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English Pages 366 Year 2022
FORGING ARCHITECTURAL TRADITION
Explorations in Heritage Studies Series Editors: Ali Mozaffari, Deakin University David Charles Harvey, Aarhus University Explorations in Heritage Studies responds directly to the rapid growth of heritage scholarship and recognizes the trans-disciplinary nature of research in this area, as reflected in the wide-ranging fields, such as archaeology, geography, anthropology and ethnology, digital heritage, heritage management, conservation theory, physical science, architecture, history, tourism and planning. With a blurring of boundaries between art and science, theory and practice, culture and nature, the volumes in the series balance theoretical and empirical research, and often challenge dominant assumptions in theory and practice. Volume 4 Forging Architectural Tradition National Narratives, Monument Preservation and Architectural Work in the Nineteenth Century Edited by Dragan Damjanović and Aleksander Łupienko Volume 3 Walls and Gateways Contested Heritage in Dubrovnik Celine Motzfeldt Loades Volume 2 Heritage Movements in Asia Cultural Heritage Activism, Politics, and Identity Edited by Ali Mozaffari and Tod Jones Volume 1 Politics of Scale New Directions in Critical Heritage Studies Edited by Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Suzie Thomas and Yujie Zhu
FORGING ARCHITECTURAL TRADITION National Narratives, Monument Preservation and Architectural Work in the Nineteenth Century
8 Edited by
Dragan Damjanović and Aleksander Łupienko
berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com
First published in 2022 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2022 Dragan Damjanović and Aleksander Łupienko All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Damjanović, Dragan, 1978- editor. | Łupienko, Aleksander, 1980editor. Title: Forging architectural tradition : national narratives, monument preservation and architectural work in the nineteenth century / edited by Dragan Damjanović and Aleksander Łupienko. Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2022. | Series: Explorations in heritage studies ; volume 4 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021042544 (print) | LCCN 2021042545 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800733374 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800733381 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Nationalism and architecture--Europe--History--19th century. | Collective memory--Europe--History--19th century. | Architecture--Conservation and restoration--Europe--History--19th century. | Architecture and history--Europe. Classification: LCC NA2543.N38 F67 2022 (print) | LCC NA2543.N38 (ebook) | DDC 720.94/09034--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021042544 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021042545 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-80073-337-4 hardback ISBN 978-1-80073-338-1 ebook
Contents 8
List of Figures and Tables Introduction. Forging Architectural Tradition Aleksander Łupienko
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Part I. Architectural Conservation and National Narratives Chapter 1. The Cathedral of Citizenship: Race and National Identity in Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’s Work and Discourse Bérénice Gaussuin
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Chapter 2. Identity Written in Stone? Gothicizing Renovation of Estonian Churches at a Second Glance (1820–1940) Kristina Jõekalda
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Chapter 3. Architecture as a Weapon: The Gothic and the National Ideal in Nineteenth-Century Polish Discourse Aleksander Łupienko
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Chapter 4. Before and after Emile-André Lecomte du Nouÿ, or the Birth of National Style in Romanian Architecture Anda-Lucia Spânu
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Chapter 5. On the Articulation and Popularization of Christian Built Heritage: Representing National Continuity in Nineteenth-Century Athens Georgios Karatzas
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Part II. Styles for the Nation and State Chapter 6. Creating a Monument to Kaiser Wilhelm I in Berlin: Historicist Architecture and Tensions between National and Dynastic Identities Douglas Klahr
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Chapter 7. History, National Identity and Architecture in the Last Royal Palaces in Europe (1861–1930): Turin, Budapest, Bucharest175 Paolo Cornaglia Chapter 8. Renaissance Architecture and the Search for the Hungarian National Style in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Gábor György Papp Chapter 9. Vernacular versus Historical: National Style(s) in the Architecture of Austro-Hungarian Croatia Dragan Damjanović
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Part III. The Appropriation of Heritage(s) Chapter 10. Architectural Heritage in the National Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Russia: Kazan Antiquities Gulchachak Nugmanova Chapter 11. Hungarian Nation-Building and the Use of Medieval Archaeology: Interpreting the Székesfehérvár Excavations in the Nineteenth Century Andrea Kocsis Chapter 12. The Architectural Heritage of Silesia in the Purview of Prussian History (1740–1918) Monika Ewa Adamska Chapter 13. Madonna del Pascolo: Ruthenian Heritage in Baroque Rome and the Development of the National Church of the Ukrainians (1640s–1960s) Anatole Upart Afterword. For the Glory of Nation: Architectural Heritage in Nineteenth-Century Europe Dragan Damjanović
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Index341
8 Figures and Tables Figures 0.1. Cologne Cathedral immediately after its erection. Wooden engraving from the Illustrated London News (October 1880). Public domain, source: polona.pl.
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1.1. Faces drawn by Viollet-le-Duc for several chapters of Histoire de l’habitation humaine. Paris: Hetzel, 1875.
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1.2. The city hall and the cathedral in Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle. Paris: B. Bance, A. Morel, vol. 6, 1863, and vol. 3, 1858.
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2.1a–b. (a) August Philipp Clara, Tartu Cathedral after the works supervised by architect Johann Wilhelm Krause in the early 1800s: the chancel redesigned as university library and ruined section partly conserved. Aquatint, 1821. Estonian History Museum, Tallinn, G 6736. (b) Krause’s new elevation from 1820 (unrealized), attempting to house a church and museum in the cathedral ruins as well. Original lost, reproduction: Paris, Olga. ‘Johann Wilhelm Krause’. MA thesis, University of Tartu, 1943. Available at University of Tartu library.
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2.2. Booklet celebrating the re-inauguration of Tallinn St. Olaf ’s Church after the fire of 1820 and the following renovation. Back and front cover of the Oratory Devoted to the Inauguration of the Renewed St. Olaf ’s Church in Reval on Trinity Sunday, 16 June 1840 (Reval: Lindforsʼ Erben [1840]). Lithographs by the workshop of Friedrich Wilhelm Macdonald. Tallinn City Museum, 4113 Dp.
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2.3a–b. (a) View of the chancel of St. Nicholas’ Church, Tallinn, showing the result of the 1840s renovation along with Johann Gottfried Exner’s new window traceries. Photo postcard Reval – Nicolai Kirche by Frères Christins (Hans and Jaan Christin), ca. 1900. Tallinn City Museum, F 7770:3. (b) Western portal of St. John’s Church, Tartu: uncovering the terracotta sculptures under the supervision of architect Wilhelm Bockslaff. Photographer unknown, ca. 1900. Estonian History Museum, F 16977. 60–61 3.1. Adolf Friedrich Dietrich, Cathedral Church of St. John in Warsaw as restructured by Adam Idźkowski. Steel engraving, 1845. Public domain, source: polona.pl.
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3.2. Krakow Jagiellonian University, Collegium Maius, as renovated by Karol Kremer. Photo published by Verlag von Kutrzeba & Murczynski, 1895. Public domain, source: polona.pl.
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4.1. Henri Trenk, Royal Church in Curtea de Argeș, 1861. Romanian Academy Library, public domain.
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4.2. Auguste Raffet, Three Holy Hierarchs Monastery in Iași, 1837. Romanian Academy Library, public domain.
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5.1. The Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens overshadowing the restored eleventh-century Church of Theotokos Gorgoepikoos and Agios Eleutherios (little Metropolis) on the right, 2018. © Georgios Karatzas.
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5.2. The main entrance of the restored Soteira Lykodemou Church, 2018. © Georgios Karatzas.
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6.1a–b. (a) Berlin, Nationaldenkmal Wilhelm I postcard. Publisher unknown, ca. 1900. (b) Detail of Berlin inner-city map, Baedeker Guide to Northern Germany, Karl Baedeker, 1920, 9. Juxtaposition of the images and tinting of the map by Douglas Klahr.
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6.2a–b. (a) Halle an der Saale, Kaiser Wilhelm Denkmal postcard. Leipzig, Louis Glasser, 1907, public domain. (b) Detail of Halle city map, Northern Germany as far as the Bavarian and Austrian Frontiers. Handbook for Travellers. Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1910, 250, public domain. Juxtaposition of the images and tinting of the map by Douglas Klahr.
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Figures and Tables • ix
7.1. Emilio Stramucci, Turin, Royal Palace, the New Wing (today, Galleria Sabauda), 1899–1903. Photo by Hairless Heart, 2019. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0. Wikimedia Commons, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Galleria_ Sabauda_dai_Giardini_Reali.jpg.180 7.2. Alajos Hauszmann, Royal Palace, Budapest. The western forecourt with the façade of the Grand Ballroom, 1900, old postcard ante 1918. Photo by Károly Divald the younger. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
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8.1. Jenő Kismarty Lechner, teacher-training college (today Campus Sárospatak, Eszterházy Károly University) built in 1909–14. Creative Commons BY 3.0 (Source: Wikipedia, Photo: Attila Brunner).206 9.1. Chapel in Gustelnica built in 1887–88 according to Herman Bollé’s designs, 2010. © Dragan Damjanović.
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9.2. Church of St. Blasius in Zagreb built in 1911–14 according to Viktor Kovačić’s designs, 2015. © Dragan Damjanović.
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10.1. Alexander Schmidt, Bulgarian Monuments of the 13–14th Century, 1827. Watercolour. From the album Arhitekturnye chertezhi razvalin Drevnih Bolgar, snyaty s natury v 1827 g. arhitektorom A. Shmidtom, Moscow, 1832.
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10.2. Edward Tracy Turnerelli, Kazan fortress, 1837. Lithograph. From the album Views of Kazan, drawn from nature by Edward Turnerelli, London, 1839. Wikimedia Commons, public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TURNERELLI(1854)_ p1.010_Fortress_of_Kazan_(Kremlin).jpg.253 11.1. The so-called Ruin-garden and the remains of the Basilica in Székesfehérvár, 2017. © Andrea Kocsis.
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12.1. Nineteenth-century Silesia superimposed on the current state borders. © Monika Ewa Adamska.
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12.2. Town hall in Opole. The nineteenth-century building supervised by K.F. Schinkel at the front. The part erected in the 1930s at the rear, 2021. © Jan Franciszek Adamski. 302 13.1. View of SS. Sergio e Bacco, Rome, 2017. © Anatole Upart.
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13.2. Interior of the church of SS. Sergio e Bacco, Rome, 2017. © Anatole Upart.
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Table 11.1. Royal virtues assigned to the artefacts during the reburial of Béla III. © Andrea Kocsis (based on Békefi, ‘III. Béla temetése’, 290–91).280
8 INTRODUCTION Forging Architectural Tradition Aleksander Łupienko
The volume that the readers hold in their hands deals with the issue of nineteenth-century architectural heritage as a means of strengthening or creating modern national identity. It is not so much about the monuments themselves, their forms and styles – though these issues are also addressed – but rather more about texts, narratives and discourse connected to their perception and evaluation by elite groups of nationalizing nineteenth-century societies in the selected states and regions. In other words, it is about the shifting meanings imposed upon them by nationalist, social actors. It is also about the past being evoked for the needs of the present, which is close to the issues of collective memory and identity. That is why this issue may be, and often is, discussed from the standpoint of various sciences and scholarly approaches. The most relevant seems to be the whole branch of heritage studies, which is concentrated on the issues of perceiving, managing and using material remnants of the past throughout human history – and this volume may be regarded as a contribution to this field. Nationalism as a social force in the period in question has been subject to analysis for decades. To remind the reader about the most important lines of intellectual division, we should invoke the issue of the primordial versus constructed nature of nations,1 or the issue of nations having their roots mainly in the field of cultural and ethnic differences or in the political sphere of state activity and reality.2 The nature of nations as groups and the whole human identity has also been thematized. The authors of the volume do not analyse nationalism as such; its topic encompasses one of the aspects of nation-building, connected to shaping space and identifying historical objects present in it.
2 • Aleksander Łupienko
Writing about identification instead of identity is crucial here. To be sure, some anthropologists now tend to avoid the latter term for it sounds too static and entails an implicit interpretation of selfhood as something given and unchanging.3 In the case of structures in space, there is obviously no talk of identity even though scholars of heritage studies do use the term ‘place identity’ (see below). Identification as a constant process, not obvious in terms of defining the self,4 may well explain this and is more suited as an analytical tool to examine meanings in space. The social identification of monuments from the past and new buildings designed in historical styles in the nineteenth century forms in itself part of the policy of the national elites in nationalizing societies to define the groups to which they belonged. Analogically to monuments, which seldom had inscribed meanings, groups are perceived in the scholarship as – to some extent – products of social construction. To give one example, ethnic differences are not so much real as made to seem so.5 Ethnic or national identification is therefore a matter of imagining and maintaining symbolic boundaries, which, according to Richard Jenkins, implies a dialectic interplay between similarities and differences.6 Architectural objects, and also ‘ways of building’, i.e. the perceived and imagined traditional manner of transforming space and decorating architectural structures, played an important role in imagining and maintaining these symbolic boundaries – symbolic in the full meaning of the word, because symbols – which are abstract, imprecise and multifaceted – could be used as a unifying ‘umbrella’ ( Jenkins) to hide the real differences between people, who could ‘bestow their own meanings on and in’ them.7 Architectural monuments served as such unifying symbols (see figure 0.1) not only in the nineteenth century and not only in the region addressed in this volume, but the complicated realities of this region made them especially salient to these societies. Multi-ethnic, multicultural and multi-religious are the most common attributes assigned to Central Europe, part of the region in question, which served as the embodiment of the heterogeneity that dominated in nineteenth-century Europe in the transitional period between pre-nationalistic and nationalistic eras. As Craig Calhoun has pointed out, there was a seminal difference in the nature of Western and Eastern nationalisms, which stemmed from the real ethnic and religious differences in both societies.8 The situation in Eastern Europe was much more complicated, and the inter-ethnic boundaries were much less stable and clear. One scholar who did more than others to identify the complexity of the issue was Moritz Csáky. In his view, influenced by the Central-European context, culture is ‘essentially hybrid, a creolizing ensemble and at the same time transnational, translocal, transterritorial, fluid, and not homogeneous or essentialist’.9 Such hybridity and fluidity were characteristic features of Central Europe,
Figure 0.1. Cologne Cathedral immediately after its erection. Wooden engraving from the Illustrated London News (October 1880). Public domain, source: polona.pl.
Introduction • 3
4 • Aleksander Łupienko
and it is not hard to imagine that nationalism’s aims in the region were connected to social homogenization, which, although incompatible with the social reality,10 could in the view of Mark Haugaard be a refuge from ontological insecurity.11 To attain this goal, nationalism had to present itself as a natural emanation of culture, and culture had to be ‘reified’ – i.e. presented not as unstable, dynamic and in flux, as the editors of Understanding Multiculturalism would like it, but static and ready to be appropriated by the masses.12 To succeed in doing so, actors in nationalizing societies relied on the dual strategy of the nationalization of space and the naturalization of the nation in space. While the second phenomenon will be dealt with below, the former will be addressed here. Monuments from the past were not necessarily meant to be pillars of social integrity back in the time of their construction. Their main aim was very often practical – connected to, for example, military security – and even if many buildings conveyed integrational meanings, these meanings were connected to the state, or dynasty, not the nation. In many instances, their true meanings were unretrievable already in the nineteenth century. The aim of the authors of the sources examined in the current volume was much more creative than is sometimes assumed. It was to bring the realm of history, which was indeed ‘a foreign country’,13 closer to the present and bestow a new, clear nationalizing meaning on it. To be sure, this practice of bestowing meaning is processual in character and did not (and does not) always produce the anticipated results. It is often subject to contestation and negotiations, and also has a huge potential for exclusion – as do (and did) the national movements in themselves.
Cultural Memory To understand these notions, it is instructive to present yet another key to the interpretation of this volume’s topic, that of cultural memory. An important example of such an approach is, in my view, that proposed in the 1990s by Jan and Aleida Assmann in Germany – researchers who coined the whole term, which, in short, works similarly to individual memory but can be realized only institutionally and artificially through ages.14 It comprises everything that pertains to the issue of social recollection and the strengthening of social organizations like – as in the case of Jan Assmann’s interests – the ancient empires. The greatest advantage of this category is its flexibility and analytical potential in dealing with the historic instances of ‘management’ of the past. Also important is the relationship between memory and the past. Cultural memory has, according to Astrid Erll, a large capacity to reconstruct,15 which entails a strong relationship with the
Introduction • 5
present and its needs. The best approach will thus be to perceive heritage discourse not as an examination into the past but as the ‘present of the past’, to follow here Marie-Claire Lavabre,16 whose aim is moreover to form and secure the future. This future-oriented quality was attributed quite early on to the idea of nationhood: for the famous thinker José Ortega y Gasset, this idea, developed in the nineteenth century, was strongly connected with the ability to think prospectively.17 The reason for that may be simple: modern nationhood, as has become obvious to ‘modernist’ theoreticians of nationalism, was a product of the modern era, and thus had to be constructed as a future-oriented project. Whether one agrees with this or not, the context of the multi-ethnic, multicultural and multi-religious region in question demanded that the proponents of national ideals define their claims and provide the members of the respective national communities with a sense of cultural differentiation.18 Moreover, creating narration on historic monuments also occasionally amounted to a symbolic acquisition of territory. Territory, a political phenomenon that started to be explicitly discussed in the seventeenth century,19 could be symbolically conceived of as an area of sacred or nationally significant land in its entirety. Jan Assmann included this phenomenon in specific techniques of remembering, in which a single object, city or landscape could act as a ‘mnemotopos’, or a signifier.20 For Anthony D. Smith, territory forms one of the crucial sorts of cultural foundations of nations. As ethnic history may be appropriated by nationalists to connect the past and the present, memories may be ‘territiorialized’. Ethnies (or Smith’s proto-nations) can appear in such narratives as ‘naturalized’ parts of landscapes, intrinsic parts or ‘natural outgrowths’ of historic environments, and their monuments as ‘fixtures’ of their landscapes.21 This territory-oriented aspect is further developed in heritage studies. Heritage is always connected to a place, and creating narrations about monuments entails bringing about what some scholars call ‘place identity’.22 Indeed, the entire concept of heritage appeared alongside the modern national movement, and the signifying practices (i.e. bringing new meanings) performed by its proponents mark an intrinsic feature of the movement.23 Such objects, or territorial markers, could act as a medium of the symbolic appropriation of a territory, helping to mark it as historically belonging to a nation – not necessarily just against the claims of another group or community but also as a message directed to someone’s own group.24 Occasionally, the whole territory of a nation state could be, similar to Assmann’s ‘mnemotopes’, regarded as a media of conveying national identity, as Kenneth R. Olwig has noted referring to the Swedish example.25 The eastern part of the defunct Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, lands lost by Byzantium to the Turks, territories appropriated by Russia from the Kazan Khanate – all of them
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may serve as examples of territories where pieces of acknowledged or contested heritage were located.
The Context of Scholarly Literature Current historiography tends sometimes to avoid the topic of nation-building, showing a trend of showcasing the anti-national or non-national tendencies in history – as in the works on the Habsburg Monarchy of Pieter Judson, Gary Cohen or Jeremy King.26 This does not however mean that the process of nation-building has been sufficiently examined. On the contrary, it is still an important field of study – especially so as a broader spectrum of phenomena related to nation-building still awaits to be addressed, and comparative studies of nationalism should be continued. Our goal is to fill some of the deficiencies in the study of nation-building, by tracing back some of its cultural aspects. It combines the analyses of nation-formation with architectural history and heritage studies, and also makes some inroads into the field of memory studies (see below). The authors in this volume thematize the issue of place identity with all of its unifying potential, claim that space is not culturally neutral and treat the heritage discussed in a handful of chapters as a sort of knowledge in line with the arguments presented several years ago by the authors of Pluralising Pasts.27 The authors also show that defining, discussing and narrating monuments in the nineteenth century can be conceived of as a common cultural practice similar to public celebrations and the unveiling of statues, as has been shown in the volume Staging the Past.28 Their studies in the following chapters also analyse the ideas accompanying the architectural history of the nineteenth century. They bring the context of the debates, arguments used and proposals given by the relevant social actors, who included proponents of national movements, politicians and journalists as well as artists, architects and conservationists. In this respect, the chapters are informed by a long history of research into the forms and meanings of the built environment. The origins of scholarly investigations into the issue of tradition and historical thinking in architecture date back to the interwar period,29 if not the end of the nineteenth century, but a more recent and deeper interest in the problems of historic references and forming collective identities through the built environment comes from the late 1960s and the beginnings of the demise of modernistic visions. The first reflections expressed by the proponents of what was finally to emerge as a postmodern way of thinking went hand in hand with a new need to understand the Historicist thinking that has dominated minds since the nineteenth century. Among the scholars
Introduction • 7
who went that way was Sir John Summerson, who in 1963 gave a popular lecture on how Classical architecture should be ‘read’, drawing attention to the forgotten values embedded in the Historicist language of forms.30 Robin Middleton, in his lecture twenty years later entitled The use and abuse of tradition in architecture, described in more detail nineteenth-century Historicist imaginary, arguing for a still deeper understanding of Historicist thinking.31 In Germany, the first sign of the change of heart regarding Historicist architecture came in 1960, when Werner Hofmann published his book Das irdische Paradies, wherein he argued that in order to understand the nineteenth century we have to understand the perception of history at that time.32 What took place later was the creation of a new historical perspective. Historicism as symptom of the new human consciousness of its historical specificity, in opposition to the natural world, was perceived as a new quality – including in the history of art. The issue of architectural conservation, although researched and described throughout the twentieth century as an important practical and technical activity, also gained new depth. Historians examined the tensions between schools of conservation, along with their entanglement in nineteenth-century ideals and trends. But it was the studies of modernity that lent new momentum to the research. Miles Glendinning argued that the conservation movement, although presenting itself as interested in the past, was a clear symptom of modernity and a pillar of the modern transformation of architecture.33 New attempts at depicting the international (mainly Western) history of the conservation movement followed in form of the books written by Jukka Jokilehto and the aforementioned Miles Glendinning.34 A more detailed look at the issues concerning conservation and restoration, with a link to the national imaginary, was also included in books on early German,35 Austrian36 and Polish37 conservation.
The Historical Context of the Volume The idea of the volume is connected to the current scholarship on conservation conceived of as a cultural phenomenon, and brings new contexts for further research as well as new keys of interpretation. It offers the perspective of nations and states outside of what is commonly defined as the ‘West’ of Europe. The majority of chapters are related to the broad belt in Central and broadly defined Eastern Europe, stretching from the southeast (Greece), through the Balkans north to Russia and to today’s Estonia. That provides historians with new points of reference and more material for comparison. This material is enriched by a fresh look at the ideas related to Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’s restoration philosophy.
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The authors start from the presumption that the approach towards the built heritage is entangled with deeper processes and social change, and with the transformation of political ideals. The central phenomenon here was the issue of national architectural heritage. From ancient times, rulers have borrowed and appropriated the symbols of prior regimes and chronologically distant cultures.38 This remodelling was based on elements that were already present in the discourse and also physically present in the landscape, to which also belonged the architectural monuments of a region or state. In order that a monument ceased to be a mere object in space left by previous generations, sometimes far back in history, and became something close to the contemporaries’ thoughts, it had to be re-narrated, re-actualized or invented anew by an elite group of the ‘guardians of a nation’, to borrow the term from a book by Pieter Judson.39 The practice of creating this heritage at the institutional level became possible in the nineteenth century, the century of developed bureaucratic states. These states became communities of a new type, whose legitimacy was based not only on dynastic tradition but also on a national ideal. A national policy towards the conservation of monuments was of high importance here, as it set new narratives regarding heritage and its role in the final vision of the nation. This vision could be supported by the cultural–artistic narratives related to the Enlightenment, based on order and ancient legitimacy, or a more romantic ideal of the presupposed medieval nationhood, which could be based on the Gothic style. They were followed by the newly established states, e.g. in South-Eastern Europe, which are subject to analysis in this volume. It was however a pan-European trend. The long-established nation states, such as those united under the British crown, expressed the need for identity-building in the early nineteenth century, in which the Gothic Revival of ca. 1820–40 played a crucial role – being the harbinger of what was explicitly called the ‘English style’ (in a new, modern meaning of the term) in the debates related to the building of the new Palace of Westminster.40 The question of whether the debates concerning the Gothic Revival in Britain were a symptom of modern nation-building or rather a sign of an escape from modernity will not be answered here, as it suffices to say that ‘forging the architectural tradition’ had its roots also in Western Europe.
An Outline of the Volume The example of France and the leading conservationist Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc in Bérénice Gaussuin’s chapter can be treated as a model approach to the monuments of the past. In his highly theorized writings, Viollet-le-Duc attempted to reconstruct not only the country’s imperfectly
Introduction • 9
preserved architectural monuments but also ancient French society as such, based on substantial a priori knowledge supported by racial presumptions. It was positivistic philosophy, with its biological leanings, that lent him arguments for his visions about what the medieval builders had allegedly had in mind when building a cathedral or a town hall. The resulting well-known practice of purifying monuments might be seen as one of the successful methods of supporting the collective identity around such early grands travaux as the restoration of churches and castles according to their supposed original appearance, which later gained in importance in the German states. The work of Viollet-le-Duc amounted to the forging of a national style, a style that stemmed from his clear vision of medieval French society as intrinsically democratic and racially valuable. Both topics are also present in the other chapters. Almost all the rest of the case studies in this volume relate to the conservationist debates and architecture of identity in various European states and empires. The conservationist debates revolved around certain issues, which could bear striking resemblances to one another in different ethnic and political contexts. The issue on which the authors dwell more broadly comprises the age-old dependencies between the centres and peripheries in Europe. In the exemplary discussions described in this volume, the topic of cultural orientation plays a crucial role. This orientation, defined here within the confines of identity-building stylized as (geo)political statements regarding the patterns and templates to be followed in the sphere of culture, clearly affected political systems and alliances – as was the case for those nations that gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century: Greece or Romania. This cultural orientation could serve as a shield against possible assimilation into the wider political bodies of an empire, in itself subject to nationalizing discourses at that time. Here, the case of nineteenth-century Hungary, described by Andrea Kocsis, should be noted, wherein tension between the imperial and the national could be seen in the discourse accompanying the excavations around architectural monuments, or the nineteenth-century Kingdom of Poland, where cultural orientation towards the Roman Catholic West was a useful tool in assuring the success of building national culture, as in the chapter by Aleksander Łupienko. The tension and connections between centres and peripheries also hint at the other side of the coin – namely, the problem of the rejection of ideals resonating from the centre. Russian cultural policy is a case in point. The cultural-political orientation towards the West initiated during the reign of Peter I, although supported by Western sympathizers in the nineteenth century, was challenged by new forms of orientation and identity like the Slavophile defence of the ‘old’ Russian traditions. The multidirectional,
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changing ideal of the tsarist discourse of sociopolitical legitimation also included an attempt to embrace the idea of the oriental as a counterweight, or at least as an additional component of cultural orientation. As Gulchachak Nugmanova argues in her chapter, the oriental context of the capital of the Kazan Khanate brought fresh momentum to the official discourse of legitimation, supported here by the new architecture of the nationalizing Russian Empire. New churches and the preservation of ruins from the time of the Khanate, conquered in the sixteenth century, could be seen as a new stage for the show of imperial strength, along with a new vision of the cultural foundations of the Russian state – and nation. The oriental context was, however, more often used as a cultural stigma, an alleged feature of a national culture that had to be neutralized by expressions of strong and direct bonds with the (Western) centre. The stronger the stigma, the more direct were the methods of cooperation with the centre, as Anda-Lucia Spânu shows when describing the commissions placed by the Romanian Government with the French architect and conservationist Emile-André Lecomte du Noüy. Both the Romanians and the Greeks joined the mission of unequivocal rejection of the oriental stigma when asserting their place on the cultural map of Western Europe. But as the Romanian example shows, this cooperation with the centre brought a reciprocal reaction on the part of younger architects, who wanted to create a new, local architecture that would express the national distinctiveness. In this sense, cultural policy towards architectural monuments could also be seen as a utopian ideal, which tightly combines sociopolitical development with culture. The claimed relationship between the architecture – which is perceived, researched, preserved or remodelled – and the social profile of a society could venture further towards the conclusion that changing meanings related to historic objects, which is publicly supported and connected to the national ideal, may indeed in the future change society itself. This utopia can be seen in the light of the nationalizing narrations presented here, and also draws our attention to the fact that nations were not necessarily perceived as ready and coherent products of history but were, rather, historically conditioned ‘conglomerates’ of ethnicities that had to be internally remodelled. Finally, the issue of state borders should be mentioned because they had a huge impact on the actions taken regarding historic monuments. Ethnic boundaries were, in the given period, never fully in accord with state ones – and sometimes they differed markedly. State institutions devoted to the conservation of national heritage could function only within the confines of the state, and this resulted in particular regions with similar cultural heritage being treated differently. We can note the example of Greece, where the policy towards its ancient and medieval heritage was implemented
Introduction • 11
on a constantly expanding territory, and those monuments still located within the Ottoman Empire could not be included. The same pertains to Latvia, not covered in this volume, where a significant part of the land inhabited by the Latvian population lay outside the Livonian guberniia, where autonomous institutions could take care of them.41 In addition, the land of the defunct Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was under the rule of three different regimes, and it was only the Austrian part that had any sort of autonomy after the 1860s. Historians, archaeologists and architects from Galicia could develop a better policy to protect the monuments, and they also felt responsible for the heritage of the whole early modern Commonwealth. In the Russian partition, however, modern institutional forms of conservation were only able to appear after the revolution of 1905. Finally, Prussia–Germany serves as another case in point, but in reverse. The Silesian provinces of this state, acquired through the war of 1740, added numerous valuable monuments (churches, palaces, whole towns), examples of Habsburg Baroque, to what became later its cultural treasury. The monuments were at first often put to practical use (e.g. secularized monasteries), and later had to be managed, conserved and connected to the state’s other, mainly non-Catholic, heritage – as shown in the chapter by Monika Adamska. The second pillar on which the volume rests is the issue of nineteenthcentury Historicism and, more broadly, historical imaginary. People of the era were ‘enchanted’ by history, as Friedrich Nietzsche once put it in his essay ‘On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life’.42 That criticism reflected the fact that the century in question was a time when intellectuals in the West realized their own historicity, i.e. belonging to the realm of linear history, in which mankind could find its fullest expression and leave traces of its existence, and not to the realm of nature with its cyclicality. This category of historic imaginary must be taken into account for several reasons, not least because of the fact that architectural design was conceived of as a higher form of human creativity, connected more with art than with technical–utilitarian skills (which were reserved more for engineers, trained at polytechnics). But, besides its purely aesthetic role, a new potential for strengthening identity was acknowledged by architects and their patrons. Viewed as such, architecture was supposed to draw inspiration from the past not so much for aesthetic reasons but to make use of the ‘present of the past’. This leads me to a new locus of architectural creativity and also to greater sensitivity to the issues of historical borrowings in architecture. The new issue of style emerged, conceived of as a complex set of artistic rules resulting not only from the artistic but also from the cultural and social backgrounds of the countries and regions concerned. Therefore, the category of national specificities found a new field of expression as architecture
12 • Aleksander Łupienko
started to be seen as the evocation of a nation, and thus could be called, as mentioned above, an architecture of identity. Interestingly, in this way architecture can be viewed as forming part of the currently still widely discussed issue of inventing traditions. The case studies analysed here amount to the conclusion that these ‘traditions’, i.e. the deliberately chosen elements from the vocabulary of historical architectural forms, were in fact taken from the real substance of the historical monuments in a particular territory – thus, they were not so much pure ‘constructions’. Another aspect of the rising historical imagination was connected to nostalgia. This category may help to explain the emergence of the need for cultivating memory. Nostalgic sentiments, which could already be traced back to the overall intellectual climate of the Enlightenment, amounted within time to the Romantic turn in the approaching nineteenth century – especially in the northern part of Europe. In Britain, this climate led to the rise of the Gothic Revival and ‘liberal’ instincts in the arts, though not in politics. The climate of admiration for the builders of the Gothic cathedrals was transplanted to Germany with the help of artists and writers.43 It continued into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, where direct inspiration also came from Britain in the form of an aristocratic ‘anglomania’, and was later adapted to the needs of a nation without a state after 1795. Here, the practices of building cultural memory developed in order to counter the more pessimistic visions of ‘finis Poloniae’, or the end of Poland. It also found reflection in forms of romantic nostalgia, which were partly based on the ‘mnomotopes’ or historic monuments scattered around the territories of the then-defunct Commonwealth. This nostalgia permeated the discourse of art history. Additionally, the general character of the history of ‘national’ art was being questioned, as mirrored in the theories of continuity or rupture in the architectural–historical process. Continuity was a useful category by which to depict architectural history in a longue durée perspective, wherein certain processes could be portrayed as temporal ruptures rather than more significant changes of vector – and thus could offer appropriate material for functional memory. On the other hand, using the category of rupture as the main interpretational key was an even more effective strategy, as Jan Assmann has noted. Here we can place all the ‘revivals’, which went hand in hand with national awakenings. Revival of ancient cultural traditions was at the heart of nineteenth-century architectural thought. An example of this is convincingly depicted in the chapter by Georgios Karatzas on the ‘medieval revival’ in the architecture of independent Greece. This discovery of the Christian roots of modern Greek art could be paralleled to a similar, earlier phenomenon of the ‘Classical Revival’, which appeared in Greece immediately after the war of independence. Architectural revivals also characterized the Hungarian
Introduction • 13
debates around monument preservation and the issue of choosing the best-suited periods in history (represented by the appropriate styles) for expressing national distinctiveness. Here, the chapter of Gábor Papp may be mentioned, as he describes this stage of architectural thought before the mature debates about the national style were to emerge, when the rising memory of architectural monuments and its product, the nationalizing narratives, were vital in forming the new historical consciousness. Bringing new quality into the current architectural sources of inspiration also characterized the seekers of the ‘true’ national style in Croatia, based on the tradition of wooden architecture and later medieval stonework, as can be seen in the chapter by Dragan Damjanović. Finally, it must be added that the revivalist cultural model only virtually implied a rupture, as the practice of reviving old traditions was simultaneously the practice of binding and connecting the past with the present. Examination of the monuments of the past, defining them as the heritage of a particular group or society, and institutionalizing functional memory by means of new historical and artistic societies, academia and schools amounted to changes in the network of meanings in space. Thus, architectural styles were perceived, described and evaluated not entirely on the basis of their physicality – proportions, construction and details – the image of the monuments of architecture was, rather, connected with and depended on the narratives accompanying it. In particular, if we look at Historicism and its vocabulary of forms and details, we can clearly see its limits. It is therefore worth stressing the potential of nationalizing narratives in establishing meanings and boosting the range of possible connotations, as opposed to the limited potential of bringing new meaning solely through additional architectural elements. As shown in the book by Michaela Marek, modernity and the national ideal brought a new network of meanings to art, including architecture, which – for its part – went into symbiosis with and strengthened Historicism as a modus operandi of architects.44 The nineteenth century was the time of these new nationalizing meanings, which started to compete with the more cosmopolitan connotations of built forms that had dominated before the ‘age of revolutions’. This problem permeates this volume as well. As the chapter by Kristina Jõekalda shows, the art-historical discourse of the Baltic Germans was conceptualized as an attempt to define their monuments culturally, which brought new national meanings to the art history of the region and to the selected church buildings that are the topic of her chapter. The chapter by Anatole Upart, for its part, highlights the example of one church in Rome that was subject to Ukrainian ‘nationalization’ by means of architectural details and interior solutions – thus, making it slightly less universal.
14 • Aleksander Łupienko
Bringing new meanings and connotations was also crucial for ongoing architectural activity in the nineteenth century. The chapters by Douglas Klahr and Paolo Cornaglia both deal with the issue of new, urban public monuments and architecture. Paolo Cornaglia gives context to the new royal palaces, wherein the national system of meanings intermingled with the royal (dynastic) one. The quest for the style of a royal seat simultaneously invoked the question of the national style. Interestingly, an additional question emerges about the interrelationship between political forms and the artistic language created to express them – particularly, to what extent the architectural eclecticism used in such royal investments followed the political forms of the new states. In the chapter by Douglas Klahr, the meaning of the actual location of a new monument also plays a significant role. To be sure, different urban quarters were symbolically and socially charged, but the author raises our awareness of the fact that precise sites bore meanings connected with the state and national or dynastic realm – as in case of locating the new monument to Wilhelm I. Aleksander Łupienko is Assistant Professor at the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. His research interests include the cultural history of urban space in Central and East-Central Europe, private and public space, the conservation movement and the history of Warsaw and Lviv in the nineteenth century. His publications include Kamienice czynszowe Warszawy 1864–1914 [Warsaw Apartment Houses 1864–1914] in 2015, Order in the Streets. The Political History of Warsaw’s Public Space in the First Half of the 19th Century in 2020 and numerous papers including in Urban History, Journal of Transnational History, Zeitschrift für Ostmittleuropa-Forschung, Acta Poloniae Historica and Mesto a Dejiny. He has led and participated in several research grants, and organized a cycle of conferences on various aspects of urban history. NOTES 1. It is sufficient to point to Gellner’s, Hobsbawm’s and Anderson’s work on the one hand, and Armstrong or Smith on the other. See Gellner, Nations and Nationalism; Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780; Anderson, Imagined Communities; Armstrong, Nations Before Nationalism; Smith, The Cultural Foundations of Nations. 2. See Smith, The Cultural Foundations of Nations; Breuilly, Nationalism and the State. 3. Malešević, ‘Identity’. 4. Jenkins, Social Identity, 9–15. 5. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 16. Breuilly also convincingly showed that the naturalness of ethnic groups, like the Kikuyu in Kenya, had to be constructed regardless of the social reality, Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 61.
Introduction • 15
6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.
Jenkins, Rethinking Ethnicity, 14. Jenkins, Social Identity, 136. Calhoun, Nationalism, 88. Csáky, ‘Culture as a Space’, 199. Ibid., see also Kedourie, Nationalism. Haugaard, ‘Nationalism and Modernity’, 135. Feichtinger and Cohen, Understanding Multiculturalism, 6; for reification of culture, see Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 124; for naturalization of the nation, see Balibar, ‘The Nation Form’, 96. Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country. Assmann, Cultural Memory, 9. Erll, Memory, 29. Lavabre, ‘Entre Mémoire et Histoire’. Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, 129. The often difficult consequences of these attempts to create nationally oriented cultural space in culturally mixed Central Europe is discussed in Csáky, Das Gedächtnis der Städte. See Elden, The Birth of Territory. Assmann, Cultural Memory, 44. Smith, The Cultural Foundations of Nations, 35–6. Place identity in the context of the national framing of heritage, see Graham and Howard, ‘Heritage and Identity’, 7. Ibid. McDowell, ‘Heritage, Memory and Identity’, 48. Olwig, ‘Natural Landscapes’. Numerous works of Judson were lately summed up in his opus magnum: see Judson, The Habsburg Empire. See also Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival, and the manifesto of Jeremy King: ‘The Nationalization of East-Central Europe’. Ashworth, Graham and Turnbridge, Pluralising Pasts, 6, 36, 63. Bucur and Wingfield, ‘Introduction’, in Staging the Past, 2. See, e.g. Clark, The Gothic Revival. Summerson, The Classical Language. Middleton, ‘The Use and Abuse of Tradition’. Hofmann, Das irdische Paradies. Glendinning, ‘The Conservation Movement’. Jokilehto, A History of Architectural Conservation; Glendinning, The Conservation Movement. Speitkamp, Die Verwaltung der Geschichte; Mohr de Pérez, Die Anfänge der staatlichen Denkmalpflege; Falser, Zwischen Identität und Authentizität. Frodl, Idee und Verwirklichung. Frycz, Restauracja i konserwacja. See Siwicki, Architectural Restoration and Heritage. Judson, Guardians of the Nation. Clark, The Gothic Revival, 114. Mārtiņš, ‘Latvia’s Architectural Heritage’. Middleton, ‘The Use and Abuse of Tradition’, 730. Robson-Scott, The Literary Background. Marek, Kunst und Identitätspolitik.
16 • Aleksander Łupienko
Bibliography Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Books, 1983. Armstrong, John A. Nations Before Nationalism. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Ashworth, Gregory J., Brian Graham and John E. Turnbridge. Pluralising Pasts: Heritage, Identity and Place in Multicultural Societies. London‒Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2007. Assmann, Jan. Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Balibar, Etienne. ‘The Nation Form: History and Ideology’, in Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, trans. Chris Turner. London‒New York: Verso, 1991, 86–106. Breuilly, John. Nationalism and the State. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. Calhoun, Craig J. Nationalism. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997. Clark, Kenneth M. The Gothic Revival. London: Constable, 1928. Cohen Gary B. The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2006. Csáky, Moritz. ‘Culture as a Space of Communication’, in Johannes Feichtinger and Gary B. Cohen (eds), Understanding Multiculturalism: The Habsburg Central European Experience. New York: Berghahn, 2014, 187–208. . Das Gedächtnis der Städte: Kulturelle Verflechtungen – Wien und die urbanen Milieus in Zentraleuropa [The Memory of Cities: Cultural Interconnections – Vienna and the Urban Milieus in Central Europe]. Vienna etc.: Böhlau Verlag, 2010. Elden, Stuart. The Birth of Territory. Chicago‒London: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives. London‒New York: Pluto Press, 2010. Erll, Astrid. Memory in Culture, trans. Sara B. Young. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Falser, Michael S. Zwischen Identität und Authentizität: Zur politischen Geschichte der Denkmalpflege in Deutschland [Between Identity and Authenticity: The Political History of the Monument Preservation in Germany]. Dresden: Thelem, 2008. Feichtinger, Johannes and Gary B. Cohen (eds), Understanding Multiculturalism: The Habsburg Central European Experience. New York: Berghahn, 2014. Frodl, Walter. Idee und Verwirklichung: das Werden der staatlichen Denkmalpflege in Österreich [Idea and Realization: The Emergence of the State Monument Preservation in Austria]. Vienna‒Cologne: Böhlau, 1988. Frycz, Jerzy. Restauracja i konserwacja zabytków architektury w Polsce w latach 1795– 1918 [Restoration and Conservation of Architectural Monuments in Poland in 1795–1918]. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1975. Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983. Glendinning, Miles. ‘The Conservation Movement: A Cult of the Modern Age’. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 2003 (13), 359–76.
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. The Conservation Movement: A History of Architectural Preservation; Antiquity to Modernity. London: Routledge, 2013. Graham, Brian J. and Peter Howard. ‘Heritage and Identity’, in iidem (eds), Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. London‒New York: Routledge, 2016, 1–15. Haugaard, Mark. ‘Nationalism and Modernity’, in Mark Haugaard and Siniša Malešević (eds), Making Sense of Collectivity: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Globalisation. London: Pluto Press, 2002, 122–37. Hobsbawm, Eric. Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Hofmann, Werner. Das irdische Paradies: Motive und Ideen des 19. Jahrhunderts [The Terestrial Paradise: Nineteenth-Century Motives and Ideas]. Munich: Prestel, 1960. Jenkins, Richard. Rethinking Ethnicity: Arguments and Explorations. London: SAGE Publications, 2008. . Social Identity. London‒New York: Routledge, 2008. Jokilehto, Jukka. A History of Architectural Conservation. Oxford: ButterworthHeinemann, 1999. Judson, Pieter M. Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. . The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Old Saybrook, CT: Tantor Media, 2017. Kedourie, Elie. Nationalism. London: Hutchinson, 1960. King, Jeremy. ‘The Nationalization of East-Central Europe: Ethnicism, Ethnicity, and Beyond’, in Nancy M. Wingfield and Maria Bucur (eds), Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2001, 112–52. Lavabre, Marie-Claire. ‘Entre Mémoire et Histoire: A la Recherché d’une Méthode’ [Between Memory and History: Searching for a Methode], in Jean- Martin Clément (ed.), La Guerre Civile entre Histoire et Mémoire [Civil War Between History and Memory]. Nantes: Ouest éditions, 1995, 39–48. Lowenthal, David. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Malešević, Siniša. ‘Identity: Conceptual, Operational and Historical Critique’, in Mark Haugaard and Siniša Malešević (eds), Making Sense of Collectivity: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Globalisation. London: Pluto Press, 2002, 195–215. Marek, Michaela. Kunst und Identitätspolitik: Architektur und Bildkünste im Prozess der tschechischen Nationsbildung [Art and Identity Politics: Architecture and Representing Art in the Process of the Czech Nation-Building]. Cologne‒Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2004. Mārtiņš, Mintaurs. ‘Latvia’s Architectural Heritage and its Protection 1880–1940’. Journal of Baltic Studies 2006, 37 (3), 298–312. McDowell, Sara. ‘Heritage, Memory and Identity’, in Brian J. Graham and Peter Howard (eds), Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. London‒New York: Routledge, 2016, 37–53. Middleton, Robin. ‘The Use and Abuse of Tradition in Architecture’. Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 1983 (131), 729–39.
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Mohr de Pérez, Rita. Die Anfänge der staatlichen Denkmalpflege in Preussen. Ermittlung und Erhaltung alterthümlicher Merkwürdigkeiten [The Beginnings of the State Monument Preservation in Prussia: Investigation and Conservation of the Ancient Monuments]. Worms: Werner, 2001. Olwig, Kenneth R. ‘Natural landscapes in the representation of national identity’, in Brian J. Graham and Peter Howard (eds), Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. London‒New York: Routledge, 2016, 73–88. Ortega y Gasset, José. The Revolt of the Masses. New York: New American Library, 1950 [orig. 1900]. Robson-Scott, William Douglas. The Literary Background of the Gothic Revival in Germany: A Chapter in the History of Taste. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965. Siwicki, Christopher. Architectural Restoration and Heritage in Imperial Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Smith, Anthony D. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. . The Cultural Foundations of Nations: Hierarchy, Covenant, and Republic. Malden, MA‒Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. Speitkamp, Winfried. Die Verwaltung der Geschichte: Denkmalpflege und Staat in Deutschland 1871–1933 [The Management of History: Monument Preservation and the State in Germany, 1871–1933]. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996. Summerson, John. The Classical Language of Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1963. Wingfield, Nancy M. and Maria Bucur (eds). Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2001.
PART I
8 ARCHITECTURAL CONSERVATION AND NATIONAL NARRATIVES
8 CHAPTER 1 The Cathedral of Citizenship Race and National Identity in Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’s Work and Discourse Bérénice Gaussuin
Introduction On 22 March 2018, Florian Philippot, founder of France’s new political party ‘The Patriots’ and formerly Marine Le Pen’s lieutenant in the Front National (National Front), published a video on Twitter in which, standing in front of the Cathedral Saint-Denis, he criticised a political party that had entered the cathedral the prior Sunday to protest against a proposed immigration law. Accompanying the video was the following phrase: ‘From the necropolis of the Kings of France in Saint-Denis, I denounce the invasion of the Basilica by pro illegal immigration organizations’.1 Philippot claimed the cathedral as a national heritage site and as embodying the nation’s Christian roots. Marine Le Pen reacted similarly, using the word ‘profanation’.2 Echoing the anti-immigration theme central to their political discourse,3 both called for French ‘patriots’ to stand against the ‘threat of immigration’. Throughout Europe, today’s populist movements and political parties use architectural and cultural heritage to uphold European or national identity against what they consider to be an unprecedented migration crisis. Speaking in Paris, the anthropologist Chiara de Cesari,4 on 5 June 2018, stressed the need to further study the place that material heritage occupies in the contemporary populist political discourse of both leaders and activists. These observations on the political instrumentalization of heritage by organizations considered ‘populist’ unravels the link that has been held to exist between heritage and patriotism since the former’s very foundation
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in the nineteenth century. Such instrumentalization can lead to a populist vision of heritage that comes from a long genealogy, which we will explore here. Love for homeland, cemented by the racialization of the history of art,5 results in the use of old buildings as a mirror of the greatness of a nation. In nineteenth-century France, the consequence of this interpretation was the preservation movement and the creation of historical monuments as proof of the greatness of the French nation in comparison with its European neighbours. In France’s relationship with its heritage, the royal necropolis of SaintDenis has a double symbolic meaning. In August 1793, its tombs were opened and dismantled, corpses exhumed, lead and bronze fittings melted down. The historian and curator Alexandre Lenoir (1762–1839) attended this event of meticulous destruction of monarchic effigies and salvaged some tombs and gisants with which he enriched the deposit of the convent of the Petits Augustins, renamed Musée de monuments Français (Museum of French Monuments) in 1795. This revolutionary act, among others, provoked a reversal of feeling about the preservation of works from the past.6 A year later, the Abbé Henri Gregoire (1750–1831) advocated in his Rapport sur les destructions opérées par le Vandalisme, et sur les moyens de le réprimer (Report on the Destructions Wrought by Vandalism, and on the Means of Repressing It) the idea of the nation as a subject of love. Whoever failed to denounce ‘vandalism … [hated] the homeland’, while monuments were part of ‘the splendor of a nation and [added] to its political preponderance’. Monuments were ‘recommended to the surveillance of all good citizens’,7 according to the Abbé Grégoire. In the eighteenth-century in England, the Gothic Revival8 offered a picturesque image of the Middle Ages in a romantic vision of the past. In France, Alexandre Lenoir’s museum contributed to this revival by exhibiting pieces of Gothic architecture and sculpture all gathered in a single place. The literary output of Victor Hugo (1802–85), among others, further disseminated this vision in France – with his novel Notre-Dame de Paris,9 in particular – along with the work of troubadour painters. In the Germanic world, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)10 belonged to the network of those who participated in this romantic movement that permeated European culture as a whole.
Building a New Nation Thanks to the Middle Ages In France, the construction of the post-revolutionary national narrative on history, constructed for political needs, transformed this romantic vision. If the return of the monarchy during the Restoration (1814–30) attempted to
The Cathedral of Citizenship • 23
repair the Revolution’s damages, the Monarchie de Juillet ( July Monarchy) (1830–48) appropriated both the revolutionary legacy and a more distant past in order to rewrite the history of France. It was under this new regime, born after the revolution of July 1830, that the preservation of historical monuments in France became institutionalized. In 1830, the first year of this constitutional monarchy, the historian and Minister of the Interior François Guizot (1787–1874) appointed Ludovic Vitet (1802–73) as inspector of historical monuments. Vitet’s mission was twofold: to develop historical knowledge about the monuments in French territory and to ensure their conservation. Guizot had a precise idea of the uses of historic monuments: as a liberal, he was opposed to the restoration of dynastic divine rights to the throne and the absolute monarchy embodied by Louis XVIII and Charles X during the Restauration (1815–30). For him, history was a powerful tool that could be used to give meaning to the revolutions of 1789 and 1830 by positioning these two events as the logical continuation of a movement that had emerged in the Middle Ages. Once appointed inspector of historical monuments, Vitet was in charge of applying this vision of history on the field. Guizot was not alone; he belonged to a group of intellectuals called the doctrinaires. Arlette Auduc describes their relationship with history as a narrative put at the service of a political project based on reason: It is a question of uniting in the same movement, the savant and the politician, the historian and the man of action … relying on a real cult of facts, putting erudition in the spotlight. Guizot can outline the History of civilization in Europe, like the History of civilization in France. But through the study of the global coherence of the movement of civilization, it is the unity of the history of France that is demonstrated. … For the doctrinaires, it is the bourgeoisie that must be endowed with a history capable of founding the central political place it must occupy. From this point of view, the study of the Middle Ages is essential. By studying the history of the medieval communes, historians describe the emancipatory movement of the bourgeoisie and give it a political dignity and a driving role in the slow advent of freedom.11
Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–79) was linked to these doctrinaires through his uncle Etienne-Jean Delécluze (1781–1863), whose home was a gathering place for doctrinaires such as Ludovic Vitet, François Guizot, Adolphe Thiers (1797–1877), Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–69), Victor Cousin (1792–1867) and Prosper Mérimée (1803–70). Most of them formed the editorial staff of the newspaper Le Globe (The Globe). Thereby, Viollet-le-Duc met all of them as a young boy. Once he had become an architect, he faced the materiality of buildings and restored monuments that attested to the use of history in the service of a certain
24 • Bérénice Gaussuin
idea of the nation. The restoration of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val town hall appears as material evidence of the new narrative of the French nation imagined by the doctrinaires. The national narrative of the doctrinaires was centred on a particular social category – the bourgeoisie – whose emancipation was rooted in the Middle Ages and had led to the French Revolution, and who were imagined as leaders for the future of the country instead of the previous aristocracy, which was strongly linked to the absolute monarchy. They believed, in a positive vision of history, that writing the history of the bourgeoisie would give this newly powerful class a genealogy and therefore legitimate its takeover of nineteenth-century France. Indeed, if the bourgeoisie found its roots in the Middle Ages, its emancipation after the fall of the absolute monarchy was considered logical progress. As an architect who adhered assiduously to the ideas of the doctrinaires – and who was himself part of the bourgeoisie – Viollet-le-Duc studied the typology of the town hall, the building which embodied the history of the communes and of the bourgeoisie, in a manner far from the romanticism of the Gothic Revival. From this political use of history came his vision of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val town hall as testimony to the communes’ formation in France. It didn’t matter if his hypothesis is true or not – recent historical studies revealed that the Romanesque building was probably used as a house;12 according to Viollet-le-Duc, the building had to be preserved but also restored with the purpose of providing the only complete example of a medieval city hall on French soil. The restoration was the creation of a material testimony to the history of the emancipation of the bourgeoisie, which, with the help of its reason guiding it towards progress, fought against the domination of the feudal hierarchy. For the doctrinaires, the political system that they wished to introduce was based on reason; for Viollet-leDuc, architecture should have been based on reason too, a vision opposing him to romantic ideas on the past. The policy of conservation of historical monuments was based on such political views of history. In his first report of 1831, Ludovic Vitet indicated that the architecture from the period between the sixth and the eleventh centuries – that is to say, early Christian and Romanesque architecture – was marked by oriental and Byzantine taste. In other words, its source lay outside the ‘national territory’ and was led by monastic orders. That, however, changed during the eleventh century, when the development of domestic building craft gave rise to an ‘essentially indigenous’ Gothic architecture in a mainly urban context. As Vitet wrote: Its origin, its formation, its progress is the origin, the formation, the progress of almost all modern Europe … its principle is in emancipation, in freedom, in the
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spirit of association and of commune, in all indigenous and national feelings; it is bourgeois, and moreover it is French, English, Teutonic, etc.: the other, on the contrary, is exotic and sacerdotal; it springs from dogma and not from the soil, from faith and not from mores; it reigns by right of ecclesiastical conquest; it has no other principle, other roots than the church and canons. Then, the architects, who are they? here monks, nothing but monks or church people; there layman, Freemasons.13
‘The other’ described here was the architecture of the early Middle Ages and Romanesque period. On the other hand, Gothic architecture was aligned with modernity and freedom because it was seen as indigenous: grounded in the territory of the ‘Aryas’, for whom emancipation was an inalienable, genetically determined principle. Vitet continued, ‘I feel all that is vague and incomplete in such an explanation’.14 Viollet-le-Duc completed this thought with great detail throughout his Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle (Reasoned Dictionary of French Architecture from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Century), especially in entries such as ‘Sculpture’ and ‘Symbol’, as well as in other writings such as Histoire de l’habitation humaine (History of Human Habitation). Most historians15 dealing with Viollet-le-Duc’s work addressed his racism, which surfaced from the 1860s onwards. Of these, Martin Bressani and Greg Kerr explored this issue extensively.16 Bressani underlined the strong presence of Arthur de Gobineau’s (1816–82) theory of races in the Entretiens sur l’architecture (Discourses on Architecture) in particular, while Kerr concluded that Viollet-le-Duc was trapped by the observational method that he applied to all objects (architecture, mountains, animals, humans …). Even though Viollet-le-Duc’s text on the History of Human Habitation was supposed to be an instrument to spread Gobineau’s theory on the three races, it betrayed his interest for those who do not belong to his culture: his designer’s eye explains what he sees – even if, at times, it seems to compromise the integrity of Gobineau’s theory of which this text is meant to be the vehicle.17
Rationalist Nuances of Racialized Geographies This ambiguity was due to the rationalist method that Viollet-le-Duc invented and by which he was, to some extent, constrained. In History of Human Habitation, the architect applied this rationalist prism to the analysis of human habitation understood as a material transcription of society. After setting apart humans from animals in the first chapter, he categorized human beings thanks to Gobineau’s racial classification.18 Following thinkers such as the French philosopher François Bernier (1620–88),19 the Swedish naturalist
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Carl von Linné (1707–78) and Charles Darwin (1809–82)20 in England, as well as Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)21 and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840)22 in Prussia, Gobineau’s work emerged from a pan-European intellectual current in which biology was used to classify societies. In keeping with the racial hierarchies established by Gobinism, Violletle-Duc argued that at the beginning of mankind, the planet was supposed to be populated by three main races – white, yellow and black – hierarchically organized with the white race at the top, followed by the yellow race, with the black one at the bottom. The proximity between Viollet-le-Duc’s and Gobineau’s ideas is indisputable. As an architecture enthusiast, Gobineau maintained a correspondence with Viollet-le-Duc, which attested to the impact of Gobineau’s foreign journeys on the architect’s writings. They both imagined primitive dwelling types and constructive systems characteristic for each biological race:23 the so-called Aryan race (white) was particularly proficient in carpentry, the so-called yellow race proceeded by agglomeration, while the so-called black race dug its dwellings.24 The chalet became the embodiment of Aryan racial specificities. Thus, when Violletle-Duc built his own houses – la Vedette in Lausanne and the Chalet de la côte in Chamonix25 – he followed the principles that he had identified. For Viollet-le-Duc, the architecture of habitat was not determined exclusively by the builders’ race; the environment was another factor in its construction. In History of Human Habitation,26 the adventures of his fictional characters, Epergos and Doxi, were a pretext to describe different races, their environments and the architecture that they created. Environment coincided with the race, which resulted in an architecture that was itself an adaptation to the environment. While races sought the ideal geographical conditions in which to express their particular abilities, the environment could also make them evolve – a point connecting Violletle-Duc’s thought to the transformist theory of Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744–1829) about the evolution of living creatures. Thus, the primitive typology and the genius of a race was improved by the environment. In this sense, stone construction could be a transcription of the wooden frame into a different building material. Architecture adjusted itself to available resources provided by the environment: if men are born in a wooded territory, they will naturally use wood for shelter; but if they are in the middle of a country where wood is scarce and where stone or silt abounds, they will try to make homes with these materials.27 While in Viollet-le-Duc’s discourse race determined architecture, his descriptions reflected a specific approach to the environment and its resources. Here, he demonstrated the attention he had paid to contemporaneous biologists’ debates about interactions between race and environment and their influence on the nature of human beings and their social groups. Thus,
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while he sought to rationalize the racialization of art history, the question of environmental conditions inevitably interfered in Viollet-le-Duc’s argument. At the same moment, Gottfried Semper reached similar conclusions about the influence of race, climate and the nature of the ground on the act of building.28
Asymptotic Art You may be surprised if I tell you that the chalets of Switzerland’s mountains are exactly the same as the chalets we see on the ramps of the Himalaya and in the valleys of Kashmir.29
The so-called Aryas came down from their mountains and ‘fertilized the lowlands’ with their nomad carts30 – a mobile version of their primitive type.31 Isolated in the mountains, the Aryan blood remained pure but produced nothing more. Here, Viollet-le-Duc’s thought split from Gobineau’s. The former did not prioritize the preservation of racial purity, whereas for Gobineau cross-breeding, although facilitating the emergence of new art forms, was the dawn of decadence. As Dominique Jarrassé indicated, Gobinism was ‘very pessimistic, an inescapable fatalism that registered the destiny of people in the “degeneration” produced by the blood mixture’32 (see figure 1.1). Viollet-le-Duc, on the other hand, advocated Auguste Comte’s positivist philosophy, in which the notion of progress is central. He argued that the racially pure groups tended towards hieratic art, like Egyptian sculpture: ‘we cannot take anything away from it … add nothing to it: it is a porphyry block’.33 In the case of the Egyptians, no progress was possible; the decadence of their art was the only conceivable evolution according to Viollet-le-Duc: ‘It is perfect, it is complete, it is true, it is clear, but it is over. These arts have no beyond’.34 On the other hand, cross-breeding brought about the possibility of a dynamic and progressive art. The ‘burning drops in such a great lake of pure white blood’35 marked the potential for progress, the path towards a ‘more perfect’ state of art. Viollet-le-Duc didn’t seek perfection or purity but rather an art that is perfectible, even in its most idealized drawings. The model for this was the asymptote, always progressing. Epergos described these mixed people admiringly as full of vitality, like those of ancient Greece. Their art was not perfect, but their efforts extended towards perfection. For Viollet-le-Duc, achieving the state of perfection was of no interest because of its sterility. This stance arose from his idealistic vision of artistic progress: a perpetual search for a more perfect state that never actually attained static perfection.
Figure 1.1. Faces drawn by Viollet-le-Duc for several chapters of Histoire de l’habitation humaine. Paris: Hetzel, 1875.
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According to Viollet-le-Duc, racial intermingling would give rise to an art either hieratic or asymptotic, depending on the mix. The so-called Aryas remaining in the Himalaya were just as sterile as ‘each of the three great human races that share the globe’. They were ‘unable, in isolation, to produce that, what is called the arts’.36 During their migration, Aryas spread and mixed with other racial groups. It was their propensity to observe – as the architect says, ‘To see is to know’37 – that rendered possible an art created according to principles drawn from nature. For Viollet-le-Duc, this art was endowed with ‘Style’. The latter emanated not from divine inspiration but from reason, which brought art to life. From their observation of geological formations, artists could deduct the principles of, for example, crystallization. This was what gave rise to the asymptotic art desired by Epergos/Viollet-le-Duc. Thus, the hybridization of the white race with another became the breeding ground for a progressive art that followed the principles of nature. At each step of their migration, the Aryas mixed with locals; each wave of Aryan emigration brought the possibility of adding more new blood to Viollet-le-Duc’s potion. To a certain extent, Viollet-le-Duc was hinting that the artistic and architectural landscape that Europe had inherited was the outcome of an intermingling of races. By analysing architecture or sculpture, the architect could identify the precise rate of hybridization and thus identify the origins of the different races that made an artefact: Thus when Aryas are in contact with Semites already mixed with Chamites, the result is a very complete art. The moral sense of the Arya makes him repel these exaggerations, favoured by the Chamites, but to the structure of wood he substitutes the stone structure and he uses the forms which are suitable to this one.38
However, racial mixture had to be seasoned with reason. The role of women in this blood transmission was imagined as fundamental because ‘the purity of blood is better preserved through women than men’.39 They were the ‘cooking pot’,40 in which Viollet-le-Duc’s recipe is stewed. The planet was ‘a huge apothecary where future civilizations blend’.41 Depending on the preparation, this cross-breeding produced either a sterile or a fertile art, each race bringing its strength without its excesses: As for the black, far from this regulator who never abandons the spirit of the white man, incapable of fixity in his ideas, he lets his imagination go astray until he conceives and gives birth to monsters … Now, if white and black (the latter in minimal proportion) are found together, art develops rapidly and in form of incessant progress. In the mixture of the white element with yellow, the art emerges, but leans toward hieratisme [sic].42
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The assertion above was far from anecdotal; it provided the architect’s alchemical recipe.43 With this proportion, ‘the result … produces a splendid development of art, in the direction of … progress’. Viollet-le-Duc claimed that his analysis of art was the conclusion of ‘reasoning’ – in other words, of a rationalism since ‘this is the reason that leads to art through research’.44 In his Dictionnaire raisonné, the entry on ‘Sculpture’ set up a bridge between the notion of race and that of nation. The connection between the two concepts was established in terms of architecture and its sculpted ornament, both seen as the product of the racial and national genius. Carved figures represented this passage from race to nation. Again, as in the case of dwellings, Viollet-le-Duc identified distinct types, starting from the hieratic ones – from which medieval sculptors learned their craft – to the local types, which they observed to produce a more perfect art.45 The strength of these artists resided in their capacity to abandon the hieratic types in favour of hybridizing with local types. This approach bore the mark of progress, of the permanent and asymptotic research of an art specific to the dominant races. The French medieval sculptors were born from the hybridized Aryan race: their inheritance carried the necessary abilities to bring out a dynamic and vigorous art endowed with ‘Style’. Their specific genius required turning from ‘To see is to know’ to ‘to see is to create’. Thus, this art of l’école française formed in the late 12th century, in the midst of the medieval-drafted civilization, was made of confusion of the old ideas with new willingness, like a trumpet’s fanfare in the midst of buzzing of a crowd. Each one came together around these artists and craftsmen who had the power to assert the long-compressed genius of a nation.46
National Genius The genius of a race was, for Viollet-le-Duc, inalienable. When humans from the same melting pot united, they formed a nation, built on the basis of a national genius. France was marked by the genius of the Gauls, which, despite three centuries of Roman occupation, had found ‘its own genius rekindled by a powerful intake of people from the same origin’.47 These people, to whom Viollet-le-Duc referred, are the Franks, who were from the same race as the Gaulois (Gallic). Once united, they became the cement, or the mythical origin, of the modern nation to which Viollet-leDuc belonged. The figure of Vercingetorix embodied this genius and was a key trope of nineteenth-century France, rewriting its national narrative. Viollet-leDuc closely monitored the erection of the monument sculpted by one of
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his relatives, Aimé Millet in 1866 in Alise-Sainte-Reine. The architect drew its base, inscribed with the words that Vercingetorix was believed to have expressed to unify the Gallic tribes during their war against Rome: ‘United Gaul / Forming a single nation / Animated by the same spirit / Can defy the Universe’.48 For Viollet-le-Duc, the political context was a determining factor in the expression of the national genius. He favoured republican Rome, arguing that imperial Rome corrupted humans and architecture by praising a single man, a dictator, equal only to the gods. Not surprisingly, Viollet-le-Duc’s entry ‘Style’ particularly criticized the French absolute monarchy incarnated in the person of King Louis XIV, a ruler allegedly designated by God, whose despotism stifled artists. Instead, Viollet-le-Duc favoured the early twelfth century, when ‘there was no king, no lord, no prelates who could take this exorbitant power to confiscate the genius of a nation for the benefit of a political organization’.49 His recovery of Vercingetorix – a heroic figure whose short-lived emancipation of the Gallic nation provided the myth of origin for the uprising of 1789 – became, despite the obvious anachronism, an ideological tool for nineteenth-century French nationalism. In nineteenth-century Europe, nations were competing by means of both national narratives and technical innovations well before the battlefield of the Franco–Prussian War of 1870–71. As architecture could embody history, many nations claimed the legacy of Gothic architecture as a national architecture. For instance, Goethe published Von Deutscher Baukunst (On German Architecture) in 177250 – an essay in which he praised Gothic architecture, calling it ‘German’. For his part, Viollet-leDuc decided to prove the French origin51 of Gothic architecture through the history that he exposed in the entry ‘Cathedral’ of his Dictionnaire. The intellectual movement had consequences on the materiality of Gothic cathedrals in Europe in as much as many of them were completed in the nineteenth century, starting with Cologne in 1842. On the French side, Viollet-le-Duc completed the Cathedral of Clermont-Ferrand under the patronage of Napoléon III from 1864. In France, the post-revolutionary context required the construction of a national identity that could no longer be based on castles and palaces,52 since these were the symbols of the fallen privileged aristocracy. In this context, Gothic, based mainly on the Gothic churches, seemed most appropriate to promote as a national architecture. In 1827, François-René de Châteaubriand wrote Le genie du christianisme (The Genius of Christianity),53 which was described by Theophile Gauthier as a ‘restoration’ of the Gothic cathedral in all its genius imbued with religiosity. Châteaubriand wanted to cast Christianity as the basis of civilization, which imbued each of its facets with morality, social order and the arts. For Viollet-le-Duc, a theoretician
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not concerned with religion, the cathedral was more than a religious building. It was, firstly, the product of a political and social context. In France, … in the heart of the communes, the old Gallic spirit regained its empire … It was in homes of municipal freedoms that the laic schools of artists were formed, and the day when they were strong enough … the bishops, for whom it was the linchpin of their projects against the power of abbeys and secular feudalism, commissioned these schools to build the monument of the city, the cathedral.54
For Viollet-le-Duc, this social transformation, in which the population became increasingly urban (leaving rural milieu to monastic orders), was made possible by a political regime that relied on the spiritual authority represented by the bishops, which could regulate the bustling cities – otherwise hard to contain by temporal power alone. The cathedral was the instrument in regulating and controlling this crowd.
City Hall Versus Cathedral: The Syncretic Monument of the City Nonetheless, in the Dictionnaire’s sixth volume, published in 1863, Violletle-Duc offered an entry ‘City hall’ five years after the entry ‘Cathedral’. ‘City hall’ was a much shorter entry, though it could have been the place to develop the secular political discourse that he presented in ‘Cathedral’. His town hall was a ‘maison commune’ (common house), the embodiment of a commune. In France, Saint-Antonin’s city hall was the only surviving example dating from the Middle Ages. The fact that most other surviving examples were to be found in Germany or in Belgium was undoubtedly the reason for the brevity of Viollet-le-Duc’s study of the city-hall type. While these buildings certainly embodied a political movement that the architect favoured, they were not part of his vision of the French national genius. Theirs was a pan-European phenomenon and thus did not contribute directly to the formation of a specifically French architecture. Moreover, the city hall was fragile – unlike ‘the cathedral as a municipal building’.55 As a symbol of syncretism between the civil and the religious world, the cathedral played the role of the monument of the city, which embodied the nation. Viollet-le-Duc demonstrated this role by the attitude of the revolutionary authorities towards the cathedral: it wasn’t destroyed but transformed into a temple to the goddess Reason. While many city halls ceased to exist, the cathedrals survived over time because they carried the idea of the French nation, which was based on a shared sense of racial identity – stemming yet from the ancient act of unification of the Gauls by Vercingetorix. A building like the city hall that could be easily broke down by the monarchy was
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unnecessary, while the cathedral protected the very idea of citizenship. It was the place ‘not only of religious service, but … of political and secular meetings … The shade of the cathedral … was sufficient’56 for the people of the Middle Ages, because they understood that the time of the commune, of democracy and freedom, had not yet come (see figure 1.2). For Viollet-le-Duc, Laon, a city with a strong interest for democracy, demonstrated this civil and religious syncretism. Its cathedral was built by ‘a race of giants’.57 Viollet-le-Duc saw Laon’s plan as the most syncretic of all. Its egalitarian plan forms a ‘huge hall’ that hosted celebrations such as the feast of the Innocents on 28 December,58 and the Feast of Fools the day before Epiphany.59 He presumed that Laon’s unique, square apsidal plan was the result of ‘moral concessions [made] to citizens’60 by the bishop. The apse reflected egalitarian ideas because the result is a plan in which it is difficult to distinguish the nave – for the laymen – from the presbytery – for the clerics. Seeking the support of the bourgeoisie in order to finance his monumental seat, the bishop agreed on compromises that served the public good. The cathedral pacified the agitated urban crowd ‘for peace to be sustainable’.61 In Laon, ‘its destination is religious, its plan preserves the civil attribute’.62 The
Figure 1.2. The city hall and the cathedral in Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle. Paris: B. Bance, A. Morel, vol. 6, 1863, and vol. 3, 1858.
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nave and the presbytery have been designed with almost the same length and no apse was added to distinguish one from the other. The comparison with several other examples – the cathedrals of Noyon, Chartres, Amiens, Cologne – allowed Viollet-le-Duc to evaluate the rate of the penetration of secular ideas into the plan. He analysed different plans of cathedrals and justified their respective architecture by the presence or absence of civic use. With the ‘democratic origin’63 of its square apse, Laon was the most accomplished in this sense.
The Citizen Cathedral In Viollet-le-Duc’s long entry ‘Cathedral’, terms related to the concept of nation appear sixteen times, ‘France’ occurs on fifty-six occasions and ‘français/e’ (French) is used thirty-six times. Public awareness of cathedrals as national buildings clearly supersedes the religious thought standing behind their creation. The bishops thought that they could co-opt the secular builders but, according to Viollet-le-Duc’s interpretation of history, it was the other way round: artists and the bourgeoisie used this political moment to express the genius of their national art. While cathedrals are religious monuments, they are mostly national buildings. The day French society lent its arms and gave its treasures to raise them, it wanted to be constituted and so it was. The cathedrals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are therefore, in our view, a symbol of French nationhood, the first and most powerful effort towards unity.64
The cathedral was the counterpoint to medieval castles that ‘will eventually win’ in 1789 with the abolition of privileges. As such, it was the ‘first really popular building’.65 Viollet-le-Duc offered a model of that cathedral, called later ‘ideal’.66 In fact, there was no source from which to see a cathedral in its completed state, as imagined in the minds of its designers. In contrast, Viollet-le-Duc’s sketch of the ideal cathedral was finished and could embody the national genius, as imagined by the author. The communal, democratic ideal standing behind the cathedral’s creation survived centuries only to culminate in the French Revolution, which explains its persistence despite the violence of the revolutionary acts of monument demolition.
Patriotic Citizenship The survival of the cathedral was the subject of a long development in Viollet-le-Duc’s last work, a text addressed to a young audience. A year
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before his death, the architect wrote Histoire d’un hôtel de ville et d’une cathédrale (History of a City Hall and a Cathedral), an account of the history of a fictive French city named Clusy throughout history. This fictional town was the local expression of Viollet-le-Duc’s national narrative: Real progress results therefore from the simultaneity of the two feelings: the love for the country and the love for the city … It took centuries and hard trials to combine these two ideas that seem at first sight contradictory … It took the laborious tenacity of the people and the sense of civil spirit particular to the Latin race.67
The idea of citizenship was associated here with the notions of race and patriotism. Patriotism expanded from the scale of the city to that of the nation, from local to national: whoever loves their city will love their nation. Despite the presence of the two buildings in the title, it is the cathedral – as a monument of the city and therefore of the nation – that carried this patriotic feeling of civic-mindedness. As in Le tour de France par deux enfants (The Tour of France by Two Children),68 Viollet-le-Duc aimed here to educate the country’s youth to be true citizens. After the Franco– Prussian War, the Republic seemed to have brought stability to the French political landscape. Disappointed by the failure of Napoleon III, who engaged the whole nation in a military campaign doomed to fail, Violletle-Duc never forgave the Emperor. He placed his hopes for the nation in its youth. But, in the eyes of the architect, only reason could guide the citizens: this was the goal of his final message. Returning to the dialectic of city hall versus cathedral, he obsessively repeated the writings of the Dictionnaire. Thus, the cathedral of Clusy carried the mark of the ‘ideal cathedral’ of the Dictionnaire, both in form and in representation: they are both represented in axonometric drawings. Threatened by revolutionary vandalism,69 a man stood up for its defence; he was the mayor of the fictional city. ‘Clusy Cathedral, built by the people of Clusy, is a national monument, it belongs to us; let’s preserve it intact, and use it henceforth for great popular meetings under the aegis of the people who raised it!’ This speech was greeted by cries of ‘Long live the nation! Long live the Mayor!’ And the statues were immediately decorated with tricolor ribbons and red bonnets. Then the crowd began to consider all these sculptures with a new impression, giving them the strangest interpretations. However, the cathedral was saved.70
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The new kind of perception changed the understanding of the symbol. Deconsecrated, the cathedral had to be preserved and acquired new meanings. No iconoclasm was necessary; the good citizen loved his cathedral and, through the building, also his country – thus becoming a patriot. The positivist Viollet-le-Duc and Epergos are back and they advocate for a complete, fully restored cathedral – a brand-new Gothic building. The architect’s theory of architectural restoration was clarified in this context. Epergos/Viollet-le-Duc had faith in the future and its progress thanks to the new republican political regime – as in his idea of a nation born from the genius of race, or of the indestructible cathedral. The democratic regime was already embedded in the cathedral, it had its first hours during the French Revolution and it was finally settled at the end of the nineteenth century. In this political context – defeat in the Franco–Prussian War – national pride was a cure for the French nation. Only the good citizen, the one inspired by Viollet-le-Duc’s words, can vote for the common good of the nation. This citizen is free, like Marie, the young woman for whom her brother built a house in Histoire d’une maison (History of a House): when faced with an admirer who compared the house to a ‘seigniorial manor’, she replied, ‘I have no vassals and I don’t want vassals’.71 Marie understood that her home was part of this new republican paradigm – even if she had no civic right to vote – in which privileges had long been abolished. This new paradigm was leading young citizens to the polls, they had their destiny in their hands: the last illustration in Histoire d’un hôtel de ville et d’une cathédrale is of a ballot box, an object chose by Viollet-le-Duc to embody the genius of the renewed nation.
Conclusions We cannot ignore, in hindsight, the consequences of these national and nationalist statements, enhanced up to the present day by racial ideas. Rooted in the very heart of the concept of heritage after the French Revolution, this discourse is still present in Europe – even if used unconsciously. Today’s populist discourses emerge from this long genealogy. For Viollet-le-Duc, the Gothic cathedral embodied the genius of the race, which, once united, formed the secular French nation. The cathedral is therefore the most relevant manifestation of the identity of the nation formed after the French Revolution because it is linked to the emancipation of the bourgeoisie. As far as this history, promoted by the doctrinaires, needed tangible proofs, the choice of the cathedral appeared as the most efficient: the city hall could not compete with this extraordinary landmark, present in several cities in
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the territory. Once the religious aspect of the building was reduced to a minor contingency, the cathedral could become a vector of patriotism. It is therefore not surprising to find a member of a populist party stressing the Christian roots of France in front of Saint-Denis cathedral in order to protest against immigration. However, after 1905 and the law of separation of church and state in France, we can see a paradox in praising a religious building as embodying the identity of a secular nation. To manage this difficulty, the reaction of both Le Pen and Philippot, highlights the secular role, as royal necropolis, of this cathedral. This tension was also present in the analyses seeking to explain the emotion generated by the fire in Notre-Dame, Paris in April 2019 and in the debate on its reconstruction: Does Notre-Dame belong first to the Christians or to all citizens? Is the priority to allow the resumption of Catholic worship or tourist activity? This tension between secular and religious activities existed long before today’s events: built as a church by Jacques-Germain Soufflot (1713–80), Sainte-Geneviève in Paris was transformed into a pantheon dedicated to the ‘great men’ of the French nation during the Revolution and remained as such until today with a period of cohabitation with Catholic ceremonies during the First Empire and the Restoration. For Viollet-le-Duc, it was progressive art, only possible through intermingling, that made a national monument rather than the long history that had unfolded under the cathedral vaults. Because this progressive art was the proof of the genius of his nation, the cathedral was worthy of being protected and restored. From this conception of the selection of what is heritage or not, we understand that Viollet-le-Duc – and the doctrinaires – intended to make the past bend to their ideological needs. In terms of restoration, it involved radical intervention on buildings. In 1866, Violletle-Duc wrote his strong definition of restoration that we can sum up as achieving a more perfect, complete state of a building. Indeed, how to imagine the genius of his race and nation in a phantom-like ruin? Bérénice Gaussuin is a heritage architect graduated in France (École Spéciale d’Architecture and École de Chaillot) and a member of the Commission du Vieux Paris. As a practitioner, she is a partner in an architectural agency. She teaches at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais in Paris. In parallel, she is completing a PhD thesis in architecture under the supervision of Prof. Dominique Rouillard (Laboratoire Infrastructure, Architecture et Territoire) at Université Paris-Est-Sup.
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NOTES 1. All translations are by the author. 2. ‘En appelant des migrants à profaner la Basilique Saint-Denis, nécropole de nos rois, “La France Insoumise” et l’extrême-gauche démontrent que, dans leur folie immigrationniste, ils sont prêts à piétiner notre civilisation et à profaner un lieu de culte historique. Indigne’. Posted on 19 March 2018 on Marine Le Pen’s Facebook page. 3. See, for instance, Marine Le Pen’s discourse in front of the National Assembly opening a debate on immigration on 7 October 2019. 4. Cesari, ‘European Heritage and Cultural Racism’. 5. Michaud, Histoire de l’art: une discipline à ses frontières, 9–84. 6. Greenhalgh, Destruction of Cultural Heritage in 19th-century France. 7. Grégoire, Rapport sur les destructions, 25–28. 8. Grodecki, Le ‘gothique’ retrouvé: avant Viollet-le-Duc. 9. Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris. 1482. 10. Goethe, Von deutscher Baukunst. 11. Auduc, Quand les monuments construisaient la Nation, 32–33. 12. Scelles, ‘La maison romane de Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val’. 13. Vitet, Rapport à Monsieur le ministre, 46. Emphasis in the original. 14. Ibid. 15. See, for instance, Foucard, Viollet-le-Duc; Auzas, Viollet-le-Duc, 1814–1879; Leniaud, Viollet-le-Duc ou les délires du système; Baridon, L’imaginaire scientifique de Viollet-le-Duc. 16. Bressani, Viollet-le-Duc and the Historical Imagination. 17. Kerr, ‘Racialisation du discours’, 94. 18. The Comte Arthur de Gobineau developed his theory in Essai sur l’inégalité des races (1853–55). 19. Boulle, Race et esclavage dans la France de l’Ancien régime, 47–56. 20. See Duvernay-Bolens, ‘L’Homme zoologique’, 9–32; Pichot, Aux origines des théories raciales. 21. Kant, Von den verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen. 22. Blumenbach, De generis humani varietate nativa. 23. Bressani, ‘La maison comme forme sociale’, 21–32. 24. Viollet-le-Duc, Entretiens sur l’architecture. 25. Both published in Viollet-le-Duc and Narjoux, Habitations modernes. 26. We must note that this text belongs to a series of books that Viollet-le-Duc published with Jules Hetzel ( Jules Verne’s editor) and that were aimed at a young readership. 27. Viollet-le-Duc, Histoire de l’habitation humaine, 358. 28. Recht, ‘Viollet-le-Duc et Gottfried Semper’, 155–68. 29. Viollet-le-Duc, Histoire de l’habitation humaine, 360. 30. See, in this regard, Georges Teyssot, ‘Norm and Type. Variations on a Theme’, 141–73. 31. Viollet-le-Duc, ‘Maison’, 272–73. 32. Jarrassé, ‘Trois gouttes d’art nègre’. 33. Viollet-le-Duc, ‘Sculpture’, 98. 34. Viollet-le-Duc, ‘Style’, 494. 35. Faure, ‘Les Trois gouttes de sang noir’, 382.
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36. Viollet-le-Duc, ‘Sculpture’, 98–99. 37. Viollet-le-Duc, Histoire d’un dessinateur, 302. 38. Viollet-le-Duc, Histoire de l’habitation humaine, 364–65. 39. Ibid., 172. 40. Héritier, Masculin-Féminin, 262. 41. Viollet-le-Duc, Histoire de l’habitation humaine, 152. 42. Viollet-le-Duc, ‘Sculpture’, 99. 43. He is using the chemistry metaphor in ibid., 101. 44. Ibid., 102. 45. Ibid., 114–15. ‘these trends … towards the study of nature and the observation of local types’. 46. Viollet-le-Duc, ‘Style’, 487. 47. Viollet-le-Duc, ‘Sculpture’, 190. 48. ‘La Gaule unie / Formant une seule nation / Animée d’un même esprit / Peut défier l’Univers’. 49. Viollet-le-Duc, ‘Sculpture’, 191. 50. Goethe, Von Deutscher Baukunst. 51. The French origin of Gothic architecture was proved by the German architect Mertens (1808–97) in ‘Paris baugeschichtlich im Mittelalter’ (1843). See Frankl, The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations Through Eight Centuries. 52. Gilkerson, ‘Aristocratic chateau to republican villa’. 53. Châteaubriand, Le génie du christianisme. 54. Viollet-le-Duc, ‘Style’, 488–89. 55. Viollet-le-Duc, ‘Hôtel de ville’, 95. 56. Ibid. 57. Viollet-le-Duc, ‘Cathédrale’, 309. 58. On this occasion, the altar boys sat in the chapter’s stalls and sang the mass ‘with all sorts of buffoonery’. 59. When the laics elected a ‘pope’ entitled ‘Patriarch of fools’. 60. Viollet-le-Duc, ‘Cathédrale’, 306. 61. Ibid., 307. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., 309. 64. Ibid., 281. 65. Ibid., 283. 66. Ibid., fig. 13, 323. 67. Viollet-le-Duc, Histoire d’un hôtel de ville et d’une cathédrale, 273–74. 68. Fouillée (Bruno), Le tour de France par deux enfants. 69. In the reality, many revolutionary destructions occurred – for instance, in NotreDame, Paris with the destruction of the statues from the king’s gallery. 70. Viollet-le-Duc, Histoire d’un hôtel de ville et d’une cathédrale, 267. 71. Viollet-le-Duc, Histoire d’une maison, 250.
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Bibliography Auduc, Arlette. Quand les monuments construisaient la Nation: le service des monuments historiques de 1830 à 1940 [When Monuments Built the Nation: The Historical Monument Service from 1830 to 1940]. Paris: Comité d’histoire du ministère de la Culture, la Documentation française, 2008. Auzas, Pierre-Marie. Viollet-le-Duc, 1814–1879. Paris: Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques, 1965. Baridon, Laurent. L’imaginaire scientifique de Viollet-le-Duc [The Scientific Imagination of Viollet-le-Duc]. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996. Blumenbach, Johan Friedrich. De generis humani varietate nativa. Göttingen, 1795. Boulle, Pierre-Henri. Race et esclavage dans la France de l’Ancien régime [Race and Slavery in Ancien Régime France]. Paris: Perrin, 2007. Bressani, Martin. Viollet-le-Duc and the Historical Imagination. Burlington, VT; Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. . ‘La maison comme forme sociale’ [House as a social form], in Viviane Delpech (ed.), Viollet-le-Duc: Villégiature et architecture domestique [Viollet-le-Duc: Resort and Domestic Architecture]. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2016, 21–32. Cesari, Chiara de. ‘European Heritage and Cultural Racism’. The Cultural Heritage of Europe: Re-assessing a Concept – Re-defining its Challenges, Conference at INHA, Paris, 5 June 2018. Châteaubriand, François-René de. Le génie du christianisme [The Genius of Christianity]. Paris: Librairie ecclésiastique de Rusand, 1827. Duvernay-Bolens, Jacqueline. ‘L’Homme zoologique: Races et racisme chez les naturalistes de la première moitié du XIXe siècle’ [The Zoological Man: Races and Racism Among Naturalists of the First Half of the 19th Century]. L’Homme 1995, 35 (133), 9–32. Faure, Elie. ‘Les Trois gouttes de sang noir’ [The Three Drops of Black Blood] (1929), in Henry Miller, Œuvres complètes [Complete Works]. Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1964. Frankl, Paul. The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations Through Eight Centuries. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960. Foucard, Bruno (ed.). Viollet-le-Duc. Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1980. Fouillée, Augustine (Bruno, G.). Le tour de France par deux enfants [The Tour of France by Two Children]. Paris: Belin, 1877. Gilkerson, Ann Melissa. ‘Aristocratic Chateau to Republican Villa: The Changing Construction of Rational Theory and Regional Form in the Country Houses of Viollet-le-Duc’. PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2003. Gobineau, Arthur de. Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines [Essay on the Inequality of Human Races]. Paris: Librairie Firmin Didot, Hanover: Rumpler, 1853–55. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Von Deutscher Baukunst [On German Architecture]. Strasbourg, 1772. Greenhalgh, Michael. Destruction of Cultural Heritage in 19th-century France: Old Stones Versus Modern Identities. Leiden: Brill, 2015.
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Grégoire, Henri. Rapport sur les destructions opérées par le Vandalisme, et sur les moyens de le réprimer, séance du 14 Fructidor, l’an second de la République une et indivisible [Report on the Destructions Wrought by Vandalism, and on the Means of Repressing It, Session of Fructidor 14th, the Second Year of the One and Indivisible Republic]. 1794, BNF, coll. Les archives de la Révolution française, 12.436. Grodecki, Louis (ed.). Le ‘gothique’ retrouvé: avant Viollet-le-Duc [The ‘Gothic’ Rediscovered: Before Viollet-le-Duc]. Paris: Caisse nationale des monuments historiques et des sites, 1979. Héritier, Françoise. Masculin-Féminin [Male-Female] (1996). Paris: Odile Jacob, 2012. Hugo, Victor. Notre-Dame de Paris. 1482. Paris: Charles Gosselin, 1831. Jarrassé, Dominique. ‘Trois gouttes d’art nègre: Gobinisme et métissage en histoire de l’art’ [Three Drops of Black Art: Gobinism and Cross-Breeding in Art History]. Les actes de colloques du musée du quai Branly Jacques Chirac, 1 (2009). doi.org/10.4000/ actesbranly.96 Kant, Immanuel. Von den verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen [Of the Different Races of People]. Hartung, 1775. Kerr, Greg. ‘Racialisation du discours dans l’Histoire de l’habitation humaine d’Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’ [Racialization of Discourse in History of Human Habitation of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc]. Romantisme 2014, 166 (4), 82–94. Leniaud, Jean-Michel. Viollet-le-Duc ou les délires du système [Viollet-le-Duc or the Delusions of the System]. Paris: Mengès, 1994. Mertens, Franz. ‘Paris baugeschichtlich im Mittel-alter’ [History of Paris Architecture in the Middle Ages]. Allgemeine Bauzeitung 1843, VIII, 159–67, 253–60. Michaud, Eric. Histoire de l’art: une discipline à ses frontières [History of Art: A Discipline at Its Boundaries]. Paris: Hazan, 2005. Pichot, André. Aux origines des théories raciales: De la Bible à Darwin [At the Origins of Racial Theories: From the Bible to Darwin]. Paris: Flammarion, 2008. Recht, Roland. ‘Viollet-le-Duc et Gottfried Semper: leurs conceptions du patrimoine monumental’ [Viollet-le-Duc and Gottfried Semper: Their Conceptions of Monumental Heritage]. Revue Germanique Internationale 2000, 13, 155–68. Scelles, Maurice. ‘La maison romane de Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val’ [The Romanesque House of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val]. Mémoires de la société archéologique du Midi de la France XLIX, 1989, 45–119. Teyssot, Georges. ‘Norm and Type: Variations on a Theme’, in Antoine Picon and Alessandra Ponte (eds), Architecture and The Sciences: Exchanging Metaphors. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003, 141–73. Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène-Emmanuel. Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle [Reasoned Dictionary of French Architecture from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Century], 10 vols. Paris: B. Bance, A. Morel, 1854–68. . ‘Cathédrale’ [Cathedral] in Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du e XI au XVIe siècle [Reasoned Dictionary of French Architecture from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Century], vol. 2. Paris: B. Bance, 1856, 279–392. . ‘Hôtel de ville’ [Town hall] in Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle [Reasoned Dictionary of French Architecture from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Century], vol. 6. Paris: B. Bance, 1863, 88–99.
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. ‘Maison’ [House] in Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle [Reasoned Dictionary of French Architecture from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Century], vol. 6. Paris: B. Bance, 1863, 214–300. . ‘Sculpture’ in Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle [Reasoned Dictionary of French Architecture from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Century], vol. 8. Paris: A. Morel, 1866, 96–276. . ‘Style’ in Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle [Reasoned Dictionary of French Architecture from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Century], vol. 8. Paris: A. Morel, 1866, 474–97. . Entretiens sur l’architecture [Discourses on Architecture] (1872). Gollion: Infolio, 2010. . Histoire d’une maison [History of a House] (1873). Gollion: Infolio, 2008. . Histoire de l’habitation humaine: depuis les temps préhistoriques jusqu’à nos jours [History of Human Habitation: From Prehistoric Time to Present Days] (1875). Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1978. . Histoire d’un hôtel de ville et d’une cathédrale [History of a City Hall and a Cathedral]. Paris: Hetzel, 1878. . Histoire d’un dessinateur [History of a Designer]. Paris: Hetzel, 1879. Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène-Emmanuel and Félix Narjoux. Habitations modernes [Modern habitations]. Paris: Hetzel, 1875. Vitet, Ludovic. Rapport à Monsieur le ministre de l’Intérieur sur les monuments, les bibliothèques, les archives et les musées des départements de l’Oise, de l’Aisne, de la Marne, du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais [Report to the Interior Minister on the Monuments, Libraries, Archives and Museums of the Departments of Oise, Aisne, Marne and Pas-de-Calais]. 20 February 1831.
