums in Bulgaria is worthy of mention. The first two of the act’s 24 paragraphs established that the following were to be declared monuments of culture: notable works of science, technology, architecture, decorative and applied arts, historic places, structures and objects that (document) the development of society and its material and spiritual culture; and established that such monuments were public assets under the State’s protection, regardless of whether they were public, communal or private property. It is interesting that the first paragraph also acknowledges, as elements of heritage to be safeguarded, natural sites of “extreme beauty.” Bulgaria, moreover, offers the clearest confirmation of the different approach to managing cultural heritage, conforming to an idea of public property “of the people”, as in the law promulgated on April 11, 1969, which brought its norms into line with the Polish law, and recognized as monuments of culture: works of human activity that (constitute) a true cultural and intellectual documentation 7

J. Zachwatowicz, La protezione dei monumenti storici nella Polonia popolare, Edizioni “Polonia”, Warsaw, 1956, p. 7.

72

Chapter Four

owing to their historical, cultural and scientific importance, and (are) linked to historical events, the artistic production of celebrated artists or the lives of historic personages. But in the absence of a private law code, these regulations were integrated with laws regarding property, and with all other provisions – on private property, obligations between private individuals, management of the territory, ordinances on public ownership, laws regarding research, study and documentation of State assets and on the organization, use and valuation of the plastic arts and their incorporation into architecture, laws on the use of real-estate monuments of culture, and finally the law regarding customs and border crossings – which put extremely strict limitations on them.

3. Landscape and environment The idea that the safeguarding and enhancement of cultural heritage should be contextualized within the environment was an aspect which, although more evident in certain countries that already had a cultural attentiveness to nature and the landscape, proved to be widespread throughout Europe. In fact, in this regard there were interesting actions by a few socialist bloc countries to safeguard cities and historic sites, or landscape complexes of particular value. So, while the Republic of Austria issued a provision for the safeguarding of the historic center of Salzburg, considering its overall setting as crucial to the city’s tradition, in 1967, and in 1972 an urban-planning law was issued regarding the perimeter of the city of Vienna, Albania had already promulgated two laws in 1961, aimed at conserving and enhancing, respectively, the “museum-city” of Berat, and all museum-cities throughout the territory. The city of Berat in particular was to be protected due to its not only local but national historic, artistic and cultural value related to the development of Albanian history, art and culture. The connection between conservation of historic-artistic heritage, protection of the environment and the landscape and urban development was particularly important with regard to management policies in areas where the protectionist movement had been fueled from the outset by cultural elements and conceptual schemas that combined the contemplation of beauty with a pragmatic attitude geared towards harmonically inserting the new into the old. For example, in Italy, the problem of the “ancientmodern” relationship (although it took up a few themes from the battle undertaken at the start of the 20th century mainly by socialists regarding the decoration and rational management of urban services) arose anew in

The Safeguarding of Cultural and Environmental Heritage in Europe

73

post-World War II debate on urban development and on the organization and management of the equilibrium between historic centers and peripheral areas. But in England, it was an element of continuity, with the earliest law – from 1909 – having been conceived as an urban planning regulation through which to address the issue of the safeguarding of historic heritage, the new law of 1931 had confirmed and updated elements of the preceding one in light of the socio-economic development of the first thirty years of the new century, and four provisions were promulgated between 1950 and 1967 on the subject of environmental and landscape management and especially urban planning. The former of these two, from 1950, regarded churches, places of worship and cemeteries, as well as the utilization of lands on which religious buildings and cemeteries had been built and the utilization of said structures which, if their designated use changed, were to be acquired and reutilized for educational purposes. The Civic Amenities Act of 1967 contained a very wellarticulated regulation for the protection and enhancement of buildings and areas of architectural and historic value and interest, as well as the safeguarding and planting of new vegetation. An indication of attentiveness to the safeguarding of nature that was shifting from a traditional regard for aesthetic beauty to a consideration of nature as ecosystem and an element of balance in human relations, the act also called for measures concerning the management of unused vehicles, abandoned equipment and other scrap materials. In 1962 and Historic Buildings Act had already been promulgated regarding the restoration and maintenance of buildings and gardens of historic and architectural interest. Within the framework of such legislative action, the actions and pressure applied by the National Trust in Great Britain were particularly significant. After the Second World War, it further broadened its range of action and accentuated its capacity to represent the interests of culture and serve as a mediator between the State and civil society. In 1955 the National Trust thus approved a new statute reiterating the organization’s absolute and exclusive authority over the properties entrusted to it, and prohibiting any “non-authorized” person to undertake any act that could blemish the land, including the introduction of animals, pipe or cigarette smoke or even disturbances caused by people intent on their own utilization of the land or site under consideration. The National Trust Statute was renewed in 1971, granting the association an even greater autonomy and personality, and pointing it towards new issues, foremost among which were environmental pollution and the management of urban and industrial areas. In particular, the highly-detailed 1971 Statute set forth what is still today the definition of a registered charity – that is, a private

74

Chapter Four

association intended for public benefit as well - establishing detailed selection and election mechanisms for national and regional Committees as well as the acquisition of land and buildings. Thus an association that had in the meantime grown considerably in terms of members – from 35,000 in 1935 to 100,000 in 1961, to a million at the beginning of the 1980s, 2,300,000 in the mid-1990s and over 3 million today – , found itself playing the role of an institutional subject with a strong influence on decisions and planning regarding the safeguarding of heritage. It has worked mainly through the acquisition of large portions of British coastline (today around 20% of the total) and woodlands (today approximately 25,000 hectares) and the promotion on these lands of visitor welcome centers, tourist services, the management of shops, restaurants and lodgings and travel/tour agencies, as well as the development of agricultural activities covering more than 80% of the territory it owns8. The “National Trust for Scotland for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty” was established following the same model in 1931. Then, on October 2, 1949, a “National Trust for Historic Preservation,” was also established in the U.S., and in 1966 was strengthened and made more influential by the approval of the National Historic Preservation Act. Among its other provisions, this detailed act regulating the entire sector at the federal level also established the planning of federal funding for the management of sites entrusted to the organization’s care. It is worth noting how, in matters of safeguarding the landscape and the environment, laws approved in other countries fully reflected the differences in organization of this sector, linked explicitly, for example in Scandinavia, to State intervention. The Preservation of Buildings Act approved by the Danish government on June 8, 1966 safeguarded buildings or parts of buildings considered of great importance for their particular architectural or historic-cultural value. It called for the inclusion of these buildings in a special catalogue managed by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs in collaboration with the Council for Buildings of Historic Value. Said Council was headed by the Superintendent of State Antiquities, and was made up of five other members nominated by the Ministry, specifically: an architect nominated based on a proposal from the Board of Directors of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts; a member chosen in collaboration with the Municipality of Copenhagen and the Association of Danish Provincial Capitals; another selected in tandem with the Federation of Rural Municipal Councils and the Federation of Urban .

8 C. Desideri-E.A. Imparato, Beni ambientali e proprietà. I casi del “National Trust” e del “Conservatoire de l’espace littoral”, Giuffrè, 2005, p. 37 ff.

The Safeguarding of Cultural and Environmental Heritage in Europe

75

Municipal Councils; and two other members chosen from among the owners, possessors and life tenants of the properties in the catalogue. Any renovation, maintenance or demolition work had to be authorized by the Ministry upon the Council’s recommendation; funds for the management of buildings were managed by a committee nominated by the Ministry and made up of all the members of the Council for Buildings of Historic Value together with a representative from the Ministry of Finance, one from the Ministry of Construction, and one from the staff of tax collection functionaries. In 1969, a Conservation of Nature Act was promulgated with analogous rules to safeguard and enhance broad swathes of territory and other areas consider essential for public use due to their panoramic value, and territorial areas – including flora and fauna as well as geological formations upon them – considered essential for scientific, educational or historic reasons. The act was also intended to facilitate public access to areas of the countryside important for outdoor recreation. The city of Copenhagen and other provincial capitals were grouped into Conservation Districts, each overseen by an organism made up of three members: a magistrate who served as president, named by the Minister, and two members designated by the District’s municipalities. Even in countries where private associations had played a substantial role since the 19th-century beginnings of the protectionist movement, the prevalence of government action sometimes ended up limiting private action, confining it mainly to forms of political pressure. This was the case of the “Italia Nostra” association established on October 29, 1955 on the initiative of a group of intellectuals and politicians committed to safeguarding the country’s historic-artistic heritage since the time of the battle against a project that would have gutted the historic center of Rome between Piazza di Spagna and Piazza Augusto Imperatore as part of the city’s 1951 regulatory plan. Organized in sections and Regional Committees and financed partly through government contributions, “Italia Nostra” developed an intensive activity over the course of time regarding study, analysis, sensitization and pressure to obtain approval for legislative provisions, which, however, never went beyond propaganda and promotion, as the association had no powers analogous to those of the British National Trust. An intermediate case, we might say, is that of the “Conservatoire de l’Espace littoral et des rivages lacustres” established in 1975 in France. The “Conservatoire” arose from the French legislature’s intention to lend the safeguarding system – which had already been centralized in 1959 with the creation of the Ministry of Culture – a tool for land development policy and for the safeguarding and protection of the coastal natural environment and ecological equilibrium. In fact, unlike the

76

Chapter Four

National Trust, the “Conservatoire” was an établissement public – an administrative organ – under the supervision of the Ministry of the Environment and with a mixed management made up of members chosen by Parliament and by Ministry representatives, as well as representatives of environmentalist associations and local institutions. And again unlike the National Trust, the “Conservatoire” was from the outset supported by public funding, receiving a special government endowment, which did not exclude (and still today does not exclude) possible private financing. Finally, in contrast with the British association, the “Conservatoire” had the power to acquire terrain to be protected, but not to exercise said protection. In fact, it was organized through a system of subjects, listed in a special attachment, which were made active through stipulation of agreements with the organization9. On another front, attention and sensitivity to cultural and environmental heritage, revived in part through the wide-ranging debate that wound through the 1950 and ‘60s in magazines and newspapers in Italy as in other European countries, was vigorously supported by the sort of touristic-cultural associations which between the late 19th and early 20th centuries converged in the establishment of Touring Clubs in various parts of Europe, and in the spread of mountain, hiking and alpine associations. On this terrain, the development of protection-sensitization efforts was in some countries a strong element of continuity, in conceptual terms as well. This was the case in particular of the role of naturalist and forest associations in West Germany from the end of the 1940s to the emergence of the environmental question throughout Europe at the beginning of the 1960s. Landscape and cultural heritage had been preserved since 1935 by the Reichsnaturschutzgesetz – the Reich Conservation Law – proposed by Hermann Göring as the Reich’s Agriculture and Forests Minister. This law imposed the confiscation of property without compensation, and created an office of public expropriation. Although it managed to preserve large portions of flora and fauna, natural monuments, reserves and picturesque country landscapes, it was unable to defend the vast areas of German territory devastated by bombardment. In the Federal Republic, the general law was applied to the democratic state through the acquisition of portions of the territory and the creation of county or district offices. Continuity at the legislative level was confirmed by the reorganization of the entire generation of functionaries who, trained and promoted under Nazism, had had the good fortune to survive the devastation of the war. The reorganization culminated in the 1947 establishment of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Beauftragter 9

Ivi, p. 65 ff.

The Safeguarding of Cultural and Environmental Heritage in Europe

77

für Naturschutz und Landschaftpflege, the Working Association of German Commissioners for Conservation, which became a professional association during the 1960s. This association entered into a close, constant and fruitful collaboration with the Bundesanstalt für Naturschutz und Landschaftspflege - the Federal Institute for Conservation, which, established in 1906 in Prussia, had been transformed into an institution by the above-mentioned 1935 Nazi law under the direction of the Agriculture and Forests Ministry. After the second World War, it became active once again, with a range of efforts including resuming the publication of the important periodical Natur und Landschaft (Nature and Landscape). The long tradition of naturalistic and protectionist associations that had characterized the German movement since its beginnings also continued. Among the most important new organizations worthy of mention was the “German Conservation Ring” (Deutscher Naturschutzring), established in 1950 thanks largely to the efforts of Hans Klose, an accomplished architect who had been the director of the Reich’s Conservation Agency. By the middle of the decade, the Ring counted 61 affiliated organizations and about 760,000 members; that number was destined to reach 2 million in the 1970s. Together with other associations born during the course of the reconstruction, often spontaneously, or with the support of local political leaders, this network played an important role in terms of promotion and collaboration with government authorities. It should also be said that, while the safeguarding of the landscape initially appeared in many ways tied to an estheticizing, anti-modern view of nature that clashed with the industrialist optimism of the golden age and also seemed linked to the Nazi idea of “planned development” of the environment and the territory, it soon became a very strong identity-building element among West Germans, and as such a suitable tool for facing up to the growing risks brought by industrialization. In fact, in the first regard, protest actions promoted by naturalist associations between the late 1940s and early 1950s – against deforestation and for the protection of the landscape of the Moselle and of Baden-Wurttemberg – were also conceived as means of a proud reconstruction of German national identity against occupying nations. On the other hand, rational planning and management of the environment reemerged as an idea aimed at facilitating the link between defence of the environment and economic development, shifting the concept of landscape towards that of the eco-system. Already in the 1960s (the Mainau Green Charter was signed in 1961, and around the same time, on the initiative of the Hamburg entrepreneur and philanthropist Alfred Toepfer, a National Parks Society was created, obtaining between 1957 and 1963 the creation of 26 protected parks, a

78

Chapter Four

number that rose to 53 in the 1970s), an ecological sensibility that denounced the risks of climatic pollution and the irrational exploitation of energy sources was coming to the fore. Thus, between 1957 and 1965, three provisions of law were approved regarding, respectively, the protection of waters (1957), the reduction of pollution (1959) and the safeguarding of the environment, with a view towards regional planning (1965), and in 1961 a Ministry of Health was established with a realm of responsibility that included monitoring and controlling acoustic, atmospheric and water pollution. Finally, in the 1960s, the social-liberal coalition led by Willy Brandt definitively brought the question of the environment to the center of the political debate, assigning the Ministry of the Interior, under Hans-Dietrich Genscher, responsibility for environmental protection. A few lines of convergence and similar elements can be found in the East German experience, albeit in a context of a completely different political, economic and social order. The protection of the Heimat remained central to the actions and especially the language of socialist Germany, but, as has been noted, the new order overturned the bourgeois patriotic-aesthetic meaning that had been used (according to many “in a criminal way”) under Fascism. The new socialist vision conceived of the landscape as a system in which natural resources, production sites, forests and fields served work and workers. The socialist Heimat was no longer “the private property of the great landowner and the capitalist,” but a place that belonged in an egalitarian way to the workers. That is, it became – as Hugo Wienitschke underscored – a place where nature and culture intersected, and conservation of the landscape was only one of the aspects of the process of construction and defense of a framework of peace and brotherhood that embodied socialist patriotism. This new concept involved institutions and citizens in activities and normative schemas that were not, in effect, so different from those of West Germany, as demonstrated, for example, by the fact that until approval of the new conservation law in August 1954, the law of reference was the 1935 one. The Federal Institute for Conservation, which functioned in a way that paralleled its West German counterpart, was established in 1953, when the government also set up a conservation research institute (Institut für Landesforschung und Naturschutz – Institute for Land Research and Conservation) under the direction of the German Academy of Agrarian Sciences. Headed by Hermann Meusel, that institute conducted research and experiments regarding nature conservation until 1963, and had a decisive role in the preparation of the 1954 law. It is true that the functionaries responsible for conservation and protection encountered considerable obstacles in

The Safeguarding of Cultural and Environmental Heritage in Europe

79

exercising their role, due first and foremost to lack of funds, but also, and no less importantly, to the fact that many of the best staff had been assigned to other functions. Nor must we forget the lack of freedom to express opinions under the control of the all-seeing and inflexible political police, which often hindered them from openly conducting battles to defend individual sites or landscapes. But it is also true that, even in the face of these difficulties, East German functionaries managed to do work that was not without its effect: although they were never able to form a professional association on the West German model, they nonetheless pursued the goal of sensitization in alliance with landscape defense organizations which – picking up the traditions of the “Goethe Society” or the “Heimat League” – were brought together in 1949 under the umbrella of the Kulturbund zur demokratischen Erneurung Deutschlands, the League of Culture for the Democratic Renewal of Germany, one of the most important mass organizations in the German socialist system. Within the League, the Central Committee of “friends of nature and the landscape” served to link and organize activities developed over the successive years in a quite intense manner. Similarly to what occurred during the same period in West Germany, this Committee promoted nature exploration and awareness activities, as well as planting and reforestation initiatives in despoiled landscapes and nature sponsoring and educational activities. These actions fit into a much larger framework of initiatives, among which we should note the annual “most beautiful village” competition and the annual conservation week, which continued until the early 1970s. Finally, in 1958, the 5th Unitary Socialist Party Congress marked the definitive step in the acquisition of a significant level of awareness of the theme on the part of the communist directorship, when Secretary General Walter Ulbricht asserted the regime’s intention to complete the construction of socialism through the establishment of “superstructures” aimed at creating the “new socialist man”; parks and natural recreation sites were to be among the most important of these superstructures. The introduction of the new conservation law in August 1954 had in the meantime recognized the landscape as “legal property,” thus laying the normative groundwork for the conservation of places of recreation. And yet, as indicated by the polemics between Meusel and the Director of the Humboldt University Institute of Horticulture and Resource Planning, Georg Pniower, the distance between the legal precepts and the concrete reality of a centralized, authoritarian system would continue to shape the German experience until reunification. Even more interesting was the Soviet example. Here, the network of natural parks and reserves (zapovedniki) dated back to a period prior to the

80

Chapter Four

1917 revolution, but it was the focus of a fairly intense debate between exponents of the protectionist movement and communist functionaries after the end of the world war. The associations that made up this movement – some of the most important were the Pan-Russian Society for the Protection of Nature (VOOP), the Moscow Naturalists Society (MOIP) and the Moscow section of the Geographic Society (MGO) – were the arenas of an extremely complex and at times oblique confrontation with the new principles of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine that had come to the fore in the meantime. And yet, as has been observed, the intelligent albeit risky decision to lend a “protectionist tone” to the regime, bringing authoritative exponents of the Party and of Soviet cultural life into the management of associations (Lysenko was elected to the Executive Committee of the Moscow Naturalists Society), along with the fact that functionaries themselves were not rigidly hostile to conservation but sometimes even promoted or sponsored specific initiatives of the movement, allowed for the transformation of these circuits into what Douglas Weiner aptly defined as “little corners of freedom,” and also ensured that the protection of nature would remain one of the relevant issues on the Soviet political agenda10.

4. The organization of safeguarding systems Elements of asymmetry and convergence in Eastern and Western Europe can also be highlighted in the system on which the administrative organization of safeguarding was built, both in higher-level entities and in the network of conservation institutions. In the Western area, the evolution of the administrative and institutional safeguarding system maintained, and one might say brought to fulfillment, the same layout and approach on which it hinged from its beginnings. Thus the safeguarding activities being developed corresponded in large part to the grand models that had characterized the protectionist movement in its early days: centralist-state in continental Europe, and decentralized and highly autonomous in AngloSaxon Europe. In the former, the French situation is still a point of reference, both in terms of the system of Superintendencies and the 1959 establishment - under the De Gaulle government and thanks to the efforts of André Malraux – of a Ministry of Culture that definitively verticalized the system. Around fifteen years later, this became, not coincidentally, the 10

D.R. Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachev, University of California Press, Berkeley-Los AngelesLondon, 1999, passim.

The Safeguarding of Cultural and Environmental Heritage in Europe

81

main model for the Commission established by Giovanni Spadolini, Minister of Cultural Assets in the Moro-La Malfa government, in creating an Italian Ministry called – with proactive intent – the Ministry for (and not of) Cultural and Environmental Assets. Conceived as an autonomous agency for the management of cultural heritage and the landscape, it would come to represent the culmination of the debate that went on throughout the 1950s and ‘60s, and would become intertwined with the demands for decentralization of state powers underlying the regionalist battle that led to the 1970 establishment of Ordinary Statute Regions. In other words, the Italian experience was in effect a singular laboratory of mediation between the French past – with its strong Napoleonic inheritance and a sense of “stateness” that has always been a French hallmark – and an opening up to experimentalism, developed via the experience of the center-left in the 1960s and linked to technocracies operating mainly at the local level, which were in a certain way inspired by British reformist pragmatism, and which in any case recalled contents and presuppositions of the systems in use in those countries where the tendency towards autonomy and connection to the territory was strongest. This may be said of Germany, where the network of Länder completed the system of federal powers, or the Spanish “autonòmico” system, destined to gain definitive centrality after the end of Francoism. The situation was much different in Eastern European countries, which conformed to the model of Polish legislation, and were also linked to Soviet-style organization. Here, the organization of the safeguarding and conservation administrative system aimed to reflect the political and institutional upheaval of the October Revolution: it marked – as highlighted in a catalogue regarding Byzantine art collections in Russia published by the Cooperative of Russian Artists of Moscow and Leningrad in 1966 – a shift in this, as in all other spheres of cultural activity. The early post-revolutionary years were marked by vigorous measures aimed at preserving art monuments, from the nationalization of private collections owned by people who emigrated abroad, to the concentration of art works in state-owned museums11. The positive consequences included on the one hand a continuous increase in visitor numbers, and on the other the complete updating of methods of historic-artistic investigation and museum organization. In particular, the division into Departments allowed the gathering into a single collection of objects from a given era and culture recognized as 11

A. Banck, Byzantine Art in the collections of the USSR, “Sovietsky Khudozhnik”, Leningrad-Moscow, 1966 (text in Russian with English translation), p. 29.

82

Chapter Four

characteristic of a certain historic period. And Soviet historical science, giving great importance to the analysis of general laws of historic development, lent increasingly keen attention to the investigation of specific elements that characterized the evolution of various regions and populations12. The rediscovery of ethnic roots as a constituting element of the Eastern European historic-artistic experience was first and foremost the product of an ideology linked to the particular connotation taken on by communist internationalism in the Stalinist interpretation, in which the “national question” – which had one of its greatest interpreters in Stalin, particularly with regard to the problem of language – affirmed the universalism of revolutionary principles in the multiform, diversified galaxy of the “national roots of socialism”. On the other hand, this was actually one of the effects of the process of de-Stalinization after 1956, when “national paths to socialism” were pursued through the reclamation of the different national origins of communism and, in countries with a multi-ethnic aspect, through appreciation and recuperation of each ethnic group’s roots. This was a driving force in particular behind the development of archeology as an element at the root of national communism: in Romania, with its Daco-Roman past; Albania, with its Roman-Illyric past; and in various other states in the socialist bloc, there was a strong push for the rediscovery of the vestiges of a national past now revitalized by socialist freedom, which in the 1950s and ‘60s led to the undertaking of many of the major excavations and finds that still today make up the cultural heritage of these countries. One particular case of management of historic assets and reconstruction of cultural heritage was that of Yugoslavia. Here, after the 1948 split from the Soviet Union, Tito’s regime continued, especially in the 1950s and ‘60s, to accentuate a multi-ethnic nationalism in which even the Muslim past – initially the object of a furious iconoclasm due to links with enemy populations, particularly the Albanians – was recuperated and, after Muslims were declared a component nation of the Yugoslavian Federation, considered an essential part of the Balkan state’s cultural heritage. As a result, the number of newly-constructed mosques increased to over 3,000 after 1970; the theological school of Sarajevo was reopened and others founded in Pristina and Skopje; the university Department of Islamic Theology was opened in Sarajevo; and later, a mosque was inaugurated in Zagreb. After 1956, this model was followed by other socialist countries as well. For example, in Bulgaria, under the Zivkhov government, the monastery of Saint John the Theologian in

12 Ivi, p. 30-31.

The Safeguarding of Cultural and Environmental Heritage in Europe

83

Zemen, with its splendid 13th-14th-century fresco cycle, was restored, as were the bedesten (covered market) and the mosques of Jambol and Stara Zagora. However, when the regimes began to experience a distancing on the part of intellectuals, they turned to a nationalist revival as a tool to eliminate “internal enemies”: in Bulgaria in the 1970s, the Mosque of Mustafà Pascia in Vidin was torn down (in 1974) on orders from the municipal council, as were the White Mosque and the Turkish buildings in Shumen in 1984-’85, and the baths in Razgrad. On a strictly organizational level, the conservation and management of heritage was entrusted to state organs, as indicated by the provision issued by the Bulgarian government on August 5, 1958 regarding the Conservation of monuments of culture and the development of museums in Bulgaria, which called for the “surveillance” ensured by means of Ministry of Education and Culture control. However, it also called for a system of counterweights that made local entities – local people’s Councils – protagonists as well, along with associations in the sector, which could intervene for the safeguarding, enhancement and conservation of assets, in particular movable property. In any case, the creation or suppression of museums required the authorization of the Ministry of Education and Culture, which, in accord with the Academy of Sciences of Bulgaria, decided whether or not to confer the museum the function of scientific research center. Even more analytical was the provision dictated by Decree n. 9 of 1963 on the protection of museum assets promulgated by the Hungarian government, and later amended by law n. 6, 1975. Section 5 of the provision recognized as “museums” those scientific institutions dedicated to preserving collections which in their specific sphere of pertinence (were) of evident relevance on the level of national interest and that (aimed) towards a complete territorial and historical coverage, evaluating these collections using the scientific method and placing them in the service of the education of the people. National museums would have assisted, alongside provincial and municipal museums, in the implementation of scientific plans and in tasks entrusted to them in accordance with norms dictated by the Ministry of Culture. Recognized national museums were the National Museum of Hungary, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Ethnography, the Museum of Natural Sciences, the Museum of Workers’ Movements of Hungary, the “Sàndor Petòfi” Museum of Literature, the Budapest Museum of History, the Museum of Agriculture, the Museum of Military History, the Museum of Transport and the National Museum of Technology. Each museum was headed by a General Director, whose nomination was the personal prerogative of the Minister of Culture, with

84

Chapter Four

possible exceptions indicated by the Board of Ministers. On the other hand, it should also be noted that the rise of the communist system led to the denial of the relevance of many monuments considered “contrary to the ideology,” and the general abandonment in a state of neglect and degradation of a great many art treasures, as demonstrated in particular by the case of Romania. There, up until 1977, the National Commission for Monuments, which was intended to continue the country’s long and important museographic and historic-artistic tradition, was conditioned by factors that contaminated its activities; its disbandment was decreed in December 1977.