8 CHAPTER 2 Identity Written in Stone? Gothicizing Renovation of Estonian Churches at a Second Glance (1820–1940) Kristina Jõekalda
Introduction Any history can be expected to be multilayered – the history of heritage conservation, all the more so. A wave of interest has lately emerged in the topics relating to multiple temporalities, presentism and coexisting times in the humanities.1 As a recent volume claims, building on Aby Warburg and Walter Benjamin, ‘[t]he past and the future do not exist as separate categories but are always projections of specific presents, they exist as the present’s own immanent modes’.2 Monuments, especially architectural ones, are all about that phenomenon: a lived heritage in which all the historical layers – either through additions or through states of neglect – continue to be visible in the present. This chapter deals with the historiographical afterlife of nineteenth-century architectural conservation in the Baltic area, especially in what was to become the nation state of Estonia in 1918. Tallinn (or Reval, as it was known in German) and Tartu (Dorpat in German, Yuryev in Russian), the two largest cities of Estonia, have played host to a lively cultural and scholarly life ever since the medieval era. The identity of both cities may be described as German, Baltic German, Russian or Estonian, depending on the context. Since the Great Northern War (1700–21), the area of what is now Estonia and Latvia was divided into three Baltic governorates (Ostseeprovinzen) of tsarist Russia. Tallinn was the capital of the northernmost of them, the Estonian Governorate; its walled Old Town still retains
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much of the medieval appearance both in terms of the street network and surviving buildings. Tartu, the historical cultural centre that belonged to the Livonian Governorate, has been one of the leading university towns of north-eastern Europe since 1632; its Old Town is predominantly Neoclassical in style, as a result of massive restructuring after several fires. The different layers of urban and art history also make themselves visible in historiography. Which of those identities should one talk about, given the sharp political ruptures that have been an integral part of Estonian history? This chapter is focused on the Baltic German and Estonian axis. Individual monuments have often been interpreted as reminders of glorious national histories, and represented as such in historiography. The construction of cultural heritage usually demands the image of a selection of objects to be shaped as belonging to a specific group, but it likewise entails the practice of marginalization of those elements that do not fit into that (national) narrative.3 The various different layers of time – the centuries of Baltic German dominance, including under Swedish and Russian rule; the time of the independent nation state between the two world wars; the era of Nazi German occupation; and the Soviet years (1940–41 and 1944–91), followed by the ‘rebirth’ of the nation state – have all strongly shaped the ways in which historic monuments were maintained and interpreted – their discursive utilization. At the same time, changes in the relevant disciplines that affected how such practices were perceived in professional circles do not necessarily correspond with the political birthmarks that they bore: ideas and schools of renovation often lived longer than political regimes. Interpretations were shaped on the one hand by the Romantic movement, revival styles and emerging national styles and on the other by the history of the disciplines of art history and heritage conservation, along with the technical aspects of historic preservation. The nineteenth century was certainly a time of turmoil for architectural monuments. Despite growing enthusiasm for history and heritage, despite better awareness of the value of medieval architecture, damage to monuments was an issue that frequently needed to be faced – as it still is today. Reacting to neglect, the practice of demolishing and the extensive rebuilding of old structures in the region, art historian and architect Wilhelm Neumann (1849–1919) was the first to defend the position that all layers, styles and stages of construction are worthy of being maintained for posterity. In line with John Ruskin’s and Georg Dehio’s ideas, Neumann appealed to this claim in 1887: It is up to our time, a time characterized by a better appreciation of the creations of the preceding centuries, to mend the damage wrought by past ignorance and
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vandalism, and we can be sure that the damage will be mended, and with success, since we have already experienced the renewal and resurrection of some works that had previously suffered destruction.4
Such evaluations are relative, of course. The restoration works carried out during the first half of the nineteenth century – the time that we often associate with the rise in historical consciousness5 – were much discredited in later years. What was deemed by some as resurrection has been seen as destruction by others. No history of the reception of Estonian conservation practice has been written. Yet the early historiography – the attitudes of the nineteenth-century and interwar scholars – continue to shape our understandings today. This chapter will touch upon the evaluations made both by authors who lived through such renovation works and by subsequent scholars, both Baltic German and Estonian. I began research on this topic in response to the challenge represented by the extremely critical approaches that existed during the interwar era towards the renovation of Tartu Cathedral over a century earlier. In 1932, the author of the first history of Estonian art, Alfred Vaga (1895–1980), deemed the entire nineteenth century to have lacked both in taste and in piety, and to have made nothing but a negative contribution to the monuments, deforming their proportions and altogether doing more damage than any of the wars had managed. The loss of a sense of style among architects and master builders, he alleged, led them to produce ‘soulless and unartistic’ designs.6 In 1940, his brother Voldemar Vaga (1899–1999) similarly condemned the way in which churches had been rebuilt over the nineteenth century, the era in which the noble ‘Classicism became extinct and eclecticism – this imitation of past styles – began to dominate. This is the age of total decline in the history of architecture’.7 The way in which modernity brought with it strong criticism towards the history of style is, of course, a global phenomenon. Since the 1970s, a revision of this negative attitude has been launched whose evolution I cannot examine in detail here, but the essence of which was a more sympathetic approach towards the nineteenth-century masters with their different views.8 Or can evidence be found of a more open-minded assessment having been adopted earlier than that? I have chosen four medieval churches through which to analyse the debates, both from a technical and ideological point of view. (It just so happens that the first large-scale renovation projects in the area were all carried out on ecclesiastical structures.) The influence of Romanticism – with its fantasy-driven restorations, albeit based on research – is hardly specific to the Baltic region. While this region did not quite have its own Eugène Viollet-le-Duc,9 similar processes can be seen – even if the
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reconstructions were less pretentious than in the ‘centres’. The early nineteenth-century renovation of Tartu Cathedral and St. Olaf ’s Church in Tallinn has been shaped into a sort of a national myth as a result of the technical and creative innovations involved in the work. But what specific part has one or another author played in this? While the first two churches deserve more attention in the chapter, in the latter part two others are discussed. St. Nicholas’ Church in Tallinn went through a less ambitious but equally well-documented renovation in the mid-nineteenth century. Finally, I take a look at St. John’s Church in Tartu to remind the reader of the diverse scenarios available. (Two of the chosen examples are no longer in use as churches, but as museums and concert halls,10 a fact that gives an additional twist to discussion on the topic and to their valorization as monuments.) This chapter, with its focus on reception over the ‘long nineteenth century’ and until 1940, therefore serves two main goals: firstly, to look at the development and self-evaluation of the disciplinary practice as reflected via reporting and history writing that discusses the renovation of these monuments. Secondly, I aim to address the nation-building endeavours involved – i.e. to discover how the same (German) monuments were adapted to suit new (Estonian) narratives. Putting these aspects together, a historiography of heritage begins to emerge. Heritage is undoubtedly a phenomenon that is about the present rather than the past. Yet heritage studies as a field of research seems to be excessively centred around contemporary concerns that the practitioners and communities are facing when dealing with monuments. My reading is interested in historical presents, much in line with cultural geographer David C. Harvey’s idea of ‘the “presentness” of heritage’, both in the sense of having a material presence and of representing the interpretations of the nowmoment.11 While John Carman and Marie Louise Stig Sørensen allege that from the late nineteenth-century ‘taken-for-granted position … that heritage is about and belongs to the nation, we have reached a point where the concerns and awareness of what constitutes heritage, what roles it plays and what challenges it raises have exploded’,12 I try to show that things were already more complicated in the nineteenth century. Heritage is indeed an ambiguous concept, and it needs to be cherished precisely because of the hybridity and ambivalence that it entails. I have tackled the issues concerning how monuments were put into the service of local and national histories elsewhere.13 What I want to do here is look at monuments in their role as eyewitnesses to historical processes, and especially at their representation in subsequent art-historical discourse – because heritage construction does not concern the material objects alone but, particularly, their reception and the historiography of heritage.
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As Harvey claims, ‘heritage is about the process by which people use the past – a “discursive construction” with material consequences’.14 How, and with what sort of arguments, have those four monuments been handled in accounts of the history and politics of renovation?
Monuments as/for Nation-Building: A Quick Guide to the Case of Estonia The Baltic Germans – who represented only a small proportion of the population, no more than 5% – maintained the position of the local cultural, economic and political elite for centuries, while the ethnically local inhabitants were predominantly peasants; serfs in fact until 1816 in the Estonian and 1819 in the Livonian Governorate.15 After having colonized the Baltic area in the thirteenth century (in the course of the conflicts often referred to as the Baltic crusades),16 Germans continued to migrate to the area over the centuries. For them, the German states were their ‘motherland’, the Russian Empire constituted the ‘fatherland’, while their Baltic homeland was commonly referred to as the Heimat. This is a curious formulation, one that allows a view of the Baltic Germans (at least in their own eyes) as intermediaries between the Russian oppressor and the original German Kulturträger.17 I have concentrated my attention mostly on the Baltic German perspective, because they were the first authors to begin writing histories of local ‘high’ art and thus to constitute the very idea of heritage. Throughout the long nineteenth century, the debates over Baltic art can be described as having a dual relationship towards Germany. While many authors sought to prove the autonomous character of Baltic art, contributing to the search for a specifically Baltic German identity, these attempts usually remained within the framework of demonstrating the pan-European range of German culture, asserting that art in the Baltics was merely a simplified replica of the ‘true’ German art. Against the background of the national aspirations of German, tsarist Russian and native Estonian/Latvian cultures, however, Baltic German identity constructs gradually became more pronounced. By the end of the century, the aim of inventing a specifically Baltic German past and strengthening its colonial identity had become a major goal for the community18 – a project that was to gain further urgency from the policy of Russification19. As for the state of affairs in heritage conservation, historic and artistic monuments of the region had begun to witness growing interest from the end of the eighteenth century onwards. But these efforts remained the authors’ own private initiatives. There was no functional arrangement
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or public institution dedicated to heritage preservation in the Russian Empire – although Peter the Great, Elizabeth and Catherine II sometimes issued decrees regarding individual monuments, and a couple of state acts became law from 1826 to 1827.20 Most of the achievements were thus born as a result of the common efforts of scholars through the local learned societies, which took on the burden of filling the gaps in an imperfect imperial heritage-preservation system.21 German continued to be the language of scholarly art history even during the interwar era. While Russian was used for official reports as well as for some discussions relating to the planned Heritage Conservation Act, it was rarely employed in discussions of thoroughly academic issues about the Baltic history of art. Research on local monuments remained the ‘monopoly’ of Baltic German scholars until the nation states of Estonia and Latvia were declared in 1918. Estonian became a more dominant language of discourse in the 1920s, when a shift also took place content-wise. In the eyes of the new nation state the Baltic Germans, those ‘architects of history’, suddenly became representatives of an unwanted heritage. The native Estonians and Latvians of the region had been in the throes of a process of discovering their national consciousness ever since the latter nineteenth century, and were becoming increasingly active in the cultural debates on the material heritage of the area, but this hardly involved the ‘alien’ heritage of art and architecture. Such instances of rewriting history fall under what François Hartog calls the ‘crisis of time’ to which heritage is recourse.22 Whereas in the case of other building types heated debates continued, the question of whether the new state ought to take care of religious monuments seems to have required hardly any public discussion in the interwar years. Though they had originally been constructed as Catholic churches, in the sixteenth century they became mostly Protestant (Lutheran).23 Since they had been used by Estonians and Germans alike, even if local social hierarchies were made visible through their interior design, by the nineteenth century churches had become a part of Estonian identity as well. In the attempts to exemplify the young state’s image as a Kulturnation, the state was in a position to benefit from all the various facets of its history. With the 1925 Heritage Conservation Act, everything related to the history of Estonia, including its past of foreign rulers, was deemed worthy of preservation as part of the country’s cultural history.24 A distinction made between ‘art in Estonia’ and ‘Estonian art’ by Alfred Vaga in 1932 gave researchers a key with which to envision a suitable (national) treatment of the earlier heritage of the region.25 Ever since, the ‘canon’ of the history of art in Estonia has normally followed a narrative centred on Baltic German ‘high’
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culture until roughly 1900, from which point a switch takes place towards a view focused on Estonian national art. A tolerant attitude enabled the country to demonstrate its democratic values – a quality much needed for a new-born state. As the country’s heritage inspector (essentially a state antiquarian) Eerik Laid highlighted in 1936, heritage is not protected solely to fulfil a ‘formal obligation that the name of a cultural nation imposes upon us’ but to show open-mindedness towards the various layers of the local past.26 Many scholars wrote popular articles, emphasizing that Estonia possesses a rich and valuable material culture that its inhabitants ought to be proud of. In the words of Otto Freymuth (1892–1953), a Baltic German by descent and one of my protagonists in this chapter, the old local structures – both sacred and secular – ‘can be expected to raise public interest, so that more grounded research on the monuments of those times ought to seem a self-evident task’.27
Tartu Cathedral – ‘the Prettiest Embellishment to Our City’ First, I shall look at the red-brick cathedral in Tartu, situated on Cathedral Hill (Domberg, Toomemägi). It was constructed in the thirteenth and perfected until the sixteenth century, but became a ruin soon afterwards; in the 1760s, the western towers were demolished. Tartu was being extensively rebuilt following the great fire of 1775, especially after the university was re-established in 1802. The idea behind the grand reconstruction of the cathedral was that it combine the functions of an observatory (in the western towers), church (the nave) and university library (chancel). Of architect Johann Wilhelm Krause’s (1757–1828) numerous ambitious designs only the library was to be realized from 1803 to 1807, with the main entrance romantically placed in the middle of the ruined nave. This way, half of the structure was left almost untouched – the ruins and the imaginatively restructured part of the building becoming an integrated whole. In the interior, Gothic and stylized Neoclassical motifs (such as tin-sheet acanthus leaves for the capitals of columns) were merged. Further plans were interrupted during the 1812 French invasion of Russia, not least due to financial and technical obstacles28 (see figure 2.1). Krause’s own writings upon arrival in Tartu demonstrate his desolation at the state of neglect that he witnessed: the few remaining ruins were used as the source of building material when rebuilding the city.29 Such an early, bold attempt to reconstruct a medieval ruin certainly makes an interesting case study – before such international precedents as the Marienburg (Malbork) castle or Cologne Cathedral had been set. The field of conserving medieval architecture was as yet largely undiscovered territory – and it
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Figure 2.1a–b. (a) August Philipp Clara, Tartu Cathedral after the works supervised by architect Johann Wilhelm Krause in the early 1800s: the chancel redesigned as university library and ruined section partly conserved. Aquatint, 1821. Estonian History Museum, Tallinn, G 6736. (b) Krause’s new elevation from 1820 (unrealized), attempting to house a church and museum in the cathedral ruins as well. Original lost, reproduction: Paris, Olga. ‘Johann Wilhelm Krause’. MA thesis, University of Tartu, 1943. Available at University of Tartu library.
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was rather peculiar that a Russian university would be interested in investing in a Catholic, Gothic ruin. In his explications, Krause himself called the undertaking somewhat laughable. Although some professors did criticize the pretentious idea of restoring the cathedral, their counterarguments were of a practical rather than ideological nature.30 Calculating what his impulses and role models might have been, it is known that Krause admired the cathedrals of Milan and Seville, as well as Marc-Antoine Laugier’s Essai sur l’architecture (An Essay on Architecture, 1753), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Von deutscher Baukunst (On German Architecture, 1772) and Johann Gottfried Grohmann’s Bruchstücke der Gotischen Baukunst… (Fragments of Gothic Architecture…, 1799).31 The theologian Johannes Frey (1867–1914) became the first historiographer to go deeper into the early reconstruction designs in a 1911 article, writing that although the cathedral is: just a romantic-picturesque ruin now, many have thought while looking at the towering pillars and the delicate tracery of the windows: how splendid must this building have been before it sank into rubble and debris in 1595! And might it not perhaps be open to restoration back to its old beauty, with its lofty halls and the towering twin towers thrusting skyward?!32
He continues with a surprisingly self-aware exclamation for the time, given that a more self-reflective history of art history was only beginning to take shape internationally:33 ‘One hundred years ago this idea was seriously under consideration. … It is not without interest, therefore, to take another look at the negotiations on the expansion of the whole cathedral … to form a picture of what was intended and desired at that time’.34 Most of the rest of Frey’s text is a series of quotations from original correspondence on the matter, combined with some descriptive remarks. In the end, though, he does give an evaluation of the works completed and further planned according to Krause’s designs: That these did not come to be executed – we cannot regret it. Of course it could not be denied that the plans do testify to a certain understanding as to the particular stylistic character of reconstruction, as well as to the peculiarities of Protestant worship and to its liturgical needs. But in addition, they show so many features of paltriness and are so seriously cheapened by considerations of economy and practicality that their execution would have been far from the ideal that the author … had in mind.35
In early twentieth century, Krause’s work was cherished for his Neoclassical designs, while his other efforts were often decried.36 Yet Frey seems to have an interest in the history of the project on its own merits.
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Even more surprisingly, he appears supportive of the project in general, criticizing the form that it actually took in reality rather than the idea itself. Considering what was to follow, his attempt to understand the choices made by his predecessors are all the more noteworthy. Texts on heritage conservation – especially those that appear in the public press – often arise directly out of necessity, from contemporary events and plans. From 1927 to 1929, further projects were undertaken to restructure the university library, with historian and librarian Otto Freymuth conducting archaeological research.37 It was in this context that he published another article overviewing the renovation history of the cathedral, that ‘magnificent Old Livonian structure’, concentrating on Krause’s work and publishing many of the latter’s drawings for the first time. Freymuth, however, all in all evaluated the renovation effort as nothing less than ‘barbaric’.38 He characterized the reconstructed portion of the cathedral as a ‘monster’, regretting that its conversion into a library ‘has deformed precisely this most beautiful part of the church in such a miserable manner, and has probably done so irreparably’.39 In stark contrast to Frey’s sympathetic attitude, Freymuth wrote that it was ‘with the re-establishment of the university that the most vicious era of destruction began for the Domberg, and as a mockery of fate the work was done under the maxim of preserving and even rebuilding the structure’.40 Freymuth certainly possessed a Ruskinian eye for the beauty of ruins, allowing himself also a patriotic moment of pride over this heritage: ‘the cathedral ruins maintained, apart from the chancel, are the prettiest embellishment to our city, a ruinous witness to a bygone cultural age, whose preservation and investigation ought to be a duty of honour for us’.41 Several other scholars saw fit to give similar evaluations. Voldemar Vaga, who was to become the first Estonian-born professional art historian and one of the very few to be specialized in the nineteenth century, wrote that the cathedral’s ‘monumentality and magnificence in its original form surpassed even Riga cathedral’42 (the latter was renovated since 188543). This testifies to the evergreen tendency to compare oneself with the closest neighbour, and bears witness to the Estonian national pride involved. But in 1928 Vaga too expressed the opinion that Krause’s work on Tartu Cathedral had ‘permanently spoiled this most splendid achievement of medieval architecture in the Baltic countries. Although not so much from the outside, all the more from the inside, where the construction of additional floors, galleries etc. has destroyed all of the [building’s] former spatial impact’. Vaga was convinced that ‘Krause was obviously neither a genius, nor even a very talented artist’.44 Alfred Vaga, self-taught as an art historian, seconded his brother’s view on the cathedral in 1934: ‘human hands lacking
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culture have done more to ensure its destruction than the harsh climate of our homeland’.45 Drawing any solid conclusions in the face of this array of opposing opinions is a tricky task, especially given that in subsequent research, Krause’s project has been interpreted both as an outright freak and a perfect form for a university of the Enlightenment era.46 He has been cherished because of his conservationist and his romantic approach alike – two traits that should be expected to rule out each other. Frey had asserted that ‘[t]he preserved ruins speak to us more loudly of the former magnificence of the old episcopal cathedral of Tartu than the construction erected according to these plans could possibly have done’.47 A similar attitude was taken up by art historian Kaur Alttoa in 1984 towards the cathedral’s renovation history, concluding rather poisonously, when comparing historical photographs that made the irreversible decay of the ruined part particularly evident, that ‘it is highly debatable who has managed to preserve the medieval architectural heritage better – Krause or those who in their sense of piety have exclusively advocated leaving the ruins in a state of neglect’.48 Although it seems that Tartu Cathedral has been primarily interpreted as a Romantic renovation project, and criticized for that reason, the texts are surprisingly ambivalent, acknowledging both extremes of Krause’s project.
St. Olaf ’s Church in Tallinn – ‘the Honour and Beauty of the City’ One of the most outstanding monuments in (and to) the history of Baltic conservation is the thirteenth-century St. Olaf ’s Church, which became a ruin under quite different circumstances – having suffered a huge fire in 1820. The church, with its approximately 125-metre spire, had been struck by lightning repeatedly over the previous centuries.49 Naturally enough (one need only think about the fire at Paris Notre-Dame in 2019), the unexpected burning mobilized people to quite a different extent than slowly decaying walls could ever have done – even if some writings on Tartu Cathedral had also been marked by a sense of melancholy. Additionally, pragmatic calculations come into play in such cases, making its consideration in the framework of heritage studies all the more suitable: this was not about bestowing an embellishment on the city – the congregation was in need of its church (see figure 2.2). Only a few months after the fire, schoolteacher Heinrich Wilhelm Joachim Rickers (1753–1826) published a booklet entitled Etwas über die St. Olai-Kirche in Reval (Something about St. Olaf ’s Church in Reval), one of the first scholarly accounts to be devoted to a single monument in local
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Figure 2.2. Booklet celebrating the re-inauguration of Tallinn St. Olaf ’s Church after the fire of 1820 and the following renovation. Back and front cover of the Oratory Devoted to the Inauguration of the Renewed St. Olaf ’s Church in Reval on Trinity Sunday, 16 June 1840 (Reval: Lindforsʼ Erben [1840]). Lithographs by the workshop of Friedrich Wilhelm Macdonald. Tallinn City Museum, 4113 Dp.
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art historiography, in which the church is discussed thoroughly in both its historical and art-historical contexts. Rickers seems well aware of his limits, and concludes that large gaps remain in relation to its early construction history,50 but his descriptions of the renovations is remarkably thorough. Writing about the works on the tower in the 1770s, Rickers lists all the building masters, measurements and technical details involved.51 The closer he gets to his own time, the more circumstantial his descriptions become – including an account of the exact course taken by the fire. With regard to the national perspective on monuments, it is noteworthy that Rickers employs the unprecedented manoeuvre of bringing in the point of view of Estonian peasants, even citing in Estonian their slogan that this church was ‘the honour and beauty of the city’.52 His argument thus tries to draw on the shared pride of both ethnic communities – not something many of his successors would repeat. Perhaps it is in this context that one should understand the reason behind a sudden exclamation in the middle of the work’s section on urban history: ‘The founders of the city were not brute barbarians … but the citizens of a free German imperial city, Lübeck’.53 Rickers’ book was probably inspired by more than scholarly interest alone, written with the aim of promoting the collection of funds for the reconstruction effort, making his emotional calls particularly expressive: ‘Our old, majestic, glorious St. Olaf ’s church … [stands as] a beautiful, venerable ruin! … In short, everything that could possibly burn, has burned’.54 His attitude towards the forthcoming reconstruction was utterly supportive. The church was indeed reconstructed from 1828 to 1840. The new field inevitably lacked experienced specialists: works were supervised by engineers Alexander Feldmann and Johannes Daniel Bantelmann (of the Tallinn Civil Engineering Office), while Finnish building master Heinrich Ryberg assisted in the design of the spire.55 The Romanticist painter Friedrich Ludwig von Maydell (1795–1846) played a decisive part in the final outcome. He reveals in a letter to the German architect Wilhelm Stier how great a surprise and an honour it is for him that the Tsar has chosen his design for the new altarpiece. He adds that ‘the church is Gothic and should be rebuilt as far as possible to [its original] character’, but admits that the members of the Bau-Commission ‘are racking their brains over it and digging through all sorts of sketches of Gothic buildings. I am … just happy to find [in you] someone who can distinguish a column from a pillar’. Maydell also designed the pulpit and organ loft, and ‘the windows of the same [church] are mostly based on my drawings, each in a different pattern, really gracefully executed’.56 He repeatedly mentions the unfortunate scarcity of books on Gothic architecture at the University of Tartu library.57 This decades-long correspondence with Stier indeed leaves one to conclude that Maydell was much more of an internationally influential figure than
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previously imagined: the two men were planning to cooperate in writing books on architectural theory. Following this original character meant in reality that remaining medieval fragments were remodelled based on the nineteenth-century understanding of medievalism. Still, the fact that the renovation was realized according to a vision to restore the former building, and that each of its stages was carefully documented, have earned for this 1830s’ project the title of the first professional example of heritage conservation in the region. And indeed, the effort was to remain the largest-scale undertaking of the century.58 In his 1858 book on religious architecture in Tallinn, historian and archivist Gotthard von Hansen (1821–1900) deemed it to be the highlight of the city: ‘Among the works of German architecture in the Baltic lands, the majestic church of St. Olaf in Tallinn stands above all, by its grandeur and by the harmony in the relations between its individual parts’.59 The chapter on this church contains an account both of its construction and its renovation history, including all the fires it suffered, devoting an especially lengthy section to the events of 1820 – still vivid in collective memory. He reports on the renovation in year-by-year detail, praising the fine decorative stonemasonry of Johann Gottfried Exner,60 based on Maydell’s designs, that reflected the belief that Gothic architecture was highly creative and never repeated itself in even the tiniest details.61 The discipline of art history had developed more visibly by then: several massive comparative albums about the history of architectural typology had been published. As Christopher S. Wood aptly suggests, ‘[e]xcavations and publications imposed a linear sense of time on monuments that had been constructed under different principles’, so that the conservators had a whole new arsenal of historically ‘accurate’ motifs and missing details to choose from in case of need.62 Also in Marienburg Castle, whose influence is documented in St. Olaf ’s case, the first phase of renovation (1817–50) was clearly Romanticist – inspired more by the fantasies of medieval fortification architecture than by its original appearance.63 ‘After twelve years of industrious activity, the noble temple was restored to its original Gothic glory’,64 Hansen tells his readers, so that a festive re-inauguration ceremony could be held exactly twenty years after the fire, allowing to interpret this reconstruction as a perfect match for the romantic ideal of monuments rising from the ashes. The meaning that the reconstructed St. Olaf ’s carried for Estonia has even been claimed as equivalent to the completion of Cologne Cathedral for Germany.65 But here it should not be forgotten that although the resurrection of the latter had been discussed for decades, the actual renovation of the chancel in Cologne began in the same 1820s, the newly constructed part only in the 1840s.
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St. Olaf ’s also raises the tension between German/Prussian and Russian role models, under whose legislation their Baltic Heimat operated. The reconstruction was financed by tsars Alexander I and Nicholas I – especially the latter, who, it deserves to be mentioned, was related by marriage to the initiator of the reconstruction in Cologne, King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia.66 St. Olaf ’s was renovated with Russian funds and expertise, even if strongly influenced by precedents in the German-speaking world. Hansen highlights, for example, that when the bells were finally hung in the tower in 1843, a Dankfest was celebrated on the anniversary day of becoming part of the Russian Empire, as St. Olaf ’s was ‘by the favor of the monarch now fully restored … [and] bestowed upon the inhabitants of Tallinn’.67 Critical stances towards the result at St. Olaf ’s appeared immediately after the work was completed. Baltic German writer and painter Alexander von Ungern-Sternberg (1806–69), who had documented the fire-damaged interior in images, noted in 1855, in a concerned tone, that the outcome was ‘too clean, too smooth and too new, little remained of the hazy mystery of the pre-fire structure’.68 All the ‘faults’ of the medieval artwork had been ‘corrected’ by the nineteenth-century masters – as in their view the true Gothic had undoubtedly envisaged.69 At the same time, it has to be taken into account that Lutheran theology did privilege a whitewashed and simplified church interior over abundant decoration,70 and St. Olaf ’s Church greatly influenced contemporary revival-style religious architecture. In later historiography it is sometimes even named in the context of new rather than medieval architecture.71 So, in a similar manner to Tartu Cathedral, later research has re-evaluated the contribution made by the renovation in many and various ways. One can speak of two parallel tendencies: there was certainly a wish to preserve the medieval look of St. Olaf ’s. Yet the final form chosen for it was, typically of the era, the result of an artistic approach to the restoration task. Unlike Tartu Cathedral, however, St. Olaf ’s has not been the target of nearly as much negative assessment. In his account of the history of Tallinn and its art, published around the turn of the century, historian Eugen von Nottbeck surprisingly describes the process that followed the tragic fire simply as an act of Wiederherstellung (rebuilding).72 In 1937, esteemed art-history professor at the University of Tartu, Sten Karling (1906–87), even more startlingly asserted that despite the destruction and reconstruction ‘the general architectonic impression that the church makes … is more or less the same as it did in the late medieval era’.73 Writing decades before more extensive research was undertaken in Russian archives, Karling seems not to have realized the true extent of the works. The renovation of St. Olaf ’s certainly did change the overall impression less than had been the case with
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Tartu Cathedral, but as its renovation was fully completed, fewer clues were left for reading its many historical layers.
St. Nicholas’ Church in Tallinn – a ‘Monument of Civic Harmony’ Other churches went through a renovation, though less extensive, in these decades, and might thus be woven into a similar kind of narrative. The reasons behind each one differed quite widely, however. While Tartu Cathedral had long since been a ruin, and St. Olaf ’s had become a ruin overnight, two more variants must be discussed. St. Nicholas’ Church in Tallinn presents a rather different narrative from the first two: it had become a danger to churchgoers as a result of its physical condition. After a number of occasions on which structural-engineering problems had arisen in the building, action was finally taken in the period from 1846 to 1850 in order to prevent a disaster. The works on this church, too, have later been interpreted as a symbolic step, a verification ‘that our land has not lost pace with the first decades of the history of conservation of built monuments in Europe’.74 The historiography on this phase of renovation is greatly overshadowed by the later history of the church – namely, the vast destruction that it suffered in the Second World War and a major renovation that lasted until the 1980s.75 In 1956, the original records of the nineteenth-century renovation were found in the rubble of the church, offering a thorough insight into the original intentions.76 The main masters responsible for the conservation were Heinrich Ryberg, Franz Oxford and Johann Oldenburg. The German architect Christoph Conrad Stremme (1807–77), professor of civil engineering (Civilbaukunst) at the university in Tartu and counsellor at the Russian imperial court (who was to continue his career into the 1850s in Texas, USA) was also consulted on the occasion.77 Immediately after the 1840s renovation, Gotthard von Hansen wrote at length about the work done, including some details on the previous works: the 1681 demolition and 1695 rebuilding of the church’s tower. He repeatedly mentioned the significance of the recent undertaking to Tallinners, and their support for the project. Here, too, resources had been collected by means of donations, concerts and exhibitions78 – all of which allowed ‘our St. Nicholas’ church, a monument of civic harmony, to open again in veneration of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’.79 Although decorative additions were made and a large part of the chancel walls and vaults were reconstructed from scratch, the works were less demanding than those at St. Olaf ’s. Hansen in fact pointed out that, compared
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with the newly created Gothic interior of St. Olaf ’s, St. Nicholas’ Church with its abundance of medieval furnishings enjoyed a privileged position (that it no longer held after 1944). Here, too, the masonry and window traceries were executed by Johann Gottfried Exner. Although the superb Gothic Revival traceries appear highly creative and were referred to as ‘special artworks’ in their own right in the documentation from 1850,80 other contemporary sources nevertheless claimed that they had been restored to ‘their old beauty’ (see figure 2.3a).81 Also in this case, hardly any negative statements about the renovation are to be found – a fact that can largely be explained by the fact that without intervention the building might have collapsed. Looking at the same texts as previously for references, Karling’s 1937 manuscript again curiously fails to demonstrate any knowledge of such a renovation ever having taken place: he speaks of St. Nicholas’ as ‘a majestic and lavishly decorated church that our age has inherited – it is preserved for the generations to come with relatively few changes’.82 Voldemar Vaga – entirely uncritically (a stance atypical of him) – named a later, 1898 renovation of the late seventeenth-century Baroque spire as ‘a renewal in its old forms’.83 True, the history of conservation was not in the focus of either of those texts, plus, Karling is known to have had little regard for the nineteenth century. I do consider it worthwhile to stress this discrepancy though, given that the role that such interpretations play in influencing the real world is even more important in cases where solid archival sources are scant.
St. John’s Church in Tartu – ‘Opus Inherited from Our Fathers’ To complete the circle, the parallel, but very different, case of the fourteenth-century St. John’s Church in Tartu needs to be added to the story. Its lavish red-brick decoration is untypical in Estonia, including a couple of thousand unique terracotta statues both on the façades and in the nave. Voldemar Vaga called its western portal ‘a simplified and reduced replica of French and West-German great portals’.84 St. John’s also suffered badly in the Second World War and went through a large-scale renovation as late as in the 2000s.85 It is noteworthy in the context of this chapter mainly because of the evaluation given to it by Otto Freymuth writing in 1924. Of all the nineteenth-century undertakings in the field of heritage conservation, he attributes positive significance to only one: the rejuvenation of the tower and choir of St. John’s around 1900.86 This view was expressed as a side remark in a newspaper article about rural churches but is nevertheless interesting because it gives a final twist to the kaleidoscope of contradictory
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Figure 2.3a–b. (a) View of the chancel of St. Nicholas’ Church, Tallinn, showing the result of the 1840s renovation along with Johann Gottfried Exner’s new window traceries. Photo postcard Reval – Nicolai Kirche by Frères Christins (Hans and Jaan Christin), ca. 1900. Tallinn City Museum, F 7770:3.
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(b) Western portal of St. John’s Church, Tartu: uncovering the terracotta sculptures under the supervision of architect Wilhelm Bockslaff. Photographer unknown, ca. 1900. Estonian History Museum, F 16977.
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possibilities with which one is presented when contemplating the renovation of medieval churches. Such a rejuvenation was required because a more ‘contemporary’ Neoclassical interior had been designed for the church over half a century before (1820–21 in the chancel and 1832–33 in the nave) by architect George Friedrich Wilhelm Geist (1782–1846). Inspired entirely by stylistic preferences, the medieval brick walls, decorated pillars and triforium niches with their terracotta statues (many being destroyed in the process) were concealed under smooth white plaster, not to mention the extension of the windows and addition of new galleries. These works, which by no means form part of the history of conservation, perfectly testify to the fact that stylistic restoration was clearly not an established practice yet. In Geist’s ‘defence’, it has to be said that the church had already been considerably reshaped by fires, repairs and the additions of subsequent centuries – most notably, the destruction of the medieval vaults in the Great Northern War.87 Still this rebuilding of the 1830s, aimed at hiding a splendidly lavish medieval appearance, was carried out simultaneously with the emblematic Gothicizing renovation at St. Olaf ’s. Furthermore, the same Friedrich Ludwig von Maydell, who was working with St. Olaf ’s, designed the new altarpiece and pulpit for St. John’s in the mid-1830s. Given the new architectonic setting, it might come as a surprise that both of these followed Gothic Revival forms – their Baroque predecessors might have been more fitting for the Classicized interiors, but Gothic furnishings were becoming the norm for Lutheran churches around this time in the Baltic region.88 Even though attempts were made to regulate church building, both German and Baltic ecclesiastical architecture maintained remarkable stylistic plurality.89 Geist himself executed neo-Gothic church designs in those years, but his considerations in the given case were not random – he had prepared several manuscripts on the principles of Protestant church architecture.90 From 1899 to 1904, an attempt was made to change the façades of St. John’s Church back to their medieval form under architect Wilhelm Bockslaff, assisted by Robert Pohlmann. While Freymuth strongly criticized all the horrid renovations dating from the previous century, this endeavour seems to have undone the wrongs of the earlier examples in his eyes. The most visible outcome was that the western and southern portals were conserved, the plaster was removed and copies were made of fifty-seven most damaged terracotta statues by sculptor August Franz Leberecht Volz from Riga (see figure 2.3b). In addition, the tower was renovated in 1911.91 Restoration of the medieval interior was also planned – but the First World War intervened. Johannes Frey’s comment from 1902
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demonstrates a wonderfully patriotic and Heimat-inspired pathos, typical of the era, especially when gathering finances for the works was involved: May the work begun not be obstructed, may also our old church arise in new splendor, as the Riga cathedral has been allowed to. And let love and enthusiasm for this great and beautiful work pour the necessary means into the building fund at all times – as this would be pleasant testimony to the ecclesial sensibility of the inhabitants of our good old town, who thereby maintain an awareness of this opus that we have inherited from our fathers and preserve it piously for the coming generations.92
In fact, the whole case of the ‘restitution’ of St. John’s appears to be in perfect harmony with Wilhelm Neumann’s call from the 1880s, with which I began this chapter – namely, that the duty of heritage conservation is to ‘mend the damage wrought by past ignorance and vandalism’,93 and to guarantee the preservation of those monuments, inherited from one’s ancestors, for the generations to come.
Conclusions These structures are no isolated monuments: all four churches constitute centrepieces of the urban settings in which they are located. It might not be appropriate to speak of a national heritage in the case of the Baltic Germans in quite the same sense as one can for the later nation states, yet it remains the case that their patriotic enterprise nonetheless does fit into the romantic construction of heritage that was being actualized internationally at the time. While it seems that the region’s medieval architecture was regarded as almost synonymous with Baltic Germanness as a phenomenon, if one assumes that equivalence then one is soon faced with the problem that the Gothic was associated with the roots and national character of a variety of European regions. Both the Romanesque and the Gothic Revival have been interpreted within the framework of German patriotism and the search for a national style. With regard to the cultural identity that these monuments and related heritage construction represent, it might rather be suggested that the urban space in all its diversity, with its many building types from the city’s long history, has the ability to embody the competing memories of differing social classes; nations; genders; and, above all, eras. As architectural theoretician Aldo Rossi claimed, the city can itself be considered the collective memory of its residents.94 ‘In modernity the venerable city is the surface of an art history, the image of a process’, Christopher S. Wood also
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observes.95 Quite evidently, the present is always an accumulation of all the material pasts that have ever existed – or, more precisely, of all of those pasts that remain. In the history and politics of heritage conservation,96 this fact has been at the top of the agenda ever since the late nineteenth century. The four renovation cases discussed have presented an instructive panorama of what might happen to a church, of how such acts were dealt with, and of how they were interpreted at a temporal distance. Tartu Cathedral represented an attempt to take advantage of a long-standing medieval ruin in order to adapt it to present-day needs and make something new out of it. St. Olaf ’s Church in Tallinn saw an attempt made after a devastating fire to restore a monumental building’s medieval appearance in the best Gothic Revival manner available, in parallel with such international (German) role models as Marienburg and Cologne, to turn it once more into a functioning church. St. Nicholas’ Church in Tallinn represented an attempt to do only whatever work was necessary according to the rhetoric, but nonetheless considerably perfecting the ‘handwriting’ of medieval masters. St. John’s in Tartu, however, through a fashionable act of modernizing, can be seen to represent the counternarrative; the restoration of its medieval look was taken up only around 1900. Heritage is above all a process, a verb even – in the words of David C. Harvey, a ‘veneer of continuity, preservation and reverence for the past conceals a process of dynamic modification’.97 It is no wonder that these reconstructions have attracted various kinds of criticism over time. But since they are considered to represent the most emblematic cases of renovation carried out in nineteenth-century Estonia, the task of mapping out these varying attitudes allows one to draw preliminary conclusions about the general approaches taken towards historical conservation until the late 1930s. Art history is a history of reinterpretations: in addition to the layers of history laid down by phases of construction and renovation, the various levels of interpretation come into play. Even if architecture can be considered the most immediate historical source of all – a daily reminder of the passing of time – that does not mean that the historical layers are visible to every passer-by. It takes a trained eye to distinguish between construction and renovation phases, and, as the texts have shown, not even the most highly trained specialists can detect all of those layers. That is to say that as one researches art historiography, yet another level emerges within this accumulation of times, both in relation to the effects of historical texts on reality (in the form of the actual renovations – especially given that these same scholars often acted as consultants on or supervisors of the works) and to the continuing relevance of such historical evaluations as expressed in professional discourse. It is
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not simply changes in approach that have generated such diverse evaluations. Assessments tend to vary even within the writings of a single author, depending on the research done up to the moment of writing but also on the point of departure – e.g. whether the focus was on the relevant monument’s original construction history, its status quo at the time of writing or the promotion of fundraising for the reconstruction effort. The biggest surprise to me over the course of this research was nonetheless how several highly esteemed scholars such as Sten Karling and Voldemar Vaga in the 1930s, whose critical datings of medieval and early modern art are often still trusted, made relatively ungrounded evaluations – either dismissing or grossly underestimating the extent of the reconstructions of the medieval buildings about which they were writing. It is in the nature of the field that the previous conservation history of a specific structure usually begins to attract attention only when the next renovation is under way. Otto Freymuth was involved in doing just that when he wrote his critical articles during the 1920s. Indeed, the situation in which things are unresolved has often been the trigger for disciplines to begin more self-consciously writing their own history and theorizing their daily practices.98 Tartu Cathedral may also have inspired ongoing public interest because parts of it continued to stand in ruins that needed constant maintenance, visible to all. The work on St. Olaf ’s, at the same time, had been completed in the 1840s and had been kept in good condition ever since – nothing to cause heated discussions. It remains a complex question whether changing attitudes depended more on specific ways of thinking (and – tentatively – ‘schools of conservation’, though the principles followed seem to have been fairly intuitive in those early years) or simply on personal differences and varying preferences. In the first half of the twentieth century, the renovation of Tartu Cathedral clearly suffered the most negative reception of all such projects. Then again, that impression may just be the effect of the voice of individual authors that can sometimes have a far-reaching echo. It may be that, if I were to leave aside the contributions of one author – Freymuth – to these discussions, the conclusions would be quite different. Kristina Jõekalda is an Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn. In 2018, she was Visiting Fellow at the Humboldt University of Berlin. She has received scholarships from Yale University, the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies and the Böckler-Mare-Balticum Foundation. She has published German Monuments in the Baltic Heimat? A Historiography of Heritage in the ‘Long Nineteenth Century’ (2020) and co-edited the volumes European Peripheries
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of Architectural Historiography (2020), A Socialist Realist History? Writing Art History in the Post-War Decades (2019) and Debating German Heritage: Art History and Nationalism during the Long Nineteenth Century (2014). NOTES I would like to thank Anneli Randla and Krista Kodres for their helpful comments, Mariann Raisma for a reference, and Jaime Hyland for language editing of my text. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.
Especially Hartog, Regimes of Historicity; Lorenz, ‘Unstuck in Time’. M. Tamm and Olivier, ‘Rethinking’, 2. Cf. Dolff-Bonekämper, ‘National’, 280. Rampley, ‘Contested Histories’, 8–9. Neumann, Grundriss einer Geschichte, 181. Cf. Neumann, ‘Erhaltung’, 354. Translations by K.J. E.g. Swenson, Rise of Heritage; Bartetzky, Geschichte bauen. A. Vaga, Eesti kunsti ajalugu, 84–86, 112, 164, 178–80, 212. V. Vaga, Eesti kunst, 48, cf. 12–20. Üprus, ‘Restaureerimistööd’; Alttoa, ‘Krause’; Hein, ‘Poolteist’. See the chapter by Bérénice Gaussuin in this volume. St. Nicholas’ Church now hosts the Niguliste Museum – an affiliate of the Art Museum of Estonia specialized in religious art; the reconstructed chancel of Tartu Cathedral houses the University of Tartu Museum and ceremonial hall. Harvey, ‘Heritage Pasts’, 320–22. See also Harvey, ‘History of Heritage’, 21–23. Carman and Sørensen, ‘Heritage Studies’, 23. Jõekalda, German; Jõekalda, ‘Cherished and Perished’. See also Fülberth, ‘Nationale’. Harvey, ‘History of Heritage’, 19. See Johansen and Mühlen, Deutsch und Undeutsch; Plath, Esten und Deutsche; Liivik and Liibek, Das letzte Kapitel. See Tamm, Kaljundi and Jensen, Crusading. See Plath, ‘Heimat’. Jansen, ‘Baltentum’; Hackmann, ‘Nationalisierung’. See Thaden, Russification. These were quoted also in Neumann, ‘Erhaltung’, 357. See Hein, ‘Early History’. Neumann, ‘Denkmalschutz’, 286–89. Hartog, ‘Temps et histoire’. See Kodres, Kurisoo and Nürnberger, Indifferent Things? ‘Muinasvarade’, 603. A. Vaga, Eesti kunsti ajalugu, 5–6, 281–82. See Kodres, ‘Our Own’, 17–18. Laid, ‘Muinasleiud’, 201–2. Freymuth, ‘Meie’, 109. See Jõekalda, ‘Heritage, Patrimony’, 192–97. Efforts were made to press on with Krause’s designs during the 1820s. See Maiste, Polli and Raisma, Alma Mater, 203–27; Ormisson-Lahe, ‘Toomkirikust’, 101–17; Asmer and Maiste, In Search. I thank Anu Ormisson-Lahe for providing an image. Frey, ‘Ein alter Plan’; Ormisson-Lahe, ‘Toomkirikust’, 101–5.
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30. See Frey, ‘Ein alter Plan’, 108. 31. See Maiste, Polli and Raisma, Alma Mater, 155, 163, 203–10; Maiste, ‘Ülikool pargis’, 28–36; Maiste and Ormisson-Lahe, ‘Toomkirik’, 165–81, see 153–54. 32. Frey, ‘Ein alter Plan’, 105. 33. See Wood, History of Art History, 320–21. 34. Frey, ‘Ein alter Plan’, 105. 35. Ibid., 120–21. 36. E.g. V. Vaga, Tartu, 21–22. 37. Freymuth, ‘Ülevaade’, 20–36; Freymuth, ‘Lõpuaruanne’, 25–27. Cf. Alttoa, ‘J. W. Krause’, 62. 38. Freymuth, ‘Üks’, 194. 39. Freymuth, ‘Tartu doomkiriku’, 51. 40. Freymuth, ‘Üks’, 194. 41. Ibid., 196. 42. V. Vaga, Eesti kunst, 12. 43. See Neumann, Dom. See also Romang and Celmiņa, Dommuseum. 44. V. Vaga, Tartu, 23, 25. Cf. Maiste, Polli and Raisma, Alma Mater, 214. 45. A. Vaga, Eesti kunsti ajalugu, 112. 46. Alttoa, ‘J. W. Krause’, 63; Maiste, Polli and Raisma, Alma Mater, 210. 47. Frey, ‘Ein alter Plan’, 121. 48. Alttoa, ‘J. W. Krause’, 62. 49. Most heavily in 1625; to a lesser extent in 1693, 1698, 1700, 1707, 1719, 1736 and 1931. According to a misleading document from the late eighteenth century, it was in fact believed to have been much taller – making it the largest in the world, prior to the fires. See Hein, ‘Linna auw’, 38–39, 47. 50. Rickers, St. Olai-Kirche, 7, 11, 45–46. Rickers does not claim the tower to be the tallest in all of Christenheit with complete certainty, but writes that some think it to be the third or fifth tallest in the world, asking why one would want to construct such a towering structure on this unknown edge of Europe (answering himself that its function as a lighthouse might have been one of the reasons). See Keevallik, ‘Rickers’, 130–31. 51. Rickers, St. Olai-Kirche, 23. 52. Die Ehstnische Bauer nannte sie gern: ‘Linna Au ja Illo,’ der Stadt Ehre und Bierde (Rickers, St. Olai-Kirche, 27). See also Hein, ‘Friedrich Ludwig von Maydell’, 39–41; Hein, ‘Linna auw’, 40–44. 53. Rickers, St. Olai-Kirche, 6. 54. Ibid., 27. On the massive campaign in Cologne (as a possible role model), see Swenson, ‘Cologne Cathedral’, 35–40. 55. See J. Kaljundi, ‘Muinsuskaitse’, 7–8; Hein, ‘Et kellelgi’, 166–71; Hein, ‘Esialgses’, 81–86. 56. Die Kirche ist gothisch u. soll möglichst im Character wiederhergestellt werden (Maydell, Letter to Stier on 7/12/16 November 1832, 5–7). – I am indebted to Eric Garberson for drawing my attention to the letters, and to Maris Saagpakk, Moonika Teemus and Matthias Jost for kindly helping me to decipher them. See Garberson, ‘Architectural History’.
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57. Maydell, Letter to Stier on 19 December 1833, 2. See Hein, ‘Friedrich Ludwig von Maydell’, 39–47; L. Kaljundi and Kreem, Friedrich Ludwig von Maydell; Kreem, Artist and Clio. 58. See J. Tamm, Restauraatorid, 51–53; Tvauri, ‘Conservation’, 247–48; Jõekalda, ‘Cherished and Perished’, 34–35. 59. Hansen, Kirchen, 3. 60. Hansen, Die kirchlichen Bauwerke, 11–14. 61. See Hein, ‘Esialgses’, 102. 62. See Wood, History of Art History, 225–26. 63. Bartetzky, Nation, 19–24, 39. On Marienburg as a monument to Germannes, see also Falser, Identität und Authentizität, 21–41; Herrmann, ‘Friedrich Gilly’, 126–37; Störtkuhl, ‘Geschichte’, 12–14. 64. Hansen, Die kirchlichen Bauwerke, 14. See Hein, ‘Esialgses’, 102. 65. Kreem, Viisipäraselt, 192. 66. Kreem, ‘Oma aja laps’, 81–86. 67. Hansen, Die kirchlichen Bauwerke, 14. Cf. Tohvri, ‘Ehitusmeistrist’, 76–77. 68. Sternberg, Erinnerungsblätter, 5. 69. See also Hein, ‘Esialgses’, 86, 102. 70. See Kodres, ‘Uue ajastu’. 71. See Kreem, Viisipäraselt, 171–72. 72. Nottbeck and Neumann, Geschichte und Kunstdenkmäler, vol. 1, 223. See vol. 2, 101–8. 73. Karling, Tallinn, 42–43. See Kodres, ‘Freedom’. 74. Üprus, ‘Restaureerimistööd’, 24. 75. See Lumiste and Kangropool, Niguliste. 76. See Üprus, ‘Restaureerimistööd’, 20. 77. See also Stremme, Architektur. 78. Paucker, Blick, 11; Hansen, Kirchen, 50. 79. Hansen, Die kirchlichen Bauwerke, 27–28. 80. Document from 6 May 1850. Quoted from Üprus, ‘Restaureerimistööd’, 23. 81. Paucker, Blick, 12; Hansen, Die kirchlichen Bauwerke, 14, 27–28. 82. Karling, Tallinn, 37. 83. V. Vaga, Eesti kunst, 18. 84. Ibid., 14. 85. See Lamp, ‘Värvirikas’. 86. Freymuth, ‘Tööd’, 129. 87. Alttoa, ‘Tartu Jaani’, 44; Alttoa, Tartu Jaani, 59–60, 86–87. 88. Kodres, ‘Tartu Jaani’, 101–5. 89. Kreem, Viisipäraselt, 100–14, 158–88. 90. Tohvri, ‘Ehitusmeistrist’, 55–69. 91. See Frey, St. Johanniskirche, 7–12; Frey, ‘Wiederherstellung’; Alttoa, Tartu Jaani, 61–63, 87–88. 92. Frey, St. Johanniskirche, 16. 93. Neumann, Grundriss einer Geschichte, 181. 94. Rossi, Architecture, 130–31, 142. 95. Wood, History of Art History, 234. 96. See Jokilehto, History of Architectural Conservation, 16–20.
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97. Harvey, ‘History of Heritage’, 22. See Harvey, ‘Heritage Pasts’, 320–28, 335. 98. See Wood, History of Art History, 321; Hartog, ‘Temps et histoire’, 1235.
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Laid, Eerik. ‘Muinasleiud ajalooallikatena’ [Ancient Findings as Historical Sources]. ERK: üld-, majandus- ja kultuurpoliitiline ajakiri 1936, 7/8, 199–202. Lamp, Johanna. ‘Värvirikas keskaeg – mõningaid täiendusi Tartu Jaani kiriku loole’ [Colourful Middle Ages: Some Additions to the Story of St. John’s Church in Tartu], in Anneli Randla (ed.), Aja lugu. Muinsuskaitse ja restaureerimise ajaloost [The Story of Time: History of Heritage Protection and Restoration]. Tallinn: Eesti Kunstiakadeemia, 2016, 161–86. Liivik, Olev and Tõnis Liibek (eds). Viimane peatükk. Baltisakslaste lahkumine Eestist 1939–1941 / Das letzte Kapitel: Die Umsiedlung der Deutschbalten 1939–1941 [The Last Chapter: The Resettlement of the Baltic Germans]. [Tallinn:] Argo, 2019. Lorenz, Chris. ‘Unstuck in Time. Or: The Sudden Presence of the Past’, in Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree and Jay Winter (eds), Performing the Past: Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Europe. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010, 67–102. Lumiste, Mai and Rasmus Kangropool. Niguliste kirik [The Church of St. Nicholas]. Tallinn: Kunst, 1990. Maiste, Juhan. ‘Ülikool pargis’ [University Inside the Park], in Anu Ormisson-Lahe and Juhan Maiste (eds), Johann Wilhelm Krause, 1757–1828. Kataloog / Katalog, 3: Linnaehitajana Tartus / Als Stadtbauer in Tartu [A City Builder in Tartu]. Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus / Tartu: Tartu Ülikool, 2011, 13–49. Maiste, Juhan and Anu Ormisson-Lahe. ‘Toomkirik valgustusajastu valgusel. Varemetest kerkib raamatukogu’ [The Cathedral in the Light of Enlightenment: A Library Rises from the Ruins], in Mariann Raisma and Krista Andreson (eds), Tartu toomkirik. Katedraal. Raamatukogu. Muuseum [Tartu Cathedral. Cathedral. Library. Museum]. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli muuseum, 2018, 152–85. Maiste, Juhan, Kadi Polli and Mariann Raisma (eds). Alma Mater Tartuensis. Tartu Ülikool ja tema arhitekt Johann Wilhelm Krause / Die Universität Tartu und ihr Architekt Johann Wilhelm Krause / Tartu University and Its Architect Johann Wilhelm Krause. Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus, 2003. ‘Muinasvarade kaitse seadus’ [Heritage Conservation Act]. Riigi Teataja 111/112 (1925), 603–5. Neumann, Wilhelm. Grundriss einer Geschichte der bildenden Künste und des Kunstgewerbes in Liv-, Est- und Kurland vom Ende des 12. bis zum Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts [Outline of the History of Fine Arts and Crafts in Livonia, Estonia and Courland from the End of the Twelfth until the Late Eighteenth Century]. Reval: Franz Kluge, 1887. . ‘Die Erhaltung unserer Denkmäler’ [The Preservation of Our Monuments]. Baltische Monatsschrift 1888, 35, 351–59. . Der Dom zu St. Marien in Riga: Baugeschichte und Baubeschreibung [St. Mary’s Cathedral in Riga: Construction History and Architectural Description]. Riga: Löffler, 1912. . ‘Denkmalschutz und Denkmalpflege in den baltischen Provinzen Liv-, Est- und Kurland’ [Heritage Protection and Heritage Preservation in the Baltic Provinces of Livonia, Estonia and Courland], in Baltische Studien zur Archäologie und Geschichte: Arbeiten des Baltischen Vorbereitenden Komitees für den XVI. Archäologischen Kongress in Pleskau 1914 [Baltic Studies in Archaeology and History: Work of the Baltic Preparatory Committee for the 16th Archaeological Congress in Pleskau, 1914]. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1914, 285–93.
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Nottbeck, Eugen von and Wilh[elm] Neumann. Geschichte und Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Reval [History and Artistic Monuments of the City of Reval], 1–2. Reval: Franz Kluge, 1904. Ormisson-Lahe, Anu. ‘Toomkirikust valgustusajastu templiks’ [From the Cathedral into a Temple of the Enlightenment], in Anu Ormisson-Lahe and Juhan Maiste (eds), Johann Wilhelm Krause, 1757–1828. Kataloog / Katalog, 3: Linnaehitajana Tartus / Als Stadtbauer in Tartu [A City Builder in Tartu]. Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus / Tartu: Tartu Ülikool, 2011, 99–162. [Paucker, Carl Julius Albert.] Blick auf einige Denkmäler Revals aus älterer und neuerer Zeit [Glance at Some Monuments of Reval from Earlier and More Recent Times]. Reval: Lindforsʼ Erben, 1848. Plath, Ulrike. Esten und Deutsche in den baltischen Provinzen Russlands: Fremdheitskonstruktionen, Lebenswelten, Kolonialphantasien, 1750–1850 [Estonians and Germans: Constructions of Otherness, Living Spaces, Colonial Fantasies]. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011. . ‘Heimat: Rethinking Baltic German Spaces of Belonging’. Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi / Studies on Art and Architecture 2014, 23 (3/4), 55–78. Rampley, Matthew. ‘Contested Histories: Heritage and/as the Construction of the Past: An Introduction’, in Matthew Rampley (ed.), Heritage, Ideology, and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe: Contested Pasts, Contested Presents. Woodbridge, Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2012, 1–20. Rickers, H.W.J. Etwas über die St. Olai Kirche in Reval, die durch einen Blitzstrahl in Nacht vom 15 zum 16 Juni 1820 zerstört wurde [Something about St. Olaf ’s Church in Reval that Was Destroyed by a Bolt of Lightning on the Night between 15 and 16 June 1820]. Reval, 1820. Romang, Margit and Ilona Celmiņa (eds). Das Dommuseum in Riga: Ein Haus für Wissenschaft und Kunst / Doma muzejs Rīgā: Templis zinatnei um makslai [Riga Cathedral Museum: A House of Research and Art]. Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2001. Rossi, Aldo. The Architecture of the City. Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 1994 [1982]. Sternberg, Alexander von. Erinnerungsblätter [Memoir Pages], 1. Berlin: Schindler, 1855. Störtkuhl, Beate. ‘Geschichte der Baudenkmalpflege: zwischen Wissenschaft und Ideologie’ [History of Monument Preservation: Between Science and Ideology], in Beate Störtkuhl (ed.), Architekturgeschichte und kulturelles Erbe – Aspekte der Baudenkmalpflge in Ostmitteleuropa [Architectural History and Cultural Heritage – Aspects of Preserving Built Monuments in East Central Europe]. Frankfurt am Main etc.: Peter Lang, 2006, 9–56. Stremme, C.C. Die Architektur und ihr Verhältniss zur Cultur und zum Volke: Rede gehalten am Feste der Thronbesteigung Sr. Majestät des Kaisers und Herrn Nicolai Pawlowitsch am 20. November 1842 im grossen Hörsaale der Kaiserl. Universität Dorpat [Architecture and Its Relationship to Culture and People: Speech Given on the Anniversary of the Accession to the Throne of His Majesty the Emperor Mr. Nikolay Pavlovich on 20 November 1842 in the Large Auditorium of the Imperial University of Tartu]. Dorpat: Laakmann, 1842. Swenson, Astrid. The Rise of Heritage: Preserving the Past in France, Germany and England, 1789–1946. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
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. ‘Cologne Cathedral as an International Monument’, in Jan Rüger and Nikolaus Wachsmann (eds), Rewriting German History: New Perspectives on Modern Germany. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, 29–51. Tamm, Jaan. Restauraatorid vanas Tallinnas [Conservators in Old Tallinn]. Tallinn: Perioodika, 1984. Tamm, Marek, Linda Kaljundi and Carsten Selch Jensen (eds). Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier: A Companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. Tamm, Marek and Laurent Olivier. ‘Introduction: Rethinking Historical Time’, in Marek Tamm and Laurent Olivier (eds), Rethinking Historical Time: New Approaches to Presentism. London etc.: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, 1–20. Thaden, Edward C. (ed.). Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 1855–1914. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981. Tohvri, Epi. ‘Ehitusmeistrist arhitektiks – G.F.W. Geist Tartu linnaruumi kujundajana 19. sajandi esimesel poolel’ [From Master Builder to Architect – G. F. W. Geist as Designer of Tartu Urban Space in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century]. Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi / Studies on Art and Architecture 2004, 13 (3/4), 50−74. Tvauri, Andres. ‘The Conservation of Archaeological Heritage in Estonia’, in Valter Lang and Margot Laneman (eds), Archaeological Research in Estonia 1865–2005. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 2006, 247–66. Üprus, H[elmi]. ‘Restaureerimistööd Niguliste kirikus aastail 1846–1850’ [Restoration Works in St. Nicholas’ Church]. Ehitus ja Arhitektuur 1970, 3, 20–24. Vaga, Alfred. Eesti kunsti ajalugu, 1: Keskaeg [The History of Estonian Art, 1: The Middle Ages]. Tartu: Eesti Kirjanduse Selts, 1932. Vaga, Voldemar. Tartu ülikooli arkitektid [The Architects of the University of Tartu]. Tartu: Varrak, 1928. . Eesti kunst. Kunstide ajalugu Eestis keskajast meie päevini [Estonian Art. The History of Arts in Estonia from the Middle Ages to the Present Day]. Tartu, Tallinn: Loodus, 1940. Wood, Christopher. A History of Art History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019.
8 CHAPTER 3 Architecture as a Weapon The Gothic and the National Ideal in Nineteenth-Century Polish Discourse Aleksander Łupienko
Introduction This chapter deals with a case study of the architectural heritage of an emerging nation in the borderland between three main central–eastern European, multi-ethnic empires. It presents the debates concerning Gothic architecture conceived of as a historical phenomenon, a possible basis for forming a national heritage and a template for ongoing architectural development. The Polish cultural milieu belonged to these specific regions where it was not the state that fostered the rise of national identity but, rather, a certain social class. As Mathew Rampley noted in his introduction to the volume Heritage, Ideology, and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe, the context of the region in question differed from that of Western Europe in the process of nation-formation. Instead of a trajectory of ‘stateto-nation’, here the direction of ‘nation-to-state’ prevailed.1 Poland was nevertheless an exceptional case in the region as the independent state did exist from the Middle Ages in the form of a separate kingdom and later, from 1569 until 1795, as the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth – and its tradition and memory were still vivid in the nineteenth century. This had a huge impact on the formation of national identity, and that is why this historical issue will be also dealt with below. The idea of the Polish nation was mediated by the nobility, the only class endowed with political power in the Commonwealth that swiftly lost influence when Poland fell under the control of Russia, Prussia and Austria. In this chapter, I will discuss two aspects of the heritage in this region: the rise of national
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identity, in which architectural tradition was one of the key instruments, and cultural change, which was bound to the rise of a new aesthetic ideal of the neo-Gothic. To be sure, neo-Gothic was far from being the only style to be related to the national ideal, as Classicism also became a style appropriate for the new needs of the semi-sovereign state of the Kingdom of Poland, the Russian part of the former Commonwealth, as it functioned until 1831,2 and the early Classicism of the reign of the last Polish–Lithuanian king was viewed ex post as a Polish, or Warsaw style. It was nevertheless the rise of neo-Gothic – connected to the general, cultural, romantic transformation in Europe in the age of struggle against French cultural hegemony3 – that somehow embodied the process of forming the national identity. Hinting at these issues as they appeared between 1795 and the 1880s in this region is instructive because there has not been much written in English-language literature on this topic, and such hinting can fill in the already broadly sketched picture of European nation-formation through heritage and the functioning of national memory culture.
The Role of Heritage and Monument Conservation Let me begin with some theoretical assumptions. As Anne-Marie Thiesse has argued, among others, the nineteenth century, the period of modern nation-formation in Europe, saw changing attitudes towards the cultural roots of the continent and a declining dominance of Classical antiquity as the only source of identity and artistic inspiration in favour of the hitherto marginalized medieval traditions. This helped the modern nation-formation ethos to develop, especially in northern Europe, and seeking a common historical heritage was the most important task on the ‘national check-list’ (Thiesse).4 When defining this heritage, contemporary theoreticians derive much from the idea of cultural and collective memory. One of the proponents of this approach, Jan Assmann, when writing about ancient civilizations, hinted at the formative potential of collective memory in shaping human identity as a group and securing its cultural survival, and also at the functions performed by founding myths. For him, the past can be translated into political and social utopias, which are not only the basis of a stable identity but also a project for the future. This function, which is referred to as ‘mythomotor’, also pertains to much more recent historical phenomena including nationalism.5 Likewise, David C. Harvey, theoretician of conservation, speaks of a ‘prospective memory’ and a ‘fabricated sense of destiny’ as a crucial feature of each heritage.6 David Lowenthal also stresses the contemporaneous aspect of each heritage, conceived of as a practice of binding together the distant past and the present, which
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serves the legitimization of current politics and thus is different from history.7 Heritage is therefore viewed as a significant and dynamic factor in the history of nation-formation in the nineteenth century. Assmann also clearly stressed the rupture that allows the imagined ‘mythomotoric’ past to be shaped by a group. ‘Every substantial break in continuity or tradition can produce the past whenever the break is meant to create a new beginning’,8 as he puts it. This aspect will be also important to the context of this chapter, because here a clear and indeed catastrophic break in continuity did occur with the dissolution of the Polish–Lithuanian state. This tendency is clearly visible in the early history of monument preservation. The French institutionalized forms of conservation that appeared in 1830 (Commission des monuments historiques) with the start of the July Monarchy. The urge to examine and preserve the royal medieval relics was strong – but in practice the policy of restoring fewer monuments, but with greater flourish, appeared to be more effective in building the sense of national belonging around the person of the ruler.9 The most obvious point of reference in this regard was the rebuilding of Cologne Cathedral, which started in the 1820s and gained momentum after 1842 with the help of the Prussian king (already the ruler of the Rhineland Province) and the activity of the proponent of the region’s cultural specificity and future opposition to the Prussian centralization policy, August Reichensperger.10 In Prussia, the conservation office was presided over by the famous architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who was followed by Ferdinand von Quast. Michael Falser showed how the history of the ruins of another architectural monument, the castle of Marienburg (today Malbork in Poland), epitomized the growing German national identity. Its reconstruction and mythification served as a tool to bind together a nation (Prussian, and later German).11 Falser also described the quarrel between Schinkel and regional official Theodor von Schön over the decorative motifs to be employed in the completed castle, which reflected the tension between the centralistic functions of heritage, embodied here by the former, and the defence of the distinctiveness of the province, embodied by the latter. In the Habsburg Empire, the conservationist office (Central Commission for the Preservation and Research of Artistic Heritage) was established relatively late, in the period 1850–3,12 and its activity after the creation of Austria-Hungary had to be more cautious. In order not to trigger opposition from the multi-ethnic crownlands, which could possibly result from a policy of promoting the idea of a strong state, instead more subtle means had to be employed.13 These examples from the history of state conservationist policies in continental Europe clearly show their nation-forming potential.
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The Polish Case In the region in question, things looked different. There was no Polish state in the nineteenth century, if we exclude small semi-sovereign political bodies with capitals in Warsaw (the Duchy of Warsaw 1807–15 and then Kingdom of Poland 1815–31) and Krakow (the Krakow Republic 1815–46) that existed under the Napoleonic aegis or thanks to concessions made during the Vienna Congress. The creation, or, as the historiography in Poland would prefer it, the retention of a separate national identity formed part of the political agenda of the Polish-language learned elite throughout the nineteenth century. The above-mentioned social class of nobility – historically forming a larger part of the society than, e.g. in Britain or France – was the main proponent of the national ideal as early as the end of the eighteenth century, which was a sign of the nation being ‘lateral’ (Anthony D. Smith),14 i.e. with a disproportionally large role played by the elite at the expense of other social groups. This ideal functioned as a political project most often labelled ‘regaining independence’, and was incrementally expanded to include forming a modern nation and inviting other classes to join it. Here, I would like to highlight the prospective quality of Polish nation-formation, as it was tightly bound to the future of an imagined independent state. But how was the idea disseminated? The political elite survived the dismemberment of the Commonwealth as a group, and after a certain period of despair it formed the nation-tostate project, initially backed by the political plans of Napoleon – although in comparison with many other national movements in the region, which emerged thanks to Napoleonic ‘propaganda’, the Polish one was already taking shape shortly after the fall of the state in 1795. Its ideas resonated from the traditional, small, provincial centres of communication: noble manors and palaces. It was also in the capitals of the above-mentioned semi-sovereign states, Warsaw and Krakow, that Polish-speaking dignitaries and officials of noble origin could shape wider policy and support the national movement. In the second half of the century, the territories of the former Commonwealth were subject to strenuous efforts of the three partitioning powers to hinder this process of state-formation, or to stop it altogether – which, however, transpired to be impossible. On the contrary, a kind of common Polish public sphere emerged, made up of a rather small number of institutions; numerous periodicals; and, of course, a growing ‘mass’ public of the nascent intelligentsia. The last group, which appeared at the end of the eighteenth century,15 consisted of members of the higher nobility joined by representatives of the hitherto politically insignificant former burgher class and the stratum of lower nobility, which had already
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lost its political meaning during the reform period of the Commonwealth shortly before 1795 and which treated activity in the public sphere as a way of regaining social significance. These participants in the Polish public sphere were to a large extent active in what amounted to be the formation of a modern nation. As stated above, repressive practices facilitate the task of describing the glorious past, ‘time of liberty and self-determination’ as part of the policy pointed to the future. In this way, the proponents of the Polish national movement managed to convince members of other social strata (including the intelligentsia) that military action against the partitioning powers had the potential to regain the defunct state and bring the imagined past back. To put it simply, this modern nation-formation started to some extent as an irredentist movement and developed after 1830–1 (the first anti-Russian uprising) into a debate about social modernization, and then, after 1863–4 (the second anti-Russian uprising), also into a debate about economic modernization. I will not deal with the political and social aspects of this process but, rather, will examine how artistic discourse regarding the architecture of the past shaped nation-formation and also how it reflected the broader cultural change of that period. The first stage of the national process was driven by a sense of loss, and the need to celebrate the glory of the Middle Ages.16 That meant cultivating the memory of the past but also shaping it and forging what we can call national heritage.
In Search of a National Art Initially, traces of the past were sought to a large extent in movable objects. The first Academy of Friends of Learning, established in Warsaw in 1800 with the blessing of the Prussian king, was more interested in movable remains from the past, like coins, than in old architecture.17 This was because the above-mentioned sense of loss gave a nudge first to the collectors of antiquities. The tradition of Polish antiquarians can be traced back to the times of the failing Commonwealth in the eighteenth century,18 but it was a romantic interest in the medieval past that galvanized the trend. Amateur collectors complemented – and, in some instances, indeed substituted for – the activity of public institutions like the Academy, which was closed down in 1832 (this time by the Russian ruler), and paved the way for the field of professional ethnology. Here, the past was an object of nostalgic passion for research, strengthened by the consciousness of rupture and discontinuity (i.e. the dissolution of the historic state) that, according to Assmann, was a condition for the past to be constituted as a driving force for identity-building. In other words, artefacts from the past – perceived as
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national and, as such, collected, discussed and displayed – had an inherent mythomotoric strength. The sense of discontinuity and lack of a state led to the establishment, faster than in much of the West, of a new meaning of nation and ‘national’ culture, whose aim was to bring back the sense of continuity and uninterruptedness. For new romantic philosophers, poets and artists, art rose to even greater prominence than for the Classicists. An instance of this may be seen in the case of a writer, Maurycy Mochnacki.19 His thought was strongly influenced by the young German philosopher Schelling. For Mochnacki, art evaded the rules of logic and it could not in fact be comprehended, but only art’s logic could be accepted as one’s own. Works of art, on the contrary, were not of a universal character; they owed their beauty to the differences between nations. The term ‘nation’ itself was conceived of in a holistic way, as a collective agent in all its unity and entirety, whereby its members were deprived of their rights to autonomy.20 Here, literature (and, we may add, art as well) can be seen as a nation’s collective soul and, through that, a testimony to the nation’s existence. Hence, the state appeared unnecessary;21 the nation existed through culture. Similar thoughts can be found in art critique, e.g. the writing of an aesthetician of Danish origin called Fryderyk Lewestam, who stated that it is in works of art that a nation’s imaginative potential lies and thus they strengthen its wisdom and creed.22 For another aesthetic critic, the influential thinker Karol Libelt from the Prussian partition, art was equal to religion and philosophy, and emanated from ‘national concepts’. It did not emulate anything, which opposed the Classical notion of art following nature, but instead embodied the spirit of a nation – because for romantic philosophers, including Libelt, all human creativity was permeated with traces of nationality. Libelt even employed an expressive comparison of this creativity to an ocean with transparent waters bearing everywhere the colours of the sea bed (i.e. the nation).23 This national component was present in aesthetic discourse throughout the period in question and also during the more sober intellectual climate that dominated after the failed, second main anti-Russian uprising in 1864, and was largely influenced by the French philosophy of positivism. This change in the status of art, appealing not only to the senses and intellect but also to feelings, as it was expressed in the Romantic era, was also shaped by a growing spirituality. The French Revolution and the resulting atrocities in the cultural centre of Europe, which also reached the physical remnants of the fallen regime, are generally deemed responsible for the rising consciousness of the value of historic monuments.24 It acted as a driving force for intellectual attempts to re-establish religion as a crucial component of human identity. The famous French book Le genie du christianisme (1802) by François-René de Châteaubriand, or the mystic English
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writings of the son of a French émigré, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, can serve as an obvious reference here. This Catholic re-awakening on the continent appealing also to some extent in Protestant Germanic states, along with a temporal rise in spirituality in Britain, led to a new view of Gothic architecture on the continent and a new momentum for the rise of neo-Gothic in Britain, which had already begun a century earlier.25 To be sure, the pagan origins of the European states were also widely explored and used as a source of new identity, and this trend did not fail to appear in the region in question in the early nineteenth century, but as there were no remains of ancient Slavic architecture it was limited mainly to literary studies. The case of Gothic was different. In the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, neo-Gothic as a style first appeared as early as 1764,26 although it took a long time before it was established as an important source of inspiration for public architecture. Park pavilions in aristocratic residences were often neo-Gothic, and a trend of looking to the British Isles for artistic and political inspiration was already widespread before 1795 and took the name of ‘anglomania’. The new interest in the Roman Catholic tradition gave the actors of artistic discourse new impulses and arguments to support their narratives – especially among Poles, who after the period of fierce counter-reformation appeared as an overwhelmingly Catholic nation. Before I go on with the topic of artistic discourse, I shall first go back to the issue of the ‘sense of loss’, i.e. nostalgia.
A Nostalgia for Monuments There was talk about movable objects through which the ‘glorious past’ was projected. Late-Classicist and Romantic writers noted that the architectural remnants of the past may, and in fact did, play an important role as elements of culture. To give an example, for the little-known Krakow painter, sculptor and poet Ignacy Mieroszewski, architecture had the leading role among human creations. It was, for practical reasons, the first to be mastered by mankind, and the architectural ruins of ancient civilizations were an obvious yardstick of their greatness.27 The author meant the example of the Roman Empire, but here a certain sensitivity to the issue of architectural ‘heritage’ was definitely at play. The period in question was marked by efforts to save the knowledge of historical objects located in the landscape of the fallen fatherland. Romantic journeys, most commonly connected with the exotic itineraries of some Byrons and Humboldts, assumed here the form of ‘pilgrimages’ through the historic regions of the former Commonwealth and a new literary genre of detailed travel description of the home country.28
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The strongest feeling of nostalgia was aroused by a view of the ruins of medieval ancestral castles and old Catholic churches, also conceptualized as historical sources of prime importance in a period with still-insufficient historiographic writings. The myth of the Kresy (the eastern region of the Commonwealth) was created in the nineteenth century, and although it was the castles and churches that were transmitters of the ‘place identity’ the region as a whole began to act as a single ‘mnemotope’ ( Jan Assmann, see the Introduction) for future Polish generations. Another stimulus came from the cities, which saw their urban fabric modernized and networks of roads improved and cleared. This development, conceived of as acts of modernization from above, was conducted by the Austrians in Krakow and Lviv (Lwów, L’viv, Lemberg) and by the Prussians in the capital of the Partition, Poznan (Posen), along with many urban centres of the future Kingdom of Poland that Prussians temporarily held – and then by the semi-sovereign Polish authorities of the Kingdom. The modernization policy was based on, among other things, demolishing less-important elements of the historic built environment that most conspicuously stood on its way. It was in Krakow, which rose in prominence at that time as an informal cultural capital of the Poles because of its numerous still-untouched medieval and early-modern monuments,29 where opposition to the policy of tearing down medieval structures first appeared. Krakow’s city walls were torn down on the order of the Austrians around 1800, which made room for a new urban greenery, and no fewer than fifteen churches were demolished in 1796–1809.30 Defenders of the old structures began to voice their protest only after the establishment of the semi-sovereign Krakow Republic in 1815 – with the help of conservationist and patriotic vocabulary, although they apparently had to employ occasionally more veiled language.31 Similar instances of demolishing historic buildings in Poznan could not raise more open opposition due to the strong position of the city’s Prussian decision makers, and in Warsaw such policy pertained only to a small number of interventions as urban growth affected the outer districts more than the oldest medieval core.32 The concept of the ‘Gothic’ character of the demolished structures was, however, not conceptualized in the debates because knowledge of medieval architecture was only slowly improving.
The Symbolic Potential of the Gothic What helped to raise public attention to Gothic architecture as such (and not only as the ‘old remnants of the past’) was the romantic climate of renewed spirituality. The whole concept of the ‘sublime’, as developed by Edmund Burke and later by other aestheticians, fitted well here. We can
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also mention the impact of writers and poets on the rising appreciation of this sort of historic architecture from around the 1770s, with the Germans: brothers Boisserrée and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe the most prominent among them.33 In Polish aesthetic discourse, it was the religious role played by Gothic architecture that appealed the strongest. In 1832, an article appeared in an important scientific periodical in Krakow concerning the value of the Gothic. The author, Jesuit and philologist Franciszek Stachowski, argued that Christian art was an essential part of the entire history of culture. Among his statements we can find those clearly negating the achievements of Classical antiquity, in which the author claimed that the ‘creative spirit of Christianity’ built churches that appealed to the heart more than ‘dumb, heavy and horizontal’ ancient temples.34 This appeal stemmed from the fact that medieval churches were for the author more closely connected to transcendence, and Christian religion had the potential to raise the human spirit high above the mundane world and motivate it towards sublime and noble ideas.35 Secular philosophers were not insensitive to such claims either. For one of the most important Krakow aestheticians, Józef Kremer, art and artistic activity occupied an even higher position than Nature, as it was an emanation of the godly Spirit and infinity in mortal man.36 For Kremer, it was only medieval Gothic architecture that had the potential to express infinity. Part of his famous Letters from Krakow was nothing less than a paean to Catholic cathedrals,37 which quite cleverly caught the spirit of the epoch (which was already present in parts of the above-mentioned book by Châteaubriand) because the publication appeared a year after the demands of German thinkers to start more intensive works on completing Cologne Cathedral according to the discovered plans were fulfilled. The above-mentioned Libelt also connected artistic inspirations with divine action, although here they operated through the ‘imagination’ – an important category for Libelt, which was responsible for humanity’s creations in the field of art. Overall, the entire phenomenon of human artistic creativity was described as an emanation of God’s spirit on Earth.38 This came quite close to treating architecture as heavenly art, which was clear in the description of the Gothic: ‘we can observe a piling up of the spirit in Gothic art, as if it was willing to blow up the forms that shackle it, and to shoot up to infinity, to heaven …’.39 All this clearly shows the inspirations drawn from the German idealistic philosophy of the period, but it is worth stressing that while German thinkers were more secular in their approach, for Polish philosophers the religious aspect was more at play. Apart from these discussions there was also discourse concerning the artistic aspects of the physical form of Gothic compared with ancient architecture. It is instructive to see how the proponents of the Classical ideal,
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initially distancing themselves from the Gothic, gradually accepted these forms. It was not the height of the churches, gargantuan and towering, that was subject to critique because, as we have seen, the argument was strongly connected to the issue of the spiritual influence of these buildings and had already found its expression in Châteaubriand’s book. It was, rather, the Gothic decoration – its bizarreness and randomness to the Classical eye – that was lambasted.40 Some aestheticians defended these adornments. For Libelt, these decorations, which he called ‘arabesques’, were proof of art being autonomous from Nature.41 For others, they came from the filigree character of medieval devotional items applied to large structures.42 This weakness stemmed from the fact that there was at that time no great and influential theoretician of the Gothic in the region, such as Viollet-le-Duc or Reichensperger, who could look for the ‘inner’ rules of the Gothic and establish it as a new way of architectural thinking rather than a style of decoration. Large church renovations changed that.
Gothic in Practice Coming from the discussions of aestheticians to the texts penned by professional architects and conservationists, we should start with the Warsaw of the 1840s. This was a time when neo-Gothic began its career as one of the styles used in public architecture. The man who devoted himself to popularizing the Gothic style was Adam Idźkowski, a very inventive and original architect and engineer, who was immensely influenced by the English neoGothic, which he had admired during his studies. In 1839, he began work at Warsaw’s medieval Gothic cathedral, which he largely reconstructed giving it an interesting – if clearly unfamiliar in the Kingdom of Poland – English Late-Gothic-style façade (see figure 3.1). He propagated this new neo-style in his 1832 architectural catalogue,43 and in 1845 he published an article summing up his work at the cathedral. The way to appreciate Gothic led via the acceptance of the phenomenon of beauty being less universal and more subject to change. The author tried to connect it to scientific progress (by which he was also fascinated), as art derived much – according to Idźkowski – from science. He wrote about the ‘spirit of time’, which helps art to be less materialistic and ‘superstitious’ and to introduce more ‘general’ ideas, which are ‘appropriate to the time’.44 This spirit of time also helped to contextualize aesthetic arguments that had previously been too universal. These reflections were a clear symptom of the rising Historicism in architecture and the intellectual climate, which encouraged architects to look to the past for inspiration. Warsaw was nevertheless a modern city, where no really important monuments from the distant past remained. It was in
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Krakow that mature debates about historic architecture as a source for national identity could be started. This happened in dramatic circumstances. In July 1850, a large fire broke out in Krakow, reducing to rubble the core of the city, including both churches and convents of the Dominicans and Franciscans along with the southern and partly eastern front of the Main Square. It was the most terrible catastrophe in the region that century. Given the historic value of the city in general, the most pressing need appeared to be the reconstruction of its destroyed monuments. The city was under Austrian rule at that time, but central conservationist bodies in the Monarchy, as mentioned above, were still absent. The task of examining the ruins and preparing their reconstruction was bestowed upon members of Krakow’s Building Office – most notably, Karol Kremer, brother of the above-mentioned philosopher. He had been interested in the monuments before the fire. From 1839, he restored the medieval building of Krakow University (Collegium Maius), where he deliberately chose not to alter parts stemming from different stages of the Gothic and limited his artistic interventions. He was driven by a clear, practical need to adapt the interiors and the buildings’ construction. However, he was not fully free from the will to beautify the Collegium (‘make the buildings richer and more decorative’), as he decided to intervene in the allegedly less stylistic parts built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries so that, in the words of his brother Józef, ‘the Jagiellonian generations, awakened from the tombs, would have felt here like at home’.45 It must nevertheless be admitted that his approach transpired to be modern, i.e. close to today’s attitude to conserving monuments (see figure 3.2). Karol also had the merit of galvanizing a new trend of not only dealing with an old building itself but also projecting the future based on the past. In an article published a year before the fire, he stated that monuments attested to the creative power of people – showing their needs, penchants and spiritual scope.46 He argued that monuments were important to a nation’s history – especially for Poles, for they showed how important the Commonwealth used to be. For the author, the architectural remnants had the potential to build historical consciousness and could better secure prospects in the context of the lack of a state. This path was explored by his followers. As David Wilson has argued, nineteenth-century problems with identity in the West were solved either by appealing to folk traditions or to historic monuments.47 Krakow fell formally under Austrian rule in 1846 in the dramatic circumstances of a peasant revolt against the Polish nobility, and soon saw the policy of imperial unification gather momentum after the failed revolts of 1848. But it was there that the arguments aimed to prove cultural strength and the originality of the Gothic style in architecture (and later also that of the Renaissance, which is beyond the scope of this
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Figure 3.1. Adolf Friedrich Dietrich, Cathedral Church of St. John in Warsaw as restructured by Adam Idźkowski. Steel engraving, 1845. Public domain, source: polona.pl.
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chapter). Here, Karol Kremer was again one of the initiators who paved the way to specifying and contextualizing the national ideal in conservation. He was responsible, along with fellow architect and conservationist Teofil Żebrawski, for the reconstruction of both destroyed Krakow churches. The examination of the construction of the Dominican church formed an important stage in the process of understanding the technical thought of the Gothic.48 Next came the careful examination of Gothic architecture elsewhere and the forging of theories of its originality, as mirrored in the activity of the first Krakow art historians Józef Łepkowski and Władysław Łuszczkiewicz. The need to make a national inventory of monuments, the equivalent of the French classement, appeared to be the first task here. The pioneering role was played by Warsaw, where in 1844 the Administrative Council sent antiquarian Kazimierz Stronczyński to gather knowledge and draw up plans of all the monuments deemed important in the Kingdom of Poland, which after 1831 had lost all of its sovereignty to the Russians.49 The nine-year action resulted in rich materials and drawings being gathered, which encompassed, according to the inclinations and
Figure 3.2. Krakow Jagiellonian University, Collegium Maius, as renovated by Karol Kremer. Photo published by Verlag von Kutrzeba & Murczynski, 1895. Public domain, source: polona.pl.
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needs of the time, mainly medieval monuments and almost only brick-andmortar ones. Efforts to publish the results did not succeed before the failed anti-Russian uprising of 1863–64, and then the idea was dropped. This activity continued in Krakow. In 1847, the first of a series of cataloguing journeys by Łepkowski took place in the Austrian Partition (Galicia), soon followed by similar trips to the Russian and Prussian partitioned areas.50 Making inventories was followed by examining the monuments’ forms and construction. There is no room here for a detailed summarizing of these works, many of which were published. It is the elements of the examination that found their way into discourse that will be dealt with here. In his 1869 chapter in a popular volume of literary works, Łuszczkiewicz complained about the ‘three centuries’ of neglect regarding Gothic architecture, starting from Renaissance times, which was in itself a visible shift in discourse.51 He praised the late-medieval construction of ecclesiastical buildings, marking it as the main advantage of this architecture – leaving the matters of façades and aesthetics aside – which was in itself a logical way of evading decades-long discussions. He also hinted at the possible originality of the Polish version of the style, especially regarding the composition of buttresses supporting vaults, hypothesizing that there was a possible foreign influence in this matter. His later investigations into the emerging national architectural heritage led him to adopt the idea of a distinctively Polish version of the Gothic, the so-called Vistula-Baltic Gothic. The idea behind these efforts was clearly national but also scientific, and it is this aspect of conservation that should be tackled now.
Scientific Conservation The activity of the Warsaw Academy of Friends of Learning (1800–32) has already been mentioned. The second most important scholarly centre after the university city of Vilnius (where the university was closed in the 1830s) was Krakow, with one of the oldest universities in the region. In 1815, the year the Krakow Republic was established, the Scholarly Society connected to the university was founded with the aim of examining Polish culture.52 One of the members of the Department of Art and Archaeology (which was later established within the Society), and author of articles in the Society’s periodical, was Karol Kremer. Thanks to him, the issue of historic architecture began to be dealt with after the 1850 fire. The Kingdom of Poland, and Warsaw in particular, lacked such institutions and Warsaw University was closed soon after 1831. It was only in the 1840s that the scholarly milieu was enlivened by the creation of new periodicals, most notably Biblioteka Warszawska (Warsaw Library), and a
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secondary art school in 1844. The 1850s were characterized by the first attempts at writing a history of Polish art (but only marginally tackling architecture) by an antiquarian, a writer-cum-archaeologist and two rich collectors-turned-art-critics.53 In 1857, a heated debate over the existence of proper ‘Polish art’ in the past began, which showed that the lack of a state also led to a certain public sensitivity towards the pivotal issues of national identity through art and architecture. The debate was started by an ambitious art critic, and fostered many replies in the form of articles and books by outraged defenders of the national past.54 A competition was announced to discover those traces in art and architecture in the territories of the Partition that were symptoms of their particular Polish character.55 It also showed the new intellectual climate of anti-Romantic opposition by intellectuals voicing the need for a scientific approach to art and architecture that can be termed ‘pre-positivistic’. The positivistic, and later also socio-Darwinian, trends in science of the 1860s had a profound impact on art critics and conservationists, changing the tone of the discussions. For the first time following the Romantic period, national culture was subject to relatively objective comparison with the West without assuming its higher, or different, character and without making allusions to the Polish moral high ground, as had been the norm before – at least, in historiography.56 The peripheral cultural status of the Commonwealth became clear, as well as the minor role that it played in European culture in the eyes of many researchers. The remains from ancient civilizations were no longer presented as proof of the high value of architecture in general but instead testified to the strength of nations in an overwhelming, everlasting rivalry – a rivalry of cultures, but also of science. In the words of an art critic of French origin, Ludwik Buszard, winning civilizations always secured victory for their ideas.57 Łepkowski in his written speech for the Krakow Scholarly Society in 1862 spoke again of the ‘winning’ peoples, who leave sources for archaeologists, clearly meaning also the nations of his time.58 The conclusions from such premises led in different directions, but the most important one was related to the idea that the nation, particularly a nation without a state, should act in unity in the field of culture. This was close to the ideal of Kulturnation, characterizing the policy of Prussia and later of the unified Germany at that time to educate the masses through culture,59 but obviously with much less stress being placed on the role of the state.
Cultural Competition and Cultural Pessimism The need for such cultural advancement of the nation began to be voiced in Polish conservationist discourse – especially in Galicia, where the
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Austrian–Hungarian compromise of 1867 led to this crownland gaining wide autonomy under the aegis of the Polish social and political elite, often of noble origin. These voices demanded that the entire society, including the new rising social classes outside the historical nobility, participate in national activity, leaving less to the state. Another speech at the Krakow Society in 1868 is instructive here: by Wincenty Pol, a very popular poet, geographer and conservationist engaged in the national movement. Curiously enough, his words sound very close to the assumptions of Jan Assmann, when Pol claimed at the beginning of his lecture that without the monuments of the past, collections, museums, galleries, works of art and historic edifices ‘there will be no necessary criticism in the nation, no traditions, no art and literature, because there will be no light and this civic spirit, which, warmed by love of the national cause, creates literature and art, spreading enthusiasm for devotion and actions, showing clearly the path for the national mission’.60 In this vision, the past is the source of a nation’s creativity but also its strength in cultural struggles. As the author stressed later on, ‘[n]ow European civilization evaluates each state and nation according to its reserves and collections, according to the gathered monuments of the past … Woe betide the society that has no higher moral and intellectual needs, and which is unable to point to higher aims for national desires either in the field of literature or art.’61 The talk was explicitly about bringing national identity to the masses through the preservation of monuments in order that these new, conscious members could accept the national past. The aim of the lecture was clear – to engage the entire society in conserving and defending the movable and immovable treasures of the land – and the arguments were a symptom of a new, mature view of the role that conservation played in the nineteenth century. The narrative created by other conservationists, art historians and scholars at Krakow University can illustrate how the need to be scientific was entangled with the discourse on national survival and the post-Romantic world view. For Łepkowski, conservation was, to be sure, ‘a sober science that comes here to distinguish the important from the trivial, a souvenir from an art monument, antiquarianism from precise study’ but a few lines below, the same author betrayed a different motivation for Polish research, stating that the German and French scientific societies: may split their potential into more detailed studies, while for us the thing is to gather into the national depository those sparks of life that are hidden in the fatherly tombs. Our neighbours are allowed to analyse the past by means of scientific experiments, similar to those done on dead corpses [by physicians]; we meanwhile have to bring the past to life, from the dead.62
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Such emotional, biological comparisons were quite up to date in the times of the popularity of social evolutionism and the triumph of the biological comparative method spreading through the humanities.63 Looked at in this light, it becomes clear that the 1870s and 1880s could act as a period of cultural pessimism.64 The Russian Partition, after 1864, started to be administratively unified with the Russian Empire and the German one saw a rise of politics against the Polish minorities that gained momentum after unification in 1871, leaving only the Austrian part as the sole place where relatively independent Polish cultural life could take place. Positivistic ideology, stressing the need to adapt to new circumstances and remain loyal to the partitioning powers, served as the main guideline for intellectuals, who had to wait until the 1890s before new mass parties with their novel political visions were to appear. Archaeological activity outside Austria clearly lost its dynamism, and new, effective conservationist institutions in Galicia would be established under the aegis of the Viennese Central Commission only at the end of the 1880s. To be sure, studies of the local architecture continued and the process of monument-cataloguing developed incrementally, but optimistic conclusions regarding the Polish contribution to the history of architecture, awaited by many, could not be made. Gothic was an obvious choice here, as the Renaissance was long deemed alien to Poland. For Krakow architect Filip Pokutyński, the Gothic had had the potential to become a Polish ‘specialty’, had not ‘its thread been cut by the Renaissance epoch, which was imposed on the northern world by monarchs and magnates’.65 For Warsaw art critic and a would-be painter Karol Matuszewski, different styles evolved like organisms. Gothic, again, was thought to fail to develop fully and was marginalized by Renaissance architecture before it could evolve into its full maturity;66 the same pertained to Classicism, whose life was terminated by the loss of the state’s independence. All this resulted in a chaos in nineteenth-century Polish architecture. Architects, for the author, had nothing to rely on, and the only solution could be to look back to the old discontinued architectural traditions and to try to resume them with regard to modern needs.67 For him, the only solution could be a new style, based on the Gothic. Such an idea was initially criticized by the renowned Warsaw art critic Franciszek Ksawery Martynowski in his 1882 book. Martynowski pessimistically claimed that the Polish nation stood out not in culture-making but, rather, in the task of defending its eastern (and thus also European) borders – which was in itself a constant motif of rampart ideology, appearing in the historical and cultural discourse at least since the Enlightenment.68 Architectural styles, following the author’s narration, were accepted merely for their novelty and not for the needs of the nation, so the conclusion was that ‘different artistic lines move through our land like migratory birds’.69
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This was in stark contrast to the West, where artists could, according to Martynowski, ‘rest a bit’ while their Polish equivalents had to get down to work from the beginning. The important Krakow architect Władysław Ekielski in fact agreed when he wrote in an article for a technical journal that it was the long breaks between the periods dominated by subsequent styles that were responsible for the insufficient development of each of them. Imports stood in place of real development, and that led to the lack of a ‘vivid tradition’.70 These comments can testify, in my opinion, to a genuine cultural pessimism characterizing the 1870s and 1880s, and were not mere rhetorical figures of speech. Polish culture, as seen through the lens of history, was deemed too weak to serve as a stable foundation for a possible independent state but also too strong to employ the old arguments of Herder and claim that the nation was young and thus may be the hope for the European future. We must nevertheless bear in mind that the same period was a time for creating a new theory of the local Vistula-Baltic Gothic as the Polish answer to the struggle of styles in the nineteenth century.71 But its triumphal entry into the wider discourse and popular consciousness started only during the competition and subsequent construction for a new church in Warsaw at the end of the 1880s: St. Florian Church in Praga district, completed in 1904. That in turn led to a real enthusiasm towards the Gothic, characterizing the following decades and seen not only as a style prompting the spiritual experience of its users but also as hope for a national future. It also thus put an end on the long disputes regarding the merits and drawbacks of this late-medieval architectural way of building, opening the door to its full appreciation and later also a near-religious admiration. The Vistula-Baltic style was employed as the most important ecclesiastical style at the beginning of the twentieth century, in the hundreds of works by the Warsaw architect Józef Pius Dziekoński or his more mystic-minded and literarily gifted Krakow (and later Lviv) counterpart Jan Sas-Zubrzycki, remaining popular even after the Great War.