5. After 1989: prospects of convergence The situation created following the end of the socialist regime, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, appears today to include some elements of confusion, but also positive elements of convergence between the two areas of Europe. On the one hand, the system of safeguarding in exsocialist countries still appears to be tied to inherited mechanisms introduced after 1945, with a difficult and drawn-out process of acquisition of awareness of the importance of cultural heritage, and a few elements of continuity in terms of legislative measures. On the other hand, there is evidence of a positive, progressive effort to modernize in these countries, bringing the foundations of the system into line with the most advanced outcomes of internationalist doctrine. One very clear example is that of the Russian Federation, where – albeit with delays linked to an uncertain equilibrium between public and private, a still-immature grasp of the importance of the question of cultural heritage, and the complexity of the management of economic aspects linked to it – a few significant steps forward seem to have been made. In its system, the Russian Federation distinguishes among various categories of objects of cultural and historic importance, namely: objects of historic interest, objects of archaeological interest, elements of urban-design and architectural interest and documents of historic interest (with particular reference to libraries and archives). These categories are specified in detail through an exhaustive indication of pertinence: for example, the category of historic objects included buildings, places and sites of commemorative value, objects linked to the memory of the most important events in the history of various peoples, the development of society and the State, the development of science and technology, culture and everyday life, particularly important figure such as national heroes, representatives of science and literature and those who gave their lives for the nation’s independence and freedom; objects of

The Safeguarding of Cultural and Environmental Heritage in Europe

85

archaeological value included ruins and vestiges of ancient cities, ruins of fortifications and of products of human activity, roads, statues, paintings and ancient objects; elements of urban-design and architectural interest included and protected not only buildings of particular importance but also historic town and city centers, entire neighborhoods, structures of military or industrial value, religious buildings and places of ritual interest; and finally, monuments and works of art, archives and libraries fell into the last two categories. In any case the State remains the principal actor in safeguarding, through a highly-developed system of central and territorial organs that create a complicated network of entities designated to protect and manage cultural heritage, as well as to control the two main national libraries, the National Library and the Library of State. Their acknowledged aims were not solely those of maintenance and preservation, but also included the development of national awareness and education, and towards this end the government established – in addition to a system of public funding that could, in some cases, be augmented by private funding – a Museum Fund, and issued particular rules for the management of the heritage of the city of Moscow. While analogous examples of advancement regarding safeguarding systems can also be found in other ex-socialist bloc countries, the underlying problem remains – that of a still-insufficient awareness of the problem itself, and in particular of the role cultural heritage can play in redrawing or rewriting the recent history of these countries. Even a superficial contemplation of the practice of “museumizing” contemporary history in ex-socialist countries stands to demonstrate this. Consider what seems without doubt to be the most patent example: Memento Park, set up by the Hungarian government after the end of the regime, which collected and arranged in an enormous space outside the city limits all of the statues and monuments that had dotted the streets and squares of Budapest to glorify the regime. The park had a star-shaped layout (a symbol of the socialist dream), and was opened and closed by two images representing horror and failure: at the entrance, Stalin’s boots stood at the base of the gigantic statue which was knocked down in 1956, and at the exit a wall blocked the visitor, effectively shutting him inside a labyrinth that required him to visit – on his way to the only exit – a sort of “museum of terror,” a dark structure within which the only light is set on a copy of Stalin’s boots. To cite another example, which seems almost aimed at exorcising and “expelling” the socialist experience from German history, the Museum of Contemporary History in Bonn starts the visit from Germany’s year “0”, 1945, without any reference to the problem of the German people’s compliance with Nazism, and only reconstructing the terror East Germany

86

Chapter Four

experienced under the heel of communism. In Berlin, however – the quintessential “unresolved” city - tourists can visit, not far from the CheckPoint Charlie Museum focusing on the atrocities of the Soviet regime, a Museum dedicated to everyday life in the ex-DDR, where the experience is reproduced in the form of a “museum of living memory,” with extremely positive evaluative intentions. This contradiction between a sort of “exorcism” that seems more and more like a rather superficial liquidation and a nostalgic feeling that tends to crop up in the most disparate areas of the territory may be one of the underlying reasons for the difficulty in creating a mature and definite European identity. It is almost as if Europe, incapable of dealing with its past, is still today weighed down by its own obsession with its specters.

CHAPTER FIVE A NEW EDGE OF THE WORLD? EUROPE, THE CULTURAL QUESTION AND THE CHALLENGE OF THE GLOBAL WORLD

1. Europe: a waning hope When on April 28, 1990 the special European Council meeting convened in Dublin formally launched the idea of constructing a European political union, it seemed that the pro-European dream that had emerged at the end of the Second World War might finally begin to crystallize. The fall of the Berlin Wall a few months earlier had marked the “end of the story” of the post-WWII period. German reunification on October 3, 1990 was the political magnum opus of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and ushered in a definitively new story, full of promise and expectation. Monetary unification, approved in 1992 with the Treaty of Maastricht, seemed the crowning moment that set the continent on a path towards realizing a new political dream, from West to East and across borders that had been drawn by the Iron Curtain. Not just a dream of peace, then, but a concrete expectation of political dynamism and, above all, economic growth. Twenty-five years later, the European dream seems to be very much in doubt. The economic crisis gripping more than one member state is not the only problem that puts the somewhat unsteady scaffolding erected in the 1990s at risk. The geopolitical upheavals of recent years and months have impacted Europe in particular, due mainly to its centrality. Migratory pressure, which is growing more critical every day, stretches across the Mediterranean; Euro-Asian boundaries are the object of new conflicts the shape of which is still not sufficiently clear; the global economy makes Europe a battleground between the weakened and threatened AmericanOccidental area’s attempts to endure and an Asian-Oriental area inundating everything like a gigantic tsunami. The outcome of an historic process begun more than seventy years ago, but immersed in a continuously-changing present, Europe is an in many ways unique case of a political, economic, institutional and socio-cultural

88

Chapter Five

subject of which we are now observing the crisis with great concern, its positive historicization having proved, to our disappointment, a failure. What had seemed the only real possibility to bring a process of civil growth and progress to fruition has proven to be a zone of the world impacted by profound shocks that come along day after day to threaten its very existence. What had been the dream of a generation of “founding fathers” – in which the positive appraisals of several successive generations converged, along with a few isolated voices of dissent – seems today to have vanished under the effects of real politics, economic debts, the ironclad regulations Europe created for itself and the incapacity to implement a real political perspective. The growing and widespread rise of movements with Euro-skeptical tendencies captures the heart and the underbelly of a problem now dramatically concrete and paradoxical: the decline of Europe due to its own absence. Within this framework there has arisen an effort to seek, or to construct, a European identity, with the recovery or discovery of a “European culture” as a key element. And part of this effort is an attempt to define a “European cultural heritage” as the unifying force for the desired new political and institutional dimension. The desire arose, one might say, in conjunction with the creation of the European Economic Community, and grew with the passing decades. In fact, the treaty that established the EEC recognized what it called the “cultural exception,” or the possibility of deviating from the rules of free exchange and circulation of goods in cases where there was a need to protect a national historic, artistic or archaeological heritage. Initiatives undertaken by the European Parliament in the 1970s – the 1974 resolution in favor of the safeguarding of European cultural heritage, and the creation of a European Union Youth Orchestra in 1976 – indicated increasing attention to the issue, as did the 1986 Single Act, which, while it did not call for normative solutions to the heritage question, introduced some important innovations regarding the environment and the territory. But it was the Treaty of Maastricht itself that represented an inversion of the trend, which, as we have noted, led member states to acknowledge the fact that in order to break through in an effective way, the European Union would have to transcend “that strictly economic vision that had marked its birth”1. Article 128 of the Treaty in fact assigned the European Union a greatly augmented list of institutional and political responsibilities. In particular, it established the Community’s duty to contribute to the development of national cultures, with mutual 1

M. Fiorillo, Verso il patrimonio culturale dell’Europa unita, Rivista AIC – Associazione Italiana dei Costituzionalisti, n. 4/2011, p. 2.

A New Edge of the World?

89

respect and with a call for a “shared cultural heritage” and in this sense to encourage and support cooperation among member States to improve awareness and diffusion of the culture and history of European peoples, the protection and enhancement of each individual State’s cultural heritage, cooperation in non-commercial exchanges and artistic, literary and audio-visual creativity. And yet, despite integration efforts undertaken up to this point in various spheres – which even a cursory review of European programs and agendas would contribute to confirming, and of which a now-nearlyconsolidated pro-Europe historiography has already highlighted the importance - Europe must now face the risky paradox of being crushed by its own lack of presence. Of the many reasons that might help to explain this weakness, the most recent literature (mainly economic or political-economic in nature, with the exception of journalistic “instant books”) underscores in particular aspects linked to economic organization, errors made and possible ways to get out of or save ourselves from the crisis. But there is no doubt that the forced acceleration of economic integration raises deeper and more complex questions, including one regarding “European culture,” or rather “European cultural roots,” which is certainly, if not the most significant, the most coherent with the line of thought we are following here. Precisely because – as Edgar Morin noted in his successful 2013 book – Europe is going through a true “existential crisis” with the convergence of various aspects of the impasse into which it has sunken2. The debate surrounding Europe’s cultural roots thus would be focused around the two main underlying axes of the problem, now central to the historiographic debate as well, of processes of national building and nation invention. On the one hand are those positions we can call (conscious that the dichotomy is a bit strained) objectivist and immanent: they see Europe as an existing reality from a geographic point of view, and thus with characteristics which, although concretized in history, represent its consubstantial cultural elements. From time to time these elements have been identified in the profundity of Greek culture, in the Christian tradition associated with Catholicism and various forms of Protestantism, in 18th century Enlightenment and in individualism. All of these cultural expressions are viewed and interpreted as expressions through which “European culture”

2

E.Morin-M.Ceruti, La nostra Europa, Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano, 2013; see also G.Allegri-G.Bronzini, Sogno europeo o incubo? Come l’Europa potrà tornare ad essere democratica, solidale e capace di difendersi dai mercati finanziari, Fazi, Rome, p. 9-15.

90

Chapter Five

reached its maturity and became clearly identifiable3. On the other hand are those interpretations we might call subjectivist and transcendent: they deny the existence of Europe as a geographic reality, and thus indicate its character as having been invented out of traditions and cultures 4 . Alongside these views are those that focus mainly on the juridical reality of Europe, which they maintain represents its very essence, and other, contrasting ones that seek a common linguistic root. The question of “European culture” appears particularly relevant today, however, due to the fact that the elements leading to the global crisis currently redesigning world geopolitical and cultural equilibriums, as well as critical issues that emerged after the financial upheaval of 2008, impact two of the elements evoked as fundamental to European identity. One is the concept of modernity, with which Europe has ended up being identified not only in terms of the Eurocentric view long dominant in historic studies, but also within a concept of sociology that has made the paradigm of modernization a key to interpreting processes of transformation of various areas of the world, with a largely evaluative judgment not untouched by apriorism. After all, we might ask ourselves, isn’t the current growth of the study of world history – the laudable effort to identify elements of syncretism and others of divergence that would serve as common elements linking different areas of the world around shared historic processes – the result of both European historians’ need to move beyond the partial view prevalent up until at least the 1980s as a partial response to European historiography’s “crisis of conscience,” and the effect of a crisis of European culture primarily manifested in terms of Europe’s awareness of itself and its history? In conjunction with this, there is another no less relevant element, one that is generating an equally evident and dramatic issue: the religious characterization of European identity, indicated from various quarters as foundational and even invoked as the crux of a future European constitution. Europe as a “Christian nation” would have originated around the year one thousand, and had a great turning point in 1517: diffused initially in the form of Catholicism in Southern and Mediterranean areas, and in Protestant versions in Northern and Baltic zones; one family and community-oriented, the other individualistic; one shrouded in the murkiness of penitence and contrition, the other illuminated by the light of personal worship and closeness to God through material means as well. 3

See the essay by O.Galland-Y.Lemel, Valori e culture in Europa, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2010. 4 See the discussion set forth in P. Rossi, L’identità dell’Europa, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2007.

A New Edge of the World?

91

Regarding the first element, the dizzying acceleration of trade in a global market, continuous technological transformation and the speed of information transmission have, as is generally accepted, altered not only mechanisms of production and exchange of wealth, but also worldwide geopolitical and economic equilibriums. Thus, with new countries playing important roles on the historical stage, and above all with the aggressive and apparently unstoppable advance of the “Asian tigers,” Europe and the West appear to be in a position of progressive weakness and decline. And along with them, modern capitalism, which had represented their essence as the outcome of the rise of reason and an extraordinarily intrepid humanism, seems literally to have been swallowed up by economies that focus on technological specialism (India and Japan), or on an immense, apparently inexhaustible availability of low-cost labor. With regard to the latter, growing tensions have in recent years, and especially in the last few months, been reverberating around the world, evoking the “clash of civilizations” of the title of Huntington’s celebrated and controversial essay, and impacting the substantial elements of religious culture linked to the development of Western and European civilization. It is not without significance that the organization of the Caliphate systematically strikes religious sites, monuments and settlements of extraordinary historicartistic interest, and we should ask ourselves whether in this there may not lie an attack against the symbols of a civilization that it wants not only to contest, but rather to obliterate. Reflecting on the problem of European culture, then, means deeply examining the status, the role and even the destiny of Western civilization, and at the same time carrying out an initial historicization: how much, and what, remains of European culture, of which important testimony is offered in the museums, galleries, archaeological sites and monuments one can admire in every street and square of each one of its member states and which are a country’s harmonic framework that allows us to perceive the experiences of generations that lived and worked there? And what, and how much, can this heritage offer in the current state of decline and distress in which the European world and Western civilization is plunged? Can it be an element on which to construct a dialogue with other cultures and civilizations, as well as a new economic driver that gathers and integrates the positive energies of other, different economies? Or must we resign ourselves to seeing our streets and squares as poignant pathways along which the world of yesterday, which was ours, is offered up as a melancholic memory? Is what that world produced merely ruins submerged beneath an inescapable tidal wave? Can the blending of the aromas and flavors of our traditions with the spicy, pungent ones of

92

Chapter Five

Chinese, Arab and Indian traditions be managed through a harmonic, virtuous mechanism capable of guaranteeing a return to prosperity, or must we resign ourselves to the idea that the battle is a losing one, and that the little Romanesque church and the Gothic cathedral – treasures of humanity – will be abandoned when confronted with the protagonism of modern structures that host new faiths and are in essence new tools for the exercise of power?

2. European policies for a European identity A history of public policies for the management of cultural heritage in Europe brings out how precocious the attempt to define a “European culture” and a “European cultural heritage” actually was, and how rapidly the institutional subject called upon to define them was as well. From an historical-institutional point of view, and in terms of political analysis, the balance appears extremely positive, considering the wealth of initiatives and subjects involved over time. Long before the 1954 Hague Convention on the protection of heritage in the case of armed conflicts, the European Council was created, with a Statute signed and approved in London on May 5, 1949 that indicated its aim, in article 1, as the realization of a closer union between member countries for the safeguarding and promotion of shared ideals and principles, facilitating economic and social progress and, more in general, improving the quality of life in the European community5.

In successive years, the European Council launched a series of political and institutional initiatives aimed at strengthening cultural cohesion and cooperation among countries. For example, in 1962 a Cultural Cooperation Council was created, which generated a series of international encounters on the subject, and the following year the Parliamentary Assembly, an organ of the European Council, voted for a recommendation concerning the safeguarding of monuments and sites. Over the years, the Cultural Cooperation Council developed actions in the field of promotion and safeguarding of heritage, especially by organizing conferences on the theme. In the same period, the creation of a series of specific Committees confirmed the development of interest in individual sectors: the Committee for monuments and sites, established in 1970, the Managing

5

Cited from the documentary apparatus published in S. Italia, I beni culturali in Italia e in Europa, Del Bianco Editore, Udine, 1999, p. 446.

A New Edge of the World?

93

Committee for territorial planning and architectural heritage and the Managing Committee for urban policy and architectural heritage. No less important were the declarations and Conventions adopted over the course of time, although this second index of evaluation highlights greater difficulties in translating intentions and awareness into effective tools to implement. In fact, what emerges first and foremost is a difficulty in conceptually defining the idea of “European cultural heritage.” This difficulty seems linked in particular to the uncertainty of moving beyond the national dimension towards a European dimension, and thus defining an idea of “European culture” or at least “common European culture.” The first attempt to do so – the European Cultural Convention adopted in Paris on December 19, 1954 by the governments of the member states of the European Council – offers clear evidence of this difficulty, as even a brief review from a technical-juridical point of view can confirm. In fact, Article 1 calls upon each signee to take appropriate measures to safeguard its own contribution to Europe’s common cultural heritage and encourage its development6.

The text of the Convention made continuous reference to Europe’s common cultural heritage, or to rather nebulous conceptual categories like “cultural activities of European interest” or “objects of European cultural value.” But in effect, aside from the technical norms regarding the responsibilities and prerogatives of the European Council’s Secretary General and Committee of Ministers, these references offered no definition whatsoever of the boundaries and content of a hypothetical European cultural heritage. The construction of this dimension was in fact entrusted to a heightened exchange between member states in the field of the study and reciprocal awareness of national languages, history and culture, and to the free circulation of people and objects of cultural value. But significantly, Article 8 set up a technical roadblock to the definition of cultural heritage, establishing that the principles of the Convention could not interfere with other bilateral Conventions agreed to by the signees, nor, above all, with any obligation to be subject to the laws and regulations in force in the territory of a Signee with regard to the entry, sojourn and departure of foreigners7.

6 7

Ivi, p. 494. Ivi, p. 496.

94

Chapter Five

A long and analytical indication of the assets subject to safeguarding was, on the other hand, contained in the European Convention on infractions regarding cultural assets, signed in Delphi on June 23, 1985. However, this detailed list ended up leading once again to a certain generalness, because in effect – after declarations asserting the principle of the existence of a “European cultural heritage” - it referred once again to actions carried out by individual states regarding objects and assets of historical, archaeological, artistic and monumental interest in the broadest sense. It is in any case interesting to note that this list was clearly impacted by the conceptual openness of the category of cultural asset, comprising not only the classical types of assets, but also photography, musical instruments more than a hundred years old, and even furnishings, wall coverings, carpets and costumes. It also included among assets subject to safeguarding elements linked to knowledge of nature and natural sciences, such as zoological, botanical, mineralogical and anatomical collections and rare samples, as well as materials of anthropological interest and archaeological structures of civil or religious interest. The Convention for the safeguarding of European architectural heritage, signed in Granada on October 13, 1985, and the European Convention for the protection of archaeological heritage, signed in La Valletta on January 6, 1992, moved in the direction of a more in-depth and mature analysis of “European cultural heritage.” The former was based on recognition of architectural heritage as “unrepeatable expression of the wealth and diversity of Europe’s cultural heritage,” and the latter indicated the existence of a “European archaeological heritage”; so, one was oriented towards appreciation of differences as the characterizing element of European identity, while the other focused on recognition of a common matrix expressed partly in the form of archaeological heritage. Both Conventions acknowledged the importance of cultural heritage as an element of transmission of memory from generation to generation, but while the Convention on archaeological heritage made it a question of “knowledge of the past,” the one on architectural heritage considered the projection of “knowledge for the future” to be the key theme, as in instrument for improving urban and rural life as well as economic development8. However, over time, European culture was expected to be constructed mainly through reciprocal knowledge of respective national cultures. In this sense, we must underscore the value of now strongly-consolidated cultural exchange experiences, in particular at the level of secondary and 8

All of the Conventions mentioned are cited in the documentary apparatus published in S. Italia, I beni culturali…, cit., respectively on p. 522-536, 537-544, 545-553.

A New Edge of the World?

95

university education. The Erasmus (European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students) program allowed more than two million students to carry out a significant part of their university studies in other European countries between 1976 and 2010, and this surely led, at least within certain limits, to the construction of an “Erasmus generation” that was far more aware of the meaning of the European cultural situation 9 . No less relevant in terms of organization and institutional experiences was the growing phenomenon of international relationships between local entities. The affirmation of a “European dimension” of local autonomy can in fact be read as one of the most important, and perhaps also one of the few experiences that truly ran counter to the prevalently bureaucratic-government European integration effort10. Beginning with the 1913 establishment in Ghent of the first international organization of municipalities – the “Union Internationale des Villes” – and through the vast and complex network of initiatives taken on during the period between the wars, up until the creations of the Council of European Municipalities after the end of the second World War, the autonomist, municipal dimension took on particular importance in a scenario in which, as has been observed, “federalist groundswells, although present in numerous European countries among the cultural and political elite, did not (translate) into strictly consequential steps”11, but the European union became a concrete objective in a situation of expanding citizenship and social cohesion. Thus the phenomenon of “sister” cities was an interesting attempt to react to this new state of affairs, while over the course of the 1960s and ‘70s the problem intersected with the emergence of the theme of regionalism, another great axis of political development and technical experimentation in Europe. After the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht, the European Union produced a series of other provisions regarding the management of cultural heritage, especially in terms of the problem of exportation, illicit trafficking and the circulation of cultural objects among member States. In general, the Treaty recognized culture as one of the fundamental sectors for the development, consolidation and implementation of the three pilasters on which the European Union was based, and the changes made with the successive Treaty of Lisbon in 2007 detailed the relationship between national and 9

See F. Cappè (ed.), Generazione Erasmus: l’Italia delle nuove idee, FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2011, and in particular the introduction by H.C.Jones, p. 15-21. 10 See M. Degl’Innocenti’s opinion in F. Zucca, Le relazioni internazionali degli enti locali. Dai gemellaggi al Comitato delle Regioni: cinquant’anni di storia dell’integrazione europea, Lacaita, Manduria-Bari-Rome, 2013, p. 5. 11 Ivi, p. 17.

96

Chapter Five

municipal policies. Article 3, paragraph 3 in particular established that a fundamental principle of the European Union was respect for the wealth of its cultural and linguistic diversity (and vigilance, author’s note) over the safeguarding and development of European cultural heritage. The successive treaty on the functioning of the European Union, approved in 2012, also established, with article 167, that the European Union has the fundamental objective of contributing to the development of the cultures of member States while respecting their national and regional diversity, while at the same time highlighting common cultural heritage, and in this sense safeguarding cultural heritage of European importance. But it is also true that from that point on, the European Union’s actions in support of cultural heritage moved mainly along different lines, in particular linked to project financing and single initiatives that the Commission has adopted in recent years, or consolidating older initiatives. Worthy of note among these are the European cultural heritage days, instituted in 1985 to open to the public cultural sites in countries adhering to the European Convention on Cultural Heritage and encourage widespread reciprocal awareness; the European cultural heritage prize, awarded to initiatives for the safeguarding, opening, enhancement or renovation of individual works or monumental sites; the conferring of the title of “European Cultural Capital” to a city, along with a program of events and initiatives geared towards enhancement and awareness; and the European heritage trademark, bestowed on sites recognized as being of high historic and symbolic value with regard to European integration. Alongside these actions, the other major strategic axis developed by the Union to support culture and cultural heritage is project financing, activated not only with European financing structural Funds, but also with programs for research financing – namely Horizon 2020 and Creative Europe – which include cultural heritage as one of their main strategic assets in terms of human and social sciences.

3. European dimension/national dimension: European cultural heritage or cultural heritage of Europe? In the picture thus described, and with an awareness of how far off Europe is and must be, from the construction of an identity and a common cultural heritage, it is useful to examine whether and to what degree this effort has been thus far carried out by individual states through an updating of their safeguarding systems in keeping with some of the essential guidelines of European directives. In this sense the comparison between counties belonging to what we might call Central-Western

A New Edge of the World?

97

Europe, which have lived under democratic political-institutional regimes and have longer traditions with regard to the movement to protect historicartistic beauty, and countries of Central-Eastern Europe, which lived under non-democratic political-institutional regimes and came much later to the European perspective, may, we believe, offer some valid cues for reflection. The first notable piece of information is surely the great proliferation of normative acts – laws and regulations – issued regarding cultural heritage beginning in the late 1990s. Nearly all of the member States intensified their production of norms, underscoring the increased attention to the issue. These directives involved very general questions in the case of wide-ranging laws regarding cultural heritage and regulations applying to entire sectors, but also individual matters and specific cultural fields. Between 1999 and 2009, for example, the Republic of Austria issued three measures dedicated respectively to a general regulation of heritage, and to the safeguarding of the historic city centers of Graz and Salzburg. Many laws were approved by the Kingdom of Belgium, as well as by Scandinavian countries. But it was Mediterranean-European countries above all that updated their regulations to conform with the EC framework, as exemplified by France and Italy. With the law of July 10, 1995, France adopted the La Valletta Convention on European archaeological heritage, and in 2006 the European Convention on the landscape, signed in Florence in 2000. In particular, with the law of February 20, 2015, France brought several measures into conformity with European norms regarding the issue of literary and artistic property and cultural heritage. Similarly, in 1993 Italy approved and adopted the 1992 EC Regulation concerning the exportation of cultural objects. But on the other hand, the more recent and more important measure – the Code of cultural and landscape heritage, approved in 2004 – makes no reference to the European norm, but rather to the Constitution and to articles it dedicates specifically to the landscape and to cultural and landscape heritage. With measures issued in 1994 and 2002, Spain incorporated into its own regulatory framework the EC Regulation regarding the return of cultural objects exported illegally from a member State’s territory. The definition of cultural asset, however, does not imply a precise reference to a European identity, but rather refers to the “territory of the European Union” and an area comprising the States to which the rules apply. And then again, the Spanish regulation is still today anchored to the definition of heritage provided by the law of June 25, 1985, a very broad definition that hinges on the idea of Spanish culture’s contribution to universal civilization, and which therefore juxtaposes the cosmopolitan, universalist, French-and-enlightenment-based dimension of

98

Chapter Five

culture with that of national specificity as an expression of the spirit of the Spanish people, a clear reference to a Germanic romantic conceptualization and legacy. Analogously, Portugal’s 2001 law redefined its policy regarding cultural heritage, indicating its nature and content as the entire body of evidence of universal civilization or Portuguese culture. A separate discourse, which will be mentioned only in passing here but which merits further analysis, is the development from the 1990s on of policy and legislation for the protection of heritage in Greece, one of the protagonists of the process of consolidation of European integration. The Greek actress Melina Merkouri, then Minister for Culture under the socialist government, was responsible for the Capitals of Culture initiative, launched in Athens in 1985, and the most recent measures have brought the principles of safeguarding into line with UNESCO and other international conventions. Countries that have joined the European Union more recently, almost all of which were under dictatorial regimes during the past fifty years, quickly updated their rules for organizing the safeguarding system, but they likewise seem to have paid little attention to the question of European regulation. As demonstrated by the cases of Bulgarian and Romanian legislation, as well as those of the Baltic Republics, each State took on the EC directive regarding the problem of illicit traffic, but each maintained its own safeguarding policy firmly anchored to the principles of national specificity, perhaps updated with more-efficient models. An example is Regulation n. 78 of January 27, 2005 approved by the Romanian government for the organization of the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs, which tied policy for the safeguarding and promotion of national culture to principles of the Romanian Constitution and of the international treaties and conventions to which Romania adhered, and in particular to notions of freedom of expression and artistic creativity, equal opportunity and free access to culture, participation in cultural life and religious freedom. In the face of this difficulty, it is interesting to note the consistent openness of the safeguarding system in various countries to paths previously less-traveled or simply absent. In this sense we can certainly assert that the end of the equilibriums of the Cold War and the beginning of the European integration process greatly facilitated an awareness of problems and new opportunities among member States. One example is the opening of bilateral relations between EU countries, or between EU and non-EU countries, to meet the profoundly changed needs of a globally-interrelated society. In 2011 alone, Greece signed a memorandum agreement with the U.S. for the protection of cultural heritage, as well as bilateral agreements with Switzerland and China. Aimed at introducing

A New Edge of the World?

99

and strengthening measures to combat the illicit trafficking of cultural objects in application of the 1970 UNESCO Convention, two accords were signed by the Italian government with the U.S. in 2001 (amended and expanded in 2006 and again in 2011), and with the Swiss Federal Council in 2008. Between 2004 and 2013, the government of the Czech Republic signed a total of 21 agreements with other countries, not only for the protection of cultural heritage in terms of exportation and illegal trafficking, but also for the promotion of individual museum complexes and monumental sites, and in particular events recognized as intangible cultural heritage. To offer just one example, take the case of the attention paid to the problem of the safeguarding of ethno-linguistic minorities and regional specificities. Said attention is certainly not new, if we consider the importance that the system of autonomies has had, in terms of safeguarding and otherwise, in countries like Belgium, Spain and Germany. Nonetheless, the legislation that has emerged in recent years seems to have shed new light on the relationship between the dimension of continentwide integration and the recognition, safeguarding and enhancement of “little homelands,” almost as if to indicate the singular contrast between the complex and laborious effort to create a great European area and the need to remain anchored to a specific identity and a community identity that serves to protect against the challenges of a new world. In this sense, Belgium appears to be a particularly advanced laboratory of experimentation, given that already in 1990 the Walloon Regional Government introduced a decree the obliged an holder or possessor of a protected monument or site to place a distinguishing marker on it, and the July 29, 1993 Decree gave the Walloon regional government the responsibility and obligation to cover part of the costs – in co-participation with the central government – for the restoration and maintenance of protected monuments and sites. The Institute of Walloon Heritage also had a particularly important role from the outset, as the main subject coordinating intervention actions and constituting the main interlocutor with the UNESCO World Heritage Committee. The Decree of July 15, 2008 partially modified the Institute’s organizational rules and identified its objective as: assisting the owners of listed assets in the maintenance, ensuring the conservation of knowledge and the consolidation of trades in the conservation of heritage, insuring listed regional property or parts of property and sensitizing the public to the protection and appreciation of cultural heritage. In a complementary way, the Decree of January 14, 2005 promulgated by the Flemish government regarding the implementation of the region’s

100

Chapter Five

cultural heritage, acknowledged the institutional subjectivity and authority in the matter of each official institution at local, provincial and regional levels, as well as at the EC and federal government levels, while in 2009 the same Walloon government redefined the list of sites and monuments subject to protection. Another equally interesting example from the EuroMediterranean area is that of Spain, which has over the years issued various measures to safeguard the cultural heritage of Andalusia. The safeguarding and enhancement of identity-building specificities is also linked to growing attention to the question of intangible heritage, which appears in the most recent legislation in all European countries as the most important new element, consistent with the conceptual evolution of cultural heritage over the past thirty to forty years. With the establishment of the Flemish Center for Folk Culture, Belgium was once again in the forefront, raising the question of broadening the content of protected cultural and identity-constructing elements, while in 2002 the Belgian government made the oral heritage of the French community in Belgian territory subject to protection as well. But to give another example, the Czech Republic was also in the vanguard, with laws for the protection and enhancement of numerous manifestations of national, regional and local folklore, while Romania recognized the Romanian national language as an element of identity and thus a heritage to safeguard, in line with a general recognition of language as intangible heritage that culminated in UNESCO’s publication of the “Red Book on Endangered Languages”. Finally, Romania also offers a cue for reflection on the relevance of a fourth element to which much attention was paid after the end of the dictatorial period in Eastern Europe: the religious element, which real socialist regimes had promptly acted to cancel out after their rise to power, due to their principles of Marxist-derived atheism, or at least secularism. From this point of view, it is significant that the Romanian government appointed a new Minister of Culture, adding the phrase “and Religious Affairs,” indicating a renewed attention and sensitivity to the question, which was also evident in the extraordinary flowering of new religious buildings and monuments after the death of Ceaucescu. Equally interesting ideas could arise from an in-depth study of countries like Poland – with its profoundly Catholic tradition - or countries like those of Eastern Europe and the ex-Yugoslavia and Spain as well, in which the presence of Arab culture and the Islamic religion was historically rooted, in a singular contrast which, far from being a problem, should instead make Europe into a laboratory for peaceful co-existence.