Conclusions The presentation of these aspects of the Polish architectural discourse leads me to conclude that the past, as presented in the history of art, was the basis of collective identity in the nineteenth century. Each present needs its past. It must, however, be added that the nineteenth century was exceptional – for it was a time when the consciousness of the past became stronger than ever before and disseminated on a mass scale. The past of an elite, or of a
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state, became the common past. Furthermore, we can conclude that it was national movements that employed this method of creating and strengthening the sense of belonging through the collective past in the most effective way, stating that each member of the national community had equal rights to be a member and also excluding all the others on a scale not seen before. Monument preservation – as shown in the example of the discourse on the Gothic, and for a long time unnoticed by scholars72 – was the key element in this movement. The slow process of accepting Gothic as a vital part of the nascent heritage mirrored to some extent the process of nation-formation, identity-building and dissemination of self-consciousness among the masses, which also meant a radical cultural change in Europe between the ancient régime and the age of nations. The change in meaning of Gothic, and the connotations connected with it, showed how the Polish nation tried to overcome a crisis. The fact that frequent references to the past in a discourse can be a symptom of a crisis of collective identity proves correct in my case study. This was, however, not a crisis of ‘who are we?’, but one of ‘what is our role in history?’ and ‘is it possible to be significant again?’. Gothic in all its aspects (religious, formal, topographical, historical) evolved to become one of the pillars of national existence and a real mythomotor of sorts for future generations. To be sure, the history of Gothic and neo-Gothic in Polish discourse and architectural practice (not covered by this outline) bears hardly any traces of originality. Gothic went through a long route of marginalization and depreciation, slow recognition and a sudden rise in popularity, ensuing from theoretical works by Pugin, Ruskin, the Boisserrée brothers, Viollet-leDuc and Reichensperger, and allowing for such careers as those of George Gilbert Scott, Friedrich von Schmidt and Josef Mocker (in the Czech lands). However, the Polish case is interesting for its connection with the lost state and its eventual role in strengthening the endangered national identity as well as its deeper religious entanglement. Among the most striking features of this discourse are also its richness, the number of intellectuals engaged in it (a list of whom was, of course, not exhausted here) and the variety of voices and ideas disseminated during the decades in question. The discussions regarding Polish medieval architecture also show in detail the difficult path along which the nation-without-state had to march, between bastions of hope and precipices of doubt, especially in the period of rising ‘cultural imperialism’ (Miles Glendinning).73 Aleksander Łupienko is Assistant Professor at the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. His research interests include the cultural history of urban space in Central and East-Central Europe, private and public space, conservation movements and the history of Warsaw and
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Lviv in the nineteenth century. He has published, among others, Kamienice czynszowe Warszawy 1864–1914 [Warsaw Apartment Houses 1864–1914] in 2015 and Order in the Streets. The Political History of Warsaw’s Public Space in the First Half of the 19th Century in 2020 as well as numerous papers, including in Urban History, Journal of Transnational History, Zeitschrift für Ostmittleuropa-Forschung, Acta Poloniae Historica and Mesto a Dejiny. He has led and participated in several research grants, and is active in organizing a cycle of conferences on various aspects of urban history. NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Rampley, ‘Introduction’, in Heritage, Ideology, and Identity, 10. For details, see Łupienko, ‘Architecture and Urban Planning’. Thiesse, La création, 23‒66. Ibid. Assmann, Cultural Memory, 66. The term of ‘mythomotor’ is used in the writings of, e.g. Anthony D. Smith, or John Armstrong. 6. Harvey, The History of Heritage, 21‒22. 7. Lowenthal, The Heritage Crusade. 104‒42. 8. Assmann, Cultural Memory, 18. 9. Bressani, Architecture, 105‒6. 10. Lewis, The Politics of the German Gothic Revival, 40 and ff. 11. Falser, Zwischen Identität, 27 and ff. 12. Frodl, Idee und Verwirklichung, which encompasses the first decade of the Commission’s activity. 13. Blower, ‘The Monument Question’, 19. 14. Smith, The Ethnic Origins, chapter 4. 15. See Janowski, Birth of the Intelligentsia. 16. Rampley, ‘Introduction’, 10. 17. Jurkowska, Pamięć sentymentalna. 18. A good overview can be found in Abramowicz, Dzieje zainteresowań. 19. As described in Pieróg, Maurycy Mochnacki. 20. For the entire context, see Walicki, Philosophy. 21. Pieróg, Maurycy Mochnacki, 276. 22. Lewestam, ‘Wyjątki z estetyki’, 85. 23. Libelt, Estetyka, 30‒1. 24. See Glendinning, The Conservation Movement, 65 and ff. 25. An overview: Clark, The Gothic Revival. On A.W.N. Pugin: 122‒49. 26. For neo-Gothic secular architecture, see Jaroszewski, O siedzibach. 27. Mieroszewski, ‘Rozprawa o malarstwie’, 213‒14. 28. More about this in Burkot, Polskie podróżopisarstwo. 29. Purchla, Matecznik Polski. 30. Ślesiński, ‘Problemy konserwatorskie’, 4.
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31. As in the case of the senator and architect Feliks Radwański, who defended the famous Florian Gate claiming that its demolition would result in strong winds reaching Krakow’s Main Square. The issue of Krakow’s historic architecture and related public discourse is dealt with in Borowiejska-Birkenmajerowa, Serce Polski. 32. Łupienko, Order in the Streets. 33. Robson-Scott, The Literary Background. 34. Stachowski, ‘O wpływie Religii’, 148. 35. Ibid., 151. 36. Kremer, Listy z Krakowa, Letter No. 2, 195. 37. Ibid., Letter No. 9, 282‒84. 38. Libelt, Estetyka, 88. 39. Ibid., 174. 40. See, e.g. Łęski, ‘Rozprawa o piękności’, 269. 41. Libelt, Estetyka, 338. 42. As they were for a poet and geographer, one of the proponents of the national movement, Wincenty Pol: Dzieła Wincentego Pola, 76, taken from Bęczkowska, ‘Wincenty Pol’, 90. 43. Idźkowski, Kroie architektury. 44. Idźkowski, ‘Stanowisko sztuk pięknych’, 679, 685. 45. Bęczkowska, Karol Kremer, 253‒67; citation: 257. 46. Kremer, ‘Niektóre uwagi’, 546‒60. 47. Wilson, ‘The Roots of Medievalism’, 112. 48. Bęczkowska, Karol Kremer, 367. 49. The mission’s initiator was the supervisor of the army of the Kingdom before 1830, brother of the then tsar, Archduke Constantine, and the motivation for the inventory was military. For the full history of the mission, see Walicki, Sprawa inwentaryzacji. 50. Antoniewicz-Goraj, ‘Między teorią a praktyką’, 14. 51. Łuszczkiewicz, O znaczeniu, 198‒208. 52. Dużyk and Treiderowa, ‘Zagadnienia opieki’, 203. 53. These were Franciszek Maksymilian Sobieszczański, Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, Edward Rastawiecki and Aleksander Przezdziecki respectively; see Polanowska, Historiografia. 54. His name was Julian Klaczko. The entire issue was reported in Jakimowicz, Z dziejów polskiej krytyki, 6‒184. 55. Archive of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakow Department, inv. No. TNK-73, 8, cited after Dużyk and Treiderowa, ‘Zagadnienia opieki’, 216. 56. Wierzbicki, Wschód-Zachód, 234. 57. Buszar[d], O stosunku sztuki, 133. 58. Łepkowski, O poszanowaniu zabytków. 59. For an overview stressing the democratizing aspects of art and museums in Germany after 1871 and before, see Scheuner, ‘Die Kunst als Staatsaufgabe’, 13‒46. 60. Pol, O potrzebie, 4. 61. Ibid., 22. 62. Łepkowski, O poszanowaniu, 10. 63. See a study of the early art history of Galicia and of the inspirations drawn from, e.g. the works of Cuvier: Kunińska, Historia sztuki, 122.
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64. Cf. Łupienko, ‘Średniowieczne zabytki’. 65. Pokutyński, ‘Jak zapatrywać się’, 258. 66. Matuszewski, ‘O architekturze’, 80‒81, 231. 67. Ibid., 387. 68. Wierzbicki, Wschód-Zachód, 61. Cf. also, Berezhnaya and Hein-Kircher, Rampart Nations. 69. Martynowski, Na przełomie, 35. 70. Ekielski, ‘Uwagi’, 52–56. 71. For more about the Polish national style, see, e.g. Stefański, Polska architektura sakralna; Majdowski, ‘Nurt narodowy w architekturze sakralnej’. 72. Examination of the conservation movement as a national phenomenon began in the 1960s, bearing fruit in the 1970s. In Polish historiography, it was Jerzy Frycz who published the first comprehensive book on the issue: see Frycz, Restauracja. 73. See the chapter ‘Revolutions and national heritages’ in Glendinning, The Conservation Movement.
Bibliography Abramowicz Andrzej. Dzieje zainteresowań starożytniczych w Polsce [History of Antiquarian Interests in Poland], Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1983. Antoniewicz-Goraj, Blanka. ‘Między teorią a praktyką. Aktywność Józefa Łepkowskiego w dziedzinie konserwacji zabytków’ [Between Theory and Practice: Józef Łepkowski’s Activity in the Field of Monument Conservation]. Wiadomości Konserwatorskie 2005, 17, 14–24. Armstrong, John. Nations before Nationalism. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Assmann, Jan. Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Bęczkowska, Urszula. ‘Wincenty Pol a początki instytucjonalnej opieki nad zabytkami sztuki w Polsce’ [Wincenty Pol and the Beginnings of the Institutional Care over Art Monuments in Poland], in Krystyna Grodzińska and Adam Kutarba (eds). Wincenty Pol (1807–1872) w służbie nauki i narodu [Wincenty Pol (1807–1872) in the Service of Science and the Nation]. Krakow: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 2010, 71–95. . Karol Kremer i krakowski urząd budownictwa w latach 1837–1860 [Karol Kremer and the Krakow Building Office in the Years 1837–1860]. Krakow: Universitas, 2010. Berezhnaya, L. and H. Hein-Kircher (eds). Rampart Nations: Bulwark Myths of East European Multiconfessional Societies in the Age of Nationalism. New York: Berghahn Books, 2019. Blower, Jonathan. ‘The Monument Question in Late Habsburg Austria: A Critical Introduction to Max Dvořák’s Denkmalpflege’. Doctoral thesis at the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh 2012. Published online at era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/8723 (accessed 23 August 2021).
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Borowiejska-Birkenmajerowa, Maria. Serce Polski: zabytki i świadomość narodowa [The Heart of Poland: Monuments and the National Consciousness]. Krakow: Ars Nova, 1991. Bressani, Martin. Architecture and the Historical Imagination: Eugène-Emmanuel Violletle-Duc, 1814–1879. London‒New York: Routledge, 2017. Burkot, Stanisław. Polskie podróżopisarstwo romantyczne [Polish Romantic Travel Writing]. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1988. Buszar[d], Ludwik. ‘O stosunku sztuki do naszego społeczeństwa’ [On the Attitude Toward Art in Our Society]. Biblioteka Warszawska 1860, 3, 129–52. Clark, Kenneth. The Gothic Revival. London: Murray, 1962. Dużyk, Józef and Anna Treiderowa. ‘Zagadnienia opieki nad zabytkami w działalności Towarzystwa Naukowego Krakowskiego’ [The Issues of the Care of Monuments in the Activities of the Krakow Scientific Society]. Rocznik Biblioteki Polskiej Akademii Nauk w Krakowie 1957 (3), 201–80. Ekielski, Władysław. ‘Uwagi nad spółczesną architekturą z powodu wystawy sztuki polskiej w Sukiennicach’ [Remarks on the Modern Architecture on the Occasion of the Exhibition of Polish Art in the Krakow Cloth Hall]. Czasopismo Techniczne 1888, 7, 52–6. Falser, Michael S. Zwischen Identität und Authentizität: Zur politischen Geschichte der Denkmalpflege in Deutschland [Between Identity and Authenticity: The Political History of the Monument Preservation in Germany]. Dresden: Thelem, 2008. Frodl, Walter. Idee und Verwirklichung: das Werden der staatlichen Denkmalpflege in Österreich [Idea and Realization: The Emergence of the State Monument Preservation in Austria]. Vienna: Böhlau, 1988. Frycz, Jerzy. Restauracja i konserwacja zabytków architektury w Polsce w latach 1795– 1918 [Restoration and Conservation of Architectural Monuments in Poland in the Years 1795–1918]. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1975. Glendinning, Miles. The Conservation Movement: A History of Architectural Preservation; Antiquity to Modernity. London: Routledge, 2013. Graham, Brian and Peter Howard. Heritage and Identity, in Brian J. Graham and Peter Howard (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, 19–36. Harvey, David C., The History of Heritage, in Brian J. Graham, Peter Howard (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, 1–15. Idźkowski, Adam. ‘Stanowisko sztuk pięknych’ [The Situation of the Art]. Biblioteka Warszawska 1845, 1, 678–90. . Kroie architektury, obeymuiące rozmaite jey kształty, uważane jako przedmiot piękności [The Patterns of Architecture, Including its Various Forms, Considered as a Subject of Beauty]. Warsaw: Drukarnia przy ul. Mazowieckiej i Śto-Krzyskiej, 1832. Jakimowicz, I. (ed.). Z dziejów polskiej krytyki i teorii sztuki [From the History of Polish Art Criticism and Theory], vol. 2: Spór o rację bytu polskiej sztuki narodowej (1857– 1891) [The Dispute Over the Raison d’Etre of Polish National Art, 1857–1891]. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1961. Janowski, Maciej. Birth of the Intelligentsia: 1750–1831, in Jerzy Jedlicki (ed.), A History of the Polish Intelligentsia, vol. 1. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014.
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Jaroszewski, Stefan T. O siedzibach neogotyckich w Polsce [About Neo-Gothic Mansions and Palaces in Poland]. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1981. Jurkowska Hanna, Pamięć sentymentalna: praktyki pamięci w kręgu Towarzystwa Warszawskiego Przyjaciół Nauk i w Puławach Izabeli Czartoryskiej [Sentimental Memory: Memory Practices Within the Circles of the Warsaw Academy of Friends of Learning and Izabela Czartoryska in Puławy], Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2016. Kremer, Józef. Listy z Krakowa [Letters from Krakow], vol. 1. Vilnius: S. Lewental, 1855. Kremer, Karol. ‘Niektóre uwagi o ważności zabytków sztuk pięknych na naszej ziemi’ [Some Remarks Concerning the Salience of Artistic Monuments in our Land]. Rocznik Towarzystwa Naukowego Krakowskiego 1849, 4 (19), 546–60. Kunińska, Magdalena. Historia sztuki Mariana Sokołowskiego [The History of Art of Marian Sokołowski]. Krakow: Universitas, 2014. Lewestam, Fryderyk H. ‘Wyjątki z estetyki’ [Excerpts from Aesthetics]. Biblioteka Warszawska 1841, 3, 81–100. Lewis, Michael J. The Politics of the German Gothic Revival: August Reichensperger. New York: Architectural History Foundation, 1993. Libelt, Karol. Estetyka czyli Umnictwo Piękne, Część ogólna [Aesthetics, a General View]. Petersburg: s.n., 1854. Lowenthal, David. The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Łepkowski, Józef. O poszanowaniu zabytków ojczystej przeszłości [On the Respect for the Monuments of the Fatherland’s Past]. Krakow: s.n., 1862. Łęski, Józef. ‘Rozprawa o piękności w sztukach a szczególniey w malarstwie’ [A Dissertation on the Beauty in Arts, Especially in Paintings]. Rocznik Towarzystwa Naukowego Krakowskiego 1817 (1), 259–319. Łupienko, Aleksander. ‘Architecture and Urban Planning in Service of Politics: (Neo) classicism and the Restructuring of Cities in the Kingdom of Poland’, in Dragan Damjanović, Lovorka Magaš Bilandžić and Željka Miklošević (eds), Art and Politics in Europe in the Modern Period. Zagreb: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, 2019, 313–24. . Order in the Streets. The Political History of Warsaw’s Public Space in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Jarosław Garliński. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2020. . Średniowieczne zabytki w nowoczesnym kraju. Z dziejów dziewiętnastowiecznego dyskursu o architekturze [Medieval Monuments in a Modern Country: On the History of the Polish Nineteenth-Century Discourse on Architecture]. Roczniki Dziejów Społecznych i Gospodarczych 2020, 17–48. Łuszczkiewicz, Władysław. O znaczeniu w dzisiejszych czasach budownictwa średniowiecznego [On the Today’s Significance of the Medieval Building Art], in Kłosy i kwiaty. Książka zbiorowa [Ears and Flowers: A Collective Book]. Krakow: drukarnia W. Kirchmayera, 1869, 198–208. Majdowski, Andrzej. ‘Nurt narodowy w architekturze sakralnej Królestwa Polskiego od drugiej połowy XIX wieku. Wybrane problemy’ [The National Trend in the Sacral Architecture of the Kingdom of Poland Since the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century. Selected Problems]. Nasza Przeszłość 1985, 64, 5–55. Martynowski, Franciszek Ksawery. Na przełomie sztuki polskiej [On the Turning Point of the Polish Art]. Warsaw: T. Paprocki, 1882.
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Matuszewski, Karol. ‘O architekturze u obcych i u nas. Uwagi ze stanowiska estetycznego’ [On Architecture of the Foreigners and Us: Remarks from the Aesthetic Point of View]. Biblioteka Warszawska 1881, (3), 75–93, 231–45, 382–405. Mieroszewski, Ignacy. ‘Rozprawa o malarstwie’ [A Dissertation on Painting]. Rocznik Towarzystwa Naukowego Krakowskiego 1818 (3), 199–245. Pieróg, Stanisław. Maurycy Mochnacki. Studium romantycznej świadomości [Maurycy Mochnacki: A Study of Romantic Consciousness]. Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1982. Pokutyński, Filip. ‘Jak zapatrywać się należy na kierunek dzisiejszej architektury. Zarys osnuty na podstawie Historyi sztuki’ [How Should the Direction of Today’s Architecture be Viewed? The Outline Based on the History of Art]. Rocznik Towarzystwa Naukowego Krakowskiego 1869 (38), 258–75. Pol, Wincenty. Dzieła Wincentego Pola wierszem i prozą [The Works of Wincenty Pol in Verse and Prose], vol. 1. Poezje [Poems]. Lwów: F.H. Richter, 1875. . O potrzebie zachowania pomników z przeszłości i znaczeniu ich w czasie dzisiejszym [On the Need to Preserve Monuments from the Past and Their Significance in the Present Time]. Krakow: s.n., 1868. Polanowska, Jolanta. Historiografia sztuki polskiej w latach 1832–1863 na ziemiach centralnych i wschodnich dawnej Rzeczypospolitej: F.M. Sobieszczański, J.I. Kraszewski, E. Rastawiecki, A. Przezdziecki [Historiography of Polish Art in the Years 1832–1863 in the Central and Eastern Territories of the Former Polish– Lithuanian Commonwealth: F.M. Sobieszczański, J.I. Kraszewski, E. Rastawiecki, A. Przezdziecki]. Warsaw: Instytut Sztuki PAN, 1995. Purchla, Jacek. Matecznik Polski: pozaekonomiczne czynniki rozwoju Krakowa w okresie autonomii galicyjskiej [‘Lair’ of Poland: Non-Economic Factors of the Development of Krakow in the Period of Galician Autonomy]. Krakow: Wydawnictwo „Znak”, 1992. Rampley, Matthew. ‘Introduction’, in idem (ed.), Heritage, Ideology, and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe: Contested Pasts, Contested Presents. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012. Robson-Scott, William Douglas. The Literary Background of the Gothic Revival in Germany. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965. Scheuner, Ulrich. ‘Die Kunst als Staatsaufgabe im 19. Jahrhundert’ [The Art as a Duty of the State in the Nineteenth Century], in Ekkehard Mai and Stephan Waetzoldt (eds), Kunstverwaltung, Bau- und Denkmal-Politik im Kaiserreich [Managing the Art, Building and Monument Policy in German Empire]. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1981, 13–46. Smith, Anthony D. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford‒Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1986. Stachowski, Franciszek K. ‘O wpływie Religii Chrześcijańskiej na wzrost i postępy sztuk pięknych’ [On the Influence of the Christian Religion on the Growth and Progress of Fine Arts]. Rocznik Towarzystwa Naukowego Krakowskiego 1843, 2 (17), 143–54. Stefański, Krzysztof. Polska architektura sakralna w poszukiwaniu stylu narodowego [Polish Sacred Architecture in Search of a National Style]. Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2002.
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Ślesiński, Władysław. ‘Problemy konserwatorskie Krakowa w pierwszej połowie XIX wieku’ [Krakow’s Conservationist Problems in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century]. Ochrona Zabytków 1963, 16 (1), 3–16. Thiesse, Anne-Marie. La création des identités nationales. Europe XVIIIe‒XXe siècle [The Creation of National Identities: Europe Eighteenth–Twentieth Centuries]. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1999. Walicki, Andrzej. Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism: The Case of Poland. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994. Walicki, Michał. Sprawa inwentaryzacji zabytków w dobie Królestwa Polskiego (1827– 1862) [The Issue of the Inventory of Monuments in the Era of the Kingdom of Poland, 1827–1862]. Warsaw: Kasa im. Mianowskiego, 1931. Wierzbicki, Andrzej. Wschód-Zachód w koncepcjach dziejów Polski. Z dziejów polskiej myśli historycznej w dobie porozbiorowej [East-West in the Concepts of Polish History. From the History of Polish Historical Thought in the Post-Partition Era]. Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1984. Wilson, David M. ‘The Roots of Medievalism in North-West Europe: National Romanticism, Architecture, Literature’, in Patrick J. Geary and Gábor Klaniczay (eds), Manufacturing Middle Ages. Entangled History of Medievalism in NineteenthCentury Europe. Leiden–Boston, MA: Brill, 2013, 111–37.
8 CHAPTER 4 Before and after Emile-André Lecomte du Nouÿ, or the Birth of National Style in Romanian Architecture Anda-Lucia Spânu
Introduction Many countries are easily identified through emblematic monuments: the Eiffel Tower means France, London Bridge is totemic of the United Kingdom, the Tower of Pisa or the Colosseum represent Italy, the Statue of Liberty is the symbol of the United States of America, the Kremlin of Russia, the Taj Mahal advertises India and so on. The architectural symbol of Romania is its churches. This chapter describes an essential episode in the history of Romanian architecture in the circumstances of the first restoration actions of historical monuments in the country. To understand the events, the historical/ political and cultural context must be briefly explained. Not only local architecture but also heritage protection developed differently in each Romanian principality. Wallachia and Moldavia, which were united under the same ruler in 1859 and acquired their independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878, finally became the Kingdom of Romania in 1881. Transylvania was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918, when it merged with the then-existing Romania to form Greater Romania. Thus, Transylvania followed the Vienna rules and started to inventory its monuments from 1850 onwards while the Kingdom of Romania set up a Public Monuments Commission in 1874, began inventorying churches in 1881 and passed its first architectural protection law in 1892.1
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Some of the most important monuments of old Romanian religious architecture are the Cathedral Church in Curtea de Argeș, the Church of Trei Ierarhi (Three Hierarchs) Monastery in Iași, the Old Metropolitan Church in Târgoviște, the Sfântul Nicolae Domnesc (Saint Nicholas Princely) Church in Iași and the Sfântul Dumitru (Saint Demetrius) Church in Craiova. All of them were restored (or reconstructed) by the French architect EmileAndré Lecomte du Nouÿ (1844–1914). Most of his work in Romania was done under the patronage of Carol I of Romania (1839–1914),2 with constant support from cultural officials, and was perceived as a great success and, therefore, highly praised. However, it was also the subject of harsh criticism by some prominent personalities of the time and architects from the younger generation. Arguments for the appraisal and judgement of his restoration methods have initiated heated debates about the heritage of Romanian architectural and cultural identity, which raised awareness of the value of traditional architecture and the growth of interest in historical heritage. This led to the establishment of a new institutional system of monitoring and protecting monuments. Lecomte and his works are familiar to Romanian students of history, art and architecture, and there is also a large body of work about him – mostly critical, as befits authors during the period of Romanian national socialism3 – followed in recent decades by others, who admit and discuss his contribution to the protection of national monuments and restoration legislation and programmes.4 This chapter reassesses the opinions and judgements considering this architect, as presented in the historiography and architectural critique since his times.
André Lecomte du Nouÿ (1844–1914) Emile-André Lecomte du Nouÿ was born on 7 September 1844 in Paris, into a family of noble descent originating in Piedmont and established in France in the fourteenth century. In 1859, André entered the École Impériale de Dessin et Mathématiques, where he studied drawing, sculpture, mathematics and architecture. Later, he was a student of the renowned French architects Anatole de Baudot (1834–1915), writer, architect and professor; Auguste-Émile Vaudremer (1829–1914), designer and restorer of many public buildings; and Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–79), restorer of medieval buildings and writer, known for his theories of architectural restoration. Under the guidance of the last of these, André Lecomte du Nouÿ carried out various monument-restoration works and took part in an archaeological mission in the Holy Land. Notebooks kept throughout his
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career prove his teacher’s influence on his working methods. It seems that he was also a collaborator with the Commission of Historical Monuments in France. Lecomte added ‘du Nouÿ’, his mother’s maiden name, to his name in 1884. It was a family of artists: his uncle, Hyacinthe-André du Nouÿ (surnamed Dunouÿ) was a painter and the Orientalist painter Jean-Jules Antoine Lecomte du Nouÿ (1842–1923) was his brother. André Lecomte du Nouÿ went to Romania in 1875 at the recommendation of his teacher and friend Viollet-le-Duc, and worked on the five important monuments of old Romanian religious architecture named in the introduction. In recognition of his merits, the French architect and restorer was elected a correspondent member of the Romanian Academy (25 March 1887).5 Appreciated and criticized in equal measure over the decades during which he lived in Romania, the Frenchman was one of the best-known artists and intellectuals in the country. He spent his time in the company of Romanian noblemen and the royal family, in Bucharest and at Peleș Castle in Sinaia. Lecomte remained in Romania until his death on 11 November 1914, and, at his request, was buried in the Sfinții Voievozi (Saints Voivodes) Church, called Flămânzești, not far from the church in Curtea de Argeș: his greatest work, both in size and importance.
Restoration of the Curtea de Argeș Monastery Church Founders, especially of churches, play a significant role in the collective Romanian mentality.6 Throughout the Middle Ages and well into the nineteenth century, rulers, boyars and other dignitaries built churches – or, at least, funded enlargements or repairs in gratitude or to show their devotion to God. Building churches was also a way to win the sympathy of the people, and an opportunity to manifest power. According to historical documents, Neagoe Basarab (1459–1521), a great ruler of Wallachia (1512–17), man of culture, patron of the arts, and respected diplomat – together with his wife Despina (1485–1554) – was the founder of the monastery church of Curtea de Argeș, which was finished and decorated by Radu from Afumați (1522–29). Damaged by fire and earthquakes and plundered, the church, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, was repaired and modified several times. It was in 1856 that modern restoration works in the former Episcopal church were ordered by Alexandru Ghica (1796–1862), and the building was researched in 1857 by Ludwig Reissenberger of Sibiu at the request of the Vienna Monuments Commission,7 which in 1860 published the history, description and survey of the buildings.8 However, the first attempt to
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restore the church was made by Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza (1820–73)9 in May 1863. The task of researching and examining the monument was given to the architect Gaetano Burelly (1820–96), a Romanian architect of Italian origin who had studied architecture in Paris. Then, in 1866, the old seminary burnt down. A year later, two other fires affected the cells, the bell tower, the western chapel and the interior of the church.10 Prince Carol I immediately became familiar with the monument on his arrival in the country on 10 May 1866, as he received albums of Curtea de Argeș from Prime Minister Ion Ghica, who welcomed him.11 A little later, in October 1866, Carol visited the damaged Episcopal Church of Curtea de Argeș, describing it in his diary: ‘the splendid building is in a sad state’ with ‘the interior destroyed by fire’, but ‘fortunately the beautiful monument is all built of stone’ so it could be restored.12 The passages from his diary during the journey of 1866, to discover his new country, indicate his keen interest and concerns about the restoration of historic monuments. The architects who were active in Romania at that time studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna, or finished the École des Beaux-Arts, the prestigious French school. They promoted the same theory regarding the need of stylistic purity to be achieved by restoration. Violletle-Duc’s initial aim was to restore buildings in their original style, but his later restorations show that he often added entirely new elements of his own design. Twentieth-century archaeologists and restorers have severely criticized these fanciful reconstructions and additions posing as restorations, for they often destroyed or rendered obscure the original form of
Figure 4.1. Henri Trenk, Royal Church in Curtea de Argeș, 1861. Romanian Academy Library, public domain.
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the building. Nevertheless, his numerous writings made him an original and influential professional. As a result of Carol’s preoccupation, the restoration programme finally started in 1867. Under the coordination of the Romanian architect and publicist of French origin Filip Montoreanu (1839–91), the first professor of sculpture at the Fine Arts Academy in Bucharest, the artist Karl Storck (1826–87) restored the stone basis of the church in 1870. Dissatisfied with slow progress under the guidance of Montoreanu, Minister of Culture Titu Maiorescu (1840–1917), probably as a consequence of the Romanian openness to the French cultural spirit, appealed to Viollet-le-Duc for advice in 1874. The latter sent his protégé and collaborator, Anatole de Baudot, to Romania to study the church and draw up a proposal for its restoration. His report was submitted to the Ministry of Culture in December of that year. As the reputed French architect was too busy, he recommended the best of his students for this mission, and thus André Lecomte du Nouÿ moved to Romania in 1875 with a two-year contract. As he came to solve this conservationist problem, Carol ‘warmly advised him to keep with devotion the old forms of the splendid building and to raise it from its sad dilapidation to its old splendor’, which encouraged him to remake all of Montoreanu’s works.13 Most of the restoration work took place during Romania’s war of independence, which hindered its progress. Construction works started again in 1877, when funding resumed and the minister proposed an extension of the contract with the French architect. At the beginning of 1878, architects Alexandru Orăscu (1817–94), the first president of the Romanian Architects Society and professor, and Karl Benisch (1822–96), a Czech architect specialized in monasteries, issued an opinion that two-thirds of the work had been competently completed by that time and that Carol I ‘enjoys how artistic, beautiful and precise in his style this little jewel of oriental architecture is restored’. Even though the monastery precincts were demolished and the little pavilion in front of the church entrance was reconstructed in a new form, representatives of the central administration did not find this suspicious – being concerned only about the costs and deadlines.14 An 1879 report prepared by the Romanian painter of genre and history scenes, and one of the founders of Bucharest National University of Arts, Theodor Aman (1831–91), together with the sculptor Karl Storck and the architect Alexandru Săvulescu (1847–1902), assessed the Frenchman’s work favourably despite some criticism concerning the exterior stonework, as well as some complaints regarding the painted interior decoration. In the interior, after extracting from the walls everything that could be preserved and copying the rest on tracing paper for scrupulous reproduction,
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Lecomte removed the painting by the master Dobromir, which had been damaged by successive repairs (1680, 1785, 1804), replacing it with a decoration painted in 1883–85 by Charles Paul Renouard and Emile Fréderic Nicolle. In 1896, portraits of the royal couple were added on the walls. The finished church was consecrated with great enthusiasm in October 1886, and a long text describing the contribution of its new founder was inscribed in stone.15 The intervention of Lecomte du Nouÿ is without doubt considered the first restoration, in the modern sense of the concept,16 of a Romanian monument – an important point of reference for Romanian architectural heritage.17 This brief description of the restoration stages is essential to understand that the conservation works were long delayed despite plans to start them earlier. André Lecomte achieved alone in four years at Curtea de Argeș what had not been done in the previous twelve years under various political regimes. Lecomte was asked to restore other national monuments, not only in recognition of the quality of his work but also because he actually had no competitors. Romania at the time did not have local specialists in the restoration of monuments.
Restoration of the Trei Ierarhi Monastery Church The foundation of Voivode Vasile Lupu (1595–1661)18 of Moldavia, the monastery of the Trei Ierarhi in Iași, the historic capital of Moldavia, was built in 1634–37 as a royal necropolis, and decorated in 1641–42 by Russian painters from the tsar’s court. It is unique on account of the ‘embroidery’ of its stone façades, made with oriental motifs (Persian, Georgian, Armenian) and arranged in thirty-three registers that do not repeat.19 The Trei Ierarhi Church is the resting place of Alexandru Ioan Cuza (1820–73), Dimitrie Cantemir (1673–1723)20 and the church’s founder himself. When Carol I visited the building in 1866, he found it ‘poorly preserved, even worse restored and now in ruins’ – which was the result of earthquakes in 1711, 1781, 1795, 1802 and 1829, and also because of the great fire of 1827. Work began in March 1882.21 Despite the criticism made against Lecomte in 1879, no conditions were imposed on him at Trei Ierarhi, the French architect having full freedom of action. From the beginning, it was proposed to keep only one building from the old monastery complex – and even that one was, in fact, heavily modified.22 In 1887, Lecomte wrote to the Ministry of Culture stressing the need to completely rebuild Trei Ierarhi from the foundations up because of its poor
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condition. In the end it was an act of creation, not restoration, as the height of the towers, nave and narthex were changed, and sections of the intricate stonework patterns of the exterior were replaced. The surviving fragments of interior decoration were replaced with brightly coloured frescoes by Lecomte’s brother Jean-Jules in 1896.23 Lecomte du Nouÿ’s work here was completely different from that at Curtea de Argeș, and was marked by several controversial interventions. The bell tower of the former monastery, with the first public clock in the Romanian countries, was dismantled. Only fragments from the original painting (the votive picture of the ruler Vasile Lupu with his first wife and two daughters) are kept today in the church museum, and the royal coat of arms along with two of the bells are preserved in the courtyard.24
Sfântul Nicolae Domnesc Church in Iași, Sfântul Dumitru Church in Craiova and the Metropolitan Church of Târgoviște The Sfântul Nicolae Church in Iași was founded by Ștefan cel Mare of Moldavia (1433–1502)25 in 1491–92, and is the oldest ecclesiastical building in Iași to be preserved until the modern era. Although located in the area of
Figure 4.2. Auguste Raffet, Three Holy Hierarchs Monastery in Iași, 1837. Romanian Academy Library, public domain.
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the Royal Court, it was not part of it. From the second half of the sixteenth century, with the establishment of the principal residence of the rulers in Iași, until the nineteenth century, most of the rulers of Moldavia were crowned in this church. It gained the status of the metropolitan church of Moldavia in 1677 and housed the famous printing house of the Metropolitan Dosoftei.26 As with other monuments damaged by numerous earthquakes and fires, the church underwent a great restoration after 1884, in parallel with the church of Trei Ierarhi. Thus, it was decided to restore only the fifteenth-century construction. The old church was eventually dismantled during the renovation, and the precious votive portraits of Ștefan cel Mare and his family, painted in fresco, were lost.27 The restoration of representative religious monuments, which was supported by the Catholic Prince (later King) Carol I, was clearly a policy of social legitimization of this German monarch in the young state of Romania at the end of the nineteenth century. An art lover with aesthetic leanings, Carol tried, by supporting a wave of restorations, to symbolically establish himself as a cultural patron – next in line to the renowned ancient noblemen and voivodes like its first founder, the glorious Ștefan cel Mare, in the case of the Saint Nicholas Princely Church.28 Sfântul Dumitru Church in Craiova was built in the 1490s by Barbu Craioveanu, great Ban of Craiova (1492–1520). Dedicated to Saint Demetrius, it was also known as Băneasa after its founder. Between 1651 and 1654, the church was rebuilt under Matei Basarab (1588–1654), ruler of Wallachia (1632–54), a scholar, patron of the arts and builder of many churches. Although it was repaired several times in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, after repeated damage caused by inclement weather and earthquakes, the church was closed in 1849 and became a ruin. In 1889, it was rebuilt by André Lecomte with the support of King Carol I and Queen Elisabeth. The painting of the church lasted from 1907 until 1933, and was done by French artists Emil Menpiot and Bernard Baries. The ornamental paintings in the church and the porch were done by the German artist Gustav Nill, and the iconostasis by the local painter Josef Keber. Then, it could finally be consecrated – with Carol II in attendance at the ceremony.29 When the Craiova Archdiocese was raised to the rank of a Metropolis, in March 1939, the building became a metropolitan cathedral.30 The building of the Metropolitan Church in Târgoviște was begun by Prince Neagoe Basarab in 1518, after the completion of his church at the aforementioned Curtea de Argeș, and was consecrated on 17 May 1520 with the dedication to the Ascension of the Lord. Radu Paisie covered the church and painted it in 1537. Some repairs were made during the time of Matei Basarab (1632–54) and Constantin Brâncoveanu (1688–1714),
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when the church was reinforced and painted. Its fall into dilapidation began in 1821 and continued for decades. In 1889, Lecomte demolished it and erected a new building, the current church, which bears no resemblance to the old building.31 Carried out at the same time as the works at Trei Ierarhi, Lecomte’s restoration of the churches of Sfântul Nicolae in Iași, Sfântul Dumitru in Craiova and the Metropolitan Church of Târgoviște was even more drastic. Between 1888 and 1889, all three monuments were completely rebuilt. This was a consequence of the differences between the two tasks: to preserve (i.e. to keep it as it is) and to restore (i.e. to reproduce it), considered at the time to have different purposes. As it was impossible to preserve the ruined churches, the architect decided to ‘restore’ them. André Lecomte du Nouÿ was also active in correcting the policy of the Romanian authorities regarding historic monuments, as he was a member of judging committees and became a salaried member of the Royal Court. Moreover, the Royal House began financing his restoration works, when needed, including from the king’s personal purse.32 The original appearance of the aforementioned monuments, before the modifications made by Lecomte, can still be observed. Their historical images (drawings, watercolours, lithographs and engravings) – two of which are reproduced in this chapter – though not numerous are kept in special collections in several museums and libraries. Some of the plans and sketches made of the initial buildings by Lecomte, as well as reproductions of the historic frescoes from the interiors of the churches, are still preserved – collected by the French artists who worked on the mural painting of the restored monuments. Folders with the documentation of Lecomte and his team are at the ‘Ion Mincu’ University of Architecture and Urban Planning in Bucharest. Some of his notebooks are kept at the Romanian Academy Library in Bucharest, others are at the Central National Historical Archives of the National Archives of Romania. Drawings by Emil Menpiot of the church in Craiova are at the Metropolis of Oltenia – and, as the painter worked in all the churches mentioned here, it is likely that others still exist.33
Consequences According to his famous Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française, Viollet-le-Duc’s opinion – latterly called his ‘doctrine of the unity of style’ – was that ‘to restore a building is not to preserve it, to repair, or rebuild it; it is to reinstate it in a condition of completeness which could never have existed at any given time’.34 Lecomte’s ‘free interpretation’ of
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Viollet-le-Duc’s theories was to incite negative comments – as, incidentally, also happened in France when his master stated his theories – in the closing years of the century. Some young Romanian artists and architects – almost all newly returned from their studies in Paris, solidly trained and eager to make careers in architecture – found it surprisingly difficult to establish themselves in their homeland. The most important architects active there were foreigners, many already renowned in Romania, designing or planning the most important buildings of the new Romanian state in Bucharest (the National Bank, the Royal Palace, the Athenaeum, the Palace of Justice and so on). They built in the ‘European’ style (i.e. occidental). The reaction of the young Romanians transpired as clearly xenophobic, as they began accusing the authorities of selling the country to foreigners. As we might expect, Lecomte du Nouÿ was deemed one of them. In the late 1880s, as Lecomte’s work progressed, accusations appeared that he was violating Viollet-leDuc’s principles – that he strengthened and embellished the churches on which he worked, depriving them of their ‘characteristic’ simplicity. Most dissatisfied were those who today are considered the creators of modern Romanian architecture: Ion Mincu (1852–1912), architect, engineer, professor and politician, promoter of a Romanian style in architecture, Mincu integrated in his works the specificity of the traditional architecture of Romania; Ion Socolescu (1856–1924), founder of the Society of Romanian Architects, the magazine Analele arhitecturii and of the first school of Romanian architecture; George Sterian (1860–1936), restorer of churches, publicist, one of the first professors of architecture in Romania; and Nicolae Gabrielescu (1854–1926), designer of several public buildings and collaborator for thirteen years of Lecomte du Nouÿ, who proposed him as the leader of the restoration of the Church in Curtea de Argeș and with whom he also worked at the two churches in Iași: Trei Ierarhi and Saint Nicholas. The first attack came only after fifteen years of intense activity by the French architect in Romania – from Gabrielescu, who in 1890 criticized what he had done, in the brochure Memoriu pentru luminarea publicului in afacerea restaurărilor de monumente istorice (Memoire for informing the public on the issue of historical monument restoration). Sterian followed Gabrielescu the same year, with his publication ‘Restauration des monuments historiques à l’etranger et en Roumanie’ [The restoration of historical monuments abroad and in Romania].35 The young Romanian architects criticized almost solely the restoration of Curtea de Argeș among many other restoration works by Lecomte. This was due to the high esteem in which the church was held in Romania, and thus had the potential to stimulate patriotic sentiments.36
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As a Romanian proverb says: the cart was put in front of the horse. These were writings about restoration, printed before building rules and regulations had been mastered. In fact, Romania’s monuments have always been erected by foreigners. After all, the criticisms had to do with broader worldview issues regarding Romania’s place in Europe, its cultural peripheral position and visions of the future, and were a consequence of the historical conceptions of the restoration of historical monuments at that time. It is thus unsurprising that the critique did not take into account the merits of the works of Lecomte, which are now recognized in scholarship. With all the shortcomings and even the damage of which he was accused, in fact Lecomte du Nouÿ did pay a great deal of attention to the local context, gathered advice from Romanian intellectuals and acquainted himself with publications on the subject of the monuments in question. We should not forget that he always received substantial support from the most important decision makers, who were aware that his presence was necessary for projects to be completed. His critics also knew this, but they used him to indirectly criticize the political regime and perhaps even the Royal House.37 In January 1890, Analele Arhitecturii (Annals of Architecture), the first journal devoted to Romanian architecture, began to be published. However, in February the same year, the Resistance Committee for the Defence of the Destruction of Historical Monuments was also formed. Its members demanded a new vision of the preservation, restoration and promotion of historical buildings. The importance of national monuments was also discussed. Among those who signed the manifesto we can find the most famous Romanian artists of the time, including the painters Theodor Aman and George Demetrescu Mirea (1852–1934), the director of the School of Fine Arts; Gheorghe Tattarescu (1818–94), professor and headmaster of the National School of Fine Arts in Bucharest; the sculptor Ion Georgescu (1858–98), the first modern Romanian sculptor; and the architects Alexandru Orăscu and Alexandru Săvulescu. As a result of this protest memorandum, Minister of Culture Maiorescu invited a French expert, the architect and restorer Henri Révoil (1822–1900), to review the situation. His report praised Lecomte’s work. Revoil’s assessment of the restorations facilitated the acquisition of new funds needed to complete the work, thereby saving Lecomte’s reputation. The action taken by Romanian intellectuals amounted to raising social consciousness regarding historical monuments and their preservation. Their efforts did not go unheeded: following lengthy debates, including in parliament (politicians not missing the opportunity to give speeches on the subject), a ministerial commission was set up to analyse the entire work of Lecomte du Nouÿ. No one was sanctioned, but, as a result, the Frenchman was not commissioned for any
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new official work. He would continue to be active in Romania, on a smaller scale, mainly in private commissions. Thus, it seems that the young architects achieved a victory in this cultural struggle – which was, in fact, an expression of the conflict between the founding myths that underlie the Romanian collective mentality and external influences that were described as harmful. The controversy ended with native architects gradually replacing foreign ones. This development was coupled with the creation of a range of new institutions. The Society of Romanian Architects was established on 26 February 1891 and the School of Architecture opened its doors in 1892. The same year saw the founding of the Historical Monuments Commission and a new royal decree in November, which acted as the first law for the preservation and restoration of public monuments in the country. But the Autonomous Restoration Service, set up at the beginning of the works at Curtea of Argeș, was headed by Lecomte du Nouy until his death, operating from 1892 in parallel with the Historical Monuments Commission, and the five monuments saved by him are still considered to be of great beauty and well executed.38 Curtea de Argeș was the first monument in Romania to be studied in a modern way by a foreign scholar and, afterwards, by the few Romanian architects and art historians. It was the first to be advertised outside the country, at world exhibitions, and the first to be restored under Carol I. It was also under this king’s reign – as he used any public opportunity to declare his interest in monuments, insisting on their preservation and restoration – that laws concerning monument restoration were promulgated. Passed in 1874, 1892 and 1913, these laws were in themselves important landmarks in the history of monument restoration in Romania. Soon afterwards, an entirely new institutional framework was created, focusing on promoting Romanian architectural heritage and a national architectural style. By the end of the nineteenth century, Curtea de Argeș rose to prominence to such an extent that it began to be conceived of as the most significant piece of Romanian architectural heritage. It was perceived as the representation of both the nation and the Royal House.39 Furthermore, it became the new Romanian Royal Crypt. Next to the church’s founders Neagoe Basarab (along with his wife Despina, and children) and Radu from Afumați, the members of the HohenzollernSigmaringen royal house of Romania have now been buried there: Carol I with his wife, Elisabeth of Wied (1843–1916); Ferdinand I (1865–1927, ruling 1914–27) with his wife, Marie of Edinburgh (1875–1938); their son Carol II (1893–1953, ruling 1930–40) and grandson Mihai I (1921–2017, ruled 1927–30 and 1940–7) with his wife Ana (1923–2016) and his mother Elena (1896–1982).
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A Romanian National Architectural Style The architecture adopted by the young Romanian state had little in common with the traditions of the country, due to the immense role played there by foreign architects. First, the academic eclecticism of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris was adopted as the official architectural style for state institutions, as settled by a law on the establishment of public buildings and constructions enacted in 1882. State orders were given to French architects as well as to Romanians trained in Paris. Thus, Romania moved towards the French model and look – especially in the case of Bucharest, called ‘Little Paris’. The first generation of Romanian architects, trained abroad, were marked by Historicist quests and a taste for the picturesque. Some of them found in these an ideological impulse and support to create an architectural identity that exploited local traditions. Due to their commitment, they were occasionally openly in conflict with foreign architects in the country, reproaching them for interpreting tradition instead of representing it. In this quest for tradition, architects’ opinions were sometimes divergent, which explains the conflictual nature of the beginnings of ‘national styles’ in Romania.40 It was in the period between 1867 and 1900 that the national Romanian architectural style was born. In 1867, the new United Romanian Principalities took part for the first time in a Universal Exhibition – in Paris, with their own stand and pavilion under the name of ‘Romania’. The General Commissioner for the event was Alexandru Odobescu (1834–95);41 he entrusted the construction of the Romanian Pavilion to the French architect Ambroise Baudry (1838–1906) who had visited Romania for several months in 1866 and 1867, studying the Roman vestiges and medieval monuments. The model of the Episcopal Church of Curtea de Argeș was chosen as an architectural monument worth presenting to an international audience. However, the model differed significantly from the original – elements of the Stavropoleos Church in Bucharest being added as decoration to the pavilion. It was noted that the pavilion was a typical expression of a type of architecture at the confluence of two extremely different worlds, the Occident and the Byzantium.42 For the 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris, Prince George Bibescu (1834–1902), the head of the Romanian Commission, was asked to create a Romanian-style pavilion. He did so with the help of a team of architects composed of Frenchmen Paul Gottereau (1843–1924), an architect who had lived in Romania for thirty years and was famous for his public and private buildings; and André Lecomte du Nouÿ; along with Romanians Ion Mincu and Grigore Cechez (1850–1927), supporters of national specificity in Romanian architecture. Eventually, two national pavilions were created
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according to the plans of the architect Mincu: a Restaurant Pavilion, resembling a cottage with towers, eaves and a porch made of wood; and a Wine Tasting Pavilion built of wood, with a straw roof, in a peasant-house style. Both were constructed with elements of Romanian rustic architecture.43 In order to organize Romania’s participation in the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition, Dimitrie Ollanescu (1849–1908) was appointed as the General Commissioner. Romania exhibited its products in four pavilions, two designed by the French architect and restorer of medieval monuments Jean-Camille Formigé (1845–1926), former chief architect of the historic monuments of France. The first was the Royal Pavilion, again inspired by the Episcopal Church in Curtea de Argeș with stylistic details from the Horezu Monastery, Stavropoleos Church in Bucharest and the Trei Ierarhi in Iași – all considered masterpieces of Byzantine art. The second, the Restaurant Pavilion, featured a boyar country house with a porch. The third pavilion, a tobacco kiosk, was designed in the form of a medieval Romanian monumental fountain by architect Petre Antonescu (1873–1965), known for preferring the neo-Romanian style. The last, the Oil Pavilion, shaped like an oil tank, was inscribed with the names of the most important oil wells in Romania.44
Conclusions The importance of the works of Emile-André Lecomte du Nouÿ to modern Romanian architecture has been accurately assessed in past and recent studies that managed to offer different opinions on the French architect. If previously he was seen only as a destroyer of Romanian heritage, today he is appreciated for his way of studying the monuments and for the innovations that he introduced to heritage practices. The one monument that was severely altered – or, in fact, rebuilt – by foreign specialists, the Curtea de Argeș Church, was promoted as the building most representative of Romanian architectural heritage and served as an expression of national aspirations.45 The entire history of French architects commissioned by a German prince to deal with historic monuments took place in a country that had not even had public statues before, including in its historical capitals Bucharest and Iași. These architects were granted much freedom in the treatment of important architectural monuments. Critique of their works came later, voiced by a rising elite of native architects trained abroad whose ultimate aim was the creation of a new national style. From the perspective of current methodology of architectural heritage studies and currently valid work ethics, some of Lecomte du Nouÿ’s interventions seem to be deeply inappropriate or even harmful. Nevertheless, by analysing the official and technical documentation of the restorations,
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the authors of several recent studies have highlighted the fact that the interventions led by him were always accompanied by detailed written documentation. Broader investigations were carried out before the works began and all the elements, whether architectural or decorative details, were drawn up with the purpose of saving as much information as possible. He did what he was asked to do, taking great pains to ensure that each alteration was well conceived and justified. Thereby, Lecomte’s endeavours to study old Romanian architecture and his thorough assessment of the condition of the buildings that he restored were the starting point of the development of modern architectural documentation in the two principalities. If we consider Viollet-le-Duc’s writings and compare them with the works of Lecomte du Nouÿ in Romania, taking into account the whole context, the accusations that the latter did not respect the theories of the former no longer hold true. On the contrary, it seems that he followed his master’s instructions carefully. The heated debate generated by Lecomte’s restorations brought Romania’s architectural heritage fully into the public arena for the first time. Artists and architects began their own studies of religious and secular monuments, seeking to trace the origins of Romanian architecture both from the historical and the heritage perspective. The restoration of monuments has thus become a component of state policy in modern Romania. As King Carol I declared in one of his speeches, ‘Rebuilding the old monuments was one of the works that always attracted my special care’, adding, ‘A nation that respects its ancestral monuments and especially those of piety and the Christian faith, has a secure and steadfast future’.46 With the restoration of the Cathedral Church in Curtea de Argeș and the reconstruction of the Church of Trei Ierarhi Monastery in Iaşi, Lecomte du Nouÿ achieved what Romanian architects had not: a characteristic Romanian architecture, synthesizing and representing both the Greek Orthodoxy of modern times and the nascent national identity. These architectural treasures overwhelmingly influenced the evolution of religious architecture in Romania, and are an important part of its heritage. Anda-Lucia Spânu is a historian with a background in archaeology, a master’s degree in the Protection and Conservation of Heritage, PhD in the History of Culture and post-doctoral studies in Historical Sciences. She specializes in urban history, with a special interest in European town-views/ vedutas. She is a member of the European Association of Urban History, European Architectural History Network and Associazione Italiana di Storia Urbana; committee member of the Commission for the History of Towns in Romania; and founding member of the Civitas Nostra Association – the Society for the Study of the History of Towns (Romania).
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NOTES 1. Spânu, ‘Romania’, 305. 2. Carol I of Romania (r. 1866–1914), born Prince Karl Eitel Friedrich Zephyrinus Ludwig of Hohenzollern-Singmaringen (20 April 1839–27 September 1914) was elected Ruler of the United Romanian Principalities (20 April 1866–5 March 1881), named Royal Highness (9 September 1878–5 March 1881) and King of Romania (15 March 1881–10 October 1914). Under his forty-eight years rule, the longest in the history of Romania, the country achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire, grew and developed, becoming active in European diplomacy (Constantin, Dicționar de personalități, 37–38). 3. Ionescu, ‘Începuturile lucrărilor de restaurare’; Ionescu, ‘Societatea arhitecților români’; Derer, ‘Cazul “Lecomte du Noüy”’; Pippidi ‘În ajunul înființării Comisiunii’. 4. Popescu, Le Style National Roumain; Socolescu, Fresca arhitecților; Mărturii. Frescele Mănăstirii Argeșului; Ungureanu, ‘Biserica Mănăstirii Argeșului’; Moldovan, ‘André-Emile Lecomte du Nouÿ’; Minea, ‘The Monastery of Curtea de Argeș’; Minea, Catedrala de la Curtea de Argeș; Cernea, ‘André Lecomte du Noüy’; Noica, Restaurarea necercetată; Teodorescu, ‘Arhitectul André Lecomte du Noüy’. 5. Ionescu, ‘Societatea arhitecților români’, 63; Derer, ‘Cazul “Lecomte du Noüy”’, 68–69. 6. The monastery of Curtea de Argeș in the ancient capital of Wallachia has an interesting history, which intertwines with one of the most important founding myths in Romanian culture. According to mythology, master Manole, the builder of Curtea de Argeș Monastery, sacrificed his wife Ana by bricking her up inside the southern wall in order to prevent the walls from falling down. He erected the monastery for Radu Negru, a legendary voivode (governor) of Wallachia, who in turn took his life to prevent the mason from building anything greater (Kernbach, Dicționar de mitologie generală, 359). Monastirea Argeșului (The Argeș Monastery) or Balada meșterului Manole (The Mason Manole Ballad), an old Romanian ballad, has 280 versions. The best known is the one recorded and published by the Romanian poet and politician Vasile Alecsandri (Alecsandri, Poezii poporale). A fundamental creation myth, it is loved by Romanians. It also enjoyed the attention of some great Romanian creators, who wrote dramas, plays and operas on this topic (Taloș, Mitul etnogenezei românilor). 7. The Commission was informed of the value of the monument by Johann von Coronini Cronberg, the commander of the Austrian occupation troops during the Crimean War (1854–56). 8. Reissenberger, Die bischöfliche Klosterkirche. 9. Alexandru Ioan Cuza (Bârlad, 20 March 1820–Heidelberg, 15 May 1873), Prince of Moldavia, Prince of Wallachia, first elected ruler of the United Romanian Principalities (1859–66). He elaborated and introduced a series of reforms for the first time in Romanian history, but was overthrown by a palace coup d’état, abdicated on 11 February 1866 and lived in exile. His remains were buried in his residence in Ruginoasa, but were moved to the Trei Ierarhi Church in Iași after the Second World War (Constantin, Dicționar de personalități, 54).
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10. Ionescu, ‘Societatea arhitecților români’, 63; Pippidi, ‘În ajunul înființării Comisiunii’, 72; Velescu, ‘Preliminariile legii din anul 1892’, 8; Noica, Restaurarea necercetată. 11. Albums of paintings by Heinrich Trenk and of photographs by Carol Szathmari. Henri, Henric or Heinrich Trenk (1818–92) was a Swiss painter naturalized in Romania, known for his landscapes. Albumul arheologic și pitoresc al mănăstirilor din districtele Argeșului și Vâlcea [Archaeological and picturesque album of the monasteries from the Argeș and Vâlcea counties] was made during his travels along with Alexandru Odobescu in their inventory journey. This work was Ion Ghica’s welcome gift for Carol I. Hungarian artist Carol Pop Szathmari (1812–87) was born in Cluj. He settled in Bucharest in 1843 but had joined the Bucharest court entourage earlier – serving five successive rulers for almost half a century, from 1840 until his death. Painter, lithographer and later one of the first photographers in Bucharest, Szathmari participated in several national and international exhibitions. The album with photographs of Curtea de Argeș that Carol I received as a welcome gift was made by him. 12. Tzigara-Samurcaș, ‘Carol I și monumentele’, 11. 13. Ibid., 11–12; Ionescu, ‘Începuturile lucrărilor de restaurare’, 63–64; Velescu, ‘Preliminariile legii din anul 1892’, 9–10; Mohanu, ‘Extragerea picturilor murale’, 44; Coroamă and Tomescu, ‘Regele Carol I ctitor’, 107–8; Velescu, ‘Regele Carol I’, 213–16; Moldovan, ‘André-Emile Lecomte du Nouÿ’, 159–60; Minea, ‘The Monastery of Curtea de Argeș’, 191–94; Noica, Restaurarea necercetată. 14. Tzigara-Samurcaș, ‘Carol I și monumentele’, 12; Moldovan, ‘André-Emile Lecomte du Nouÿ’, 160. 15. Tzigara-Samurcaș, ‘Carol I și monumentele’, 15–16; Mohanu, ‘Extragerea picturilor murale’, 46; Mărturii. Frescele Mănăstirii Argeșului, 13. 16. As a joke in a poor taste, the last ‘restoration’ of the church ‘enriched’ its interior with double-glazed windows and doors. 17. Moldovan, ‘André-Emile Lecomte du Nouÿ’, 163; Minea, ‘The Monastery of Curtea de Argeș’, 194; Cernea, ‘André Lecomte du Noüy’, 70–73. 18. Vasile Lupu (1595–1661) was a man of culture, ruler of Moldavia (1634–53), builder of monuments and patron of the arts – and a founder of the Princely High School of Trei lerarhi Church in 1640, which taught in Greek and Latin. 19. Iftimi and Ichim, Strada Ștefan cel Mare, 21. 20. Prince Dimitrie or Demetrius Cantemir (1673–1723) – a true Enlightenment man, soldier, scholar and writer – was Voivode of Moldavia (1693, 1710–11) (Constantin, Dicționar de personalități, 37). 21. Tzigara-Samurcaș, ‘Carol I și monumentele’, 20; Coroamă and Tomescu, ‘Regele Carol I ctitor’, 108; Velescu, ‘Regele Carol I’, 213–14. 22. Moldovan, ‘André-Emile Lecomte du Nouÿ’, 164. 23. Ionescu, ‘Începuturile lucrărilor de restaurare’, 67. 24. Ibid.; Iftimi and Ichim, Strada Ștefan cel Mare, 21. 25. Ștefan cel Mare [Stephen the Great] (1433–1504), a national hero of Romania (canonized by the Romanian Orthodox Church in 1992), was Voivode of Moldavia for forty-seven years (1457–1504), and his rule considerably influenced the political, cultural and economic development of the country. He was the most important
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26. 27. 28. 29.
30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.
founder of churches and monasteries in Romanian history (Constantin, Dicționar de personalități, 189). Iftimi, Cercetări privitoare, 13–14. Iftimi and Ichim, Strada Ștefan cel Mare, 16. Coroamă and Tomescu, ‘Regele Carol I ctitor’, 111; Ionescu, ‘The Royal House’, 181; Iftimi, Cercetări privitoare, 25. Carol II of Romania (1893–1953), King of Romania (8 June 1930–6 September 1940), was the first Hohenzollern born in Romania, at Peleș Castle, and the son of King Ferdinand, then the Crown Prince. Carol had a complex personality and a complicated personal and public life but under his authoritarian and at times dictatorial leadership, the country evolved economically and culturally, and became notable in European politics (Constantin, Dicționar de personalități, 38). Popescu-Cilieni, Biserica Sf. Dumitru; Roșulescu, Craiova – Biserica Catedrală. Moisescu, Târgovişte; Mihăescu and Fruchter, Curtea domnească. Tzigara-Samurcaș, ‘Carol I și monumentele’, 17; Velescu, ‘Regele Carol I’, 220; Socolescu, Fresca arhitecților, 80; Teodorescu, ‘Arhitectul André Lecomte du Noüy’, 631. Roșulescu, Craiova – Biserica Catedrală; Spânu, Vechi reprezentări grafice, 353–59, 396–403; Moldovan, ‘André-Emile Lecomte du Nouÿ’, 157, 161–62. Viollet-le-Duc, ‘Restauration’. In three consecutive issues of the magazine, Sterian commented in detail on all official reports and documents (reproduced in extenso) related to Lecomte du Nouÿ’s work. See Sterian, ‘Restauration des monuments historiques’. Pippidi, ‘În ajunul înființării Comisiunii’, 74; Socolescu, Fresca arhitecților, 51, 95–96; Moldovan, ‘André-Emile Lecomte du Nouÿ’, 169; Minea, Catedrala de la Curtea de Argeș. Mohanu, ‘Extragerea picturilor murale’, 43; Socolescu, Fresca arhitecților, 107–8; Ungureanu, ‘Biserica Mănăstirii Argeșului’, 158; Minea, ‘The Monastery of Curtea de Argeș’, 196–97. Enescu, ‘După o jumătate de veac’, 5–7; Velescu, ‘Preliminariile legii din anul 1892’, 10–11; Socolescu, Fresca arhitecților, 104; Minea, Catedrala de la Curtea de Argeș; Teodorescu, ‘Arhitectul André Lecomte du Noüy’, 630. Velescu, ‘Regele Carol I’, 218, 220, 223; Socolescu, Fresca arhitecților, 104; Minea, ‘The Monastery of Curtea de Argeș’, 199. Popescu, ‘Un patrimoine de l’identité’, 146–49. Alexandru Odobescu (1834–95) was a Romanian writer, archaeologist and politician. He was Minister of Monuments (1863–64) and Professor of Archaeology at the University of Bucharest. Popescu, Le Style National Roumain, 40–43; Vlad, Imagini ale identității naționale, 43–45, 67–69; Minea, ‘The Monastery of Curtea de Argeș’, 193. Vlad, Imagini ale identității naționale, 119–34; Minea, ‘New Images for Modern Nations’, 94. Vlad, Imagini ale identității naționale, 145–46, 163–66. Minea, ‘The Monastery of Curtea de Argeș’, 194–99. Sturdza, Regele Carol I, 560.
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Bibliography Alecsandri, Vasile. Poezii poporale. Balade (Cântece bătrânești) adunate și îndreptate de Vasile Alecsandri [Popular Poems. Ballads (Old Songs) Assembled and Improved by Vasile Alecsandri]. Iași: Tipografia Buciumului Roman, 1852. Cernea, Elena. ‘André Lecomte du Noüy and the Frescoes of the Curtea de Argeș Monastery’. Museikon 2017, 1, 69–76. Constantin, Nicolae. Dicționar de personalități istorice românești [Dictionary of Romanian Historical Personalities]. Târgoviște: Cetatea de Scaun, 2009. Coroamă, Radu and Dorina Tomescu. ‘Regele Carol I ctitor și protector al patrimoniului cultural’ [King Carol I Founder and Protector of Cultural Heritage]. Muzeul Național 1999, 11, 107–14. Derer, Peter. ‘Cazul “Lecomte du Noüy”. Demers analitic privind intervențiile sale asupra monumentelor’ [The ‘Lecomte du Noüy’ Case: Analytical Approach Regarding its Interventions on Monuments]. Revista monumentelor istorice 1992, 41(12), 68–71. Enescu, Ion D. ‘După o jumătate de veac’ [After Half of a Century]. Arhitectura 1941, 1, 5–19. Gabrielescu, Nicolae. Memoriu pentru luminarea publicului in afacerea restaurărilor de monumente istorice [Memoire for Informing the Public on the Issue of Historical Monument Restoration]. Iași: Tipografia Popovici, 1890. Iftimi, Sorin. Cercetări privitoare la istoria bisericilor ieșene. Monumente, ctitori, mentalități [Researches on the History of the Churches of Iași: Monuments, Founders, Mentalities]. Iași: Doxologia, 2014. Iftimi, Sorin and Aurica Ichim. Strada Ștefan cel Mare Iași. Memoria monumentelor [Ștefan cel Mare Street in Iași: The Memory of Monuments]. Iași: Editura Palatului Culturii, 2016. Ionescu, Grigore. ‘Începuturile lucrărilor de restaurare a monumentelor istorice în România și activitatea în acest domeniu a arhitectului francez André Lecomte du Nouy’ [The Beginnings of the Restoration Works of Historical Monuments in Romania and the French Architect André Lecomte du Nouÿ’s Activity in this Field]. Revista Monumentelor Istorice 1978, 1 (47), 63–70. . ‘Societatea arhitecților români și problema monumentelor istorice’ [The Romanian Architects Society and the Historic Monuments’ Problem]. Revista Monumentelor Istorice 1991, 1 (5), 62–65. Ionescu, Radu. ‘The Royal House, supporter of the national spirit in art’. Muzeul Național 2006, 18, 181–89. Kernbach, Victor. Dicționar de mitologie generală [Dictionary of General Mythology]. Bucharest: Albatros, 1995. Mărturii. Frescele Mănăstirii Argeșului [Testimonies. The Argeș Monastery Frescoes], in Oliviu Boldura et al., Catalogul expoziţiei Muzeului Naţional de Artă al României [Romania’s National Museum of Art Exposition Catalogue]. Bucharest: MNAR, 2012. Mihăescu, Gabriel and Eugen Fruchter. Curtea domnească din Târgovişte [Princely Court in Târgoviște]. Bucharest: Sport-Turism, 1986. Minea, Cosmin. ‘New Images for Modern Nations: Creating a “National” Architecture for the Balkan Countries at Paris Universal Exhibition of 1889’, in Miklós Székely
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(ed.), Ephemeral Architecture in Central-Eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015, 91–106. . ‘The Monastery of Curtea de Argeș and Romanian Architectural Heritage in the Late 19th Century’. Studii de Istoria și Teoria Arhitecturii 2016, 4, 181–201. . Catedrala de la Curtea de Argeș. Controversele restaurării [The Cathedral of Curtea de Argeș. Restauration Controversies]. Published online in Historia in 2017 at www.historia.ro/sectiune/general/articol/catedrala-de-la-curtea-de-arges-controversele-restaurarii (accessed 24 August 2021). Mohanu, Dan. ‘Extragerea picturilor murale între distrugere și salvare: câteva exemple privind cazul românesc’ [Extraction of Murals Between Destruction and Rescue: Some Examples Regarding the Romanian Case]. Revista Monumentelor Istorice 1993–4, 62–3 (1–2), 43–51. Moisescu, Constantin. Târgoviște. Monumente istorice și de artă [Târgoviște. Historical and Art Monuments]. Bucharest: Meridiane, 1979. Moldovan, Horia. ‘André-Emile Lecomte du Nouÿ: Medieval Architecture at the beginning of Romanian Modernity’. Caietele ARA 2015, 6, 154–74. Noica, Nicolae. Restaurarea necercetată a Bisericii Curtea de Argeș [Unsearched Restoration of Curtea de Argeș Church]. Published online in 2017 at www.cotidianul.ro/restaurarea-necercetata-a-bisericii-curtea-de-arges (accessed 24 August 2021). Pippidi, Andrei. ‘În ajunul înființării Comisiunii. Rolul lui Nicolae Gabrielescu’ [On the Eve of the Establishment of the Commission: Nicolae Gabrielescu’s Role]. Revista Monumentelor Istorice 1992, 41 (2), 72–75. Popescu, Carmen. Le Style National Roumain. Construire une Nation à travers l’Architecture 1881–1945. Rennes/Bucharest: Presses Universitaires de Rennes/Simetria, 2004. . ‘Un patrimoine de l’identité: l’architecture à l’écoute des nationalismes’. Études balkaniques 2005, 12, 137–71. Popescu-Cilieni, Ioan. Biserica Sf. Dumitru Catedrala Mitropolitană din Craiova [St. Demetrius Church Metropolitan Cathedral of Craiova]. Craiova: Tipografia Sfintei Mitropolii a Olteniei, 1941. Reissenberger, Ludwig. Die bischöfliche Klosterkirche bey Kurtea d’Argyisch in der Walachei [The Episcopal Monastery Church at Kurtea d’Argyisch in Wallachia], Wien: K. K. Hof- u. Staatsdruckerei, 1860. Roșulescu, Vladimir. Craiova – Biserica Catedrală Sf. Dumitru [Craiova – Saint Demetrius Cathedral Church]. Published online in 2010 at vladimirrosulescu-istorie.blogspot.com/2010/12/craiova-biserica-catedrala-sf-dumitru.html (accessed 24 August 2021). Socolescu, Toma T. Fresca arhitecților care au lucrat în România în epoca modernă 1800–1925 [Fresco of Architects Who Worked in Romania in the Modern Era 1800–1925]. Bucharest: Caligraf, 2004. Spânu, Anda-Lucia. Vechi reprezentări grafice ale orașelor din România [Old Graphic Representations of the Romanian Towns]. Sibiu: ASTRA Museum, 2012. . ‘Romania’, in Ugo Carughi and Massimo Visone (eds), Time Frames. Conservation Policies for Twentieth-Century Architectural Heritage. New York: Routledge, 2017, 305–7.
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Sterian, George. ‘Restauration des monuments historiques à l’etranger et en Roumanie’. Analele Architecturei și ale artelor cu care se légă March 1890, 1/3, 48–58; April 1890, 1/4, 73–80; May 1890, 1/5, 97–101. Sturdza, Dimitrie A., Regele Carol I: Cuvântări și scrisori [King Carol I: Speeches and Letters]. vol. II, 1877–1886, Bucharest: Göbl, 1909. Taloș, Ioan. Mitul etnogenezei românilor: universul traianic [The Myth of the Ethnogenesis of the Romanians: the Trajan Universe]. Published online in România literară in 2019 at romanialiterara.com/2019/08/mitul-etnogenezei-romanilor-universul-traianic (accessed 24 August 2021). Teodorescu, Sidonia. ‘Arhitectul André Lecomte du Noüy și “chestiunea” restaurării Bisericii Episcopale de la Curtea de Argeș’ [The Architect André Lecomte du Noüy and the ‘Issue’ of the Restoration of the Episcopal Church at Curtea de Argeș], in Simpozionul internațional Monumentul – Tradiție și viitor, ediția a XIX-a, 28 septembrie – 1 octombrie 2017, Iași [International Symposium The Monument – Tradition and Future, 19th edition, 28 September–1 October 2017, Iași]. Iași: Doxologia, 2018, 629–44. Tzigara-Samurcaș, Alexandru. ‘Carol I și monumentele străbune. Fapte și documente’ [Carol I and the Ancestral Monuments. Facts and Documents]. Convorbiri literare 1909, 43/4, 8–22. Ungureanu, Cosmin. ‘Biserica Mănăstirii Argeșului’ [The Church of Argeș Monastery]. Arhitectura 2013, 2, 154–59. Velescu, Oliver. ‘Preliminariile legii din anul 1892. Fapte istorice, juridice și deprinderi estetice’ [Preliminaries of the Law of 1892: Historical and Legal Facts and Aesthetic Skills]. Revista Monumentelor Istorice 1992, 61 (2), 5–13. . ‘Regele Carol I și monumentele istorice’ [King Carol I of Romania and the Historic Monuments]. Muzeul Național 2000, 12, 211–24. Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène. ‘Restauration’, in idem, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, 1854–68 (1858), vol. 8. Published online at fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionnaire_raisonn%C3%A9_de_l%E2%80%99architecture_fran%C3%A7aise_du_XIe_au_XVIe_si%C3%A8cle/Restauration (accessed 24 August 2021). Vlad, Laurențiu. Imagini ale identității naționale. România la expozițiile universale și internaționale de la Paris (1867–1937) [Images of National Identity. Romania at the Universal and International Exhibitions in Paris (1867–1937)]. Iași: Institutul European, 2007.
8 CHAPTER 5 On the Articulation and Popularization of Christian Built Heritage Representing National Continuity in Nineteenth-Century Athens Georgios Karatzas
Introduction This chapter addresses the re-evaluation of medieval Christian built heritage in nineteenth-century Greece and its eventual pre-eminence as one of the basic constituent elements of the built-heritage landscape. It examines advances in national historiography and religious architecture, publications on history and heritage monuments, as well as the development of relevant institutions and heritage-protection legislation, through the prism of the rich literature on the emergence of the nation and the nation state,1 as well as on the articulation of distinct unifying identities and common heritage references.2 The idea that institutions of the nation state promoted the establishment of national heritage as the driving collective identity to populations with diverse cultural references,3 thus constructing ethnoscapes of symbolic unifying value,4 is of fundamental importance in this discussion, which aims to bring forward the interrelationship between the development of the Greek national narrative and the nationalization of local Byzantine heritage.
The Beginnings of Greek Nationalism and the Emergence of Irredentism Political and social developments in the Ottoman Empire during the eighteenth century allowed a growing number of Greek-speaking Christians to
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travel outside its borders – either to trade or to study, and thus to come in contact with the rich Western European scholarship on ancient Greek literature and civilization. Delving into what they saw as their lost heritage, they would in turn embark on a mission to recivilize their Ottoman peers.5 The idea of belonging to a community different from the Ottoman Rum millet spread gradually and reached greater audiences by means of an increasing amount of published material written in Greek and ranging from revolutionary pamphlets and newspapers to translations of Western oeuvres on the Classics.6 Described as the Neohellenic Enlightenment in modern Greek historiography, this national awakening period would culminate in the war of independence (1821–29) and the establishment of the Greek state (1830), which within its initial borders encompassed only part of the imagined national community.7 Greek irredentism was first expressed in 1844 during fierce debates at the Parliament, when Ioannis Kolletis, an MP and later prime minister, spoke of the discriminations against non-native Greeks within the state apparatus. This notion would eventually evolve into the Megali Idea (Great Idea), an irredentist vision of incorporating all historical Greek lands and all areas inhabited by Orthodox Greek-speaking communities into the independent Greek Kingdom.8 As it was gradually taking shape, it captivated diverse social and cultural fields – establishing a reciprocal relationship. This vision mobilized society to embrace the Byzantine legacy in its manifestations. It would come to dominate foreign and domestic policy until the second decade of the twentieth century.
Narratives on National History Publications on history written or circulated in the Greek world up to the end of the eighteenth century were preoccupied with the Christian past and the Christian perspective, ignoring the distant and rather unfamiliar antiquity.9 The appropriation and popularization of Classical antiquity took place during the times of the Neohellenic Enlightenment,10 almost half a century before the war of independence, but not without strong opposition. Debates on the name and the language of the people at the time suggest different historical models.11 However, the impact of Classical Greece on European culture after the Renaissance became a decisive factor for its eventual adoption into the modern Greek historical narrative. Besides, Greek antiquity helped Greek revolutionaries to stress the national aims of the resurgence and hide therefore its social implications, differentiating it from radical revolutionary movements elsewhere in Europe that threatened the existing
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sociopolitical order.12 The myth of the return of the Muses started gaining ground: following the collapse of the ancient world, the Muses left Greece only to return after its liberation.13 The link between Classical antiquity and the present was strengthened just before the war of independence,14 and would become an indisputable regime of truth after the establishment of the Greek state.15 The initial narrative of Greek national history, stressing the revival of the nation, was centred on two milestones: the antiquity and the national resurgence, which culminated in the war of independence.16 The myth of the Phoenix rising from its ashes served as a parallel to the rebirth of the ancient Hellas. During king Otto’s reign (1832–62), the cultural expression of the Enlightenment was readily adopted by the part of society that included Greek communities abroad, foreign and Greek newcomers, state functionaries and academics of the newly established university. Within these circles, the cult of antiquity overshadowed the Christian Orthodox tradition – at least, temporarily.17 Neoclassicism was thought to represent the architectural avant-garde and a new cultural reality, and was therefore favoured in all new building projects – even in church building.18 Unlike its secular equivalent, though, Neoclassicism in religious architecture did not find broad public acceptance. However few in number, Neoclassical temples such as Agia Eirini (1847–50) on Aiolou Street or Agios Konstantinos (1869–93) near Omonoia Square (both in Athens), are extremely important as they visualize the ideological strategy of the early Greek state. The myth of the Phoenix, however, was too weak to support any form of national ideology, as the implicit time gap was too great to form a coherent and convincing story. In addition, the narrative of revival failed to take into account fields of cultural experience such as the Christian Orthodox sentiment, which was strong among parts of society.19 These discrepancies were felt as early as the mid-nineteenth century, and made it difficult for this narrative to persist. In this spirit, writer and historian Spyridon Zampelios expressed in 1852 his hope that someday ‘the ripped and scattered pages of the fatherland’s bible would be gathered to restore integrity and unity’.20 Absorbing the legacy of the Byzantine Empire into the national narrative was seen by nineteenth-century Greek scholars as a rebellion against the narrow national focus on Greek antiquity. Its eventual incorporation into the national timeline and imagery signified the transition from the narrative of revival to that of continuity – having a profound effect on the structure of national history,21 and an impact on Greek self-consciousness. Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos’ monumental work Istoria tou Ellēnikou Ethnous (History of the Greek Nation), published in volumes between 1865 and 1874, came as an answer to Jakob Fallmerayer’s doubts on the true ethnic character of the Greek nation,22 and is credited with popularizing
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the concept of the nation’s continuity in a single grand narrative by reinterpreting the notion of Hellenism and introducing terms such as ‘first’ (i.e. ancient), ‘Macedonian’, ‘Christian’, ‘medieval’ and ‘modern’ Hellenism.23 By establishing a genealogical relationship between Hellenisms,24 he was thus able to document the uninterrupted cultural continuity of the ancient nation up to the present. By merging cultural and political history into a single field, Paparrigopoulos offered a new research methodology to Greek national historiography, becoming a pioneer in providing the nation with a fresh historical vision and by the same token a new national identity. The notion of continuity through the succession of Hellenisms was receptive to the inclusion of hitherto disregarded or under-researched historical periods,25 and would thus dominate Greek national historiography in one way or another until the fall of the Colonels’ regime in 1974. Its diffusion and popular acceptance was accelerated by the competition among Balkan nationalisms and the clash of opposing irredentist visions,26 often claiming overlapping territories of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, which resulted in the Balkan Wars between 1912 and 1913. The foundation of the Bulgarian Exarchate (1870), the establishment of the Bulgarian
Figure 5.1. The Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens overshadowing the restored eleventh-century Church of Theotokos Gorgoepikoos and Agios Eleutherios (little Metropolis) on the right, 2018. © Georgios Karatzas.
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state (1878), and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by Russia in the war of 1877–78 constituted political events that acted as a catalyst for the popularization of a new historical awareness among the Greeks. In this view, the legacies of the Christian Byzantine Empire and that of Greek antiquity were equally important to the development of the nation. The Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens, completed in 1862, became the archetype of the domed temple with symmetrical bell towers on its central façade, Neoclassical proportions and extensive loans from Byzantine religious architecture (see figure 5.1). By blending Eastern and Western historic building styles with the elements of ancient Greek and Christian Orthodox architecture, the so-called Hellenic-Byzantine style of the Cathedral would become popular.27 Interestingly, this style would be closer to Romanesque than Byzantine church building, as local architects were more familiar with Western archetypes by training.28 Zoodohos Pigi on Athens’ Akadimias Street is another example of the early version of this style. A result of an architectural competition held in 1845,29 the building is a stepped-hall basilica. Its blend of Western and Eastern architectural languages is evident in the Renaissance arched openings and terracotta antefixes at the roof, the Romanesque-inspired Lombard bands at the cornice, the blind windows of the apse, the Byzantine proportions of the windows and the ceramic dentil courses around them.30
Attitudes towards Christian Built Heritage During the early period of the independent state, historic Christian churches and monasteries were not considered to be part of the acknowledged heritage. According to the 1834 decree on the scientific and technological collections of artefacts,31 the Greek state’s first attempt to systematize its archaeological legislation (based on similar legislation of the Papal States for the antiquities of Rome),32 antiquities were the property of the state and included works of architecture and sculpture, everyday objects and weapons33 – from ancient to early Christian times.34 As a result, during the early Greek Kingdom, historic Christian churches and monasteries in and around Athens that had been destroyed in the war of independence or had been long abandoned and neglected, remained in ruins. Many were demolished for building material,35 even spolia in new local temples,36 or adapted to completely different civilian or military uses.37 The removal of medieval and early modern historical layers of ancient ruins during archaeological excavations,38 as well as the practice of urban clearance for the implementation of the Athens town plan,39 were also responsible for the loss of medieval building stock.
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Due to the extent of the demolition, the exact number of medieval and Ottoman Christian monuments in and around Athens is unknown. Surveys covering the city centre and its immediate surroundings show a varied but diminishing number of surviving examples.40 By the 1960s, out of 129 temples that were still standing at the end of the war of independence, only 24 retained their original form and the rest had already been demolished or deformed due to repairs and building additions.41 Those surviving were restructured, often to their detriment, to accommodate larger congregations. The 1834 circular of the Greek Church’s Holy Synod paved the way for the repair, rebuilding and adaptation of the surviving historic temples that were still in use.42 Notable examples include the late tenth-century Agioi Apostoloi Solaki at the ancient Agora, the late eleventh-century Agioi Asomatoi at Thiseio, the Katholikon (i.e. the main temple) of the Petraki Monastery, the eleventh-century Agia Ekaterini, the tenth-century Pantanassa at Monastiraki and the eleventh-century Agios Nikolaos Rangavas.43 Rough and improvised interventions raised concerns and compelled the Secretary of the Interior to demand that such operations be carried out only by competent departments of state authorities.44 Further alteration of the historic form also involved building additions in different styles – most commonly bell towers built in marble, with Neoclassical proportions and detailing. Disregard was not only reserved for historic churches and monasteries but also applied to several other monuments from the medieval and Ottoman eras. An example of their negative portrayal in the press is given by Stefanos Koumanoudis’ newspaper article on the self-evident need to demolish, ‘despite its historicity’, the Frankish tower at the Acropolis’ Propylaea.45 According to him, it was the duty of both the Greek Government and the Archaeological Society at Athens to remove it so as to restore the ‘image’ and ‘harmony’ of the original building complex. In his article, he stressed the fact that similar acts had already taken place in the recent past and for the same reasons – reminding readers of the fact that the Parthenon’s mosque, the Temple of Pyrgiotissa at the Stoa of Attalus and the Muslim hermitage at the Temple of Olympian Zeus had already been demolished so as to bring forward the ancient structures.46 The drastic repair of the Soteira Lykodemou Church between 1850 and 1855 (see figure 5.2) was the earliest example of the changing trend, and a milestone in the rising historical accuracy and study of the original Byzantine architecture found locally. This eleventh-century monument had stood in ruins before it was given to the Russian community in the city in 1847,47 on the condition that repairs should not alter its original form.48 An intervention was necessary as the entire west side, the dome, nearly all the interior vaults and all the non-loadbearing walls were in danger of imminent
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collapse and were hence demolished. Repairs also included the rebuilding of the sections that had collapsed over time due to neglect or damage resulting from fighting during the war of independence. Although the restoration of the dome was highly praised at the time for keeping its original shape and dimensions,49 the degree and scope of interventions were such that they have given rise to serious doubts as to whether the building should still be considered a medieval Byzantine monument.50 During King George’s reign (1863–1913), new temples would incorporate more and finer Byzantine details and decorations in their design – finally amounting to a new neo-Byzantine style,51 which matured parallel to the Hellenic-Byzantine. Research into, and therefore knowledge, of Byzantine architecture gradually increased, leading to a more consistent approach to Byzantine church building. One interesting, albeit poorly explored, aspect is the link between the Greek Kingdom’s neo-Byzantine style and similar revival movements in Europe – especially in the Russian Empire,52 and the Balkans.53 This exchange of design ideals could have been facilitated by influential architects working in Athens at the time. Theophil Hansen, for
Figure 5.2. The main entrance of the restored Soteira Lykodemou Church, 2018. © Georgios Karatzas.
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instance, followed his elder brother Hans Christian to the Greek capital as early as the 1830s, where they designed and built a number of Neoclassical masterpieces. During his first decade-long stay, young Theophil took part in the Acropolis excavations under Ludwig Ross and designed new buildings, such as the Athens’ Observatory. While studying the ancient originals, he developed a keen interest in the local Byzantine-era surviving structures and in Byzantine architecture in general,54 reflected in his later work in Vienna. There, his compositional ability in blending Byzantine and other Historicist elements produced unique new archetypes, such as the Museum of Military History or the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, that were embraced by architects from east Europe and the Balkans, where similar cultural pursuits had seen the fusion of local Byzantine heritage and national ideals. Notable examples of the neo-Byzantine style in Athens included the Panagia Chrysospiliotissa on Aiolou Street (1863–92) and the Agios Nikolaos Ptōchokomeiou (1876). Distinct features of the new style included the elaborate masonry of the external walls, decorated in bands of mud-brick motifs of either Byzantine or Romanesque origin; the use of Classical or Byzantine-inspired sculpted elements, such as capitals on columns or pillars; and the use of forms and volumes that referred to Hellenic-Byzantine or historical prototypes.55 It is argued that in terms of proportions, form and general composition of volumes, the neo-Byzantine crossed-dome churches of this period were closer to their Byzantine archetypes than temples of the late Ottoman period or the ones built during King Otto’s reign.56 Byzantine-inspired Historicist styles of the final decades of the nineteenth century would represent the national architectural avant-garde. The architectural language that was chosen for the national pavilion at the 1900 Paris Exposition imitated the forms, proportions and details of a typical late-Byzantine crossed-dome church. Building innovations of the pavilion included its lightweight cast-iron structure, thin red-brick walls and the many long windows along the sides and within the dome, giving the interior an air of originality and at the same time attesting to architect Lucien Magne’s design talent.57 The value of Christian heritage was officially recognized as equal to that of ancient heritage as late as 1899, which is when the 1834 law on antiquities was replaced. The new law broadened the scope and general definitions to include artefacts and works of architecture, sculpture, graphic and fine arts58 – from antiquity to the times of medieval Hellenism.59 Similarly to ancient artefacts, restrictions on export licenses for works of Byzantine and Christian art were imposed in 1916.60
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Learned Societies and State Institutions for Medieval and Byzantine Antiquities Since its establishment in 1837, the University of Athens had played a significant role in the development of the national historical discourse and the dissemination of the Megali Idea.61 In its early years, its two History chairs – one in ancient and one in medieval and modern history – provided courses, which were mandatory for all students. Ellēnomnēmōn ē Symmikta Ellēnika (Greek Chronicler or On Various Greek Issues), circulating in Corfu between 1843 and 1853, was the earliest history journal to publish documents and sources concerning Byzantine and modern history. However, not everyone was ready to accept a paradigm shift, as indicated by the Philistōr editors’ hostile attitude towards research on any period other than antiquity.62 After the overthrow of Greece’s first king, Otto, in 1862, the new constitution facilitated the establishment of public associations and societies. Many of the societies that were founded were centred on historical research and the preservation of historical artefacts. The Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece, for instance, was established in 1882 and viewed history as a catalyst in forging the identity of the Greek population.63 Its regular publication, the Deltion tēs Historikēs kai Ethnologikēs Hetairias tēs Ellados (Bulletin of the Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece), was first published in 1883 and focused exclusively on ethnography and Byzantine history. The foundation of the Christian Archaeological Society in 1884 aimed at promoting research into Byzantine and post-Byzantine archaeology and art, collecting and safeguarding testimonies of Christian antiquity and establishing a museum of Christian archaeology. Its journal (published since 1892), as well as monographs and public lectures on Christian monuments, popularized the importance of this heritage, associating it with broader narratives on local and national history. The society was put under the protection of Queen Olga in 1890 and included men of letters, artists and academics among its members. Its early period was marked by the initiatives of its most active founding member Georgios Lampakis, a theologian and archaeologist by training, who had defended his PhD thesis on the Christian antiquities of Attica at the University of Erlangen in 1883. Between 1910 and 1930, historiography was already dominated by research on the Byzantine period.64 New societies included the Byzantinological Society and the Society for Byzantine Studies (established in 1918), which published the journal Byzantis (1909–12) and the yearbook of the Society for Byzantine Studies (1924–2013), respectively. Neos Ellēnomnēmōn (New Greek Chronicler) was published between 1904 and 1927 under the editorship of University of Athens’ professor Spyridon
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Lambros, and focused on the medieval and early modern periods. The Archaeological Service’s own publication, Archaiologikon Deltion (Archaeological Bulletin), printed articles on Christian built-heritage research from its first issue in 1915 onwards. During the state’s territorial expansion in the first decades of the twentieth century, scholarly interest in Byzantine history and heritage flourished. Specialized institutions and museums were founded, focusing on the study, preservation and promotion of Christian artefacts and buildings. Between the Balkan Wars and the military defeat in Asia Minor, the Athens Byzantine and Christian Museum was established in 1914, Ephorates (i.e. subdivisions of the Archaeological Service) of Byzantine Antiquities were founded in Athens and Thessaloniki in 1916, and the Hellenic Eastern Institute was founded in Athens in 1921. In 1912, shortly after the incorporation of Thessaloniki into the Greek state, a General Ephorate of Antiquities was established, aiming at studying and promoting the city’s rich Byzantine heritage. Early Christian and Byzantine heritage became the means by which to Hellenize the city. The urban plan of the new city centre, commissioned by the Greek Government after the Great Fire in 1917,65 proposed the creation of a network of open spaces centred on Christian monuments, where the most important institutional buildings would be built in a neo-Byzantine style. Churches – such as the seventh-century Agios Dimitrios Basilica,66 the fifth-century Panagia Acheiropoiitos or the eleventh-century Panagia ton Chalkeon67 – were carefully restored in their original form. The Byzantine chapter of the city’s history gained in significance, helping the Greek population feel confident that the city belonged to them.68 The amendment of the founding chapter of the Archaeological Society at Athens in 1917 to broaden its activity and research scope to include Byzantine and post-Byzantine antiquities, previously absent, was a milestone in the inclusion of the Byzantine legacy into the national narrative.69 According to the revised charter’s first article, the society’s synergy with the state authorities in ‘identifying, collecting, restoring, offering surveillance, repairing and conducting research’ in ancient monuments was now expanded to include Byzantine and Christian monuments, covering a historical period from the Middle Ages to the war of independence.70 The expansion of the Society’s scope was central to the cause of the preservation and promotion of Christian heritage as it was an already established institution, very active in restoring ancient monuments and diffusing knowledge through popular public lectures and events as well as the publication of respected journals in the field such as the Praktika tēs en Athēnais Archaiologikēs Etaireias (Proceedings of the Archaeological Society at Athens) and the Archaiologikē Ephēmeris (Archaeological Gazette).