A New Edge of the World?

101

4. Prospects for innovation If, as seems clear from even the brief overview above, the problem of constructing a European cultural heritage and a European cultural identity derives from the still-unresolved conflict between the still-national focus of member States’ policies (which impacts legislation regarding cultural heritage and ultimately reflects the influence of the legacy of choices made over the past fifty years concerning the various models of politicalinstitutional and socio-economic regimes prevalent in each country) and the effort to align with EC norms, the question of whether or not it is effectively possible to construct an identitary and cultural cohesion through the actuation of a “European cultural assets policy” and the recognition of a “European cultural heritage” remains open. It is an extremely complex problem, considering the juridical, institutional and socio-anthropological implications that the question of identity definition puts before scholars. In terms of the first, juridical/institutional profile, the question is linked to the problem of the definition of the State-form of Europe and the legitimization of its sovereignty. As George Contogeorgis underscored in a thorough analysis, the problem of the institutional definition of Europe lies in the fact that it is configured not as a federation of states – which would imply the existence of not-yet-consolidated States that cede part of their sovereignty to a supranational organism – but as a super-national dimension that constitutes one aspect of a much vaster process of transformation and surpassing of the historic dimension of national State. Tracing the model back to that of the ıȣȝʌȠȜȚIJȑȚĮ – an association of independent States in partnership – which spread around the end of the phase of Hellenic statocentrism, the author indicates three elements as the essential conditions for a State’s admission to the European dimension: its European quality, conformity with the anthropocentric model of the State that took hold in European civilization, and conformity with geopolitical equilibrium12. But the boundaries and contents of these three conditions are far less clearly defined. So, while it may seem evidently difficult to recognize Russia as a European state as this would entail throwing off the region’s geopolitical equilibrium, and while it appears even more evidently difficult to admit Turkey, given the profound historic-cultural differences between it and Germany or France or Great Britain, it is nonetheless much more difficult to say what 12

G. Contogeorgios, L’Europe politique et ses États. De la nature de l’espace politique européen, in A. Landuyt-D. Rolland (ed.), Construire l’espace politique européen. Historiographies, politiques et territoires, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2013, p. 85.

102

Chapter Five

differentiates these States from a European cultural area as a whole – at least not without falling back on the usual idea of contrasting individual States, and thus into an analytical comparison of nations. On the other hand, identity definition is a fundamental element both in establishing a distinction from the “other” and in building consensus among members; it involves as much exclusion as inclusion. Consensus regarding European integration – as Daniele Pasquinucci noted in his introduction to the Acts of the 2010 International Colloquium organized in Geneva by the University Association of European Studies – “can be considered the entire set of values, norms, principles and objectives political, cultural, economic social ideals – which the various actors who took part in the unification process […] progressively developed and proposed to support European unification” 13 . But the recognition of common elements of identity also delineates borders in terms of those who reject those values or are not included within them. In a very general geopolitical definition, borders are “continuous territorial lines that demarcate the outer limits of the authority of a State and thus a fundamental crux around which the principle of sovereignty is constructed in the international system. Borders represent the essence of statehood. At the same time, borders are compelling symbols of power and historical continuity”14. This definition, or at least the first part of it, is based on the idea of an identity rooted in belonging to a common territory, but it raises the question – which is more difficult to contain within borders and to implement in terms of contents – of historical continuity. This is demonstrated by the fact that within the European Union there are countries with a deeply-rooted liberal and democratic culture and a Christian religious heritage co-existing alongside others with a history of socialist dictatorship and where Islam is a solid presence. Another definition, more linked to the socio-anthropological point of view and to the theory of symbols and political communication, describes borders as both “symbols and institutions which simultaneously produce and are produced by distinctions among social groups. As symbols, borders are 13

D. Pasquinucci, Introduction, a D. Preda-D. Pasquinucci (ed.), Consensus and European Integration. An historical perspective, Peter Lang, Brussels-Bern-BerlinFrankfurt am Main-New York-Oxford-Vienna, 2012, p. 9. 14 A. Mogos, European Union Identity’s Borders as Tools for Differentiating Inside-Outside EU’s Policies, in I. Horga-A. Landuyt (ed.), Communicating the EU Policy beyond the Borders. Proposals for Constructive Neighbour Relations and the New EU’s External Communication Strategy, Oradea University Press, Oradea, 2013, p. 38. The contribution is commendable for its attentive survey of the main theoretical points of view on the theme.

A New Edge of the World?

103

means and instruments of social control as well as for the construction and communication of meanings and identities” 15 . In this sense, borders structure the relational hierarchy between us and others, but once again raise the problem of understanding and accurately specifying which elements can and must be considered distinctive of a European identity regarding, for example, countries that share a border with Europe but can hardly be considered European. Borders can also be read as lines of spatial-temporal relation between local communities and States. We should thus reflect carefully on the possibility of defining a “multi-ethnic” or “multi-community” European identity, as demonstrated by the few references in these pages to the safeguarding of identitary specificity within States like Belgium and Spain, as well as elements of intangible cultural heritage that can be traced back to old Hungarian or Czech community traditions. The definition of European borders then slipped once again, as has happened with a few recent contributions, towards a political-institutional or even economic dimension that re-opens the question of the invention of a European nation, whether the one constituted by the entire group of States participating in the common European project for a new political-institutional dimension, or the one linked to the single currency. But in the former case – as Neil Fligstein hypothesized16 – not all of the nations taking part in the European Home project share the same European identity, and those that do not are, in particular, those that did not reap the benefits of freedom of movement the European Union offers, and thus did not share experiences with other Europeans. In the other group, we might say that the problem is even more evident if we consider the now-widespread perception of the European Union as a banking technocracy that is crushing entire national economies, and that certainly does not seem to offer a positive contribution to the growth of a shared understanding of “being European.” From the historical point of view, European identity can be traced mainly to three phases corresponding to three processes of general transformation of the political, institutional and social system. The first corresponds to the Roman Empire and the predominance of Constantinople; the second to the Medieval prevalence of Christianity; and the third to the grand processes of secularization that characterized the modern period. But from this point of view, the concept of European identity remains open and undefined, if those who espouse the idea of said 15

Ivi, p. 39. N. Fligstein, Who are the Europeans and How Does this Matter for Politics?, in J.T. Checkel-P. Katzenstein (ed.), European Identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009, p. 166, cit. Ivi, p. 40.

16

104

Chapter Five

identity arising from shared religious, philosophical, political, scientific and artistic elements within a Judeo-Christian framework are contested by liberal and democratic authors who read European identity in the affirmation of principles of democracy, respect for human rights, the rule of law and thus the rise of a public or civic sphere, while the religious dimension remains confined to the private sphere. And, there are more than a few authors who see European identity as the fruit of a progressive series of steps achieved through political, institutional and socio-cultural cooperation among States. And in effect, the documents that have been progressively approved since the origins of the construction of Europe seem to confirm an underlying ambiguity, as calls to common values of respect, democracy and creative actions by citizens are always accompanied by references to the recognition of national diversity, as in the Declaration on European identity approved in Copenhagen on December 14, 1973, or the 1976 Tindemans Report - which advocated the introduction of mechanisms of political and symbolic recognition like a common European passport, the removal of boundaries between States, common instruments for social security – , and finally, the Treaty of Lisbon, which called upon European citizens to directly propose ideas. As Léonce Bekemans observed, the aspect of the cultural and religious heritage of European peoples is brought up in the various treaties much more as an element of differentiation than of unity17. Article 167 of the Treaty of Lisbon declares the Union’s commitment to contributing to the growth of the “cultures of member States,” respecting their national regional diversity even while seeking elements in common, and its commitment to considering culture in its own political actions, especially with regard to “respect for and promotion of diversity.” And it is extremely difficult to contemplate the construction of a continental identity without the foundation of a common language and history, and while even the continent’s territorial borders remain uncertain. In light of these brief considerations on method, it seems far more appropriate and fitting to speak of a “cultural heritage of Europe” or a “cultural heritage of European countries” than a “European cultural heritage.” In this sense, cultural heritage seems to serve much more as a testimonial of the varied and ancient cultural stratifications that have constructed this geographic area than as a “symbolic mediator” or “identifying totem” for a community that recognizes and represents itself as European. We can certainly identify a few very long-term threads that 17

L. Bekemans, The Idea of Europe: Identity-building from a Historical Perspective, in Id. (ed.), A Value-Driven European Future, Peter Lang, BrusselsBern-Berlin-Frankfurt am Main-New York-Oxford-Vienna, 2013.

A New Edge of the World?

105

characterize European history: the ancient Greco-Roman past, the presence of Christianity, 17th-18th century secularization culminating in the French Revolution, and above all, the national identities which over the course of the 19th century structured the symbolic fabric of parliaments, monuments, the pantheon of martyrs and place-names. But, in fact, we must continue to speak of national identities, as it is difficult to recognize a common European matrix underlying the history of millions of citizens who live between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, the North Sea and the Urals. If anything, a European policy for the safeguarding and enhancement of this heritage could, it seems to us, reinforce not so much the identity as the political and economic role of the European Union with regard to the dramatic challenges it currently faces. Take, for example, the problem of the unbounded flow of migration from the southeast, which brings with it not only the contingent problems of public order and organization, but also fear of the other and of the different, today pervaded by the threat of Islamic extremism. The extraordinary monuments of European history stand to testify that if there is a characterizing element of European identity that must be considered, it is precisely an openness to the new and the different, a capacity for syncretic amalgamation that led Christianity and Medieval civilization to gainfully deal with, and in the vast majority of cases to absorb, the equally important contribution of Islamic culture. From this point of view, as the exemplary case of Albania’s admission to the Union has already demonstrated, Europe can truly become a laboratory of cultural-religious integration and civil coexistence. But let us also consider – to give another example – the challenge presented by large emerging economies, which flood European markets with immense quantities of low-quality products manufactured at the cost of great human sacrifice, “copying” other products in a manner that risks destroying the rules of market competition indicated by European capitalism. The revival of “European creativity” – the artisanal skill that has been Europe’s hallmark since the Middle Ages – can now offer a far more profitable and positive opportunity to regain lost ground and competitiveness than boxing the continent in with obsolete concepts of import duty protectionism or market wars. If, as we might say, the world’s “axis” is shifting to the East, almost in a sort of cyclical continuity leading it towards a return to its origins, then the West is standing at a crossroads that may be one of the classic and fundamental turning points of history: it may witness its own decline by projecting itself towards the demise of civilization that has been a protagonist of human history for two millennia, or open itself up to the challenge of redefining itself, no longer as a civilization that produces, perhaps, but certainly as one that offers itself to

106

Chapter Five

new subjects in its own interest and with its own form of beauty. In this sense, the “museum of Europe” can truly become the advanced laboratory for a new world of observers and participants.

CHAPTER SIX LOOKING TO OTHER AREAS: CULTURAL HERITAGE IN AREAS OUTSIDE OF EUROPE

1. The grand South-American world: development and definition of a national-continental identity Parallel to European legislation, there was the development of an apparatus of protection, safeguarding, and valorization of heritage also in the more distant areas of the world. Overall, this responded to a progressive affirmation of these areas on the stage of history: in some cases as the effect of consolidation and even development of a national identity and a national dimension already acquired; in other cases as expression of the recently acquired independence. It was thus on the one hand a phenomenon belonging to the national history of each country, to which it corresponded and even contributed to developing; on the other hand also the effect of a progressive shift of the global geopolitical axis towards areas different from Europe, which can certainly place itself among the origins of the current imbalance and evidence marginalization that the old continent is experiencing. The study of policies of management of cultural heritage in these areas, also in a brief, introductory survey, may offer interesting reflections for comprehension of vaster elements of globalization or in any case broader historical perspectives than the traditional eurocentric approach. One of the most relevant and interesting paths in this sense was without doubt the consolidation and perfecting of a legislation in terms of cultural heritage in the countries which make up the vast South American continent marked, already in the period between the two world wars and above all after 1945, by processes of structural transformation in terms of social structure and the composition of class, of political and institutional structure, and organization of power. On the one hand the changing framework of international relations that affected these countries in the

108

Chapter Six

years around WWII; on the other hand the incidence of internal factors in tumultuous change: demographic growth, especially in cities, the affirmation of nationalist tremors among the middle classes, the reawakening of the lower classes, the weak or practically null democratic results of such changes, and the affirmation, in contrast, of authoritarian regimes and dictators which marked, often in military terms, many of these countries. These all corresponded to a significant cultural ferment characterized by several specific elements. The relationship with Europe was central, in the double sense of closer ties and of imitation, or at least of strong European influence. On the other hand, however, there was also a need, which was gradually able to be met, of enfranchisement and independence from this sort of hegemony. This desire was evident in South American literature and art, with expressions of a sensibility aimed at looking to the past for the roots of the South American world and of its identity, in elementary sentiments. This was the case for the most notable poetic production, that of Pablo Neruda, or also in the invention of imaginary worlds: the visionary world of Jorge Luis Borges, or the similarly imaginative worlds of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The search for these origins and the definition of a South American identity, first National: Argentinian, Colombian, Brazilian, then continental, that is Latin American, also found in the protection of cultural assets and of landscape significant expressions. Let’s consider the decree emanated on 29 December 1921 by the Argentinean government containing regulations for the activation of law 9080 related to Ruins or Archaeological or Paleontological Deposits. In particular, as anthropological deposits were considered all of those sites containing human remains of indigenous peoples living before or after the discovery of America;

And a special “section of deposits” was created, managed by the Direction of the National Museum of Natural History in Buenos Aires The Museum of the University of La Plata, and the ethnographic Museum of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy1. In a similar way, intense and important was the legislation in Bolivia which between 1927 and 1930 was implemented with two Provisions related to the creation of a Head Commission and a National Gallery of Fine Arts, History, and Archaeology 1

Decreto del 29 deciembre 1921 in UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws – consulted at the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws on 12 February 2016 at 11.24.