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Popularization of the Collective Past: Publications on Monuments and Urban History One of the earliest guides on the monuments of Athens written for a broad Greek audience is archaeologist Panagiotis Kastromenos’ Mnēmeia tōn Athēnōn (Monuments of Athens), published in 1884. The author describes forty-four monuments of the Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods, such as the Parthenon, the Propylaia, the Erechtheion, the Roman Agora and the Stoa of Attalus alongside other lesser-known monuments, which at the time of the book’s publication were either visible or still unexcavated and only known from sources. By focusing exclusively on the ancient remnants of the city – indeed, providing exhaustive information on the morphology of ancient typologies and the differences between the Classical orders – this early guide is itself testimony to the mid-nineteenth-century debate on the nation’s genealogy, as it brands antiquity as the city’s only past. Odēgos tōn Athēnōn (Guide to Athens), published in 1900, was written by archaeologist Alexandros Philadelpheus as an easily comprehensible handbook ‘for all Greeks of all classes and educational levels’.71 The guide gives a detailed account of thirty-two monuments of the Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods with explanatory notes on ancient art and architecture, which again confirmed the primacy of antiquity in the nation’s history. Closer to the narrative of revival, though, the book also gives a brief account of recently completed Neoclassical public buildings – thus linking the nation’s ancient and modern architecture. Examples of the Neoclassical buildings described therein include the Athens Observatory (1846), the University of Athens central building (1864), the Technical University (1878) and the Athens Academy (1885). Unlike the Guide to Athens of 1900, its revision – entitled Mnēmeia Athēnōn (Monuments of Athens), published in 1928 – included examples from all three periods in the narrative of continuity, even though emphasis was placed on emblematic monuments of the ancient period. As stated in the preface, the author’s aim was to disseminate knowledge of monuments and their narrative contents to a broader and more diversified public, through the prism of their national context.72 The paradigm shift was verified by the publication of the first three volumes of the Euretērion tōn Mnēmeiōn tēs Ellados (Directory of Monuments of Greece) by the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs,73 which also reflect the irrevocable acceptance of Christian heritage as the most appropriate to represent medieval Hellenism. The Directory included both well-established and completely unknown Orthodox temples and monasteries, built throughout the Middle Ages up until the establishment of the state in 1830, many of which had already been placed under legal
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protection.74 Its aim was also to promote the idea that these ‘sacred and historic relics of the Nation and the Church’75 should be properly restored and brought forward, as they bore witness to the qualities of the nation’s ‘soul’ during difficult times.76 By identifying Christian Orthodox built heritage as the testimony of the Middle Ages par excellence, medieval and Christian pasts are correlated into a single entity in line with the narrative of continuity. One of the first treatises focusing exclusively on the Christian built heritage of Athens was published in 1940, almost a decade after the first volume of the Ministry’s Directory. In the Ekklēsiai tōn Palaiōn Athēnōn (Churches of Old Athens), architect Kostas Biris examines surviving town plans from the time of the modern city’s first remodelling and localizes seventy-eight demolished churches unknown to the broader public.77 The book contributes greatly to limiting medieval built heritage to Christian church building, as affirmed by Minister Kostas Kotzias who, in the book’s preface, praised the ekklisaki’s (little local church) place in the everyday life of ordinary people during Ottoman times, characterizing it as a ‘proof of faith’ in the resurrection of the nation and religion.78
Interventions in Historically Important Churches and Monasteries in and around Athens The early phase of the restoration of Dafni Monastery presents a good example of the initial awkwardness of the state authorities in dealing with the preservation of medieval heritage.79 At that time, local experience in the field was limited, goals were unclear and methods varied according to the architects and archaeologists involved in the restoration. Interest in the preservation of the derelict and abandoned katholikon of the Dafni Monastery and its unique mosaics was first expressed in 1885, in a report by the newly founded Christian Archaeological Society containing a brief condition survey and sketch repair proposals. Building repairs began in 1888 following a similar report by the Ephorate of Antiquities that set out a strategy, which was re-evaluated after the 1889 earthquake. New proposals, authored by a specialized committee,80 initiated the next round of repairs in 1891, which included the reconstruction of the dome – by reusing original building materials, a common practice in the restoration of ancient monuments – the demolition of a later belfry and the construction of a new buttress on the north elevation.81 These interventions were met with fierce disapproval from the Christian Archaeological Society, whose founding member Georgios Lampakis argued that they ‘deformed and destroyed the ancient form’ of the building and of the dome in
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particular,82 compelling the Minister of Religious Affairs to take action and appoint in 1892 a new committee to advise on the reinstatement of the original Byzantine form of the dome.83 The new committee’s report highlighted the importance of the demolished belfry and insisted on the restoration of the Frankish portico at the temple’s west side. Other proposals included the opening of the dome’s sealed windows, the removal of later wall plaster to reveal the original brick decoration, the reinstatement of the original gables at the south and east side, the demolition of the buttress at the north side, the demolition of later building additions at the narthex and the unsealing of ancient gates – all aiming at the reinstatement of the original historical form.84 The bulk of the restoration works continued until 1917. As on-site experience was accumulating, several new repair proposals followed – recommending new building materials and techniques as well as ancient-monument restoration practices, including the use of iron sections, support frames and tension ties, and even the use of reinforced concrete.85 Restoration of the monastery would resume after the Second World War. In the early 1920s, several royal decrees would register a large number of historical churches and monasteries, defining them as prominent Byzantine monuments. Between 1921 and 1936, out of the 176 new monuments and sites placed under statutory protection in Athens and the surrounding regional units of Boeotia, Argolis, Corinthia and the Saronic islands, as many as 155 involved Byzantine and post-Byzantine Christian temples and monasteries.86 For Athens and its outskirts, a royal decree issued at the peak of the state’s expansion in Asia Minor in 1921,87 concerned the registration of 24 surviving examples88 – such as the late tenth-century Agioi Apostoloi Solaki, the mid-eleventh-century Agioi Theodoroi, the late twelfth-century Panagia Gorgoepikoos, the eleventh-century Kaisariani and the early twelfth-century Agios Ioannis Kynigos. In the same spirit, a royal decree issued in 192389 focused on Athens’ outskirts and the rest of Attica region, registering as many as 91 Christian temples.90 The reconstruction of Agia Ekaterini’s dome is another example, illustrating the particularities of early twentieth-century medieval heritage preservation and the implications of the heated debate on Byzantine churches’ functional rather than heritage value. Agia Ekaterini, a Byzantine church built in the second quarter of the eleventh century in Plaka, one of the old districts of Athens, suffered serious damage during the war of independence. Between 1885 and 1890, the church was repaired and expanded to accommodate the growing number of parishioners despite objections by the newly founded Christian Archaeological Society. After the partial collapse of the dome in 1917, Georgios Sotiriou – curator and later Head of the Byzantine and Christian
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museum of Athens – had to stop the church council’s initiative to rebuild it based on uninformed decisions about its form and image. The dome was not reconstituted until 1927, as the authorities had to press for restoration strategies that brought forward the original Byzantine character of the church – disputing with parishioners who failed to see the building as a monument. Other Christian-heritage restoration projects of the interwar era included the conservation and stabilization of the frescoes of the twelfth-century Agios Georgios Church in Galatsi (1935), the repair of the dome of the Katholikon of Agios Ioannis Theologos Monastery (1937), the stabilization and structural repair of several buildings in the Asteriou Monastery (1937), the stabilization of the refectory of the Kaisariani Monastery and the restoration of the dome of its katholikon (1937). Restoration of Christian monuments would resume on a massive scale after the end of the civil war and the consolidation of right-wing governments.91 Postwar state investment in tourism and public infrastructure led to the strengthening of the role of the Archaeological Service, which was re-established as the Antiquities and Restoration Service and was placed under the Ministry of Presidency of the Government (1960).92 From the 1950s onwards, competent state authorities would organize and supervise a variety of projects ranging from structural repair to stylistic reconstruction aiming at a purified original form. By that time, restoration practices would involve a standard set of on-site tasks such as the removal of plasters to uncover the original masonry, the strengthening of the structure by repointing, the retiling of roofs and domes, the demolition of later additions and the unsealing of original openings. After restoration, landscaping would usually follow in an attempt to maximize a monument’s appeal.93 This toolbox of operations resulted in the regulation of heritage imagery – thus providing a staged, visual representation of the nationalized Byzantine era. The list of the monuments at which similar restoration schemes took place include the Katholikon of the Petraki Monastery (1960), the Church of Agioi Asomatoi (1959–60) and Agia Dynami (1961, 1965) in the heart of Athens, Kaisariani Monastery (1952, 1958–60), Asteriou Monastery (1959) and the Monastery of Agios Ioannis Theologos (1960, 1963–4) in the city’s outskirts. These nowadays form part of a network of medieval monuments, which constitutes an integral part of the urban heritage landscape.
Conclusions In the early era of the Greek Kingdom, medieval heritage was disregarded and was allowed to deteriorate because of the cultural turn to antiquity, the
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diffusion of the narrative of revival and the preference for Neoclassicism. This cultural framework, which downgraded the impact of Christian orthodoxy and led to policies such as the declaration of independence of the Greek Church from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1833, was changed only when irredentist policies began to be expressed and the gains of a gradual reinstatement of religion in the cultural sphere became apparent. In church building, the invention of the Hellenic-Byzantine style and later of the neo-Byzantine style would be envisioned by architects trained in Classically orientated schools of the West, starting as an intellectual exercise and eventually representing the national architectural avant-garde. In the Ottoman territories, Christian orthodoxy was still playing an important unifying cultural role among Greek speakers and its built legacy still kept its prestige. As irredentism gradually became the official strategy and the state was preparing itself to incorporate multicultural cities and regions, the study of the lost link between antiquity and the present in all its manifestations became an immediate need. Medieval architectural heritage, especially examples relating to Orthodox Christianity, became an important part of the Greek identity. Paparrigopoulos’ History of the Greek Nation laid out the theoretical framework of the narrative of continuity and set a point of departure for the inclusion of Byzantine monuments into the collective memory and the historical landscape. The new national awareness equally recognized the importance of the Orthodox identity and the claim to antiquity – providing a common ground and a sense of belonging to the same national community, which would include both existing and future subjects of the Kingdom. Medieval churches and monasteries came to represent the medieval phase of the ancient nation, and were thoroughly studied and eventually restored to their imagined original form. The process that began with the recognition of the sociopolitical significance of Christian heritage and ended with the eventual restoration of individual monuments on a massive scale transcended the whole nineteenth century, eventually concluding after the Second World War. It included several intermediate processes, such as the foundation of specialized institutions and organizations for the establishment of a body of knowledge on Christian heritage and its preservation, the dissemination of knowledge of the Christian monuments’ cultural significance among the broader public and the articulation of a statutory framework for the protection of surviving examples, along with the inclusion of many of them in heritage lists. The incorporation of surviving Christian monuments into the established vision of the historical landscape of Athens, a case study in cultural homogenization processes related to nation building, attests to the close interrelation between the promotion of specific heritage building typologies and imagery, and the legitimation of political and cultural hegemony in the present.
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Georgios Karatzas is a practising architect, registered in Greece and the United Kingdom. He studied at the University of Dundee and the Glasgow School of Art, and completed postgraduate programmes in architectural conservation and in town and regional planning. His PhD thesis at the Technical University of Athens investigated aspects of built-heritage management in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Greece. He has collaborated with architectural practices in Athens and Edinburgh. Since 2013, he has been project architect on various heritage-building restoration schemes at the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports. NOTES 1. For instance, See Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism; Gellner, Nations and Nationalism; Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780; Kitromilidis, ‘Imagined Communities’. 2. For instance, see Harvey, History of Heritage; Hobsbawm and Ranger, Invention of Tradition; Rampley, ‘Contested Histories’. 3. Graham, Ashworth and Tunbridge, Geography of Heritage, 12. 4. For ethnoscape, see Smith, Nationalism and Modernism, 63. 5. Anderson, Imagined communities, 116. 6. See Roudometof, ‘From Rum Millet to Greek Nation’. 7. For imagined communities, see Anderson, Imagined communities. 8. See Clogg, Concise History of Greece. 9. Tziovas, ‘Reconfiguring the past’, 288; Politis, ‘Apo tous Rōmaious stous archaious’, 14; Politis, ‘From Roman emperors to Greek ancestors’, 4. 10. In a sense, the Neohellenic Enlightenment was the transfusion of ideals and values of the European Enlightenment and the French Revolution into areas of the Ottoman Empire in which Christian Orthodox Greek speakers dominated in commerce and education. The term was introduced in Greek historiography by philologist Konstantinos Dimaras after the Second World War. (See Dimaras, Istoria logotechnias). 11. Katartzis, Dokimia, 51, 18. 12. Skopetea, Protypo Vasileio, 36, 209–11. 13. Mackridge, ‘The return of the Muses’. 14. Tziovas, ‘Reconfiguring the past’, 288; Clogg, ‘Sense of the past’, 10. 15. For regimes of truth, see Foucault, Power/ Knowledge. 16. Liakos, ‘Pros episkeuēn olomeleias kai enotētos’, 177. 17. Poulimenos, ‘Elladikē naodomia’, 22; Dimaras, ‘Ideologikē hypodomē’, 458. 18. Poulimenos, ‘Elladikē naodomia’, 52. For the role of Neoclassicism in modern Greek architecture, see Kautantzoglou, Logos ekfōnētheis, 20–1. 19. Liakos, ‘Pros episkeuēn olomeleias kai enotētos’, 177. 20. Ibid.; Zampelios, Asmata dēmotika tēs Ellados, 16. 21. Liakos, ‘Pros episkeuēn olomeleias kai enotētos’, 180. 22. In his Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea, published in 1830, Fallmerayer argued that between the sixth and tenth centuries mainland Greece was Slavicized, therefore
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23.
24. 25. 26.
27.
28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.
39.
losing its (ancient) Greek link permanently. See Aroni-Tsichli, Istorikes scholes kai methodoi; Veloudis, Gennēsē ellēnikou istorismou. Paparrigopoulos based his work on writings of several of his contemporary historians, especially Spyridon Zampelios’ Folk songs of Greece (Zampelios, Asmata dēmotika tēs Ellados). However, Paparrigopoulos’ work was received warmly due to the author’s compositional and writing abilities (Tomadakis, Drasis kai theōria). Liakos, ‘Pros episkeuēn olomeleias kai enotētos’, 184. Skopetea, ‘O “Konstantinos Paparrēgopoulos” tou K. Th. Dēmara’. The inclusion of medieval times into the historical continuum of the nation is linked to the legitimization of irredentist claims. For instance, See Kitromilidis, Ideologika reumata; Clogg, ‘Byzantine legacy and Megali Idea’; Skopetea, Protypo Vasileio; Xifaras, ‘Akatalytē Synecheia’; Politis, Romantika chronia; Kitromilidis, ‘Intellectual content’. The term ‘Hellenic-Byzantine style’ (transliterated as Hellenobyzantinos rythmos) was first mentioned in the brief of the architectural competition launched in 1846 for the reconfiguration of the Cathedral’s architectural style (Poulimenos, ‘Elladikē naodomia’, 62; Philippides, Neoellēnikē Architectonikē, 94). It is argued that the competition brief in effect prompted participants to experiment by blending Classical and Byzantine architectural vocabularies (Poulimenos, Perigramma Athēnaikēs naodomias, 119–20). Moskoff, Ethnikē kai koinōnikē syneidēsē, 219–27. Biris, Ai Athēnai, 138. Philippides, Neoellēnikē Architectonikē, 95. Royal Decree 10/22‐05‐1834, Government Gazette Issue (GGI) no.22 (16/06/1834). Maurer, Das griechische Volk, 233–34; Petrakos, ‘Ellēnikē archaiologia’, 77; Mannoni, ‘Expanding the canon’. Royal Decree 10/22‐05‐1834, Article 110. Ibid., Article 111. Travlos, Poleodomikē exelixis tōn Athēnōn, 244. Sotiriou, ‘Mesaiōnika Mnēmeia Attikēs’, 60; Papageorgiou-Venetas, Edouardos Saoumpert, 77. Chlepa, ‘Antiprosōpeutikes epemvaseis’, 59–63. Architect Konstantinos Biris argued that Classicist archaeologists’ interest in ancient ruins and statistical archaeology led to the destruction of Athenian historic churches. For archaeologists, the removal of later historical strata or even later building additions was justified in order to reveal ancient architectural remnants in their original form (Biris, Ai ekklēsiai tōn Palaiōn Athēnōn, 18–19). For Elli Skopetea, the transfer of the capital city to Athens not only marked the beginnings of spectacular archaeological revelations but also initiated a mass demolition of medieval and early modern monuments that had remained intact for centuries (Skopetea, Protypo Vasileio, 199). For the close link between Greek archaeology and the articulation of the Greek national imaginary, see Hamilakis, The Nation and its Ruins. The scale of demolition of medieval buildings during the implementation of the first town plans was such that it led to a royal decree that strictly forbade any demolition without any prior royal consent. As stated, the reason for the protection of medieval ruins, including those built over ancient Greek or Roman antiquities, was
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40.
41. 42. 43.
44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.
58. 59. 60.
that they ‘increase the curiosities of the capital city’ (Royal Decree 7/19‐12‐1837). In practice, this decree would never be implemented. In 1832, archaeologist L. Ross recorded 130 historical churches and monasteries; in 1839, archaeologist and art historian A.N. Didron estimated the surviving recognizable examples at 88 (Xygopoulos, ‘Mesaiōnika Mnēmeia Athēnōn’, 60); while in 1868, A. Mommsen described in his treatise 132 temples (Mommsen, Athenae christianae). During the twentieth century, the first two volumes of the Directory of the Monuments of Greece (Sotiriou, ‘Mesaiōnika Mnēmeia Attikēs’; Xygopoulos, ‘Mesaiōnika Mnēmeia Athēnōn’) registered 94 historical churches in varying conditions, whereas in 1940 architect K. Biris wrote of 140 temples of which 78 had already been demolished. For the demolished churches, See Biris, Ai ekklēsiai tōn Palaiōn Athēnōn, 21–44. Travlos, Poleodomikē exelixis tōn Athēnōn, 244. The 1834 circular called, among other things, for a decrease in the existing number of parishes and forbade the construction of new churches in small parishes (Chlepa, ‘Antiprosōpeutikes epemvaseis’, 59). The scale of building interventions was so great that, for example, when Dimitrios Kampouroglou wrote about Agios Nikolaos Rangavas in 1922, he stated it had been completely renewed, making it difficult to find any traces of its Byzantine origins (Kampouroglou, Ai palaiai Athēnai, 170). Chlepa, ‘Antiprosōpeutikes epemvaseis’, 61–63. Stefanos Koumanoudis was an archaeologist and Classical philologist. Between 1859 and 1894, he was the General Secretary of the Archaeological Society at Athens. Koumanoudis, ‘Archaiologika’, 1–2. Soteira Lykodemou church is included in the second volume of the Directory of the Monuments of Greece (Xygopoulos, ‘Mesaiōnika Mnēmeia Athēnōn’, 80–83). Biris, Ai Athēnai, 142–43. Lampakis, ‘Ai episkeuai’, 63. Bouras, ‘The Soteira Lykodemou’, 11. For the close ties between the neo-Byzantine style and Greek irredentism, see Biris, Ai Athēnai, 142. See, for instance, Brumfield, History; Hamilton, Art and Architecture. For instance, for similar neo-Byzantine styles in Serbia and Croatia, see Kadijević, Byzantine architecture and Damjanović, Byzantine Revival, respectively. Panetsos and Cassimatis, ‘Theophil Hansen’, 37. Poulimenos, ‘Elladikē naodomia’, 87. Ibid, 86. See Mavrikou, O naos tou Sōtēros, 93. The Greek Pavilion was placed next to the pavilion of the Kingdom of Serbia, which was built in a similar Serbo-Byzantine style that was inspired by the Serbian Byzantine heritage (Kadijević, Byzantine architecture, 39). After the Exposition, the pavilion was shipped to Athens and was converted into a church commemorating the assassination attempt against King George and Princess Maria in 1898 at the place where it was erected. Law 2646, GGI no.158 (27/07/1899), Article 3. Ibid., Article 1. Royal Decree 9-03-1916, GGI no. 59 (26/03/1916).
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61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.
70. 71. 72.
73.
74. 75. 76. 77.
78. 79.
Karamanolakis, ‘Greece’, 108. Ibid. Philistor was a historical journal published in Athens between 1861 and 1864. Karamanolakis, ‘Greece’, 108. Ibid, 109. The city plan was authored by a specialist committee headed by the architect and planner Ernest Hébrard. For a thorough description of the Agios Dimitrios basilica and the immediate repair works after the Great Fire of 1917, see Archaiologikon Deltion-Supplement 1918, (4), 1–47. For the restoration of Panagia Acheiropoiitos and Panagia ton Chalkeon, see Chlepa, Ideologia kai praktikē, 198–206 and 207–14, respectively. Mazower, Salonica, 547. The Archaeological Society at Athens was the spearhead in the archaeological exploration and identification of the country’s ancient and medieval past, from its foundation in 1837 until the full development of the state’s Archaeological Service in the 1950s. Its leading role in archaeological affairs is indicated by its General Secretary’s speech during the 1925 yearly assembly, which argued that 90% of Athens’ ancient monuments had been excavated or restored by the Society [Praktika tēs en Athēnais Archaiologikēs Etaireias 1925–1926, 18]. Praktika tēs en Athēnais Archaiologikēs Etaireias 1917, 21. Philadelpheus, Odēgos tōn Athēnōn, preface. The author states in the preface that the Guide was not written for the specialized few but for ‘the many’, and that his text was not limited to the mere description and interpretation of the monuments but tried to vivify and enliven ‘the sacred zest and divine fire that should constantly burn in the bosom of the Greek readership for these timeless and imperishable testimonies of the glorious past of our race’ (Philadelpheus, Mnēmeia Athēnōn, preface). The first three volumes – volume 1 published in 1927 (Sotiriou, ‘Mesaiōnika Mnēmeia Attikēs’), volume 2 in 1929 (Xygopoulos, ‘Mesaiōnika Mnēmeia Athēnōn’) and volume 3 in 1933 (Orlandos, ‘Mesaiōnika Mnēmeia pediados kai klityōn’) – are concerned with Byzantine and Ottoman monuments in and around Athens. See Royal Decree 19‐4‐1921 and Royal Decree 9‐7‐1923 described in the next section ‘Interventions in Historically Important Churches and Monasteries in and around Athens’. Sotiriou, ‘Mesaiōnika Mnēmeia Attikēs’, preface. Ibid. These early town plans include Kleanthis-Shaubert’s (1832), W. von Weiler’s (1834), Athens’ lithograph of 1820 (1837), F. Aldenhoven’s maps (1837), Kohlmann’s (1843), Kallergis’, Stauffert’s (1836) and the proposals of the Officers’ and Architects’ Committee (1846). Biris, Ai ekklēsiai tōn Palaiōn Athēnōn, preface. Built along the ancient Sacred Way to Eleusis, the original sixth-century monastery was erected on the site of the Sanctuary of Apollo Daphnaios. In its current form, the katholikon dates from the eleventh century. Since 1990, the monastery has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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80. The committee included the renowned architect E. Ziller, who had already headed the reconstruction of the derelict eleventh-century Palaia Episkopi at Tegea between 1884 and 1888. See, Chlepa, Ideologia kai praktikē, 69–76. 81. Ibid, 83–85. 82. Describing the reconstructed dome as an ‘abomination’ (Lampakis, Hē monē Dafniou, 3), he argued that the geometry of the new dome was not identical to the one demolished (Lampakis, ‘Ai episkeuai’, 63). 83. Lampakis, Hē monē Dafniou, 4. 84. Chlepa, Ideologia kai praktikē, 91. 85. After the 1914 earthquake, the head of the Architectural Office of the ministry proposed the use of reinforced concrete for strengthening the upper part of the dome’s drum (Ibid, 99). 86. Karatzas, ‘Istoria kai Chōros’, 94–100, 117. 87. Royal Decree 19‐4‐1921, GGI no.68 (26/04/1921). 88. Karatzas, ‘Istoria kai Chōros’, 406. 89. Royal Decree 9‐7‐1923, GGI no.194 (17/07/1923). 90. Karatzas, ‘Istoria kai Chōros’, 406. 91. Ibid., 139, 175. 92. Royal Decree 634 (14/09/1960), GGI no. 143 (17/09/1960). 93. Karatzas, ‘Istoria kai Chōros’, 139–74.
Bibliography Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (cited after the Greek edition: transl. Pothiti Chantzaroula. Athens: Nefelē, 1997). Armstrong, John, Nations Before Nationalism. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Aroni-Tsichli, Kaiti. Istorikes scholes kai methodoi: eisagōgē stēn eurōpaikē istoriographia [Historical Schools and Methods: Introduction in European Historiography]. Athens: Papazēsē, 2008. Biris, Kostas. Ai ekklēsiai tōn Palaiōn Athēnōn [Churches of Old Athens]. Athens: Athens Municipality, 1940. . Ai Athēnai apo tou 19ou eis ton 20ou aiōna [Athens from the Nineteenth until the Twentieth Century]. Athens, 1966. Bouras, Charalampos. ‘The Soteira Lykodemou at Athens. Architecture’. Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society 2004 (25), 11–24. Brumfield, William Craft. A History of Russian Architecture. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Chlepa, Eleni Anna. ‘Ta vyzantina mnēmeia stēn Ellada (1833–1939): Antiprosōpeutikes epemvaseis kai apokatastaseis’ [Byzantine Monuments in Greece (1833–1939): Representative Interventions and Restorations]. PhD dissertation, National Technical University of Athens, 2008. . Ta vyzantina mnēmeia stēn Neoterē Ellada: Ideologia kai praktikē tōn apokatastaseōn 1833–1939 [Byzantine Monuments in Modern Greece: Ideology and Restoration Practices 1833–1939]. Athens: Kapon, 2011.
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Clogg, Richard. ‘The Byzantine Legacy and the Megali Idea’, in Lowell Clucas (ed.), The Byzantine Legacy in Eastern Europe: East European Monographs. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, 253–81. . ‘Sense of the Past in Pre-Independence Greece’, in Richard Clogg (ed.), Anatolica: Studies in the Greek East in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996, 7–30. . A Concise History of Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Damjanović, Dragan. ‘Byzantine Revival as National Style in Croatian Architecture 1910–1945’. Urban Design International 2019. doi.org/10.1057/s41289-019-00098-2 (accessed 26 August 2021). Dimaras, Konstantinos. Istoria tēs neoellēnikēs logotechnias [History of Neohellenic Literature]. Athens: Ikaros, 1948. . ‘Hē ideologikē hypodomē tou neou Ellēnikou Kratous’ [The Ideological Infrastructure of the Modern Greek State], in Istoria tou Ellēnikou Ethnous, tomos 13 [History of the Greek Nation, Volume 13]. Athens: Ekdotiki Athinon, 2000, 458. Fallmerayer, Jakob Philipp. Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters. Stuttgart and Tubingen: Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1830. Foucault, Michel. Power/ Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983. Graham, Brian, Gregory John Ashworth and John Tunbridge. A Geography of Heritage: Power, Culture & Economy. London: Arnold, 2000. Hamilakis, Yannis. The Nation and its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Hamilton, George Heard. The Art and Architecture of Russia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992. Harvey, David Charles. ‘A History of Heritage’, in Brian Graham and Peter Howard (eds), Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, 28–56. Hobsbawm, Eric. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth and Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger (eds). The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Kadijević, Aleksandar. Byzantine Architecture as Inspiration for Serbian New Age Architects. Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts – Serbian Committee for Byzantine Studies, 2016. Kampouroglou, Dimitrios. Ai palaiai Athēnai [The Old Athens]. Athens: Basileiou, 1922. Karamanolakis, Vaggelis. ‘Greece’, in Ilaria Porciani and Lutz Raphael (eds), Atlas of European Historiography, The Making of a Profession 1800–2005. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 108–10. Karatzas, Georgios. ‘Istoria kai Chōros. O rolos tēs anadeixēs kai tēs diacheirisēs istorikōn mnēmeiōn kai topothesiōn stē sygkrotēsē kai anaparastasē tou ethnikou parelthontos. Diadosē ideologēmatōn, anaskafikē ereuna, syntērēsē kai apokatastasē mnēmeiōn ton 20o aiōna’ [History and Heritage Space: The Role of the Promotion and Management of Heritage Monuments and Sites in the Articulation and Representation of the National Past: Dissemination of Narratives, Archaeological Research, Conservation and Restoration of Monuments in the
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Twentieth Century]. PhD dissertation, National Technical University of Athens, 2015. Kastromenos, Panagiotis. Ta mnēmeia tōn Athēnōn, Istorikē kai archaiologikē autōn perigrafē kata tas neas pēgas kai epigrafas [Monuments of Athens: An Historical and Archaeological Description in Accordance with New Sources and Inscriptions]. Athens: New Ideas, 1884. Katartzis, Dimitrios. Dokimia [Essays]. Athens: Estia, 1974. Kautantzoglou, Lysandros. Logos ekfōnētheis kata tēn epeteion teletēn tou vasilikou Polytechneiou [Speech at the Yearly Ceremony of the Royal Technical University]. Athens, 1855. Kitromilidis, Paschalis. ‘Ideologika reumata kai politika aitēmata’ [Ideological Trends and Political Claims], in Dimitrios Tsaousis (ed.), Opseis tēs ellēnikēs koinōnias tou 19ou aiōna [Aspects of Nineteenth-Century Greek Society]. Athens: Estia, 1984, 23–38. . ‘“Imagined Communities” and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans’. European History Quarterly 1989 (19), 149–94. . ‘On the Intellectual Content of Greek Nationalism. Paparrigopoulos, Byzantium and the Great Idea’, in David Ricks and Paul Magdalino (eds), Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998, 25–33. Koumanoudis, Stefanos. ‘Archaiologika’ [On Archaeology]. Paligenesia 1875, 9 October. Lampakis, Georgios. ‘Ai episkeuai tou Dafniou’ [The Repairs at Dafni]. Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society 1894 (2), 63–64. . Hē monē Dafniou meta tas episkeuas [Dafni Monastery After the Repairs]. Athens, 1899. Liakos, Antonis. ‘Pros episkeuēn olomeleias kai enotētos: hē domēsē tou ethnikou chronou’ [Toward the Repair of Integrity and Unity: The Construction of National Time], in Triantafyllos Sklavenitis (ed.), Epistēmonikē synantēsē stē mnēmē tou K. Th. Dēmara [Scientific meeting in memory of Κ. Th. Dimaras]. Athens: Centre for Neohellenic Research – NHRF, 1994, M171‒199. Mackridge, Peter. ‘The Return of the Muses: Some Aspects of Revivalism in Greek Literature, 1760–1840’. Kάμπος: Cambridge Papers in Modern Greek 1994, 2, 47–71. Mannoni, Chiara. ‘Expanding the Canon of Art: Developing New Definitions in Legislation for Heritage Protection, Administration and Trading in NineteenthCentury Rome and Athens’. PhD dissertation, University of Auckland, 2017. Maurer, Georg Ludwig von. Das griechische Volk in öffentlicher, kirchlicher und privatrechtlicher Beziehung vor und nach dem Freiheitskampfe [The Greek People in Public, Ecclesiastical and Private Law Relationships before and after the Freedom Struggle]. Heidelberg: J.C.B. Mohr, 1835. Mavrikou, Stamatia. O naos tou Sōtēros. 93 chronia istorias. Tama, periptero, ekklēsia [The Temple of the Saviour. 93 Years of History. Ex-Voto, Pavilion, Church]. Athens: Eptalofos, 1991. Mazower, Mark. Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430–1950 (cited after the Greek edition: Athens: Alexandria publications, 2006). Mommsen, August. Athenae christianae. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1868. Moskoff, Kostis. H ethnikē kai koinōnikē syneidēsē stēn Ellada, 1830–1909 [National and Social conscience in Greece, 1830–1909]. Thessaloniki, 1972.
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Orlandos, Anastasios. ‘Mesaiōnika Mnēmeia tēs pediados tōn Athēnōn kai tōn klityōn Hymēttou-Pentelikou-Parnēthos kai Aigaleō’ [Medieval Monuments of the Athens Valley and of the Slopes of Hymettus-Pendeliko-Parnitha and Egaleo], in Konstantinos Kourouniotis and Georgios Sotiriou (eds), Euretērion tōn Mnēmeiōn tēs Ellados, Teuchos 3 [Directory of Monuments of Greece, Volume 3]. Athens: Archaeological division of the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, 1933. Panetsos, Georgios and Marilena Cassimatis. ‘The “Hellenische Renaissance” of Theophil Hansen: An Invented Tradition in 19th Century Architecture’, in ‘Hellenische Renaissance’, The Architecture of Theophil Hansen (1813–1891), exhibition catalogue. Athens: B. & M. Theocharakis Foundation for the Fine Arts and Music, 2014. Papageorgiou-Venetas, Alexander. Edouardos Saoumpert 1804–1860: Syllogē tekmēriōn gia ton schediasmo tēs Athēnas kai tou Peiraia [Eduard Schaubert 1804–1860: Collection of Documents on the Design of Athens and Piraeus]. Athens: Odysseas, 1999. Paparrigopoulos, Konstantinos. Istoria tou ellēnikou ethnous apo tōn arxaiotatōn chronōn mechri tōn neōterōn [History of the Greek Nation from Ancient to Modern Times]. Athens: N. Passaris, 1865–74. Petrakos, Basileios. ‘Hē Ellēnikē archaiologia kata ta chronia tou Kyriakou S. Pittakē’ [Greek Archaeology During the Times of Kyriakos S. Pittakis]. O Mentor 1998 (47), 74–113. Philadelpheus, Alexandros. Odēgos tōn Athēnōn [Guide to Athens]. Athens: M.I. Saliveros, 1900. . Mnēmeia Athēnōn [Monuments of Athens]. Athens: P.D. Sakellarios, 1928. Philippides, Dimitris. Neoellēnikē Architectonikē [Neohellenic Architecture]. Athens: Melissa, 1984. Politis, Alexis. Romantika chronia. Ideologies kai Nootropies stēn Ellada tou 1830–1880 [Romantic Years: Ideologies and Notions in Greece of 1830–1880]. Athens: EMNEMnēmōn, 1993. . ‘Apo tous Rōmaious autokratores stous endoxous archaious progonous’ [From Roman Emperors to the Glorious Ancient Ancestors]. O Politis 1997 (32), 12–20. . ‘From Christian Roman Emperors to the Glorious Greek Ancestors’, in David Ricks and Paul Magdalino (eds), Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998, 1–14. Poulimenos, Grigoris. ‘Perigramma tēs Athēnaikēs naodomias tēn periodo tou neoklasikismou, 19os aiōnas’ [Outline of the Athenian Church Building During the Period of Neoclassicism, Nineteenth Century], in Athēnaikos Klasikismos [Athenian Classicism]. Athens: Municipality of Athens Cultural Centre, 1996, 112–25. . ‘Hē Elladikē naodomia stēn periodo tou neoklassikismou, 1830–1912’ [The Construction of Churches in Greece During the Period of Neoclassicism, 1830– 1912]. PhD dissertation, National Technical University of Athens, 1997. Rampley, Matthew. ‘Contested Histories: Heritage and/as the Construction of the Past: An Introduction’, in idem (ed.), Heritage, Ideology, and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe. Contested Pasts, Contested Presents. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012, 1–20.
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Roudometof, Victor. ‘From Rum Millet to Greek Nation: Enlightenment, Secularization, and National Identity in Ottoman Balkan Society, 1453–1821’. Journal of Modern Greek Studies 1998 (16), 11–48. Skopetea, Elli. ‘O “Konstantinos Paparrēgopoulos” tou K. Th. Dēmara kai merikes skepseis peri ethnikēs istoriografias’ [K. Th. Dimaras’ “Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos” and Some Thoughts on National Historiography]. Sychrona Themata 1988 (35–37), 286–94. . To ‘protypo Vasileio’ kai hē Megalē Idea. Opseis tou ethnikou provlēmatos stēn Ellada (1830–1880) [The Ideal Kingdom and the Megali Idea: Aspects of the National Question in Greece (1830–1880)]. Athens: Polytropo, 1988. Smith, Anthony. Nationalism and Modernism. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998. Sotiriou, Georgios. ‘Mesaiōnika Mnēmeia Attikēs’ [Medieval Monuments of Attica], in Konstantinos Kourouniotis and Georgios Sotiriou (eds), Euretērion tōn Mnēmeiōn tēs Ellados, Teuchos 1 [Directory of Monuments of Greece, Volume 1]. Athens: Archaeological division of the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, 1927. Tomadakis, Nikolaos. Drasis kai theōria en tē ellēnikē istoriografia [Action and Theory in Greek Historiography]. Athens: Myrtidou, 1962. Travlos, John. Poleodomikē exelixis tōn Athēnōn: Apo tōn proistorikōn chronōn mechri tōn archon tou 19ou aiōnos [Urban Development of Athens: From Prehistoric Times to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century]. Athens: Konstantinidis and Mihalas, 1960. Tziovas, Dimitris. ‘Reconfiguring the Past: Antiquity and Greekness’, in Dimitris Damaskos and Dimitris Plantzos (eds), A Singular Antiquity: Archaeology and Hellenic Identity in Twentieth-Century Greece. Athens: Benaki Museum 3rd Supplement edition, 2008, 287–98. Veloudis, Georgios. O Jacob Phillip Fallmerayer kai ē gennēsē tou ellēnikou istorismou [ Jacob Phillip Fallmerayer and the Birth of Greek Historism]. Athens: EMNEMnēmōn, 1982. Xifaras, Dimitris. ‘Hē akatalytē synecheia tou ellēnismou. Orismenes epikaires skepseis gia tēn ethnikē istoria’ [The Enduring Continuity of Hellenism. Some Current Thoughts on National History]. Theseis 1993 (42), 57–79. Xygopoulos, Andreas. ‘Mesaiōnika Mnēmeia Athēnōn: ta Vyzantina kai Tourkika mnēmeia tōn Athēnōn’ [Medieval Monuments of Athens: Byzantine and Turkish Monuments of Athens], in Konstantinos Kourouniotis and Georgios Sotiriou (eds), Euretērion tōn Mnēmeiōn tēs Ellados, Teuchos 2 [Directory of Monuments of Greece, Volume 2]. Athens: Archaeological division of the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, 1929. Zampelios, Spyridon. Asmata dēmotika tēs Ellados: Ekdothenta meta meletēs istorikēs peri Mesaiōnikou Ellēnismou [Folk Songs of Greece: Published with a Historical Study on Medieval Hellenism]. Corfu: Ermis printing, 1852.
PART II
8 STYLES FOR THE NATION AND STATE
8 CHAPTER 6 Creating a Monument to Kaiser Wilhelm I in Berlin Historicist Architecture and Tensions between National and Dynastic Identities Douglas Klahr
Introduction During the German Empire’s 47-year history (1871–1918), although a variety of Historicist building styles were used within the Empire’s major cities, neo-Renaissance and neo-Baroque examples dominated when entities of high national or regional importance – such as courts of law, railway stations and post-office headquarters – required appropriate architectural representation. Moreover, a shift from neo-Renaissance to neo-Baroque occurred as the reign of Wilhelm I (1871–88) gave way to that of Wilhelm II (1888–1918). One high-profile example of the former was the Kaiserpalast or Imperial Palace in Strassburg designed by Hermann Eggert and constructed 1884–89 (today the Palais du Rhin in Strasbourg). Another notable example of neo-Renaissance architecture utilized to symbolize the nation was the Reichstag (1884–94) in Berlin, designed by Paul Wallot. Two prominent examples of the shift to neo-Baroque were the Justizpalast or Palace of Justice (1891–97) in Munich, designed by Frederick von Thiersch, and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Nationaldenkmal or Emperor Wilhelm I National Monument (1894–97) in Berlin, designed by Gustav Halmhuber and the sculptor Reinhold Begas. This chapter examines the lattermost of this group, the monument that Wilhelm II constructed to honour his grandfather, Wilhelm I. It argues that the monument’s location and design were logical answers to a vexing issue that remained unresolved during the
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Empire: how to represent the ‘national’ identity of a recently unified nation that consisted of four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, one imperial territory and three city-states. What architectural heritage could be drawn upon to do so, and how would it express national versus dynastic identity? This matter of identity was particularly pressing in Berlin, as it sought to reconcile its new identity as capital of the German Empire with its two historical roles as the seat of Hohenzollern dynastic power since the mid1400s and the capital of Prussia since 1701. Berlin’s existing major buildings of state at the time of German unification in 1871 were either Baroque or in the austere nineteenth-century Neoclassicism of architects Karl Friedrich Schinkel and August Stüler. When it became the national capital, new building types and aggrandized versions of existing ones were needed to accommodate the increased sizes of government, commerce, transportation, entertainment and hospitality venues that were necessary to service an imperial capital. Regarding this situation, Uta Lehnert noted: In competition with other old European metropolises, one sought a new national building style that did not draw upon foreign models. Further development of style coined by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and his school of Berlin architecture was not considered. Prussian Classicism was not representative enough. Berlin’s new function as an imperial city demanded a new, i.e., imperial, monumental style. The forms of the Italian High Renaissance were best suited for this.1
During the years following unification, highly ornamented neo-Renaissance buildings therefore emerged as the model – departing from the two building styles that had previously characterized the city. As with most such changes in architectural preference, this shift did not occur precisely upon the unification of the nation; it had commenced several years earlier – especially as increased railway traffic required the replacement of older termini with larger ones, particularly in Berlin. The Lehrter Bahnhof (Lehrte Train Station) was a good example of this: construction of the ‘new’ neo-Renaissance terminus – designed by Alfred Lent, Berthold Scholz and Gottlieb Henri Lapierre – began in 1868 and was completed in 1871. Construction of a larger Anhalter Bahnhof (Anhalt Train Station) terminus to replace an earlier version started in 1876 and was completed in 1880. Designed by Franz Schwechten, its train shed was the largest in the world, surpassing London’s St. Pancras Station in both width and height and befitting its status as the major connection point between north Germany, south Germany, Italy and Austria. Two further examples of neo-Renaissance buildings in Berlin were the Kaiserhof Hotel of 1870–75, designed by Hermann von der Hude and Julius Hennicke, and the Kaisergalerie of 1870–73 by Walter Kyllmann and Adolf Heyden. The
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Kaiserhof was Berlin’s first hotel of an international stature that could rank with the finest hotels in London and Paris, and the Kaisergalerie was designed to compete with the grandest retail arcades in the French capital. The shift from neo-Renaissance to neo-Baroque for major buildings began in the mid-1880s, while Kaiser Wilhelm I still ruled. In Berlin, perhaps the earliest major appearance of neo-Baroque architecture during the latter years of Wilhelm I’s reign occurred as he made the fateful decision to demolish a portion of an eastern wing of the Berliner Schloss (royal palace) that fronted the Spree River. This was so that a bridge crossing the Spree connecting to a new street on the eastern bank, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse, could be constructed. Crowning the entrance to this highly honorific street were two so-called Kopfbauten: matching buildings on both sides of the street that contained stores on the street level and apartments above. Designed by Richard Cremer and Wilhelm Wolffenstein, they featured elaborate neo-Baroque domes that crowned their corners, providing a fittingly opulent counterpoint to the Schloss across the street. They also served as models for numerous later apartment buildings along elegant boulevards in the Charlottenburg district, which featured similar buildings ornamented with neo-Baroque domes. The change in preference for major public buildings was also reflected across the nation. The 1883–88 main station in Frankfurt am Main, designed by Hermann Eggert, became the largest train station in Europe for a short period of time and featured a neo-Renaissance façade whose ornamentation was neo-Baroque in its motifs and excessiveness. Crowning the central vault was a figure of Atlas holding up the world, and similar expressions of lavishness adorned some of the interior spaces. The firm of Schellen, Unger and Viereck was responsible for two train stations that combined neo-Renaissance and neo-Baroque aspects: the 1883–84 terminus in Bonn and the 1885–88 example in Trier, which Manfred Berger described as neo-Renaissance in form but neo-Baroque in its expression – especially regarding its ‘overproportioned main entrance opening’.2 Theatres within the German Empire were another important building type because of the civic pride that was invested in them. Similar to those of another recently unified nation, Italy, German cities vied with one another regarding their operatic and theatrical institutions – far more so than in nations such as France and England, whose capital cities dominated cultural matters to a degree not seen in Germany and Italy. Perhaps the most noteworthy neo-Renaissance theatre example in Germany was Frankfurt am Main’s Opernhaus (today Alte Oper), designed by Richard Lucae and constructed in 1875–80. Augsburg’s Stadttheater (City Theatre, today Großes Haus) of 1876–77 by Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer, although smaller than the building in Frankfurt, was similar in its use of
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neo-Renaissance massing and ornamentation. Even though Gottfried Semper’s Opernhaus in Dresden of 1870–78 is sometimes assigned the stylistic label of ‘Dresden Baroque’, it was firmly situated within the neo-Renaissance mode. In Berlin, the Theater des Westens (Theatre of the West) by Bernhard Sehring of 1895–96 serves as an excellent neo-Baroque counterpoint to the city’s neo-Renaissance Lessing Theater by Hermann von der Hude and Julius Hennicke of less than a decade earlier. The Metropol Theater of 1891–92 by Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer utilized a light, frothy neo-Baroque decorative scheme to underscore the fact that it was the city’s home for operetta. The most prominent example of neo-Baroque architecture in Berlin was, of course, the Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral) that Julius Raschdorff designed to replace the much smaller and simpler cathedral designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Typically cited as an example of Wilhelm II’s ‘bombastic’ architectural taste, the design was in truth commissioned by his father Friedrich III during his brief reign of three months in 1888. After Schinkel’s building was demolished, construction lasted from 1897 to 1905. Within this same approximate time frame, two neo-Baroque buildings that Wilhelm II did instigate were completed to the designs of his court architect, Ernst von Ihne: the Neuer Marstall (New Stables) of 1897–1901 and the Kaiser Friedrich Museum (today Bode Museum) of 1898–1904. The neo-Baroque domes of the Berliner Dom and Kaiser Friedrich Museum joined the palace’s Neoclassical dome on Spree Island. Although the Neoclassical structures of the Altes Museum (Old Museum), Neues Museum (New Museum) and National Galerie (National Gallery) separated the museum’s dome from the cathedral’s, Helmut Engel’s observation about Wilhelm II’s penchant for neo-Baroque architecture remains valid. Referring to the Schloss’s principal Baroque architect, Andreas Schlüter, he wrote, ‘Wilhelm II was convinced that the Schlüteresque Baroque was the appropriate form for building, at least within the Schloss district. This connection to the world of Baroque form presumably was the reason for his architectural criticisms against the reigning Renaissance that had arisen for buildings, and likewise was the reason for him confirming Ernst von Ihne as his court architect’.3 In was in this vein of preferring practitioners who were experienced with the Baroque that Wilhelm II not only assigned Ernst von Ihne to design the architectural component of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Nationaldenkmal, the focus of this chapter, but also ultimately hired the foremost neo-Baroque sculptor in Berlin, Reinhold Begas, to design the statue of his grandfather. Although Wilhelm II eventually had Gustav Halmhuber replace Ernst von Ihne on the project, the completed monument was an example of an architectural heritage that had arisen within the German Empire since its
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inception. This was the shift from neo-Renaissance to neo-Baroque styles for buildings of high regional or national status. Of course, there were exceptions to this trend – especially within the realm of churches, wherein neo-Romanesque was often used. Nevertheless, a shift from neo-Renaissance to neo-Baroque as the age of Wilhelm I became the age of Wilhelm II can be identified. It is within these contexts that the monument to Wilhelm I arose (see figure 6.1).
Questions of Location, Design and Identity The monument to Kaiser Wilhelm I was the earliest building project of Wilhelm II, who was not only his grandson but also a staunch advocate of traditional practices within the arts, including Historicist architecture. Before the destruction wrought by the Second World War, Berlin was punctuated with his projects: the monument to his grandfather; the National Library; the New Stables; and the memorial church to his grandfather, the postwar ruins of which became a symbol of West Berlin. Moreover, although Historicist architecture was a defining characteristic of the nineteenth century in several European nations as well as in the United States, few national leaders were as personally involved in it as Wilhelm II. Other leaders and rulers certainly expressed their opinions about buildings proposed or constructed – but few intervened with their own specific, detailed critiques to the extent that he did.
Figure 6.1a–b. (a) Berlin, Nationaldenkmal Wilhelm I postcard. Publisher unknown, c. 1900. (b) Detail of Berlin inner-city map, Baedeker Guide to Northern Germany, Karl Baedeker, 1920, 9. Juxtaposition of the images and tinting of the map by Douglas Klahr.
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A testament to this interest and involvement in Historicist architecture was the book Der Kaiser und die Kunst (The Emperor and Art), published in 1907 by the imperial press and edited by Paul Seidel, Director of Collections of the Royal Palaces and Director of the Hohenzollern Museum in Berlin. Twenty-seven individuals prominent in conservative artistic circles are listed as having contributed essays to the book, although specific chapter authorships are not identified. Throughout the volume, the design contributions of the Kaiser are presented in three ways: sketches drawn by Wilhelm himself; artists’ renderings of designs dictated by the Kaiser; and Wilhelm’s ‘corrections’ of architect’s designs, usually written by the Kaiser directly on a presentation drawing. Wilhelm II’s advocacy of Historicist architecture is evident throughout these chapters – especially regarding buildings destined to be constructed within the historic centres of German cities and towns. The Kaiser’s differentiation between historic and modern urban settings was established on the first page of the book’s architecture section: There are some cities, especially those of modern development, which have no particular character; here the emperor gives the designing artist full freedom with regard to the style of his projects. However, where it concerns our old cities, around which the splendor of their history hovers, the patina of old age and the memory of the highest cultural periods of our people must be protected from any raw interference. The emperor watches over new buildings, which have become inevitable due to the expanded needs of the present day, that the old character is preserved, and that the unity of the cityscape is not violated by the thoughtlessness and one-sidedness of the architects.4
Der Kaiser und die Kunst documents numerous instances of how detailed Wilhelm II’s critiques of architect’s designs were – especially regarding buildings destined for public use, such as post offices and train stations. Within this governmental building category, the book states that a count conducted in 1904 of the building designs in which the Kaiser had intervened produced the following results: eighty-four buildings spread throughout the Empire with an additional seventy-nine buildings within Prussia alone.5 The year 1888 is referred to in Germany as the Dreikaiserjahr, or Year of Three Emperors. On 9 March, Wilhelm I, who had ruled as King of Prussia since 1861 and as German Emperor since 1871, passed away. His son, Friedrich III, ascended the dual thrones and called upon the Reichstag to approve a resolution supporting the erection of a national monument to honour his father, which it approved on 20 March. However, Friedrich was in the advanced stage of throat cancer and ruled for only ninety-nine days before dying on 25 June. Friedrich’s son, Wilhelm II, thereupon became the sovereign, ruling until his abdication in 1918.
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Upon ascending the throne in 1888, Wilhelm II made the Schloss the monarch’s principal residence after an interregnum of four decades. Even before the Märztagen (March days) of the 1848 uprising, Wilhelm II’s ancestor Friedrich Wilhelm IV had come to regard the Schloss as being politically burdensome, too redolent with memories of several centuries of Krone gegen Stadt (crown versus city) confrontation. Wolfgang Neugebauer explains: ‘Despite his suite of rooms in the Schloss, Friedrich Wilhelm IV already before 1848 primarily resided not in Berlin, but in Charlottenhof [in Potsdam]. After 1848, on account of remaining memories, he avoided the Berliner Schloss’. 6 Wilhelm I, as King of Prussia and later as German Emperor, preferred to live in his private residence several blocks away from the Schloss on Unter den Linden: the so-called Palais Kaiser Wilhelm I (Palace of Kaiser Wilhelm I). During his brief reign, Friedrich III resided at another royal palace: Charlottenburg, a city adjacent to Berlin proper. Wilhelm II’s pronouncement that the Schloss once again would be the principal residence of the monarch indicated the highly visible role that the Kaiser intended it to play. From the onset of his reign, Wilhelm II concentrated his building energies on the westernmost wing of the building. For Wilhelm, the Schloss was a personal manifestation of his reign, and he concentrated his alterations to the palace along its western wing. The major project was the staggering sum of six million Marks that he spent to completely redesign the palace’s largest room, the Weisser Saal (White Hall), a project that lasted half of his thirty-year reign.7 By comparison, the monument examined in this essay, which was constructed adjacent to this western wing, cost the German Government four million Marks. Throughout this chapter, I use the term ‘national’ and not ‘imperial’ because that is how the monument to Wilhelm I was described in official documents and the press of the period. This is not to imply that any notion of German nationhood was clear or consistent within the populace. Indeed, the issue of German national identity is too fraught with layers of complexity and contradiction to be addressed here. Rather, the point of this chapter is to examine how the creation of a monument honouring the first German Emperor – an elected as opposed to a hereditary position – mutated from nationalistic intent to forthright dynastic expression. On 18 November 1888, five months after Wilhelm II ascended the throne, the upper house of Parliament, the Bundesrat (Federal Council), passed legislation announcing a competition to be held for the design of a national monument honouring Wilhelm I. On 2 February 1889, the major stipulations of the competition were published. First, six potential sites would be considered:
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1. Königsplatz, between the Siegessäule (Victory Column) and the Reichstag 2. Charlottenburger Chaussee, focusing on where it intersects the Siegesallee (Victory Avenue) 3. The square to the west of the Brandenburg Gate 4. Pariser Platz 5. Unter den Linden, focusing on the Opernplatz 6. The Schlossfreiheit, a block-long site adjacent to the Schloss If we place these six sites along a continuum of national–Prussian–dynastic identities in 1889, they followed an eastward trajectory, ranging from national (Königsplatz) to dynastic (Schlossfreiheit), with entities marking Prussian identity, such as the Brandenburg Gate, in between. Wilhelm II later would muddy this rather clear topographical continuum by constructing a series of statues honouring his dynastic ancestors along the north–south Siegesallee. However, when the Siegesallee was mentioned in 1889, it was clearly national – leading to a victory column, the Siegessäule, that although originally Prussian in intended identity had been transformed to commemorate the unification of the nation when it was completed in 1873, two years after unification. The second stipulation of the competition was that all entries had to be submitted by 4 September 1889. Entries could be architectural and/or sculptural, and could ‘engage the assistance of painting for the final result’.8 On 11 April 1889, members of the competition jury were announced, and they represented not only different regions of the Empire but also the disciplines of architecture, sculpture and painting. The question of where the monument would be located – the so-called Platzfrage (the location issue) – would dominate public debate for the next two years. Yet unbeknownst to both the press and the government, shortly after the competition was announced in November 1888, a private committee was established whose sole purpose was to ensure that the monument would be built along the Schlossfreiheit. This was a narrow, one-block strip of land positioned between the western wing of the Schloss, or palace, and the western bank of the island in the Spree River. The Committee for the Demolition of the Schlossfreiheit would become the target of suspicions and debates over the next half-decade within the Reichstag, the Prussian House of Representatives and the Berlin Municipal Assembly, for it helped to transform the monument from a national to dynastic one. The Schloss had been constructed over a 400-year period, beginning in 1447, along the eastern edge of an island in the Spree River. By the 1670s, it had expanded westward to about half its eventual size, stopping approximately at the island’s midpoint. In 1672, along the western edge of the
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island, a row of nine houses was constructed by the court specifically for accommodating foreign artisans and merchants; the inhabitants of the houses were exempt from all municipal taxes. The growing needs of the court had produced a demand for luxury items that exceeded both the capacity and capabilities of Berlin artisans, and workers from France and the Netherlands were eagerly sought. The term Schlossfreiheit was used to describe these houses – with the word Freiheit, or freedom, underscoring the residents’ freedom from municipal oversight: instead, they reported directly to the palace district, an independent administrative entity. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the original purpose of the Schlossfreiheit had long since been superseded by the metropolis that had emerged around it. A residence within the Schlossfreiheit houses became a somewhat sought-after commodity in Berlin due to the substantial tax benefits that were given to residents, regardless of whether they were artisans or not. During the 1860s, a shift in public opinion from fondness to concern regarding the Schlossfreiheit houses began to occur, for they obscured a clear view of the western façade of the Schloss. This shift was due in part to the building’s dome being completed in 1845, making the western façade unquestionably the most monumental of the palace. Furthermore, by the late 1880s Schlossfreiheit owners had aggrandized their houses, obscuring a view of the Schloss to a greater extent than before – in part, due to the narrowness of the street between the houses and the palace. The site, therefore, was defined by its problematic narrowness – and the map portion of figure 6.1 demonstrates this. Although the map is from 1920, an idea of the pre-monument site can be gleaned from the word ‘Schlossfreiheit’: the height of the letters indicate the approximate width of the street between the palace and the Schlossfreiheit houses before the latter were demolished and the street widened: the Strasse an der Schlossfreiheit (the street on the Schlossfreiheit). The dot above the words ‘Wilh I.’ indicates the equestrian statue of Wilhelm I designed by Reinhold Begas. The difficulties regarding such a constricted site also are indicated by the shallow C-shape of Gustav Halmhuber’s colonnade to the left, as the base upon which it sits projects into the canal. The proximity of Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Bauakademie (Building Academy) can be glimpsed as well: the building is identified by the words ‘Bau Akad’. Of the six potential sites within Berlin, the Schlossfreiheit location was the most unfavourable in terms of its narrowness and the presence of two iconic Berlin buildings so close by, with which any monument would compete: the Schloss and the Bauakademie. Yet the site’s adjacency to the Schloss imbued it with an unmistakably dynastic aura that Wilhelm II found irresistible, and his intention to construct
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the monument at the Schlossfreiheit was clear within the innermost circles of his government. In a memo dated 1 September 1888, his chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, noted that the Schlossfreiheit should be selected as the site and that the Prussian and Berlin governments would bear some of the cost of preparing the site.9 This contemplation of the site occurred ten weeks [sic] before the competition for the monument was announced, and twenty weeks before the public was informed that six potential sites were under consideration. In essence, therefore, the Platzfrage had already been decided – at least on the part of the Kaiser – before the question itself formally existed within the public realm. It would be more than one and a half years before the question of location was resolved in July 1890, when the Reichstag ceded decision-making control of the matter to the Kaiser. In September 1889, 147 entries were submitted in the design competition for a national monument, with the following breakdown by site: 27 in the square west of the Brandenburg Gate, 22 in Pariser Platz, 22 along the Schlossfreiheit, 11 in the Königsplatz, 9 in the Opernplatz and 20 for sites not specified in the competition’s specifications. The sixth site, the crossing of the Charlottenburger Chaussee and the Siegesallee claimed 36 entries. On 4 October, the winners of the competition were announced, with the first prize being shared between the design submitted by Wilhelm Rettig and Paul Pfann and that submitted by Bruno Schmitz. Four second prizes were awarded to the sculptors Adolf von Hildebrand, Karl Hilgers, Fritz Schaper and Johannes Schilling. Significantly, none of the winning entries had featured a design for the Schlossfreiheit. The results of this first competition for a national monument came to naught. The press criticized many of the entries, but a more decisive factor was a series of remarks by the Kaiser that was published in the newspaper Norddeutsche Zeitung. The Kaiser commented, ‘I was very disappointed by the exhibition of designs for a Kaiser Wilhelm monument. Above all, I don’t know what the architects with their gigantic temple buildings want … The task only can be solved through a sculptor … The Schlossfreiheit is the most suitable site … The final solution to the task can only begin through a limited competition of five to six sculptors’.10 The Kaiser’s remarks produced consternation within the press and, especially, the Reichstag since it, rather than the Crown, had sponsored the competition. Wilhelm II’s insistence that a sculptor and not an architect would be the suitable creator was based upon dynastic precedent: the two greatest statues within Berlin were of his ancestors Friedrich Wilhelm (the Great Elector) and Friedrich the Great, both astride horses. He therefore connected the ‘national’ monument to two already-existing dynastic ones, as well as the royal residences that functioned as the backdrops for these equestrian statues of illustrious predecessors. The statue of Friedrich
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Wilhelm was framed by the Schloss, and that of Friedrich the Great sat in front of Wilhelm I’s personal palace along Unter den Linden. Wilhelm II’s preference for the Schlossfreiheit was thus topographically and politically based: not only was it within close vicinity of the Schloss and the equestrian statues of his illustrious ancestors, it also was far removed from the Reichstag – a building whose national, parliamentary quintessence was anathema to the Kaiser and his dynastic identity. There was a broader context as well: the call for a national monument after the death of Wilhelm I was issued in conjunction with a competitive awareness that another recently unified nation, Italy, had already embarked upon building a massive national monument within its capital city: the Vittorio Emanuele Monument. Deutsche Bauzeitung, Germany’s leading architectural journal, noted, ‘Germany straightaway would be imputed as a disgrace if the monument to its first emperor would not be outfitted as least [as well] as the monument in Italy arising in the Roman capital of its first king’.11 This concern regarding Germany’s and Berlin’s stature within the realm of other nations and capitals would continue to resonate within the public discourse regarding a proposed national monument. Deutsche Bauzeitung’s glance towards the Vittorio Emanuele Monument was interesting, for this clearly was primarily an architectural composition. The sculptural programme certainly played an important role, but it was the architectural essence and scale of the monument that required a great amount of open space so that it would not be in the immediate proximity of another structure. Wilhelm II’s abnegation of a primarily architectural design for Berlin’s national monument therefore acquires an additional layer of inference: he recognized that talk of a monument on the scale of that in Rome would necessitate a location outside the inner city – most probably in the vicinity of the Reichstag, where suitable space existed. By insisting that a sculptor would be the proper creator of a Kaiser Wilhelm monument, Wilhelm II was in essence walking a tightrope: a sculptural solution had limits of mass and scale that an architectural solution did not, yet the finished project was supposed to compete with the likes of the monument in Rome. This was a conceptual tug-of-war between distancing dynastic identity from the parliamentary presence of the Reichstag and competing on the world stage in terms of monumental grandeur. For a monarch who is routinely associated with bombastic architectural creations, the Kaiser’s comments of October 1889 indicate a shrewd perception of the issues at hand and his willingness to forego competing with Rome in order to ensure that Berlin’s monument would be dynastic in both its location and design. On 25 November 1889, the Norddeutsche Zeitung announced that the intention to demolish the houses along the Schlossfreiheit had been a closed issue for more than one and a half years. The newspaper revealed the
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existence of the Committee for the Demolition of the Schlossfreiheit, and took care to present its establishment one year earlier as independent of the national-monument site question. As the newspaper often functioned as a voice for the Crown, it was politically necessary for the latter to discourage any notions of a connection between a demolition of the Schlossfreiheit and use of the land as a site for the monument, as this would make a mockery of the parliamentary-legislated competition. On 12 May 1890, the Bundesrat issued a brief proposition consisting of three points: the national monument would be constructed along the Schlossfreiheit, it would take the form of an equestrian statue and the Chancellor was authorized to announce a restricted competition for its design. A three-page summation of reasons accompanied the proposition. A major reason was the danger embodied in many of the imposing architectural entries submitted for the first competition – namely, that the representation of Wilhelm I would have been ‘greatly pushed into the background’.12 The need to depict Wilhelm I in his schlichten Hoheit (simple sovereignty) was used not only to promote an equestrian statue but also to exclude sites outside the inner city – that is, to the west of the Brandenburg Gate. In one swift move, the Bundesrat inverted the principal argument of most artists who had participated in the first competition. Instead of sites outside the inner city being the only ones suitable for a monument of national proportions, now the major concern was dynastic – in terms of both site and the way in which Wilhelm I was depicted. What previously had been considered a deficiency of available space concerning the three inner-city sites became a strength, as Pariser Platz, the Opernplatz and the Schlossfreiheit offered rather intimate scales in which to erect an equestrian statue. The first two choices were portrayed as being less desirable than the Schlossfreiheit because of their location along the heavily trafficked Unter den Linden, whereas clearance of the houses along the Schlossfreiheit was presented as the creation of new space. On 2 July 1890, the Reichstag relinquished full decision-making authority to the Kaiser regarding the site and design of the monument. Disappointment in the press and artistic circles was widespread – and for many, a question remained as to why the Reichstag gave in so readily. In the end, a second, invitation-only competition was announced. The six prizewinners of the first competition were invited as well as the sculptors Reinhold Begas, Wilhelm von Rümann and Leopold Rudolf Siemering, bringing the total to nine. Ultimately, due to disagreements with the competition stipulations, only four entries were submitted. Wilhelm II selected the design submitted by his favorite sculptor, Reinhold Begas, which featured an equestrian statue atop a high pedestal and a semicircular stone colonnade designed by court architect Ernst Ihne. Over the course of
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several decades, Begas had fashioned a career that was deeply intertwined with state and dynastic architecture. The Saur Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon (Saur General Artist Lexicon) offers a succinct appraisal of the sculptor: ‘After the founding of the Reich, he increasingly became a representative of the Prussian State and the Hohenzollern dynasty … Begas is a principal representative of European neo-Baroque sculpture, with elements of a restored neo-Rococo in later works. Regarded as a characteristic forerunner for the development of German art and a central personality of the so-called Wilhelmine Baroque’.13 It is not surprising that a close patron–artist relationship developed between Reinhold Begas and Wilhelm II, since Begas’ work embodied many of the Kaiser’s sentiments about art – particularly, an emphasis on naturalism. Regarding the design for the monument, however, Begas was unhappy with Ihne’s contribution as he felt that the height of the latter’s proposed colonnade obscured his statue and that the colonnade’s semicircular shape was not well suited to the rather shallow site along the Schlossfreiheit. At some point in 1892, Ihne was superseded by architect Gustav Halmhuber. Halmhuber replaced Ihne’s design with a shallow, neo-Baroque, colonnaded, open-air hall that consisted of five parts: two end pavilions were connected the rearmost central portion by curved segments. By May 1892, the new design had been submitted to and approved by the Kaiser. Deutsche Bauzeitung had covered the genesis of the project, and author Albert Hofmann noted in a January 1893 issue that ‘the struggle over the past four years for the design and authorship of the monument, as well as its location, was characterized by two competitions and other site plans’. He then proceeded to examine in detail the Reinhold Begas design in a two-part series that ended in February 1893, offering a positive assessment except regarding the secondary role that the architectural component would play within the constricted site. He observed that due to the ‘irremediable’ Schlossfreiheit location ‘the participation of architecture that is at least equivalent to the importance of sculpture’ was not possible, concluding that ‘nothing remained but to suppress the role of architecture in its meaning’.14 This diminution of the architectural component in comparison with the statue of Wilhelm I had political consequences, for the Empire’s four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, and seven principalities were relegated to the representation of their rulers in the monument’s architectural component: the hall that flanked the rear and sides of the tall equestrian statue. Writing in February 1893, Hofmann noted that ‘the roleplayed by the German princes seems to be a somewhat subordinate one … they are simply pushed back [in the colonnaded hall] on special pedestals’. He continued, ‘Surely, even under the conditions given here, a solution can be found which gives the statues more meaning and brings them into a
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more organic relationship with architecture’.15 Whatever national component of the monument existed clearly was relegated to a distant, secondary status in the Begas–Halmhuber design.
Dynastic versus National Identities Work on the monument’s supporting structure began in June 1894. On 18 August 1895, the twenty-fifth anniversary of a German victory in the village of Gravelotte near Metz during the Franco–Prussian War, Wilhelm II laid the foundation stone for the monument itself in a grand ceremony. Within the atelier of Reinhold Begas, the statue itself began to take shape. On account of the number of secondary figures surrounding the equestrian statue and adorning the colonnade, Begas enlisted the services of his pupils, such as Carl Bernewitz, Peter Breuer, Ludwig Cauer, Reinhold Felderhoff, August Gaul, Johannes Götz, Hermann Hidding, August Kraus and Ernst Wägener.16 On 22 March 1897, the hundredth anniversary of Kaiser Wilhelm I’s birth, the monument was dedicated. A glittering assembly of European and German royalty was present for the occasion, and at eleven o’clock, the Kaiser opened the festivities, in which an elaborate cover concealed the monument until the last moment. Wilhelm II had prevailed: a ‘national monument’ honouring his grandfather had been constructed directly across the street from his Schloss. The event was commemorated in postcards sold throughout the Empire. In photographs, one clearly gets a sense of the monument’s scale, its constricted site and its overwhelmingly dynastic message. Flanking the pedestal of Wilhelm I on horseback were two figures representing youthfulness, one female and one male. Four lions with an assortment of military regalia completed the central ensemble. The end pavilions presented a dilemma regarding what sculptural groups would adorn them, and a compromise was reached: quadrigas representing the kingdoms of Prussia and Bavaria were placed atop the north and south porticos, respectively. This was a calculated political decision: Bavaria was the only non-Prussian entity within the Empire to maintain a separate army, underscoring the notion of victory that has defined quadrigas throughout history. Moving rearward in the complex, the shields and crowns of the Reich’s four kingdoms – Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg – were placed away from immediate view along the ledge of the colonnade facing the statue. Along the river side, four similar groups represented trade/shipping, agriculture/industriousness, science and art. The mirroring of monarchic entities – four kingdoms – with realms of human activity was interesting, providing the monument with
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populist symbolism along its rear/river side but monarchic symbolism along its front/Schloss side. At this point, nothing in the monument bespeaks of the Empire’s six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three city states and one imperial territory. One needed to enter Halmhuber’s colonnaded walkway to encounter mosaics along the floor that represented these entities. Although the architectural press praised the beauty of these mosaics, having representations of these geopolitical components of the Empire underfoot diminished the visual impact of them and thereby any truly national identity of the monument. Architectural critics felt that the site’s proximity to Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s iconic Bauakademie across the canal was the major shortcoming of the entire endeavour. Writing in the important architectural journal Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung, Oskar Hofsfeld noted this: ‘Undoubtedly here resides the weakness of the entire ensemble. The monument building backs too closely in the westward direction …’.17 Yet he felt that a major criterion had been fulfilled: there was enough distance between the monument and the Schloss – what had been a narrow street lined with houses had become a broad thoroughfare. Nevertheless, the journal noted that sculpture alone had not sufficed, requiring architecture to enter the picture – a sly riposte to Wilhelm II’s statement of several years prior that sculpture alone was the answer. Regarding Reinhold Begas’ equestrian statue, Hofsfeld opined that the height of the pedestal had hindered the sculptor: ‘The monument is raised to a height of more than 20 meters above the floor, of which merely about 9 meters is allotted to the equestrian statue! At such a height, it was impossible to bring to the head of the Kaiser yet a portrait-proportional, intense, and thoroughly spiritual worth’.18 The issue was whether any semblance of Wilhelm I’s character, as expressed by the sculptor, truly could be communicated to the pedestrian below, and it appeared that the statue failed on this account. Yet the scale of the pedestal and statue made for ideal viewing from within the Schloss – reinforcing, perhaps coincidentally, the dynastic essence of the monument: only those inside the palace would gain a clear view of Wilhelm I’s character as expressed in sculpture. Nevertheless, the verdict from Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung was resoundingly positive regarding the other components of the monument. It praised the grace and beauty of the individual elements, and paid tribute to the artists and firms who had collaborated in the fabrication of the complex. Still, Oskar Hofsfeld felt that one critical quality was missing from the monument: ‘What it lacks is quiet, serious, architectural constraint; the deep, simple, memorial-appropriate severity of true monumentality … The size of the scale does not help it. On the contrary, the lack
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of monumentality is significantly based upon the relationship [of size] to content and purpose’.19 Writing in Deutsche Bauzeitung, Albert Hofmann admitted that prior concerns about how the monument would relate to the overwhelming mass of the Schloss were eased, noting that their proportional relationship to one another was ‘extraordinarily happy … Thus the monument, as far as the whole complex and relationship with the castle and surrounding area [goes], proves to be a lucky toss of great conception’.20 He praised most everything about the monument, yet towards the end of his two-part series about it, the overwhelming dominance of the statue in comparison with the architectural components made him question the intended ‘national’ essence. He wrote: The inner motives for the form and the location of the monument at this point are obvious … They are the reasons why the establishment of a national monument on the Königsplatz in correspondence with the Reichstag was not permitted. Furthermore, they are the same reasons that created what remains a subjective memorial instead of the originally intended National Monument of the Representation of the People; this despite the fact that the Reichstag approved the means for it, and that at the back of are the words: ‘In gratitude and faithfulness. Love, the German people’.21
Within the elusive – and perhaps illusive – notion of a ‘national’ monument, the Kaiser Wilhelm National Monument failed to create some new synthesis that would represent the German Empire. Both Wilhelm’s contemporaries and latter-day historians have cited Bruno Schmitz’s monument to Wilhelm I in Kyffhäuser as more representational of sober national dignity than that in Berlin. Thomas Nipperdey delivered his verdict: instead of possessing a transcendence akin to that of a religious-symbolic Vorstellungswelt, or world of imagination, the national monument possessed an aesthetic-theatrical quasi-transcendence. A purely architectural monument, Nipperdey states, would have proclaimed a departure from the dynastic-monarchist idea of nationhood as well as a leaving behind of the theatrical Machtstil, or bombastic style, of architecture favoured by Wilhelm II. By contrast, Nipperdey cites the monument to Wilhelm I at Kyffhäuser as an example that better expressed a truly national idea, for its massive tower rather than the equestrian statue of Wilhelm I at its base is the dominant element. Although the dedication of the Kyffhäuser monument stressed a monarchist tone, it was not seen as a monarchist monument: ‘Contemporaries did not see the Wilhelmine attitude in the monument, the desired myth-making, the pounding of might, but rather within the monumental unity of the architecture they saw an artistic step forward’. 22
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Bruno Schmitz’s 1896 national monuments at Kyffhäuser and Porta Westfalica drew upon the massive, roughly dressed stone structures of early Teutonic rulers going back to the sixth-century Ravenna tomb of Theodoric, the regent of the Visigoths and a hero of Germanic legend. The political subtext was obvious: cementing the legitimacy of the Kaiserreich (Imperial Empire) by evoking the beginnings of the Holy Roman Empire, regardless of whether stylistically such antecedents were appropriate expressions of identity for a late nineteenth-century, highly industrialized state. The emergence of this alignment in the 1890s continued throughout the Kaiserreich into the First World War, as I examined in an essay about the political subtexts of cartoons within the satirical journal Kladderadatsch.23 Utilizing Kyffhäuser and Porta Westfalica as contexts within which to further assess the monument in Berlin would be the facile option, given their coverage by historians: a default setting of sorts. However, it would also be of questionable value because they benefitted from being constructed at rural sites. This is not to say that Schmitz’s achievements arose on account of these locations; rather, it is to state that a better comparison with Berlin’s monument would be one that embodied the monumentality present in Kyffhäuser and Porta Westfalica but that faced the design challenges of a constricted site within a city’s Altstadt (old city), as was Berlin’s. Fortunately, such an example, although no longer extant, once existed: Bruno Schmitz’s national monument to Wilhelm I in Halle of 1901 (see figure 6.2).
Figure 6.2a–b. (a) Halle an der Saale, Kaiser Wilhelm Denkmal postcard. Leipzig, Louis Glasser, 1907, public domain. (b) Detail of Halle city map, Northern Germany as far as the Bavarian and Austrian Frontiers. Handbook for Travellers. Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1910, 250, public domain. Juxtaposition of the images and tinting of the map by Douglas Klahr.
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Although uniformly praised in the press after it was dedicated, according to Johana Yeats’ 2020 biography of Bruno Schmitz only four latter-day scholars discussed the monument prior to a brief listing of it in her study. Those prior historians had varying frames of reference: Wolfgang Vomm (1979) focused on equestrian statues in Germany; Sybille Einholz (1984) concentrated on the monument’s sculptor, Peter Breuer; Hans-Jörg Jechel (2010) assessed equestrian statues of Wilhelm I through Germany; and Christmut Präger (2018) studied the career of Bruno Schmitz.24 An observation by Präger serves not only as a segue to how the monument in Halle was assessed when it first appeared but also underscores why it is a more suitable point of comparison to the one in Berlin than those at Kyffhäuser and Porta Westfaclica. Präger writes, ‘In the debate, which was still going regarding the large number of big, new monuments as to whether an architectural or sculptural solution was suitable for “large” monuments, the Halle monument played an important role as it was unanimously praised in the trade press’.25 The site of the Halle monument was located between the busy thoroughfare Poststrasse (today Hansering) and a residential street called Martinsburg (today Wilhelm-Külz-Strasse) that had been created where the city wall had once been. In the map portion of Figure 6.2, Poststrasse and Martinsburg enclose the park area between them where the monument was constructed, its semicircular footprint seen to the right of the building labelled ‘Justiz Geb.’, or Palace of Justice. A shift in elevation within this rather narrow site was noted by Albert Hofmann in the 24 August 1901 issue of Deutsche Bauzeitung: ‘The considerable differences in height between the residential street behind the monument and the Poststrasse have been used with great mastery for the artistic purposes of the monument’.26 A series of circles and half-circles defined the plan of the monument, starting with a circular water basin that reached toward Poststrasse. Jutting outward in the rear half of the basin was a semicircular platform upon which three allegorical figures were placed. Two concentric half-circles proceeded rearward up the terrain with their convex curvatures expanding outwards. The inner half-circle contained four flight of steps on each side that led to the pedestal and statue of Wilhelm I on horseback, flanked by a statue of Otto von Bismarck standing to the left of the Kaiser and Helmut von Moltke to the right. Each series of steps also opened to the outermost half-circle: an open-air hallway punctuated by piers and columns whose centre was dominated by a giant semicircular niche. Crowning each end of the hallway were towers composed of decorative elements of military victory. Finally returning to street level, a pylon-like pilaster adorned the front of each tower element.27
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The result was a largely architectural, as opposed to sculptural, composition. In his 1901 review, Albert Hofmann argued that this was necessary to impress upon the 'simples of onlookers' the historical events the monument represented.28 Writing one year later in Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung, Otto Sarrazin mentioned some of the architectural components when he addressed how successfully it responded to the site’s steep change in elevation: ‘The adaptation to the terrain is carried out skillfully. Stairs lead both directly from the front and to the side behind the stepped side walls to the height of the square … A massive structure with a large niche that allows passage through a rectangular opening and a view of the rear, as well as the towering greenery of trees, form a staging post for the adjoining open columned hall’.29 Photographs of the monument demonstrate how masterfully Schmitz used stone to convey a sense of gravitas and monumentality. He interspersed rusticated blocks throughout the composition, starting at the lowest segments of the side walls and culminating in pilasters comprising rusticated blocks that rose the height of the niche. Smoother-surfaced stone was used for the rest of the monument, with the smoothest elements reserved for the columns of the open-air hall. This precise calibration of stonework created a monument of sophistication, an impression that was amplified by two international references to Renaissance city gates – both constructed with allusions to military victories. The pilasters of rusticated stone recalled Rome’s Porta San Giovanni of 1574, and the pylon-like pilasters recalled those of Paris’s Porte Sainte-Denis of 1674. Ornamentation was of two sorts. Boldly volumetric figures of eagles, lions and items signifying military victory were used not merely to underscore the ‘theme trio’ of men whose military and diplomatic prowess had created the German Empire but also in a celebratory manner, adorning the towers that punctuated the sky. Ornamentation of a more restrained and sober manner adorned the attic above the niche: the letter ‘W’ adorned each corner, with inscriptions along the attic. Moreover, as Otto Sarrazin stated, it was the way in which Schmitz used inscriptions that was noteworthy: ‘As with his main imperial monuments, Schmitz also used letters here as a distinctive decorative element’. Sarrazin continued, observing how restraint characterized the monument, ‘It is not leaping water that feeds the basin, but rather it gushes noiselessly from the crevices of the rock-like figure substructure. Also, on the lower parts of the pylons, lion heads dispense glittering water, which flows down the stalactite-like treated surfaces. The trickling water creates a strangely lively effect here and there’.30 In the end, what provided the monument in Halle with an aura of monumentality was not only Schmitz’s skill but also the fact that this was
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primarily an architectural ensemble in which sculpture played a secondary role: the reverse of what occurred in Berlin. Albert Hofmann commented at length about this: The work is primarily an architectural monument … The sculptor is to be credited with expressing that simplicity and calmness in the conception of the statues … One of the main merits of the work lies in this happy collaboration. But it is only possible if the commission for a large monument is entrusted not to the sculptor, but to the architect … The sculptor is an indispensable colleague, but today, when most academies no longer teach a monumental art but only a salon art, he can no longer be the bearer of the fundamental idea. What a feeling we lacked due to the pain we had to witness when the monument for the first man of the new empire in Berlin, for the mightiest and the mighty, became a theatrically dressed up circus group devoid of content, when the competition had delivered works of incomparable creative power!31
It is interesting to note that once he had viewed Schmitz’s achievement in Halle, Albert Hofmann boldly denigrated the monument in Berlin four years after he had initially reviewed it. In 1897, he opined that the constricted Schlossfreiheit site had constrained a design wherein the architectural component would have dominated over the sculptural. This was due not only to the narrowness of the site but also to the problem that any architectural element taller than the one that Gustav Halmhuber provided not only would have obscured the views of the Schlossfreiheit façade of the palace but also competed with Schinkel’s Bauakademie across the Spree canal. Although the Halle site did not have the same constraints, Schmitz had to contend with its steep rise in terrain and the five-storey apartment buildings that lined Martinsburg, which threatened to dominate a view of the monument from Poststrasse unless the design rose in height sufficiently – which Schmitz’s did. Hofmann’s comment about the Berlin competition was a reference to Schmitz’s entry: this displayed the concept from which the monument in Halle was derived. A comparison between the two shows how Schmitz refined and tightened the Berlin design: while he retained semicircular open-air hallways, he raised them up while eliminating an elaborate niche atop a triumphal arch – offering simply the niche with its attic in Halle. Instead of an equestrian statue of Wilhelm I placed far in front of the rest of the ensemble, he pulled it back and raised it off the ground in order for it to be in front of the niche. To accommodate the rise in elevation, he punctuated the ends of the hallways with tall towers. Thus, although Schmitz’s 1888 design for Berlin had won first place in that unsuccessful first competition, along with the entry from Wilhelm Rettig and Paul Pfann, Hofmann recognized the way in which Schmitz, the master of large monuments, had
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delivered an equally masterful rendition at a smaller scale, and this brought the theatricality of the monument in Berlin to the fore.32
Conclusions The comparison between monuments to Wilhelm I in Berlin and Halle, especially Albert Hofmann’s remarks about both, leads us back to the shift between neo-Renaissance and neo-Baroque architecture that opened this chapter. Whereas Wilhelm II promoted the theatricality and grandiosity of neo-Baroque architecture and sculpture as preferred for monuments to his grandfather, architects such as Bruno Schmitz looked backward past the Renaissance to the sixth-century, massive, roughly dressed stone structures of early Teutonic rulers for inspiration. The term ‘neo-Romanesque’ is used by scholars to describe buildings commemorating Wilhelm I that drew upon structures such as Theodoric’s sixth-century tomb in Ravenna for their massing and treatment of stone. A bifurcation regarding monuments to Wilhelm I seems to have occurred – with neo-Baroque, dominated by equestrian statues, versus neo-Romanesque, dominated by architecture. Occasionally, a combination of the two resulted – such as Schmitz’s equestrian statue at Deutsches Eck in Koblenz, which was placed on a high neo-Romanesque pedestal where the Mosel joins the Rhine River. Yet Schmitz’s work in Halle demonstrates that a further variant was possible: a monument that utilized neo-Renaissance architecture, thereby recalling Wilhelm I’s reign, but that manifested this in the heavy, rusticated manner of his monuments as Kyffhäuser and Porta Westfalica. Moreover, the monument in Halle did this in a constricted, inner-city setting that featured a steep elevation in topography. Architectural heritage expressed through Historicist architecture, therefore, was more nuanced regarding monuments to Wilhelm I than has been described by historians. The monument in Halle throws a curve ball, so to speak, challenging us to question whether that elusive quest for ‘national’ identity within a single monument might have been achieved. Certainly, its complete abnegation of the neo-Baroque and the option of an equestrian statue distances it from the style’s dynastic connections, yet its reference to two Renaissance city gates – one in Rome, and another in Paris – brought these major features far closer to citizens of a late nineteenth-century, highly industrialized state than neo-Romanesque references would. Whether or not these specific neo-Renaissance references were recognized by the critics and public – and the evidence is that they were not – is tangential. By the time of the Halle monument’s dedication in 1901, thirty years had passed since the creation of the German Empire. People would have been
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familiar with the neo-Renaissance style – and therefore the appearance of Renaissance architecture – due to the vast number of neo-Renaissance buildings constructed throughout the nation during Wilhelm I’s reign. The monument in Halle, therefore, would have evoked first-hand associations of interacting with such buildings – e.g. walking along a city street in contrast to summoning the far-distant, mythical, folkloric associations that the monuments in Kyffhäuser and Porta Westfalica required in order to gain meaning. Damaged during the Second World War, the monument in Halle was demolished, as were numerous others, according to Directive No. 30 of the Allied Control Council.33 In its place arose a monument to the victims of fascism in 1947 due to the city being in the eastern sector of the divided nation. In 1967, a large, curving flag of concrete was erected to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Both monuments are still standing. The non-existence of Bruno Schmitz’s monument perhaps accounts for the limited amount of scholarship accorded it, but its contrast with the national monument in Berlin was evident upon its unveiling in 1901, as noted in Albert Hofmann’s review. With the benefit of hindsight, however, the logic of Wilhelm II insisting upon a neo-Baroque style for the monument along the Schlossfreiheit becomes clear. In his study of the German Empire’s buildings of state, Godehard Hoffmann provides a more finely calibrated assessment than that offered by Thomas Nipperdy several decades earlier. He writes: On the one hand, this neo-Baroque followed an international trend in the tradition of the École des Beaux-Arts, but on the other hand, in Berlin it manifested clear echoes of the Baroque in Prussia … Insofar as Wilhelm II wanted to represent the German Empire architecturally to the outside world, he advocated for the neo-Romanesque, but for the buildings for the monarchy, he preferred a neo-Baroque that combined traditional Prussian forms with international ones.34
It is within this duality of neo-Romanesque and neo-Baroque that this comparison between the monuments in Halle and Berlin concludes. Bruno Schmitz’s monument in Halle was not neo-Romanesque to the extent that his examples in Kyffhäuser and Porta Westfalica were. Nevertheless, its heavy massing and robust use of rusticated stone, and the dominance of the architectural over the sculptural, contrasted with the neo-Baroque monument by Reinhold Begas and Gustav Halmhuber in Berlin with its sculptural dominance. It is intriguing to wonder what might have occurred if the chronology had been reversed, with Schmitz completing the monument in Halle first and then winning a competition to design one for the Schlossfreiheit. Would his style, so uniformly lauded by critics, have worked across the street from one of Northern Europe’s greatest Baroque palaces?
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Would an architecturally dominant monument in which the sculptural elements were reduced have coexisted in harmony with the Schloss across the street, or would it have competed with it? Although such questions never can be answered, they suggest that a nuanced appraisal of the monument that Wilhelm II built across the street from his palace is in order – something that this chapter has attempted to accomplish. The Berlin’s monument’s dismemberment by the Communist East German Government during the winter of 1949–50, preceding the similar destruction of the Schloss, was not however, the final chapter: the base of the monument, still jutting into the Spree River, stands as silent testimony to its history. A century and a quarter after Historicist architecture was used to memorialize dynastic identity, it is being used once again to reconstruct the façade of the Schloss across the street from the vanished monument to Wilhelm I. The building will house a cultural centre, not a royal residence – underscoring the fact that even in a twenty-first-century city, Historicist architecture remains a viable means of expressing identity. Douglas Klahr is Professor of Architecture and Associate Dean for Faculty and Student Affairs of the College of Architecture, Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Arlington. Born in Manhattan, he received degrees from the University of Virginia and Brown University. His research has been published in the journals German History, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Oxford Journal of Art, Architectural Histories, and Zarch Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Architecture and Urbanism. Book chapters have appeared in volumes published by Routledge, Jagiellonian University Press, Ashgate, Leuven University Press and Éditions Recherche. NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Lehnert, Der Kaiser, 18. Berger, Historische Bahnhofsbauten II, 189. Engel, Baugeschichte, 213. Der Kaiser und die Kunst, 31. Ibid., 38. Neugebauer, Residenz – Verwaltung – Repräsentation, 56–57. For the Weisser Saal redesign, see Klahr, ‘Wilhelm II’s Weisser Saal and its Doppelthron’. 8. Nicolai, ‘Das National-Denkmal’, 8. 9. Votum I. 12565, Finanz-Ministerium, Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, Rep. 151 IC, No. 8329. 10. Norddeutsche Zeitung No. 480, 30.
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11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.
‘Die Ergebnisse der Preisbewerbung’, 512. Bundesrat No. 61, Session from 1890, 12 May 1890, 5. Saur Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon, 269. Hofmann, ‘Der zur Ausführung bestimmte Entwurf ’, 45. Ibid., 58. Arnold, Schlossfreiheit, 65–66. Hofsfeld, ‘Das Nationaldenkmal’, 138. Ibid., 139. Ibid., 140. Hofmann, ‘Das Kaiserdenkmal’, 142. Ibid, 160. Thomas Nipperdey, cited in ibid., 144. On 28 March 1915, six months into the war, a cartoon entitled ‘Steadfast in a Storm!’ appeared in Kladderadatsch that depicted a great sea wall modelled on Theodoric’s tomb. The distinctive, monolithic, circular stone cap that crowns his mausoleum, a triumph of engineering and sheer bravado, is placed atop the sea wall that represented the Reich. As waves crash against this powerful edifice, a caption informs the reader, ‘He built us a sturdy house, thus firm in trust of God despite weather, storm, and tempest’. Carved into the stone are the words ‘Deutsches Reich’ (German Empire) and ‘Otto v. Bismarck, Baumeister’, or building master. Crashing against the stone are waves in the guise of the Reich’s three wartime adversaries: a Russian general; Marianne, representing the French Republic; and John Bull, representing British economic might. See Klahr, ‘Symbiosis’, 542–43. 24. Yeats, Bruno Schmitz, 314–15. 25. Präger, ‘Leben und Werk’, 203. 26. Hofmann, ‘Zur Enthüllung’, 422. 27. Some height measurements will provide an indication of how Schmitz achieved monumentality within a constricted site that presented challenges but also the advantage of a topography that rose in elevation, creating additional height as the monument progressed rearward from its front portion along Poststrasse. From street level to the tops of the end towers measured 67.5 metres, and each pylon-like pilaster was 21 metres high. Ascending the stairs, one encountered the curved, open-air hallway that was 12 metres tall. Progressing towards the centre, Bismarck and Molkte each stood 3.1 metres in height and upon low bases, and Kaiser Wilhelm on his horse was 4.5 metres in height but placed upon a high pedestal. If one turned around, the niche and its attic rose 35.5 metres in height. Standing at this level, a visitor could exit through the rear of the niche or through six openings in the surrounding hallway to a path that not only provided access from Poststrasse but also access to Martinsburg behind the monument after climbing a short flight of ten steps. 28. Hofmann, ‘Zur Enthüllung’, 422. 29. Sarrazin, ‘Das Denkmal’, 393–4. 30. Ibid., 394. 31. Hofmann, ‘Zur Enthüllung’, 423. 32. Although she does not discuss it, Johanna Yeats includes in her study an 1889 ground plan drawing by Schmitz for a Kaiser Wilhelm monument on the Schlossfreiheit. The giant semicircular motif that he had designed for the first competition was
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greatly reduced in size and simplified. Yet even with this reduction, Schmitz still found it necessary to intrude upon the canal due to the broadening of the Strasse an der Schlossfreiheit – similarly to what Reinhold Begas and Gustav Halmhuber needed to do. Yeats, Bruno Schmitz, 112. 33. Paragraph 1 of Directive No. 30 defines the items that paragraph 2 ordered to be destroyed by 1 January 1947: ‘any monument, memorial, poster, statue, edifice, street or highway name marker, emblem, tablet, or insignia which tends to preserve and keep alive the German military tradition …’ Enactments, 134. 34. Hoffmann, ‘Architektur’, 200–1.
Bibliography Arnold, Dietmar and Ingmar. Schlossfreiheit: Vor den Toren des Stadtschlosses [Schlossfreiheit: In Front of the Gates of the City Schloss]. Berlin: be.bra Verlag, 1998. Berger, Manfred. Historische Bahnhofsbauten II: Braunschweig, Hannover, Preussen, Bremen, Hamburg, Oldenburg und Schleswig-Holstein [Historical Train Stations II: Braunschweig, Hannover, Prussia, Bremen, Hamburg, Oldenburg and SchleswigHolstein]. Berlin: Transpress Verlagsgesellschaft, 1988. Bundesrat Session no. 61 (12 May 1890), 5. Enactments and Approved Papers of the Control Council and Coordinating Committee, Vol. 3, 1 March 1946 – 30 June 1946. Berlin: Legal Division, Office of Military Government for Germany (U.S.), 1946. Engel, Helmut. Baugeschichte Berlin: Umbruch suche Reformen, 1861–1918 [Building History of Berlin: Change Seeks Reforms, 1861–1918]. Berlin: Jovis Verlag, 2004. ‘Die Ergebnisse der Preisbewerbung für das National-Denkmal Kaiser Wilhelm’s I’ [The Results of the Competition for the National Monument of Kaiser Wilhelm I]. Deutsche Bauzeitung 1889, 23 (90), 19 October, 512–13. Hoffmann, Godehard. Architektur für die Nation? Der Reichstag und die Staatsbauten des Deutschen Kaiserreichs 1871–1918 [Architecture for the Nation? The Reichstag and the State Buildings of the German Empire 1871–1918]. Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, 2000. Hofmann, Albert. ‘Der zur Ausführung bestimmte Entwurf zu einen National-Denkmal für Kaiser Wilhelm I. Zu Berlin’ [The Design for a National Monument for Kaiser Wilhelm I, in Berlin, Intended for Execution]. Deutsche Bauzeitung 1893, 8, 28 January, 45–46; 1893, 9, 4 February, 57–58. . ‘Das Kaiserdenkmal auf der Schlossfreiheit zu Berlin’ [The Kaiser Monument on the Schlossfreiheit in Berlin]. Deutsche Bauzeitung 1897, 23, 20 March, 141–43; 1897, 24, 27 March, 157–60. . ‘Zur Enthüllung des Kaiser-Wilhelm-Denkmals in Halle a. S.’ [The Unveiling of the Kaiser Wilhelm Monument in Halle a. S.]. Deutsche Bauzeitung 1901, 68, 24 August, 422–23. Hofsfeld, Oskar. ‘Das Nationaldenkmal Kaiser Wilhelms I. in Berlin’ [The National Monument of Kaiser Wilhelm I in Berlin]. Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung 1897, 17 (13), 137–42.
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Der Kaiser und die Kunst [The Emperor and Art]. Berlin: Reichsdruckerei, 1907. Klahr, Douglas. ‘Wilhelm II’s Weisser Saal and its Doppelthron’. German History 2009, 27 (4), 490–513. . ‘Symbiosis between Caricature and Caption at the Outbreak of War: Representations of the Allegorical Figure Marianne in Kladderadatsch’. Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 2011, 74 (4), 537–58. Lehnert, Uta. Der Kaiser und die Siegesallee: Réclame Royale [The Kaiser and the Siegesallee: Réclame Royale.]. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1998. Neugebauer, Wolfgang. Residenz – Verwaltung – Repräsentation: Das Berliner Schloss und seine historischen Funktionen vom 15. bis 20. Jahrhundert [Residence – Administration – Representation: The Berlin Schloss and Its Historical Functions from the Fifteenth to the Twentieth Century]. Potsdam: Verlag für BerlinBrandenburg, 1999. Nicolai, Bernd. ‘Das National-Denkmal für Kaiser Wilhelm I. in Berlin (1889–1897). Wettbewerbe – Ausführung – Rezeption’ [The National Monument to Kaiser Wilhelm I in Berlin (1889–1897). Competitions – Execution – Reception]. Master’s thesis, University of Göttingen, 1980. Norddeutsche Zeitung 480, 1889, 14 October. Präger, Christmut. ‘Leben und Werk des Architekten Bruno Schmitz (1856–1916) unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Frühwerks’ [Life and Work of the Architect Bruno Schmitz (1856–1916) with Special Consideration of the Early Works]. PhD dissertation, University of Heidelberg, 1991. Sarrazin, Otto. ‘Das Denkmal für Kaiser Wilhelm I. in Halle a.d.S.’ [The Monument of Kaiser Wilhelm I in Halle a.d.S.]. Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung 1902, 64, 13 August, 393–94. Saur Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon, 8. Munich: K.G. Saur, 1994. Votum I. 12565, Finanz-Ministerium, Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, Rep. 151 IC, No. 8329. Yeats, Johanna. Bruno Schmitz (1858–1916): Reformarchitekt zwischen Historismus und beginnender Moderne [Bruno Schmitz (1858–1916): Reform Architect Between Historicism and the Beginning of Modernism]. Noderstedt: PubliQuation, 2020.
8 CHAPTER 7 History, National Identity and Architecture in the Last Royal Palaces in Europe (1861–1930) Turin, Budapest, Bucharest Paolo Cornaglia
Introduction From the second half of the eighteenth century to the aftermath of the First World War, many European national states started to play a new role or appeared as totally new. From Italy in 1861 to Germany in 1871, from Hungary after the Ausgleich (Compromise) of 1867 to Romania in 1878, many countries – among them, those ruled by monarchs – had to build or rebuild their royal palaces. In this feverish period, national features played a great role in shaping these buildings as symbols of the respective national identities. An extraordinary set of tools was provided by Historicism, giving to architecture a colourful palette of opportunities and choices. If, for decades, Neoclassicism had represented the way to be modern, a sort of international style, for most of the nineteenth century, Europe played with historical styles intended as the best solution for designing buildings belonging to old and new typologies. For certain buildings of high national value, architects, artists and intellectuals looked for a national language – at first debating the best historical style to be chosen; then, in the last part of the nineteenth century, trying to define an architecture that had to be both national and modern. This process mostly occurred in countries where the issue of national identity along with the political character of the state had to be negotiated and built from scratch, sometimes because
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they had recently been liberated, gaining independence (partially or completely) from a foreign ruler – for example, Hungary, Poland and Romania. This research in pursuit of a modern national language follows more traditional approaches, in a Historicist wave that only in the 1930s could be deemed obsolete. In this context, I intend to focus on the topic of how the royal palaces in certain parts of Europe were useful in building a national narrative. The case studies of Budapest, Bucharest, Vienna, Berlin and Turin, which I follow, show interesting and more complicated methods of designing the renovation and expansion of royal seats, as opposed to the apparently Classical ones used in such capitals as London, Brussels and Copenhagen – or, for that matter, Sofia and Belgrade.
Turin 1861: How to Make the Savoy Royal Palace More ‘Italian’ Thanks to the wars of independence against the Habsburg Empire’s dominance of northern Italy (the Lombardo-Veneto Kingdom) and the other states of Italy, the Italian nation became politically unified in 1861 (apart from the Vatican State, which joined only in 1870). Turin, which had been the capital of Savoy state since 1563 – at first as the Duchy of Savoy, then as the Kingdom of Sardinia – became the first Italian capital in 1861. Several new requirements demanded a change to the face of ancient Savoy’s main city: the most symbolic ones were a new seat for the Parliament and the updating of the royal place for wider symbolic purposes related to the whole peninsula, rather than just the original part of the kingdom. Turin’s representatives had to consider how to enhance the city’s public space in view of its new role: Gustavo Ponza di San Martino, member of the Municipal Art Commission, had already, by 1860, written a report listing what was urgent and necessary: a new seat for the Parliament; a new theatre; a stock exchange; a new public park; a new main railway station; monumental fountains; the transformation of the public places into squares; and, of course, many monuments dedicated to the heroes of the nation.1 Not everything was intended to be done in a homogeneous and clear ‘Italian Renaissance’ style – so appreciated in the rest of Europe – because the shape of the national style itself was under discussion,2 with different options and results, and also because of the heterogeneity of the regional (previously multinational) situation. Each former Italian state had had a different ‘golden age’ and consequently a style crucial for its identity: Baroque in the Kingdom of Sardinia, medieval and Early Renaissance in Lombardy, a ByzantineGothic heritage in Venice, Quattrocento in Florence, Cinquecento in Rome.3 The debate started from 1866, being conducted through congresses and publications. Camillo Boito, the most famous architect and scholar in
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this field, published an essay in 1880 about the future style of Italian architecture, focusing on the Middle Ages (the period of the autonomous Italian municipalities)4 and on the Early Renaissance (or the Bramante period) in Milan. As a result of this debate, the medieval ‘option’ was superseded by the Renaissance style as the most suitable one for offering new solutions for modern needs. Francesco di Cesare stated in 1883 that ‘[t]his style [i.e. the Renaissance] is precisely historical and national’.5 The reconstruction of Rome, as the Italian capital from 1871, followed this solution to a large extent, as did the planners of the main urban interventions of that time in Milan (the Duomo square) and Naples (the Rettifilo).6 To clarify, this option was not compulsory; either public buildings or private ones could and were designed in different styles as well. In Turin, the architect Carlo Promis had, as early as 1852, adopted the Renaissance style for the façades of the arcaded bourgeois buildings along the treelined avenue abutting the main railway station of Porta Nuova. The railway building itself – designed by Carlo Ceppi and Alessandro Mazzucchetti,7 under construction since 1861 – was a monumental counterpart to the royal seat at the other end of the main axis in the Baroque city centre. It was an interesting example of Rundbogenstil – with Romanesque and, to a lesser degree, Renaissance elements – and was praised by HenryRussell Hitchcock.8 It bore a greater resemblance to the Vigadó building in Budapest, by Frigyes Feszl, or the Stock Exchange in Vienna, designed by Heinrich von Ferstel, than to the Early Florentine Renaissance style used for the railway station in Bologna (Gaetano Ratti, 1871–76) or in other parts of Italy.9 As stated by Ezio Godoli, railway stations did not play a great role in building the Italian national narrative.10 On the other hand, the new temporary hall for the Parliament in Turin, built according to designs by Amedeo Peyron and opened on 18 February 1861 for the first session of the new Italian Parliament, was an example of Quattrocento. According to the drawings,11 the new building was joined to the Carignano Palace, filling the courtyard of the former seat and showing two rows of Renaissance bifore (mullioned windows) in the great hall. Therefore, not by accident, in the magazine Mondo Illustrato the hall was described as ‘di ordine lombardo’,12 underlining its roots in the Lombardy Renaissance. The published design of the façade – only partly executed – shows its references to the Italian Renaissance: bifore, rustication and a crenelated top were, again, similar to the other European examples of Rundbogenstil.13 The idea for a permanent seat of the Parliament was already being discussed in 1860: many designs were submitted14 – by Andrea Crida (a monumental replica of the late-Baroque Madama Palace by Filippo Juvarra in Turin), Alessandro Antonelli (a triumph of a superposed row of columns, as in many other buildings designed by the
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architect) and Domenico Ferri. In 1863, the last-named painter and architect was commissioned, together with Oreste Bollati, to design a new version of the palace to host the Parliament as long as the capital remained in Turin. The building was conceived in a French late-Mannerist style, with reminiscences of the local juvarresque late-Baroque heritage, very far from the Quattrocento wooden structure. In a guide to Turin published in 1880, the architect Giovanni Battista Ferrante, while appreciating the quality of the building as the second best in town after the Madama Palace, openly criticized this ‘French Renaissance Style’ as a very strange solution for the Italian Parliament – possibly, according to Ferrante, due to Ferri’s long stay in Paris.15 The same also applied to the new main railway station in Milan. Built between 1857 and 1864 by Louis-Jules Bouchot, it showed impressive French Renaissance features apparently on demand of the client – the French railway company Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée.16 All this points to the fact that a heated debate over the national style began in the second half of the 1860s. In September 1864, the Parliament decided not to wait until Rome was incorporated into the state and moved the capital temporarily to Florence, making the undergoing works in Turin lose their functional aim.17 The huge, empty palace looks today like a new opera house – an institution that has actually never got a new seat, but that was requested by Count Gustavo Ponza di San Martino in his speech in 1860. It is an impressive building, with the appropriate scale for a capital but with very few Italian features: only the sculptures representing Law, Justice, the Arts, Agriculture and Industry play a symbolic role. Inside, the frescoes in the main hall represent the Triumph of Wisdom with Medicine, Literature, Mathematics and Law,18 as symbols of the modernity of the new state, balanced among sciences, economic development and the heritage of the arts. The adaptation works at the Royal Palace proved to be more difficult, because the building dated back to 1584 (the façade to 1658). A renewal of the main staircase as the new ceremonial access – at the beginning without a specific symbolic programme – was already planned in 1854,19 and later postponed to 1862.20 Works were completed in 1866, after the capital had been moved to Florence. If the statues and paintings in the staircase were a sign of the glory of the House of Savoy from the Middle Ages to King Carlo Alberto, who started the wars of independence, the hall under the arcades was intended as a place to connect this part of history to the whole of Italy. The portico of the hall was enclosed by wooden window frames, with new stucco decoration, a new mosaic marble floor (seminato or terrazzo) and two marble benches. Six busts depicting Dante, Marco Polo, Cristoforo Colombo, Michelangelo, Galileo Galilei and Canova, sculpted by the best
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artists, highlighted the glory of Italy.21 They were the first objects to be seen on entering the palace, showing the legitimacy of the dynasty as rulers of the entire peninsula. It should nevertheless be added that this legitimacy was also based on the long history of the Savoy dukes and kings22 – from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century – represented by statues and frescoes on the staircase. The author of the interior design, architect Domenico Ferri, also conceived a new monumental façade for the palace, which had been lacking since the eighteenth century. Works never began because of the move of the capital from Turin to Florence, but a wooden model was preserved23 – executed in 1864 – which helps us to understand the aim of the project.24 Interestingly, despite city guides of the time claiming that the planned façade was a ‘monument of the Italian art’,25 no ‘Italian’ signs are in fact visible here while they were present in Turin – e.g. in the recent neo-Renaissance buildings by Carlo Promis, in the temporary seat of the Parliament or in the Cernaia Barracks (from 1864).26 The new façade covered the old one, keeping the old rhythm of the windows and accented by half-columns in a more international late-Mannerist style, of the kind also adopted by Ferri in the new Parliament building discussed above. A new chapter in the history of the Royal Palace opened at the end of the nineteenth century when the Royal Household Administration decided to demolish the so-called Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace), the first seat of the Savoy Court in Turin, in order to host the Royal Household Ministry along with its offices in a brand new wing. In that period, the architect Emilio Stramucci was restoring the ancient apartments of the Royal Palace, removing the Neoclassical decoration and bringing back the Baroque and Rococo style to the interiors using ancient artworks and newly designed neo-Baroque pieces of furniture.27 This time, the palace was intended to represent the dynasty rather than serve as a national monument, so the Baroque style was deemed to be most appropriate here as it was related to the most glorious period in the Savoy family’s history. The architect followed the same fashion in designing the new wing to the palace, the socalled Manica Nuova or Palazzo Reale Nuovo.28 This building, completed in 1903, spoke a mixed language composed mainly of late-Baroque and Mannerist elements and taking inspiration both from Juvarra and the late sixteenth century. It avoided any references to Art Nouveau, which was just entering the city in 1902 with the famous Decorative Arts Exhibition. It may be noted that the late Baroque – less bourgeois than the neo-Renaissance – was popular for dynastic edifices – for example, the Savoy in Turin (see figure 7.1) and the Hofburg in Vienna.
Figure 7.1. Emilio Stramucci, Turin, Royal Palace, the New Wing (today, Galleria Sabauda), 1899–1903. Photo by Hairless Heart, 2019. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0. Wikimedia Commons, commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Galleria_Sabauda_dai_Giardini_Reali.jpg.
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In the Heart of Europe In Central Europe,29 three major capitals – Vienna, Budapest and Berlin – saw extensive, politically motivated projects of transformation and the completion of existing residences.30 A case in point is provided by Berlin – the new capital of the German Empire in 1871, which was already the capital of Prussia – and the grand palace of Hohenzollerns, built between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by Andreas Schlüter. Together with its counterpart in Stockholm, this was one of the most impressive and modern buildings of Baroque Europe. Architectural proposals, completions and interventions (1871, 1875–76, 1885–86, due to demolitions carried out to improve the viability of the city centre)31 followed mimetic criteria, both neo-Baroque and neo-Renaissance. The presence of German neo-Renaissance solutions is stimulated both by the configuration of the buildings created under the Great Elector and incorporated without modifications by Schlüter into the new palace, and by a ‘national’, unifying idea behind the design. The great project of joint transformation of the cathedral and the palace, connected to each other by covered walkways and accentuated by a high tower, ran alongside a proposal for the new neo-Renaissance town hall by Julius Raschdorff (1888) – both were competition-winning proposals, but neither was executed. The works were limited to the demolition of the Baroque-Neoclassical cathedral – too inadequate for the imperial capital – and its hypertrophic reconstruction in 1894–1905, again to a project by Raschdorff. The Viennese urban residence, the Hofburg,32 however extensive, was not finished until 1857 when the laying down of the famous Ringstrasse brought about the challenge of adding a new façade to the palace facing this boulevard. The architect Gottfried Semper created a monumental project for such an extension, prepared for an 1867 competition. The link between the Hofburg and the Ringstrasse was made not only by means of a new wing (1869) but also public spaces and museums – together, creating a stage for the dynasty: the Kaiserforum (Emperor’s Forum), probably inspired by a lost Baroque master plan.33 The Mannerist forms of the extension were typical for the Central European capitals of the second half of the nineteenth century. In the same year, the project was approved and Gottfried Semper, a German from outside Austria, was joined by the local architect Karl von Hasenauer, who later retained sole responsibility for the project. It was executed only partially, with two museums and only one of the two hemicycles that were meant to embrace this part of the Ringstrasse. The old wing of the Hofburg was left without a new façade. The executed hemicycle, in
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itself a modern and impressive part of the imperial palace (Neue Burg), was characterized by a mix of architectural references – from the Mannerism of the rusticated base and the large central arch to the Baroque Classicism of the colonnade, which was borrowed (curving the front) from the famous Louvre façade: an everlasting reference for royal palaces in Europe.34 The Neue Burg, begun in 1881, was completed in its present form in 1913 on the eve of the war that led to the dissolution of the Empire. As stated by Richard Kurdiovsky and others, ‘the newly erected Imperial Forum on the other hand was forced to compensate [for] its lack of history by repeated use of crowns, heraldry and monograms on its façade’.35 On the other hand, the completion (executed between 1889 and 1893) of the Hofburg entrance façade in Michaelerplatz was strictly neo-Baroque. It had a clear template in the form of a Baroque predecessor here: an incomplete realization of a project by Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach from 1720. Moreover, the late-Baroque style was a distinctive identity symbol of the Empire in its greatest historical splendour. The symbolic role of the Habsburg buildings in question was so powerful even in the eighteenth century that the Royal Library in Berlin, built by Georg Christian Unger in 1775–80, was in fact a copy of the unfinished Michaelertrakt (wing of the palace oriented towards Michaelerplatz) of the Viennese Hofburg. The clear continuity between the original drawings by Fischer von Erlach (1726) and the completion works by Ferdinand Kirschner in 1893 is shown by the similar drawings (1772) of Johann Christian Wilhelm Beyer.36 The choice of neo-Baroque as the architectural language of the Empire related the present times to the past and glorified the period of Karl VI and Maria Theresia, as – for centuries – the more ancient parts of the Hofburg were never demolished or completely transformed, and were used as a mirror of prestige and ancient roots.
Compromise and Balance of Styles: Budapest Projects on a monumental urban scale took place until around 1873 in Budapest, formerly Pest-Buda, which gained the status of one of the two capitals of the Dual Monarchy after the Ausgleich of 1867, the compromise that split the Empire into two parts: Cisleitania and Transleitania. There was a need for new national symbols. Discussion about a national style in Hungary arose around the time of the construction of the seat of the Academy of Sciences, starting with the competition of 1861. The different solutions shown in the entries and suggested in the ensuing debate represented the divergent approaches of many architects: Gothic (Imre Henszlmann, Heinrich Ferstel), Renaissance (Miklós Ybl), Byzantine/
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Rundbogenstil (Antal Szkalnitzky) and Venetian (Zsigmond Ormós).37 The choice here was particularly difficult as a century and a half of Turkish rule had hindered the development of Western influences in architecture, and therefore no style could be obviously perceived as a real, national, Hungarian production. This complicated situation resulted in a search for a ‘national style’ that lasted decades, bringing results only at the very end of the century. The Academy was eventually built in 1862 by Friedrich August Stüler in the international neo-Renaissance style, but this solution was not sufficient to fulfil the complicated vision of the royal palace of the capital of Transleitania. The problem could be solved thanks to Historicism flourishing in all its manifestations in the late nineteenth century. Among many styles on offer in the 1880s was also Baroque, an import from Austria. The recent and convincing example of the above-mentioned Michaelertrakt in Vienna probably led the architects Miklós Ybl and Alajos Hauszmann to choose a late-Baroque language for the expansion of the Royal Palace in Budapest.38 It was a monumental complex ordered above all by the Hungarian Government and the Council of Public Works in the city, to express the new status of the municipality, rather than by the Habsburgs as was the case during the time of its original construction in 1749.39 Ybl designed the expansion toward the Krisztina wing, which was laid (from 1895) on monumental substructures, and Hauszmann was responsible for the 300-metre-long extension of the façade facing the Danube and Pest. The central role of the Habsburgs, underlined by the late-Baroque character of the façades; the ‘Viennese’ atlases of the main staircase in the Krisztina wing; and the decoration of the central building, surmounted by a large dome, were contrasted with neo-Romanesque and neo-Renaissance ‘period rooms’, which constituted a clear link to the pre-Habsburg history of Hungary and thereby an expression of the Hungarian national ideal. In a masterpiece of balance – another ‘compromise’, similar to the political one achieved in 1867 – in architectural details, the centrality of the ruling dynasty was shown by the Habsburg room in the middle of the palace, right under the large dome, while the ‘period rooms’ in other wings were consecrated to the Hungarian historical kings István and Matyás. This approach resulted in the whole complex forming an architecturally eclectic and striking match for the politically eclectic shape of the Habsburg state. The statue of King Matyás as hunter with dogs and animals, placed at the great fountain in the main courtyard, further strengthened the Hungarian narrative. To go into further detail, the solutions adopted in the ‘period rooms’ were clearly linked to the vocabulary of eclecticism: Romanesque for King István, Renaissance for King Matyás and late-Baroque for the Habsburg dynasty. Outside the palace, a more modern ‘experiment’ was set up.
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Hauszmann designed a little garden object called the Shepherd’s House for the Empress Sissi. This pavilion was quite modern in its shape, as it mixed reminiscences of Art Nouveau with local vernacular wooden structural elements and popular decorations. It was the route followed by other, less official architects, like Ödön Lechner. They tried to create a new modern Hungarian architecture – and as such their ideas could not acquire official status, being limited (here) to garden architecture. It is, nevertheless, worth mentioning that the person to whom the pavilion was dedicated played an important mediating role between the emperor and the authorities in Transleitania. The Hungarian Government, proud of the new Royal Palace, promoted it through a book written by the architect himself and published in 1912,40 which celebrated this architectural enterprise. Budapest had obtained an indispensable royal symbol appropriate to its capital rank. Royal palaces in the capital cities usually stood out in the townscape, but the one built in Budapest reached a peak: conceived as a real ‘crown of the city’, it became one of the symbols of the capital – an unavoidable urban landmark, fixed in observers’ memories also thanks to ‘official’ postcards. All such palaces tried to balance their international connotations, referring to the system of royal connections, with their role as symbols of each nation and its specific history. The Royal Palace of Budapest was a masterpiece of political acrobatics: promoted by Hungarians, it showed the legitimacy of the Habsburg central power but – at the same time – mirrored the history of the Hungarian kings of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. During the interwar period, the Royal Palace perfectly played the role of stage for Miklós Horthy, the regent whose power was ‘a neo-Baroque version of Fascism’, as stated by Sándor Márai in his memoirs.41 The symbolic value of some parts of the palace was still clearly recognized after the Second World War: the Habsburg room, though not damaged, was singled out for destruction while the fountain with King Matyás – representing the ‘right’, or national, part of history – was preserved and restored. The Royal Palace complex is currently undergoing a process of reconstruction due – again – to opposing political reasons: the Riding Hall, demolished in the 1950s, and the Guardhouse, demolished in the 1970s, have just been rebuilt. The transformation of the palace into a museum complex was a clear choice of the Hungarian Socialist state in order to cut all ties with the imperial ‘Baroque’ past,42 connecting architecturally the castle – where it was possible, thanks to excavations and restorations – to a more ‘manageable’ Middle Ages. The contemporary reconstructions – despite the undoubted need to heal unnecessary wounds – reflect an opposite type
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Figure 7.2. Alajos Hauszmann, Royal Palace, Budapest. The western forecourt with the façade of the Grand Ballroom, 1900, old postcard ante 1918. Photo by Károly Divald the younger. Wikimedia Commons, public domain. of legitimacy, trying to revive the past before the Communist period (see figure 7.2).
A ‘National’ But Not Simply Vernacular Approach: Bucharest Other, younger monarchies had to be satisfied with royal palaces created practically de novo. Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania had slowly freed themselves from Turkish domination, leading to the creation of new state capitals or to the need to bring existing ones up to European standards. Serbian independence and the resulting change in status of Belgrade were completely recognized only in 1878: the Obrenović dynasty almost immediately promoted the construction of a new complex of buildings, for residential and administrative functions, constituting the ‘royal heart’ of the capital.43 The site was the same as that of the existing, old residence of Prince Karađorđević since 1845. Between 1882 and 1884 – as the first step in an overall plan designed by Aleksandar Bugarski – the current Stari Dvor (Old Palace) was built based on a design by Bugarski: an eclectic neo-Renaissance and Neoclassical building with neo-Baroque interiors. In 1911,
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according to a design by Stojan Titelbah, construction began on the socalled Novi Dvor (New Palace). It was completed by Momir Korunović in 1921 with eclectic façades and interiors created by the French firm Bézier, by adopting Louis XIV, XV and XVI styles. The final part of the plan, the socalled Maršalat for the administrative services of the court (also designed by Korunović) was built in 1919–20. The palace of the National Assembly (1907–36) was built behind the Maršalat, completing this political and institutional heart of the capital.44 In Sofia, the Royal Palace was also built belatedly45 – after the Bulgarian city’s election as the capital in 1879. The Central-European, international style was used here. Its author was an Austrian architect, Viktor Rumpelmayer, designer of the Festetics Castle on Lake Balaton, who, between 1880 and 1884 transformed the pre-existing Turkish konak (mansion) according to eclectic forms in which the French mansard roofs along with the neo-Baroque and neo-Renaissance interiors are worth mentioning. Despite the subsequent expansion by Friedrich Grünanger (1894–96), the building still retains a modest scale inappropriate for the status of the Kingdom established in 1908: it is no coincidence that between 1912 and 1914, a competition was announced for a new royal palace – won by a Frenchman, Albert Drouet, but without concrete results. In Romania, the process of building a royal palace unfolded over fifty years. The country obtained a sort of autonomy from the Turks in 1859, and in 1881 Romania became a kingdom with the ascent to the throne of Carol I, already prince from 1866. The royal palace was built in eclectic forms46 – starting from 1881 by the French architect Paul Gottereau, assisted by the Romanian engineer Grigore Cerchez. Opulent neo-Mannerist decorations corresponded to the French mansard roofs of the building, a recurring element of European eclecticism. The fire of 1926 forced the reconstruction of the palace (Karel Liman, Nicolae Nenciulescu, 1927–35) in monumental forms linked to international Baroque and based on models such as the colonnade of the Louvre, the garden façade of Versailles and the Berlin Schloss. The Czech architect Karel Liman had already worked for the Romanian court between 1894 and 1914 in Sinaia, updating Peleş Castle and joining it to the complex of the villa of Pelişor.47 If the castle, built between 1875 and 1883 according to designs by Wilhelm von Doderer as an eclectic version of the German Renaissance, could be seen as an expression of the German origin of the new rulers of Romania (the HohenzollernSigmaringen), the villa also followed the model of timber-framed German houses, though with some Art Nouveau accents (like the interior of the Golden Room). Despite the strong German aspects, outside and inside, Peleş Castle in Sinaia was intended by the king to serve as the cradle of the nation: ‘I have built this castle as lasting proof that the Dynasty freely
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elected by the nation is deeply rooted in this beautiful country’.48 At the time, no contradiction was perceived between the international style of the building (built nota bene with the use of local materials) and a national narrative. Moreover the most important aim for the ‘new’ nation was to present itself as modern and devoid of any Turkish heritage. The eclecticism of the building was strengthened by the international atmosphere of the works; according to Elisabeth de Wied, Queen of Romania, in 1875, ‘the quiet valley of Sinaia has quite changed its character, and is now like a colony in the back woods, with wooden huts and wigwams. Twelve to fourteen languages are spoken on the place where the castle is being built’.49 From 1896 onwards, the palace of Cotroceni in Bucharest was also used as a royal residence. The building was reconstructed by Paul Gottereau between 1893 and 1896 in eclectic forms, whose sources of inspiration constituted an inextricable tangle. In this context, the north wing (added by Grigore Cerchez between 1915 and 1929) shows the will to promote – thanks also to the active role of the client, Queen Maria – a ‘national Romanticism’. It was a programmatically Romanian architecture, based mostly on the Brâncovenesc style from the eighteenth century but also on Orthodox religious architecture (most notably, the Curtea de Argeş Church, 1512–17)50 and – to a lesser extent – on vernacular elements, like loggias and verandas. The new wing had direct links to the foisor (1752) – a sort of loggia – of the Hurez Convent (1690–97). This style was named after the prince, Constantin Brâncoveanu, who ruled the principality of Wallachia between 1688 and 1714 during the Ottoman period; other important examples of civil and religious buildings in this vein are Potlogi Palace (1698, Dâmbovița County), Mogoşoaia Palace (1698–1702) and Stavropoleos Church (1724–30) – the last two both in Bucharest. These buildings mixed Byzantine, Ottoman and late-Renaissance elements, offering to an Italian eye a sort of Venetian taste. The first official stage for the Romanian national style was provided by the National Exhibition of Bucharest in 1906, and the most important architect, Ion Mincu, was the author of the 1886 Villa Lahovary in the capital. In 1925, Queen Maria asked Grigore Cerchez to create new rooms for Cotroceni – among them the White Hall, a mixture of elements taken from Wallachian and Moldavian religious architecture, along with Brâncovenesc-style carved stones. As stated by Shona Kallestrup, this approach belonged widely to the Orthodox Balkan area: ‘the Queen Maria style in Bucharest was the King Aleksandar style in Belgrade’.51 The Austrian firm working at Cotroceni was at the same time involved in the neo-Serbian rooms of Dedinje Palace in Belgrade (1924–9)52 for the king of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenians. After the First World War, Greater Romania and the new kingdom ruled by Serbia, both born partly from the ashes of the Habsburg Empire, had similar needs of
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representation and similar Orthodox references. The Romanian national style was useful after 1920, when Greater Romania had to strengthen its image and appeal to the inhabitants of the new territories joined to the old core, the Regat. Orthodox churches and neo-Brâncovenesc architecture spread all over the new state, from Transylvania to Bukovina.
Conclusions This overview concerning the royal palaces of selected European countries – many of them of recent origin, built during a time in which Historicism offered a wide range of choices – shows how they were used to match new national narratives. For these great urban buildings from the second half of the nineteenth century, symbols of royal power, a new international language of eclecticism, valid in every place in Europe, was developed. In the early case of Turin, where only artworks could express the new national function of the palace, the French Mannerism chosen for the new façade shows a change of culture rather than of the political reality, which was due to the national style being only marginally mentioned in the discourse. On the contrary, the projects for Berlin and the works carried out in Vienna and Budapest focused on an appropriate choice of style that could embody the nation and its history: German Renaissance in Berlin; late Baroque in Vienna and Budapest. In Vienna, it did not have to show the specific character of the nations comprising the Empire, because of the supranational rank of the capital. On the contrary, in Budapest the government aimed at balancing fidelity to Vienna with the demands of patriotic affirmation – displaying symbols of Hungarian history, thanks to Renaissance and Romanesque styles. We have to underline the fact that despite the ethnic mosaic of Transleitania, the little Shepherd’s House in the garden abounded in Hungarian folk-art motifs.53 In Bucharest, both the first and the second main royal palace followed the features of the international architecture – mainly aiming to look modern and far removed from Turkish models. The wave of ‘national’ architecture was coupled with an affirmation of ‘modern’ architecture, and we can identify this approach immediately before and after the First World War in countries where a new political order brought a wider range of needs of representation by means of architecture. Such is the case, for example, with Cotroceni Palace. Different cultures and timelines within the complex framework of a century of architectural development make it difficult to develop a general conclusion. In any case, we can state that in the context of Historicism it was a matter of which official historical ‘style’ was useful for strengthening the rank and value of the state within
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the international community; after the war, it was a matter of knowledge of the local architectural tradition and folk art as roots of a new architectural language.54 Paolo Cornaglia is Associate Professor of History of Architecture at the Turin Polytechnic, DAD. He has a PhD in the History of Cultural Heritage (Turin Polytechnic, 1998). Since 2016, he has been a member of the Scientific Board of the Research Centre of the Royal Residences of the House of Savoy (Venaria Reale). He has published several articles and books about his main research topics (historical gardens, royal residences, architecture in Central Europe), such as ‘From Czernowitz to Chernivtsi by Cernăuți: A Multicultural Townscape as Heritage of a Plural Society’ (in Klaus Tragbar, Volker Ziegler, eds, Planen und Bauen im Grenzraum / Planning and Building in Border Regions. Berlin-München: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2019, 65–82). NOTES 1. Fasoli, 1859–1864. ‘opere straordinarie’. Paris was often a reference: for the new public park of Valentino, in 1860, the municipality requested the contribution of Jean-Pierre Barillet Deschamps, collaborator in Paris of Adolphe Alphand (Roggero Bardelli, ‘Modelli per una capitale’). 2. On the public architecture for the unified Italian nation: Mangone and Tampieri, Architettare l’Unità. 3. Lenza, ‘Stile nazionale e identità regionali’. 4. Boito, Architettura del Medioevo. In the northern Italian architectural debate, the religious buildings of Lombardy were intended as ‘essenza della lingua italiana’, as shown by the works of Edoardo Arborio Mella and Camillo Boito (Dellapiana, ‘Il mito del Medioevo’). 5. Gravagnuolo, ‘Stile nazionale e neorinascimento’. 6. A straight avenue (rettifilo) traced from the new railway station to the core of the city, cutting through the ancient urban fabric according to the methods of Parisian planner Haussmann. 7. Mazzucchetti, Scalo Ferroviario. 8. Hitchcock, Architecture, 204. 9. Belli, ‘La Stazione Centrale di Bologna’. 10. Godoli, ‘L’architettura delle ferrovie in Italia’. On railway stations and national architecture in Italy, see also Schram, Railways; Morgera, ‘Identità e immagine’. 11. Cerri, Palazzo Carignano, 110–17. 12. ‘Lombard style’. Cerri, Palazzo Carignano, 111. B., ‘Nuova aula della Camera dei Deputati’, (Torino, Biblioteca Storica della Provincia, PER.b. 14). 13. Like, for instance, the Captain Miša building in Belgrade ( Jan Nevole, 1863). 14. Cerri, Palazzo Carignano, 118–33.
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15. Ferrante, ‘L’Architettura’, 677. Domenico Ferri was a scenery and interior designer who had worked at the Italian Theatre in Paris: Cornaglia, ‘Eclettismo di Corte’. 16. Godoli, ‘L’architettura delle ferrovie in Italia’. 17. Prime Minister Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, declared – already in 1861 – Turin to be a temporary capital, waiting on Rome as the ‘natural’ capital of Italy (Fasoli, 1859–1864. ‘opere straordinarie’, 25). 18. Gianasso, Per l’immagine dello Stato, 173. 19. Archivio di Stato di Torino (hereinafter, ‘AST’), Casa di Sua Maestà (hereinafter, ‘Casa di S.M.’), folder 4998. 20. AST, Casa di S.M., folders from 5155 to 5160, from 6375 to 6376, contracts for works from 1862 to 1866. 21. AST, Casa di S.M., folder 5159, 1864, contracts for the busts of Cristoforo Colombo, Michelangelo, Galileo Galilei, Dante; folder 6375, 1865, contracts with the sculptors Pietro Della Vedova (Antonio Canova’s bust) and Vincenzo Giani (Marco Polo’s bust). Today, all these artworks are displayed in the entrance hall of the Castle of Moncalieri: the palace stopped playing an ‘Italian’ role almost immediately after completion and there was no reason to have the sculptures of Dante, Marco Polo and the other great Italians at the entrance to the building. 22. Rooted both in Savoy and Piedmont, from 1563 the dynasty began looking at Italy as the framework in which to operate. The capital was fixed in Turin and all official documents had to be written in Italian. Savoy and Nice – no longer relevant for the new Italian state – were given to France in 1860, thanks to the Treaty of Plombières (1858). On the dynasty: Barberis, I Savoia. 23. Executed by Gabriele Capello (AST, Casa di S.M., folder 2853, fasc. 1), now displayed on the first floor of the royal palace. 24. Cornaglia, ‘Il trionfo dell’Eclettismo’, 47–48. 25. Torricella, Torino, 201. 26. Giovanni Castellazzi published his professor’s façade drawings in Fabbriche Moderne. He was a clear supporter of the Renaissance solution, very often the architectural ‘language’ used for military purposes in Piedmont and Italy after unification. 27. San Martino, ‘Stramucci, Morini, Dellera’. 28. On the Manica Nuova, see Mennea, ‘Il Palazzo Reale’; Corrado and San Martino, ‘Sul crinale dei due secoli’; Longhi and Morgantini, ‘La Manica Nuova di Palazzo Reale’. 29. On architecture in Central Europe see Moravánszky, Competing Visions; Alofsin, When Buildings Speak. 30. For this part, see Cornaglia, ‘Il trionfo dell’Eclettismo’. 31. For the Berlin Schloss, see Nicolai, ‘Architettura e sviluppo urbano’; Hinterkeuser, Das Berliner Schloss. More on the Berlin Schloss in Douglas Klahr’s chapter in this volume. 32. Herrmann, Gottfried Semper; Plassmeyer, ‘Architecture au XIXe siècle’; Telesko, Die Wiener Hofburg; Telesko, ‘The Vienna Hofburg’; Kurdiovsky et al., ‘Legitimacy’; Lorenz and Mader-Kratky, Die Wiener Hofburg. 33. Kurdiovsky et al., ‘Legitimacy’, 128.
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34. The unexecuted drawings by Bernini for the ‘third project’ of the Louvre were followed by Zuccalli designing the castle of Schleissheim near Munich (1701) with the same courtyard with four staircases. The main entrance of the wing, designed by Perrault, was replicated in the central part of the Arsenal built by Johann Arnold Nering in Berlin in 1695. The curved façade of the unexecuted first project was adopted by Guarino Guarini in his Carignano Palace (Turin, 1679). 35. Kurdiovsky et al., ‘Legitimacy’, 127. 36. Vienna, Albertina (ASA, Az. Allgemeinen 6.097). 37. Sisa, ‘The Palace of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’; Sisa, ‘The Question of the Architectural Style’. 38. For the Royal Palace in Budapest, see Farbaky, ‘Le Palais Royal de Buda’; Gerle, Hauszmann Alajos, 191–263; Gerle, Ybl Miklós, 168–79; Cornaglia, Budapest, 21–40. 39. ‘a palace … in a place where the court does not want to and cannot reside’, Maria Theresia stated while authorizing him. See Farbaky, ‘Le Palais Royal de Buda’, 54. 40. Hauszmann, Le Château Royal de Hongrie. 41. Márai, Volevo tacere, 43. 42. Kollányi, Az újjáépült budavári palota. 43. Milan, ‘Residenze di corte tra XIX e XX secolo’. 44. Conley, ‘Belgrade’. 45. Ibid. 46. Kallestrup, ‘Cradle of the Nation?’. 47. For the castle of Sinaia, an eclectic masterwork, see Bachelin, Castel-Pelesch. 48. Kallestrup, ‘Cradle of the Nation?’, 306. 49. Stackelberg, The life of Carmen Sylva, 194–5. 50. Analysed in the chapter by Anda-Lucia Spânu in this volume. 51. Kallestrup, ‘Cradle of the Nation?’, 311; Popescu, Le Style National Roumain, 180–3. 52. According to the designs of Živojin Nikolić and Nikolay Krassnoff. See www.royalfamily.org/palaces/the-royal-palace. 53. Alföldy, ‘A Budai Királyi Várkert az újkorban’, 292. 54. Gordon Bowe, Art and the National Dream; Howard, Art Nouveau; Andrieux et al., Idée nationale et architecture.
Bibliography Alföldy, Gábor. ‘A Budai Királyi Várkert az újkorban’ [The Royal Palace Gardens in Modern Times], in Tanulmányok Budapest Múltjából [Studies from the Past of Budapest], XXIX. Budapest: Budapesti Történeti Múzeum, 2001, 267–92. Alofsin, Anthony. When Buildings Speak: Architecture as Language in the Habsburg Empire and its Aftermath, 1867–1933. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Andrieux, Jean-Yves, Fabienne Chevallier and Anja Kervanto Nevanlinna (eds). Idée nationale et architecture en Europe 1860–1919: Finlande, Hongrie, Roumanie, Catalogne [National Idea and Architecture in Europe 1860–1919: Finland, Hungary, Romania, Catalonia]. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006.
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B., G. ‘Nuova aula della Camera dei Deputati’ [New Hall of the Chamber of Deputies]. Mondo Illustrato IV 1861 (8), 120–22. Bachelin, Leo. Castel-Pelesch: Le Château royal de Sinaia [Castel-Pelesch: The Sinaia Royal Palace]. Paris: Firmin Didot et C.ie, 1893. Barberis, Walter. I Savoia. I secoli d’oro di una dinastia europea [The Savoy: The Golden Ages of a European Dynasty]. Turin: Einaudi, 2007. Belli, Gemma. ‘La Stazione Centrale di Bologna’ [The Bologna Central Station], in Fabio Mangone and Maria Grazia Tampieri (eds), Architettare l’Unità. Architettura e istituzioni nelle città della nuova Italia 1861–1911 [Planning of Unity: Architecture and Institutions in the Cities of the New Italy 1861–1911]. Naples: Paparo Edizioni, 2011, 377–81. Boito, Camillo. Architettura del Medioevo in Italia [Architecture of the Middle Ages in Italy]. Milan: Hoepli, 1880. Castellazzi, Giovanni. Fabbriche Moderne inventate da Carlo Promis … [Modern Factories Invented by Carlo Promis]. Turin: Bocca, 1871. Cerri, Maria Grazia. Palazzo Carignano. Tre secoli di idee, progetti e realizzazioni [Palazzo Carignano: Three Centuries of Ideas, Projects and Realizations]. Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 1990. Conley, Tanja. ‘Belgrade’, in Tanja Conley and Emily Makaš (eds), Capital Cities in the Aftermath of the Empires: Planning in Central and Southeastern Europe. London and New York: Routledge, 2010, 61–74. Cornaglia, Paolo. ‘Eclettismo di Corte: l’appartamento di Vittorio Emanuele II a Moncalieri fra neobarocco e Secondo Impero’ [Court Eclecticism: the Apartment of Vittorio Emanuele II in Moncalieri between the Neo-Baroque and the Second Empire]. Bollettino della Società piemontese di Archeologia e Belle Arti 1996 (48), 345–62. . Budapest. Architettura, città e giardini tra XIX e XX secolo [Budapest: Architecture, Cities and Gardens Between the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries]. Turin: Celid, 2013. . ‘Il trionfo dell’Eclettismo nelle residenze di corte in Europa, 1860–1920’ [The Triumph of Eclecticism in the Court Residences in Europe, 1860–1920], in Silvia Ghisotti and Andrea Merlotti (eds), Dalle regge d’Italia. Tesori e simboli della regalità sabauda [From the Palaces of Italy: Treasures and Symbols of Savoy Royalty]. Genoa: Sagep, 2017, 43–49. Corrado, Fabrizio and Paolo San Martino. ‘Sul crinale dei due secoli. Emilio Stramucci e il suo cantiere nel Palazzo Reale di Torino, nella Manica Nuova di Torino e in altre residenze di Umberto I e Margherita’ [On the Ridge of the Two Centuries: Emilio Stramucci and His Works in the Royal Palace of Turin, in the Manica Nuova of Turin and in Other Residences of Umberto I and Margherita], in Bruno Signorelli and Paolo Uscello (eds), Torino 1863–1963. Architettura, arte e urbanistica [Turin 1863–1963. Architecture, Art and Urban Planning]. Turin: S.P.A.B.A., 2002, 117–44. Dellapiana, Elena. ‘Il mito del Medioevo’ [The Myth of the Middle Ages], in Amerigo Restucci (ed.), Storia dell’architettura italiana. L’Ottocento [History of Italian Architecture. The Nineteenth Century]. Milan: Electa, 2005, 400–21.
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Farbaky, Péter. ‘Le Palais Royal de Buda du XVIIIe siècle à 1945’ [The Royal Palace of Buda from the Eighteenth Century to 1945], in Un Château pour un Royaume [A Castle for a Kingdom]. Paris: Paris Musées, 2001, 54–58. Fasoli, Vilma. 1859–1864. ‘opere straordinarie’ per l’abbellimento di Torino capitale [1859–1864. ‘Extraordinary Works’ for the Embellishment of Turin Capital]. Turin: Archivio Storico della Città di Torino, 2004. Ferrante, Giovanni Battista. ‘L’Architettura’ [The Architecture], in Torino. Turin: Roux & Favale, 1880, 631–86. Gerle, János. Hauszmann Alajos. Budapest: Holnap Kiadó, 2002. . Ybl Miklós. Budapest: Holnap Kiadó, 2002. Gianasso, Elena. Per l’immagine dello Stato. Sperimentazioni neobarocche a Torino. Castello del Valentino e Palazzo Carignano [The Image of the State: Neo-Baroque Experiments in Turin. Valentino Castle and Palazzo Carignano]. Turin: Centro Studi Piemontesi, 2018. Godoli, Ezio. ‘L’architettura delle ferrovie in Italia’ [Railway Architecture in Italy], in Fabio Mangone and Maria Grazia Tampieri (eds), Architettare l’Unità. Architettura e istituzioni nelle città della nuova Italia 1861–1911 [Planning of Unity: Architecture and Institutions in the Cities of the New Italy 1861–1911]. Naples: Paparo Edizioni, 2011, 381–87. Gordon Bowe, Nicola. Art and the National Dream: The Search for Vernacular Expression in Turn of the Century Design. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993. Gravagnuolo, Benedetto. ‘Stile nazionale e neorinascimento’ [National Style and neoRenaissance], in Fabio Mangone and Maria Grazia Tampieri (eds), Architettare l’Unità. Architettura e istituzioni nelle città della nuova Italia 1861–1911 [Planning of Unity: Architecture and Institutions in the Cities of the New Italy 1861–1911]. Naples: Paparo Edizioni, 2011, 232–42. Hauszmann, Alajos. Le Château Royal de Hongrie [The Royal Castle of Hungary]. Budapest: Hornyánszky, 1912. Herrmann, Wolfgang. Gottfried Semper. Architettura e teoria [Gottfried Semper. Architecture and Theory]. Milan: Electa, 1990. Hinterkeuser, Guido. Das Berliner Schloss [The Berlin Castle]. Berlin: Nicolai Verlag, 2003. Hitchcock, Henry-Russell. Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. London: Penguin Books, 1958. Howard, Jeremy. Art Nouveau: International and National Styles in Europe. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996. Kallestrup, Shona. ‘Cradle of the Nation? National Style Debates and Romanian Royal Palace Design’, in Jean-Yves Andrieux, Fabienne Chevallier and Anja Kervanto Nevanlinna (eds), Idée nationale et architecture en Europe 1860–1919: Finlande, Hongrie, Roumanie, Catalogne [National Idea and Architecture in Europe 1860– 1919: Finland, Hungary, Romania, Catalonia]. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006, 303–17. Kollányi, Béla. Az újjáépült budavári palota [The Rebuilt Buda Castle]. Budapest: Muszaky Könyvkiadó, 1990. Kurdiovsky, Richard, Günther Buchinger, Renate Holzschuh-Hofer, Markus Jeitler, Herbert Karner, Anna Mader-Kratky, Paul Mitchell, Anna Stuhlpfarrer and Werner Telesko. ‘Legitimacy through History and Architecture: The Vienna Hofburg as
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Dynastic Hub and Seat of Government between Tradition and Innovation’. Court Historian 2015, 20 (2), 109–36. Lenza, Cettina. ‘Stile nazionale e identità regionali’ [National style and Regional Identities], in Fabio Mangone and Maria Grazia Tampieri (eds), Architettare l’Unità. Architettura e istituzioni nelle città della nuova Italia 1861–1911 [Planning of Unity: Architecture and Institutions in the Cities of the New Italy 1861–1911]. Naples: Paparo Edizioni, 2011, 83–99. Longhi, Andrea and Filippo Morgantini. ‘La Manica Nuova di Palazzo Reale. Un edificio nel rinnovamento urbano e nel delicato rapporto con gli insediamenti antichi’ [The Manica Nuova of the Royal Palace: A Building in Urban Renewal and in the Delicate Relationship with the Ancient Settlements], in Paola Astrua and Carla Enrica Spantigati (eds), La Galleria Sabauda di Torino. Dal Collegio dei Nobili alla Manica Nuova di Palazzo Reale [The Galleria Sabauda in Turin: From the Collegio dei Nobili to the Manica Nuova of the Royal Palace]. Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 2012, 60–89. Lorenz, Hellmut and Anna Mader-Kratky. Die Wiener Hofburg 1705–1835 [The Vienna Hofburg 1705–1835]. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2016. Mangone, Fabio and Maria Grazia Tampieri (eds). Architettare l’Unità. Architettura e istituzioni nelle città della nuova Italia 1861–1911 [Planning of Unity: Architecture and Institutions in the Cities of the New Italy 1861–1911]. Naples: Paparo Edizioni, 2011. Márai, Sándor. Volevo tacere [I Wanted to be Silent]. Milan: Adelphi, 2018. Mazzucchetti Alessandro. Scalo Ferroviario eretto in Torino su disegno dell’ingegnere Alessandro Mazzucchetti [Railway Yard Erected in Turin Based on a Design by the Engineer Alessandro Mazzucchetti]. Turin: Civelli, 1867. Mennea, Maria Grazia. ‘Il Palazzo Reale tra Ottocento e Novecento’ [The Royal Palace between the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries], in Amici di Palazzo Reale (eds), Il Palazzo Reale di Torino nelle guide della città [The Royal Palace of Turin in the City Guides]. Turin: Celid, 1999, 33–52. Milan, Alessandro. ‘Residenze di corte tra XIX e XX secolo. Storia e modernità. Il Palazzo Reale di Torino e il contesto europeo’ [Court Residences between the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: History and Modernity. The Royal Palace of Turin and the European Context]. Master’s degree dissertation, Turin Polytechnic, 2013–14. Moravánszky, Ákos. Competing Visions: Aesthetic Invention and Social Imagination in Central European Architecture, 1867–1918. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. Morgera, Alessandro. ‘Identità e immagine. L’architettura delle stazioni nelle città di frontiera: Bolzano, Trento e Trieste’ [Identity and Image: The Architecture of the Stations in the Border Cities: Bolzano, Trento and Trieste]. La Panarie 2012, 45 (173), 69–74. Nicolai, Bernd. ‘Architettura e sviluppo urbano’ [Architecture and Urban Development], in Gert Streidt and Peter Feierabend (eds), Prussia. Arte e architettura [Prussia. Art and Architecture]. Cologne: Könemann, 2001, 416–55. Plassmeyer, Peter. ‘Architecture au XIXe siècle: Du Néoclassicisme à l’ère du Ring’ [Architecture in the Nineteenth Century: From Neoclassicism to the Ring Age], in Rolf Toman (ed.), Vienne: Art e Architecture [Vienna: Art and Architecture]. Cologne: Könemann, 1999, 144–215.
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Popescu, Carmen. Le Style National Roumain: Construire une nation à travers l’architecture [The Romanian National Style: Building a Nation Through Architecture]. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2004. Roggero Bardelli, Costanza, ‘Modelli per una capitale europea’ [Models for the European Capital], in Vera Comoli Mandracci and Rosanna Roccia (eds), Torino città di loisir [Turin, City of Leisure]. Turin: Archivio Storico della città di Torino, 1996, 73–125. San Martino, Paolo. ‘Stramucci, Morini, Dellera e i mobili “in stile” negli arredi di Palazzo Reale di Torino 1880–1890’ [Stramucci, Morini, Dellera and the Period Furniture in the Furnishings of the Royal Palace of Turin 1880–1890], in Stefania de Blasi (ed.), Genio e Maestria. Mobili ed ebanisti alla corte sabauda tra Settecento e Ottocento [Genius and Mastery. Furniture and Cabinet Makers at the Savoyard Court between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries]. Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 2018, 102–7. Schram, Albert. Railways and the Formation of the Italian State in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Sisa, József. ‘The Palace of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’, in József Sisa (ed.), Motherland and Progress: Hungarian Architecture and Design 1800–1900. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2016, 307–14. . ‘The Question of the Architectural Style’, in József Sisa (ed.), Motherland and Progress: Hungarian Architecture and Design 1800–1900. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2016, 431–41. Stackelberg, Natalie. The Life of Carmen Sylva (Queen of Roumania), transl. Baroness Deichmann. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1890. Telesko, Werner. Die Wiener Hofburg 1835–1918 [The Vienna Hofburg 1835–1918]. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2012. . ‘The Vienna Hofburg Between 1835 and 1918: A Residence in the Conflicting Fields of Arts, Politics, and Representation’. Austrian History Yearbook 2013 (44), 37–61. Torricella, Giuseppe. Torino e le sue vie illustrate con cenni storici per Giuseppe Torricella [Turin and Its Streets Illustrated with Historical Notes for Giuseppe Torricella]. Turin: Borgarelli, 1868.
8 CHAPTER 8 Renaissance Architecture and the Search for the Hungarian National Style in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Gábor György Papp
Introduction Nineteenth-century thought was characterized by a historical sentiment and by history in the singular. The end of the eighteenth century saw the emergence of a process later described by Koselleck as a changed collective perception of time and temporality. Time was no longer solely perceived as the framework within which the events of history play out; instead, it gained a historical quality. In this context, history does not simply run parallel to the passing of time – it is also subject to it. The latter presumes a new way of viewing history – namely, history in the singular (Kollektivsingular).1 In addition to this, evolving nation states created a new frame of reference for the previously mentioned historical sentiment.2 These two phenomena provided the basis for ventures to establish national art and, in particular, national architecture. In Central Europe, efforts to create national architecture first appeared during the second third of the nineteenth century.3 At this time, national characteristics were found in architectural traits that were determined by the climate, building materials and by customary practices on one hand, and by individuality and artistic talent on the other. Later, national characteristics were sought in historical styles. This resulted in different nations striving to find their own distinctive, individual and location-specific architectural features in widespread and inherently very similar historical forms. The national past, primarily the most important
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or glorious periods of a national history, provided the basis for assigning specific historical styles as representative of a particular nation. Historical buildings exemplifying national history began to be studied as possible sources of inspiration for the creation of national architecture. In what follows, I will examine the question of how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century North-Hungarian Renaissance architecture provided a model for the creation of national architecture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.4 Much like the reigns of King Charles IV for the Czechs, and Casimir and the Jagiellons for the Poles, the reign of Louis the Great (1342–82) and Sigismund of Luxembourg (1387–1437) came to express national identity for the Hungarians. The late Middle Ages were seen as the last glorious period of the independent Kingdom of Hungary before it was eventually included in the Habsburg Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
In Search of a Style From the 1860s onward, much was written about the national nature of the Gothic in Hungary. This coincided with the continuously growing number of restorations of historic monuments. Guidance on this was given by Imre Henszlmann, a key figure in the field of art history and archaeology in Hungary in the nineteenth century, as well as the founder of the Department of Art History at the university in Budapest in 1872. In the 1860 design competition for the palace of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, he argued for choosing Gothic as, at once, a modern and a national style. His reasoning was that the Gothic style was appropriate for different buildings because of its resilience and freedom in composition, proportion and grouping.5 Furthermore, he held that it was the most suitable style for a building of great symbolic value – especially one that was to be funded by national public donations – saying that ‘the golden ages of our national history have gone hand in hand with the Gothic style’.6 His idea that Hungarian national public buildings should be constructed in this style was not fully supported by all of his contemporaries, and the debates that repeatedly arose and subsided led to no consensus about the ideal form of national architecture.7 In the 1880s, the attention of experts seeking historical models – including historians, archaeologists and art lovers – was seized by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Renaissance architecture. Nevertheless, neither the Gothic nor the Renaissance became a generally accepted norm of national style. In the last third of the nineteenth century, the style of the majority of Historicist buildings was selected according to their types, the needs of
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clients and proven practices. Meanwhile, although treatises questioning the nature of and the need for national architecture – and articles wishing for its creation – were published, they provoked little response. The issue of national character was raised in the case of public buildings that carried symbolical value. The 1884 design competition for the House of Parliament in Budapest is an ideal example of this phenomenon.8 However, in most such cases both the patrons and the architects sought to express national character by means of sculptural and pictorial decorations as well as ornaments. World’s and national fairs and exhibitions, among them the 1873 Vienna and 1878 Paris World’s Exhibitions, provided excellent opportunities for experimenting with architectural forms that could adequately express and promote the self-image of a country.9 The fact that in Paris, a csárda (a traditional inn from the Hungarian Great Plain) was erected next to the Hungarian Pavilion shows that the representation of national characteristics in architecture did not necessarily coincide with historical styles. A further event that served as an occasion to present both the current achievements of the national economy and the country’s past to foreign and domestic audiences was the 1896 celebration of the millennium of the arrival of the Magyar tribes in the Carpathian Basin.10 The latest products of Hungarian industry were displayed in the various pavilions in the contemporary section, whilst a separate exhibition area was set aside to show the country’s history and culture. In the latter, an important element of the composition was presenting the cultural history of the Hungarian nation in chronological order. The artefacts of each period were shown in architectural replicas or buildings composed of specific wings or parts (portals etc.) of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque edifices. Thus, the architectural setting itself appeared as a display item for visitors. The exhibition was completed with an ‘ethnographic village’ where the diversity of Hungarian vernacular architecture was showcased. This complex, regarded as an authentic and genuine illustration of the variety of rural architecture in the country, aroused much interest among both Hungarian and foreign critics and scholars. Additionally, at this exhibition the architectural monuments and their details were shown as if on the pages of a picture book. Instead of being used as a vehicle for boosting national identity, they had, rather, the character of simple quotations from either historical or peasant architecture. As such, they cannot be seen as a material suitable for creating a national architectural style. Nevertheless, it was such historic vernacular architecture that transpired to be the source of it at the end of the nineteenth century. Later, at the turn of the century, the vernacular became a root of an ahistorical national architecture. The leading figure of this architectural trend was the Hungarian architect Ödön Lechner. Lechner’s approach was
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fundamentally determined by Gottfried Semper’s theory of ornamentation, according to which the vernacular and peasant styles preserved some kind of primeval forms for contemporary architecture and, not incidentally, created the opportunity to harmonize new architectural ideas with the issues of modern architecture. In addition, Lechner was also influenced by the Englishman John Ruskin, who contrasted his praise for those cultivating handicrafts and cottage industries and the master carvers with the industrial activities in modern European cities. Lechner’s architecture succeeded in being so innovative and, at the same time, having a large impact because he was able to show a different direction for the creation of a national architecture at a time when historical forms had become empty. For this, he also needed to be able to break away stylistically from the historical model that resolved the variety of architectural tasks by utilizing the elements of historical styles befitting them.11
Beyond the Gothic Historicist architects designing in styles from the past repeatedly strove to extract the most authentic, ‘most national’ forms from the historic material or its local variations. This endeavour, however, can more often be seen in theoretical writings than in the practice of modern urban architecture. Due to their proportions, the façades of a large number of medieval buildings that constituted the canon of Hungarian architectural history could not be integrated into the modern urban fabric. Moreover, the imitation of Gothic façades and vaulted interiors multiplied the construction costs. Therefore, architects started to seek out historical sources that could be reconciled with the possibilities and needs of the modern urban space. At the same time, the range of buildings that were deemed part of the national heritage was expanded in art historiography from the 1880s by the inclusion of later periods on the list. Under these conditions, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century North-Hungarian Renaissance architecture played a special role in the process of the creation of a self-image and the search for a national architecture. The history of the different regions of Hungary evolved differently in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a result of the Ottoman conquest. The country was divided into three parts: the central part under Ottoman rule was governed by the Turkish sultan; the Habsburgs controlled Transdanubia and North Hungary; while Transylvania was ruled by princes from the Szapolyai, Bethlen, Báthory, Rákóczi and Apafi families. The architecture in the three regions also took different paths. Ultimately, it
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was North-Hungarian Renaissance architecture that gained the upper hand by the time of nineteenth-century art historiography in this comparison. In the 1880s, when the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century architecture of North Hungary was rediscovered as a potential basis for a national architectural style, Budapest was undergoing a rapid transformation from a market city of local significance to a major Central-European metropolis. The increased volume of construction gave rise to the almost unified neo-Renaissance urban landscape that still defines the style of the city today. In the urban architecture of Historicism, the Italian Renaissance style was applied throughout nineteenth-century Europe as a reference to the economically and politically independent fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Italian cities.12 In addition to Budapest, the neo-Renaissance defined, and in many cases still defines, the profiles of other Central European cities. Vienna and Prague along with other cities of Austria-Hungary such as Lviv, Chernivtsi and Zagreb illustrate this trend. Therefore, it was no accident that the Hungarian architects attempting to create a national architectural style from historical forms found inspirational models in the North-Hungarian Renaissance. It was a style that could be easily incorporated into the neo-Renaissance urban landscape. The entire process of the inclusion of the style in question and the historical objects from the northern region as the national heritage and the style of the future was in line with a similar process of establishing the German Renaissance as the leading national vehicle of identity from the 1860s onwards, in the wake of Jacob Burckhardt.13 Similarly, the historic buildings of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century North-Hungarian architecture began to appear in Hungarian art historiography shortly after the publication of the first nineteenth-century compilations of Renaissance art. Jacob Burckhardt’s Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (1860) was published in Hungarian in 1895–96, and the Hungarian translation of John Addington Symonds’s summary Renaissance in Italy (1875–81) was published in a series from 1881 to 1886.14 The acknowledgment of the historical significance of the architecture in question resulted from and was followed by surveys of historic buildings, proposals for restorations and renovations. It is important to note that, while various examples of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century North-Hungarian Renaissance architecture became part of the Hungarian national architectural canon in the nineteenth century, the remnants of the fifteenth-century Hungarian Renaissance architecture built during the reign of Matyás I did not become the reference for a national style. The ‘Matyás Renaissance’ was only adopted as part of national art after the excavations at Visegrád, Buda and Esztergom from the second quarter of the twentieth century onwards.15 This fact points
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to the significance of the relationship between archaeological activity and art-historical discourse.
Architectural Narratives In the following paragraphs, I will focus on the ways in which NorthHungarian Renaissance architecture and its local and Central-European connections were represented in pre-First World War Hungarian art historiography. Imre Henszlmann (1813–88), in his work on the history of architecture, highlighted the high artistic quality of fifteenth-century Renaissance architecture in Hungary and correctly recognized the rather restrictive courtly nature of the style – as well as the fact that Matyás also commissioned buildings in a late Gothic style.16 In another publication, he discussed three sixteenth-century Renaissance town houses known as the Thurzó houses in Lőcse (today Levoča, Slovakia) in the context of an additional group of North-Hungarian buildings: further town houses, castles and towers from the former counties of Sáros and Szepes.17 He identified three characteristic features of this group: the frequent use of an arcade on the ground floor of residential properties, the flatness of the section beneath the cornice on the façade, and the rich mouldings and sgraffito decoration on the frieze and crenellations. He found that these features originated in the Italian Renaissance and that they had been transmitted to Hungary through South-Polish regions – most notably, through Krakow.18 The architect Béla Ney (1843–1920), writing about the 1878 Paris World’s Exhibition, also discussed the architecture of Northern Hungary. Ney was dissatisfied with the presentation of Hungarian architecture in Paris. He discussed the possibilities of the renewal and modernization of Hungarian architecture, and the necessity of its appropriate presentation abroad. He formulated his thoughts around three interconnected points. Firstly, he drew attention to the inspirational effects that the motifs that became common as a result of the institutionalized exploration of medieval buildings could have on current architecture. At the same time, he warned against strict replicas and the artificial creation of styles. His second main point was that rather than copying multiple styles, the building as a whole had to carry a local, original and thus distinctive character. He said that Hungarian architecture had the potential to become nation-specific due to special combinations of architectural elements. He cited as examples the arcaded manor houses that became common in Transdanubia and Transylvania from the eighteenth century onwards, as well as the characteristic motifs of the buildings in the towns of Northern Hungary from the
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sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He believed that the adaptation of these two historic building types could serve as a template to create architecture better suited to Hungarian customs and lifestyles. Lastly, Ney put the endeavour towards the creation of a national architecture in an international context. He thought that creating a distinct architectural language could contribute to the representation of the country as an independent national entity.19 Cataloguing historic buildings (monument-survey works in Kassa and Bártfa: today, Košice and Bardejov in Slovakia) played a significant role in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century architecture becoming known to a wider public of professionals.20 Unquestionably, Henszlmann’s contemporary, Viktor Myskovszky (1838–1909) from Bártfa, played an important part in this enterprise. From the late 1870s onwards, he toured the towns of Northern Hungary and prepared descriptions of their historic buildings. The list included many examples of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century architecture. As an advocate of Renaissance architecture, he wrote the first Hungarian summary of the period in 1881.21 In this piece, he presented a selection of buildings in Northern Hungary that he deemed exemplary of the style, which he described as a local, ‘national’ variation of the Italian Renaissance. Contrary to Henszlmann, Myskovszky did not take into consideration any potential relationships with Polish Renaissance architecture.22 He attributed the earliest instances of Hungarian Northern Renaissance architecture to Italian stonemasons, from whose example a local variant of the structures had developed and gone on to become widespread during the seventeenth century. He devoted an in-depth study of the characteristic features of the style that he recognized in the parapet-like, decorative fronts articulated by semicircular niches in the façades and the crenellations surmounting the cornices. Myskovszky also discussed the sgraffito decoration of the façades, comparing their floral motifs with those of the traditional regional clothing of the period. The characteristic features described by Myskovszky along with the terminology that he applied soon became widely accepted by scholars. Gyula Pasteiner (1846–1924), the second professor of Art History in Budapest, hinted in his works at Poland (as did Henszlmann), which, for him as well, were the source of the architecture in question. He stated, ‘It might have appeared in Poland first, but this type of crenellation soon became a prominent, indeed inescapable part of new buildings in Sáros and Szepes counties; in addition to castles and townhouses, it also appeared on church towers and belfries. The stylistic variety of these crenellations was a testimony to the exceptional creativity of the architects who worked in these two counties.’23
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In his 1898 book, Pasteiner mentioned the Sukiennice (Cloth Hall) in Krakow, surmounted by an articulated cornice, as one example of this device. He pointed out that crenellated walls above the cornice divided by horizontal moulding and sgraffito decoration occurred only in Northern Hungary. He also classified the growing number of discovered historic buildings by type, and found that buildings erected in the North-Hungarian Renaissance style included palaces and town houses as well as churches and belfries.24 Kornél Divald (1872–1931) was not a university professor; his work to protect the artworks of Northern Hungary was fuelled purely by personal interest. He made it his mission to save artefacts that were on the brink of ruin: these included sculptures, altars, and carvings. His unrelenting work – in the course of which he scoured the counties of Szepes and Sáros; the town of Besztercebánya (today Banská Bystrica, Slovakia) and its vicinity; and, later, Liptó, Árva and Trencsén counties – makes him the intellectual successor of Arnold Ipolyi and Flóris Rómer. These two mid-nineteenth-century art historians sought to collect the artistic legacy of the past with a similar devotion as Divald half a century later. During his expeditions, he focused not only on the visual arts but branched out to architecture as well. He wrote systematic accounts on Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance artworks alike. He attributed special significance to the artistic traits of the last of these, describing it as a pivotal part of the history of art in Hungary. In his first paper devoted to the topic in 1899, he presented numerous similar façade arrangements of historic buildings in Poland. It is likely that it was Divald who coined the phrase ‘crenellated Renaissance of Upper Hungary’.25 While he acknowledged the Polish connections of the Northern Hungarian Renaissance, he sought to demonstrate its national character. He emphasized the local nature of the rich sgraffito decoration, linking it to the local textile arts and clothing adornments and arguing that it was not so much the sheer architectural form as, rather, the decoration that lent these buildings a specifically local ‘Hungarian’ tint: The whimsical patterns we see on the crenellations of seventeenth-century buildings were greatly influenced by the applied arts; the fantastic gables that have an almost mysterious effect on today’s observer … are none other than the very same patterns that we find on the ends of strips of fabric from the period, adapted to a different medium. … They became so popular precisely because they proved to be the perfect backdrop for the clothing worn by the public going about their day in these places.26
With reference to Divald’s work, Károly Pekár (1869–1911) wrote a treatise on the Renaissance and Baroque art of Northern Hungary in 1906.
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In his work comprising the description of various investigations into the national ornamentation styles, he proposed yet another approach towards creating modern national art. As he wrote: This school of architecture became so distinctive, and it evolved in so many original ways in Hungary, that its neglect by the people who seek a Hungarian style of architecture today is a true disgrace. Yes, the new courthouse in Lőcse does have a façade in a similar style, but it is a detached piece, coupled with a roof and walls that do not match, nay, the façade itself is not very authentic, and all the more unflattering to the forms that it is meant to resemble. The style it tries to imitate is more Polish (Posen town hall) than Hungarian in the first place. It is truly a pity that these pompous, almost painting-like niches, crenellations and gables with their arcades, this Northern Hungarian Renaissance style, has been abandoned, and that no one has thought to revive it yet in proper fashion.27
In his view, this could be done by combining historic forms and national ornamentation. In achieving this, he attributed great importance to the seventeenth-century architecture of Northern Hungary – the Renaissance forms and ornamentation of which, adapted to local taste, would satisfy both these requirements.28 Building on the theoretical foundations laid down by Henszlmann, Pasteiner and Divald, the architect Jenő Kismarty Lechner (1878–1962) sought new ways in which to use the Northern Hungarian Renaissance as a source of inspiration in practice. He also published a study on the Renaissance architecture of Northern Hungary in 1908,29 which was followed by further articles in 1913 and 1915.30 His purpose in these studies was to describe the history and the specific qualities of the historic buildings of the period against the background of Central European architecture. By doing this, he followed Divald, but he was able to outline their specific Hungarian characteristics more precisely, comparing them with an array of historic buildings from Silesia, Moravia and Austria. He applied the classification of building types and regions established by Pasteiner, but in far greater detail. One of Lechner’s aims in the early twentieth century – in the midst of the First World War – was to draw attention to the significance of protecting historic monuments and buildings. At the same time, he believed that it was important to emphasize the national character of the style that grew out of the local milieu (‘the architecture … of our monuments is rooted in Hungarian national soil and developed nourished by its sap’).31 As an architect, Kismarty Lechner was primarily interested in the creation of a style expressing national character – and he found Northern Hungarian Renaissance architecture to be the proper source for it.
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Narratives in Practice The canonization of the architectural heritage of the Northern Hungarian Renaissance and the recognition of its national character resulted in architects starting to employ its formal vocabulary in their Historicist production from the 1890s onwards, while the contemporary Secessionist architecture expressed national characteristics by means of vernacular art rather than historical styles. The Renaissance style of Northern Hungary appeared in two locations at the aforementioned 1896 Millennium Exhibition. The architect of the buildings in the historical section that incorporated the Renaissance group, Ignác Alpár, combined the tower of Lőcse Town Hall with details of the Rákóczi House in Eperjes (today Prešov, Slovakia). In the contemporary section of the exhibition, the Commerce, Finance and Credit Pavilion designed by Zsigmond Quittner was constructed using motifs of town houses in Eperjes, Lőcse and Késmárk (today Kežmarok, Slovakia). The last-named example could have become a model for architects on how to instil national character in state buildings using historical forms that fit into the neo-Renaissance cityscape. Further examples illustrate the spread of this trend outside the Exhibition. For example, Alpár himself returned to the forms of the Northern Hungarian Renaissance in his 1899 design of the County Hall in Nagyenyed (today Aiud, Romania), whose tower and the crenellations of the adjoining wings recall the buildings of the northern region. In Lőcse, the entrance, the niches containing statues, and the cornice of the central avant-corps of the courthouse designed by István Kiss (1857–1902), built in 1901, likewise recall these forms. While Ignác Alpár and István Kiss gave a national accent to only some of their buildings, Jenő Kismarty Lechner in the early twentieth century aimed to create a whole new style. One of the best examples of this is his teacher-training college in Sárospatak (1909–14) (see figure 8.1). In the competition for the building, multiple plans were based on the forms of Northern Hungarian architecture – including Lechner’s first-prize-winning design, but also Henrik Kotál’s second-prize-winning plan. A series of state-funded school-building programmes in the first two decades of the twentieth century contributed to the spread of this style. Following the construction of the one in Sárospatak, new school buildings in Bonyhád by Sándor Baumgarten (1864–1928) from 1913 to 1914 and in Liptószentmiklós (today Liptovský Mikuláš, Slovakia) by Zoltán Bálint and Lajos Jámbor from 1914 to 1916 exhibited similar crenellations and sgraffito decorations. Although the number of buildings inspired by Northern Hungarian architecture was not particularly large at that time, they seem to have given the most appropriate answer to the problem of a national architectural
Figure 8.1. Jenő Kismarty Lechner, teacher-training college (today Campus Sárospatak, Eszterházy Károly University) built in 1909–14. Creative Commons BY 3.0 (Source: Wikipedia, Photo: Attila Brunner).
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style in the context of revivalist architecture. This was, again, facilitated by the style’s adaptability in contemporary cities. In the changed sociopolitical environment after the First World War, the issue of national architecture – particularly, its creation through historical forms – acquired a new meaning. By Hungary ceding the greater part of the country’s territory, the architectural references to historic buildings located now in areas beyond its borders additionally conveyed references to the bygone ‘happier’ period. This was apparent in the forms of the buildings constructed with crenellations in the interwar years, such as Gyula Sándy’s Postal Palace in Buda erected in 1939.
Conclusions The place of North-Hungarian Renaissance architecture in the history of creating a national style cannot readily be appreciated without a comparative study of similar tendencies in other Central-European countries. This style, attributed mainly to Hungary in the period in question, is in fact the regional version of a common, formal architectural vocabulary. Examples of it can be found primarily in Silesia and Moravia, but partly also in Austria. As with their Hungarian counterparts, these buildings also played an important role in the formation of the national architecture of their respective countries. When Hungarian theorists and architects, aiming at the creation of a national architecture, went beyond the common language of the neo-Renaissance and found – in their view – a distinctive, national, historical architectural style, they also found another common language: that of the Central-European architectural tradition of the sixteenth-and-seventeenth-century Renaissance.32 Gábor György Papp works as a Research Fellow for the Research Institute for Art History of the Research Centre of the Humanities in Budapest. In the focus of his current interests is the emergence of the national idea and its reflections in the arts, architecture and historiography in nineteenth-century Central Europe. He has recently published ‘Medievalism in the 19th Century Hungarian Architecture’, in The Art of Medieval Hungary, edited by Barral i Altet et al. (Rome: Viella, 2018); ‘Present Constructed from the Past. Attempts to Shape National Architecture in 19th-century Hungary’, in Discovering and Imaging the Nation, edited by Gyáni and Halmesvirta, (Budapest: MTA BTK, 2018) and ‘The Millennial Monument in Budapest as a Bearer of Memory, National Identity and Self-Awareness’, in RIHA Journal, Special Issue ‘Vienna as a Sculptural Centre in the Long
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19th Century: Current Research on Sculpture in Central Europe’, edited by Ingeborg Schemper-Sparholz and Caroline Mang (2021).
NOTES 1. Koselleck, Futures Past, 369–70. 2. For the term nation state, see Boswell and Evans, Representing the Nation, 51–58. For new frame of reference, see Anderson, Imagined Communities; Smith, National Identity; Gellner, Nations and Nationalism. 3. See Hajdu, The Search, 394–439; Crowley, National Style; Damjanović, ‘Polychrome Roof Tiles’; Filipova, ‘Writing and Displaying Nations’; Hartmuth, ‘K.(u.)k. colonial?’; Hnídková, ‘Rondokubismus’; Jõekalda, ‘Baltic Identity’; Veress, ‘Architecture as Nation-Building’; Vybiral, ‘National Identity’. 4. I use the term ‘Northern Hungary’ to refer to the north-eastern regions of Historic or Greater Hungary (some literature refers to this region as Upper Hungary because of its mountainous landscape): the region of origin for a distinctive style of late-Renaissance architecture, now in Slovakia. 5. He referred to George Gilbert Scott as well. See Scott, Remarks, 20. ‘No style of architecture has so directly derived its characteristics from utility as that which I am advocating; that no style is capable of adding so much that is beautiful and pleasurable, not only without reducing, but as arising out of its uses, as this; and that no style is equally capable of adapting itself to varied requirements, or of enlisting in its service the inventions, materials, and ideas which are introduced by the advance of social improvement’. 6. Henszlmann, Válogatott képzőművészeti írások, 203–9. 7. Concerning Henszlmann’s views on Gothic monuments as the sources of national art within the universal evolution of art, see Marosi, ‘Restoration as an Expression of Art History’, 170–71, 173. 8. Gábor and Verő, Az Ország háza; Sisa, ‘Le Parlement hongrois’; Sisa, Az Országház építése és művészete. 9. Papp, ‘Önkép alkotás és régiótudat’; Székely, ‘A Capital in the Margins’. 10. Setting the date for this exhibition was entrusted to historians, who identified the presumed date for the conquest of Hungary in different periods. Eventually, a committee proposed that 1894 should be the chosen date; however, due to delays in the preparations for the exhibition, this was changed to 1896. See Vadas, ‘Programtervezetek’. 11. Papp, ‘Present Constructed from the Past’; Róka, ‘Fejezetek a Lechner-recepció történetéből’. 12. Zádor, A historizmus művészete; Németh, Magyar Művészet; Milde, Neorenaissance; Hübsch, In welchem Style sollen wir bauen? 13. See Cordileone, ‘The Austrian Museum’. 14. Burckhardt, A renaissancekori műveltség; Symonds, A renaissance Olaszországban.
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15. 16. 17. 18.
19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.
See Mikó, ‘A reneszánsz művészet története’. Henszlmann, Magyarország ó-keresztyén, 5, 22. See Henszlmann, Lőcsének régiségei, 161–63. Concerning the origin of the forms of the Renaissance façades, which is a recurring issue for other scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see current literature such as Haber and Kadluczka, ‘Renaissance Architecture in Cracow’; Omilanowska, ‘Searching for a National Style’; Torbus, ‘Die Rezeption der Renaissance’; Omilanowska, Architekt Stefan Szyller. Ney, Jelentés. See: Bardoly and Lővei, ‘The First Steps’. Myskovszky, A renaissance kezdete. Myskovszky, Felsőmagyarországi műemlékek; idem, Kassa város középkori. Pasteiner, ‘Felső-Magyarország’, 164. Ibid., 161, 163, 164–66. Divald, ‘A felsőmagyarországi renaissance-építészet’. Ibid., 351. Pekár, A Magyar nemzeti szépről, 107–8, 115. Ibid., 105–22. Lechner, ‘Modern és nemzeti építőművészet’, 188–91, 198–202. Lechner, Tanulmányok a lengyelországi. See Gábor ‘“e műemlékeinkben a történelmi”’, 180–85. See Bialostocki, The Art of the Renaissance.
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Divald, Kornél. ‘A felsőmagyarországi renaissance-építészet’ [Renaissance Architecture in Upper Hungary]’. Magyar Mérnök és Építész-Egylet Közlönye 1899, 33 (5–10), 173–76, 219–24, 261–65, 301–5, 351–59, 385–97. Filipova, Marta. ‘Writing and Displaying Nations: Constructing Narratives of National Art in Bohemia and Austria-Hungary’. Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi 2014, 23 (3/4), 134–56. Gábor, Eszter. ‘“e műemlékeinkben a történelmi magyar hangulatoknak mélységes tengerét bírjuk”. Lechner Jenô kísérlete a magyar nemzeti historizmus megteremtésére’ [‘In these Historic Monuments we Have a Deep Sea of the Hungarian Moods of the Past’: Jenő Lechner’s Attempt to Create Hungarian National Historicism], in Sub Minervae nationis praesidio. Tanulmányok a nemzeti kultúra kérdéskörébôl Németh Lajos 60. születésnapjára [Studies on the Issue of National Culture for the 60th Birthday of Lajos Németh]. Budapest: ELTE Művészettörténeti Tanszék, 1989, 180–85. Gábor, Eszter and Mária Verő (eds). Az Ország háza: Buda-Pesti Országháza-tervek/ The House of the Nation: Parliament Plans for Buda-Pest 1784–1884. Budapest: Szépművészeti Múzeum, 2000. Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983. Haber, H. and A. Kadluczka. ‘Renaissance Architecture in Cracow – General Features and Regional Peculiarities’. Periodica Polytechnica Architecture 1986, 30 (1–4), 279–300. Hajdu, Ada. The Search for National Architectural Style in the Balkans. London: Brill, 2017. Hartmuth, Michael. ‘K.(u.)k. colonial? Contextualizing Architecture and Urbanism in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1878–1918’, in Clemens Ruthner, Diana Reynolds Cordileone, Ursula Reber and Raymond Detrez (eds), WechselWirkungen: AustriaHungary, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Western Balkans, 1878–1918. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2015, 155–84. Henszlmann, Imre. Magyarország ó-keresztyén, román és átmenet stylű mű-emlékeinek rövid ismertetése. I [A Brief Description of Ancient Christian, Romanesque and Transitional Style Historic Buildings of Hungary]. Budapest: Magyar Királyi Egyetemi Nyomda, 1876. . Lőcsének régiségei [On the Architectural Heritage of Lőcse]. Budapest, 1878. . Válogatott képzőművészeti írások [Selected Works on Fine Arts]. Budapest: MTA Művészettörténeti Kutatócsoport, 1990. Hnídková, Vendula. ‘Rondokubismus versus národní styl’ [Rondo-Cubism versus the National Style]. Umění/Art 2009, 57 (1), 74–84, 112. Hübsch, Heinrich. In welchem Style sollen wir bauen? Karlsruhe, 1828. Jõekalda, Kristina. ‘Baltic Identity via German Heritage? Seeking Baltic German Art in the Nineteenth Century’. Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi/Studies on Art and Architecture/Studien für Kunstwissenschaft 2014, 23 (3–4), 79–110. Koselleck, Reinhart. Futures Past. On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004 (cited after the Hungarian edition: Elmúlt jövő. A történeti idők szemantikája. Budapest: Atlantisz, 2003). Lechner, Jenő. ‘Modern és nemzeti építőművészet’ [Modern and National Architecture]. Építő Ipar 1908, 32 (18, 19), 188–91, 198–202.
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. Tanulmányok a lengyelországi és felsőmagyarországi reneszánsz építésről. [Studies on the Building in Renaissance in Poland and Upper Hungary]. Budapest: Eggenberger könyvkereskedés, 1913. Marosi, Ernő. ‘Restoration as an Expression of Art History in Nineteenth-Century Hungary’, in Patrick J. Geary and Gábor Klaniczay (eds), Manufacturing the Middle Ages: Entangled History of Medievalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe. London: Brill, 2013, 159–88. Mikó, Árpád. ‘A reneszánsz művészet története Magyarországon’ [The History of Renaissance Art in Hungary]. Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2011. (Manuscript, DSc dissertation.) Milde, Kurt. Neorenaissance in der deutschen Architektur des 19. Jahrhunderts: Grundlagen, Wesen und Gültigkeit [Neorenaissance in the German Architecture of the Nineteenth Century]. Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1981. Myskovszky, Viktor. A renaissance kezdete és fejlődése különös tekintettel hazánk építészeti műemlékeire [The Beginning and Development of the Renaissance]. Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1881. . Felsőmagyarországi műemlékek és régiségek [The Historic Buildings and Antiquities of Upper Hungary]. Budapest, 1888. . Kassa város középkori és renaissance-stílű műemlékei [The Medieval and Renaissance Style Buildings of Kassa]. Budapest: Országos Középiskolai Tanáregylet, 1895. Németh, Lajos. Magyar Művészet 1890–1919 [Hungarian Art 1890–1919] I–II. Budapest: Akadémiai kiadó, 1981. Ney, Béla. Jelentés a Párisi 1878-iki közkiállításról építészeti szempontból [Report on the Exhibition in Paris in 1878 from an Architectural Aspect]. Budapest: Kilián, 1880. Omilanowska, Malgorzata. ‘Searching for a National Style in Polish Architecture at the End of the 19th and the Beginning of the 20th Century’, in Nicola Gordon Bowe (ed.), Art and the National Dream: The Search for Vernacular Expression in Turn-ofthe-Century Design. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993, 99–116. . Architekt Stefan Szyller 1857–1933. Warsaw: Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2008. Papp, Gábor György. ‘Önkép alkotás és régiótudat: Magyarország, az európai építészeti diskurzus és a 19. századi szaksajtó’ [Self-Image-Making and the Notion of Hungary, the European Discourse on Architecture and the Nineteenth-Century Periodicals]. Tanulmányok Budapest Múltjából 2014 (39), 305–16. . ‘Present Constructed from the Past: Attempts to Shape National Architecture in 19th-century Hungary’, in Gábor Gyáni and Anssi Halmesvirta (eds), Discovering and Imaging the Nation: Sciences and Arts in the Service of Nation-Building 1830 – 1914. Budapest: MTA BTK, 2018, 146–63. Pasteiner, Gyula. ‘Felső-Magyarország’ [Upper Hungary], in Mór Jókai (ed.), Az Osztrák-Magyar Monarchia írásban és képben [Austria-Hungary in Words and Pictures]. Budapest: Magyar Királyi Államnyomda, 1898. Pekár, Károly. A Magyar nemzeti szépről. A magyar géniusz esztétikája [On the Hungarian National Beauty: The Aesthetics of the Hungarian Genius]. Budapest, 1906. Róka, Enikő. ‘Fejezetek a Lechner-recepció történetéből’ [Chapters from the History of the Lechner-Reception], in Eszter Földi and Orsolya Hessky (eds), ‘Bátran megnyitni a művészettörténet kapuit’. Tanulmányok Bajkay Éva 75. születésnapjára. [‘Feel
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Free to Open the Doors of Art History’. Papers on Éva Bajkay’s 75th Birthday]. Budapest: Hungarian National Gallery, 2018, 84–93. Scott, George Gilbert. Remarks on Secular and Domestic Architecture: Present and Future. London, 1857. Sisa, József. ‘Le Parlement hongrois – construction, décoration, idéologie’. Acta Historiae Artium 2019, 185–246. Sisa, József (ed.). Az Országház építése és művészete [The Construction and Art of the Parliament]. Budapest: Országház könyvkiadó, 2020. Smith, Anthony D. National Identity. London: Penguin Books, 1991. Symonds, John Addington. A renaissance Olaszországban [The Renaissance in Italy] I– III, trans. Károly Pulszky and Janka Wohl. Budapest, 1881–86. Székely, Miklós. ‘A Capital in the Margins: Concepts for a Budapest Universal Exhibition between 1867 and 1917’, in Marta Filipová (ed.), Cultures of International Exhibitions 1840–1940 Great Exhibitions in the Margins. London: Routledge, 2015, 21–42. Torbus, Tomasz. ‘Die Rezeption der Renaissance im Nachkriegs-Polen – die Suche nach einem Nationalstil’ [The Reception of the Renaissance in Post-War Poland – The Search for a National Style], in Beate Störtkuhl (ed.), Hansestadt – Residenz – Industriestandort: Beiträge der 7. Tagung des Arbeitskreises deutscher und polnischer Kunsthistoriker in Oldenburg, 27.-30. September 2000 [Hanseatic City – Residence – Industrial Location: Contributions to the 7th Meeting of the Working Group of German and Polish Art Historians in Oldenburg, 27–30 September 2000]. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2002, 313–25. Vadas, Ferenc. ‘Programtervezetek a Millennium megünneplésére (1893)’ [Draft Programmes for the Millennium Celebrations (1893)]. Ars Hungarica 1996, 24 (1), 3–55. Veress, Dániel. ‘Architecture as Nation-Building: The Search for National Styles in Habsburg Central Europe Before and After World War I’, in Nari Shelekpayev, François-Olivier Dorais, Daria Dyakonova and Solène Maillet (eds), Empires, Nations and Private Lives: Essays on the Social and Cultural History of the Great War. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016, 1–39. Vybiral, Jindrich. ‘National Identity, Style. Constructing National Identity on the Example of Czech Architecture of the 19th Century’, in Vendula Hnídkova (ed.), National Style. Arts and Politics. Prague: Academy of Art, Architecture and Design, 2013, 148–62. Zádor, Anna. A historizmus művészete Magyarországon [The Art of Historicism in Hungary]. Budapest: MTA Művészettörténeti Kutatóintézet, 1993.
8 CHAPTER 9 Vernacular versus Historical National Style(s) in the Architecture of AustroHungarian Croatia Dragan Damjanović
Introduction Attempts to create a national style and a nation-based coding of buildings was characteristic for the architecture of all European nations in the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. This chapter aims to show how this process took place in Croatia, focusing mainly on changes in the perception of the ways in which the Croatian national style should be represented in architecture between 1867/1868 and 1918. The period between the completion of the Austro-Hungarian (1867) and the Croato-Hungarian (1868) Compromises and the end of the First World War has been chosen as a chronological framework for this analysis. During that period, the territory of present-day Croatia was divided for the most part between three provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy: the Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia; the province of Dalmatia; and the province of Austrian Coastland (part of which was the Istrian Peninsula). The Triune Kingdom was a semi-autonomous unit in the Hungarian part of the Monarchy. Despite its name, it did not include the territory of Dalmatia – which was located, as was the territory of Istria, within the Austrian half of the Monarchy. The political position of these parts of Croatia within the Monarchy largely conditioned attitudes to and affinities for historical buildings and attempts to create a national style in Croatian architecture. These attempts were limited primarily to the territory of the Triune Kingdom, due to which
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this particular area will be given the greatest attention in the text. Some influence on the architecture of Dalmatia could be discerned only from the end of the nineteenth century, whereas the architecture of Istria remained free from any impact of the said attempts. The case of Croatia shows that a relatively short period of only twenty-five years can be enough for the concept of national style to change almost entirely. The Croatian national style was first attempted based on Gothic, then vernacular and finally on Byzantine architecture – and always with equally strong arguments.1 At the same time, the history of the search for the Croatian national style clearly shows the degree to which art-historical and historiographic narratives intertwined and the manner in which architectural heritage was used as a model in contemporary architecture, as well as demonstrating that these searches were equally aesthetically, politically and economically motivated.
Heritage and Nation: Research and Protection of Architectural Monuments in Croatia, 1867–1918 The birth of national styles in nineteenth-century art reflected, in the first place, the emergence of national ideologies and nationalism in European countries. In multi-ethnic states such as the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, this process was marked by frequent conflicts between different ethnic groups – which manifested itself in the field of architecture by, among other things, highlighting specific features of national architectural heritage. This heritage, similar to national history or national literature, began to be used as the evidence for or emphasis of a nation’s glory, its sheer existence, origins or specific rights.2 Interest in historical architecture prompted research into the subject and the creation of a national canon of architectural monuments, which in most European countries was a starting point for the shaping of a national style. The creation of a national canon was largely made possible owing to the people today considered to be the first European art historians and to institutions that dealt with inventories and the protection of monuments. In the Habsburg Monarchy, including its Croatian provinces, a system for the protection of monuments was created in 1850 with the foundation of the Central Commission for the Study and Protection of Architectural Monuments (K.K. Central-Commission zur Erforschung und Erhaltung der Baudenkmale) situated in Vienna. It was founded as part of modernizing reforms carried out under the so-called Bach’s absolutism. However, the commission became fully operational three years later in 1853, and in the following few years it appointed conservators in
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all of the Monarchy’s provinces.3 In early 1855, historian Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski (born in Varaždin in 1816, died in Puhakovec in 1889) was appointed conservator for the territory of the Triune Kingdom. Over the following five years, he took the first steps towards creating inventories and protecting heritage in Croatia, but his activity was soon interrupted by the adoption of the so-called October Diploma (20 October 1860), which abolished absolutism and strong centralism in the Monarchy and established a degree of self-government in the provinces. The power of the Central Commission, and other Viennese institutions, was thereby significantly reduced in Hungary and Croatia – and it completely disappeared with the Croato-Hungarian Compromise/Settlement of 1868, which brought the installation of internal self-government in the Triune Kingdom. The care of architectural monuments in the Triune Kingdom was formally taken over by the Croatian Provincial Government’s Building Section of the Internal Affairs Department, which, due to a lack of funds, did almost nothing in terms of active protection. Unlike Austria or Hungary, the Triune Kingdom had no institutions such as the Central Commission and therefore no institutional monument protection, which also meant no official inventories or legal protective measures.4 Only in 1910 was the Provincial Commission for the Protection of Artefacts and Historical Monuments in the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia finally founded. Since it took an entire half-century to establish the Croatian Commission, the first inventories and, consequently, the creation of the national canon of monuments came rather late. This could be the reason for the formation of so many different concepts of a Croatian national style, which, as this text will show, were grounded in both the vernacular and the historical architectural heritage of Croatia.
Vernacular Textiles as Sources of National Motifs in Croatian Architecture in the 1870s Since prior to 1910 there had been no official institutional care for Croatian architectural heritage, this was done primarily by individual members of the intellectual elite – most notably, historians, art historians, archaeologists, architects and church dignitaries. Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski played a key role in monument protection in the 1860s, then in the 1870s he was replaced by Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer (born in Osijek in 1815, died in Đakovo in 1905). Strossmayer became the main initiator of restoration campaigns, and the person who laid the foundations for national expression in Croatian architecture. Due to his status and the sound financial conditions of the Diocese of Đakovo-Srijem and Bosnia, which he headed, Strossmayer
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grew into the most important patron of Croatian art in the second half of the nineteenth century. Inspired by the Romantic movement’s revival of the arts and crafts, he undertook a series of architectural ventures – the construction of the cathedral of his diocese in Đakovo (1866–82); the building of the Yugoslav (today Croatian) Academy of Sciences and Arts in Croatia’s capital, Zagreb (1877–84); and the building of a grammar school in his home town of Osijek (1880–82). He also encouraged the restoration of two of the most important medieval churches in Zagreb – St. Mark’s Church (1875–82) and the Cathedral (1878–1902). All these buildings were erected or restored in the neo-Romanesque, neo-Gothic and neo-Renaissance styles. However, some of them show the seeds of the idea of using architectural decoration to emphasize national features of buildings or, in a way, make them (more) Croatian. This tendency was particularly apparent in the neo-Gothic restoration of St. Mark’s Church in Zagreb. In the early 1870s, the city authorities intended to demolish this building, which was at the time the main Catholic parish church in the city. Helped by Zagreb’s bourgeois intellectual elite, Strossmayer successfully stopped its demolition and finally convinced the city authorities of the need to restore the church ‘to its original state’.5 The work that was carried out is today considered an example of the so-called purist, radical approach to monument restoration. Viennese architect Friedrich Schmidt, entrusted with the project together with his associate Herman Bollé, sought to restore the original Gothic appearance of the church by removing elements of non-medieval styles from the façades and the interior and by building new neo-Gothic ones. In addition to the church being Gothicized, its roof was covered with impressive polychrome glazed tiles designed to mimic motifs from traditional textiles of the Croatian region of Slavonia. Although it is not completely clear who initiated the installation of the tiles, or who chose the sources of the motifs, it is certain that by placing national motifs on the roof of St. Mark’s Church this building sought to be Croatized and turned into a reference to the political programme then represented by Bishop Strossmayer, which was characterized by the struggle to achieve the highest possible level of Croatian autonomy within the Monarchy.6 For the same reasons and at almost the same time – the second half of the 1870s – Schmidt’s design for the paving of Đakovo Cathedral contained patterns characteristic of Slavonian vernacular textiles. Strossmayer’s and Schmidt’s reliance on traditional textiles was made possible primarily thanks to Felix Lay, a passionate researcher of South Slavic vernacular art, who had begun publishing the Südslavische Ornamente (South Slavic Ornaments) print portfolios in the early 1870s, in which he published a number of examples of traditional artefacts made from fabric and wood (rugs, towels, etc.).7 Given that one of the most important
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theorists of nineteenth-century architecture at the time, Gottfried Semper, developed the theory of textile design as Urkunst, the primal art that gave rise to all ornaments later appearing in architecture,8 it is not surprising that Lay’s publication quickly found its way into practical use in contemporary Croatian architecture. Although ideas about the Croatian national style soon went through considerable changes, vernacular textiles continued to be considered an important example of the national style in art even in later periods. Objects such as carpets were used in religious artworks through which Croatian painters wanted to nationalize their compositions; folk textiles were often displayed at exhibitions and occasionally continued to be used as sources of motifs for architectural decoration or interior design commissioned by Zagreb’s bourgeoisie for their apartments.9 Vernacular textiles thus proved to be a suitable tool for nationalizing works of art and architecture, but at the same time it became apparent that they were not sufficient as a basis for a national style that could be adapted to all types of buildings.