Looking to Other Areas: Cultural Heritage in Areas Outside of Europe

109

dependent on the Ministry of Education, along with the detailed cataloging of sites and monuments put under protection2. 2

Ley del Monumento Nacional – 08/05/1927, La Paz, 3 mayo 1927; e Decreto Supremo – Normas sobre Monumentos Nacionales – 15/04/1930 in UNESCO Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws, consulted at the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws on 12 February 2016 at 11.35. In particular, considered as protected monuments, according to the long and analytic list published: In the city of Potosi: 1) Casa de Los Condes de Otavi, ubicada en la Calle Bolìvar n°13; 2) Casa de Lopez Quiroga (vulgarmente Quiroz) ubicada en la Calle Lanza n°7; 3) Casa n° 136 de la Calle Chuquisaca; 4) Casa particular de Alonzo de Ibáñez, ubicada en la Calle Nogales; 5) Casa de Los Condes de Lizarazu, ubicada en la Calle Junìn; 6) El quadro nominado “San Miguel” proprio del Señor Néstor Gutiérrez; 7) El altar de la Capilla de Artes y Oficios ubicada en la Calle Oruro; 8) La Galería de Arte Colonial que existe en la Casa de la Moneda; 9) La Galería del Consejo Municipal; 10) El Skating, antiguo templo de la Compañía de Jesús, situada en la Calle Ayaccucho n°6; 11) Teatro Municipal, antiguo templo de Velarmhitas, situado en la Plaza 6 de agosto; 12) La Casa Nacional de la Moneda, situada en la Calle Ayacucho n°4; 13) la Catedral (llamada Matriz) situada en la Plaza 10 de Noviembre, letra N; 14) San Lorenzo, situado en la Plaza del Mercado; 15) San Francisco, situado en la Calle Cobija n° 56; 16) La Capilla del Hospital de San Juan de Dios, situada en la Calle Chuquisaca; 17) La iglesia de “San Martín”, situada en la Calle de Hoyos; 18) La Merced, situada en la misma calle; 19) San Juan, situado en la parte alta de la ciudad; 20) La Concepción, situada en la Calle Hernández; 21) San Cristóbal, situado en el barrio Sudoeste; 22) Santa Teresa, monasterio situado en la Calle Chichas; 23) San Roque, situado en la Calle Bustillos; 24) Monasterio y Templo de Copacabana, situado en el barrio Sud; 25) San Benito, situado en el barrio Oeste de la ciudad; 26) Jerusalén, iglesia situada en la Calle Oruro;

In the city of La Paz: 1) Iglesia de San Francisco, situada en la plaza del mismo nombre; 2) Iglesia de Santo Domingo (actual Catedral), situada en la Calle Ianacocha; 3) Palacio de Gobierno, situado en la Plaza Murillo;

110

Chapter Six

In the same way, in Chile starting from the 1920s there was a series of laws related to the management of archives and libraries, up to the creation, in 1964, of a Chilean Institute in charge of promoting letters, arts and culture. Even more intense, and specific in its contents, was the legislation passed in Columbia, in connection to the provisions already approved in the period of Independence. In this sense, it is opportune to observe the fact that the legislation passed above all during World War II, and in the successive years, tended to be aimed at standardizing definitions, concepts, and tools of intervention similar to those in Europe. Thus, for example, the Colombian law of 6th September 1940 related to national monuments and to the realization of some interventions in the city of Cartagena, declared as national monuments of “public utility” All those buildings and sights which for their antiquity and artistic beauty or for their historical tradition are worthy of conservation as part of national heritage.

All the monuments would have been inserted in a declaration of the Government, which would have acted, where necessary, to expropriate cultural assets in need of protection3. Thus, 1942 saw the creation of the Claro y Cuervo Institute to celebrate the greatness of the two Colombian writers Miguel Antonio Caro and Rufino José Cuervo, and in 1954 the declaration as a National Monument of Vila de Leyva, a small colonial

4) Altar Mayor de la Iglesia del Carmen, situada entre las Calles Colón y Ballivián; 5) Casa de los Marqueses de Villa Verde, situada en la Calle Ingavi; 6) Casa de los Herederos de Joaquín Caso; 7) Todas las obras de arte existentes en museos públicos y particulares; In the city of Sucre: 1) Catedral de Sucre, situada en la plaza principal; 2) Capilla de San Carlo y Palacio Arzobispal; 3) Sala del Palacio Legislativo; 4) La Sillería tallada en la Recoleta; 5) Santo Domingo, situado en la Calle Bolívar; 6) Colegio Junín, situado en la calle del mismo nombre; 7) Objectos historicos existentes en el local de la Sociedad Geográfica de Sucre; 8) Todas las obras de arte existentes en edificios publicos y particulares. 3 Ley 5a septiembre 6 de 1940 – Sobre monumentos nacionales y realización de algunas obras en la ciudad de Cartagena – Bogotà – 7 septiembre 1940 in UNESCO Database of Cultural Heritage National Laws consulted at the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws on 12 February 2016 at 10:00.

Looking to Other Areas: Cultural Heritage in Areas Outside of Europe

111

city located about 170 kilometers north of Bogota, and within which was constituted the natural park of Iguaque4. Finally, on 30 December 1959, the Colombian government passed a general law for defense and conservation of historical and artistic assets, and national monuments, which in 37 articles defined the system of protection in a manner articulated and very similar to the models present in Europe. In fact, after a detailed declaration of monuments recognized as elements of national heritage5, The Council for National Monuments was indicated as the body in charge of study and making proposals for 4

Ley 5 25/08/1942 Creacion del Instituto Caro y Cuervo – Bogotà – 25/08/1942; Decreto 3641 17/12/1954 – Por el cual se declara a Villa de Leyva monumento nacional y se dictan otras disposiciones – Villa de Leyva 17/12/1954 in UNESCO Database of Cultural Heritage National Laws, consulted at the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws on 12 February 2016 at 10:13 5 Declared as part of national heritage, according to article I° of the law: “los monumentos, tumbas prehispanicas, y demás objetos, ya sean obra de la naturaleza o de la actividad humana, que tengan interés especial para el estudio de las civilizaciones y culturas pasadas, de la historia o del arte, o para las investigaciones paleontológicas, y que se hayan conservado sobre la superficie o en el subsuelo nacional”. In base alle risoluzioni della Conferenza americana di Montevideo del 1933, si riconoscevano poi come patrimonio nazionale alcuni monumenti legati alla storia nazionale ed al periodo dell’indipendenza, come indicava l’articolo 2°: “los que estén intimamente vinculados con la lucha por la independencia y con el periodo inicial de la organización de la República”. In article 3°, several parts of cities were recognized as part of national heritage for the relevance of their architectural beauty and the historical traditions conserved therein: “los sectores antiguos de las ciudades de Tunja, Cartagena, Mompós, Popayán, Guaduas, Pasto y Santa Marta, Santa Fe de Antioquia, Mariqita, Cartago, Villa de Leyva, Cali, Cerrito y Buga”, intendendosi come parti storiche vie, piazze, piazzette, muretti, immobili inclusi case e costruzioni storiche risalenti ai secoli tra il XVI° ed il XVIII°. For its scientific importance, the Sierra de Macarena was recognized as part of national heritage. Ley 163 – 30/12/1959 – Ley de defensa y conservacion del patrimonio historico, artistico y monumentos nacionales. Consejo de monumentos nacionales – Bogotà, 15/12/1959 in UNESCO Database of Cultural Heritage National Laws, consulted at the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws on 16 February at 10.45.

112

Chapter Six

declaring other monuments or other parts of cities, natural or historic sites as part of national heritage. A system of quite analytic rules was established relative to digs, to interventions for protection of sites and monuments, and the prerogatives of the State in relation to private owners. This system hinged on recognition of a role of particular importance of municipalities and mayors, along with regional bodies. A similar process was found in the countries of the Rio de La Plata – Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay – which had experienced intense development from the end of the 19th century through the 1930s and that after the second World War, between the 1940s and 1970s, so the affirmation of authoritarian, military regimes. Between 1972 and 1973 Argentina passed two provisions related to acquisition of effects and the application of regulations of the Convention on the illegal traffic of art objects6. Then, in 1978, the Argentine government gave the force of law to the 1972 Paris convention on the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage and in the 1980s implemented its own apparatus of protection with several provisions, including a 1982 degree on immobile cultural heritage and the competencies of the State in relation, and the 1988 joining of the Argentine Republic of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property. Also important was the 1986 law related to the recognition of those groups of museum structures and recognized sites of value, returned to the competency and management of the Secretary of Culture7. In Paraguay, after the 1950 6

Ley 19.943. Aprobacion de Convencion sobre trafico ilicito de bienes culturales – Buenos Aires, 13 de Noviembre de 1972; Resolucion 3474 – Declaración de las obras u objetos de arte, objetos para colecciones y antigüedades que lleven con sus equipajes quienes viajen al exterior o ingresen al pais – Buenos Aires, 24 octobre 1973 in UNESCO Database of Cultural Heritage National Laws, consulted at the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws on 15 April 2016 at 12.15. 7 Included, according to article I° of the Decree, were Museo Histórico Nacional, Museo del Cabildo y la Revolución de Mayo, Museo de la Historia del Traje, Museo Histórico Sarmiento, il Museo Mitre, Palacio San José, Museo y Monumento Nacional Justo José da Urquiza, Museo Histórico del Norte, Museo Histórico y Biblioteca de la Casa del Acuerdo de San Nicolás, Museo Histórico y Biblioteca Sarmiento – San Juan, Museo Jesuitico de Jesús Maria, Museo Histórico de la Casa del Virrey Liniers, Casa Histórica de la Independencia, Museo Nacional de las Bellas Artes, Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo, Museo Nacional de Arte Oriental, Museo Casa de Yrurtia, Museo de Pintura Regional José A. Terry, Museo del Grabado, Museo Roca, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas. The attachments analytically disciplined tasks, functions and organization of each one. Decreto 1934 – Museos Dependientes de la Secretarìa de Cultura – Buenos Aires, 24 octubre 1986, in UNESCO Database of Cultural

Looking to Other Areas: Cultural Heritage in Areas Outside of Europe

113

creation of a National Commission for Cultural Property, of particular interest in the 1970s, under the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (but already after the introduction of the Constitution and the formal opening of the regime at the height of its popular consensus in 1967), was the recognition of indigenous cultural property as an integral part of national heritage. In 1981, indigenous communities were given their own statute, and in 1982 the general law on cultural property, which redefined the organizational structure of protection, recognized the language of the indigenous populations as an element of the national cultural property of Paraguay8. Finally, Brazil was a case of notable interest. In the 1930s, under the dictatorship of Getulio Vargas, provisions had been passed for protection of heritage, as a sign of the strengthening of the relationship between the national tradition and the strong sense of State control that has historically characterized this great South American country. The law n° 25 of 30 November 1937, in particular, organized protection of national historic and artistic property, defined in article 1 as the whole of mobile and immobile assets existing in the country, and whose conservation was of public interest, for their connection to important events in Brazilian history, or for their exceptional archaeological, ethnographic, bibliographical or artistic value. Protection would be applied after the recognition of the individual monument as an element of significance for cultural property, through inscription in one of the four catalogs (Livros de Tombo) which could happen through a direct request of the owner, or by injunctive order on the part of the bodies of the Service for National Historic and Artistic heritage. This inscription, among other effects, determined the inalienability, the prohibition of exportation abroad, and in any case for only a brief period, without authorization from the competent Authority, along with the prohibition of building near monuments or in environments considered as part of heritage, along with a series of rules regarding the maintenance, demolition or in general interventions on the objects9. Heritage National Laws, consulted at the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws on 15 April 2016 at 12.48. 8 Ley 904/81 – Estatuto de las comunidades indigenas; Ley 946/82 – de protección a los bienes culturales UNESCO Database of Cultural Heritage National Laws, consultato al sito www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws consulted at the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws on 15 April 2016 at 13.11. 9 Decreto-Lei n° 25 – de 30 de novembro de 1937 – organiza a proteção do patrimônio historico e artistico nacional, in UNESCO Database of Cultural Heritage National Laws, consulted at the website www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws on 15 April 2016 at 14.59.

114

Chapter Six

Within the frame of these general provisions, in following years there were other laws passed to regulate the problem of illegal trafficking of art objects, the parts of the penal code relative to damages of works of art, and even regulations for archaeological digs. After the end of the dictatorship of Vargas, with the passing of the new constitution in 1946, cultural property was subject, in the face of the populist governments and the successive military dictatorships, to criteria increasingly rational and dependent on State intervention. In 1946, Halo organized an Entity for National Historical and Artistic Property, under the direction of the Ministry of Education, while the law of 19 December 1951 created the National Commission for Fine Arts. In 1958, Brazil joined the International Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the event of armed conflict, while in following years, also after the end of the military dictatorship, a series of other provisions were passed to analytically regulate the various sectors not only of cultural property but also of artistic production, in particular that of Cinema, in close connection with the regulation of the discipline of copyrights.