Between Gothic and Wooden Vernacular Architecture – Iso Kršnjavi and the Croatian National Style The emergence of motifs taken from vernacular textiles in Croatian architecture in the 1870s was more a reflection of the enthusiasm for the works published by Felix Lay than a deliberate action to create a Croatian national style in architecture. It was not until the early 1880s that the first Croatianeducated art historian, Iso Kršnjavi (born in Našice in 1845, died in Zagreb in 1927), began to use this term and define what, in his view, this style should actually be. Kršnjavi’s views on architecture were largely shaped by his education. He first studied painting, then history and art history at the University of Vienna – where he was strongly influenced by Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg – but also Viennese architecture, which experienced a great boom in the late 1860s and 1870s due to the construction of the Ringstrasse. After completing his education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in the mid-1870s, and having travelled to Italy on numerous occasions, Kršnjavi settled in Zagreb where he continued to carry out the Croatian culture and art ‘revival project’ started by Bishop Strossmayer. Architecture played an extremely important role in this project. Kršnjavi theoretically conceived variants of Croatian national style in architecture, and at the same time he played the key role in the realization of the first structures in this style due to his close relationship with architect Herman Bollé (born in Cologne in 1845, died in Zagreb in 1926).10
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Bollé lived from 1872 in Vienna and worked, as mentioned before, in the studio of Friedrich Schmidt, the architect entrusted with the restoration of St. Mark’s Church in Zagreb. That is how he came into contact with Croatia, where he moved in 1879 at the urging of Kršnjavi and Strossmayer to work on the restoration of Zagreb Cathedral. This project was, as mentioned above, encouraged by Strossmayer in an effort to monumentalize and adapt Croatia’s main Gothic monument to nineteenth-century aesthetic tenets, but it played no important role in promoting the idea of a Croatian national style. However, the cathedral’s restoration, which lasted until 1902, indirectly prompted Kršnjavi to define the path that should be taken to create the Croatian national style in the text published in 1881 in Vienac, the then central-Croatian cultural journal. Kršnjavi in fact called for the reconstruction of the entire Kaptol, the Zagreb quarter in which the cathedral is located, in the Gothic style, considering it the most suitable for the creation of a Croatian national style. In his text, Kršnjavi claimed that Gothic was extremely adaptable and that Croats should follow other European nations in basing their national style on it.11 In the end, he did not reap much success – although he did manage to have three new neo-Gothic manor houses built according to Herman Bollé’s designs. In this way, Gothic was briefly promoted to the first historical style to serve as the basis for the creation of the Croatian national architectural style. The fact that most of Croatia’s Gothic monuments had been destroyed or damaged in the wars with the Ottomans, and that the particularities of the Croatian version of the Gothic could not be found, probably led Kršnjavi to greatly modify his views and refocus his search for a national style. In the quoted text in Vienac, he emphasized that he regarded Gothic as a logical choice for the creation of the Croatian national style because Gothic elements were also present in Croatian folk crafts.12 It was precisely the vernacular architecture and applied arts of Croatian rural areas that very soon became a key source of inspiration for this art historian in creating the Croatian national style. Kršnjavi developed his views in his travelogue Listovi iz Slavonije (Letters from Slavonia), in which he described his journey to Slavonia and Srijem – the eastern parts of the Triune Kingdom. The text was published in instalments as feuilleton in the Narodne novine daily, starting from October 1881, only two and a half months after the release of the cited article on the Kaptol in Vienac.13 A year later, in 1882, the travelogue was published in full as a book.14 Kršnjavi was not the first to begin studying the architectural heritage of the Croatian village. In the 1860s, architects and anyone interested in the arts began to be attracted by its picturesque rural architecture. At the 1873
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World Exhibition in Vienna, which saw the first significant participation of Croatia at a major international event, vernacular architecture served as a source of motifs for the construction of the exhibition pavilion – the socalled Croatian peasant house.15 However, after his travels to Slavonia and Srijem in 1881, Kršnjavi first defined the vernacular architecture of these regions as works of the ‘Croatian national style’ and was the first to recommend that its elements should be used in contemporary architecture. Wooden architecture – houses, churches, outbuildings – was also preserved in other parts of the Triune Kingdom, but in the aforementioned regions one could find the most decorative, richly carved and polychromatic examples of buildings that, due to their decorative nature, represented a desirable model – that is, they corresponded to the aesthetic views of the late nineteenth century. Since wooden structures were rapidly being replaced by new masonry buildings, Kršnjavi suggested that the most important and still-standing traditional buildings be architecturally surveyed or even transferred to Zagreb and used as models for new structures.16 In his view, preserving works of vernacular architecture and using their features in contemporary architecture was a crucial segment of maintaining a national individuality that was increasingly disappearing under the influence of foreign culture.17 The most devastating was, according to him, the influence of German culture – which he admired, but nevertheless considered a foreign element.18 Thanks to Kršnjavi, the search for a national style in Croatian architecture shared the same features as similar pursuits in the architecture of other European peoples. In the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and neighbouring countries – especially among the Slavs, Hungarians and Romanians – a national style was often sought in works of wooden traditional architecture. Just as vernacular linguistic expressions were a desirable basis for the construction of a modern, standard language – freed from loan words mostly originating in German – so motifs for specific national styles began to be looked for in rural architecture, with historical styles being treated as architectural equivalents to the German language.19 At the time, it was believed that rural areas were least affected by foreign cultural influences or modernization, and that, consequently, the architectural forms of peasant buildings were the most authentic products of a special national spirit in architecture. At the same time, theories were being developed about wood as a suitable natural material for construction and about its immersion in nature.20 During his 1881 trip to Slavonia and Srijem, Kršnjavi made a series of drawings of the buildings that he considered to be the most valuable. The travelogue describing his impressions of that trip, published in 1882, did not, however, contain illustrations. He would publish the drawings only
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later, in 1888 in the Zagreb Glasnik Družtva za umjetnost i umjetni obrt (Arts and Crafts Society Bulletin).21 Kršnjavi’s travelogue, even without illustrations, quickly found resonance among Croatian architects. In 1885, architect Nikola Kolar published a text on the need for an architectural survey of vernacular buildings in the then main Croatian architectural publication, Bulletin of the Society of Engineers and Architects in Zagreb.22 A year earlier, however, the same magazine had published designs that had a much wider reach. They were the first drawings of Croatian vernacular buildings created by Martin Pilar and Janko Holjac, two young students at the architectural school of Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts.23 Pilar and Holjac also published parts of their drawings in the seventeenth volume of Wiener Bauhütte (probably from 1885)24 – and finally, between 1904 and 1909, the entire collection of their designs appeared in Croatian Architectural Forms, a monumental book series published in the Croatian and German languages.25 In the last decades of the nineteenth century, other Croatian architects continued to study Croatian vernacular architecture. As professor (and headmaster) of the Zagreb School of Crafts, Herman Bollé played an especially important role in this process by taking his students to do fieldwork and conduct architectural surveys of Croatian vernacular architecture. This can be attested by preserved drawings of peasant houses from Ilok and its surroundings that his students Stjepan Podhorsky and Vjekoslav Bastl made in the 1890s.26
Pavilions, Churches and Villas – Iso Kršnjavi, Herman Bollé and the Vernacular-Based Croatian National Style Although Kršnjavi’s research on vernacular wooden architecture was neither systematic nor comprehensive,27 it raised awareness about the importance of this segment of national architectural heritage and helped to make it a part of the national canon of monuments. Kršnjavi’s wishes that his texts contribute to the preservation of the most important items of wooden architecture in Slavonian and Srijem villages were not fulfilled, but he at least succeeded in making them the starting point for the creation of a vernacular-based Croatian national style. During the 1880s and 1890s, purely thanks to Kršnjavi and his collaboration with Bollé, a number of works in this style were realized. It was used mostly in the architecture of exhibition pavilions; in the applied arts; and, to a lesser extent, in church and residential architecture. In 1882, shortly after returning from his trip through Slavonia and Srijem, Kršnjavi was given the opportunity to launch the construction of the first
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building in the Croatian national style. Working for the then Croatian Provincial Government, Kršnjavi had the Croatian Pavilion built and equipped for the jubilee exhibition in Trieste. Pavilion design was entrusted to Herman Bollé, who, in accordance with Kršnjavi’s recommendations, used a wooden house from the town of Ilok in Srijem as a starting point for his designs. Bollé was again entrusted, at Kršnjavi’s recommendation, with the designs for the Croatian Exhibition Pavilion at the 1885 Hungarian National Exhibition in Budapest and for the Croatian Forestry Pavilion at the 1896 Millennium Exhibition in Budapest. Finally, he also designed the ‘Croatian Rooms’ for the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris as well as the main pavilion at the Croatian-Slavonian Provincial Economic Exhibition organized in Zagreb in 1906. These buildings and interiors proved to be suitable for representing Croatia at international and Austro-Hungarian exhibitions not only because of their stylistic features but also because of the materials from which they were built. Wood was one of the most important Croatian export products of that time, so the quality of the material used in their construction represented the best possible advertisement for the Croatian timber industry. Although all these buildings and interiors show a reliance on elements from the vernacular architecture of Slavonia and Srijem, their numerous stylistic details also point to the influence of the architectural works of the late Historicism and exhibition pavilions of other Central European nations (Hungarian, Romanian, Russian, etc.).28 The aforementioned Croatian pavilions and their interiors are the most monumental examples of the search for a special national style in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Croatian architecture. All of them represented important state-funded projects and demonstrate Bollé’s and Kršnjavi’s good ties with the authorities in Zagreb. As pavilions are ephemeral, temporary structures built purely for exhibitions, their appearance can be seen only from surviving photographs. Only the so-called Parisian Room remained preserved, which showed the development of education in Croatia at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris and which testifies at the same time to the attempts to expand the Croatian national style in the fields of interior design or the applied arts.29 In addition to surveying and researching traditional architectural heritage, Kršnjavi sought – along with Bollé – to popularize traditional artistic craft by collecting and preserving textiles and wooded and metal objects, and by presenting them at exhibitions in order to develop craft production in the Croatian national style. In doing so, he built on Felix Lay’s work. His first attempts were completely amateur, and related to the creation of the collection that formed the basis for the establishment of the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb in 1880.30
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Kršnjavi’s efforts to popularize traditional craft intensified during the aforementioned trip to Slavonia in 1881. In November of the same year, he opened an exhibition dedicated to folk crafts in Zagreb at the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts.31 These efforts were followed by the aforementioned exhibitions in Trieste in 1882 and Budapest in 1885, at which Croatian pavilions were packed with handcrafted objects – partly vernacular, partly made according to Bollé’s designs in a national/vernacular style. Kršnjavi hoped that by exhibiting these items, he would create a market for rural products – thus preventing the decline of domestic crafts, preserving works and skills that were considered to be an authentic expression of the local national spirit, and reducing imports of ‘fashionable goods’ from European industrial centres (France, central parts of Austria, the German Empire) to Croatia. So, the study and promotion of vernacular heritage was not only aesthetically but also economically and nationally motivated.32 The exhibitions of 1882 and 1885 showed, however, that Croatia’s ‘home industry’ had no future in the modern world since, supposedly, as many as ten thousand carpets remained unsold at the Budapest exhibition.33 Although this was disappointing for Kršnjavi, he still did not give up promoting the use of vernacular ornamentation in Croatian applied arts and he had some success in this. Ornaments taken from decorated gourds, rugs, distaffs and various structures and utility objects proved very attractive to a whole range of artists and craftspeople, so they continued to be used – especially in furniture making – as exhibits for the 1896 Budapest Millennium Exhibition show. Bollé designed and realized a large number of handicraft objects in the national style at this exhibition. The furniture executed by carpenter Albert Zorinić,34 and the bedroom made by Đakovo-based carpenter Dragutin Turković35 – all according to Bollé’s designs – stood out for originality. The furniture had richly polychrome surfaces covered with vegetative and geometric ornamentation, which partly derived from vernacular art and was mixed with motifs originating from neo-Renaissance and sometimes neo-Gothic decoration. The intertwining of motifs of vernacular and historical architecture might have occurred partly due to Kršnjavi’s view that vernacular architecture stemmed from Gothic architecture.36 This attitude was especially strongly reflected in the 1880s in Herman Bollé’s church projects, as in the choir for the organ in the seminary chapel in Zagreb and the parish church in Erdevik in Srijem. In addition to wooden vernacular architecture, however, Bollé sometimes drew on traditional textiles, carpets, towels and other handcrafted objects to find motifs and include them into his neo-Renaissance and neo-Byzantine church buildings – especially in the conception of paintings, and floor and stained-glass designs. During the restoration of Zagreb Orthodox Church, it was claimed that the stained-glass windows, installed in 1884, were shaped by motifs taken from
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‘rugs of folk production’ and the floor tiles were said to have originated from traditional vernacular art.37 Such designs were similarly applied to the neo-Renaissance restorations of two Catholic religious buildings in the vicinity of Zagreb – the parish church in Dubranec in Turopolje 1882–83 (in ceiling design) and the chapel of St. Ladislaus in Marija Bistrica in 1883 (in the design of the tower at the entrance to the chapel). It is to be assumed that the motifs were used in order to Croatize these buildings, make them more national or capture the specific genius loci of the space in which the architect worked. While a whole series of built sacral structures show a mixture of motifs taken from vernacular and historical architecture, only one church building in the nineteenth century was constructed wholly in the Croatian national style – a chapel in the village of Gustelnica, near Zagreb, which was built from 1887 to 1888 according to Herman Bollé’s design.38 In the case of the Gustelnica chapel, it was not only about relying on the vernacular national style in terms of form or the use of materials but also about responding to the specific tradition of the space for which it was built – the region of Turopolje, which is even today, and back then would have been even more so, replete with wooden sacral architecture. Bollé, however, was not (and was seemingly not very interested in becoming) familiar with the construction techniques characteristic of Turopolje, so he used a construction system different from that of the older chapels of this region.39 He also used motifs from the vernacular architecture of Slavonia and Srijem, given that he was more acquainted with it. This building was therefore a clear testimony to the exceptional importance of previous explorations of national heritage for the creation of the national style (see figure 9.1). Owing to Kršnjavi’s initiative, a combination of motifs from traditional architecture and historical styles also emerged in the residential architecture of Croatia in the 1880s and 1890s – primarily in urban villas. Finding out that in early 1888 Swiss-style villas were planned to be built in Zagreb’s new cottage quarter, Kršnjavi urged citizens to erect their new buildings ‘in the national style, because the shapes of our wooden houses are truly very appropriate for that’.40 His initiative soon proved fruitful. Again, an important role in the realization of this idea was played by Herman Bollé, who designed the villa for the Weiss family in the northern part of Zagreb by combining motifs from neo-Renaissance and Croatian vernacular architecture (1890).41 Kršnjavi’s exhortation resonated well with other architects, too. The first villa built with elements of the Croatian national style for medical doctor Anton Lobmayer (1888) was designed by another Zagreb-based architect, Kuno Waidmann.42 The Lobmayer building opened a new chapter in the
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history of urban villas. Wooden towers, oriel windows and richly coloured friezes modelled on the traditional architecture of Slavonia and Srijem became widespread in the last two decades of the nineteenth century.43 In the years to come, Waidmann designed a considerable number of new villas in this style – including his own house, which, unlike Lobmayer’s, has been preserved. National-style villas were designed for other parts of Croatia, not just Zagreb. It was planned to build them on the Plitvice Lakes, an area of exceptional natural beauty characterized by dense forests and a network of interlinked lakes and waterfalls, for which the vernacular folk style seemed to have been considered more than appropriate. The plans for these buildings were drawn up by architect Martin Pilar, who, as could be
Figure 9.1. Chapel in Gustelnica built in 1887–88 according to Herman Bollé’s designs, 2010. © Dragan Damjanović.
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seen, well knew the traditional architecture of Slavonia and Srijem.44 As far as we know, these villas remained only designs, but the hotel in Plitvice had verandas and terraces that were claimed to have been built in the national style.45
Towards a New Historical Template – Neo-Byzantine as a Croatian National Architectural Style Most of the structures built in the Croatian national style based on the vernacular heritage of Slavonian and Srijem villages date back to the 1880s and 1890s. The idea of creating or having a national style, however, did not disappear in the ensuing period. Moreover, it attracted an increasing number of artists and intellectuals both among Croats and other ethnicities in the Monarchy, probably due to the increasing growth of national frustrations brought about by the inability to change the political structure of AustriaHungary. In part, it also reflected general European tendencies. The advance of the First World War; the rise of nationalisms; but also the emergence of Art Nouveau, which brought additional diversity into architecture, propelled the search for national styles throughout Europe. Croatian artists tried to get involved in these developments, often frustrated by the fact that the idea of a national style had not become sufficiently rooted among Croats themselves. The second half of the 1890s saw the formation of the idea of a differently defined Croatian national style – this time, based on historical architecture. Again, explorations of national heritage played the key role in creating this idea, but this time the focus was on the architectural heritage of Dalmatia. As mentioned in the introduction, Dalmatia was the province that became part of the Austrian half of the Monarchy with the AustroHungarian Compromise. The Central Commission, therefore, continued to have an impact in this area, which undoubtedly facilitated the further implementation of archaeological and art-historical explorations of Dalmatian medieval architectural heritage. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, historiographic research was carried out in parallel with these explorations – largely by Croatian historians, who used them, among other things, to justify with historical and ethnic arguments the desire to unite Dalmatia and Croatia. Of particular relevance to the field of architecture was the study of early Croatian medieval history, from the seventh to the early twelfth century when Croatia was an independent state. The emphasis on the medieval roots of the Croatian state, and the fact that it was older than Hungary, supported on the one hand aspirations for greater autonomy and an improved political position of Croatia in the Hungarian part of the Monarchy. On the
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other hand, the fact that the territory that had been Croatian in the early Middle Ages was then mainly located on the territory of Dalmatia supported a historiographic argument formed to prove Croatia’s historical right to the annexation of the latter province. Dalmatia was then governed by Croatian parties – so the idea of national unification was, for political and economic reasons, encouraged from the Dalmatian side too. While archival documents were used as evidence of Croatia’s historical right to statehood and territory, preserved church buildings and other works of art created during the period of the historical Croatian state were to serve as the basis for the creation of a new Croatian national style. The political message thus sent was very clear – a return to the architectural forms of the early Middle Ages was meant to evoke the period of Croatian sovereignty, which was interpreted as a time of flourishing national culture. As some archaeologists and historians who had been studying this period of Croatian art concluded that Croatian architecture represented a local version of Byzantine architecture, the ‘Croato-Byzantine style’ was supposed to serve as the basis for the creation of a new national style. The name of the style was coined by archaeologist Frano Radić, in part in reaction to writings of Austrian art historian Josef Strzygowski on the northern ‘Germanic’ origin of motifs in the art of early medieval Croatia.46 Radić considered such views to be anti-Slavic, a reflection of the German Drang nach Osten policy and Strzygowski’s attempts to ‘attribute the works of the Slavic genius to the Germans’.47 Radić also tried to refute the views of Wilhelm Anton Neumann, Max Georg Zimmermann and Ernst Alfred Stückelberg, who argued that Dalmatia’s early medieval art had been influenced by Lombard art.48 He rightly observed that these Austrian and German researchers wrote under the influence of political ideas49 – that is, ‘a large dosage of popular chauvinism of intoxicated imagination’50 – but at the same time failed to recognize the influence of his own national, impassioned plea in the way in which he interpreted Croatia’s early medieval heritage. Radić was extremely interested in emphasizing the originality of Croatian early-medieval architecture, no doubt in order to make it more valuable and at the same time more national and different from the Byzantine architecture of other nations (‘The goal of these lines was to prove that decoration of very many ancient Croatian monuments has something special, that it contains exclusively Croatian national motifs and that enough materials have so far already been collected to confirm that’).51 A whole host of other theorists and artists soon became involved in the debate on the issue of the new Croatian national style. There was no unique attitude. The painter Marko Peroš, for example, wholeheartedly endorsed Radić’s thesis in a 1912 booklet on the Croatian national style, in which he published a series of drawings that were meant to serve as guidelines
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for contemporary architects and artists.52 Archaeologist Luka Jelić, on the other hand, agreed with Radić’s theses on special, Croatian elements in early medieval architecture of Dalmatia but rejected the Byzantine and promoted the view of their Middle Eastern origin.53 Even the most important Modernist Croatian art critic, Vladimir Lunaček, referred to these writings on the one hand in a critical manner, by deeming the creation of new styles unnecessary, but on the other hand acknowledging the need for ‘the resurrection of our national ornamentation and the cult of national feelings’. He accepted the view that stylistic forms of early medieval Dalmatian buildings possessed ‘a certain national character’. He was also no stranger to the belief that they were based on Byzantine and Romanesque architecture, but he was more inclined to hold Luka Jelić’s view about the Middle Eastern rather than the Byzantine origin of these motifs.54 At that time, the biggest clash over Radić’s convictions broke out between Zagreb’s mayor, Milan Amruš, and Iso Kršnjavi – the latter being still extremely active in the field of cultural policy. Inspired by Radić’s texts, Amruš decided to build a new parish church in Zagreb in the Croato-Byzantine style. In a number of texts, Kršnjavi rose up against this project and the new concept of the national style in general – considering it merely a reflection of ‘patriotic fantasy’.55 He tried to prove that the buildings erected at the time when Croatia was an independent state were neither sufficiently monumental to serve as a model for the modern church nor national enough, because they had been built primarily by foreign masters. Additionally, the Byzantine style was in his view generally inappropriate as a basis for the Croatian national style.56 Despite Kršnjavi’s protests, Amruš’ idea was finally put into action and the parish church of St. Blasius in Zagreb was constructed. In 1908–9, Zagreb City Council organized an architectural design competition for this church, in which the first prize was won by architect Viktor Kovačić, the champion of Croatian modern architecture. The church was built between 1911 and 1914, and for its construction Kovačić used new types of materials that were just being introduced into architecture. He built one of the earliest reinforced-concrete domes and used the same material for the bell tower. The materials from which it was built, together with its refined façades and the monumental rustic design of its base, make St. Blasius’ Church a key example of proto-Modernism in Croatian architecture. At the same time, the form of its floor plan, the dome and certain details of the articulation also contain numerous neo-Byzantine elements.57 This church is the only monumental representation of the new Croatian national style – that is, the Croato-Byzantine style in architecture. The onset of the First World War impeded the spread of the style. It briefly came to the fore again in the 1920s and 1930s, primarily in church architecture and
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under utterly changed political circumstances that did not favour its expansion. The Serbia-leaning authorities of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Kingdom of Yugoslavia showed no interest in disseminating this version of the neo-Byzantine style. Additionally, it was not accepted by the other numerous nations of Yugoslavia or even by many Croatian architects. For public architecture, the authorities encouraged the use of a version of the neo-Byzantine style based on Serbian medieval architecture, which was at the time promoted as the Serbian national architectural style – albeit exclusively in the eastern parts of the new state, not in Croatia. The coexistence of the two national (or nationalized) versions of the neo-Byzantine style in interwar Yugoslavia clearly shows that it was possible to adapt the same style to the needs of competing national ideologies, which had often been the case in many parts of Europe both before and after 1918 (see figure 9.2).58
Public Architecture and the National Style The First World War can without doubt be blamed for the Croato-Byzantine national style’s not putting down deeper roots. The question arises, however,
Figure 9.2. Church of St. Blasius in Zagreb built in 1911–14 according to Viktor Kovačić’s designs, 2015. © Dragan Damjanović.
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as to why the styles defined as Croatian national in the earlier decades did not become (more) widespread in Croatian architecture. At the very end of the period that is discussed in this text, painter Marko Peroš, while analysing Zagreb’s architecture in his already-cited booklet, pointed out: My heart breaks when I visit our lovely and beautiful city of Zagreb. In all its beauty, it has no external features that are Croatian! Only Croatian signs, but that is all. Its buildings could be placed in any other city. If it were not for signs in the Croatian language, one would not know what country one came to … Many public and private buildings have been built in the last 20‒30 years in Zagreb, but has at least one of them, been built if not entirely then at least decorated, in the Croatian national style? Unfortunately, we have to admit – not a single one.59
Although this statement was not completely true, as the previous section of the text shows, Peroš correctly noted that it was difficult to find any public building in Zagreb that could show the use of a Croatian national style. Styles belonging to European architectural history – primarily neo-Renaissance and, later, neo-Baroque and Art Nouveau – were the starting points for the design of public buildings erected by the Croatian authorities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Neither Zagreb nor any other Croatian city can offer a single public building that could represent some national tradition in architecture such as those encountered in Budapest, Belgrade, Krakow or even Ljubljana (though mainly after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy), Prague or Lviv – not to mention many German cities. The reasons for this state of affairs are to be found primarily in the fact that the earliest Croatian national style relied at first on vernacular architecture characterized by the use of wood as the main material, which was not suitable for public buildings due to fire-safety reasons. When later neo-Byzantine or early-medieval architecture emerged as the basis for the new national style in Croatia, the outbreak of the First World War drastically limited potential opportunities to execute new edifices. However, there were certainly opportunities to incorporate ornamentation originating from Croatian vernacular art (especially those found on textiles, but also on wooden items) into public buildings – so the question is why the Croatian Government never even attempted to initiate anything like this, while it financed the construction and decoration of pavilions for exhibitions outside Croatia in the Croatian national style. Croatia’s political position at the time seems to be the reason for this outcome. Using the Croatian national style in the pavilions presented at exhibitions outside Croatia was not considered controversial as it highlighted regional and national peculiarities in relation to other provinces and
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peoples in the Monarchy, which was not politically questionable. On the other hand, the use of elements of the Croatian style within the borders of Croatia could have been interpreted as promotion of Croatian nationalism, which was unacceptable to most Croatian governments between 1868 and 1918 because they were pro-Hungarian and they believed that such action could provoke criticism from Budapest. That is why only one public building in Zagreb, so-called Starčević House, contains motifs that were interpreted as characteristic of the Croatian national style. However, its construction was not funded by the Croatian Provincial Government but by the nationalist Croatian Party of Rights. It was named after the founder and long-time leader of the party, Ante Starčević. The house was built from 1894 to 1895 according to the design of the then extremely prolific Zagreb architectural bureau Hönigsberg and Deutsch, which, in accordance with the intention of the architectural-design competition, envisaged its winning entry in ‘a monumental style of Italian renaissance’ with motifs that contained ‘true national expression’.60 The ‘true national expression’ appears on the dome, crowning the building, which is covered with tiles containing a motif associated with vernacular textiles. The ‘Croatianness’ of the building was thus branded similarly to that of St. Mark’s Church, though in a far more restrained manner.
Colonizing by Style? National Styles and National Conflicts in Fin-de-Siècle Croatia The position in which Croatia found itself in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, being politically dominated by Austria and Hungary with no full sovereignty and with high levels of ethnic diversity, enabled the appearance of national styles characteristic of other Central-European ethnic groups in its territory. Choosing a style could often be seen at that time as a political statement. The extent to which a style was or was not suitable for use in a particular national space was therefore subject to heated debates. Some architects went to the extreme. The famous Hungarian architect Ödön Lechner emphasized that in Hungary architects should design buildings only in the Hungarian national style, and that the use of historical styles in architecture was as inappropriate as the use of German in everyday language.61 It is not surprising, therefore, that severe criticism centred on the emergence of buildings in non-Croatian national styles in the territory of Croatia, although this emergence had been motivated not solely by political but also by aesthetic or religious reasons.
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Aesthetic reasons were crucial in choosing German (Northern) neo-Renaissance (which had been promoted as a German national style from the 1870s onwards) for the restoration of the church and the pilgrimage complex in Marija Bistrica, a village north of Zagreb. The restoration of this great centre of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s cult was carried out between 1878 and 1885. The author of the project was Herman Bollé, the same architect who, together with Kršnjavi, had played the key role in creating the Croatian national style in architecture. In Marija Bistrica however, his aspiration to give a more lavish appearance to the then humble Baroque church and adapt it to the aesthetic horizons of time led him to choose German neo-Renaissance as the restoration style.62 When works were in their final stage, the restoration style of the church was fiercely attacked by Zagreb architect Matija Antolec, who accepted the argument that the choice of style for Marija Bistrica had been conditioned by the need to reconstruct the original appearance of the building but believed that national reasons should have been privileged over the aspiration to reconstruct the building in its presumed original style. ‘It needs to be admitted, however, that in Marija Bistrica, a place lying almost in the heart of Croatian Zagorje, populated completely with Croatian people, a different style than that of German Renaissance would have been a better choice’.63 Probably in an attempt to give the church in Marija Bistrica a ‘more Croatian’ look, Bollé eventually covered the church tower, as well as part of the towers of the pilgrim complex, with glazed tiles – again, containing motifs and colours taken from vernacular Croatian textiles.64 When political rather than aesthetic reasons triggered the use of a non-Croatian national style in architecture, reactions were even more severe. In addition to German neo-Renaissance, we also find in the territory of Croatia structures built in the Hungarian national style – or, more precisely, the Hungarian version of Art Nouveau. This style appeared in public buildings designed and built for Hungarian institutions in Croatia. As mentioned previously, the Triune Kingdom was from 1868 to 1918 a semi-autonomous unit in the Hungarian part of the Monarchy. This autonomy extended only to internal administration, the judiciary, religion and education, while all other affairs were controlled by the Hungarian ministries based in Budapest. In the whole territory of Croatia, and especially in Zagreb, Hungarians set up many branches of different ministries (for instance, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Communications). Designs for these buildings were entrusted exclusively to Hungarian architects, who most often chose the styles widely used in the architecture of Central-European Historicism: neo-Renaissance, neo-Baroque, Neoclassical. However, when constructing the new Post Office and Telegraph Directorate building in central Zagreb (1902–4), architects Ernő Foerk and Gyula Sándy opted for the
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aforementioned eclectic Hungarian Art Nouveau as the building style. Very soon after the building was completed, the choice of this style was fiercely attacked by the already-mentioned Croatian art critic Vladimir Lunaček. He considered that ‘[t]his Hunyadiburgo [the castle of Hunedoara] style is suited neither to the place nor time’.65 A few decades later, even less-flattering words about the choice came from Croatian conservator Gjuro Szabo. ‘They [Hungarians] did not forget to leave their “brothers” their own monument – the mansion of the Post Office in Jurišićeva Street, built in the style of Attila the Hun, with towers sticking out like horns. The interior was not bad for that period, but the exterior is a witness of tastelessness that must be born when a nation wants to create by force their “own” style …’.66 Because of such critiques, this style would for decades be referred to as the ‘colonizer’s architecture’,67 which was probably one of the reasons the façades of the post office building were later radically purified and the unusual original roof removed.68 Constructing buildings either in the German or Hungarian national styles in Croatia at that time provoked such violent reactions primarily because it was considered to be representation of Croatia’s subordinate position in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. It is interesting, however, that similar heated discussions did not occur (or, at least, to date are unknown) regarding the neo-Byzantine Serbian style used for the buildings of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Croatia or the neo-Moorish style used for the construction of synagogues for the Jewish population. In these particular cases, the use of style was a reflection foremost of confessional identity and was largely confined to church buildings intended for members of the aforementioned ethno-confessional groups. This is probably why it did not provoke indignation among the Croatian intellectual elite, for whom it was not acceptable to see the German national style on a sacral building used by Croats or the Hungarian national style on a public building located in central Zagreb (also used in the first place by Croats).
From the Croatian to the Yugoslav National Style, or Regarding the Cacophony of National Styles in Turn-of-theCentury Croatia In addition to Kršnjavi and the architects who followed his advice, as well as artists and intellectuals who promoted the Croato-Byzantine style, a number of other Croatian artists set out on their own pursuit of a Croatian national style. Although the results of this quest differed, they have a common feature – namely, the combination of motifs characteristic of vernacular architecture, the applied arts, and diverse historical styles.
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A particularly interesting version of the national style can be found in the works of amateur artist August Posilović (born in Ivanić Grad in 1846, died in Zagreb in 1935), who created numerous designs for the construction and interior decoration – including wall paintings and furniture – of churches and other public, residential and memorial buildings.69 In the late 1870s, even before Kršnjavi and Bollé, Posilović had turned to a kind of style based on vernacular ornaments that he combined with motifs originating from ancient Classical, Gothic, Byzantine and even Egyptian architecture. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, he would be given the opportunity to realize in this style, which was characterized by rich polychromy and numerous phytomorphic motifs, a number of picturesque wall paintings and altars in village churches around Zagreb: in Veleševec (1885), Novo Čiče (1886–7), Sveta Marija pod Okićem (1889–93) and Donja Stubica (1890) among others. He considered the decoration of churches in the Croatian national style a sort of entitlement of the Croatian people, given the fact that the Church allowed the use of all styles: ‘the church does not proscribe an exclusive use of any particular style for any particular place, and as people of any nation are allowed to pray to the Lord in their own language, so they are allowed to decorate the house of Lord in their own style’.70 At the beginning of the twentieth century, Posilović would become one of the most ardent proponents of the use of his particular Croatian national style in all types of buildings. He published a number of publications on this topic (Zagreb in the Croatian National Building Style, 1901; My Home, 1905, Public Buildings, 1905), in which he tried to convince his contemporaries that a new Croatian style must be created and used, claiming that ‘it is a shame that we are in architecture utterly dependent on foreigners and urged them to embrace ‘the vigorous and national Croatian features’ in their homes, churches and public buildings.71 He found buildings erected in Croatia in the late nineteenth century to be shameful given their lack of ‘Croatianness’, and particularly attacked the neo-Gothic restoration of Zagreb Cathedral by saying that it was ‘[n]othing but plagiarism, a copy and imitation of other German churches’.72 A number of his rather bizarre designs for public buildings – a new national library, a national museum, a new Catholic parish church and an Orthodox church in Zagreb – remained unrealized, and only the furnishings and the wall paintings of the aforementioned churches testify today to Posilović’s concept of the Croatian national style. Posilović’s understanding of a national style was extremely close to a variant of the national style that sculptor and amateur architect Ivan Rendić tried to create. On his tombstones and public monuments, both in the decoration of the plinths and in the architectural design of the chapels, Rendić
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combined motifs originating from vernacular crafts and motifs of historical styles (Neoclassicism, neo-Renaissance, neo-Byzantine, Russian style, etc.), whose origins can sometimes be difficult to establish. Since Rendić lived and worked for most of his life in Trieste and built his monuments and churches along almost the entire eastern Adriatic coast, from Trieste and Rijeka in the north to Dubrovnik in the south, he also transferred his version of the national style to the territory of the Croatian provinces located in the Austrian part of the Monarchy (Istria and Dalmatia).73 Rendić named his style ‘Yugoslav’ rather than ‘Croatian’74 which reflected the political and national movement among South Slavs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that was based on the cooperation and unification of Croats and Serbs in order to improve their position both in Austria-Hungary and abroad. The same political ideology would give birth to the style used by decorative painter Dragutin Inkiostri and undoubtedly the most important Croatian sculptor of the early twentieth century, Ivan Meštrović. Meštrović tried several times to design buildings – and his most important architectural project, which was never executed, is the temple dedicated to the heroes of the Battle of Kosovo: the so-called Vidovdan Temple (model made in 1912–13). Some contemporaries interpreted the style of the temple as an example of the Yugoslav style in architecture, but others clearly noted that Meštrović’s architecture also included elements of so many different periods and architectural traditions that it was actually impossible to define its style precisely. In addition to the motifs of buildings located in the areas populated with South Slavic peoples (Diocletian’s mausoleum and the cathedral in Split), Meštrović included in his work Egyptian, Assyrian, Indian and Persian motifs, as well as elements of oriental pagodas, etc.75 This mixture of styles that characterizes the design of the Vidovdan Temple, which also shows the flexibility of Art Nouveau in terms of the adoption of non-European artistic elements, would not eventually be accepted as a new national style by any Yugoslav people so it was another dead-end road for the pursuit of a particular national ingredient.
Conclusions – Towards the Commercialization of the National in Architecture and Visual Media At the end of this story of heritage politicization and nationalization, it is by maintaining a certain distance from the ever-present national narratives that it can be noted that the spread of national styles in the arts – in Croatia as well as in other parts of Europe and the world in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century – was not purely ideological or political but
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very often commercially motivated. Real economics very quickly snuffed out the commercial potential of incorporating national-style motifs as a means of reaching out to its consumers. In Croatia, furniture industry (which, due to a large stock of forests in Croatia, was very strong) was first to respond to the appearance of a national style in the arts. It used this national style initially to produce furniture for special occasions, to show both the national awareness of its companies and the quality of their products. On the occasion of an official visit to Zagreb by Kronprinz Rudolf (son of Emperor Franz Joseph I) and his wife Princess Stephanie in 1888, Daniel Herman’s Zagreb-based factory made for these high-profile guests a boudoir in a Croatian national style.76 The same producer used a ‘Croatian style’ in 1896 to furnish the lodge where the Archduke Leopold Salvator Habsburg and his wife stayed during the military ceremony called the Garnisons-Abend (Garrison Evening).77 The Bothe and Ehrmann factory from Zagreb, at that time one of the most successful furniture factories in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, produced in the same style a ‘gentleman’s’ room for the 1896 Millennium Exhibition in Budapest.78 Even more interesting examples can be found at the turn of the twentieth century. The Budweiser Pub, which opened in Zagreb in 1899 in the new building of the First Croatian Savings Bank in the city centre, was advertised as a building in the ‘most modern Croatian style’ (‘im modernsten kroatischen Style’)79 – arguably to emphasize the national character of the pub and thus attract nationally conscious consumers. A similar commercial trick saw the furnishing of two rooms in the ‘Croatian national style’ at the Savoy Westend Hotel in Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad) in Bohemia. The hotel stood opposite the Russian church, so it was thought that the rooms furnished in this way would attract Russian tourists visiting the town.80 The commercial potential of national motifs easily recognizable to the broad masses was largely used in the decades to come, though not so much in architecture or in the arts as in advertisements for consumer goods.81 The methods of the Budweiser Pub were later followed by manufacturers of laundry powders, mineral waters, pâtés and candles packaged with national symbols. Croatian national motifs, which almost disappeared in architecture when Modernism began to dominate, would therefore continue to live on in the commercial world in their different forms – on a continuum between vernacularism and the reliance on the historical architecture of the early Middle Ages – throughout the twentieth century, only to face new attempts at revival in both architecture and memorials after the 1991 declaration of Croatia’s independence.
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Dragan Damjanović is Full Professor at the Art History Department, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia. He is currently teaching and researching the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Croatian and European art and architecture. He has published eighteen books and numerous papers in edited books and journals (among them, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, Centropa, Urban Design International, Umění/ Art, Acta Historiae Artium and RIHA Journal), curated exhibitions and organized congresses related to this subject. Since 2018 he has been heading the Croatian Science Foundation project ‘Art and the State in Croatia from the Enlightenment to the Present’. NOTES This work has been fully supported by the Croatian Science Foundation under the project IP-2018-01-9364 Art and the State in Croatia from the Enlightenment to the Present. 1. The Croatian national style has so far been the topic of a considerable number of texts, but none of them brings a comprehensive overview of different aspects of the style, which is attempted by this chapter. Papers worth mentioning include Maruševski, Iso Kršnjavi kao graditelj and Lončar, Etnologija i arhitektura u Hrvatskoj. I have also published several papers on the attempts to create a national style in Croatian architecture. See Damjanović, ‘Herman Bollé and Croatian Pavilions’, 231–43; Damjanović, ‘Polychrome Roof Tiles’, 466–91; Damjanović, ‘Byzantine Revival’, 24. 2. For more on the use of national history in the nineteenth century, see Bergdoll, European Architecture, 139–70. Bak, Geary, Klaniczay, ‘The Long Shadow of Ossian’, XVI. 3. Frodl, ‘Die Einführung’, 395–400. 4. Damjanović, ‘Između Ivana Kukuljevića Sakcinskoga i Gjure Szabe’, 11–37. 5. Rački, ‘Popravljanje crkve sv. Marka’, 1. More in Damjanović, ‘Schmidt-Bolléova obnova crkve’, 66–74. 6. Damjanović, ‘The Shaping of Zagreb’, 13–26. 7. Lay, Südslavische Ornamente. 8. Semper, Der Stil, 12; Hvattum, Gottfried Semper, 67. 9. Kršnjavi, ‘Obrtnička izložba’, 2. 10. More on Kršnjavi in Maruševski, Iso Kršnjavi kao graditelj. 11. Ibid., 91–92; Kršnjavi, ‘Kuće gotskog sloga u Zagrebu’, 526–27. 12. Kršnjavi, ‘Kuće gotskog sloga u Zagrebu’, 526–27. 13. Kršnjavi, ‘Listovi iz Slavonije’, 4. 14. Kršnjavi, Listovi iz Slavonije. 15. L.K., ‘Von der Wiener Weltausstellung’, 192, 194; Maruševski, Iso Kršnjavi kao graditelj, 96.
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16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.
47. 48. 49.
Kršnjavi, Listovi iz Slavonije, 74. Kršnjavi, ‘Gradjevni narodni styl’, 1. Kršnjavi, Listovi iz Slavonije, 76–77. Moravánszky, Competing visions, 217–8. Moravánszky, Die Architektur der Donaumonarchie, 156. Kršnjavi, ‘Gradjevni narodni styl’, 1–10. Kolar, ‘O skupljanju gradjevnih oblika’, 1–3; Doljak. ‘Hrvatski gradjevni oblici’, 3–6. ‘Na uvaženje’, Viesti hrvatskog društva inžinira i arhitekata. Wiener Bauhütte, 17. Holjac and Pilar, Hrvatski gradjevni oblici; Holjac and Pilar, Das Bauernhaus in Kroatien; Dubovečak, ‘Društvo inžinira i arhitekata’, 123–54. They are party preserved in the Arts and Crafts Museum and Archbishopric archives in Zagreb (NAZ, ZNDM, sign. II–19). Lončar, ‘Narodna arhitektura u djelima Ise Kršnjavoga’, 257–70. Damjanović, ‘Herman Bollé and Croatian Pavilions’, 231–43. Today it is located in Croatian School Museum. More in Rapo, The Paris Room. Kršnjavi, ‘Pogled na razvoj’, 244–45. Ibid., 248; Katalog izložbe. Kršnjavi, ‘Gradjevni narodni styl’, 1–2. Kršnjavi, ‘Pogled na razvoj’, 246. Ráth, Az iparművészet 1896-ban, 271. Brdar Mustapić, ‘Namještaj hrvatskih proizvođača’, 195–207; Zagreb City Archives (DAZ), Fond 135, Obrtna škola (Arts and Crafts School), Album of the photos of the Millennium Exhibition. Kršnjavi, ‘Kuće gotskog sloga u Zagrebu’, 528. ‘Radnje u pravoslavnoj crkvi’, 3. Damjanović, Arhitekt Herman Bollé, 622–28. Cvitanović, Turopoljske ljepotice, 45. Kršnjavi, ‘Ville na Josipovcu i u Tuškancu’, 60; Same in Kršnjavi, ‘Gradjevni narodni styl’, 9. ‘Agramer Baurevue’; Damjanović, Arhitekt Herman Bollé, 629–31. Kršnjavi, ‘Ville na Josipovcu i u Tuškancu’, 60–62. These elements should not be understood exclusively as national Croatian since they also appear in the architecture of country houses in other Central-European areas. Pilar worked with an architect from Varaždin and with architect J. Pammer: ‘Plitvicer Seen’, 5. ‘Plitvicer Seen’ [Plitvice Lakes]. Agramer Zeitung 102, 2 May 1896: 6–7. Radić, ‘Hrvatsko-bizantinski slog’, 21. On Strzygowski’s writings on Croatian art, see more in Piplović, ‘Teorije Josefa Strzygowskog’, 121–30; Goss, ‘Josef Strzygowski,’ 335–43; Goss, ‘What Josef Strzygowski Did Not Know’, 447–55; Pelc, ‘Josef Strzygowski’, 176–87. Radić, ‘Hrvatsko-bizantinski slog’, 22. Radić, ‘Još o hrvatsko-bizantinskom slogu, II’, 1900, 123–30; Radić, ‘Još o hrvatsko-bizantinskom slogu, I’, 12–25. Radić, ‘Hrvatsko-bizantinski slog’, 22.
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50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.
Radić, ‘Još o hrvatsko-bizantinskom slogu, II’, 1901, 100. Radić, ‘Hrvatsko-bizantinski slog’, 36. Peroš, Izložba Marka Peroša. Jelić, ‘Dvorska kapela sv. Križa u Ninu’, 21–22. Lunaček, ‘Hrvatski narodni stil’, 184–87. Kršnjavi, ‘Crkva svetog Blaža’, 1–3; Maruševski, ‘Arhitektonsko-urbanističke veze’, 217; Maruševski, ‘Kovačić u kontekstu’, 38–40. Kršnjavi, ‘Crkva svetog Blaža’, 1–3; Kršnjavi, ‘Der Bau der Blasiuskirche’, 5–6. Jurić, ‘Crkva sv. Blaža’, 160–88. Damjanović, ‘Byzantine Revival’. Peroš, Izložba Marka Peroša, 7. Knežević, Zagrebačka zelena potkova, 187–88. Moravánszky, Die Architektur der Donaumonarchie, 218. Restoration designs for the church in Bistrica had been completed before Kršnjavi initiated the creation of the Croatian national style in architecture, which means that they could not have contained any of its stylistic features. Antolec, ‘Ekskurzija kluba inžinira i arhitekata’, 14–16. Damjanović, ‘Architect Herman Bollé’, 385–408. Lunaček, Eseji i kritike, 59. Szabo, Stari Zagreb, 153. Cvitanović, ‘Arhitektura monumentalnog historicizma’, 140; Laslo, ‘Lica moderniteta’, 26. Damjanović, ‘In the Shadow of Budapest’, 544. Kršnjavi, ‘Pogled na razvoj’, 246. Maruševski, ‘August Posilović’, 354. Posilović, Javne zgrade, 10, 11. Ibid, 11. Kečkemet, Ivan Rendić, život i djelo, 201–15. Ibid., 206–8. Kečkemet, Umjetnost Ivana Meštrovića, 109–11; Prelog, Hrvatska moderna umjetnost i nacionalni identitet, 101–40; Bulimbašić, ‘The Medulić Association’, 245–47. ‘Domaći obrt’. ‘Garnisons-Abend’. Ráth, Az iparművészet 1896-ban, 274. Advertising published in the Agramer Zeitung, 251, 2 November 1899, 8. ‘Maschinelle Möbel-Fabrication mit Dampfbetrieb’. For examples of interwar advertisements, see Miklošević, ‘Ideološka konstrukcija žene’, 229–37.
Bibliography ‘Agramer Baurevue’ [Zagreb Architectural Revue]. Agramer Zeitung 153, 5 July 1890, 2–3. Agramer Zeitung 251, 2 November 1899, 8.
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Antolec, Matija. ‘Ekskurzija kluba inžinira i arhitekata u Zagrebu 4. lipnja 1882. u Mariju Bistricu’ [Field Trip of the Zagreb Association of Engineers and Architects to Marija Bistrica on 4 June 1882]. Viesti kluba inžinira i arhitekta 1882, III (1), 30 June, 14–16. Bak, János M., Patrick J. Geary and Gábor Klaniczay. ‘The Long Shadow of Ossian’, in János M. Bak, Patrick J. Geary and Gábor Klaniczay (eds), Manufacturing a Past for the Present: Forgery and Authenticity in Medievalist Texts and Objects in NineteenthCentury Europe. Leiden; Boston, MA: Brill, 2015, VIII–XXIV. Bergdoll, Barry. European Architecture 1750–1890. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Brdar Mustapić, Vanja. ‘Namještaj hrvatskih proizvođača na Milenijskoj izložbi u Budimpešti 1896’ [Croatian-Made Furniture at the 1896 Millennium Exhibition in Budapest]. Radovi Instituta za povijest umjetnosti 2014, 38, 195–207. Bulimbašić, Sandi. ‘The Medulić Association of Croatian Artists in the Context of Central European Artistic and Political Aspirations: The Myth and the Nation’, in Dragan Damjanović, Lovorka Magaš Bilandžić, Željka Miklošević and Jeremy J. Walton (eds), Art and Politics in the Modern Period. Zagreb: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2019, 243–54. Cvitanović, Đurđica. ‘Arhitektura monumentalnog historicizma u urbanizmu Zagreba’ [Architecture of Monumental Historicism in the Urbanism of Zagreb]. Život umjetnosti 1978 (26–27), 127–60. . Turopoljske ljepotice [Turopolje Beauties]. Zagreb: Kajkavsko spravišće, 2008. ‘Domaći obrt’ [Domestic Craft]. Narodne novine 135, 13 June 1888, 4–5. Damjanović, Dragan. ‘Herman Bollé and Croatian Pavilions at the Exhibitions in Trieste (1882) and Budapest (1885 and 1896)’. Centropa 2010, 10 (3), 231–43. . ‘Polychrome Roof Tiles and National Style in Nineteenth-Century Croatia’. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 2011, 70 (4), 466–91. . ‘Architect Herman Bollé and German Neo-Renaissance in Croatian Architecture in the Late 19th Century’. Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 2013, 76 (3), 385–408. . Arhitekt Herman Bollé [Architect Herman Bollé]. Zagreb: Leykam international, Muzej za umjetnost i obrt, 2013. . ‘Schmidt-Bolléova obnova crkve u drugoj polovici 19. stoljeća’ [Schmidt’s and Bollé’s Restoration of the Church], in Petar Puhmajer (ed.), Crkva sv. Marka u Zagrebu: arhitektura, povijest, obnova [Saint Mark’s Church in Zagreb: Architecture, History, Restoration]. Zagreb: Hrvatski restauratorski zavod, 2013, 63–96. . ‘In the Shadow of Budapest (and Vienna) – Architecture and Urban Development of Zagreb in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries’. Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung / Journal of East Central European Studies 2018, 67 (4), 522–51. . ‘Između Ivana Kukuljevića Sakcinskoga i Gjure Szabe – zaštita spomenika u kontinentalnoj Hrvatskoj od početka 1860-ih do 1910. godine’ [Between Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski and Gjuro Szabo – Protection of Monuments in Croatia from the Beginning of 1860s until 1910], in Marko Špikić (ed.), Gjuro Szabo 1875–1943. Zagreb: Društvo povjesničara umjetnosti Hrvatske, 2018, 11–37. . ‘The Shaping of Zagreb into the Croatian National Capital: Rebuilding, Aestheticization and Croatization of the Historical City Core in the Long Nineteenth Century’, in Britta Hentschel and Harald R. Stühlinger (eds), Recoding
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the City: Thinking, Planning, and Building the City of the Nineteenth Century. Berlin: Jovis Verlag, 2018, 13–26. . ‘Byzantine Revival as National Style in Croatian Architecture 1910–1945’. Urban Design International 2019, 24. doi:10.1057/s41289-019-00098-2. Doljak, I. ‘Hrvatski gradjevni oblici, I. Iz Posavine’ [Croatian Architectural Forms, I: From Posavina]. Viesti hrvatskog društva inžinira i arhitekata 1885, VI (1–2), 31 July, 3–6. Dubovečak, Vesna. ‘Društvo inžinira i arhitekata i izdavanje atlasa Hrvatski građevni oblici’ [The Society of Engineers and Architects and the Publishing of the Croatian Architectural Forms Atlas]. Časopis za suvremenu povijest 2017, 49 (1), 123–54. Frodl, Walter. ‘Die Einführung der staatlichen Denkmalpflege in Österreich’ [The Introduction of the State Preservation of Monuments in Austria], in Harry Kühel (ed.), Das Zeitalter Kaiser Franz Josephs: Von der Revolution zur Gründerzeit, 1, Beiträge [The Age of Emperor Franz Joseph: From the Revolution to the Gründerzeit, 1, Contributions]. Vienna, Grafenegg: Amt der NÖ Landesregierung, Kulturabteilung, 1984, 395–400. ‘Garnisons-Abend’ [Garrison Evening]. Agramer Zeitung 288, 15 December 1896, 5. Goss, Vladimir P. ‘Josef Strzygowski and Early Medieval Art in Croatia’. Acta Historiae Artium 2006, 47, 335–43. . ‘What Josef Strzygowski Did Not Know’, in Arturo Calzona et al. (eds), Immagini e Ideologia – Studi in onore di Arturo Carlo Quintavalle [Images and Ideology – Studies in Honour of Arturo Carlo Quintavalle]. Parma: Electa, 2007, 447–55. Holjac, Janko and Martin Pilar. Hrvatski gradjevni oblici [Croatian Architectural Forms]. Vol. I–V. Zagreb: Hrvatsko društvo inženjera i arhitekata, 1904–9. . Das Bauernhaus in Kroatien: kroatische Bauformen [The Farmhouse in Croatia: Croatian Architectural Forms]. Zagreb, Dresden: Kroatischer Ingenieur- und Architektenverein, 1911. Hvattum, Mari. Gottfried Semper and the Problem of Historicism. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Jelić, Luka. ‘Dvorska kapela sv. Križa u Ninu’ [Court Chapel of Saint Cross in Nin], in Hrvatski spomenici ninskoga područja iz dobe hrvatskih narodnih vladara [Croatian Monuments of Nin Surroundings from the Age of Croatian National Rulers], Book I. Zagreb: JAZU, 1911, 1–32. Jurić, Zlatko. ‘Crkva sv. Blaža u Zagrebu’ [Church of Saint Blasius in Zagreb], in Miroslav Begović (ed.), Viktor Kovačić: život i djelo [Viktor Kovačić: Life and Work]. Zagreb: Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, 2004, 160–88. Katalog izložbe narodnoga domaćega obrta što ju priredi Družtvo umjetnosti u Zagrebu god. 1881. [Catalogue of the Exhibition of the National Domestic Crafts That Was Organized by Society of Arts in Zagreb in 1881]. Zagreb: Nakladom Družtva umjetnosti, 1881. Kečkemet, Duško. Ivan Rendić, život i djelo [Ivan Rendić, Life and Works]. Supetar: Skupština općine Brač, Savjet za prosvjetu i kulturu, Brački zbornik 8, 1969. . Umjetnost Ivana Meštrovića [The Art of Ivan Meštrović]. Split: Filozofski fakultet u Splitu, 2017. Knežević, Snješka. Zagrebačka zelena potkova [The Zagreb Green Horseshoe]. Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1996.
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Kolar, Nikola. ‘O skupljanju gradjevnih oblika u hrvatskom narodu’ [On Recording Architectural Forms by Croats]. Viesti hrvatskog društva inžinira i arhitekata 1885, VI (1–2), 31 July, 1–3. Kršnjavi, Isidor. ‘Obrtnička izložba doljnje Austrije u Beču, V’ [Craft Exhibition of Lower Austria in Vienna, V]. Narodne novine 180, 7 August 1880, 2. Kršnjavi, Iso. ‘Kuće gotskog sloga u Zagrebu’ [Gothic Houses in Zagreb]. Vienac 1881, 13 (33), 13 August, 526–29. . ‘Listovi iz Slavonije, I’ [Letters from Slavonia, I]. Narodne novine 245, 26 October 1881, 4. . Listovi iz Slavonije [Letters from Slavonia]. Zagreb, 1882. . ‘Gradjevni narodni styl’ [National Architectural Style]. Glasnik Družtva za umjetnost i umjetni obrt III 1888, 1–10. . ‘Ville na Josipovcu i u Tuškancu u Zagrebu’ [Villas at Josipovac and Tuškanac in Zagreb]. Glasnik Družtva za umjetnost i umjetni obrt u Zagrebu 1888, III, 60–62. . ‘Der Bau der Blasiuskirche’ [The Construction of the Saint Blaise Church]. Agramer Tagblatt 20 (277), 2 December 1905, 5–6. . ‘Crkva svetog Blaža u Zagrebu’ [Saint Blasius Church in Zagreb]. Narodne novine 71 (273), 18 November 1905, 1–3. . ‘Pogled na razvoj hrvatske umjetnosti u moje doba’ [View of Croatian Art in the Time of My Life]. Hrvatsko kolo 1905, I, 215–307. L.K. ‘Von der Wiener Weltausstellung: Das kroatische Bauernhaus’ [From the Vienna World Exhibition: The Croatian Farmhouse]. Illustrirte Zeitung 1576, 13 September 1873, 192, 194. Laslo, Alexander. ‘Lica moderniteta 1898. – 1918.: zagrebačka arhitektura secesijske epohe’ [Faces of Modernity 1898–1918: Zagreb Art Nouveau Architecture], in Anđelka Galić and Miroslav Gašparović (eds), Secesija u Hrvatskoj [Art Nouveau in Croatia]. Zagreb: Muzej za umjetnost i obrt, 2003–04, 23–39. Lay, Felix. Südslavische Ornamente, gesammelt und gewidmet allen Ländern und Völkern zur Förderung der Kunstindustrie und nebst einer Abhandlung über die Verbreitung und Cultur der Südslaven [South Slavic Ornaments, Collected and Dedicated to All Countries and Peoples for the Promotion of the Art Industry and Together with a Treatise on the Space and Culture of the South Slavs]. Hanau am Main, 1871. Lončar, Sanja. Etnologija i arhitektura u Hrvatskoj od 1870-ih do 1970-ih – istraživanja, suradnje i međuutjecaji [Ethnology and Architecture in Croatia from the 1870s to the 1970s – Research, Collaboration and Interrelationship]. Zagreb: Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, 2014. . ‘Narodna arhitektura u djelima Ise Kršnjavoga – istraživanje i korištenje etnografske građe u svrhu stvaranja narodnog stila’ [Folk Architecture in the Works of Iso Kršnjavi – Research and Use of Ethnographic Material with the Purpose of Creating National Style], in Ivana Mance and Zlatko Matijević (eds), Iso Kršnjavi – veliki utemeljitelj [Iso Kršnjavi – the Great Founder]. Zagreb: Institut za povijest umjetnosti, Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2015, 257–70. Lunaček, Vladimir. ‘Hrvatski narodni stil’ [Croatian National Style]. Vijenac 1912, III (6), 184–87. . Eseji i kritike [Essays and Critics]. Vinkovci: Privlačica, 1994 (originally published in 1906).
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Maruševski, Olga. Iso Kršnjavi kao graditelj [Iso Kršnjavi as Initiator of Building Projects]. Zagreb: Društvo povjesničara umjetnosti Hrvatske, 1986. . ‘August Posilović u crkvi svete Marije pod Okićem’ [August Posilović in the Church of Saint Mary below Okić], in Dragutin Pavličević (ed.), Pod Okićem. Zavičajna knjiga župa sv. Marije i sv. Martina [Under Okić: Book of the Parish of St. Mary and St. Martin]. Zagreb: Župa svete Marije pod Okićem, 1993, 352–57. . ‘Arhitektonsko-urbanističke veze Zagreba i Beča na prijelomu stoljeća’ [Architectural and Urban Ties Between Zagreb and Vienna at the Turn of the Century], in Damir Barbarić (ed.), Fin de siècle Zagreb – Beč [Fin de siècle Zagreb – Vienna]. Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1997, 197–228. . ‘Kovačić u kontekstu svog vremena’ [Kovačić in the Context of His Time], in Miroslav Begović, (ed.), Viktor Kovačić: život i djelo [Viktor Kovačić: Life and Work]. Zagreb: Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, 2004, 29–50. ‘Maschinelle Möbel-Fabrication mit Dampfbetrieb’ [Mechanical Furniture Fabrication with Steam Engine’]. Agramer Zeitung 81, 9 April 1898, 3. Miklošević, Željka. ‘Ideološka konstrukcija žene u međuratnom razdoblju: reklamni oglasi Tvornice Georg Schicht’ [Gender Ideology Between the Two World Wars – Advertisements of the Georg Schicht Company]. Osječki zbornik 2011, 20, 229 –37. Moravánszky, Ákos. Die Architektur der Donaumonarchie [The Architecture of the Danube Monarchy]. Berlin: Ernst & Sohn, 1988. . Competing Visions: Aesthetic Invention and Social Imagination in Central European Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. ‘Na uvaženje’ [Notice]. Viesti hrvatskog društva inžinira i arhitekata 1884, V (1), 31 March, 15. Pelc, Milan. ‘Josef Strzygowski und die kroatische Kunstgeschichte’ [ Josef Strzygowski and Croatian Art History], in Piotr Otto Scholz and Magdalena Aana Dlugosz (eds), Von Biala nach Wien: Josef Strzygowski und die Kunstwissenschaften [From Biala to Vienna: Josef Strzygowski and Art History]. Vienna: European University Press Verlagsgesellschaft, 2015, 176–87. Peroš, Marko. Izložba Marka Peroša u hrvatskom narodnom slogu [Exhibition of Marko Peroš in the Croatian National Style]. Zagreb, 1912. Piplović, Stanko. ‘Teorije Josefa Strzygowskog o umjetnosti Dalmacije’ [Theories of Josef Strzygowski on the Dalmatian Art]. VDG Jahrbuch 2001, 121–30. ‘Plitvicer Seen’ [Plitvice Lakes]. Agramer Zeitung 292, 21 December 1893, 5. ‘Plitvicer Seen’ [Plitvice Lakes]. Agramer Zeitung 102, 2 May 1896: 6–7. Posilović, August. Javne zgrade [Public Buildings]. Zagreb, 1905. Prelog, Petar. Hrvatska moderna umjetnost i nacionalni identitet [Croatian Modern Art and National Identity]. Zagreb: Institut za povijest umjetnosti, 2018. Rački, Franjo. ‘Popravljanje crkve sv. Marka’ [Restoration of Saint Mark’s Church]. Obzor 1875, 24, 30 January, 1. Radić, Frano. ‘Hrvatsko-bizantinski slog’ [Croatian-Byzantine Style]. Starohrvatska prosvjeta. Glasilo Hrvatskoga starinarskog družtva u Kninu 1900 V (1), 2–36. . ‘Još o hrvatsko-bizantinskom slogu, II’ [More on Croatian-Byzantine Style, II]. Starohrvatska prosvjeta 1900, V (3–4), 123–30. . ‘Još o hrvatsko-bizantinskom slogu, I’ [More on Croatian-Byzantine Style, I]. Starohrvatska prosvjeta 1901, VI (1–2), 12–25.
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. ‘Još o hrvatsko-bizantinskom slogu, II’ [More on Croatian-Byzantine Style, II]. Starohrvatska prosvjeta 1901, VI (3–4), 87–100. ‘Radnje u pravoslavnoj crkvi’ [Works in the Orthodox Church]. Narodne novine 84, 10 April 1884, 3. Rapo, Vesna. The Paris Room – The Croatian School Museum: Achievements of Croatian Education at the Exhibitions of the Second Half of the 19th Century. Zagreb: Hrvatski školski muzej, 2006. Ráth, György. Az iparművészet 1896-ban. Millénniumi emlékkönyv [Applied Arts in 1896. Millennium Memorial Book]. Budapest: Kiadja a Magyar iparművészeti társulat, 1897. Semper, Gottfried. Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten oder praktische Aesthetik, 1, Textile Kunst [The Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts or Practical Aesthetics, 1, Textile Art], 2nd edition. Munich: Friedr. Bruckmann’s Verlag, 1878. Szabo, Gjuro Stari Zagreb [Old Zagreb]. Zagreb: Spektar, Znanje, 1971 (first edition from 1940). Wiener Bauhütte 17 (s.d.)
PART III
8 THE APPROPRIATION OF HERITAGE(S)
8 CHAPTER 10 Architectural Heritage in the National Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Russia Kazan Antiquities Gulchachak Nugmanova
Introduction In the first half of the nineteenth century, Europe experienced an increase in interest in the Middle Ages and medieval art that most consistently and evidently manifested itself in architecture – especially in church buildings. In Russia, this Europe-wide process related to the construction of the nation state and its acquiring unique characteristics. The state policy in architecture, ranging from the reign of Nicholas I and ending with the epoch of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II, reflected the ideology of ‘official nationality’ with its famous triad of Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality. It expressed the essence of the new state doctrine, which replaced the view of Russian history that had been held during the period of Peter I with its focus on Europe. Now, a reliance on Orthodox people formed the basis of the state idea; it was in Orthodoxy that the core of the nationality concept was imagined. The idea went back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when Orthodoxy played a major role in constructing Russian identity before Peter I.1 In the nineteenth century, the European-born drive to express national culture and to mark historical roots gave birth to a new kind of architectural activity, aimed at the study, preservation and restoration of the country’s medieval architectural monuments. Archaeology, a new field of science, emerged in the eighteenth century to study and analyse such buildings. In Russia, it started with Nicholas I’s decree of 1826 concerning the collection of information on ancient buildings and a general
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prohibition against their destruction.2 Appearing shortly after the victory in the war of 1812 and immediately after the Decembrist uprising, it reflected the need for a new vision of Russian history and culture less concentrated on Russia’s European involvement. In this view, the Russian Empire was supposed to reinvent its cultural background and heritage. It became necessary to reconsider the history of Russia as a great Orthodox empire with its own monuments and historical shrines. Ancient Orthodox churches and old fortresses related to Russia’s victories became the focus of the government’s special attention.3 This chapter explores how these practices were realized in the Kazan region, which has a recorded history that goes back to the times of Volga Bulgaria, the Golden Horde and the Kazan Khanate. Volga Bulgaria was a historical Islamic state in the Middle Volga region that existed from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. From 1243, it became part of the Mongolian Ulus Jochi, later known as the Golden Horde. The Kazan Khanate was established as a result of the decline of the Golden Horde in 1438; after the conquest of Kazan in 1552 by Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible, the first great Muscovite conqueror, it was annexed by Russia (or the Great Principality of Moscow, as it was called then). The specificity of Kazan Province, whose own medieval architectural and urban culture belonged to pre-Christian civilization and whose Orthodox history started only in the middle of the sixteenth century, had a profound impact on the state’s cultural policy in the region.
Historical Context The first legislation relevant to exploring and protecting Kazan antiquities appeared in the eighteenth century. In 1722, the founder of the Russian Empire, Peter I, visited the Russian village of Uspenskoe-Bоlgar, 140 kilometres south of Kazan, on his way to Persia. The capital of the large Islamic state of Volga Bulgaria had been situated there, and its remains were scattered around the village. When the Emperor saw the ruins of ancient buildings and tombstones, he issued a decree on their protection and study, and ordered that copies of inscriptions from gravestones were to be sent to St. Petersburg for translation.4 An Orthodox monastery existed there, with some of the surviving ancient buildings adapted for its use. In 1767, Catherine the Great, who repeated Peter I’s Kazan journey to see the country, condemned this fact and reminded the local authorities about his decree.5 The very next year, the first descriptions of Bulgarian monuments and their graphic image were set down by Peter Pallas and Ivan Lepyokhin, who headed the expeditions of the Imperial Academy of Sciences to the
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Volga region, the Urals and Siberia (1768–74).6 Such tsarist attention to Kazan historical and architectural monuments was due to the role of the Kazan annexation, viewed as the starting point of the empire in the official ideology of the Russian state in the eighteenth century. Religious motifs were also at stake. The miraculous finding of the icon of the Mother of God of Kazan near the Kazan Kremlin in 1579 was perceived as God’s blessing for the conquest of the Tatar-Muslim region. The Orthodox Bogoroditsky (Virgin) Monastery was established there, and the icon became the patron of the House of Romanov. The monastery enjoyed special patronage by Russian monarchs from then on. Catherine II’s visit to Kazan in 1767 contributed to a radical transformation of the complex. A new cathedral was designed according to her order by court architect Ivan Starov. It was begun only in 1798 in the presence of Emperor Paul I, and the Grand Princes Constantine and Alexander.7 The last of these, upon his ascension to the throne as Alexander I, provided an annual fund until the church was completed in 1808.8 The monumental cathedral with columned porticos, pediments and a massive dome gave the urban landscape a truly imperial scale. The ensemble designed around the cathedral in 1809 by Yakov Shelkovnikov, with a colonnade surrounding an oval plaza, referred directly to St. Peter’s Square in Rome.9 A similar architectural ensemble was being completed at this time in St. Petersburg, designed according to the direct order of Paul I in the likeness of the bestknown monument of the Western Christian world. The Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg was conceived by the Emperor as a place to store a copy of the icon of the Mother of God of Kazan found in Kazan. It is this symbolic connection between Kazan Cathedral in the capital and the Cathedral of the Bogoroditsky (Virgin) Monastery in Kazan that Shelkovnikov tried to express through architecture by likening their images. The style of the complex was Neoclassical, an international architectural language connected to power and imperial ideals. The Napoleonic war prompted a review of notions on the divine origin of former conquests and a strengthening of their religious connections. Russia saw the erection of numerous churches in places of victorious historical battles. In Kazan, it was the memorial temple built in 1813–23 on the site of the mass grave of the fallen Orthodox warriors who had conquered the city in 1552. The grave belonged to the Uspenskij (Assumption) Monastery – better known as the Zilant Monastery (after its location on the Zilantaw Hill), which was founded nearby in their honour in the same year. The idea for this building arose in 1811, when the monastery’s Archimandrite wished to replace the rotten wooden pillar on the grave with a stone one. However, the central authorities intercepted this initiative. Emperor Alexander I charged the capital architect, Nicholas Alfyorov, with preparing the
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temple design, the construction of which was paid for with public funds and partly financed by the Emperor himself and members of the imperial family.10 Raised on a high pedestal, a truncated Egyptian-style pyramid with twin-columned porticos in antis adjoining its edges was reflected in the waters of the Kazanka River. A wide staircase led from the west to the entrance to the church, located above the crypt. From the middle of the nineteenth century, it was Kazan architectural antiquities that commemorated the Kazan conquest (which imperial historiography deemed a glorious and dramatic event) and which served as its historical symbol. Nicholas I’s decree of 1826 to research the remains of ancient buildings in Russia’s cities and to prohibit their destruction initiated, as mentioned above, a systematic study of historical and architectural heritage all over Russia – and in the Kazan region in particular.
Kazan Antiquities in the State Registry Nicholas I’s decree of 31 December 1826 was addressed to the empire’s governors and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and was sent to all gubernias (provinces). The Kazan civil governor, Otto von Rosen, received it at the beginning of 1827. The Emperor’s intention was to gather knowledge of all the remains of ancient castles, fortresses and other antiquities; their locations; and current condition. The detailed instruction from the Ministry called on the governors to find out when and by whom they had been built or rebuilt, with which materials and for what purpose; if demolished, the date and reason for that should be provided in the survey. They also had to provide information on how the buildings were being used and whether they could be renovated according to their ancient plans and façades. In addition, drawings of them were required. The mayors of all twelve Kazan Province uezd (county) cities were informed of the decree and its urgency.11 Ancient buildings were only discovered in two uezd towns. In Sviyazhsk, it was the town-archive building – although nobody knew anything about its origin. A wooden fortress tower in Arsk was thought to have been part of the Khanate’s defensive structures. In most towns, no antiquities were found. Surprisingly enough, the chief of Spassky Uezd, where the above-mentioned remains of the medieval city of Bolgar near the village of Uspenskoe-Bоlgar were located,12 did not know anything about them at all. This was all the more striking as it was exactly these antiquities that had been the subject of the preservation decrees of Peter I and Catherine II. The reason for this oversight may have been the fact that these decrees had fallen into obsolescence by the nineteenth century. That of Nicholas I was circulated to other officials, and it was the zemstvo’s police officer,
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Zhedrinsky, who later shed light on Bulgar monuments with a detailed description of five old edifices. Two of these, which he determined as pillars, were the so-called Large and Small Minarets with a height of 15 and 7 sazhens (ca. 32 and 15 metres, respectively) from the fourteenth century. Out of three other structures built from the 1260s to the 1330s, one was a mosque and the others were mausoleums. The main religious building of Bolgar city belonged to the type of a hall mosque, almost square in plan, with supports in several rows, an entrance portal, an asymmetrically built minaret and four towers in the corners. Both mausoleums, with a hemispherical vault covering the only room, belonged to the type of eastern hipped-roof tombs, square in plan, in the form of a quadrilateral passing into an octagon. The northern mausoleum served as a monastic cellar, and the eastern one had been turned into a monastic chapel in the eighteenth century (see figure 10.1). According to Zhedrinsky, Muslims regularly came to the place for worship – even from afar.13 In their implementation of the decree of 1826, the Kazan authorities identified three ancient structures as valuable historical and architectural monuments. They were the fortress (i.e. the walls and towers) of the Kazan Kremlin; the ‘tower and mosque of the Tatar khans’, as well as two kremlin temples of the Annunciation Cathedral; and a small church of Cyprian and Justinia, these last two ‘built by the Tsar Ivan IV after the Kazan victory’ (see figure 10.2).14 The stone fortress had been erected by the Russian Government at the end of the sixteenth and during the seventeenth centuries on the site of the Tatar wooden one, which occupied the kremlin’s northern part, with its thick oak walls and four gate towers. The administrative and main religious buildings of the Tatars had been concentrated there. Only the Khan’s palace and five mosques, with the eight-minaret Grand Kul-Sharif Mosque among them, were made of stone. Four years after the Kazan conquest, the authorities started to construct the stone fortress. About one-third of it was built in the sixteenth century, while the remaining brickwork was completed in the seventeenth century. The new, extended fortress became the centre of tsarist control over the conquered region. A military garrison was housed in the kremlin, the mosques were destroyed and Orthodox churches and monasteries appeared. The ruins of the Khan’s palace were used as an arsenal and military storehouses. At the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, a complex consisting of the chief commandant’s house, a church and a watchtower were erected in the vicinity. By the end of the century, it had fallen into disrepair and the administration of the new Empress Catherine II moved to the southern part of the kremlin near the main entrance to the city.
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Figure 10.1. Alexander Schmidt, Bulgarian Monuments of the 13–14th Century, 1827. Watercolour. From the album Arhitekturnye chertezhi razvalin Drevnih Bolgar, snyaty s natury v 1827 g. arhitektorom A. Shmidtom, Moscow, 1832.
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The ruins of the Khan’s palace remained in place until the middle of the nineteenth century. A nearby Orthodox church was considered to be the earlier palace mosque, and, as such, it was included in the list of Kazan antiquities. The remaining watchtower was also attributed to the Tatar period and was believed to be the mosque minaret.15 This 58-metre-high structure, consisting of five tiers and crowned with a spire, would later be known as the Suyumbeki Tower, named after the widow of the last Tatar Khan, Safa Girey, who ruled the Khanate as a regent after his death in 1549. Many legends and stories appeared about Suyumbeki – one of them directly related to the tower. As one of the stories had it, Tsar Ivan IV heard about her beauty and asked her to marry him; supposedly, it was her refusal that led to the Kazan campaign. When the Russians besieged the city, she agreed to the marriage on condition that the Tsar’s builders manage to erect a tower taller than all the Kazan minarets in one week. When they did, she expressed a wish to look at the city for the last time before marriage and then threw herself from the top of the tower. Kazan Province architect
Figure 10.2. Edward Tracy Turnerelli, Kazan fortress, 1837. Lithograph. From the album Views of Kazan, drawn from nature by Edward Turnerelli, London, 1839. Wikimedia Commons, public domain, https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TURNERELLI(1854)_p1.010_Fortress_of_ Kazan_(Kremlin).jpg.
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Alexander Schmidt, in accordance with the imperial order, made drawings of all ancient buildings, which he partly published in 1832.16 In 1830, when the same circular came again to Kazan from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it did not mention Nicholas I’s decree but only requested information. The new governor, Evfgraf Filippov, commissioned the Kazan University professors to enrich the knowledge of Kazan antiquities.17 It was a doctor of medicine, Karl Fuchs – known as an ethnographer, statistician, orientalist and numismatic collector – who had published ‘Kratkaya istoria Kazani’ (A Brief History of Kazan) in the local newspaper Kazanskie novosti (Kazan News) in 1817. Issued as a book in 1822, it was, however, still unknown to the Kazan governor, who requested it immediately after discovering its existence. The list of architectural and historical attractions compiled by Fuchs during the execution of the governor’s task stemming from the ministerial circular included eleven points. Here for the first time, the Khan’s palace was called ‘Suyumbeki’s Palace’. Fuchs rejected the Tatar origin of the Suyumbeki Tower, dating it instead to the mid-seventeenth-century Russian period. To prove this, he pointed to the tower’s architecture – and in particular its niche for the icon and pilaster, which, in his view, would have been alien to the Tatars. In addition to the edifices, the professor also incorporated tombstones; the reliquaries of the first Orthodox missionaries of the land, Guri and Barsanuphius; the ship Tver, on which Catherine the Great came to Kazan in 1768; and other items into his catalogue. Most extraordinary was the listing of the nineteenth-century memorial temple dedicated to the fallen Orthodox warriors of the Kazan battle.18 Like the eighteenth-century ship, this monument, conceived at the height of the war with Napoleon as a reminder of the country’s glorious victories, had nothing to do with the issue of the ministerial circulars. Their inclusion came about because university professor Fuchs had researched the entire local history, of which both these monuments formed part, and his aim was not limited to a precise execution of the ministerial decree. Professor of Law Gavriil Solntsev discovered another historical monument from the same period in the region. The wooden church of St. Sergius the Wonderworker appeared by order of Tsar Ivan the Terrible in the Russian fortress of Sviyazhsk a year before the Kazan conquest.19 The fortress on a high, steep bank of the Volga, 30 kilometres from Kazan, was a stronghold for the Russians. Solntsev’s most important achievement, however, was the discovery of Peter I’s decree of 1722 – although he did not succeed in finding Catherine II’s decree. It was also Solntsev who provided Governor Filippov with the most recent decree of Nicholas I from 1826 – which, it transpired, was surprisingly unknown to him, perhaps
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due to the ministerial circular having nothing to say about this imperial decree.20 With hindsight, it was obvious that the decree of Nicholas I should have met with misunderstanding among local officials. It was unclear what should be considered under the category of ‘heritage’ except for the region’s ancient buildings – primarily Orthodox churches, kremlins and fortresses, all of which were indicated in both the decree and the circular. Historical and architectural monuments should be ‘ancient’, according to the decree, and the real or alleged Tatar monuments were undoubtedly the most ancient in Kazan Province. But the decree had, in fact, the primary aim of preserving those monuments that could be associated with the imperial ideal of building a single, centralized state. It therefore also included early Moscow churches dating back to the tenth to fifteenth centuries. Nicholas I’s attention was attracted by the temples of the city of Vladimir as a direct predecessor of Moscow and the ancient buildings of the Grand Duchy of Kiev, which was the cradle of Russian Orthodoxy. In the Middle Volga region, Orthodox churches appeared only in the middle of the sixteenth century. Constructed immediately after the Kazan conquest, first of wood and soon replaced by stone, they were the most ancient buildings of the Russian period in the region – viewed as reminders of the events of October 1552 and as symbols of the victory of Orthodoxy over Islam. The Kazan conquest was the key event in local history, and the edifices directly related to it were for this reason included on the official list of Kazan antiquities. In this sense, the above-mentioned memorial church that appeared on the bank of the River Kazanka was no exception, although it was built in the nineteenth century. It marked the burial place of Russian soldiers and was therefore as relevant to the Kazan conquest as the Kazan Kremlin churches. In 1832, a commemoration year, it was renovated and decorated with portraits of Tsar Ivan IV and Emperor Nicholas I.21 In 1836, the Emperor personally visited the monument during his journey to Kazan, stepping down into the crypt and praying for a long time there.22 From that moment, it became a mandatory place to visit for members of the imperial family. This temple, rather than the Virgin Monastery where the icon of the Mother of God of Kazan had been found, now embodied the conquest of the region. Interestingly, years later, in 1871, when a rich merchant’s widow expressed a desire to build a belfry at the place, the initiative was dismissed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs on the ground that the memorial church was an object of ‘state heritage’.23 Thus, the first official list of Russian historical and architectural monuments emerged thanks to the decree of Nicholas I of 1826, which was repeated in 1830 in a circular from the Ministry of the Interior. In 1838, a copy of the decree was reissued by the same Emperor. The decree of 1839 ‘On the
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preservation of ancient monuments in the provinces’ further confirmed the responsibility of the governors to preserve antiquities. More importantly, it ordered them to keep intact the original appearance of ancient buildings with historical and artistic value. At the same time, construction work was allowed to be carried out exclusively on projects approved by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1845, a decision was made regarding the preparation of a complete collection of architectural drawings of ancient memorable buildings in the empire. All of these measures demonstrate the state’s purposeful policy in the field of the protection of architectural heritage.24 The scientific knowledge of the above-mentioned Bulgarian architectural heritage near Uspenskoe (Bolgar) was more extensive than what the zemstvo’s police officer, Zhedrinsky, had earlier provided to the Governor. A detailed description of the ruins of the ‘White Chamber’ was made by Franz Erdman, a colleague of professors Fuchs and Solntsev, who headed the Department of Oriental Studies at Kazan University at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was published in German in Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Innern von Russland in 1825. As no one knew what the structure was, the term ‘chamber’ had been used to refer to a Russian medieval stone or brick structure. After finding a pipe system, Erdman suggested that it was a bathhouse and thus opened an almost century-long discussion about the functional purpose of the building. The first lovers of the Kazan Kingdom’s antiquities appeared – among them, Nicholas Kaftannikov and Paul Svin’in. Kaftannikov was a resident of Kazan, who studied the ‘White Chamber’ in 1819 and shared Erdman’s point of view on its functionality. Svin’in – a writer, artist and traveller – was the first publisher of the journal Otechestvennye zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland), and published his 1820-e. Puteshestviya po Rossii (P.P. Svin’in’s travels in Russia in the 1820s). He saw some similarity between the building and an Indian temple. The imperial decrees from the first decade of the state conservationist policy provided the impetus to research local landmarks and accounted for a rising historical consciousness among the local intellectual elite. Following these decrees, two periodicals appeared in Kazan during those years. The first, entitled Additions to Kazanskij vestnik (Kazan Bulletin), was an appendix to the university journal; the other was the region’s first private magazine, Zavolzhskij muravej (The Ant from the Volga Region) – they were established in 1828 and 1832 respectively. They published information and documents from the Kazan and Sviyazhsk archives, along with articles on regional history and ethnography. It was in the pages of Zavolzhskij muravej that Nicholas Kaftannikov’s descriptions and sketches of the White Chamber had been published. Books were also published, such as Kratkaya istoriya Kazani (Brief history of Kazan, 1834) and Zametki ob Astrahani (Notes on Astrakhan) by Michael Rybushkin; Ukazatel’ goroda
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Kazani (Kazan city signpost, 1841) by Ivan Chernov; and Kazanskaya istoriya (Kazan history, 1847) by Nikolay Bazhenov. Simultaneously, the collection of graphic views of Kazan and Kazan historical and architectural sights was enriched by the works of Vasilij Turin (1832), Edward Turnerelli (1837), the brothers Grigorij and Nikanor Chernecov (1838), and Andre Dyuran (1839). In the second half of the nineteenth century, a growing interest in regional history and ethnography caused a broad range of researchers to emerge, also of a grassroots character. For example, a merchant from Elabuga, Ivan Shishkin (father of the famous Russian painter), was very interested in the local archaeology. A member of the Moscow Archaeological Society, he participated in the excavation of the Ananyinsky burial ground and published a book, Istoriya goroda Elubugi (History of Elabuga city). Kazan University, endowed with a special mission to enlighten Russian inorodtsy (local indigenous people) in the east of the empire, became the true centre for studies of historical and architectural heritage, history and ethnography of not only Kazan but also of the entire region stretching from the Volga to the Pacific Ocean. This development acquired a particularly systematic character with the establishment of the Society of Archaeology, History and Ethnography in 1878. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it actually served as a state institution that regulated local architectural-heritage research and conservation activities, coordinating it with similar central bodies such as the Moscow Archaeological Society and the Imperial Russian Archaeological Society in St. Petersburg. Traditions initiated by Franz Erdman, Karl Fuchs, Gavriil Solntsev and Michael Rybushkin continued to develop. The name of the orientalist Ilya Berezin, who published the key work Bulgar na Volge (Bulgar on the Volga, 1853) was well known at home and abroad. A book published in 1877 by Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Law Sergey Shpilevskij, Drevnie goroda i drugie Bulgaro-Tatarskie pamyatniki Kazanskoj gubernii (Ancient cities and other Bulgar-Tatar monuments of Kazan Province), which constituted a collection of data on the key archaeological and historical monuments of the Bulgar-Tatar period, was awarded the Gold Medal of the Russian Geographical Society. Evgeniy Solov’yov’s work Drevnosti Kazanskoj gubernii s dvumya arheologicheskimi kartami (Antiquities of Kazan Province with two archaeological maps, 1877) greatly expanded knowledge of the Kazan monuments. Whereas previously only the Kazan Kremlin had been researched, now several fortresses were discovered and investigated. Solov’yov classified them chronologically and divided them into three main groups. At first, the main body of the historical and architectural heritage was made up of outstanding older monuments of large centres of Ancient
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Rus’, most often associated with the idea of creating a single powerful centralized state. The situation changed in 1869, when the concept of the architectural and historical monument was extended to include buildings erected before 1725, during the reign of Emperor Peter I.25 This was important for the Kazan region, whose Orthodox churches were obviously newer than those of the central Russian Provinces (Guberniyas). If the first Kazan churches, dating from the mid-sixteenth century, were of interest to the central authorities, the more numerous seventeenth century religious buildings from the period of the region’s colonization had remained outside their attention until then. Due to the decree of 1869, the list of local historical and architectural monuments deemed to be ‘heritage’ was extended significantly, which helped a number of temples to be preserved due to their official status. For example, the Kazan Mother of God Monastery gate church from the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century was saved from destruction, contrary to the approved project. Seventeenth-century Russian church architecture, including Kazan architecture, formed the basis of a new version of the Russian style, which replaced the Russian-Byzantine style of the middle of the nineteenth century. This latter had been based on an interpretation of the forms of Byzantine and ancient Russian architecture, and was characterized by a combination of the Neoclassical monumentality of volumes with the forms of early Moscow architecture (keeled kokoshniks, i.e. a curved decoration of the top of the church wall; arcature; and fivedomed roofs with cupolas or shatyors, i.e. tall pyramids). The version of the Russian style that emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century revived the traditions of cult architecture of the Moscow and Yaroslavl schools of the second half of the seventeenth century, marked by the penetration of elements of the Western European Baroque into the Orthodox architectural tradition.
Reconstruction of the Kazan Kremlin as the Russian Emperor’s Residence The Kazan Kremlin was the main historical and architectural monument to be considered by officials in St. Petersburg as a captured Tatar fortress. After a large fire in 1815, restoration works on the building turned into a full-scale reconstruction aimed at transforming the fortress into the Emperor’s Kazan residence.26 Shortly after Nicholas I’s ascension to the throne, the slow-moving restoration works at the fortress gained momentum. Due to his financial support, the bishop’s new house was completed in 1829, after twelve years of work. Since the 1780s, Kazan bishops had
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lived in their country residence in the Novo-Ierusalimskij Voskresenskij (New Jerusalem Resurrection) Monastery; now they were able to move their residence to Kazan. To be sure, the kremlin did not entirely lose its military function, as its former arsenal and foundry buildings were now replaced with a military school. Nicholas I’s arrival in Kazan in 1836 gave the reconstruction works a new impetus. It was usual for Russian monarchs to start their provincial visits from the main regional Orthodox cathedral. The Blagoveshchenskij (Annunciation) Cathedral of Kazan was believed to have been built exactly in place of the Kul-Sharif Mosque. The emperor’s forthcoming arrival inspired local citizens to ask for permission to erect a new cathedral instead of the old one, and to lay its foundation stone in his presence. In his request, the Governor cited similar historical cases: the cornerstones of the Peter and Paul Cathedral and the Cathedral of the Mother of God of the Kazan Monastery had been laid by Peter I and Paul I during their visits to Kazan in 1722 and 1798 respectively. Nicholas I examined the ancient building and ordered the old cathedral to be saved by expanding it (according to some sources, he personally measured the space for this extension). A series of designs was developed during the next four years, all of them showing a similarity to the temples of ‘Russia’s main architect’, Konstantin Thon. Thus, the plan developed in St. Petersburg by architect Vasily Morgan cited Thon’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, designed for Moscow and recently approved by the Emperor. The Kazan cathedral was finally rebuilt in 1841–44 according to the design of the local architect Foma Petondi, having been approved by the Emperor in 1839 when the Moscow cathedral had just started to be built (the official ceremony of laying the cornerstone took place that year).27 The project’s main advantage lay in the fact that the mid-sixteenth-century, five-domed cathedral was readapted, although a two-storey extension gave it a greater scale. The seventeenth-century belfry was also saved at the request of Kazan residents, who recognized it as a monument of Kazan antiquity.28 Though built in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, the Kazan Kremlin was perceived as a Tatar fortress from the time of the conquest, and therefore was of great interest to Nicholas I. Alexander von Benckendorff ’s emotional memoirs testify to this fact. Benckendorff headed the Third Department of His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancellery and was very close to the Emperor. It was he who accompanied Nicholas on his walk ‘along the walls of [the] ancient kremlin once long resisting Moscow’s power’, and the idea of ‘rebuilding’ the ancient Khan’s palace near the Suyumbeki Tower, considered to be a minaret, first arose during this visit.29 Several projects were proposed for this ‘reconstruction’ on the alleged ruins of the Khan’s palace. These would include the Governor-General’s house with the
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Emperor’s apartments to be used on his arrival in Kazan, along with the restored church, the tower of Suyumbeki and the reconstructed Annunciation Cathedral. The proposed Governor-General’s palace designed by the Kazan architect Foma Petondi launched a lengthy search for an architectural image of the imperial residence in which architects and officials, both local and central, were involved, including Konstantin Thon. Nicholas I monitored the design process, attentively going into the details. Petondi’s palace was clearly inspired by the plan of the Tsar’s palace in Kolomenskoye Village near Moscow, developed only a month before the Emperor’s arrival in Kazan. It was this Kolomenskoye building that Nicholas I ordered Konstantin Thon to follow when developing the palace in the Moscow Kremlin the following year. According to the wishes of Nicholas I, all the ancient remains were to be brought together and the palace was to be built facing towards the cathedral. The Emperor demanded that his apartments be connected by covered walkways with the restored church, built on the ‘remains of the mosque’.30 The project, designed in the capital in the Neoclassical style, was confirmed by the Tsar in 1838,31 but it lost its relevance immediately with the emergence of Thon’s Russian-Byzantine-styled Moscow Kremlin project. In 1843, Thon created a reduced replica of this Moscow design in Kazan, with a similar set of motifs from the Russian-Byzantine style.32 The restoration of the church, to be built on the ruins of the Khan’s mosque, was given high importance but the poor physical condition of the latter building complicated its realization. However, the Emperor strictly rejected the Governor’s proposal to erect a new temple instead of the old one.33 As a result, this new ensemble expressed the state idea of the union of Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality in its architecture, wherein the ‘Tatar’ tower of Suyumbeki represented an indigenous component connected to the Empire’s non-Russian people. By means of such reconstruction, we can assume, Kazan was conquered again – this time, symbolically. The fortress itself was the subject of similar associations. The Emperor categorically refused a proposal to demolish the Tainitskaya Tower, and ordered it to be reinforced with buttresses.34 Built in the sixteenth century on the site of the Tatar Nur-Ali Tower, which was damaged during the Kazan siege, it held a key place in Kazan history. It was here that Ivan the Terrible had ridden into the ruined Khan’s fortress on 4 October 1552, two days after the Kazan conquest. The Spasskaya Tower was another symbolic object in the kremlin. The Tsar’s banner had been placed there during the battle. When the Russians won, Ivan IV raised an Orthodox cross and ordered a camp tent church to be erected. The church of Spas Nerukotvorny (Saviour
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Not Made by Hands) was placed, by order of Nicholas I, in the tower, which later belonged to the kremlin garrison.35
‘Pompeii on the Volga’ The discovery of architectural artefacts in the village of Uspenskoe (Bolgar) during the implementation of imperial decrees and ministerial circulars from 1826 until the 1830s chronologically coincided with the heyday of oriental studies at Kazan University. This institution, located on the border of Europe and Asia and at the same time part of the academic system born of the Western-European Enlightenment, became the largest centre of oriental studies in Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century.36 The university was established for practical purposes as it prepared officials for public service in Asia and trained missionaries to convert representatives of ethnic, non-Christian minorities. Apart from teaching and learning Eastern languages, from the very foundation of the university its professors became interested in local culture – including architecture. This was an academic interest from the European-educated scientific community based on a pan-European fascination with the colonized Orient. American historian Robert Gerasi, who has studied Russian national identity, called Kazan a ‘window to the East’ for its important role in the ideology and technology of cultural integration of a huge part of the Empire.37 Russia had its own ‘East’, whose architectural antiquities were to be investigated in parallel with French research of Egyptian culture and British archaeological excavations in India. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Russian scientists had reached some preliminary conclusions on the Bulgar state. They were aware, for example, that Bulgars had been actively engaged in trade with many European and Asian peoples, that they had founded many large towns and that the population of their capital numbered about fifty-nine thousand. Precious metals found near the village of Bolgar testified to the high development of Bulgar society.38 Kazan antiquities became the focus of public attention at the First All-Russian Archaeological Congress, held in Moscow in 1869. Pskov archaeologist K. Evlentiev declared, ‘Italy is rightly proud of the ruins of Classic Pompeii. Russia’s Pompeii is Bolgar on Volga’. In his opinion, Russians had not yet sufficiently appreciated this archaeological monument despite the existence of a whole range of publications describing its ruins and explaining the tombstone inscriptions: ‘The Roman Pompeii is well known and revered by all educated nations, while the Russian Pompeii is forgotten by its compatriots and remains unknown to the educated of Europe.’39
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Due to the special interest in Bulgarian civilization in the Volga region, viewed as an important monument for Russian archaeology, the Fourth All-Russian Archaeological Congress (1877) took place in Kazan. The participants visited Uspenskoe (Bolgar) village in preparation for the discussions.40 Aware of the need to monitor the remains of the buildings, which was possible only with the help of an appropriate body, the scientists drafted a joint address to the government demanding the establishment of the Society of Archaeology, History and Ethnography at Kazan University, and asking for 300 roubles to fence off the hill-fort area to control it.41 The next year, the Society began its work. In 1881, the government purchased a total of 852 square sazhens (a little over 3,865 square metres) of land comprising the ruins of the ancient city of Bolgar, and placed them entirely in the hands of the Society of Archaeology, History and Ethnography, which was entrusted with a duty of preservation.42 A special commission examined the physical state of these monuments, ‘precious to Russian archaeology’, and found them to be in a much worse condition than they had been in 1877. The Society was granted, ‘in the interest of Russian science’, an annual subsidy of 300 roubles from the government with the aim of their preservation and protection. The Society requested 600‒800 roubles for restoration and conservation from Russian scientific societies, hoping that the local Tatar community would help as well because, according to a legend, the graves of their saints were there.43 Due to a lack of funds, however, the first restoration works only took place in 1884–85. The report shows that they were unsuccessful. Methodological errors led to a change in the original architectural form of the monuments, which was known from Pallas’ descriptions from the eighteenth century and Schmidt’s pictures from 1827. For example, the buttresses on the Black Chamber were considered to be late additions. This stone building of the fourteenth century received its name from the walls that had been greatly darkened by the fire. It was a quadrilateral cubic structure, which passed into an octagon covered by a hemispherical vault. The remains of the water pipe discovered during the excavation make it a secular structure. In another case, Neoclassical semicircular arches were made instead of lancet openings. Society member Vasiliy Florinskiy, who observed the works in Bolgar, concluded that this was not the proper archaeological approach. In his opinion, architect Christopher Pashkovskiy did not seek to restore the building to its original state but merely to strengthen it.44 The restoration work was carried out regularly as funds were provided, and the remains of ancient structures were revealed during the archaeological excavations. Considered scientifically, the best organized were the excavations of 1913–16. The work was inspired by the idea of creating an archaeological museum in Russia, which
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had emerged in 1869 during the first archaeological congress. Bulgarian monuments were not only objects of local interest: as evidence of the existence of very early ties between Europe and Asia, they could provide scientists with information of the greatest importance.45 However, the archaeological investigations did not clarify the question of the origin of the Bulgar civilization, and, as Gerasi explored, a number of theories on Bulgar ‘nationality’ were put forward. They were all based on different materials and written evidence, and at the same time they included subjective judgements on the prestige and legitimacy of the Volga region’s peoples.46 The first group of specialists felt that Bulgars were the ancestors of the nineteenth-century Kazan Tatars. The common commitment to Islam and involvement in trade, the same territory and a similar language all strengthened this theory. Moreover, some Tatars called themselves ‘Bulgars’. Orientalist Ivan Beresin from Kazan University was among the defenders of this theory. Other prominent figures – with university professors Sergej Shpilevskij and Vasilij Radlov, and famous missionary Nicholai Ilminskij among them – took a different view on the origin of the Bulgars, considering them to be the ancestors of the Chuvash. This theory endowed the local Turkic Orthodox people with achievements such as literacy and monumental architecture, and increased its self-esteem to help resist Tatarization – thus contributing to the missionary work.47 The cultural and religious impact of the Muslim Tatars on other local indigenous peoples, including those christened, was often superior to the Russian one, challenging the concept of the Russian-Orthodox national state. Attributing the ancient historical and architectural monuments of Tatars to other ethnicities, the scientists reduced the strength of the Tatars’ civilizational impact. However, as Gerasi notes, the theory could not explain the relatively sudden deterioration in its culture – which lost its writing, religion and trade traditions in only two centuries. The theory of the Slavic origin of the Bulgar civilization was of great importance from the point of view of state ideology, as it contributed to a strengthening of the Russian claim to the region. The theory was based on Ibn-Fadlan’s work, wherein he called the inhabitants of the Bulgarian capital Slavs, and was presented for discussion as early as in 1829. Its supporters included such influential figures as Sergei Uvarov, the President of the Moscow Archaeological Society and the author of the theory of official nationality. According to this theory, the Bulgars were a Slavic people and the Kazan Tatars were the descendants of the Mongols who had invaded both Russia and the Bulgar state in the thirteenth century and then established the Golden Horde. Inspired by the traditional rivalry between Russians and Volga Tatars, it was in conformity with the belief that Tatars were inherently alien and
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hostile towards the Russians. For many Russians, it was the main argument for legitimizing the Kazan reconquista of 1552.48
Conclusions The systematic activities involved in the identification, study, preservation and restoration of historical and architectural heritage undertaken in Russia from 1826 under the auspices of the state were the direct result of a shift in its identity politics during the reign of Nicholas I, and a reorientation towards its own history and culture based – again, as before Peter I – on Russian Orthodoxy but also mixed with the imperial ideal. The case study of the Kazan region presented in this chapter demonstrates the specificity of such an approach towards Russia’s own culture. The construction of a new Russia as a great Orthodox power was accompanied by an appeal to selected historical periods and events, and the related material evidence. As the concept of Russian heritage was created, a new, regional historical memory and consciousness took shape in society, and the role and place of individual regions outside the strict centre of the Moscow region began to be decisively stressed in the Empire’s history. This process was similar to what Mikhail Bakhtin called a chronotope – i.e. a close link between temporal and spatial relations – and the localization of a cultural phenomenon in a specific place and time.49 For the Kazan region, the key historical event was the city’s conquest by Ivan IV’s troops in 1552. This first conquest made by the medieval Russian state, which marked the beginning of the Empire and the foundation of the Russian East – not only in the historical but also in the cultural sense – determined the chronology for Kazan, its identity and place in the country’s history. The first Orthodox churches in the region, built before or immediately after the conquest of Kazan, were the historical monuments reminiscent of this event, symbolizing the victory of Orthodoxy over Islam and giving the conquest the religious character of the ‘Orthodox campaign’. The kremlin itself, although constructed by the Russians, was perceived as a subject of conquest. Its grandiose reconstruction with the renovated main regional cathedral and the construction of the residence of the Russian Emperor on the remains of the Khan’s palace represented a kind of a second conquest of Kazan – a visible ‘trophy’, further strengthened by the ‘preserved’ legendary tower of the Tatar Tsarina Suyumbeki. The discovery of an ancient and culturally developed Bulgarian civilization increased the importance of Russia as a colonizing power in possession of its ‘own East’, not unlike its Western counterparts: a power that could present itself as
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a medium between the European and Asian civilizations. The attitude to the Bulgarian-Tatar monuments was based on the idea of the cultural familiarization of the heritage of the ancient civilizations found on Russian territory. This idea was intended to emphasize the unity of power, and the final inclusion of their histories into the Russian one. The unique local historical and cultural heritage was a new basis for constructing the imperial identity and securing the legitimization of Russian rule in the nineteenth-century Middle Volga region. Gulchachak Nugmanova is a leading researcher at the Scientific Research Institute of Theory and History of Architecture and Urban Planning, Moscow. She is a specialist in nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Russian provincial architecture, focusing on the Middle Volga region. The problems of urban transformation and the interaction between the Russian imperial power and the region form the focus of her research (see, for example, her ‘Russian Power, European Model, Tatar Tradition: Transformation of the Kazan Urban Space and Freedom of Choice within the Frames of State Regulation’, Ab Imperio, 2016, 3). NOTES This study was funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project 18-01200338 Architectural and Urban Planning Process in Late Imperial Russian Province (Kazan Volga region, last third of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth centuries). 1. See Bushkovitch, ‘Pravoslavnaya cerkov’, 36–54; Plokhy, The Origin of the Slavic Nations. 2. Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossyiskoi imperii, № 794, 31 December O dostavlenii svedenij ob ostatkah drevnih zdanij v gorodah i o vospreshchenii razrushat’ onye [On the Delivery of Information about the Remains of Ancient Buildings in Cities and on the Prohibition on Destroying them]. 3. Kirichenko, Gradostroitel’stvo Rossii, 57–65, 217–18. 4. Sbornik Imperatorskogo Russkogo Istoricheskogo Obshchestva, 207; Khudyakov, Dorevolyucionnaya russkaya arheologiya, 46. 5. Ibneeva, ‘Puteshestvie Ekateriny II’, 87–104. 6. Pallas, Puteshestvie po raznym provinciyam Rossijskoj imperii; Lepyokhin, Dnevnye zapiski. 7. Nugmanova, ‘Istoriya planirovki’, 172–216. 8. Shpilevskij, Zaboty imperatora Aleksandra I o Kazani. 9. Russian State Historical Archive (RSHA). F. 1488. Op. 1. D. 1245. 10. State Archive of the Republic of Tatarstan (SART). F. 1. Op. 1. D. 9; Idem. F. 1. Op. 1. D. 115.
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11. SART, f. 1, op. 1, d. 9. 12. After the conquest, the Tatar population was removed from settlements located on the main roads and rivers as was the case with Bolgar on Volga. This was usual practice when settlements retained their former names and got the second ones after the titles of local Orthodox churches. 13. SART, f. 1, op. 1, d. 9. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Schmidt, Arhitekturnye chertezhi. 17. SART, f. 1, op. 1, d. 175. 18. Ibid., 3–4. 19. Ibid., 7–8. 20. Ibid., 5. 21. Zagoskin, Sputnik po Kazani, 153. 22. Benckendorff, ‘Zapiski’, 734. 23. SART, f. 2, op. 7, d. 2438. 24. Kirichenko, Gradostroitel’stvo Rossii, 57. 25. Ustav stroitel’nyj, articles 181–3. 26. Nugmanova, ‘Kazanskij kreml’, 313–14. 27. Scientific Library of Kazan Volga region (Federal) University, Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts (DRBM), 9607, 9608, 9609, 9610, 9611, 9612; RSHA, f. 1488, op. 1, d. 1238. 28. SART, f. 114, op. 1, d. 1398, 4. 29. Benckendorff, ‘Zapiski’, 733. 30. SART, f. 409, op. 8, d. 4. 31. Ibid., 12, 13. 32. RSHA, f. 218, op. 4, d. 7, 136. 33. Ibid., 221–24; Idem, f. 218, op. 4, d. 338. 34. SART, f. 409, op. 1, d. 515, 6. 35. Zagoskin, Sputnik po Kazani, 141. 36. Skhimmel’pennink van der Oje, ‘Mirza Kazem-Bek’, 243–70. 37. Geraci, Okno na Vostok. 38. Ibid., 229. 39. Evlentiev, ‘Ob uchrezhdenii arkheologicheskogo museuma’, 90. 40. Trudy IV Arkhelogicheskogo c’ezda v Kazani. 41. SART, f. 359, op. 1, d. 48; Protokoly IV Arkhelogicheskogo c’ezda, 132–33. 42. SART, f. 1, op. 3, d. 4618, 25; DRBM, ed. khr. 9279. 43. SART, f. 1, op. 3, d. 4899, 73; Smolin, ‘Okhrana i remont’, 7. 44. Smolin, ‘Okhrana i remont’, 9–10. 45. Geraci, Okno na Vostok, 228. 46. Ibid., 227–42. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., 234. 49. Bakhtin, ‘Formy vremeni’, 234–407.
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Bibliography Bakhtin, Mikhail. ‘Formy vremeni i hronotopa v romane. Ocherki po istoricheskoj poetike’ [Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel: Essays on Historical Poetics], in idem, Voprosy literatury i estetiki [Questions of Literature and Aesthetics]. Moscow: KHudozhestvennaya literatura, 1975, 234–407. Benckendorff, Alexander von. ‘Zapiski (1832–1837 gg.)’ [Notes (1832–1837)], in Nikolai Shilder, Imperator Nikolai I. Ego zhizn’ i tsarstvovanie [Emperor Nicholas I: His life and reign]. St. Petersburg: A.S. Suvorin, 1903, Vol. 2, 617–735. Bushkovitch, Paul. ‘Pravoslavnaya cerkov’ i russkoe nacional’noe samosoznanie XVI‒ XVII vekov’ [The Orthodox Church and Russian National Identity of the XVI‒XVII Centuries], in Gerasimov Ilya, Marina Mogil’ner and Alexander Semyonov (eds), Konfessiya, imperiya, naciya: Religiya i problema raznoobraziya v istorii postsovetskogo prostranstva [Confession, Empire, Nation: Religion and the Problem of Diversity in the History of the Post-Soviet Space]. Moscow: Novoe izdatel’stvo, 2012, 36–54. Evlentiev, Konstantin. ‘Ob uchrezhdenii arkheologicheskogo museuma v Bulgare Kazanskoi gubernii’ [On the Establishment of an Archaeological Museum in Bolgar, Kazan Province], in Trudy I Arkhelogicheskogo c’ezda v Moskve. 1869 [Proceedings of the Archaeological Congress in Moscow. 1869]. Moscow, 1871, Vol. 1, 89–95. Ibneeva, Guzel. ‘Puteshestvie Ekateriny II po Volge v 1767 godu: uznavanie imperii’ [ Journey of Catherine I along the Volga in 1767: Recognition of the Empire]. Ab Imperio 2002 (2), 87–104. Gerasi, Robert. Okno na Vostok: imperia, orientalism, natsia i religia v Rossii [Window to the East: Empire, Orientalism, Nation and Religion in Russia]. Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe obozrenie, 2013. Kirichenko, Evgeniya. Gradostroitel’stvo Rossii serediny XIX – nachala XX veka [Urban Planning in Russia in the Mid-Nineteenth‒Early Twentieth Century]. Moscow: Progress-Traditsiya, 2001. Khudyakov, Mikhail. Dorevolyucionnaya russkaya arheologiya na sluzhbe ekspluatatorskih klassov. Leningrad: Gosudarstvennaya akademiya istorii material’noj kul’tury, 1933. Lepyokhin, Ivan. Dnevnye zapiski puteshestviya doktora i Akademii nauk ad”yunkta Ivana Lepyokhina po raznym provinciyam Rossijskogo gosudarstva, 1768 i 1769 godu. Chast’ 1. St. Petersburg: Imperatorskaya Akademiya Nauk, 1795. Nugmanova, Gulchachak. ‘Kazanskij kreml’ v ehpohu Nikolaya I’ [Kazan Kremlin in the Era of Nicholas I]. Arhitekturnoe Nasledstvo 2009, (50), 313–34. . ‘Istoriya planirovki i stroitel’stva Kazanskogo Bogoroditskogo monastyrya’ [The History of the Planning and Construction of the Kazan Mother of God Monastery], in Elena Shchyoboleva, Aelita Korolyova, Sergej Popadyuk, Georgij Smirnov and Ekaterina Shorban (eds), Pamyatniki russkoy arkhitektury i monumental’nogo iskusstva [Monuments of the Russian Architecture and Monumental Art]. Moscow: Nauka, 2010, 172–216. Pallas, Peter. Puteshestvie po raznym provinciyam Rossijskoj imperii [Travel to Different Provinces of the Russian Empire]. St. Petersburg, 1809.
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Plokhy, Serhii. The Origin of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossyiskoi imperii [Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire]. Collection 2, Vol. 1, 1825–26. Protokoly IV Arkhelogicheskogo c’ezda v Kazani [Protocols of the IV of the Archaeological Congress in Kazan]. Kazan, 1877. Sbornik Imperatorskogo Russkogo Istoricheskogo Obshchestva [Collection of the Imperial Russian Historical Society], 10. St. Petersburg, 1872. Schmidt, Alexander. Arhitekturnye chertezhi razvalin Drevnih Bolgar, snyaty s natury v 1827 g. arhitektorom A. Shmidtom [Architectural Drawings of the Ruins of the Ancient Bulgarians, Taken from Nature in 1827 by the Architect A. Schmidt]. Moscow, 1832. Shpilevskij, Sergei. Zaboty imperatora Aleksandra I o Kazani. Rech’, proiznesennaya ordinarnym professorom S.M. Shpilevskim v torzhestvennom sobranii Imperatorskogo Kazanskogo universiteta 12 dekabrya 1877 g. v yubilejnyj den’ stoletiya rozhdeniya imperatora Aleksandra I [Concerns of Emperor Alexander I about Kazan: Speech delivered by Ordinary Professor S.M. Shpilevsky at the Solemn Meeting of the Imperial Kazan University on 12 December 1877, on the Anniversary of the Centenary of the Birth of Emperor Alexander I]. Kazan: Printing-House of Imperial University, 1877. Skhimmel’pennink van der Oje, David. ‘Mirza Kazem-Bek i Kazanskaya shkola vostokovedeniya’ [Mirza Kazem-Bek and the Kazan School of Oriental Studies], in Ilya Gerasimov and Cergey Glebov (eds), Novaya imperskaya istoriya postsovetskogo prostranstva: Sbornik statej [New Imperial History of the Post-Soviet Space: Collection of Articles]. Kazan: Ab Imperio, 2004, 243–70. Smolin, Victor. ‘Okhrana i remont bulgarskikh razvalin v proshlom’ [Protection and Repair of the Bulgarian Ruins in the Past], in Materialy po ohrane, remontu i restavracii pamyatnikov TSSR [Materials for the Protection, Repair and Restoration of TSSR Monuments]. Kazan: Tatglavlit, 1927, 5–16. Trudy IV Arkhelogicheskogo c’ezda v Kazani [Proceedings of the IV of the Archaeological Congress in Kazan], Vol. 1. Kazan: University printing house, 1884. Ustav stroitel’nyj [Construction Charter]. St. Petersburg, 1857. Zagoskin, Nikolaj. Sputnik po Kazani. Illyustrirovannyj ukazatel’ dostoprimechatel’nostej i spravochnaya knizhka goroda [Guide to Kazan: Illustrated Guide to Points of Interest and City Reference Book]. Kazan: Printing-House of Imperial University, 1895 (reprint: DOMO Globus, 2005).
8 CHAPTER 11 Hungarian Nation-Building and the Use of Medieval Archaeology Interpreting the Székesfehérvár Excavations in the Nineteenth Century Andrea Kocsis
Introduction This chapter aims to show the way in which Hungarian top-down nation-building used medieval archaeological heritage in the nineteenth century. The research behind it has three primary purposes. Firstly, it explores the national narratives that were used to explain nineteenth-century Hungarian archaeological excavations and the interpretation of their results. Secondly, it shows how the beginnings of archaeological research overlapped with the political sphere, from which source archaeology could procure financial support. Finally, it looks at how these narrative structures transformed the urban landscape through the reconstruction of archaeological sites. These narratives are present in the documents introducing and interpreting the archaeological results and in the media coverage of the excavations. While analysing these documents, this chapter casts light on both political and social aspects of heritage. It provides an opportunity to examine the forces of economics and power in the making of a collective narrative via an imagined past. The period following the Hungarian National Revolution in 1848 lies within the scope of my research, as it was the time of the simultaneous rise of scholarly archaeological research and Hungarian nationalism. In 1848–49, the Hungarian uprising against the Habsburgs was defeated with the help of the Russian Empire. The 1850s and the beginning of the 1860s
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were characterized by the return of Habsburg absolutism, and the passive resistance of the Hungarians. After the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, Hungary gained relative autonomy in the Empire but not independence from it. For these reasons, the relationship of Hungary to the Empire as well as the other nationalities living within its borders had a clear impact on the interpretation of Hungarian heritage.1 An anniversary was the main turning point that helped me to showcase the interrelationship between nationalist ideology and archaeological research. The event in question was the Millennium of 1896, celebrating a thousand years of the settlement of Hungarians. This has been chosen because, during the preparation for the commemoration, the political system encouraged and supported, both financially and ideologically, excavations at a time when nationalist narratives were prominent. In the nineteenth century, the Middle Ages were viewed as the golden age of Hungarian independence. For the semi-independent Hungary, as part of the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, the post-1867 period constituted a time when nationalist ideals, which were marginalized after the defeat of the uprising of 1848–49, could flourish again. The nation-building elite needed to strengthen those factors that could nourish a feeling of national pride. One of the tools used for this purpose was national myth-making, for which medieval heritage provided the material. The wars during the early modern period modified the historical landscape and left medieval cities in ruins. The change of system, and the subsequent reconstruction of those cities, meant that some buildings that had been important in the Middle Ages disappeared from view. This provided a blank canvas for interpreting the mythology surrounding these medieval castles and ecclesiastical buildings. The archaeological excavations of these sites could unearth only fragments and foundation walls, which meant that scholarly research had not enough historic material to verify and set against the myth-making processes. By examining the archaeological documentation and press reports from the time of the excavations, the connections between national myth-making and the works undertaken can be described in more detail.
The Case Study of Székesfehérvár My study focuses on the use of medieval archaeology in Hungarian nation-building with the help of a case study of the town of Székesfehérvár (Alba Regia) – chosen for the political and religious role that it played in the Middle Ages. In this section, I discuss the significance of Székesfehérvár and its connection to Hungarian myth-making. I also show the way in which
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archaeology developed in connection with the principal monument of the city, the Basilica. The importance of Székesfehérvár derives from the fact that it was the coronation and burial place of the Hungarian kings. Between the eleventh and fifteenth century, the Hungarian Kingdom had no single capital. Therefore, kings and their retinues, having no permanent royal seat, travelled between the most important towns of the country. This means that Székesfehervár was not the only important royal residency, but its status was special due to its ceremonial character. The territory located within the rectangle formed by the four towns, Buda, Esztergom, Visegrád, and Székesfehérvár is known as the Medium Regni. From this area, Visegrád and Buda emerged later as the most frequented royal residential towns.2 During the nineteenth century, PestBuda (later: Budapest) began to rise in prominence as a metropolis, while Esztergom, Székesfehérvár and especially Visegrád became less significant. In the nineteenth century, Pest-Buda underwent significant architectural changes, which led to mass demolitions – encompassing even its existing historical monuments.3 By the end of the century, a trend had arisen of rediscovering the four towns and cities in question as they also became established as the ‘sanctuaries’ of the nation’s heritage. Therefore, thanks to its royal burials, the excavations at the Basilica of Székesfehérvár came under the spotlight during the rediscovery of the Medium Regni, making this town significant for national myth-making. Regarding its factual history, the construction of the Church of the Virgin Mary, which will be referred to as the Basilica, was begun by King Saint Stephen (reigned 1000/1001–38). It was intended to be Saint Stephen’s own burial place, next to the church of his father’s tomb. In addition, his son, Saint Emericus, was buried there in 1031.4 The first building was an enormous basilica-type church with a nave and two aisles. Two towers adjoined the chancel from the eastern side. Saint Stephen’s tomb was placed in the middle of the nave, while Prince Emericus’ tomb was located in the southern side of the choir. In the twelfth century, starting from the death of King Coloman the Learned (1095–1116), the Basilica became the burial place of the kings. The site kept its function with some interruptions until the fifteenth century. The medieval architectural remains of Székesfehérvár were almost completely destroyed due to the Ottoman wars and subsequent neglect by the authorities and locals. Only stone fragments have remained from the royal palaces and the Basilica.5 János Érdy directed the first excavations searching for the site of the Basilica in 1848 during the Liberation War. These were followed by systematic excavations by Hungarian art historian and archaeologist Imre Henszlmann conducted in 1862, 1874 and 1882. For the
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occasion of Saint Stephen’s anniversary year in 1938, new funds enabled some large-scale excavations led by Kalman Lux in 1936–37. To mark the anniversary, the so-called ‘Ruin-garden’ was built on the site of the Basilica. Later, modern and more professional excavations clarified knowledge about the church and its environment.6 My study is an interpretation of the excavation from the period 1848–82 (see figure 11.1).
Theoretical Framework My research is linked with Nationalism Studies, from which the preferred perspective is ethnosymbolism, since it accepts the existence of a medieval ‘ethnic core’ as the basis of the modern nation and is suitable for the study of the nineteenth-century nation-building process.7 In Anthony Smith’s definition, the ethnic core is a named human community connected to a homeland, possessing common myths of ancestry, shared memories, one or more elements of shared culture and a measure of solidarity – at least among its elites.8 It precedes the nation, which, in Benedict Anderson’s understanding, shares public culture and common laws, and is a modern creation.9 From the Hungarian side, Jenő Szűcs was the first historian to exhaustively look for the Hungarian ethnic core as it was in the Middle Ages.10 Although some of his conclusions are considered outdated today,
Figure 11.1. The so-called Ruin-garden and the remains of the Basilica in Székesfehérvár, 2017. © Andrea Kocsis.
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he argued that Hungarian statehood during the Middle Ages was organized according to a community consciousness – rather than a national consciousness – wherein the integrating ideology was a group identity rooted in kinship-based communities. Regarding the periodization of nation-building and the definition of nationalism, I follow Miroslav Hroch’s theory.11 Hroch, a Czech political theorist, studied the nation-building processes of non-dominant nations in Central Europe, and his concept can be adapted to the Hungarian situation as well.12 For Hroch, the nation is a wide social group that is integrated by a combination of objective relations (economic, political, linguistic, cultural, religious, geographic, historical) and their subjective reflection in the collective consciousness. It has three obligatory components: the shared past, shared language and culture, and equal civil rights. The development of the last-named feature distinguishes the nation from the ethnic core. According to Hroch,13 it is not nationalism but nation-building movements that create nations. In contrast, nationalism is an extremist view, which attributes superiority to the national.14 Both movements, the nation-building and the mature national ideal excluding others, can be observed in the mythology developing on the ground of public national heritage. Moreover, the source of my study is the press – whose importance in nation-building was stressed in Benedict Anderson’s famous book, which powerfully transmits shared identity.15 The second important inspiration for my research comes from the field of Memory Studies. I chose to follow the theories of Pierre Nora, who presented the idea of a constant circulation of memory and history.16 When there is no living memory any more, it is replaced with common reference points (lieux de mémoire) that can provide a platform for nationalist reinterpretations of historical events. In this way, the Hungarian Middle Ages also becomes a lieu de mémoire for the nineteenth-century nationalists. Both Jan Assmann and Aleida Assmann discuss the transition from the communicative memory to the collective memory, which is in fact a similar process to the national canonization of medieval heritage studied here.17 Aleida Assmann describes the way in which parts of the past are saved and conserved institutionally, while other parts are forgotten.18 She argues that the discipline of archaeology is one of these canonizing institutions, which rescues particular episodes from the past. In this chapter, I use the term ‘myth’ in a way in which it is used in the works of Aleida Assmann. According to her definition, the myth is a collectively remembered, though not scholarly, history.19 My research suggests that myths in this context were used for interpreting the national archaeological sites that were studied.
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In the present chapter, archaeology is used as a metonymy of heritage, as many problems of heritage can be explored in an accessible way through the language of archaeology. Laurajane Smith’s book The Uses of Heritage is an essential work for gaining a deeper understanding of the process of cultural heritage. Smith’s concept of the authorized heritage discourse (AHD) can be defined as the institutionalized discourse ruled by the dominant power, formed by experts and based on the ideas of monumentality, aesthetics and timeless stability.20 In this process, values and identities are mediated via heritage, often at a national level, and legitimized via the canonized cultural memory.21 The researchers dealing with archaeology at the dawn of the nation-building process had the opportunity to interact directly with the AHD and its sources. It would be incorrect to state that the nationalist narrative always covers the AHD. On the one hand, in the cases of non-dominant ethnic groups, within the terms of Miroslav Hroch,22 nationalism is generally a contested narrative or sub-narrative beside the AHD. On the other hand, for dominant nations the nationalist narrative is either integrated into the AHD or seemingly irrelevant to it. According to Smith, ‘who controls the discourse also controls an important resource of political power’.23 Controlling the discourse happens not only through interpreting the results of archaeological study but also from the very beginning: through deciding on and financing excavations. Bruce G. Trigger, who was a theorist of archaeological ideologies while having a wide view on different case studies, stated that ‘most archaeological traditions are probably nationalistic in orientation’.24 Philip Kohl also argued that archaeological evidence and heritage sites are an appropriate subject for manipulation in favour of nationalist purposes, because heritage is both physical and visible to the citizens, who interact with it regularly.25 He additionally noted that archaeological sites often become national monuments, and the artefacts managed by national institutions are incorporated into the state regalia.26 Trigger proposed arranging the various ideological attempts impacting on archaeological research into colonialist, imperialist and nationalist groups. Although he touched on the question of Eastern Europe, his rather simplifying theory is written from a mostly Western point of view. For example, his imperialist category of archaeological ideas cannot be adapted to the Habsburg Empire or Hungary’s politics toward its own ethnic minorities because Trigger’s theory fits only larger scales in a global perspective, which he calls ‘world-orientated archaeology’.27 Therefore, it is more readily applicable to empires extending power to other continents. Hence, it is necessary to be aware of the smaller scale while analysing Central European nationalism.
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Nationalist archaeology refers ‘not only to that [archaeological] record but also to policies adopted by the state that make use of archaeologists and their data for nation-building purposes’.28 Kohl states that such policies may extend beyond the borders of nation states. This perspective makes it impossible to maintain Trigger’s sharp division between archaeological ideologies as Kohl pays attention to those nation states that have arisen from the ruins of empires, and which had to face special identity problems.29 His theoretical framework therefore applies to the Central European case. I argue that the roots of the national myths currently being rediscovered can be found in the early stages of archaeological research, as with the case study that I introduce in this chapter. Therefore, Cătălin Popa’s research about the role of archaeologists in Daco-Roman myth-making in Romania is especially useful from this point of view – not only because of the geographical proximity of the political bodies in question but also because of deeper similarities between Romania and the Hungarian part of the Dual Monarchy.30 He states that archaeologists let pseudo-archaeologists and re-enactors control the spread of archaeological myths, which can be misused by extremist right-wing and xenophobic movements.31 Hungary has been going through a similar process regarding the Scythe-Hun-Avar heritage, which the Hungarian extremist right sees as ancient Magyar (the ethnic core of the Hungarian nation). Although Popa describes current issues, the misuse of archaeology is not only a contemporary problem but also, as my study shows, something that started at the dawn of archaeological research.
Data and Methodology The core of my research is based on textual data analysis. The textual data consist of archaeological documentation and publications – newspapers and journals – as well as commemorative albums. These are documents on the excavation, preservation/destruction, interpretation and presentation of medieval ruins, artefacts and human remains in Székesfehérvár.32 Regarding archaeological documentation and publications, professional publications had the priority over the manuscripts. Due to Hungarian archiving inconsistencies, not all the early documentation is accessible and, in many cases, the excavations were not well-documented. Therefore, I have used them only for controlling the narratives found in the printed publications. Concerning the publications, I have analysed the periodicals of regional museums and antiquarian societies, prominent archaeological periodicals, and exhibition guides and monographs.
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Due to the low number of professional periodicals, archaeological results were published mostly in countrywide journals and grandiose but rare albums like the 1900 album published in honour of King Béla III after his reburial, and as part of other cross-thematic volumes. Thus, the professional discourse formed part of the more general public discourse. The fact that the researchers themselves were generally polymaths and publicists strengthened this tendency. For instance, the most famous archaeologist of Székesfehérvár, Imre Henszlmann, was also a journal editor. As a result, non-expert publications also form part of my focus as local newspapers and popular state-wide journals dealing with the heritage of Székesfehérvár provide a deep insight into the spread of political and nationalist narratives. However, public perception cannot be fully measured by analysis of the media.33 The aim of my media analysis is not to understand public perceptions but to see the way in which political narratives were incorporated into the broader discourse about heritage. I conducted thematic analysis and critical-discourse analysis on the above-mentioned textual sources mentioning and discussing the excavations in Székesfehérvár, as well as the artefacts and physical remains found there. I used specialized software for recording data and for the quantitative analysis. My discourse analysis discovered three main themes, which form the main points presented in this study: firstly, the intersection between nation-building and archaeological interests; secondly, the tension between nationalism and imperialism; and finally, the conflict between the excavation site and the capital city.
Discovering the Royal Tombs The discovery of the royal tombs at the excavation site of the Basilica in Székesfehérvár fuelled the nationalistic discourse. In 1848, the graves of five people were found. At that time, two of them were identified as King Béla III of the Árpád dynasty and his wife Agnes (Anna) of Antioch.34 Next to the couple were laid a young man and a pregnant woman with a child. The excavations in the 1860s and 1870s discovered seventeen more graves, but either none was recognized as that of an identifiable king or else the tombs were empty and looted. The tombs occupied a privileged place in the press discussions, as the most frequently cited archaeological finds were the human remains (57%). However, the remains were not preserved consistently since archaeological professional practice was in its formative stages. Therefore, the treatment of these remains was dependent on the interpretative narrative surrounding them. Consequently, those remains interpreted as being of
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identifiable royals were glorified while other skeletons found during these excavations were not preserved. The narratives surrounding the tombs were controversial. Firstly, the Székesfehérvár excavations were declared to be both a ‘national and scholarly treasure’.35 Therefore, the discourse sharply split: the remains were claimed by both the nation-building elite as national relics and by scholars as anthropological data. These two narratives can be found all through the analysed sources. They also left their stamp on the subsequent treatment of the human remains. Consequently, there were two opposing views about displaying the remains or burying them with reverence. The second main controversy in the interpretation of the remains was the contrasting efforts of Hungarian nationalism and Habsburg imperialism. The royal burials could be used for nation-building purposes as lieux de mémoire for the Hungarian nation, but they could be also interpreted as monarchist symbols strengthening the imperialist tradition of the Habsburgs. The third debate was formed between the cities: Székesfehérvár and Budapest. Although the excavations gave hope to Székesfehérvár of once again becoming a nationally important location, relocating the remains to the imperial capital drove attention away from the actual heritage site of the Basilica. It resulted in a local revisionist campaign aimed at relocating the remains back to Székesfehérvár from Buda, which reached its peak during the interwar period. My study focuses on these three main controversies as they appeared in the narratives discussing the excavations.
Nation-Building and Archaeological Research Nationalist and archaeological intentions overlapped regarding the necessity of the excavations. Parts of the nationalist narratives appearing in the press were strategically aimed at gaining funds from the public for the continuation of the Székesfehérvár excavations. Direct calls for donations appeared five times in the analysis, and were supported by narratives describing the obligations of true patriots: The patriots who have reverence for our statefounders’ remains and all the relics of our shining past are called with respect and trust: donate and ask others to donate for this aim.36 They will hurry to pay their sacrifices for constructing the mausoleum, if success crowns Henszlmann’s indefatigable ardour.37
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The overlap between nationalism and professionalism can be observed in the cult around the chief archaeologist leading the excavations in Székesfehérvár, Imre Henszlmann.38 He was celebrated both as a scholar and a true patriot. In the picture drawn of him by the press, he can be considered a nineteenth-century celebrity. As part of the scholarly elite, he played a great role in forming the self-representation of the nation. I suggest a causal relationship between Henszlmann’s personal past and his professional work. Since he was involved in the Liberation War of 1848–49, he emigrated into an exile after its failure.39 He returned only in the 1860s after gaining international experience and education.40 Henszlmann’s status as a political refugee made him more responsive to the nationalist narrative. Despite his rigorous excavation methodology, a narrative bias can be discovered in his interpretations. He tended to follow mythical explanations, such as unreliable narrative sources and legends, in order to give meaning to the discovered ruins.41 The best illustration of this tendency is his method of naming the tombs in the Basilica. He assigned the excavated tombs to the various Hungarian kings in order to provide a whole narrative, regardless of the lack of evidence supporting the identification. As this example shows, the public spotlight and the resulting national and political pressure can help mythical narratives to arise in professional explanations. Following the discovery of the tombs, national, political and scholarly intentions did not always intersect. After 1848, when the armies headed by Croatian Viceroy (Ban) Josip Jelačić besieged Székesfehérvár, the human remains had to be urgently transported to the Hungarian National Museum in Pest-Buda, which was both a national and scholarly important institution. The relocation of the remains shifted attention away from Székesfehérvár, and the initial enthusiasm for the excavations subsided. The public reception of these remains changed alongside the official interpretation. Without cultivating their memory, the remains were stuck in a passive archive after the sudden spotlight left them. Without an intentional cult generated around them, the ruins or the bones had no power on their own to hold the public attention – and the discovery slipped from memory for a decade. However, the archived memory was not completely forgotten. In 1862, on visiting the museum and seeing the exhibited bones, the Habsburg-loyal Governor of Hungary immediately ordered their quick reburial together with their burial objects ‘in private’.42 In his letter, he argued that the ‘holy bones’ were shown on display as ‘ordinary antiquities’ ‘without reverence felt for the dead’.43 In response, the excavator János Érdy and the museum director Ágoston Kubinyi argued that the remains were on exposition not for the pleasure
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of the audience but for ‘scholarly reasons’ [i.e. for the sake of archaeology and biological anthropology], since they were awaiting other researchers to expand their knowledge about the bones and artefacts. The bones were stored in a cabinet, while the sarcophagi and burial objects were being exhibited.45 However, from this discourse and the researchers’ defensive arguments, it can be seen that there was no agreement on how to treat nationally important human remains – either scholarly or ‘with reverence’. One of the most common notions expressed in the sources is the aforementioned ‘reverence’. This is a complex term that takes different meanings in different contexts. This notion appears in more themes: ‘general national reverence’ can be used in contexts such as generating donations for funding the excavations or establishing a pilgrimage place and creating a cult around the ‘relics’. Reverence was a flexible notion that both a Habsburg politician and a Hungarian nationalist could make good use of. The Governor’s real intentions, however, cannot be discovered by discourse analysis. It is true, and can be seen in reports and documentation, that the bones and artefacts were treated badly. The remains of the pregnant woman were lost, the bones of the unborn baby were put in the same box as those of the Queen, the skull of the young man ‘was lost somewhere’ [sic] and the King had lost his ribs.45 The artefacts also suffered more accidents, such as breakages and deformations, that were never documented.46 However, the speed of the reburial and the silence surrounding it gives us reason to suspect that there were other intentions behind it. The press barely reported on the event, and when it did the exact place of the burial was not given – only the ‘church in Buda’ was stated as the location.47 It may seem that the Habsburgs did not want a national cult or religious pilgrimages to arise at that time.
Between Nationalism and Imperialism The rhetoric connected to the graves had changed by the 1890s, when the country was heading towards the celebrations of its Millennium. The relationship between a Hungarian nationalism that had previously rushed into the Liberation War and a Habsburg Empire fighting against the revolution had also altered since the first excavations in 1848. The proponents of Habsburg imperialism creatively used the Millennium celebrations to show the political dependence between Austria and Hungary. Although this was not the kind of eighteenth-century imperial patriotism described by Benedict Anderson, which emphasized the unity of all the ethnic groups merged under Austria,48 it was, rather, focused more closely on an imagined
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ancestral relationship between the Habsburg and Árpád dynasties in order to legitimize the Habsburgs sitting on the Hungarian throne. A new narrative in favour of Emperor Franz Joseph I was created in the context of the renovation of the Matthias Church in Budapest and the commemorative re-reburial of the medieval royal couple. It spread over inscriptions, official publications and the press, encompassing the idea of imperial unity and the need for a strong ruler on the throne in line with the tradition of the historic Hungarian state, along with an emphasis on the common bloodline between the Habsburgs and the Árpád dynasty. It also showed the rising importance of Buda at the expense of Székesfehérvár. As can be imagined, no references to the history of an anti-Habsburg struggle were made within this discourse. The imperialist or nationalist debate was also expressed through the interpretation of artefacts found in the royal graves. These consisted of the funeral crowns belonging to Béla III and his wife; his sword, cross, medal, bracelet and spurs; as well as the Queen’s rings. They were referred to as relics similarly to the case of the human remains, but were treated in a different way. In contrast to the bodies, these objects were deemed suitable to be publicly exhibited. They were declared to be ‘the property of the Hungarian nation’, which should be displayed and visited.49 Nevertheless, the artefacts and jewellery were ordered to be reburied together with the royal couple. On the one hand, this could be seen as an act of their removal from the museum context in order to restore their original, sepulchral function. On the other hand, reburial did not allow the physical presence of the objects in the museum as a visible monument to the Hungarian Kingdom – therefore, it was also a way of hiding them. In the narratives during the King and Queen’s reburial ceremony in the Matthias Church, the artefacts were used as imperial symbols. In his speech, the Archbishop conducting the funeral attached mythical Hungarian royal virtues to each of the items buried with the royal couple. Table 11.1. Royal virtues assigned to the artefacts during the reburial of Béla III. © Andrea Kocsis (based on Békefi, ‘III. Béla temetése’, 290–91). Crown
Sword
Scepter
Ring
Cross
His wisdom governing the country
His heroism defending the country
His royal power punishing or rewarding his subordinates
His returned affection making his wife and family happy
His faithfulness praying for his nation
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These virtues could allow a rhetorical connection to be made between the reburied medieval king and Franz Joseph I, since they drew connotations with the popular image of the Habsburg Emperor. The Museum could only keep replicas of the items. It was proven that the original objects had already become damaged since their excavation by the end of the nineteenth century.50 The items had been copied in their corrected, imagined forms, while some of the originals were broken or lost due to the decades of neglect. By the end, the copies were displayed and the original funerary objects were reburied together with the King.
Using the Space: Székesfehérvár versus Budapest The third question posed by the present study deals with the narratives of using space. It can be concluded that the narrative drawn on by the written sources does not match the usage of the actual place in this case. The following contradictory themes occur frequently in the sources: the world-famous pilgrimage place visited by nobody, the disgraced holy place and imperial nationalism. On the one hand, the main theme emerging out of the research is the narrative of the ‘pilgrimage place’. Székesfehérvár is presented as a ‘holy place’, the ‘greatest relic of Hungary’, the ‘Mecca of the grateful Hungarians’.51 More international sites were mentioned in this context in the sources – such as the Pantheon in Paris, the Basilica of St. Denis, the Escorial palace or Westminster Abbey. Placing Székesfehérvár within a short list of these most famous European places was an intentional gambit aimed at ennobling this national monument site. On the other hand, the excavation site had never been treated according to these narratives. The demolition of the place had not entirely been caused by occupying foreign armies; internal and external neglects had both contributed to the disintegration of the site. As is general in these cases, the tombs had been looted regularly since the Middle Ages. For instance, this was how St. Stephen’s mummified right hand became a national relic,52 known later as the Holy Right Hand. In the eighteenth century, the stones of the Basilica had been used to build the Bishop’s Palace, which occupied half of the area of the former church. The destruction did not even stop with the discovery and the start of the excavations. The Bishop refused to let archaeologists inside the walls of the Bishop’s Palace, which meant that the excavations could not be completed for a decade.53 In fact, both the Habsburg-loyal Bishop and the municipality contributed to the destruction of the place by preventing the conservationist works.54 The
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excavation site remained opened for nearly a decade, which resulted in its deterioration. It seems that the ‘holiness’ of the place was not respected by the locals either, as they lost their initial enthusiasm. While in 1848, the first excavator, Érdy, wrote about crying women jumping into the archaeological sections in order to kiss the royal tomb and gain its blessing,55 subsequent usage of the place was more profane. It was soon filled with rubbish, and the mining of old stones started again. Complaints about the damage and lack of interest were coupled with the pilgrimage narrative. Focusing on the damage fuelled the discourse demanding the creation of a national Pantheon: ‘All over the world the Hungarian is the only one who knows its kings’ graves only from ruins’.56 The narratives about the destruction were also contradictory. While most of the professional and non-professional authors admitted that looting and destruction had occurred during the excavations and were caused by Hungarian hands (54%), some voices insisted on blaming only the Ottomans (31%) and, more generally, ‘the Other’ (15%). For example, a publication stated in 1900 that while it was admitted that the Germans had turned against their own tombs in Speyer and the French had besieged the Basilica of St. Denis, the Hungarians could not face the truth of their own role in similar events, which were so ‘undignifying to the whole of humanity’.57 Nonetheless, the Basilica of Székesfehérvár was almost completely in ruins and most of the tombs had been destroyed, with the exception of King Béla III’s and that of his wife. Therefore, the idea of a ‘Hungarian Pantheon’ was inconceivable. Since the excavations had proved staggeringly expensive and there was little chance of a reconstruction, the quasi-religious role of Székesfehérvár was transferred to the capital city, Pest-Buda (Budapest from 1873). In this way, the actual site of the kings’ coronations and burials can be considered to have been symbolically abandoned. It started to be rediscovered only during the interwar period as a location of Governor Miklós Horthy’s personal cult.58 As previously mentioned, following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise with Emperor Franz Joseph I, the discourse saw an advantage in emphasizing the Habsburgs’ ancestral relationships with the medieval Árpád dynasty of Hungary. This symbolic kinship between the two royal houses was extended to the realm of spatial heritage as well. The Church of the Assumption at the Buda Castle, more commonly known as Matthias Church (after King Matthias Corvinus), was turned into the new royal coronation and burial place. Once Franz Joseph I had had his coronation as a Hungarian king in the Matthias Church, it was thereafter called the Coronation Church of the Buda Castle.
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This location was advantageous for the Habsburgs as it was a centrally located monument, which had been renovated in a monumental neo-Gothic style. Franz Joseph I and his government financed the reconstruction and specified that it had to be finished by the Millennium celebrations in 1896. One element of these celebrations was the commemorative reburial of Béla III in the new Coronation Church.59 The Basilica of Székesfehérvár was thus symbolically replaced by the church in Buda and its legacy appropriated by the Habsburgs.
Conclusions It seems that both the imperial and the Hungarian-nationalist narratives benefitted from the Székesfehérvár excavations. However, these rhetorical uses proved contradictory both to each other and to the actual practice, as the treatment of the remains was correlated with neither the nationalist nor the imperialist narrative. The nation placed its trust in the archaeologist Imre Henszlmann, who had acquired the image of a national hero due to his involvement in the Liberation War. In return from his exile, he – a member of the nation-building elite – contributed to the formation of national self-representation by researching this lieu de mémoire. It is worth highlighting that according to Hroch, the nation-building elites – the initiators of nation-building movements – were at the same time the creators of a national past, which lent a nation its much-needed cohesion. Regarding the overlap between politics and archaeology, a contradiction can be seen. Although the reverence with which the discovered royal remains were treated was rhetorically important for political purposes, the actual remains were lost, destroyed or neglected. As the Habsburg regime took over the management of the remains from the Hungarian National Museum, in order to emphasize continuity between the Árpád and Habsburg dynasties, the interpretation of the artefacts also became more imperialistic and less national. Although it also reflects the post-1867 public attitude, which could be simplified down to Habsburg loyalty, national feelings within the Dual Monarchy were not that straightforward – Hungary, for example, gained its territorial unity but lacked full autonomy.60 Therefore, this tension in nationalistic feelings also manifested itself on the symbolic level of heritage. As a result, the use of space was transformed as well. Despite narratives claiming the need to have a Hungarian Royal Pantheon in Székesfehérvár, the commemorations were transferred to Buda, which was, in contrast to the former city, mainly an imperial capital besides maintaining its national
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importance. This resulted in the actual excavation site being neglected, and the subsequent exclusion of Székesfehérvár from the ‘canon’ of the national memory. It was assigned to the memory ‘archive’, as described by Aleida Assmann,61 for the next couple of decades. As this case study has shown, archaeological heritage is not exempt from the cycle of AHD. When the political setting, from which archaeology gains its financial and administrative support, changes, the interpretation and handling of artefacts and sites cannot remain constant either. However, former non-dominant narratives can revive and find their way back into the AHD when memory politics supports them. This cycle can be observed through the history of the Székesfehérvár site. Politicians did not stop using and abusing the site of the Basilica for political aims during the interwar period either. Governor Miklós Horthy built a ‘ruin-garden’ above the excavation site, representing his own regime through medieval allegories.62 The site is still a battlefield for contemporary memory politics, while resurgent nationalist voices call for the rebuilding of the Basilica from its ruins. Andrea Kocsis is an archaeologist, historian and media researcher. As an ESRC DTP (Economic and Social Research Council Doctoral Partnership) scholar, she is completing her PhD at the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre. Currently, she is the Friends of The National Archives Research Fellow in Advanced Digital Methods at the National Archives UK and a Cambridge Digital Humanities Methods Fellow for the academic year 2020–21 at the University of Cambridge. She now is Assistant Professor of History and Data Science at the ‘New College of The Humanities at Northeastern’. NOTES The research behind this chapter was supported by the Isbel Fletcher Garden Fund and by Wolfson College Cambridge. I am thankful to Dr Liliana Janik and my colleagues at the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre. 1. Palffy, The Kingdom of Hungary. 2. Laszlovszky and Szende, ‘Cities and Towns as Princely Seats’, 9–44. 3. Buzás et al., ‘Medieval Royal Centres’, 349. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid, 350. 6. Biczó, ‘A székesfehérvári királyi bazilika’. 7. Smith, National Identity. 8. Smith, Nationalism, 13.
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9. See Anderson, Imagined Communities. 10. Szűcs, Nemzet és történelem: tanulmányok. 11. Hroch, ‘From National Movement’. 12. Although, after 1867, Hungary became equal to Austria within the AustroHungarian Empire, its foreign and military affairs continued to depend on the Habsburgs. As Hungary was not a nation state, Hungarian nationalism changed its direction and focused on suppressing the minority groups living within its borders rather than on the fight against the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. However, this did not mean that alternative – using András Gerő’s term, ‘underdog’ – nationalist voices, demanding full national independence, were entirely silent (See Gerő, ‘1867 kiegyezése két látószögből’, 241–55). Therefore, in the Hrochian sense, the Hungarian nation had been switching between being a dominant and a non-dominant nation at the end of the nineteenth century. 13. Hroch, ‘From National Movement’, 29–45. 14. Ibid, 10. 15. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 25–26. 16. Nora, ‘Between Memory and History’. 17. Assmann, Cultural Memory. 18. Assmann, ‘Canon and Archive’, 99–104. 19. Assmann, ‘Transformations between History and Memory’, 68. 20. Smith, Uses of Heritage, 299. 21. Ibid, 301. 22. Hroch, Epilogue, 295. 23. Smith, Uses of Heritage, 277. 24. Trigger, ‘Alternative Archaeologies’, 358. 25. Kohl, ‘Nationalism and Archaeology’. 26. Ibid, 240. 27. Trigger, ‘Alternative Archaeologies’, 363. 28. Kohl, ‘Nationalism and Archaeology’, 226. 29. Ibid, 236. 30. Popa, ‘The significant past and insignificant archaeologists’. 31. Ibid, 28. 32. The journals and newspapers involved in the analysis can be downloaded from Arcanum Digital Database. Online: adtplus.arcanum.hu, accessed September 2021. Titles: Akadémiai Értesítő, Archeaológiai Értesítő, Atheneum Beothy, Budapesti Hírlap, Budapesti Közlöny, Budapesti Szemle, Ethongráfia, Fővárosi Lapok, Magyar Sion, Pesti Hírlap, Pesti Napló, Ugyvédek Lapja, Új Idők, Vasárnapi Újság. 33. Sommer, ‘Methods Used to Investigate the Use of the Past’. 34. The current scholarly discourse contests this identification, and attributes the grave to King Coloman. Since this discussion is not the focus of the present study, I use the knowledge available in the nineteenth century; therefore, I continue to refer to the Tomb of Béla III. For the debate, see Tóth, ‘III. Béla vagy Kálmán’; Mende, ‘Hogyan ne azonosítsuk az Árpádházi királyokat?’. 35. ‘A magyarországi legújabb régészeti felfedezések’, 162. 36. ‘A székesfehérvári ásatások költségeinek fedezése végett’, 442: ‘… tisztelettel és bizalommal felhivatnak mindazon hazafiak, kik honalapitóink tetemei és fényes
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37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.
multunk mindennemű ereklyéi iránt kegyelettel viseltetnek : méltóztassanak e czélra szives adományaikkal járulni, és másokat is ily adományozásra serkenteni’. English translation by the author. Czobor, ‘A székesfehérvári ásatások’, 796: ‘… sietni fog áldozat filléreivel a mausoleum épitéséhez, ha Henszlmann fáradhatlan buzgalmát megérdemelt siker koronázandja’. English translation by the author. 28% of the analysed sources referred to Henszlmann. Komárik, ‘Henszlmann Imre “emigrációja”’, 57–64. Buzinkay, Kő se mutatja helyét, 54–55. See Henszlmann, A székesfehérvári ásatások eredménye. Forster, ‘A királyi temetések viszontagságai’, 196. Ibid. Buzinkay, Kő se mutatja helyét, 50. Nagy, ‘III. Béla fegyverzete és az Árpádházi királyok jelvényei’, 231. The Hungarian National Museum holds two drawings documenting the state of these skeletons at the time of their excavation in 1848. MNM. Ha98.I/12. ‘III. Béla király hamvai’, 477. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 83–7, 102–7. Czobor, ‘III. Béla és hitvese halotti ékszerei’, 207. See, e.g. ibid., 209. Czobor, ‘A székesfehérvári ásatások’, 795. Buzinkay, Kő se mutatja helyét, 27. Hankó, Királyaink tömegsírban. Buzinkay, Kő se mutatja helyét, 63. Érdy, ‘III. Béla király és nejének Székes-fehérvárott talált síremlékei’, 44. ‘Az árpádkorszaki királyaink hamvait illetőleg’, 599: ‘Széles e világon a magyar az egyedül, ki ősi királyainak sirboltját csak hagyományokban vagy romokban ismeri’. English translation by the author. Forster, ‘A királyi temetések viszontagságai’, 192. See Kocsis, ‘The Uses of Medieval Archaeology’. See Deklava, ‘A budavári koronázó főtemplom mint királyi temetkező hely’. See Gerő, ‘1867 kiegyezése két látószögből’. Assmann, ‘Canon and archive’, 109. See Kocsis, ‘The Uses of Medieval Archaeology’.
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. ‘Canon and Archive’, in Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning (eds), A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010, 97–108. Assmann, Jan. Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. ‘A székesfehérvári ásatások költségeinek fedezése végett’ [For Financing the Székesfehárvár Excavations]. Vasárnapi Ujsag 1862, 37, 442. ‘Az árpádkorszaki királyaink hamvait illetőleg’ [Concerning the Ashes of Our Kings from the Árpád Dynasty’]. Vasárnapi Ujsag 1862, 50, 599. Békefi, Remig. ‘III. Béla temetése’ [The Burial of King Béla III], in Gyula Forster (ed.), III. Béla magyar király emlékezete. Dicsőségesen uralkodó utódja I. Ferencz József császár és apostoli király legmagasabb segélyével a magyar kormány megbízásából szerkesztette Forster Gyula [The Memory of King Béla III: With the Highest Help from His Gloriously Ruling Descendant, Emperor and Apostolic King Franz Joseph I and Ordered by the Hungarian Government, Edited Gyula Forster]. Budapest: Hornyánszky Viktor könyvnyomdája, 1900, 279–92. Biczó, Piroska. ‘A székesfehérvári királyi bazilika régészeti ásatásainak újabb eredményei’ [The Latest Results of the Excavations at the Royal Basilica in Székesfehérvár], in Elek Benkő and Gyöngyi Kovács (eds), A középkor és a kora újkor régészete Magyarországon [Archaeology of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period in Hungary]. Budapest: MTA Régészeti Intézete, 2010, 315–32. Buzás, Gergely, József Laszlovszky and Károly Magyar. ‘Medieval Royal Centres’, in Zsolt Visy (ed.), Hungarian Archaeology at the Turn of the Millennium. Budapest: NKA 2003, 348–63. Buzinkay, Géza. Kő se mutatja helyét: a királysírok pusztulása [The Destruction of the Royal Tombs]. Budapest: Corvina, 1986. Czobor, Béla. ‘A székesfehérvári ásatások’ [The Székesfehérvár Excavations]. Magyar Sion 1874, 5 (3), 792–96. . ‘III. Béla és hitvese halotti ékszerei’ [The Jewelleries of Béla II and His Wife], in Gyula Forster (ed.), III. Béla magyar király emlékezete. Dicsőségesen uralkodó utódja I. Ferencz József császár és apostoli király legmagasabb segélyével a magyar kormány megbízásából szerkesztette Forster Gyula [The Memory of King Béla III: With the Highest Help from His Gloriously Ruling Descendant, Emperor and Apostolic King Franz Joseph I and Ordered by the Hungarian Government, Edited Gyula Forster]. Budapest: Hornyánszky Viktor könyvnyomdája, 1900, 207–30. Deklava, Lilla. ‘A budavári koronázó főtemplom mint királyi temetkező hely: III. Béla és Antiochiai Anna sírja és síremléke a Mátyás-templomban’ [The Coronation Church of Buda as Royal Burial Place: The Grave and Funeral Monument of Béla III and Anne of Antioch in the Matthias Church]. Művészettörténeti Értesítő 2016 (65), 241–80. Érdy, János. ‘III. Béla király és nejének Székes-fehérvárott talált síremlékei’ [The Graves of King Béla III and His Wife in Székesfehérvár], in Ferenc Kubinyi and Imre Vahot (eds), Magyarország és Erdély képekben 1 [Hungary and Transylvania in Pictures 1]. Pest: Kossuth Nyomda, 1853, 42–48. Forster, Gyula. ‘A királyi temetések viszontagságai’ [The Problems with the Royal Burials], in Gyula Forster (ed.), III. Béla magyar király emlékezete. Dicsőségesen uralkodó utódja I. Ferencz József császár és apostoli király legmagasabb segélyével
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a magyar kormány megbízásából szerkesztette Forster Gyula [The Memory of King Béla III: With the Highest Help from His Gloriously Ruling Descendant, Emperor and Apostolic King Franz Joseph I and Ordered by the Hungarian Government, Edited Gyula Forster]. Budapest: Hornyánszky Viktor könyvnyomdája, 1900, 191–99. Gerő, András. ‘1867 kiegyezése két látószögből’ [The Compromise of 1867 from Two Perspectives], in Orsolya Manhercz (ed.), Historia Critica. Tanulmányok az Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem Bölcsészettudományi Karának Történeti Intézetéből 1 [Historia Critica: Studies from the Historical Institute of the Faculty of Arts of Eötvös Loránd University]. Budapest: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó, 2014, 241–55. Hankó, Ildikó. Királyaink tömegsírban [Our Kings in Mass Grave]. Budapest: Kárpát ház, 2004. Henszlmann, Imre. A székesfehérvári ásatások eredménye [The Results of the Excavations in Székesfehérvár]. Pest: Heckenast, 1864. Hroch, Miroslav. ‘From National Movement to the Fully-formed Nation’. New Left Review 1993, 198 (6), 29–45. . ‘Epilogue’, in Margarita Díaz-Andreu and Timothy C. Champion (eds), Nationalism and Archaeology in Europe. Boulder, CO and San Francisco: Westview Press, 1996, 294–300. Kocsis, Andrea. ‘The Uses of Medieval Archaeology in the Hungarian Nation-Building’. Master’s thesis, University of Cambridge, 2017. Kohl, Philip L. ‘Nationalism and Archaeology: On the Constructions of Nations and the Reconstructions of the Remote Past’. Annual Review of Anthropology 1998 (27), 223–46. Komárik, Dénes. ‘Henszlmann Imre “emigrációja”’ [Imre Henszlmann’s ‘Emigration’]. Ars Hungarica 1990, 18 (1), 57–64. Laszlovszky, József and Szende Katalin. ‘Cities and Towns as Princely Seats’, in Gergely Buzás, József Laszlovszky and Orosolya Mészáros (eds), The Medieval Royal Town at Visegrád: Royal Centre, Urban Settlement, Churches. Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2014, 9–44. Mende, Balázs. ‘Hogyan ne azonosítsuk az Árpádházi királyokat?’ [How Not to Identify Kings of the Árpád Dynasty?], in András Liska and Imre Szatmári (eds), Sötét idők rejtélyei. 6–11. századi régészeti emlékek a Kárpát-medencében és környékén. Tempora Obscura 3 [The Mysteries of Dark Times: Archaeological Finds in the Carpathian Basin from the Sixth until Eleventh Centuries]. Békéscsaba: A Békés Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága 2012, 561–72. Nagy, Géza. ‘III. Béla fegyverzete és az Árpádházi királyok jelvényei’ [The Armoury of King Béla III], in Gyula Forster (ed.), III. Béla magyar király emlékezete. Dicsőségesen uralkodó utódja I. Ferencz József császár és apostoli király legmagasabb segélyével a magyar kormány megbízásából szerkesztette Forster Gyula. [The Memory of King Béla III: With the Highest Help from His Gloriously Ruling Descendant, Emperor and Apostolic King Franz Joseph I and Ordered by the Hungarian Government, Edited Gyula Forster]. Budapest: Hornyánszky Viktor könyvnyomdája, 1900, 231–39. Nora, Pierre. ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’. Representations 1989 (26), 7–24. Palffy, Géza. The Kingdom of Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
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Popa, Cătălin Nicolae. ‘The Significant Past and Insignificant Archaeologists: Who Informs the Public About their “National” Past? The Case of Romania’. Archaeological Review from Cambridge: Archaeological Dialogues 2016, 23 (1), 28–39. Smith, Anthony D. National Identity. Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1991. . Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010. Smith, Laurajane. Uses of Heritage. New edition. London, New York: Routledge, 2006. Sommer, Ulrike. ‘Methods Used to Investigate the Use of the Past in the Formation of Regional Identities’, in Marie Louise Stig Sørensen and John Carman (eds), Heritage Studies: Methods and Approaches. London: Routledge 2010, 103–20. Szűcs, Jenő. Nemzet és történelem: tanulmányok [Nation and History]. Budapest: Gondolat, 1984. Trigger, Bruce G. ‘Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist’. Man 1984, 19 (3), 355–70. Tóth, Endre. ‘III. Béla vagy Kálmán? (A székesfehérvári királysír azonosításáról)’ [Béla III or Coloman? On Identifying the Royal Burials in Székesfehérvár]. Folia Archaeologica 2005–6, (52), 141–61.
8 CHAPTER 12 The Architectural Heritage of Silesia in the Purview of Prussian History (1740–1918) Monika Ewa Adamska
Introduction Silesia (Śląsk in Polish, Schlesien in German)1 is a significant historical region in Central Europe located along the Odra River. In the Middle Ages, it was divided into many independent duchies ruled by the Piast dynasty. The lands became the property of the Crown of Bohemia in the fifteenth century and subsequently passed to the Habsburg Monarchy in the sixteenth century. As a result of the Silesian Wars between Prussia and Austria, most of the region was annexed in 1740 to the Kingdom of Prussia, which became a great power under the rule of King Friedrich II. As a Prussian province, Silesia became part of the German Empire during the unification of Germany in 1871. Successive changes in state affiliation over the centuries shaped Silesia’s history, lending it a multicultural character. The diverse backgrounds of neighbouring countries further strengthened this process. Since 1945, the vast majority of Silesia has been located in the south-western part of Poland, with minor portions in the Czech Republic and Germany. The conquest of Silesia was of great importance for the history of the Prussian state. The vast, economically developed, urbanized and populous region undoubtedly strengthened the potential of the Hohenzollern Monarchy. Simultaneously, it introduced within the borders of Prussia a conflict between Catholics and Protestants (lasting from the seventeenth century), a feudal system ensuring the strong position of the Catholic
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nobility and the powerful Catholic Church with its substantial wealth. Notwithstanding, the annexed Silesia – economically, socially and religiously so clearly distinct from the Prussian centre – was gradually incorporated into the state and administrative structure of the absolute monarchy. After half a century of considerable administrative autonomy, at the beginning of the nineteenth century Silesia became the equivalent of a Prussian province.2 Following the Congress of Vienna, it became the largest province in the Kingdom of Prussia. This chapter focuses on the fate and importance of Silesia’s architectural heritage during Prussian rule over the region in the ‘long’ nineteenth century. It refers to Silesian towns and their public-utility buildings, both secular (castles and town halls) and sacral (churches and monasteries). In justified cases, including outlining the historical background, the key period covers the time from the 1740s, when Silesia was incorporated into Prussia, until the end of the First World War. The study gives an overview of attitudes towards this heritage based on selected, representative examples taken in Silesia in the period in question.
Silesia under Prussian Rule: The Economic, Historical and Political Background After Silesia was incorporated into the Kingdom of Prussia, policy towards the annexed lands was to consolidate the region within the Prussian state (see figure 12.1). Silesia was divided into two parts, each governed by the Chamber of War and Domains (Kriegs- und Domänenkammer): one with its seat in Wrocław (Breslau),3 the historical capital of Silesia; the other in Głogów (Glogau), one of its regional centres. The Province of Silesia retained significant autonomy until the reforms following the Napoleonic Wars.4 The crucial aims of King Friedrich II’s policy in the annexed region included the colonization of poorly urbanized areas, the development of industry and the construction of a reliable defence system based on existing and newly developed fortresses.5 As far as religious matters were concerned, the territory was generally divided between Catholic Upper Silesia and Protestant Lower Silesia. An important novelty that appeared in Silesia after the conquest was the unlimited freedom of conscience guaranteed by the state. The idea of Frederician tolerance as one of the principles of state policy was undoubtedly the most positive element of the King’s beliefs and the style of his rule. The sovereign’s conviction that all religions were to be tolerated and protected by the state authorities against persecution and injustice was based on the principles of the Enlightenment.6
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The first half of the nineteenth century was an important time for Silesia. As a resource-rich region, it grew gradually into one of the most important European industrial areas. The Napoleonic Wars brought the collapse, destruction and subsequent indebtedness of the Prussian state, which in turn forced Prussia to initiate fundamental economic and social reforms – known as the Stein-Hardenberg Reforms.7 The restructuring of the state administration started in 1808 and introduced the division of the state into provinces. Silesia, as ‘Provinz Schlesien’, became one of them and consisted of three government districts (Regierungsbezirke) with capitals in Wrocław, Opole (Oppeln) and Legnica (Liegnitz). The new administrative division of Silesia abolished the previous building administration, which had been independent of Berlin. In the newly established government districts a unified, state, building-administration institution was introduced at the level of district, and of the districts’ further division into counties. All districts were subsequently divided into smaller areas supervised by county building inspectors.8 The administrative division of Prussian Silesia established at the beginning of the nineteenth century remained in place until the end of the First World War.9 In order to pay off the contributions imposed by Napoleon, the secularization of monastic goods was decreed in 1810. Landed estates and monastic and church buildings with their assets in Silesia were taken over by the Prussian state. The majority of the goods were sold and the premises
Figure 12.1. Nineteenth-century Silesia superimposed on the current state borders. © Monika Ewa Adamska.
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were adapted to new functions. This secularization affected mostly the Catholic Church in Prussia – and particularly Silesia.10 The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of further far-reaching changes in Silesia. Railway transport revolutionized the region’s economy. Silesian towns experienced population growth and social development.11 As a Prussian province, Silesia became part of the German Empire when it was proclaimed in 1871. Prussia contained two-thirds of Germany’s population, and the territory had a privileged position in the Empire.
Silesian Architecture of the Past: The Legacy of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period When Silesia was incorporated into Prussia, the architectural heritage of the region consisted of sacral and secular buildings mainly in the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles. Due to the region’s history and geography, Silesian architecture had been influenced by artistic inspirations coming from many parts of Europe. ‘Silesian’ Gothic, a separate and coherent trend established in the fourteenth century, was shaped mostly in Wrocław.12 The most prominent examples of the style include monumental, sacral brick structures that remain impressive to this day, such as the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist and the churches of Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint Elizabeth. Numerous Gothic churches in other towns in the region are also worth mentioning, e.g. Saint Nicholas’ three-nave brick basilica in Brzeg (Brieg) with two massive western towers, the parish church in Głogówek (Oberglogau) with net vaults showing the influence of Czech architecture and the Parler style along with Saint Jacob’s soaring hall church in Nysa (Neisse), where the experiences transferred from other parts of Europe were shaped in a revealing and consistent way.13 During the Renaissance, Silesian residences, town halls and apartment houses were rebuilt according to new stylistic ideas. In that period, an important role in the region’s cultural life was played by the Duchy of Brzeg, ruled by the Silesian Piast dynasty, and the Duchy of Nysa administered by the bishops of Wrocław.14 The castle in Brzeg, rebuilt by architects and artists from northern Italy (so-called Comacine masters) and combining late Italian Renaissance with local building traditions, takes a prominent place among the secular architecture in Silesia.15 Town halls reshaped in the early modern period were usually characterized by a fusion of medieval spatial layout and Renaissance detail. Such a combination is represented by the seat of the municipal authority in Brzeg, rebuilt by Comacine masters (Bernard Niuron and Jakub Parr) after a fire in the sixteenth century.16 The
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distinctive feature of the reshaped town hall in Brzeg is an arcaded loggia flanked by two towers. Baroque appeared in the region in the second half of the seventeenth century and was directly connected with the Counter-Reformation – hence, sacral architecture was the most highly developed at that time. Monastic structures played a significant role in developing close artistic relations between Silesia and Bohemia, two neighbouring regions of the Bohemian Crown, in the age of the Baroque.17 Silesian Baroque, although not as creative and varied as in Bohemia, also produced some specific and individual works. Among many excellent Baroque works in Silesian towns are the Jesuit churches in Legnica and Nysa, implementing the mature concept of the Baroque church with a two-tower façade and a single-space interior.18 In the Protestant towns of Lower Silesia, however, more Classical and frugal architecture devoid of Baroque splendour was preferred.19 An image of the region at the beginning of the nineteenth century is captured in the valuable work ‘Letters on Silesia’ by John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), the then American Ambassador to Prussia and later President of the United States. The book contains reports from his travels through Silesia in 1800.20 Although the main goal of the journey was collecting information on trade and industry in the region, the Ambassador commented on Silesia’s topography, landscape and architecture as well. Adams was impressed by the large number of churches and monasteries in Wrocław, especially Gothic masterpieces, highlighting them as the most noteworthy sites in the capital of Silesia.21 The Ambassador was also entranced by the examples of eighteenth-century Protestant architecture in the region. In Adams’ opinion, the architecture of a new Lutheran church in Dzierżoniów (Reichenbach) was ‘at once the most simple and elegant of any similar building that I ever saw’,22 while another one in Jelenia Góra (Hirschberg) was ‘the handsomest building in the town, and [made] a conspicuous figure in all the views from the neighbouring hills’.23 Adams also made some comments on the architectural and urban features of Silesian towns, comparing them with other European and American solutions. He likened houses with ground-floor arcades in Kamienna Góra (Landeshut) to the architecture of London (Covent Garden) and Paris (the Palais Royal), while front-gabled buildings there reminded him of Dutch cities.24 Furthermore, he related the linear layout of Kowary (Schmiedeberg) to the town of Salem, Massachusetts. The spatial layout of Szklarska Poręba (Schreiberhau), characterized by scattered groups of buildings, reminded him of a typical provincial American town.25 The Ambassador’s account of Silesian architecture is uniquely valuable – being a well-educated and well-travelled American diplomat, he was able to perceive this heritage from a broader European and global perspective.
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Monument Protection and Conservation Services in the Kingdom of Prussia and the Province of Silesia An interest in monuments of the past, which started to become widespread in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century, contributed to the establishment of institutional protection for monuments in Prussia. This was also the time at which a modern state administrative system was shaped and new administrative structures emerged. The Higher Building Deputation (Oberbaudeputation), based in Berlin, would issue opinions on construction works financed from state funds in Prussia. Among the Deputation’s many responsibilities, set out in an instruction from 1809, was issuing opinions on the preservation of monuments and relics of ancient art.26 An important role in establishing the monument-protection system in the Prussian state was played by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841), one of the most prominent architects of Prussia in the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1815, both as an architect and an official of the Higher Building Deputation, Schinkel elaborated a memorial directed to the Ministry of the Interior, in which he pointed out the need to examine and protect the past in the Kingdom of Prussia.27 Consequently, King Friedrich Wilhelm III included the issue of monument protection in the duties of the Oberbaudeputation. During his official trips, including to Silesia, Schinkel formulated several opinions and corrected designs related to works on historic buildings. Professional institutions entrusted with the task of monument protection in Prussia were appointed only in the 1840s by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Ferdinand von Quast (1807–77), an architect who had studied under Schinkel, was the first person nominated for the position of the Conservator of Art Monuments in Prussia (Konservator der Kunstdenkmäler des preußischen Staates) in 1843. Von Quast held this position for over thirty years, until his death in 1877. The Conservator was an official of the Ministry of Religion, Public Enlightenment and Health. The scope of his responsibilities, specified in an instruction issued in 1844, included developing an inventory of monuments and their historical examination as well as providing practical rules for dealing with them. It was also the Conservator’s duty to travel annually to all parts of Prussia and to report on the state of historic buildings, advising and commenting on the ongoing works. However, due to limited funds, lack of professional personnel and numerous duties, Ferdinand von Quast managed to issue just one volume of the inventory, covering a single part of East Prussia. In the province of Silesia, his activity was limited mainly to issuing opinions on the works to be carried out within the structure of monuments.28 Von Quast also gathered several hundred
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drawings and graphics as a preliminary stage of work on the inventory of the monuments in Silesia.29 Ferdinand von Quast’s successors in his office were Heinrich von DehnRotfelser (1825–85) and Reinhold Persius (1835–1912), both trained architects. Dehn-Rotfelser was appointed Conservator of Art Monuments in Prussia in 1882, and Persius held the position from 1886 until 1901. Although they limited their interest in Silesia mainly to governmental duties, their contribution to initiating conservation works in the former Cistercian monastery in Lubiąż (Leubus) and the monastery church in Krzeszów (Grüssau), both outstanding works of European Baroque art, is worth mentioning.30 After the unification of Germany in 1871, a process of significant change commenced in the administrative structure related to monument protection. Wilhelm II’s decree in 1891 ordered the establishment in each province of a Provinzial Kommission zur Erforschung und Schutze der Denkmäler der Provinz (Commission for the Study and Protection of Historical Monuments). The executive body of the commission was to include a provincial Conservator of Monuments. The post of Conservator was to function outside the administrative structure in all of Prussia – except for Silesia, where he was on the payroll of the Oberbaudeputation. The Conservator received a subsidy granted annually from ministerial funds and the provincial board, intended to cover the expenses of classifying and conserving monuments.31 It is worth emphasizing that the conservation services in the Province of Silesia were the earliest to be established in the aftermath of the aforementioned decree. Outside Prussia, in the other states of the German Empire, similar services were established almost at the same time.32 After the Commission was established, Hans Lutsch (1854–1922) was nominated as the Provinzialkonservator der Kunstdenkmäler der Provinz Schlesien (Conservator of the Province of Silesia). Lutsch, a trained architect, not only elaborated the inventory of monuments for the entire province in 1894–1903 but also drove improvements in the technical and artistic quality of the works carried out on historic buildings. He additionally believed that important tasks in the field of monument conservation should be performed by artists, not craftsmen. Therefore, such personalities as Hans Poelzig (architect), Joseph Langer (painter) and Albert Werner-Schwarzburg (sculptor) were involved in the conservation of monuments in the region. Interestingly, Lutsch was averse to purist reconstructions – especially those not supported by appropriate research. Thanks to his efforts, district building inspectors were obliged to consult with the Commission on all works carried out on the buildings listed in the inventory of monuments for Silesia. The activities initiated by the Commission were documented in Berichte (reports) edited by Lutsch. They were issued every two years, were ordered alphabetically by towns and villages in each of the three districts of Silesia
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and covered historic sacral and secular architecture. They contained not only information on conservation and repair works, along with extensions and alterations carried out, but also reported on issues such as planned demolitions, reusing valuable elements of deteriorated structures (e.g. portals, church organs) and inspections. Lutsch acted as the Conservator of Silesia until his nomination for the position of Conservator of Prussia in 1901.33 Ludwig Burgemeister (1863–1932), an architect and art historian, succeeded Lutsch as Conservator in 1902. Burgemeister continued to use the methods initiated by his predecessor, whose associate he had been for several years. The reports on conservation works carried out at that time were still regularly published. Furthermore, Burgemeister also made efforts to have recognized architects and artists (mainly professors of the State Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław) employed in the most important conservation works.34
Approaches to Monument Protection in Prussia The origins of the idea of monument protection in Prussia have not only a broad historical context but also an important philosophical one. The Napoleonic Wars and the secularization of monastic properties decreed in 1810 resulted in hundreds of abandoned and ruined buildings treated mostly in utilitarian terms. German thinkers, driven by French Enlightenment thought, contributed to gradual changes in the perception of remnants of the past. It was postulated that education about the past be intensified and the search for a national identity conducted through historical research. The relics of the past came to be seen as a political tool and a means of social education aimed at strengthening self-identification.35 In the first half of the nineteenth century, Karl Friedrich Schinkel became the greatest authority on architecture in the German states. He deplored the lost architecture, emphasizing the necessity of acting to hinder the process by which such heritage disappeared. The document ‘The basic principles for the conservation of ancient monuments and antiquities in our country’ – based on Schinkel’s reports on the state of public buildings in the areas incorporated into Prussia after the Congress of Vienna, and presented to King Friedrich Wilhelm III by the Higher Building Deputation – became fundamental to the conservation of cultural heritage in Prussia.36 Schinkel, as an expert and an official, not only determined the new rules of conservation practice but also strengthened belief in the protection of monuments as an essential duty of a modern and civilized state. As the Director of the Higher Building Deputation, he pointed out the priorities for monument protection such as material; structure; values (artistic, historical
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and scientific); and original technologies and solutions. He recommended maximum restraint in interfering or transforming original structures and details in processes of restoration.37 Schinkel would opt for rebuilding historic structures in their old architectural forms in cases of their loss, acting carefully and searching for the most rational solutions.38 As previously mentioned, a new chapter of monument protection in Prussia started in 1843 with King Friedrich Wilhelm IV’s decision to create the position of Conservator of Art Monuments in Prussia. The appointee for this position, and Schinkel’s student, Ferdinand von Quast, considered monument protection to be an essential part of cultural policy and the monuments themselves as a testimony of the former unity of society, religion and the ruler, which could be recovered in a new form.39 His views on monument restoration were consistent with Schinkel’s; therefore, he was against not only works that obliterated or changed old forms but also the creation of replicas.40 Generally, von Quast was in favour of conservation while holding that restoration of a building should respect all valuable elements of the structure regardless of age. According to him, additions were to be limited to the necessary minimum taking into account the safety of the building and its characteristic appearance.41 However, the approach of stylistic purity initiated by French architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc spread throughout Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. This purism spread especially strongly in Germany, where valuable and original elements of many historic buildings were removed and replaced with forms inspired by medieval architecture. At the end of the nineteenth century, purism came under fire. It was now recommended to abandon restoration works and limit activity to the necessary conservation and maintenance only. Georg Dehio, a German art historian, was among those who stood against the idea of stylistic purity.42 Dehio’s principles were ‘to conserve and only to conserve! To restore only when conservation has become materially impossible; what has fallen can only be rebuilt under certain limited conditions’.43 He has been considered the founder of the modern approach in German conservation.44 The end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century was a significant moment in the development of conservation doctrines and the formation of the modern theory of monument protection.
The Various Fates of Silesian Castles The region of Silesia was, and still is, dotted with numerous castles and palaces. Many of them were built by Silesian Piasts, the dynasty that ruled
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in many duchies of the region from the Middle Ages until the seventeenth century. The castles in Legnica and Brzeg, important former Piast seats, will serve as examples of the approaches and attitudes of the Prussian authorities and their conservation offices to the architectural heritage of Silesia. The castle in Legnica, whose history dates back to the thirteenth century, was a princely residence until 1675. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the complex was adapted for administrative purposes within the structures of the Prussian Province of Silesia. The Chamber of War and Domains, located initially in Głogów, was moved to Legnica at that time. The castle also became the seat of the district authorities when Legnica was appointed capital of one of the three governmental districts in the Province of Silesia in 1815.45 Unfortunately, the complex was severely damaged by fire in 1835. The extent of the damage was estimated and the decision made to rebuild the entire castle, with drawings being prepared by state building officials. Karl Friedrich Schinkel had a significant impact on the project.46 The choice to create red brick neo-Gothic façades in order to, on the one hand, harmoniously merge the stylistically diverse complex and, on the other, to refer to the Gothic elements of the castle was one of Schinkel’s major decisions.47 Günter Grundmann admitted that the task had a monument-preservation significance, as, in result, it consciously connected the rebuilt parts with the surviving historic components such as the Saint Peter and Saint Hedwig Gothic towers and the Renaissance entrance portal.48 The works were completed in the 1840s, after Schinkel’s death. The complex, situated on the edge of the old town, formed an irregular U-shaped layout with an internal court. The rebuilt castle’s architecture harmoniously combined the styles of past ages with the nineteenth century neo-Gothic. The fate of the castle in Brzeg was much more dramatic. Ruled by the Piast dynasty, Brzeg was the capital of the duchy and one of the wealthiest towns in Silesia in the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The Renaissance complex with an arcaded courtyard, a splendid entrance building and an adjacent Gothic chapel was the princely seat until the dynasty died out in 1675. Later, the premises served the officials of the Habsburg administration and were also used as a temporary residence. Little was done to maintain the castle during this period, which resulted in many interiors being neglected and part of the arcades being at risk of collapsing.49 The former princely seat was severely damaged during the First Silesian War in 1741. The remains of the castle were soon after converted into a military warehouse (1743) and an inn (1755). The latter functioned until a fire in 1801.50 Despite extensive damage to the former Piast residence, some parts were still preserved – such as the gatehouse and the eastern wing, which were a testimony to the high artistic values of the castle.
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However, the monument was not taken care of by the administrative and conservation authorities until the interwar period. Moreover, the remains of the castle were treated as a building-materials depot, and many fragments of the sculptural decoration such as columns, capitals and corbels could be found in the gardens and backyards of the houses in Brzeg.51 Hermann Kutz – the author of the first monograph on the Brzeg castle, published in 1885 – gave his book a symptomatic subtitle Ein Vergessenes Denkmal Alter Bauherrlichkeit in Schlesien (Forgotten Monument of the Former Splendour of Architecture in Silesia), grieving over the sad fate of the castle.52 Only the works of a Swedish art historian, August Hahr, published in the first two decades of the twentieth century, introduced the monument to the history of European art and praised its importance.53 This constituted the impulse for the conservation authorities to undertake initial works to secure the site. Subsequently, some conservation of the Gothic Saint Hedwig’s chapel (forming part of the castle) was carried out in 1908–9.54 Additionally, some efforts were made by the town authorities to purchase the former Piast seat in Brzeg, as stated in the Conservator’s report from 1911–12.55 Regarding its historical and artistic value, the head of the Province of Silesia agreed to advocate the granting of a subsidy for conservation purposes.56 In the 1920s, the warehouse was closed down and the entrance building underwent conservation. The renovated eastern wing was adapted as a museum.57
Town Halls as Representative Seats of the Municipal Authorities In the first half of the nineteenth century some actions were taken to build a more representative image of Silesian towns – in particular, the region’s major centres. Special attention was paid not only to government buildings (both newly erected and adapted structures) but also to town halls as the seats of municipal authorities. The Higher Building Deputation in Berlin was to decide on the form and character of public buildings in Prussian Silesia at that time. Many public buildings in Silesia are today attributed, somewhat erroneously, to Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the Director of the Deputation. In reality, Schinkel’s role was mostly limited to approving the projects created by subordinated building officials, making corrections and supervising the works on site.58 This procedure can be seen from the example of Opole, the new capital of the government district in the Province of Silesia. The seat of its municipal authorities, as in most Silesian towns, was located on the main market square. Once a wooden merchant’s house, it was rebuilt as a brick structure
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with a clock tower in early modern times. At the end of the eighteenth century, the town hall was already considered to be ‘alt und wenig bequem’ (old and not very comfortable).59 Its poor condition was the reason for the planning of a comprehensive reconstruction in 1818.60 The following year, a plan of the northern wing was drafted by Ernst Samuel Friebel, the building inspector in Opole, and sent for approval to the Higher Building Deputation in Berlin.61 However, the Deputation’s officials raised many objections and introduced required amendments.62 Some of these, such as changes to the general dimensions of the new part, could not be taken into account due to the construction works, which had already started.63 Others referred to the plan of the façades to introduce certain symbolic content underlining the importance of the seat and its central location. This was going to be achieved through Rundbogenstil (‘round-arch style’: a combination of Byzantine, Romanesque and Renaissance elements) ground-floor openings, along with crenellations crowning the building. The first solution referred to the Florentine Quattrocento palaces, while the aim of the second was to lend the building the character of a defensive structure.64 The new three-story northern wing, designed on a rectangular plan, was completed in 1824. The individual character of the building was achieved primarily by flat roofs covered with zinc sheeting; crenellations with elements in the form of a dovetail; arcades on the north side; and plastered, rusticated façades. Schinkel recommended that the colour of the façades should be based on the structural paint – composed of lime, charcoal and pigments (Umber and Yellow Earth) – as in the case of Berlin Cathedral.65 There was a further discussion between the municipal authorities and the officials in Berlin on the Corinthian columns used partly in the façade: the Deputation believed that they did not match the style of the building. Although the town’s authorities initially opposed this idea, they finally withdrew their objections and replaced the Corinthian columns with arcaded pillars.66 Visiting Opole during an inspection in 1832, Schinkel wrote, ‘The town hall was built according to the Higher Building Deputation’s project and ordered outside. However, the town master-builder made all sorts of minor changes, and the whole became an adornment of the town preserved in the ancient style’ (see figure 12.2).67 Further works continued in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the Baroque tower was replaced with a new one, sixty metres high, inspired by the forms of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, according to the designs of the building inspector, Albrecht, in consultation with the Higher Building Deputation in Berlin.68 The current appearance of the town hall in Opole is a result of construction works in the 1930s, when a new southern wing was erected to replace dilapidated houses.
Figure 12.2. Town hall in Opole. The nineteenth-century building supervised by K.F. Schinkel at the front. The part erected in the 1930s at the rear, 2021. © Jan Franciszek Adamski.
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At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, town halls were also subject to further transformations, forced by the fires that still bedevilled Silesian towns. The majority of the works done at this time drew inspiration from the historical styles of the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Gothic and Renaissance Revival architecture dominated, and many well-known German architects were involved. An architectural competition was the commonly used formula to choose the best solution.
The Dissolution Edict and Its Impact on Silesian Monasteries According to the rule cuius regio, eius religio (in a [prince’s] country, the [prince’s] religion), many new Protestant churches were erected in Silesia under Prussian rule, especially in the eighteenth century, while the Catholic churches and monasteries were essentially not transformed at that time. The situation changed with the secularization of monastic goods decreed in 1810. Orders such as the Cistercians, Dominicans and Franciscans, present in the region for centuries, were dissolved and their properties taken over by the Prussian state. This dissolution resulted in the functional transformation of many monastic complexes. Selected examples from hundreds of such cases in Silesia will provide details for further analysis. Dominicans and Franciscans had been present in many Silesian towns since the Middle Ages, and their monastery complexes experienced periods of prosperity and decline over the centuries. The Franciscan complex in Opole, located in the vicinity of the market square, consisted of a church, Saint Ann’s Chapel, founded by the Piast princes as a burial chapel, and an adjacent monastery. In the first few years after secularization, during the Napoleonic Wars, a field hospital was arranged in the empty monastery, then the premises were leased temporarily for industrial and craft purposes. Soon afterwards, first the church and then the monastery were handed over to the Evangelical commune to be adapted for sacral and educational purposes.69 The Dominican monastery in Opole, also situated intra muros (within the walls), initially served administrative purposes as a result of the city being appointed capital of the governmental district in 1816. Selected departments of the district’s authorities were provisionally located here. A plan to adapt the former monastery as an educational institution for midwifes was drawn up in 1836. However, the Higher Building Deputation in Berlin negated this plan, arguing that the costs of conversion would be
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too high due to the poor technical condition of the building structure, and advised the construction of a new facility elsewhere instead.70 In the mid-eighteenth century, Aloys Gärth, a canon and a school counsellor, purchased the former monastery and founded Saint Adalbert’s Hospital.71 Over the next few years, many alterations and extensions were carried out to adjust the former monastery complex to the functional profile of a hospital.72 The Cistercians’ presence in Silesia also dated back to the Middle Ages. The Cistercian nuns’ monastery complex in Trzebnica (Trebnitz) was one of the largest in Silesia, and the nuns settled there from as early as the thirteenth century.73 The church, a three-nave basilica in which the grave of Saint Hedwig is located, was originally erected in the Romanesque style and rebuilt according to the rules of Baroque art in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At that time, the monastery was altered and enlarged. After secularization, the church received the status of a parish church in Trzebnica – in this way, keeping its sacral function. In the nineteenth century, minor renovation works in the interior were carried out on the floors, altars, statues and organs.74 More complex repair and conservation works took place in 1902–3. A new cenotaph of Saint Hedwig was made by reusing the thirteenth-century original tombstone. Some capitals and bases of inter-naval pillars were repaired and others partially replaced. Architect Hans Poelzig, the Director at the Academy of Art and Design (Königliche Kunst- und Kunstgewerbeschule) in Wrocław, designed a carved, richly decorated organ front.75 The monastery buildings, as in Opole, served as a field hospital in 1812–16. Shortly afterwards, part of the complex was adapted as a cloth factory followed by structural changes to the interiors.76 The factory functioned until 1857, when the Prussian state came up with the idea of establishing a prison in the former monastery. Finally, as that plan was abandoned, in the late nineteenth century the buildings were bought by the Knights Hospitaller and a female order of Sisters of Saint Charles Borromeo, and converted into hospitals.77 Not all the monasteries had new functions assigned shortly after secularization. This was the case for the Norbertine nuns’ monastery in Czarnowąsy (Czarnowanz) near Opole. The convent had been established in the thirteenth century and a significant Baroque reconstruction of the complex took place in the seventeenth century. The secularized monastery was abandoned for several decades, to be finally re-established in the 1870s.78 Franz Idzikowski wrote in 1863 that the monastery in Czarnowąsy, once with splendid interiors, was still disused and unmaintained, and accused his contemporary generation of an inability to maintain and reuse the heritage of previous centuries.79
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Alterations to the Sacral Architecture of Silesia at the End of the Nineteenth and the Beginning of the Twentieth Centuries A new phenomenon in this period was the process of reshaping Silesian medieval sacral architecture, which underwent wide-ranging formal alterations. Neo-Gothic motifs had appeared in Silesia first in industrial buildings, and sacral architecture was influenced soon afterwards. The first projects related to the reconstruction and extension of medieval churches in Silesia were realized in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Gothic Revival continued in Silesia until the beginning of the twentieth century.80 The Holy Cross Cathedral in Opole is among many churches rebuilt at that time. It was mentioned as a brick collegiate church of the basilica type as early as the thirteenth century. The church, damaged by a fire in the fifteenth century, gained its current three-aisled hall layout during later reconstruction. Furthermore, Saint Hedwig’s and Saint Ann’s chapels in the late Gothic style were added. In the 1880s, the Baroque interior gave way to neo-Gothic decorations. A new polychrome decoration was added and stained-glass windows were installed in the presbytery.81 Further changes were introduced at the start of the twentieth century, when a symmetrical, vertical, neo-Gothic western façade with two slender, 73-metre-high towers crowned with neo-Renaissance helmets replaced the previous façade, flanked by a small tower. The author of the new façade was Josef Cimbollek, a local builder. As the height of the towers exceeded the standards accepted by the district-government authorities, additional arrangements were required.82 The nineteenth-century alteration and renovation programme was part of the celebration of the six-hundredth anniversary of the Holy Cross parish in Opole. The parish Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Głubczyce (Leobschütz) underwent much more complex remodelling in the first decade of the twentieth century. The church, mentioned as early as the thirteenth century, was subsequently formed as a three-aisled, early Gothic, brick hall structure in the fourteenth century. A decision to extend the eastern section of the church was made at the beginning of the twentieth century. The elongated Gothic presbytery was replaced by a neo-Gothic, two-nave transept ending in a small presbytery. At the same time, the southern tower was raised to match the northern – thus creating a two-tower western front.83 The extension and restoration project was elaborated and supervised by Max Hasak (1856–1934), a German architect born in Silesia and educated in Berlin.84 Before the end of the works, Lutsch made an official visit to Głubczyce. The progress and quality of the
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construction works were assessed very highly. Particular attention was paid to the treatment of new masonry showing ‘einen wertvollen künstlerischen Fortschritt’ (valuable artistic progress).85
Conclusions When Silesia came under Prussian rule in the middle of the eighteenth century, the attitude of King Friedrich II to the region’s historic, centuries-old architecture was mainly one of pragmatism and utilitarianism. The towns in the region that matched the King’s military plans were modernized as fortresses. The towns being destroyed by repeated fires at that time were rebuilt with improved planning. It is worth mentioning here that these works were co-financed from the state coffers within the Rétablissement (restoration) policy and supervised by the building administration’s officials.86 The decisions to adapt historic public buildings, such as former Piast castles, to new functions – e.g. administrative, military and royal uses – were mainly based on utilitarian aspects such as technical condition, size and location within Silesia. The symbolic values such as strength, power and protection associated with the former princely seats were used to create an appropriate status. After the Napoleonic Wars, which revealed the weakness and backwardness of Prussia, a series of constitutional, administrative, social and economic reforms was introduced in the Prussian state. The monarchy expanded after the Vienna Congress and became a great power with a predominantly German-speaking population. Additionally, a modern system of building administration emerged in Prussia as part of the reforms at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The example of the comprehensive reconstruction of Opole’s town hall reveals not only the principles of cooperation between the local authorities and the state structures but also indicates ways of expressing the symbolism associated with the function of the building and stylistic preferences. Schinkel’s decisions on works related to the reconstruction of the castle in Legnica, the former Piast seat, which was endowed with a new administrative function, not only preserved a monument but also resulted in a structure harmoniously merging rebuilt parts with historic components. The beginning of the nineteenth century was also a time of significant formal and functional change in monastic and episcopal complexes in Silesia, brought about by the secularization of church properties. Most of the orders present in Silesia were dissolved at that time. As this chapter demonstrates, the monastic complexes in the region were predominantly
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assigned new roles as offices; hospitals; warehouses and industrial premises; and, often, parish churches. In some cases, the monasteries were rebuilt or extended to better suit the new function; in others, dismantled. The consequences of secularization can be evaluated in a multifaceted manner. There is no doubt that it changed the landscape of Silesia in many ways. In the political and economic spheres, Silesian heritage became a means to settle the financial obligations of Prussia. In terms of culture, secularization broke the centuries-old tradition of the monastic orders’ presence in Silesia. On the other hand, new functions bestowed upon church properties could in some cases initiate positive processes. A new chapter in the issue of monument protection in Prussia began with the unification of Germany in 1871. The Provincial Commission for the Study and Protection of Historical Monuments for Silesia was appointed in 1891, while Hans Lutsch was nominated as the provincial Conservator. Renowned architects and artists were commissioned for conservation works on historic buildings in accordance with the Conservator’s opinion. Previously neglected historical buildings of high artistic value, such as the Piast castle in Brzeg, gradually became appreciated and treated with professional care. The best design solutions were often selected through architectural competitions, which attracted many well-known architects. At the turn of the twentieth century, both sacral and secular Silesian architecture of the past underwent alterations. Two neo-Gothic extensions to the medieval churches in Opole and Głubczyce outlined in this study demonstrate this phenomenon. In both cases, new monumental twotower western façades were created. The works were supervised by the conservation services. To conclude, during the rule of King Friedrich II, in the second half of the eighteenth century, a utilitarian and pragmatic approach towards the Silesian architecture of the past was predominant. The first half of the nineteenth century brought the beginnings of monument protection in Prussia and improvements to state administrative structures. This resulted in the establishment of some procedures regarding works carried out in historic buildings, and in the initiation of the first conservation works in Silesia. However, at the same time there were many adaptations to new functions without reference to the artistic or historical values of historic structures. An awareness of the value of the monuments slowly began to take shape in the second half of the nineteenth century with the establishment of conservation structures in Silesia. The approach to the historic buildings in the region became more conscious and professional at the turn of the twentieth century, not only through the involvement of well-educated and recognized architects but also due to the work of conservators.