2.Management of cultural property in the People's Republic of China: an exception in the Socialist block Within the frame of areas outside of Europe, the case of the People's Republic of China certainly represents an example of peculiar specificity: both with respect to the rest of Asian areas, and in particular with respect to Japan, linked to the experience of the Meiji modernization and the great development in the post-world War II period; and, no less, with respect to the generality of socialist countries. It should be kept in mind that China, the People's Republic of China instituted in 1949 after the revolution, lived an experience of distancing, connected to political choices and precise ideologies, from the Soviet Union, at least beginning in 1959-60. This path of distancing significantly influenced politics, the judicial system, and the administrative organization of the country. Before the affirmation of Communism, there existed in China an important law on protection of antiquities, passed on 7 June 1930, connected to an analytical regulation introduced on 3 July of the same year10. These are the first statutory acts in the matter of protection in the country, in a nation, as one remembers, rich in history and cultural 10

Cfr. J.D. Murphy, Plunder and Preservation. Cultural property Law and practice in the People’s Republic of China, Oxford University Press, Hong KongOxford-New York, 1995.

Looking to Other Areas: Cultural Heritage in Areas Outside of Europe

115

property and in which political contrasts have often brought significant destructions to said heritage. The 1930 law, which intervened to close a legal loophole, prohibited exportation of antiquities, and preventively forbade any archaeological digs on Chinese soil on the part of nonChinese persons. It was also forbidden to cede objects of antiquity to foreigners within the country. The government of the People's Republic adopted early on measures for protection,within the frame of the new legislative, administrative and constitutional system introduced after 1949. In this sense it is opportune to underline several relevant elements of the Chinese legislative system that distinguish it significantly from Western countries. Although the constitution of the People's Republic of China contains a series of measures with a political and organizational value, like many Western constitutions, in particular that of Italy, nevertheless the Chinese measures often do not bring about effective legislative interventions on the matter in question. Furthermore, it should be said that the Chinese Constitution only transversally touches on the matter of cultural property, in two articles: a) article 22, in which the state promotes development of literature and art, the press, cinema, television, services of publicity and distribution of communications, libraries, museums, study centers, and other cultural institutions useful to the population and to socialism, and sponsors the development of cultural activities for the masses. The state protects sites of natural and historic interest, valuable monuments of culture, treasures and other important testimonies of the Chinese historical and cultural heritage; b) article 119, which attributes to the bodies of self-government of independent districts powers of administration of affairs related to education, science, culture, Public Health, and physical culture; and powers pertinent to the protection of heritage and the promotion of the different nationalities present in the country and the development of their culture. But it was precisely the Constitution to recognize that the supreme legislative body is the National Congress of the People, legitimized to emanate laws. And within this body it is the Permanent Committee to adopt deliberations that then are transformed into law. Thus the majority of Chinese legislation, including the 1982 law on Antiquities, which regulates the matter, is the result of deliberations of the Permanent Committee. A role of particular importance is then played by the Council of State, an administrative body that implements legislation through

116

Chapter Six

regulations, decrees, amendments, and acts of various natures. This means that legislation is extremely diversified and above all, does not always correspond in application praxis to the letter of the law. A further element to add is the fact that the autonomous areas present in the institutional organization of the People’s Republic of China have legislative power and often intervene in an inconsistent manner with respect to the general law. An example: The rules for the protection of Antiquities introduced autonomously by the administration of the province of Fujian. Finally, it is worth underlining the fact that in recent years China has tried to adjust to Western statutory systems through recourse to normative precedent: the primary example is synthesized into a statute and this in turn creates a further, different legislation. The 1982 law was preceded by a series of highly precocious interventions, immediately after the revolution: Ɣ Provisional measures forbidding the exportation of precious works of art, valuable objects, paintings and books; Ɣ Provisional measures regulating the investigation and exploration of ancient ruins and ancient tombs and other buried treasures- 24 May 1950: in this case cultural property became object of revolutionary, historic, or cultural interest for the State ;exportation was forbidden and there was even the measure prohibiting international scholars from conducting research in certain areas; Ɣ Instructions on the methods of protection of cultural artifacts ancient sites books and rare minerals; Ɣ Instructions concerning the protection of ancient buildings in mandated in 1950 through a proposal of the Council for Political Affairs; Ɣ Then in 1961 an important measure was emanated, entitled “Provisional rules for the protection and administration of cultural property”: It applied to mobile and immobile property and protected cultural assets of historic, artistic, or scientific worth. The specific wording protected: buildings, sites and objects of historical interest which recall great events of the past, revolutionary movements or important figures, ancient sites, valuable works of art and applied art, regardless of the period to which they belong, archives and representative objects which reflect the social system, social production and the life of society in all periods.

Looking to Other Areas: Cultural Heritage in Areas Outside of Europe

117

The wording of the 1982 law has remained essentially the same. We will not examine in detail the entire 1982 law, but it is useful to underline the most relevant aspects: 5. The first and most important is that the law is grounded in, and reflects fully, socialist principles: The State itself takes care directly of cultural assets by placing them under its protection and defining them as public property, not recognizing any legitimation on the part of private citizens. 6. The second is that in reality the recognition of cultural assets is carried out through verifications according to criteria fairly similar to those adopted in the 1970 Unesco Convention; 7. The third is that, however, protection is entirely reserved to the State through its own administration, whether in terms of public assets or private property; protection is recognized as a “duty of the State” ; 8. In a similar manner to other legislation, also the 1982 Chinese law foresees restrictions on archaeological digs, recognizes and puts under protection sites of natural and historic interest, and also unban sites considered of relevant interest: precisely Beijing, Nanjing, Xian, and then Guangzhou, Shanghai, Chongqing, Wuhan; 9. An effect of this prevalence of the State is the diffusion of a widespread bureaucracy which controls all institutes and sites of conservation: museums, galleries, archaeological sites, collections, etc. 10. Private citizens may only sell cultural property to the State This legislative provision was implement by successive measures passed in the 1980s and 1990s and combines with the provisions of the Chinese penal code which calls for prohibition of sabotage, destruction, exportation, theft and other typical crimes against cultural property.

3. A sketch of a different experience: Commonwealth as a system of reciprocal influences? Concluding our brief reflection about different experiences of politics for cultural heritage management in the world, it can be interesting to devote a rapid overview on a particular case of reciprocal influences: that is the system established within the Commonwealth between Great Britain and the former colonies.

118

Chapter Six

What is the Commonwealth? What are its origins and its development? What are its administrative and institutional structures? What is the role and the significance which it holds in global geopolitics and economics? It is possible to begin with these rather general questions to sketch, albeit briefly, a profile of one of the most important historical phenomena of modernity, an institution which today includes a striking 53 countries. It is an institution which, under the direction of a General Secretary, traces back to the sovereignty of Her Majesty the Queen of Britain the principle of its legitimacy and the ideological, cultural cement of its strength. From an institutional point of view, the Commonwealth represents an association of independent, equally sovereign states, with member nations big and small, rich and poor, many of which are islands, and with a total population of 2.2 million inhabitants, 60% of which are under 30 years old. Meanwhile, from a historical point of view, the Commonwealth is a grand experience of conquest and territorial expansion, with Great Britain already as protagonist in the 15th and 16th centuries: both as a member state, above all starting from the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1602), and as private citizens, as individuals and merchant companies to whom the Crown granted licenses or charters for the exercise of commerce and the jurisdiction over British subjects. Virginia and New England, Guiana (1618), Barbados (1612) Gambia and Gold Coast (1618), are the first stable English colonies founded in the 17th century, while the East India Company, founded in 1600, began its own expansion in Asia. After the Dutch defeat in the Anglo-Boer War of 1670-74, after the collapse of France’s North American empire at the height of the intense Anglo-French struggles which marked the war between William III and Louis XIV, the wars of succession in Spain and Austria and finally the Seven Years’ War, the English colonial possessions expanded with the acquisition of Canada, with the acquisition of Australia and New Wales after the explorations of James Cook, with the extension of the conquest in the region of the Great Lakes, the Indian subcontinent, the peninsula of Malacca to Penang (1785), in the African continent in Sierra Leone (1795). The loss of the American colonies following the War of Independence (1783) nevertheless kept strong the economic, commercial, and cultural ties, and successively England came into a position of monopoly over the oceans from the Napoleonic Wars, managing to take the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, and West Guiana from the Low Countries, Trinidad from Spain, Mauritius and Malta from France. The expansion later continued in Africa (Gold Coast in 1843), in Asia, above all in India (Sind, 1843; Punjab, 1846-’49, Lower Birmania, 1852) up to the passage of sovereignty from

Looking to Other Areas: Cultural Heritage in Areas Outside of Europe

119

the East India Company to the British Crown and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth as Empress of the Indies in 1876. While other colonies were being acquired in Asia, and in the last years of the great European colonial struggles, a prelude to the First World War, other possessions were acquired. Fundamental for example was Egypt in 1882, together with Africa, Asia, Oceania. Thus in 1921, shortly after the end of World War I, the British Empire reached an extension of roughly 35 million square km (including territories under mandate) with a population of roughly 450 million inhabitants: over a quarter of the Earth’s surface and population. The story of the Commonwealth, which is a direct descendent of the British Empire, is thus a story of a world conquest which marked the 19th century as the ‘British Century’ after the Spanish-Portuguese 16th century, Dutch 17th century, French 18th century, and prior to the affirmation of American power in the 20th century. From the historical point of view, the history of the Commonwealth could be grounds for a new periodization. And in this sense it is also the history of the great conquest of man over the environment and over resources: constructions of states, infrastructures, industrial production which coincides with the era of the great 19th century industrial revolution. It is the story of the affirmation and triumph, as Sir Eric Hobsbawm underlines, of the “English bourgeoisie” and unconditional, positivistic faith in the progressive fate of humanity, in the value of science and technology, rational order conferred to civilization - “a place for everything, and everything in its place”- of the centrality of the Pound Sterling and the English banking system incarnated in the City of London. It is a story of conquest and war, of explorers and geographical societies, of the painful epic of slaves, but also the legendary epic of pirates, to whom the English crown confers letters of marque so as to attack the Spanish galleons to drain gold and riches away from the weakening treasury of the Iberian Empire. But the story of the Commonwealth is also the story of a great process of independence and regulated organization of liberty, of autonomy, and of relations with the former motherland: first the abolition of protectionist laws about cereals (1846), and the Navigation Acts (1849); then the abolition of the slave trade (1807-10) and of slavery (1834-40); finally, autonomy for the first colonies characterized by a significant settlement of populations of English or European origin (Canada, 1848; Australia and New Zealand, 1850-56; Cape of Good Hope, 1872; Natal, 1892). These are the first steps. The recognition of the status of dominion was the second stage: Canada, 1867; Australia, 1901; South Africa, 1910; New Zealand, 1907; Terranova, 1917; The Irish Free State, 1922; with a

120

Chapter Six

decisive acceleration after the Second World War, after the Balfour report at the conference of prime ministers in 1926, and the Statute of Westminster of 1931 had marked the official foundation of the British Commonwealth of Nations: in 1947 India, in 1948 Ceylon, while Birmania’s failure to join after independence in 1949 confirmed the purely voluntary, consultory character of the organization, also maintained after the creation of the General Secretary in 1965 and after the current adhesion of 53 member states, having eliminated the denomination of dominion. The historical discussion about the Commonwealth has thus profoundly linked itself to the debate about the issue of the end of the British Empire, as the former is somehow a “direct descendent” of the latter. Literature on the subject underlines that the end of the British Empire was on the one hand sudden and rapid, after the Second World War, while on the other hand it represented a transition which from a constitutional, political, and cultural point of view did not cause an effective crisis of the British State, probably due to the broad consensus by then established around the idea of the necessity of independence for the colonies. However, the change did have consequences on a political level, and particularly for choices made in foreign policy. For example, keeping close economic and cultural ties with the countries of the Commonwealth determined a certain self sufficiency in Britain’s stance towards the opportunities offered by the European Common Market. And it is equally important to remember that the last colonies in possession engaged England in political and even military situations of significant weight in the 1980s and 1990s11. It is also opportune to underline how the literature about the Commonwealth has significantly brought together legal profiles on the topic, linked to current events, while the historiography has above all shown interest in economic questions, such as the dissolution of the Empire and the transformation of the relations between the former colonies and the motherland into new relations between Great Britain and those territories which were first dominions, then member states. These are economic ties grounded above all in the vast network of commercial connections which Great Britain created for itself. It is sufficient to consult even a short bibliography about the issue of the Commonwealth, where the prevalence of economic publications is evident, and where if anything there are also studies which examine legal aspects of the question. But also if one examines the historiography specifically dedicated to Great Britain 11 J. Darwin, The End of the British Empire. The Historical Debate, Basil Blackwell, 1991, passim.

Looking to Other Areas: Cultural Heritage in Areas Outside of Europe

121

and to the individual members of the Commonwealth, there is an immediate perception of a prevalence of the aspects and framework of an economic nature as regards the question: both for Great Britain and for the other countries, in particular those of significant size, adhering to the Commonwealth. This can be explained for two reasons: on the one hand the fact that European historiography has primarily focused on economic aspects of social phenomena above all due to those scholars who have adopted and chosen a methodological framework linked to a Marxist interpretation of history; on the other hand, the hypothesis that the Commonwealth has been above all a historical reality hinging on a network of economic and commercial ties. Nevertheless, the Commonwealth has been, and still is today, a reality of profound, reciprocal influences, interconnections, and cultural ascendancy. The very fact that the member states are joined by a common language, English, shows how the Commonwealth was born and initially supported by a cultural factor such as language. And it is not by chance that in the last decades studies have developed around the development of post-colonial literature in the formerly dependent states, demonstrating influences and ties, along with ruptures and distances, from the motherland. But it is sufficient to also consider the profound influence that English literature has experienced in its history from the ascendancies of countries tied to the empire, above all in the Victorian era, and the era of the anti-Victorian reaction, starting in the 1870s. All the literature of this period, especially novels, is dominated by the “environmental and cultural” traces of colonial conquest: Doesn’t Joseph Conrad, perhaps the most important novelist of the anti-Victorian period, set his 1899 Heart of Darkness in a jungle? And doesn’t a novel such as The Shadow Line: A confession recount the adventure of a youth who becomes captain on the Eastern seas between Bangkok and Singapore? And doesn’t a great narrator such as Robert Louis Stevenson write stories and tales set or at least traceable to coral islands lost in the South Seas? And isn’t a novel such as Treasure Island built on the memory of the era of those buccaneers which made England great? Furthermore, consider Sherlock Holmes, perhaps the most famous character of English mystery literature, who lives in full all the influences and connections between Great Britain and her colonies: he is a great consumer of tobacco, produced in the former American colonies, along with opium and other hallucinogens, coming from the commerce of the East India Company; he encounters Dr. John Watson in the laboratory of anatomy of the University remarking: “I see you have been in Afghanistan!” as this military doctor has taken part, and indeed been injured, in the second Anglo-Afghan war in 1880.

122

Chapter Six

Holmes is also engaged in several cases involving revenge sought for distant torts: as is the case in A Study in Scarlet - for the kidnapping and death of an inhabitant of the Americas, as in The Devil’s Foot - homicides perpetrated by a doctor that had explored Africa and had there encountered this powerful poison; or, even more in The Sign of the Four, in which the children of Major John Sholto live in a house full of “Indian curiosities and treasures of the Orient” collected by their father during his long years of service as an officer of the British army of occupation. For these reasons the issue of “cultural assets of the Commonwealth” is not easy to address, above all from the point of view of definition. To answer the questions “Do cultural assets of the Commonwealth exist, and if so, in what form?” means considering not only those concepts institutionally and conceptually recognized as part of cultural heritage, according to the indications of Unesco defined in multiple conventions such as tangible, mobile, and immobile assets, but also intangible cultural assets: folklore, music, literature, even the language itself, but also more in general the ties which have historically been stratified on the level of reciprocal cultural influences. Seen from above, the Commonwealth could be said to represent one of the first great phenomena of “globalization of culture” in the double meaning of “conquest and hegemony” over the countries that were gradually annexed, but also, conversely, the conquest and penetration of cultural elements from the annexed countries towards the motherland, following the ancient principle of Horace which can be paraphrased as “Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit”: England brought to the conquered lands language, institutions -the parliament, above alladministrative structures, but also fashions and customs and great mass phenomena: politics, for example- if it is true that the governing classes in the former colonies, with Gandhi as example, studied and were educated in British-run schools or even directly in England. Or, the fact that one of the first labour federations to be founded was the Federation of Australian Builders in 1856. Or, let us never forget, sport: not so much football as rugby- in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa this sport became part of national identity- or cricket in India and Pakistan. At the same time, the conquered countries penetrated England with their products: tea, silk, tobacco, opium, rum, and all that we see today in a city such as London, an expression of globalization in the grand mix of flavours, aromas, and colours that characterize it. All this is the final result of a process which has accelerated in the last decades but which started long ago, and which characterizes England for that particular mixture of traditional conservatism and exoticism and openness towards the new which is able to ensure dynamism. To talk about cultural assets of the Commonwealth

Looking to Other Areas: Cultural Heritage in Areas Outside of Europe

123

means to also talk about the specific relationship between English hegemony and specificity of the individual countries, verifying how much each nation has maintained its own characteristics under the guise of “Anglicization”. Finally, it also means to examine what the Commonwealth has become today, and what has become of its patrimony of culture and tradition, and what role it plays today. It could be said that the construction of a “cultural identity within the Commonwealth” begins with the same affirmation of a culture of museums, of collections, of preservation, typical of the 19th-20th centuries, when also Great Britain sees the emergence of a sensibility connected to positivistic culture and the “gathering” of objects considered worthy of preservation. The British Museum, which after the Napoleonic campaigns accumulates pieces coming from Egyptian digs, is the most famous case, but not the only one. Nevertheless, with respect to the historical experience of protection proposed by Great Britain - a highly decentralized administration, a significant role of private associations (above all the National Trust), and municipalities - the experience that little by little the very same colonial administration introduced in the annexed countries was different and was adjusted to the particular conditions of the acquired territory. We will now look at two examples. The first is related to the organization of protection of cultural assets of India, linked to the general law passed by the colonial government in 1878. This law regulated the discovery, the cataloguing, and the preservation of those finds which were indeed called “Indian treasures” and which were identified as: Every object of value hidden under or deposited on the ground.

Furthermore, as a significant step, coherent with the dominant liberal ideology emanating from London, the law also defined as collector Every salaried functionary in charge of a district, and every functionary appointed by the local government in the role of “collector”,

together with the owner, a qualification attributed to whomever had title over things considered as treasures. The law then established a system of control over the objects discovered, through notification of the district functionary or that of the government, along with the obligation of depositing the object at the local treasury, or, alternately, the obligation of the owner to guarantee display of the object to the functionary if and when requested by the same. There also existed penal laws against dispersion

124

Chapter Six

and trade, and laws regulating how the object could be acquired by the government, thus becoming public property. Much less liberal, significantly more articulated and pervasive, was the regime regulating digs and preservation of archaeological finds in Egypt, in accordance with the provisions promoted and obtained by the Minister of Public Works Ismail Sirry, and promulgated in Cairo on 8 December 1912 within the framework of administrative reform introduced by the British governor Lord Kitchener. These were two administrative regulations constructed through application of the general law on antiquities, passed on 14 June 1912, regulating the market and exportation of antiquities, imposing rigid rules of administrative authorization. The first, The Guidelines for Exportation of Antiquities, established the obligation of administrative authorization for exportation via sea or via land of ancient objects. This authorization was subordinate to a form indicating, along with name, surname, and nationality of the applicant, the port or territorial crossing from which the object would exit the country. At the same time, the objects were examined by the General Service of Antiquities, based on an application accompanied by a list indicating the number of pieces, their nature, their dimensions, their purchase price, and their commercial value. The law further specified that permissible for export were exclusively objects of Egyptian antiquity of the period of the Pharaohs, Greco-Roman, Byzantine, or Coptic; the eventual presence of objects of other periods or styles would be grounds for denial of authorization. The law called also for a series of details of a technical nature for the purposes of guarantees for shipping and safeguarding of objects, valid both for shipment overland by railway, by sea, and even by postal courier. Analogous authorization from the Ministry of Public Works, given through the Service for Antiquities, upon favorable judgement of a Committee of Egyptologists, was necessary for digs, according to provision n° 52 – Guidelines for Excavations – emanated in the same circumstances. Given the aim of our subject, perhaps it is more interesting to see how the administration of cultural assets was organized in the aftermath of independence, highlighting first of all how the problems of cultural assets are connected to the construction of a complex relationship between the vestiges of the colonial past and the definition of a national identity. If we identify a second phase of a hypothetical periodization-after the “colonial” phase- of independence and adhesion of the various countries to the Commonwealth, we observe elements common among the various experiences of policy and legislation relative to cultural assets, along with specificities that become more and more accentuated. These dynamics are evident from two points of view: that of the content of the assets under

Looking to Other Areas: Cultural Heritage in Areas Outside of Europe

125

protection, and the type of action developed by the individual governments. In terms of contents, it is easy to see how the cultural assets of the member countries of the Commonwealth are marked by the recognition of “diversity as a resource”: diversity linked to the stratification of European culture on top of indigenous culture, and the multiple influences that over the course of centuries were consolidated and penetrated through migratory movements. Diversity is indicated as an element intrinsic to national identity: for example, in Canada, in South Africa, but also in many Caribbean countries. Taking a rapid look at a list of the assets and sites preserved and protected, gradually added to the inventory of cultural assets of each country, or observing the museum organization of the various countries, it appears evident how the preservation and protection apart from those natural sites recognized for their value- were aimed in two main directions: One of the crystallization of the colonial past as identity-shaping memory, the other the consideration of the pre-colonial past. Unlike the situation in those South American states which gradually obtained independence between the 19th and 20th centuries, where the colonial past was progressively submerged in favour of the rediscovery of an ‘indigenous purity” of the pre-columbian past, in the states under English colonial administration the cultural penetration of the motherland brought about the construction of a delicate and complex equilibrium between the British presence and the valorization of the specificities deriving from the previous epoch. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the case of intangible cultural assets. Consider the case of India: apart from the three national festivals of Independence Day, Republic Day, and Gandhi Jayanti, India, with its variety of cultural, religious, and philosophical influences, has more festivals than there are days on the calendar, nor should be forgotten the cuisine, today a point of reference of international culture. However, an equally interesting subject is that relative to the variety of cultural influences in South Africa, where the mixing of ancient legacies of the Khoisan, Bantu, and Nguni populations, together with the fruits of colonization, and the reciprocal exchanges with the other members of the Commonwealth, are particularly evident. The same could be said for Australian and New Zealand culture, and all this even without considering the complex issue of the diversity of cultural assets of the various countries of the vast African continent. But the communal references that lead this diversity back to the Commonwealth are equally evident. To offer one example, in the Commonwealth countries, 11 November is celebrated as Armistice Day, with a liturgical ritual in honour of the fallen of the Great War. While certainly present in other European countries as well, such as France and Germany, significant

126

Chapter Six

is the fact that it is a liturgy introduced by George V. Consider also that the national rugby teams of the Commonwealth feature a poppy on their uniform, symbol of belonging to the Commonwealth, and of peace. Speaking of sport, consider that India entered the “elite club” of cricketplaying countries as early as 1932, and the massive expansion of the game after independence makes it today the most popular sport of the country. As regards the relationship between diversity and communal elements, the Commonwealth took notice so as to define shared rules that nevertheless do not infringe on the autonomy of organizational systems of safeguarding of each country. Thus, while each country has its own system, which today tends increasingly to adapt to common international models influenced by directives from Unesco, the Commonwealth has introduced some elements of regulation of relationships among members, the principle of which is the framework of regulation for the return of valuable objects rediscovered in one country but belonging to another, approved in 1993 in Mauritius. In some cases even more rigid frameworks and rules have been introduced to protect the assets of a single country, such as happened with the introduction of a list of protected assets in Australia in 2004, or still again, the improvements to the organizational system of protection in Canada. Ultimately, what then is the Commonwealth and what role can it play in today’s world? Apart from the various initiatives that the Secretary of the Commonwealth carries out to encourage exchange and trade among member states, both for promotion, and for finance, the feature which is particularly striking about the Commonwealth is the power of an example of “global governance of culture” which is supported by the recognition of certain communal elements of identity but with full respect for diversity and national specificity. In this sense, the Commonwealth seems today to have become above all a “cultural sensibility” which nevertheless allows the various member countries to recognize a common trait which also gives strength to their national identity. The Commonwealth may thus be put forth as an example of successful cultural diplomacy: in its mixture of races, languages, religions, customs, habits, and traditions, the Commonwealth offers a model for management of the complexity of the modern world.

INDEX OF NAMES Allegri, Giuseppe, 89n, Alpa, Guido, 8n, Balzani, Roberto, 25n, Banck, Alice, 81n, Bekemans, Léonce, 104n, Bertacchini, Enrico, 2n, Biscaretti di Ruffia, Paolo, 55n, Blume, Lawrence, E., 7n, Bobbio, Luigi, 68n, 70n, Bottai, Giuseppe, 50, 64 Brandt, Willy, 78, Bravo, Giangiacomo, 2n, Bronzini, Giuseppe, 89n, Brunetti, Giorgio, 18n, Buzio, Aldo, 2n, Cantalamessa, Giulio, 51, Cappè, Francesco, 95n, Cecchi, Roberto, 68n, Ceruti, Mario, 89n, Checkel, Jeffrey, 103n, Cofrancesco, Giovanni, 25n, 26n, Conte, Giuseppe, 8n, Contogeorgios, Georgios, 101n, Croce, Benedetto, 50, Daly, Martin W., 41n, Darwin, John, 120n, D’Agostino, Francesco, 9n, D’Andrade, Alfredo, 51, De Gaulle, Charles, 80, Degl’Innocenti, Maurizio, 95n, De Miranda, Francisco, 36, De Mauro, Tullio, 3en, Desideri, Carlo, 52n, 74n, Di Gregorio, Valentina, 8n, Di Stefano, Mariangela, 26n, Drake, Francis, 37, Durlauf, Steven, N., 7n, Dwyer, Larry, 20n, Emanuele,Emmanuele, Francesco, Maria, 18n, Failla, Donatella, 34n,

Fiorillo, Mario, 88n, Fligstein, Neil, 103n, Foà, Sergio, 25n, Forsyth, Peter, 20n, Fusaro, Diego, 8n, Galland, Olivier, 90n, Garner, Bryan, 6en, Genscher, Hans-Dietrich, 78, Giannini, Massimo, Severo, 68n, Göring, Hermann, 76, Greco, Maurizio, 26n, Harrison, David, 7n, Hill, Octavia, 53, Hitchkook, Michael, 7n, Hobsbawm, Eric, John, 24n, 119, Horga, Ioan, 102n, Humboldt, Wilhelm, von, 49, Hunter, Robert, 53, Imparato, Emma, 52n, 74n, Italia, Salvatore, 92n, 94n, Katzenstein, Peter, 103n, Kitchener, Horace, Herbert, 41, Kohl, Helmut, 87, Lagache, Serge, 68n, Landuyt, Ariane, 101n, Lemel, Yannick, 90n, Lenzerini, Federico, 9n, 10n, Lixinski, Lucas, 11n, 12n, 15n, Malraux, Andrè, 80, Marrelli, Massimo, 2n, Marsh, George, Perkins, 49, Mazzei, Vincenzo, 56n, Merkouri, Melina, 98, Mogos, Adrian, 102n, Morin, Edgar, 89n, Morris, William, 30, Mortati, Costantino, 54en, Murphy, David, 114n, Nocera, Raffaele, 35n, Panzera, Antonio, Filippo, 48, Papa, Anna, 1en,

128 Parpagliolo, Luigi, 51, Pasquinucci, Daniele, 102en, Patin, Valery, 68n, Perfetti, Ubaldo, 8n, Peterson, Mark, 7n, Piccioni, Luigi, 50n, Pierandrei, Franco, 55n, Preda, Daniela, 102n, Rava, Luigi, 50, Rawnsley, Conan, Hardwick, 53, Re, Alessio, 2n, Ricci, Corrado, 51, Rispoli, Maurizio, 18n, Ritter, Gerhard, 52, Rolland, Denis, 101n, Romeo Garre, Teresa, 70n, Rosadi, Giovanni, 30, 30,

Index of Names Rossi, Pietro, 90n, Santagata, Walter, 2n, Schraffl, Igino, 5, 6n, Sirry, Ismail, 41, 124, Sondergaard, Mikael, 7n, Toepfer, Alfred, 77, Traversa, Antonio, 56n, Trento, Angelo, 35n, Trimarchi, Michele, 2n, Ulbricht, Walter, 79, Vaiano, Diego, 8n, Vrdoljiak, Ana, Filipa, 9n, 11n, Weiner, Douglas, R., 80en, Wienitschke, Hugo, 78, Wiessner, Siegfried, 10n, Zachwatovicz, Jan, 71n.