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Monika Ewa Adamska is Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Opole University of Technology in Poland. She obtained her PhD in Architecture in 2006, followed by her habilitation in 2020. Prof. Adamska received research grants from the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe in Marburg (2015, 2016) and from the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin (2017). Her research focuses on European architecture and urban planning from the eighteenth century to the present day, with particular attention to the Silesia region. NOTES 1. The English name of the region is used throughout this chapter. 2. Kos, Ani centrum, ani peryferie, 37–38. 3. The town names binding since 1945 are given first; then, in parentheses, the names used before 1945, when mentioned for the first time. 4. Wąs, ‘Dzieje Śląska od 1526 do 1806 roku’, 204–5. 5. Ibid., 207–9, 212–14. 6. Ibid., 215. 7. Czapliński, ‘Dzieje Śląska od 1806 do 1945 roku’, 252–53. 8. Kos, Ani centrum, ani peryferie, 45. 9. Pregiel and Przerwa, Dzieje Śląska, 113–14. 10. Czapliński, ‘Dzieje Śląska od 1806 do 1945 roku’, 257–58. 11. Pregiel and Przerwa, Dzieje Śląska, 113–15. 12. Chrzanowski and Kornecki, Sztuka Śląska Opolskiego, 44. 13. Ibid., 45–48. 14. Ibid., 142. 15. Ibid., 149–54. 16. Ibid., 166–67. 17. Wrabec, ‘Zależność czy autonomia?’, 7. 18. Chrzanowski and Kornecki, Sztuka Śląska Opolskiego, 245. 19. Wrabec, ‘Zależność czy autonomia?’, 15. 20. Adams, Letters on Silesia. The reports were written as letters to the ambassador’s younger brother. They were first published in the United States, and shortly afterwards also in Germany and France – which shows their considerable popularity. 21. Ibid., 262, 270. 22. Ibid., 226. The church was designed by Carl Gotthard Langhans in a Neoclassical style and built in 1795–98. 23. Ibid., 156. This was one of the six ‘grace churches’ erected under the provisions of the Treaty of Altranstädt. 24. Ibid., 184. 25. Ibid., 171, 104. 26. Mohr de Pérez, Denkmalpflege in Preussen, 11.
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27. Grundmann, ‘Die Bedeutung Schinkels’, 122–29. In this article, Grundmann (the Conservator of the Province of Lower Silesia in 1932–45) presented the importance of Schinkel’s role not only as an inspiration for the establishment of monument protection in Prussia but also as a precursor of the activities taken by prospective state conservators of monuments. 28. Bergau, ‘Quast’, 26–31; Jokilehto, A History of Architectural Conservation, 255–58. 29. Grundmann, ‘Die Schlesischen Zeichnungen’, 52–81. Numerous professional tours around Silesia taken by Ferdinand von Quast in 1832–75 resulted in the collection of over three hundred drawings of Silesian monuments produced by the Conservator. Documented structures represented mostly Gothic and Renaissance styles; the Baroque and Neoclassical architecture of the region was not included. Sacral architecture was accompanied by secular examples such as town halls and elements of town fortifications. The article contains an inventory of this collection (the majority being pen-and-feather drawings, some employing the lithographic technique). The collection was lost during the Second World War, and the reproductions included in the article constitute their only remaining trace. 30. Grajewski, ‘Między Sztuką, Nauką a Polityką’, 25–26. 31. Ibid., 27–28. 32. Speitkamp, Die Verwaltung der Geschichte, 242–43. The history of the organization of state conservation services in all German states from the establishment of the Empire in 1871 to the end of the Weimar Republic is presented here, along with the social conditions pertaining to the movement for monument protection. 33. Grajewski, ‘Między Sztuką, Nauką a Polityką’, 28–30; Kohte, ‘Hans Lutsch’, 69–75. 34. Grajewski, ‘Między Sztuką, Nauką a Polityką’, 31–32. 35. Opaska, ‘U źródeł ochrony zabytków’, 199–200. 36. Jokilehto, A History of Architectural Conservation, 248. 37. Opaska, ‘U źródeł ochrony zabytków’, 206–7. 38. Jokilehto, A History of Architectural Conservation, 249–50. 39. Opaska, ‘U źródeł ochrony zabytków’, 208. 40. Ibid. 41. Jokilehto, A History of Architectural Conservation, 257, 373. 42. Małachowicz, Konserwacja i rewaloryzacja architektury, 36–39. 43. Dehio, Was wird aus dem Heidelberger Schloß werden?, 6: ‘erhalten und nur erhalten! ergänzen erst dann, wenn die Erhaltung materiell unmöglichgeworden ist; Untergegangenes wiederherstellen nur unter ganz bestimmten, beschränkten Bedingungen’. English translation by the author. 44. Jokilehto, A History of Architectural Conservation, 377–78. 45. Grundmann, Schlesien, 241. 46. Ibid., 241, 243. 47. Ibid., 242. 48. Ibid., 243. 49. Zlat, Brzeg, 94. 50. Kunz, Schloß der Piasten zum Briege, 17–18. 51. Ibid., 18–19. 52. Ibid., the English translation of the subtitle by the author.
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53. Zlat, Brzeg, 97. The first work of Hahr (1908) concerns the Paar artistic family originating from Italy and working in Brzeg, while the second (1915) relates to the castle itself. 54. Bericht vom 1 Januar 1907 bis 31. Dezember 1908, 28. The scope of works covered plastering and painting, repairs to the organ and the altar, and renovations to the roof and windows. 55. Bericht vom 1 Januar 1911 bis 31. Dezember 1912, 18–19. 56. Bericht vom 1 Januar 1913 bis 31. Dezember 1914, 17. 57. Ibid., 97. 58. Kozina, ‘Rozwój Miast Przemysłowych’, 190. 59. Schiedlausky et al., Die Bau und Kunstdenkmäler, 132. 60. Ibid. 61. Grundmann, Schlesien, 123. 62. Idzikowski, Geschichte der Stadt Oppeln, 299. 63. Grundmann, Schlesien, 123–24. 64. Kozina, ‘Rozwój Miast Przemysłowych’, 190. 65. Schiedlausky et al., Die Bau und Kunstdenkmäler, 134. 66. Idzikowski, Geschichte der Stadt Oppeln, 300. 67. Schiedlausky et al., Die Bau und Kunstdenkmäler, 135: ‘Das Rathaus ist nach einem Entwurf der Ober-Bau-Deputation … hergestellt und äußerlich angeordnet worden. Wenngleich damals in den Details allerlei kleine Abweichungen von dem städt. Baumeister vorgenommen worden sind, so ist das ganze doch eine Zierde der Stadt, mit dem altertümlichen Styl derselben übereinstimmend geworden’. English translation by the author. 68. Ibid., 135–36. 69. Idzikowski, Geschichte der Stadt Oppeln, 291, 308. 70. Schiedlausky et al., Die Bau und Kunstdenkmäler, 106. 71. Idzikowski, Geschichte der Stadt Oppeln, 323. 72. Schiedlausky et al., Die Bau und Kunstdenkmäler, 105–6. 73. Weczerka, Handbuch. Schlesien, 542–43. 74. Zinkler et al., Die Klosterkirche in Trebnitz, 44–46. 75. Ibid., 46. 76. Ibid., 44. 77. Broniewski, Trzebnica, 26. 78. Weczerka, Handbuch. Schlesien, 75. 79. Idzikowski, Geschichte der Stadt Oppeln, 284. 80. Chrzanowski and Kornecki, Sztuka Śląska Opolskiego, 390. 81. Chrzanowski and Kornecki, Katalog, miasto Opole i powiat opolski, 4. 82. Schiedlausky et al., Die Bau und Kunstdenkmäler, 38. 83. Chrzanowski and Kornecki, Katalog, powiat głubczycki, 22. 84. Max Hasak was the author of numerous branches of the Reichsbank, the central bank of Germany. He also elaborated projects of sacral architecture (churches and cemetery chapels) for the Ministerial Building Commission. 85. Bericht vom 1 Januar 1905 bis 31. Dezember 1906, 54–56. 86. Kos, Ani centrum, ani peryferie, 39, 44.
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Bibliography Adams, John. Q. Letters on Silesia / Listy o Śląsku. Katowice: Muzeum Śląskie, 2016. Bergau, Rudolf. ‘Quast, Alex. Ferd. Von’, in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB) [General German Biography], 27. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1888, 26–31. Bericht des Provinzial-Konservators der Kunstdenkmäler der Provinz Schlesien über die Tätigkeit vom 1 Januar 1905 bis 31. Dezember 1906 erstattet an die ProvinzialKommission zur Erhaltung und Erforschung der Denkmäler Schlesiens [Report of the Provincial Conservator of Art Monuments of the Province of Silesia on the activity from 1 January 1905 to 31 December 1906 reported to the Provincial Commission for the Study and Protection of Monuments in Silesia]. Breslau: Grass, Barth & Comp., 1907. Bericht des Provinzial-Konservators der Kunstdenkmäler der Provinz Schlesien über die Tätigkeit vom 1 Januar 1907 bis 31. Dezember 1908 erstattet an die ProvinzialKommission zur Erhaltung und Erforschung der Denkmäler Schlesiens [Report of the Provincial Conservator of Art Monuments of the Province of Silesia on the activity from 1 January 1907 to 31 December 1908 reported to the Provincial Commission for the Study and Protection of Monuments in Silesia]. Breslau: Graß, Barth & Comp., 1909. Bericht des Provinzial-Konservators der Kunstdenkmäler der Provinz Schlesien über die Tätigkeit vom 1 Januar 1911 bis 31. Dezember 1912 erstattet an die ProvinzialKommission zur Erhaltung und Erforschung der Denkmäler Schlesiens [Report of the Provincial Conservator of Art Monuments of the Province of Silesia on the activity from 1 January 1911 to 31 December 1912 reported to the Provincial Commission for the Study and Protection of Monuments in Silesia]. Breslau: Graß, Barth & Comp., 1913. Bericht des Provinzial-Konservators der Kunstdenkmäler der Provinz Schlesien über die Tätigkeit vom 1 Januar 1913 bis 31. Dezember 1914 erstattet an die ProvinzialKommission zur Erhaltung und Erforschung der Denkmäler Schlesiens [Report of the Provincial Conservator of Art Monuments of the Province of Silesia on the activity from 1 January 1913 to 31 December 1914 reported to the Provincial Commission for the Study and Protection of Monuments in Silesia]. Breslau: Graß, Barth & Comp., 1915. Broniewski, Tadeusz. Trzebnica. Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1973. Chrzanowski, Tadeusz and Marian Kornecki. Sztuka Śląska Opolskiego od średniowiecza do końca w. XIX [The Art of Opole Silesia from the Middle Ages to the End of the Nineteenth Century]. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1974. Chrzanowski, Tadeusz and Marian Kornecki (eds). Katalog Zabytków Sztuki w Polsce [The Catalogue of Art Monuments in Poland], VII (2): Województwo Opolskie, Powiat Głubczycki [Opole Voivodeship, Głubczyce County]. Warsaw: Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1961. . Katalog Zabytków Sztuki w Polsce [The Catalogue of Art Monuments in Poland], VII (11): Województwo Opolskie, Miasto Opole i Powiat Opolski [Opole Voivodeship, Opole City and County]. Warsaw: Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1968.
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Czapliński, Marek. ‘Dzieje Śląska od 1806 do 1945 roku’ [History of Silesia from 1806 to 1945], in Marek Czapliński, Elżbieta Kaszuba, Gabriela Wąs and Rościsław Żerelik, Historia Śląska [History of Silesia]. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2002, 250–424. Dehio, Georg. Was wird aus dem Heidelberger Schloß werden? [What Will Happen to the Heidelberg Castle?]. Strassburg: Verlag von Karl J. Trübner, 1901. Grajewski, Grzegorz. ‘Między Sztuką, Nauką a Polityką. Ochrona Zabytków na Dolnym Śląsku w Czasach III Rzeszy’ [Between Art, Science, and Politics. Protection of Monuments in Lower Silesia during the Third Reich]. PhD dissertation, Wrocław Polytechnics, 2014. Grundmann, Günther. ‘Die Schlesischen Zeichnungen des Ersten Preußischen Staatskonservator v. Quast’ [The Silesian Drawings of the First Prussian State Conservator], in Schlesische Heimatpflege. 1: Veröffentlichung Kunst und Denkmalpflege, Museumswesen – Heimatschutz [Silesian Protection of Monuments: 1. Publication of Art and Monument Preservation, Museum Affairs – Heritage Protection]. Breslau: Gauverlag-NS-Schlesien, 1935, 52–81. . ‘Die Bedeutung Schinkels für die Deutsche Denkmalpflege: Zum 100. Todestag Karl Friedrich Schinkels am 9. Oktober 1941’ [The significance of Schinkel for the German Preservation of Monuments: On the 100th Anniversary of Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Death in 9 October 1941], Deutsche Kunst und Denkmalpflege [German Art and Preservation of Monuments] 1940/1941 (5), 122–29. . Schlesien [Silesia]. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1941. Idzikowski, Franz. Geschichte der Stadt Oppeln [History of the City of Oppeln]. Oppeln: Erdmann Raabe, 1863. Jokilehto, Jukka. A History of Architectural Conservation: The Contribution of English, French, German and Italian Thought towards an International Approach to the Conservation of Cultural Property. PhD dissertation, University of York, 1986. Kohte, Julius. ‘Hans Lutsch, eine Würdigung seines Lebenswerks‘ [Hans Lutsch, an Acknowledgment of his Life’s Work], Monatsblätter der Gesellschaft für pommersche Geschichte und Altertumskunde 1937 (5), 69–75. Kos, Jerzy. K. Ani centrum, ani peryferie. Architektura pruskiego Śląska w okresie autonomii administracyjnej w latach 1740–1815 [Neither Centre nor Periphery: Architecture of Prussian Silesia in the Period of Administrative Autonomy in 1740–1815]. Wrocław: Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT, 2016. Kozina, Irma. ‘Rozwój miast przemysłowych’ [The Development of Industrial Cities], in Ewa Chojecka (ed.), Sztuka Górnego Śląska od średniowiecza do końca XX wieku [The Art of Upper Silesia from the Middle Ages to the End of the Twentieth Century]. Katowice: Muzeum Śląskie, 2009, 184–96. Kunz, Hermann. Schloß der Piasten zum Briege: Ein Vergessenes Denkmal Alter Bauherrlichkeit in Schlesien [Castle of the Piasts in Briege: Forgotten Monument of the Former Splendour of Architecture in Silesia]. Brieg: Verlag von Adolf Bänder, 1885. Małachowicz, Edmund. Konserwacja i rewaloryzacja architektury w środowisku kulturowym [Conservation and Revalorization of Architecture in the Cultural Environment]. Wrocław: Oficyna Wydawnicza Politechniki Wrocławskiej, 2007. Mohr de Pérez, Rita. Die Anfänge der Staatlichen Denkmalpflege in Preussen: Ermittlung und Erhaltung Alterthümlicher Merkwürdigkeiten [The Beginnings of the State
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Preservation of Monuments in Prussia: Identification and Maintenance of Ancient Monuments]. Worms: Werner, 2001. Opaska, Janusz. ‘U źródeł ochrony zabytków: rozwój systemowego konserwatorstwa w Niemczech w początkach XIX w’ [At the Origins of Monument Protection: Development of Systemic Restoration in Germany in the Beginning of Nineteenth Century]. Ochrona Zabytków 2010 (1–4), 199–210. Pregiel, Piotr and Tomasz Przerwa. Dzieje Śląska [History of Silesia]. Wrocław: CADUS, 2005. Schiedlausky, Günther, Hartmann, Rolf and Hilde Eberle (eds). Die Bau und Kunstdenkmäler des Stadtkreises Oppeln [The Buildings and Art Monuments of the Opole District]. Breslau: Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn Verlag, 1939. Speitkamp, Winfried. Die Verwaltung der Geschichte: Denkmalpflege und Staat in Deutschland 1871–1933 [The Management of History: Preservation of Monuments and the State in Germany 1871–1933]. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996. Wąs, Gabriela. ‘Dzieje Śląska od 1526 do 1806 roku’ [History of Silesia from 1526 to 1806], in Marek Czapliński, Elżbieta Kaszuba, Gabriela Wąs and Rościsław Żerelik Historia Śląska [History of Silesia]. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2002, 118–248. Weczerka, Hugo. Handbuch der Historischen Stätten: Schlesien [Handbook of Historic Places: Silesia]. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1977. Wrabec, Jan. ‘Zależność czy autonomia? Sztuka Śląska w czasach baroku oraz jej determinanty’ [Dependency or Autonomy? The Art of Silesia in the Baroque Times and its Determinants]. Quart 2008, 2 (8), 3–17. Zinkler, Alfred, Dagobert Frey and Günther Grundmann. Die Klosterkirche in Trebnitz [The Monastery Church in Trebnitz]. Breslau: Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn Verlag, 1940. Zlat, Mieczysław. Brzeg. Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1960.
8 CHAPTER 13 Madonna del Pascolo Ruthenian Heritage in Baroque Rome and the Development of the National Church of the Ukrainians (1640s–1960s) Anatole Upart
Introduction For the study of early modern and modern art and architecture, national churches in Rome offer us solid evidence of stable expatriate Slavic communities that also include a relatively small community of Slavic Greek Catholics. Exemplified in a recent project, ‘Roma Communis Patria’ by the team of Bibliotheca Hertziana, the scholarship on national churches moved well beyond its initial focus on communities that were represented by foreign or native states in the Italian peninsula, towards a study of the nationes that were smaller or less politically and artistically influential. The Slavic presence in Rome has now been carefully reconsidered, yet much remains understudied. The church of Santi Sergio e Bacco (see figure 13.1) and its hospice provide the earliest examples of a small but continuous East Slavic presence in the city, from the seventeenth century to the present day. The importance of this church has been further underscored by recent developments – the creation in July 2019 of a new ecclesiastical structure, the Apostolic Exarchate for the Ukrainians of the Byzantine Rite in Italy, and the raising of the church of Santi Sergio e Bacco to the dignity of cathedral as the seat of the Exarch.1 These developments reveal a continuous preoccupation of contemporary Ukrainians (heirs to the early modern Ruthenians) with their own ecclesiastical heritage in Italy in general and in Rome in particular.2 This chapter aims to outline some of the multi-layered
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complexities associated with this heritage, the forces that contributed to the development of that Ruthenian/Ukrainian community in Rome and the agents behind some of the aesthetic decisions whose results we see in Ruthenian early modern and modern visual culture and sacred spaces in the Eternal City. This chapter, due to its format, will take a diachronic approach, touching upon some pertinent points across the three hundred years of the Ruthenian history of a particular small church in Rome – thus going beyond the chronological frame of this volume. This approach necessarily leaves some larger contexts outside of the chapter, such as the general timeline
Figure 13.1. View of SS. Sergio e Bacco, Rome, 2017. © Anatole Upart.
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of the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church’s history and its development, as well as its tensions with the ecclesiastical and civic authorities of the states within which it operated (the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, AustriaHungary, the Russian Empire, etc.). Thus, it constitutes an argument for the relevance of the Ruthenian Baroque past in the construction of a new, modern Ukrainian identity, and the limitations of that relevance.
The Ruthenian National Church in Rome The establishment of a Ruthenian national church in Rome, specifically dedicated to the celebration of the Byzantine Rite in Church Slavonic, created a cultural and religious foothold for Eastern European Slavs from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC) at the centre of a rapidly expanding global Catholicism. Protestant gains in the PLC territories (especially among the nobility) that occurred during the previous generation (1560s‒1570s) had been consistently reversed in the next (1590s‒1610s). The Union of Brest of 1596 had marked the first successful ecclesiastical unification since the time of the Council of Florence (1439), when a large part of the Ruthenian Orthodox Church ‘left the omophorion’ of the Patriarch of Constantinople and united itself with Rome. This momentous historical event formed an unprecedented opportunity for Ruthenian religious culture to be (re)integrated into Western Europe at the very height of the cultural dominance of the Roman Baroque paradigm. The achievements of the Union were further solidified with the 1639 establishment of the Ruthenian national church in Rome in the old church of Santi Sergio e Bacco and the 1643 Papal beatification of the first martyr of the Union – Josaphat Kuncewicz (ca. 1580–1623). Initially known as the Ruthenian Uniate Church (for its unia with Rome), by the eighteenth century it became known as the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church, and in the twentieth century as the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. This gradual change in nomenclature has reflected the shifting contemporary geopolitical realities but also the shifting narrative of the past. In case of Santi Sergio e Bacco, its past – the past of the originally medieval architecture of the church and the ospizio (hospice) – has been continuously augmented and substituted, to the point of leaving no discernible fabric from the earlier, medieval period – a period that seemed to have added nothing to the contemporary function of the space as perceived by the current users, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Built in the ninth century in the Suburra neighbourhood of the rione (district) of Monti, the church of Santi Sergio e Bacco had been overseen since 1639 by the order of Byzantine-Rite Basilian monks from regions that now form
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part of Belarus and Ukraine. The church houses a miraculous copy of the fifteenth-century icon of Our Lady of Żyrowice, known by its Italian name: Madonna del Pascolo. Since its foundation, the church has been redecorated and renovated in styles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, always remaining typologically Roman in appearance. Despite these architectural erasures, and loss of institutional history, under a close examination, Margherita Trinci Cecchelli’s application of urban memory to the study of Suburran ecclesiastical history may be deemed instructive/valuable.3 On the one hand, the antiquity of Santi Sergio e Bacco’s history – tied to the local early Christian heritage, Greek-language liturgy and Byzantine associations – was ‘reclaimed’ and ‘recaptured’ in the early modern period with an introduction by Basilians of the Byzantine Rite in Church Slavonic language. On the other hand, Santi Sergio e Bacco, as the Ruthenian national church throughout its last four centuries of existence, experienced times of strife and decline: the church’s financial situation was always precarious; through negligence, it ended up losing some of its accumulated possessions; and it was eventually closed for a period of time until later, modern attempts to revive it. Yet upon closer observation, all these trials only repeated similar cycles of decline and revival that churches comparable in size and importance experienced in other parts of Suburra, Monti and Rome in general. In that sense, the architectural and institutional history of the Ruthenian national church has more in common with local Suburra parishes than with a national church like San Luigi dei Francesi.4 Despite, or maybe precisely because of, the control of the Ruthenian clergy, so deeply integrated into Roman ecclesiastical institutions such as the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, the architectural development of Santi Sergio e Bacco since 1639 has been a very Italian – and, specifically, Roman – affair. In 1718, during a remodelling of the building of Santi Sergio e Bacco, an image of the Virgin Mary was found hidden behind the plaster of the church’s sacristy. Upon its discovery, it was immediately recognized as a copy of the miraculous Madonna of Żyrowice – and the locals started to call the image ‘Madonna del Pascolo’ (of the Pasture), referencing the original site of the discovery. In 1719, it was restored by the Roman painter Lorenzo Gramiccia and transferred to the church proper. In 1730, it was installed on the main altar of the church, and in the same year a copy of the image was sent back to the monastery in Żyrowice as a gift. The Żyrowice copy of the Roman fresco is now found in Slonim’s Saint Andrew Church. The discovery of the icon prompted the production of a whole series of images in Rome, including detailed prints by Carlo Grandi that accompanied Ignazio Kulczynski’s book dedicated to all three images: in Żyrowice, in Rome, and the latter’s copy in Żyrowice. In fact, I would consider the very existence of
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the Roman Madonna del Pascolo to be the by-product of an already well-organized campaign of Marian imagery on the part of the Basilian printing houses. Rome, in that sense, is a source for the generation of a typology of images for consumption in Eastern Europe but also, to some extent, conversely a consumer of imagery produced in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.
Appearance The present appearance of the church of Santi Sergio e Bacco is largely the result of a nineteenth-century renovation and the subsequent restoration in the 1970s. Of the earlier parts of the façade and interior to have survived, all show an extensive history of renovations that the church underwent in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It appears that any remnants of the previous medieval structure not destroyed by the demolition of 1563 had been thoroughly subsumed or obliterated by the time of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century rebuilding. Facing the Piazza della Madonna dei Monti, the tripartite façade of the church is fully incorporated into the built mass of the block. This characteristic seems to have already been the case in 1675 when Giovanni Battista Falda made an etching of Le fontane di Roma that showed the church as attached to another building on its left, on the corner of the Via dei Serpenti. The church’s low-pitched roof, sloped towards the street, continued uninterrupted as the roof of that left-hand building. To the right, we can see a walled garden with an entrance and a four-storey building. Falda carefully recorded Santi Sergio e Bacco, at the time possessing an unarticulated façade with a simple moulded frame that followed the side and top edges of the wall but not its base. The only openings in that plain façade are the seventeen-century doorcase of the entrance with a pediment (nearly identical to the present one) and a tall, rectangular, framed window (today seen with an arched top). The height of the church in the seventeenth century seems to have been approximately the height of its present lower two storeys. Published in the mid-eighteenth century, Giuseppe Vasi’s Le vedute di Roma captures the changes to the façade of the church less than a century later after Falda’s etching. Now, the height of the church has been extended beyond that of the building on the left by the addition of a smaller storey, almost an attic. The new storey’s height coincided exactly (at least, in the print) with the very top of the earlier, pitched, roof, and the triangular pediment was moved to the top of the new storey. The space between the church and a building on the right, earlier occupied by the walled garden, now appears to be filled in by a newly constructed three-storey structure, matching the height of the building to the left of the church.
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Santi Sergio e Bacco is a longitudinal single-nave church, its floor plan similar to many of the other neighbourhood churches in Rome and elsewhere in the seventeenth century. The nave is almost twice as long as it is wide and it terminates in the sanctuary, with its semi-circular apse. In the sanctuary, the main free-standing altar is located between the iconostasis and a Neoclassical colonnaded high altar,5 with the icon of Madonna del Pascolo above it. The oval window in the apse provides one of only two sources of natural light in the church – the other being the large, tall window in the façade, seen behind the choir loft. A comparison of the height of the façade window and the height of the barrel vault shows that the latter does not extend beyond the second storey. It appears that the nineteenth-century addition of the third storey, lit by a tripartite Venetianstyle window, is fully separate from the interior of the church, whose spatial boundaries have remained unchanged at least since the eighteenth century (if not since the seventeenth, as the vault reaches slightly beyond the arched top of the tall window – itself seen under the roof of the single-storey church of the 1670s). Falda’s and Vasi’s representations of the early modern church of Santi Sergio e Bacco show it to be not particularly different from other Roman churches of the Settecento. With many of them having undergone similar renovation work during the same period during the papacy of Urban VIII Barberini (6 August 1623 to 29 July 1644), they appear almost generic with their two-storey rectangular façades, single entrance, a window or two in the upper part, and a triangular pediment spanning the width of the church, squeezed between other buildings of the block. Examples include Sta. Agatha dei Goti, Santi Andrea e Bartolomeo al Laterano, S. Bernardino da Siena, S. Lorenzo in Fonte and S. Salvatore ai Monti. This list of Roman churches just in the Monti neighbourhood can easily be supplemented with numerous additional examples of the same type in other areas of the city.6 The last thing anyone would suspect is that this small neighbourhood church is home to a different liturgical tradition and the seat of a representative of another Church in union with Rome.
Ospizio dei Ruteni The establishment of the national church of the Ruthenians (1639) coincided with the establishment of the ospizio (hospice), which was initially intended to function as a college – Collegio dei Ruteni – something that never truly materialized for a variety of reasons that are addressed below. The establishment of the church and the adjoining college should be viewed not in isolation but rather as a part of a larger neighbourhood redevelopment. For
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instance, only steps away from the church of Santi Sergio e Bacco, across the eponymous piazza, Giacomo della Porta had designed the famous church of Santa Maria ai Monti (also known as Madonna ai Monti) in 1580. In 1634, around the time of the renovations of Santi Sergio e Bacco, Cardinal Antonio Barberini juniore built a new home for the College of the Neophytes and Catechumens – founded for converts from Judaism and Islam – adjacent to Santa Maria ai Monti.7 We know that, earlier, the area around the Piazza della Madonna dei Monti had also been home to a Portuguese hospice and, further afield, to a few national churches as well.8 The piazza’s fountain, also designed by Della Porta, became known as ‘Fontana dei Catecumeni’ after the name of the Collegio dei Catecumeni that Barberini relocated next door. While in the past this part of the Monti had experienced the appearance of a number of foreign pilgrim hospices and early national churches, by the time it became a home to the Ruthenian church and its hospice the area had been developing a distinct aura of unity with the See of Saint Peter. The Barberini-led redevelopment of the piazza and the institutions around it fostered precisely that kind of symbolism, with the presence of converts from Judaism, Islam, Protestantism and Orthodoxy – all seeking unity with the Roman Church.9 The establishment of a college for the Basilian monks and a hospice for the Ruthenians of the Byzantine Rite, a permanent ‘embassy’ of the Greek Catholic Church in the middle of papal Rome, contributed to that symbolism of catholicity. It was another ‘brick’ in the built fabric of the renovated Rome of the Barberini, as well as another sui iuris church re-establishing its unity with Rome in the midst of Reformation – part of the Eastern European triumphs of the Counter-Reformational policies of Pope Clement VIII Aldobrandini, and then of Pope Urban VIII Barberini. Based on the archival evidence, we see the two concurrent developments within the liturgical environment of the Church: the bi-rituality, presented in weekly celebrations of the liturgy in a Latin Rite (Roman), as well as the Byzantine liturgy (theoretically, in Church Slavonic) at weekends. The Byzantine Rite shows early signs of Latinization despite the fact that numerous papal warnings had been made against mixing the rites or corrupting either of the two with the other’s characteristics.10 It appears that on the ground, in practice, Latinization had been advanced by the very clergy of the aforementioned church and its environment. Throughout their history, the church and the hospice of Santi Sergio e Bacco had experienced several instances of visitations from the officials of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide. The two earliest inventories were taken on the occasions of such visitations, while other catalogues seem to have been created possibly due to some institutional changes that prompted careful listing of all the belongings. Below is the list of all known instances:
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– 1656, August 19. A visitation conducted by Fr. Virgilio Spada.11 – 1661, May 18. A visitation,12 conducted by Ivan Paštrić, that also produced an additional document – an inventory of the material possessions left at the death (1640) of Rafajil Korsak.13 – 1735, May 2. Inventory,14 by Fr. Ignazio Kulczynski, which also includes 1743 inventory of the items left at the death of the Bishop of Aleppo, the Armenian Suchias Khaxavat. – 1820. Inventory of the church by Fr. Jordan Mickiewicz.15 – 1827, January 27. Inventory of the items in the hospice.16 – 1848. Inventory of the items in the hospice.17 – 1869. Inventory of the rector’s library.18 The information contained in the inventories is of paramount importance to the history of the material culture of the parish, the day-to-day functioning of the church and its hospice, and the intellectual background of the resident clergy (to name just a few areas of interest). Moreover, the inventories prove that the extent of the liturgical life at Santi Sergio e Bacco was, rather than exclusively Ruthenian Greek Catholic, to a large measure also Roman, Latin and Italian. Based on the quantity of the Latin liturgical items in the church and its sacristy – objects that were also increasing in quantity over the centuries – one can conclude that the Latinization of the Ruthenian national church was a process that happened rather early on, and a phenomenon that also grew in complexity over the years. Many of the above-mentioned materials had already been transcribed and published by the scholars (e.g. Athanasius Welykyj) within the Basilian order. However, as historians, Basilian scholars often overlooked or left understudied visual materials found among the documents in these volumes. For instance, a large portion of such materials preserved in the volumes of the Archivio di Propaganda Fide, Scritture riferite nei Congressi, Ospizio dei Ruteni (Pascolo) nella Chiesa dei Santi Sergio e Bacco (Archive of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, documents referred to in the general meetings, Hospice of the Ruthenians of the church of Santi Sergio e Bacco), remains un-transcribed. Moreover, as the focus of the Basilian investigations had always been Ruthenian/Ukrainian history, some of the documents pertaining to the Italian devotional life and Roman Catholic liturgical functioning of the church of Santi Sergio e Bacco had also been left unexamined or unincorporated into a narrative of the Ruthenian national church’s history – one that would give a larger presence to those local, Italian, and specifically Monti/Suburra elements. For instance, the presence of an Italian devotional society, Adunanza della Madonna del Pascolo (Assembly of the Madonna del Pascolo), that had existed since the eighteenth century remains to be thoroughly investigated. The Adunanza
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included those who lived within the Suburra neighbourhood in the vicinity of the church. Fittingly, one of the prominent burials in the church was that of Antonio Santarelli – an Adunanza member, an Italian and a local of Suburra, who also carried out some construction work for the church. One glaring absence in the inventories is any mention of an iconostasis. In his book on Santi Sergio e Bacco, Bishop Khoma mentions and provides a picture of the ‘original’ earlier iconostasis, as well as including an image of the ‘new’ (current) one.19 The ‘first’ iconostasis was the work of the Roman painter Cesare Caroselli (1847–1927) and was commissioned in 1897, soon after the remodelling of the church and the construction of the new façade by Ettore Bonoli. None of the inventories of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (the last one being conducted in 1869) mentions any iconostasis. There are no reasons to distrust Khoma’s indication that Caroselli’s iconostasis was indeed the first, the ‘original’ (Ukr.: первісний). If so, the iconostasis of Santi Sergio e Bacco was a modern innovation in the attempt to ‘re-Byzantinize’ the Greek Catholic space in the late 1800s. It seems that even though the Caroselli iconostasis had vanished, traces of it could be found – several roundels from the old one had been reused and reinserted into the new, currently used iconostasis. These remnants of the Caroselli iconostasis are inset in the metal open-work structure of the current iconostasis and constitute realistically painted representations of the prophets and saints, decorating royal and diaconal gates on the iconostasis. Although currently (and in line with Byzantine liturgical prescription) a large marble altar occupies the centre of the sanctuary, allowing for ambulatory movement around it, I suggest that the church originally possessed an attached high altar in the apse – very much according to the Latin liturgical practice of post-Tridentine Catholicism. The apse, now devoid of everything except the presbyter’s chair, is noticeably transformed: an area just below the blue-painted upper register of the apse, exactly where the high altar would have stood, is painted in faux marble, and the marble columns have a markedly different wear just below the 135 cm mark – roughly the height of the suggested, attached altar. I will return to the question of the high altar later, when examining renovations carried out by Barigioni in late 1690s.
Architecture, Its Architects and Its Patrons: A Very Roman Church Historical archives in Rome, especially the Archivio di Stato, give a detailed picture of the extent to which local neighbourhoods’ architects (architetti sottomaestri delle strade and architetti del rione) were responsible for most
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of the works that seem to have been conducted on the façade and in the interior of the church in the periods of the Seicento and Settecento. Recent scholarship, especially the work of Bruno Contardi and Giovanna Curcio (In Urbe Architectus, 1991), has been able to carefully list all the architetti sottomaestri delle strade and the chronology of their activity in the rioni as well as their private commissions (individuals, families, and religious institutions and organizations) in the period 1680–1750.20 Questions still remain as to the precise involvement of the same type of architects in the first half of the Seicento and the earlier century. In case of Santi Sergio e Bacco, we know several periods that would have occasioned such architects’ involvement: – 1563. Santi Sergio e Bacco is demolished and rebuilt ‘ad fundamentis’. – 1620s‒1646. The church was remodelled, and the façade renovated under Cardinal S. Onofrio (Antonio Marcello Barberini) based on designs by Padre Valerio Poggi (Theatine). – 1697. Petition to build a house next to the church (on the lot taken over by the walled courtyard/garden). – 1729. Finishing of the rebuilding of the walls; a new high altar by Filippo Barigioni. – 1741. A new façade by Francesco Ferrari. – 1788. A new wooden, boxed entrance holding a choir loft (bussola and cantoria) of the counter-façade. – 1880–96. a new (three-order) façade by Bonoli. To these seven occasions, we must add a note that Barigioni was mentioned to have been hired in 1719,21 the year postdating the 1718 finding of the frescoed image of the Madonna of Żyrowice on the wall of the sacristy. The discovery itself was prompted by the restoration works on the walls. This may mean that the work for which the Basilians petitioned Propaganda Fide for approval was carried out or continued in 1718. While we can now safely claim that the architect of the Barberini renovations of Santi Sergio e Bacco was Valerio Poggi, it is unclear who exactly was responsible for the work that would have been done half a century later, during the period 1697–1718. It was obviously not Poggi, since he would certainly no longer have been alive. One possible candidate would be Giacomo Moraldi, who, in the years 1680–1711, was the architetto sottomaestro of Monti. In 1711, he was succeeded by Minelli, who continued until 1714 when Ludovico Gregorini (1661–1723) took over. However, for some time in 1717, Monti was overseen by Carlo Francesco Bizzaccheri (1656– 1721), who, the same year, was replaced by Filippo Barigioni (1690–1751). The last-named continued as Monti’s architect until 1732 – apart from two short, consecutive periods when Alessandro Specchi (1668–1729) was responsible for the area in 1721–22 and Ludovico Gregorini, along with
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Bizzacheri’s former pupil Tommaso De Marchis (1693–1759), in the period 1723–25.22 For the next two years, Filippo Raguzzini (ca. 1680–1771) was Monti’s architetto sottomaestro, and in 1735 Barigioni yet again returned for his last year in the rione. In the following years, a number of architects were responsible for Monti: De Marchis, Raguzzini, Ferruzzi, Fiori, Fuga and Brioni.23 When the Basilians asked for the building of the additional structure on the adjacent lot, it would have lain within the immediate responsibilities of Giacomo Moraldi to get involved in the construction. Although there is a possibility that an outside architect could have also been commissioned, the whole history of Santi Sergio e Bacco makes that less likely. Instead, the rione’s architects seem to be directly responsible for changes to the structure and appearance of the church in question. The year of Barigioni’s work for the Basilians at the church (1719)24 falls right in the middle of the architect’s first period overseeing the area (1717–20) after the departures of Moraldi and Minelli. In 1729, when the reconstruction of the church’s walls had been completed, a new high altar, featuring the Madonna del Pascolo, was designed by Barigioni. This also falls within the second period when Barigioni oversaw rione Monti (1726–32). Thus, the work done on the church in the first decades of the eighteenth century was treated as being within the responsibilities of the rione’s architect whoever he might have been at that moment. If we considered all the other projects of the architects and artists involved in Santi Sergio e Bacco’s renovations throughout the Settecento – those of Barigioni, Ceccarelli, Ferrari, Gramiccia and Stern – we would be able to see that, both in the scope and the artistic quality, the Ruthenian national church could be placed as a smaller and less ambitious project within their whole artistic production. This assessment is not meant to devalue the work or the church itself, but rather to give us a better understanding of the site and renovation project(s) associated with it within a larger context of architectural and artistic activity in late Baroque Rome.
Filippo Barigioni The altar for Santi Sergio e Bacco first and foremost takes into account the fact that the image of Madonna del Pascolo, having been removed from the sacristy wall in 1719, had been moved into the church (7 September 1719) with the intention of placing it above the high altar – which happened only on 13 September 1730. Barigioni was hired sometime soon after the discovery of the image and its removal – most likely, closer to the year 1719. The project on the high altar was not finished until ca. 1728, and definitely by 1730 in time for the solemn installation of the newly restored image, now an
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icon, above it. Thus, Barigioni conceived the high altar’s design specifically with the image of Madonna del Pascolo in mind – and the final result, which we only partially see now, was arranged around the centrality of the framed miraculous image above the high altar and surrounded by the succession of columns. Furthermore, we can assume that at the time of the Madonna del Pascolo’s discovery, the existing high altar was deemed insufficient or inadequate as a place to install the icon. Barigioni’s high altar for Santi Sergio e Bacco is an example of the Classicizing, subdued, scenographic Baroque of the 1720s. The Marian image in the church, now rectangular rather than oval like its Żyrowice prototype, is encased in a heavy, gilded frame set within another, slightly curving, exterior frame attached to the curving wall of the apse and containing a segmental pediment above the icon frame, with a Christogram of three Greek letters iota, chi and sigma – IXΣ – with chi surmounted by a small cross. The segmental pediment is mirrored at the bottom of the outer frame with a curvature surrounding a corbel that now houses a recessed electric light, but would have held a candle in the past. The dual frames, forming an aedicula, are surrounded by relief plaster decoration consisting of white clouds; a sunburst motif of approximately twelve batches of sunrays; and eleven gilded angels, two of which have bodies of putti while the rest are winged heads of cherubs, with two hiding under the corbel. The curved plaster wall immediately surrounding the gilded aedicula, sunburst and white clouds is currently painted cerulean blue. While it is unknown what the colour of that wall was originally, the whole area constitutes the most dramatic part of the extant high altar – with the heavily framed, miraculous icon appearing in the clouds in a burst of sunlight akin to the Blessed Sacrament exposed in a monstrance at the altar for veneration and with Mary exposing her previously concealed and now-born Son. Moreover, the Christogram reminds the viewer of the Christological focus of the arrangement, as does the directionality of the clouds rising from the now-empty lower register where a stepped high altar would have probably been located, further suggesting the customary placement of a thurible with burning frankincense as a sacramental point of origin of the clouds (of smoke). The prevalent Marian theme is further strengthened by the presence of the angels, visualizing the words of the second line from Axion Estin – a Greek theotokion (a hymn to the Virgin Mary) – in Church Slavonic in the Cyrillic alphabet: Честнейшую херувим и славнейшую без сравнения серафим, без истления Бога Слова рождшую, сущую Богородицу, Тя величаем.
Thou the more honourable than the cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim, who without corruption gavest birth to God the Word, thou the true Theotokos, we magnify thee.25
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These are the very lines that are found on the oval band surrounding the Madonna del Pascolo and every other copy of the Madonna of Żyrowice. Thus, while the original Church Slavonic inscription on the oval band is obscured firstly by the rectangular frame and secondly by the later silver revetment, the now hidden and illegible text is re-enacted for Slavic- and Italian-speaking viewers in the very Italian Baroque scenography of dramatic plaster clouds and gilded putti. As mentioned above, the part of the apse directly below the bluepainted area is painted in faux marble while the verde antico columns have a markedly different wear just below the 135 cm mark – roughly the height of the suggested, attached altar that is now missing. Although in the section above, I have already addressed previous problematics of the Byzantine Rite liturgy in this space, the conspicuous absence of an attached altar in the formal description of the Barigioni designs needs further elaboration. It is impossible to reconstruct with certainty what form the attached altar may have had. Yet, considering the ubiquity of the Roman Settecento forms that we have already encountered in the interior of the church, I would suggest that it was a very typical Roman Rite altar with three steps at the bottom leading up to it and two additional steps above the main altar surface. It was probably also surmounted by a tabernacle – all very much in line with post-Tridentine Catholicism.
Francesco Ferrari and Rome under Pope Benedict XIV In 1741, only a decade after Barigioni’s renovations, the commission for a new façade for Santi Sergio e Bacco went not to the rione’s architect but instead to Francesco Ferrari, who seems not to have previously been involved with the Presidenza delle Strade.26 Yet, the choice of Ferrari may have been influenced by his earlier work with the Polish circles of the city. In 1721, he had been commissioned to resume progress on the work that was planned on the national church of the Polish nation, Santo Stanislao on Via delle Botteghe Oscure, initially according to the 1712 designs of a Polish architect, Benedykt Renard.27 The new façade of Santo Stanislao, now redesigned by Ferrari, was completed by 1735. During the same period, in 1726–38, Ferrari also worked for the Monks of the Monte Vergine on a new façade for Sant’Agata dei Goti – another, smaller medieval church in the rione Monti, just a block north of Santi Sergio e Bacco. By comparison with Santo Stanislao, and even with Sant’Agata, Ferrari’s project for Santi Sergio e Bacco was much humbler and definitely less visually impressive. There is no attempt to create a unified succession of
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façades of the church and buildings of the Ospizio, as at Santo Stanislao on Via delle Botteghe Oscure. The buildings that flank Santi Sergio e Bacco are, in their Seicento and Settecento appearance, stylistically and visually unrelated to the church that they book-end. Ospizio dei Ruteni is not a part of the ensemble with its church, like the Ospizio dei Polacchi with Santo Stanislao. In the same manner, the Ruthenian church possesses none of the theatricality of successive entrances and spaces that preceded its original medieval structure – the medieval structure itself is gone, replaced by the Cinquecento rebuilding. Prior to the changes of the eighteenth century, Santi Sergio e Bacco’s appearance was that of a small, two-storey church attached to the building of the Ospizio to the left of it, of the same height and under the same roof. A small belfry on the Ospizio side of the complex was the only structure that interrupted the continuity of the roof over the two buildings. The façade was a simple rectangle whose projection was augmented only with a few elements: a flat border that ran around three sides, except the base; the door frame, topped with a pointed pediment; and a window frame, above the entrance. There also appears to have been a cartouche on the cornice under the roof. In Falda’s etching of 1675 the treatment of the façade’s wall and the border suggests that the two were of a different finish – while the wall would have likely been unplastered brick, the flat border could have been painted plaster over masonry or some sort of stone (maybe travertine like the entrance and window frame). The wall of the adjacent garden (to the right of the church) is left ‘white’ in the etching, just like the border, and was most likely in the stuccoed masonry ubiquitous in Rome at that time. Ferrari’s intervention added an additional storey to the already-existing Seicento façade: this new storey was approximately a third of the existing façade’s height and was crowned with a pointed pediment, itself topped with a crucifix. According to the etching by Vasi from the 1750s, the new, technically third, storey contained a large oval cartouche of the Basilian Order, flanked by two vertical rectangular windows. It appears that just over a century later, by the 1870s, the bottom halves of those windows were closed by metalwork rails – as can be seen in a rather detailed watercolour by Achille Pinelli. Although Pinelli’s record of the third storey gives it a larger height and prominence than the third story had in Vasi’s view, I hesitate to assign to it yet another architectural intervention post-dating the one by Ferrari in the Settecento – it might only be due to artistic exaggeration or lack of precision in recording the actual proportions of the church. In fact, there is no record that the building underwent another façade remodelling between Ferrari’s time and that of Bonoli in 1880–96.
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Later Rebuilding and Renovations The current appearance of the façade of Santi Sergio e Bacco is almost entirely the result of the late nineteenth-century renovations that were further augmented in the late 1960s. The area of the Piazza della Madonna dei Monti experienced, like the rest of Rome, large-scale redevelopment in the late nineteenth century after the reunification of Italy. It seems that the Ruthenian church – unlike some other, older, smaller churches in the neighbourhood of Suburra – benefitted from these urban projects. The piazza was opened up with the construction of Via Cavour on the other side of the southern block, while Via dei Serpenti was extended further down, past the piazza and church of Madonna ai Monti, to cross the newly created Via Cavour and continue further towards the Colosseum as Via degli Annibaldi. Thus, the opened-up piazza was suddenly a block away from major thoroughfares and, likewise, major tourist destinations. Responding to the needs of the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church in the lands controlled by the Habsburg Empire and the financial support of the latter, Pope Leo XIII reorganized the Pontifical Greek College where Ruthenian, and later Ukrainian, seminarians were educated. In 1897, a new institution, the Pontifical Ruthenian College (Pontificio Collegio Ruteno), was established exclusively for the East Slavs, to be located in the building adjacent to the church of Santi Sergio e Bacco. With the establishment of the new College in the building of the convent, the new institution was run by the Jesuits from 1897 to 1904 when the Basilian monks returned, to reside there, celebrate liturgy at the church and co-direct the Collegio Ruteno (also known later as Collegio Ucraino) along with the Jesuits. The Basilian Order, in fact, kept its monastery in the building until 1960 when, with an acquisition of a new property on Aventine, the monastery and the General Curia of the Basilian Order moved there in 1960.28 Since that year, the church has been run by the secular clergy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. In some way, the Basilians’ move of 1960 finalized a process of transition of Santi Sergio e Bacco from an exclusively monastic oversight by the Basilians into that of the direct control by the hierarchy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. An earlier argument had stated that Urban VIII’s establishment of the national church for the Ruthenians meant that the Basilians, as a monastic order, were there only to administer the church, not to own it. This argument had been first put forward by the Ruthenian Greek Catholic hierarchs when Rome fell under French Napoleonic occupation, and all monastic property had to be given up to the French. The Ruthenian ecclesiastical authorities invoked the very letter of the original donation by Pope Urban VIII, which clearly stated that the church was being given
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to the ‘natione rutena’, not the Ruthenian Order of Saint Basil the Great (the Basilians). The same argument was revisited in the 1960s, when the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church – the successor to the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church – sought a re-establishment of its national church in the building of Santi Sergio e Bacco, and had to negotiate with its own monastic order for the availability of the property. In advance of the papal decision to establish a college for the Ruteni, necessary additional renovations had to be undertaken of both buildings – and the church acquired a new, taller façade. The Roman engineer Ettore Bonoli was, as mentioned earlier, the architect of the new 1896 façade and the expanded ospizio, now convent, while Ugo Mazzei created new sculptures for the façade and, a year later, Cesare Caroselli painted the new iconostasis. With the new façade being designed by Bonoli in the style of the neo-Renaissance, Caroselli’s iconostasis brought the rise of the revivalist aesthetic into the church’s interior, which theretofore had only been exclusively and uniformly in the styles of the Settecento. The realism of the Caroselli-painted faces ties them into the artist’s academic training and to the revivalism of the Bonoli-designed façade for Santi Sergio e Bacco. Interestingly, the new 1896 façade and the corresponding iconostasis worked in unison – adding, for the first time, a completely new layer of aesthetic (Academic Revivalism) externally and internally, which, I would argue, was a stylistic extension or a counterpart of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Orientalium dignitas (1894) that sought revival of the Ruthenian Church.
Conclusions The nineteenth-century interventions on Santi Sergio e Bacco had opened the door to the non-Settecento style choices that only increased over time, further obfuscating the stylistic uniformity of the space as it had existed since the early eighteenth century and further complicating the way in which that space was perceived by the viewer. In other words, what could have been initially perceived as a small but artistically exquisite parish church with a humble but elegant façade (Ferrari) and an interior of a single, unified vision (Barigioni), decorated by lesser-known works of Settecento artists (Stern and Ceccarelli) – all created for the exclusive purpose of serving the Greek Catholic Slavic community as well as local Italian devotion – had been layered with later eighteenth- and twentieth-century additions. In turn, these later additions had contributed to the eventual ‘Ukrainization’ of the space – a tendency to emphasize the cultural links of a specifically Ukrainian, modern version of Greek Catholicism rather than the version of the ‘Ruthenian’ Uniate Church, which was a complicated product of
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Belarusian, Lithuanian, Polish and Ukrainian traditions and which more closely corresponded to the aesthetics of the Eastern European culture of the Baroque, dominant in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. This ‘Ukrainization’ of Ruthenian Greek Catholicism has much in common precisely with the late nineteenth-century and turn-of-the-century renovations in the Revivalist mode: an attempt to ‘reclaim’ or achieve a particular ethno-cultural purity – a conscious move away from the Roman, global Baroque developments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (see figure 13.2). In that context, the old Santi Sergio e Bacco, despite the ‘de-Latinizations’ of the twentieth century, remains an obstinate antithesis of contemporary Ukrainian Greek Catholicism, better exemplified in a newly constructed (1967–8) Ukrainian national church: the Byzantine Revival Cathedral of Santa Sofia a Via Boccea, west of Rome. The latter is a monumental, Greek-cross-plan, domed structure decorated with mosaics, Cosmatesque floors and a large and proper iconostasis – a visually strong and stylistically unequivocal statement of the cultural and liturgical programme of the Ukrainians in union with Rome: a programme that radically excludes the very same cultural, stylistic and liturgical accretions that had been accumulated by Ruthenians in and from Rome since the late Cinquecento.
Fig. 13.2. Interior of the church of SS. Sergio e Bacco, Rome, 2017. © Anatole Upart.
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The aesthetic opposition that has existed between the new Modernist (and Byzantine Revivalist) Santa Sofia a Via Boccea and the still-Baroque (within its interior) Santi Sergio e Bacco has now been somewhat placed on hold. The new developments mentioned earlier (the creation of the Apostolic Exarchate with the seat at Santi Sergio e Bacco, now a cathedral) raise questions as to what new aesthetic decisions might be explored by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church vis-à-vis the existing appearance of the old Santi Sergio e Bacco. Will the old Baroque interior be deemed in need of further additional ‘Ukrainizations’ to being it more firmly into line with the prevailing current aesthetic and visual culture dominant among Ukrainian Greek Catholics? Only time will tell. What is certain is that the Ruthenian architectural and cultural heritage in Rome will again undergo a moment of readjustment, or aggiornamento. Anatole Upart is a historian of art and architecture, specializing in the Italian Renaissance and the Baroque as well as their reuses in the modern period. He received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an MA in Art History from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a PhD from the University of Chicago. In the year 2016–17, he was a Fulbright Scholar in Italy. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Early Modern Art History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has published on topics both in the early modern period and the twenty-first century. NOTES 1. ‘Erezione dell’Esarcato Apostolico per i fedeli cattolici ucraini di rito bizantino residenti in Italia e nomina dell’Amministratore Apostolico sede vacante’, Holy See Press Office, 11 July 2019. press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2019/07/11/0586/01208.html#esarcato (accessed 13 September 2021). The Exarch had not been named at time of writing, and instead an apostolic administrator exercises governance of the Exarchate during this sede vacante (‘vacant seat’). Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, Vicar General of the Pope for the Diocese of Rome, has been named the Apostolic Administrator, while Bishop Dionisio Lachovicz, O.S.B.M. has been named the Apostolic Visitor for the Exarchate. 2. Throughout this chapter, I use the term ‘Ruthenian’. The term’s early modern meaning should not be mistaken as being identical to its contemporary use – a designation for the people from the Carpathian regions of Western Ukraine and Slovakia, today known in English as Carpatho-Ruthenians or Rusyns (Rusyn: Русины) and often considered a subgroup of Ukrainians. In the early modern period and up until the 1920s, ‘Ruthenian’ (ruthenus in Latin) was a designation used by the Catholic Church (and many Western scholars) to describe East Slavs in what is now Ukraine and Belarus (the latter known as Alba Ruthenia in Latin). This term was also used in Italian in its form ruteno/ruteni. Ruthenian Orthodox who signed
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3. 4.
5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.
the Union of Brest (1595/96) were known in Italian documents as ruteni uniti, while the Ruthenians who refused the union with the pope and maintained their allegiance to the Patriarch of Constantinople (later to the Patriarch of Moscow) were known as ruteni schismatici – schismatic Ruthenians. Over the centuries, with the development of the national consciousness in Ukraine, the term ruthenus started to be substituted for the term ‘Ukrainian’. Thus, what was known after 1596 as the ‘Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church’ (Latin: Ecclesia Ruthena unita) began to be called the ‘Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church’ in the twentieth century. Trinci Cecchelli, ‘Il monastero dei SS. Sergio e Bacco in Callinico’, 119–31. San Luigi dei Francesi is the French national church, serving a long-established, historically numerous and politically influential French community in Rome. It had been lavishly funded and is known for a number of its outstanding masterpieces, such as three canvases by Caravaggio alone. As such, it is the exact opposite – in the scope and funding of the project – of the national church of the Ruthenians in Rome, Santi Sergio e Bacco. The high altar was designed by Filippo Barigioni (1690–1753). In Trevi: S. Andrea dei Scozzesi, S. Basilio, S. Croce e S. Bonaventura dei Lucchesi, Madonna del Carmine, Sta. Maria dell’Umiltà, etc. See Tesei, Le Chiese di Roma. Terpstra, The Politics of Ritual Kinship, 147. Brophy Dubois, Strangers and Sojourners, 276. A more comprehensive account of the redevelopment of the neighbourhood above and beyond that of Santi Sergio e Bacco is given in Upart, ‘Ruthenians in Early Modern Rome’. 1755’s Allatae Sunt (On the Observance of Oriental Rites), by Pope Benedict XIV, listed previous instances of papal warnings against mixing of the rites or hindering the Greek rite. In it, he mentions the decrees of the Council of Florence on the union between Roman and Greek churches, which said that ‘that no changes should be made in the Rites of our Church’. A more recent papal pronouncement against Latinization of the Oriental rites was made by Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Orientalium dignitas (1894). For more on that, see Senyk, ‘The Eucharistic Liturgy’, 123–55; eadem, ‘The Education of the Secular Clergy’, 387–416; eadem, ‘The Ukrainian Church and Latinization’, 165–87. APF, Fondo di Vienna, vol. 17, fol. 164–67v. APF, Fondo di Vienna, vol. 18, fol. 12–20. Ibid., fol. 21v. APF, Ospizio dei Ruteni (Pascolo), Chiesa dei Santi Sergio e Bacco, vol. 1, fol. 38r‒62v. Also transcribed in Šeptyckyj, Monumenta Ucrainae Historica, vol. VI, 51–54. APF, Ospizio dei Ruteni, vol. 4d. Ibid., vol. 3. Ibid. Ibid. Khoma. Narys Istoriï Khramu, Illustrations. Museo nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo, Contardi and Curcio, In Urbe Architectus. Ibid., 469. Ibid., 288. Ibid., 285–88.
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24. Ibid., 469. 25. The full passage reads: ‘Достойно есть яко воистину блажити Тя, Богородицу, Присноблаженную и Пренепорочную и Матерь Бога нашего. Честнейшую херувим и славнейшую без сравнения серафим, без истления Бога Слова рождшую, сущую Богородицу, Тя величаем’ (It is truly right to bless thee, O Theotokos, thou the ever blessed, and most pure, and the Mother of our God. Thou the more honourable than the cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim, who without corruption gavest birth to God the Word, thou the true Theotokos, we magnify thee). 26. The Presidenza delle Strade was a department of the municipal Roman Government responsible for the upkeep of the streets and, relevant to this case, the upkeep of the building façades facing those streets. 27. Museo nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo, Contardi and Curcio. In Urbe Architectus, 472. 28. The move of the Basilians from Santi Sergio e Bacco was also, it seems, tied to the desire to escape this area of Monti that continued to be perceived as a home to somewhat unsavoury characters, such as petty criminals and prostitutes. The latter, still seen in the area at time of writing (2018), had presented Basilians with a continuous problem that could only be solved by leaving the area altogether.
Bibliography APF (Archivio della S. Congregazione de Propaganda Fide, Rome). Fondo di Vienna, vols 17–18. . Ospizio dei Ruteni (Pascolo), Chiesa dei Santi Sergio e Bacco, vols 1–4d. Brophy Dubois, Katharine. ‘Strangers and Sojourners: Pilgrims, Penance and Urban Geography in Late-Medieval Rome’. PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 2001. Gudelj, Jasenka and Tanja Trška. ‘The Artistic Patronage of the Confraternities of Schiavoni/illyrians in Venice and Rome: Proto-national Identity and the Visual Arts’. Acta Historiae Artis Slovenica 2018 (23), 103–21. Khoma, Ivan. Narys Istoriï Khramu Zhyrovyts´koï Bohomateri I Svv. Muchenykiv Serhiia I Vakkha V Rymi: Extractum E Bohoslovia T. XXXV [An Outline of the History of the Monastery of Our Lady of Żyrowice and St. Martyrs Sergio and Bacco in Rome]. Rym: Vyd. Bohosloviï, 1972. Kubersky-Piredda, Susanne, Alexander Koller and Tobias Daniels (eds). Identità e rappresentazione: le chiese nazionali a Roma, 1450–1650 [Identity and Representation: The National Churches in Rome, 1450–1650]. Rome: Campisano Editore, 2016. Museo nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo, Bruno Contardi and Giovanna Curcio. In Urbe architectus: modelli, disegni, misure: la professione dell’architetto, Roma, 1680– 1750 [In Urbe Architectus: Models, Drawings, Measurements: The Profession of Architect, Rome, 1680–1750]. Rome: Argos, 1991. Senyk, Sophia. ‘The Eucharistic Liturgy in Ruthenian Church Practice’. Orientalia Christiana Periodica 1985 (51), 123–55.
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. ‘The Education of the Secular Clergy in the Ruthenian Church before the Nineteenth Century’. Orientalia Christiana Periodica 1987 (53), 387–416. . ‘The Ukrainian Church and Latinization’. Orientalia Christiana Periodica 1990 (56), 165–87. Šeptyc´kyj, Andrej, and Josyf Slipyj. Monumenta Ucrainae Historica. Vol. VI. Romae: Editiones universitatis catholicae Ucrainorum, 1964. Tatarenko, Laurant. ‘I Ruteni a Roma: i monaci basiliani della chiesa dei Santi Sergio e Bacco (secoli XVII‒XVIII) [The Ruthenians in Rome: The Basilian Monks of the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus (Seventeenth‒Eighteenth Centuries]’, in Antal Molnár, Giovanni Pizzorusso and Matteo Sanfilippo (eds), Chiese e nationes a Roma: dalla Scandinavia ai Balcani: secoli XV‒XVIII [Churches and Nations in Rome: From Scandinavia to the Balkans: Fifteenth‒Eighteenth Centuries]. Rome: Viella, 2017, 135–51. Tesei, Giovanni P. Le chiese di Roma. Roma: Anthropos, 1986. Terpstra, Nicholas (ed.). The Politics of Ritual Kinship: Confraternities and Social Order in Early Modern Italy. Cambridge‒New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Trinci Cecchelli, Margherita M. ‘Il monastero dei SS. Sergio e Bacco in Callinico: questione toponomastica e suo inserimento nel tessuto urbanistico della Subura cristiana’ [The Monastery of SS. Sergio and Bacchus in Callinico: Toponymic Question and its Insertion into the Urban Fabric of the Christian Subura], in Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana and Victor Saxer, Memoriam Sanctorum Venerantes: Miscellanea in onore di Monsignor Victor Saxer [Memoriam Sanctorum Venerantes: Miscellaneous in Honour of Monsignor Victor Saxer]. Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia Cristiana, 1992, 119–31. Upart, Anatole. ‘Ruthenians in Early Modern Rome: Art and Architecture of a Uniate Community, 1596–1750’. PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2021.
8 AFTERWORD For the Glory of Nation Architectural Heritage in Nineteenth-Century Europe Dragan Damjanović
The architectural heritage of Europe has become so thoroughly nationalized that today we can hardly think about it without using the national frames created in the nineteenth century. This volume deals with the beginnings and early stages of this process in eastern and central parts of the continent, from the shores of the Baltic Sea and the banks of the Volga River to the Mediterranean. Over the past two centuries, these areas have been marked by frequent changes of borders and regimes that have, in part, tended to erase or reinterpret the architectural heritage considered non- (or not sufficiently) national. Therefore, they are particularly convenient for analyses of heritage nationalization. A history of heritage nationalization, or nationalist manipulation of heritage, has not yet been written – either for this area or for wider Europe – at least not in the comprehensive way in which Eric Hobsbawm or Miroslav Hroch researched the emergence and spread of nationalism in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.1 The current book is not a review of this process, but it brings together thirteen case studies mainly focused on the nineteenth and early twentieth century – the period in which the birth of nationalism gave rise to the ‘heritization’ of the built environment and a plurality of styles. The case studies mostly cover those areas where ethnic groups lived within multinational and multi-religious states and strove for national independence. They also include developments in newly formed states such as Italy and Germany, which, given their recent national status, struggled to recreate specific national traditions in architecture. ‘Heritization’ of the built environment happened, of course, all over Europe, though in these multinational and
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multi-confessional areas it almost always had many national, political and even economic layers. Nineteenth-century art and architecture displayed three peculiar obsessions – style, nation and history (not necessarily in that order) – and this is clearly expressed in the chapters contained in this book. Although all of the authors deal with style, nation and history, the volume is divided into three parts according to the specific topics on which they focus. The first part concentrates primarily on the impact of national narratives on monument conservation; the second on attempts to create national architecture/ national styles; and the third is focused on the appropriation of heritage for national ideologies, mostly through writings. The methodology used by the authors shows how much the history of art, i.e. the history of architecture, has changed over the last few decades in Europe and the world. The starting point for most of the chapters is still the story of style, an element that makes art history somewhat independent within the humanities. However, sources of style are no longer seen in an autonomous play of forms but are, rather, contextualized within political, social and economic circumstances; national(ist) narratives; and personal relationships. We learn from the chapters in this volume that almost all European nations had more than one national style in the nineteenth century, that the interpretation of what was really national in the ‘national’ architectural heritage constantly changed and that the focus in the process of heritage nationalization was continually adjusted due to the shifting nature of nationalism. We also learn that the nationalization of heritage did not automatically accompany its preservation, and that the flourishing of nationalism made – and still makes – architectural heritage a constantly attractive field for manipulation. While in the mid-eighteenth century, authors like Marc-Antoine Laugier sought the roots of architecture in the natural world, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century authors often tried to explain special features of the architectural heritage of their countries or nations via special features of the(ir) people.2 In those areas characterized by very low levels of urbanization – that is, by a high percentage of rural population – the search for a national style in architecture turned on numerous occasions towards vernacular heritage, as is shown by the cases from Croatia, Poland and, partly, Hungary. In more urbanized areas – like northern Italy, Germany and France, where researchers started earlier (than in most parts of Eastern Europe) to create national pantheons of architectural heritage – medieval and early modern church and public buildings became the most important role models for national style(s) and for new buildings (as has been shown by the chapters of Paolo Cornaglia, Douglas Klahr and Gábor György Papp).
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Simultaneously, in those areas where the population consisted of different religious groups, national styles were often used to differentiate from other religious (and often, at the same time, national) entities in society, as has been shown in the chapters written by Aleksander Łupienko and, partly, Gulchachak Nugmanova and Dragan Damjanović. The ‘Byzantinization’ of the Ruthenian – that is, Ukrainian – church in Rome, described in Anatole Upart’s chapter, also belongs to this category. All these developments reflect the nineteenth- and partly twentieth-century search for authenticity; legitimacy; and, at the same time, for the ‘true national’.3 The nationalization of architectural heritage had many positive effects – it played a decisive role in the creation of a system of monument protection (as shown by the texts of Gulchachak Nugmanova, Monika Ewa Adamska, Anda-Lucia Spânu, Aleksander Łupienko and Dragan Damjanović). The establishment of institutions for monument protection and heritage inventory prevented the destruction of numerous buildings and artworks, encouraged research, and helped in the development of heritage-based tourism and the like. However, placing a building, or a site, at the centre of a national narrative or cult was sometimes counterproductive. It could have led (as the texts of Anda-Lucia Spânu, Georgios Karatzas and Kristina Jõekalda show) to an excessive reconstruction of monuments or their devastation with the aim of erasing traces of past epochs for aesthetic, political or other reasons. Sometimes, there is also a marked discrepancy between the place occupied by a particular monument in the national narrative and the care that it is offered (as Andrea Kocsis’ chapter shows). Today, in almost all European countries, there is a widespread belief that the government does not invest enough in culture and that it does not care enough about the past. Time will tell whether the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries were different regarding care for, and focus on, heritage. It seems to me that they were not. There is no doubt that heritage politicization is constantly present, albeit not always with the same intensity and not always in the same ways as in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, narratives related to ‘national monuments’ continue to be tirelessly developed – both among those whose profession is related to heritage protection, who use national narratives in order to obtain funds for monument restoration, and among those who use heritage exclusively for daily political (most often populist or right-wing nationalist) purposes (as the chapter by Bérénice Gaussuin clearly shows). Recent developments in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe indicate that the use of heritage for building/reinforcing national(istic) narratives never ends in those areas with disputed borders, or religiously and ethnically mixed regions and areas where governing structures want to reconstruct (or sometimes recreate) the past. Such developments include
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the removal of communist monuments; turning Hagia Sofia (again) into a mosque; the question of the status of Serbian Orthodox monasteries in Kosovo; the reconstruction of numerous churches, monasteries and palaces in Russia; medieval and renaissance fortresses, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings in Hungary (Diósgyőr, buildings in Buda district in Budapest); Ottoman, Christian Orthodox and Catholic heritage in Bosnia and Herzegovina (destroyed during the war in the 1990s); historical streets and quarters in the centres of German cities; or, as shown in Bérénice Gaussuin’s chapter in this book, the use of St. Denis Cathedral in French nationalistic narratives. The ongoing debate and the removal of statutes of not just Confederate generals and politicians but also of European explorers and stereotypically depicted Native and/or African Americans in the United States of America demonstrates that burdensome heritage is not unique to Europe but that its recreation happens everywhere. It could be concluded that political changes – and, even more so, social and demographic shifts, not to mention border changes – are regularly accompanied by shifts in attitude towards built heritage. What one group of a population regards as a stronghold of its national, religious or civic identity, another group sees as unwanted or burdensome heritage. This process is bound to take place with each larger change in society in the future. If buildings/monuments survive the change, they are sooner or later reinvented and they will be (endlessly) reinvented. This reinvention is good, from the point of view of an art historian or an architectural historian. European history shows us that the best way to preserve monuments/artworks is to include them in the narratives of governing structures. There are numerous examples from recent history, many of which are not even touched upon in this volume. It still remains to be answered, for example, how the palace of the late Roman Emperor Diocletian became part of Croatian heritage, how the civic house of a rich German family in Gdańsk became part of Polish national heritage, how the ethnic-German noble-family castle in Czechia became part of Czech national heritage – and how (much) these processes influenced their preservation. A likely answer is that sometimes the ideology of blood and sometimes the ideology of soil prevails, depending on the case or need – and probably often unconsciously, considering the nationalist and Nazi roots of these ideologies. As much as it sometimes seems artificial, the appropriation of heritage is the main condition for its preservation. Without the ‘adoption’ of monuments, no one would take care of them. Moreover, this process not only preserves the monuments but also gives us (and will give us) material for countless volumes of this kind.4
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Dragan Damjanović is Full Professor at the Art History Department, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia. He is currently teaching and researching the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Croatian and European art and architecture. He has published eighteen books and numerous papers in edited books and journals (among them, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, Centropa, Urban Design International, Umění/ Art, Acta Historiae Artium and RIHA Journal), curated exhibitions and organized congresses related to this subject. Since 2018 he has been heading the Croatian Science Foundation project ‘Art and the State in Croatia from the Enlightenment to the Present’. NOTES The work forming this chapter has been fully supported by the Croatian Science Foundation under the project IP-2018-01-9364 Art and the State in Croatia from the Enlightenment to the Present. 1. There are, however, many texts that deal with the issue. See Andrieux, Kervanto Nevanlinna and Chevallier, Idée nationale et architecture en Europe; Filipova, ‘Writing and Displaying Nations’, 134–56; Galeta, ‘National houses’, 119–33; Varga, The Monumental Nation; Bartetzky, Geschichte bauen. 2. On national styles in nineteenth-century architecture, see more in Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890, 139–70. 3. On this issue, see more in Geary, The Myth of Nations, 2–40. 4. More on the issued touched upon in this afterword in Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country; Bak, Geary and Klaniczay, Manufacturing a Past for the Present; and Jokilehto, A History of Architectural Conservation.
Bibliography Andrieux, Jean-Yves, Anja Kervanto Nevanlinna and Fabienne Chevallier (eds). Idée nationale et architecture en Europe 1860–1919: Finlande, Hongrie, Rumaine, Catalogne [National Idea and Architecture in Europe 1860–1919: Finland, Hungary, Romania, Catalonia]. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006. Bak, János M., Patrick J. Geary and Gábor Klaniczay (eds). Manufacturing a Past for the Present: Forgery and Authenticity in Medievalist Texts and Objects in NineteenthCentury Europe. Leiden; Boston, MA: Brill, 2015. Bartetzky, Arnold (ed.). Geschichte bauen: Architektonische Rekonstruktion und Nationenbildung vom 19. Jahrhundert bis heute [Building a Past: Architectural Reconstruction and Nation Building from the Nineteenth Century until Today]. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2017.
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Bergdoll, Barry. European Architecture 1750–1890. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Filipova, Marta. ‘Writing and Displaying Nations: Constructing Narratives of National Art in Bohemia and Austria-Hungary’. Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimus 2014, 23 (3/4), 134–56. Galeta, Jan. ‘National Houses – Damnatio memoriae? Architecture and Nationalism at the End of 19th and in 20th century’, in Jan Galeta and Zuzana Ragulová (eds), Admired as Well as Overlooked Beauty: Contributions to Architecture of Historicism, Art Nouveau, Early Modernism and Traditionalism. Brno: Barrister & Principal, 2015, 119–33. Geary, Patrick J. The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Jokilehto, Jukka. A History of Architectural Conservation. Oxford: ButterworthHeinemann, 1999. Lowenthal, David. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Varga, Bálint. The Monumental Nation: Magyar Nationalism and Symbolic Politics in Finde-siécle Hungary. New York, Oxford: Berghahn, 2016.
8 INDEX A Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, 217 Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, 220 Adams, John Quincy, 294 Adamska, Monika Ewa, 11, 337 Agnes (Anna) of Antioch, queen of Hungary, 276 Aiud (Nagyenyed), 205 Alba Regia. See under Székesfehérvár Alexander I, emperor of Russia, 57, 249 Alfyorov, Nicholas, 249 ‘Alien’ Heritage in Estonia, 43–44, 48–49, 55 in Poland, 92 Alighieri, Dante, 178, 190 Alise-Sainte-Reine, 31 Alpár, Ignác, 205 Alphand, Adolphe, 189 Alttoa, Kaur, 53 Aman, Theodor, 106, 112 Amiens, 34 Amruš, Milan, 227 Ana, queen of Romania, 113 antiquity, 77, 84, 124–25, 127, 130–31, 133, 136–37 anti-Russian uprising, 80–81, 89 Antolec, Matija, 231 Antonelli, Alessandro, 177 Antonescu, Petre, 115 Arborio Mella, Edoardo, 189 Archaeological Service (Greek), 132, 136, 141
Archaeological Society at Athens, 128, 132, 140–41 archaeology, 52, 92, 269–271, 273–275, 277, 279, 283–284 Árpád dynasty, 276, 280, 282–83 Arts and Crafts, 216, 220 Assmann, Aleida, 4 Assmann, Jan, 4, 12, 77–78, 80, 83, 91 Assyrian art, 234 Athens, 124–37 Auduc, Arlette, 23 Augsburg, 151 Ausgleich. See under Austro-Hungarian Compromise/Settlement Austria/Austrian, 11, 76, 86, 89, 92, 117n7, 150, 181, 183, 186–87, 204, 207, 213, 215, 222, 225–26, 230, 234, 270, 279, 285n12, 290 Austria-Hungary. See under AustroHungarian Empire Austrian Coastland (Küstenland), 213 Austrian partition, Galicia, 11, 86, 89–90, 92, 96 Austrians, 83 Austro-Hungarian Compromise/ Settlement, 91, 175, 182, 213, 225, 270, 282 Austro-Hungarian Empire, 78, 102, 182, 200, 225, 229, 232, 234–35, 270, 275, 283, 285n12, 316 Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. See under Austro-Hungarian Empire authorised heritage discourse, 274, 284
342 • Index
B Bach, Alexander, 214 Balaton, 186 Balkans, 7, 126, 129–30, 132, 187 Baltic art, 43–65 Baltic Germans, 13, 43–65 Baltic Governorates (Ostseeprovinzen) of Russia, 43–44, 47 Baltic region, 43–65 Bantelmann, Johannes Daniel, 55 Barberini, Antonio (juniore) 320 Barberini, Antonio Marcello (seniore) 323 Barberini, Maffeo (Pope Urban VIII) 319–20 Baries, Bernard, 109 Barigioni, Felipe, 322–26, 329, 332 Barillet Deschamps, Jean-Pierre, 189 Baroque style, 11, 59, 62, 150, 152, 170, 176–79, 181–84, 186, 188, 198, 203, 231, 258, 293–94, 296, 301, 304–5, 309n29, 314, 316, 324–26, 330–31 Basarab, Despina, 113 Basarab, Matei, 109 Basarab, Neagoe, 104, 109, 113 Basilians, 317, 323–24, 328–29, 333n28 basilica, 21, 271–272, 276–278, 281–284 Basilica of St. Denis, 21–22, 37, 38n2 Bastl, Vjekoslav (Alois), 220 Baudot, Anatole de, 103 Baudry, Ambroise, 114 Bavaria, 162, 165 Begas, Reinhold, 149, 152, 157, 160–63, 170, 172n32 Béla III, king of Hungary, 276, 280, 282–83, 285n34 Belarus, 317–18, 330, 331n2 Belgrade, 176, 185, 187, 189n13, 229 Benckendorff, Alexander von, 259 Benedict XIV, pope, 326, 332 Benisch, Karl, 106 Benjamin, Walter, 43 Benso di Cavour, Camillo, 190 Berlin, 149–59, 161, 164–66, 168–71, 176, 181–82, 186, 188, 190n31, 191n34, 292, 295, 300–01, 303, 305
Bernewitz, Carl, 162 Bernier, François, 25 Bernini, Gianlorenzo, 191 Beyer, Johann Christina Wilhelm, 182 Bézier, firm, 186 Bibescu, George, 114 Biris, Kostas, 134, 139–40 bi-rituality, 320 Bismarck, Otto von, 158, 166, 172n23, 172n27 Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 26 Bockslaff, Wilhelm, 61–62 Bohemia, 290, 294 Boisserrée brothers, 84, 94 Boito, Camillo, 176, 189 Bolgar, 248, 250–51, 256, 261–62, 266 Bollati, Oreste, 178 Bollé, Herman, 216–18, 220–24, 231, 233 Bologna, 177 Bonn, 151 Bonoli, Ettore, 322–23, 327, 329 Bosnia. See under Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina, 215, 338 Bothe & Ehrmann, Zagreb furniture factory, 235 Bouchot, Louis-Jules, 178 Bourgeoisie, 23–25, 33–34, 36, 177, 179, 216 Bramante, Donato, 177 Brâncoveanu, Constantin, 109, 187 Brâncovenesc style, neo-Brâncovenesc style, 187–88 Breslau. See under Wrocław Bressani, Martin, 25 Breuer, Peter, 162 Britain/British, 8, 12, 79, 82, 102, 172n23, 261 Brussels, 176 Brzeg (Brieg), 293–94, 299–300, 307 Bucharest, 104, 106, 110–12, 114, 119, 175–76, 185, 187–88 Buda, 271, 277–78, 282–83, 338 Budapest, 175–77, 181–85, 188, 191n38, 197–98, 200, 202, 205, 221–22, 229–31, 235, 271, 277–78, 280–82, 338
Index • 343
Bugarski, Aleksandar, 185 Bukovina, 188 Bulgaria, 185 Bull, John, 172n23 Buonarroti, Michelangelo, 178, 190 Burelly, Gaetano, 105 Burgemeister, Ludwig, 297 Burke, Edmund, 83 Buszard Ludwik, 90 Byzantine art and architecture, 24, 27, 115, 123–24, 127–32, 135–137, 139n27, 140n43, 140n57, 141n73, 182, 187, 214, 226–27, 233, 258, 301, 330–331 Byzantine Empire, 5, 125, 127 Byzantine-Gothic heritage, 176 Byzantine Rite, Greek Rite, 314, 316–17, 320, 322, 326, 332 C Calhoun, Craig, 2 Canova, Antonio, 178 Cantemir, Dimitrie, 108, 118 Capello, Gabriele, 190 Carlo Alberto of Savoy, king of Sardinia, 178 Carman, John, 46 Carol I of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, king of Romania, 105–07, 109, 113, 116–17, 119, 186 Carol II, king of Romania, 109, 113, 119 Caroselli, Cesare, 322, 329 Castellazzi, Giovanni, 190 Catherine II, empress of Russia, 48, 248–51, 254, 259 Catholic Church (Catholicism, Catholic, Roman Catholic, Roman Catholicism), 9, 37, 48, 51, 82–84, 109, 216, 223, 290–91, 293, 303, 314, 316, 320–22, 326, 328–31, 331n2, 332n2, 338 Cauer, Ludwig, 162 Central Commission for the Study and Protection of Architectural Monuments (in Vienna), 78, 92, 95, 104, 214–15, 225
Central Europe, 2, 7, 15n18, 181, 186, 190n29, 196, 200–01, 204, 207, 221, 230–31, 237n43, 273–75, 290 Ceppi, Carlo, 177 Cerchez, Grigore, 114, 186–87 Cesari, Chiara de, 21 Chamonix, 26 Charles X, king of France, 23 Charlottenburg, 151, 155 Charlottenhof, 155 Chartres, 34 Chateaubriand, François-René de, 31, 81, 84–85 Chernivtsi (Cernăuți, Czerniowce, Czernowitz), 200 Christian Archaeological Society, 131, 134–35 Christian heritage, 12, 21, 24, 37, 45–63, 84, 123–37, 216, 218–20, 222–23, 226–28, 230–35, 238n62, 317, 336–38 Christianity, 31, 48, 51, 63, 67n50 church architecture, 31, 37, 45–65, 83, 123–37, 216, 218–20, 222–23, 226–28, 230–35, 238n62, 258 Church-Slavonic Language, 316–17, 320, 325–26 Cinquecento (sixteenth century), 176, 327, 330 Cisleitania, 182 Cistercians, 296, 303–04 Classical architecture, 7, 233, 294 Classicism, 45, 62, 77, 92 Clement VIII, pope, 320 Clermont-Ferrand, 31 Clusy, fictional town, 35 Cohen, Gary, 6 Cologne, 3, 31, 34, 49, 56–57, 64, 67n54, 78, 84, 217 Coloman, king of Hungary, 217, 285n34 Colombo, Cristoforo, 178, 190 colonial, 47, 55, 57, 274 commercialization of architecture, 234–35 Comte, Auguste, 23 Congregation of Propaganda Fide, 317, 320–21, 323
344 • Index
conservation of monuments, architectural conservation, heritage conservation, 7–11, 23–24, 43–65, 77–78, 88–91, 97n72, 106–07, 136, 256–57, 262, 281, 295–300, 304, 307, 336 conservation service in Austrian Empire, 7, 86, 92, 214–15 in Croatia, 214–15 in Estonia, 48 in France, 23 in Germany, 7, 78, 295–96, 307, 309n32 in Poland, 7 in Russia, 48, 256 Constantine, Romanov, archduke, 96 continuity (narrative of, in Greece), 123, 125–26, 133–34, 137 Copenhagen, 176 Cornaglia, Paolo, 14, 336 Cousin, Victor, 23 Craiova, 103, 108–10 Craioveanu, Barbu, 109 Crida, Andrea, 177 Croatia, 13, 213–35, 336, 338 Croatian Provincial Government, 215, 221, 229, 230 Croatization, 216, 223, 230 Croato-Byzantine Style, 226–28, 232 Croato-Hungarian Settlement, 213, 215 Csáky, Moritz, 2 cultural memory, 4–6, 12, 43–49, 53, 56–57, 59, 62–65, 274 cultural pessimism, 92–93 Curtea de Argeș, 103–05, 107–09, 111, 113–17, 119, 187 Cuvier, Georges, 96 Cuza, Alexandru Ioan , 105, 108, 117 Czechia, Czech Lands, 94, 338 D Daco-Roman theory, 275 Đakovo, 215–16, 222 Dalmatia, 213–14, 225–27, 234 Dâmbovița county, 187 Damjanović, Dragan, 13, 337
Dante. See under Alighieri Danube, 183 Darwin, Charles, 26 Dehio, Georg, 44, 298 Delécluze, Etienne-Jean, 23 Della Vedova, Pietro, 190 Demetrescu Mirea, George, 112 Di Cesare, Francesco, 177 Diocese of Đakovo-Srijem and Bosnia, 215–16 Diocletian, Roman emperor, 338 Diósgyőr, 338 Directory of Monuments of Greece, 133–34, 140 Divald, Kornél, 203–04 Dobromir, painter, 107 Doctrinaires, 23–24, 36–37 Doderer, Wilhelm von, 186 Dominicans, 86, 88, 303 Donja Stubica, 233 Dorpat. See under Tartu Dosoftei, metropolitan of Moldavia, 109 Dresden, 152 Drouet, Albert, 186 Dual Monarchy. See under AustroHungarian Empire Dubranec, 223 Dubrovnik, 234 Duchy of Savoy, 176 Duchy of Warsaw, 79 dynastic identity, 14, 150, 159, 171 Dziekoński, Józef Pius, 93 Dzierżoniów (Reichenbach), 294 E early Florentine Renaissance, 177, 179 early medieval architecture, 10, 25, 226–27, 229, 235 early Renaissance, 176–77 earthquake, 104, 107, 109, 134, 142n85 Eclecticism, 14, 45, 62, 114, 183, 186–88 Egyptian art and architecture, 233, 234 Einholz, Sybille, 166 Eitelberger von Edelberg, Rudolf, 217 Ekielski, Władysław, 93 Elena, queen of Romania, 113
Index • 345
Elisabeth de Wied, queen of Romania, 109, 113, 187 Elisabeth of Bavaria, empress and queen of Austria-Hungary, 184 Elizabeth, empress of Russia, 48 Enlightenment, Enlightenments, 8, 12, 48–53, 92, 118n20, 124–25, 138n10, 261, 291, 295, 297 Eperjes. See under Prešov Ephorate of Antiquities, 132, 134 equestrian statue, 157–64, 166, 168–69 Erdevik, 222 Érdy, János, 271, 278, 282 Erll, Astrid, 4 Estonia, 7, 43–65 Estonian Governorate of Russia, 43, 47 Esztergom, 200, 271 excavations, 9, 52, 56, 65, 127, 130, 184, 200, 257, 261–62, 269–84, 286n46 exhibition pavilions, 114, 219–22, 229 exhibitions Agricultural and Industrial ( Jubilee) Exhibition in Trieste in 1882, 221, 222 Croatian-Slavonian Provincial Economic Exhibition in 1906, 221 Decorative Art Exhibition in Turin in 1902, 179 Hungarian National Exhibition in Budapest in 1885, 221, 222 Millennium Exhibition in Budapest in 1896, 221, 222, 235 National Exhibition, Bucharest, 1906, 187 World Exhibition in Paris in 1878, 198, 201 World Exhibition in Paris in 1900, 198, 201, 221 World Exhibition in Vienna in 1873, 198, 219 Exner, Johann Gottfried, 56, 59–60 evolutionism, 92 F Falda, Giovanni Battista, 318–19, 327 Falser, Michael, 78 fatherland (homeland), 22–23, 47, 82, 125, 256
Felderhoff, Reinhold, 162 Feldmann, Alexander, 55 Ferdinand I, king of Romania, 113, 119 Ferrante, Giovanni Battista, 178 Ferrari, Francesco, 323–24, 326–27, 329 Ferri, Domenico, 178–79, 189 Ferstel, Heinrich, 177, 182 fire, 37, 49, 53–58, 62, 64, 67n49, 86, 89, 104–05, 107, 109, 132, 141n66, 141n72, 186, 258, 262, 293, 298–99, 303, 305–06 Fischer von Erlach, Joseph Emanuel, 182 Florence, 176, 178–79, 301, 316, 332n10 Foerk, Ernő, 231 Formigé, Jean-Camille, 115 France, French, 8, 10, 21–37, 49, 59, 77–79, 81, 102–07, 109–12, 114–15, 151, 157, 190n22, 222, 297–98, 308n20, 332n4, 336, 338. Franciscans, 86, 303 Frankfurt am Main, 151 Franz Joseph I, emperor and king of Austria-Hungary. See under Habsburgs French. See under France French late-Mannerist style, 178 French Renaissance style, 178 French Revolution, 22–24, 31–37, 39n69, 49, 81, 138n10 Frey, Johannes, 51–53, 62–63 Freymuth, Otto, 49, 52, 59, 65 Friedrich III, emperor of Germany, 152, 154–55 Friedrich the Great (Friedrich II), king of Prussia, 158–59, 290–91, 295, 297–98, 306–7 Friedrich Wilhelm, elector of Brandenburg and duke of Prussia, 158 Friedrich Wilhelm III, king of Prussia, 57, 80, 295 Friedrich Wilhelm IV, king of Prussia, 155 Fuchs, Karl, 254, 256–57 fundraising for reconstruction, 55, 58, 63, 65
346 • Index
G Gabrielescu, Nicolae, 111 Galilei, Galileo, 178, 190 Gaul, August, 162 Gaussuin, Bérénice, 8, 337 Gauthier, Theophile, 31 Gdańsk (Danzig), 338 Geist, George Friedrich Wilhelm, 62 Georgescu, Ion, 112 Gerasi, Robert, 261, 263 German. See under Germany German Empire, 47–48, 55–57, 92, 149– 71, 172n23, 181, 222, 290, 293, 296 German heritage, 31, 39n51, 43–65, 149–71 German houses, 186 German neo-Renaissance style, 181, 231 German Renaissance style, 231, 186, 188 German Unification (1871), 92, 150, 290, 296, 307 Germany, German, 7, 11–12, 32, 47–48, 55–57, 78, 90, 96, 150–51, 153–54, 159, 165–66, 172n23, 175, 181, 186, 188, 200, 219–220, 222, 226, 229–33, 256, , 290, 296, 298, 307, 336, 338 Ghica, Alexandru, 104 Ghica, Ion, 105, 119 Giani, Vincenzo, 190 Glendinning, Miles, 7, 94 Głubczyce (Leobschütz), 305–07 Gobineau, Arthur de, 25–27, 38n18 Godoli, Ezio, 177 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 22, 31, 51, 84 Golden Horde – 248, 263 Gothic art and architecture, 8, 12, 22, 24–25, 31, 36, 39n51, 46–64, 76, 82–86, 88–89, 92–94, 176, 182, 197–99, 201, 203, 208n7, 214, 216–18, 222, 233, 293–94, 299–300, 303, 305, 309n29 Gothic cathedral(s), 12, 21, 31, 36, 46–64, 84–85, 87 Gothic Revival. See neo-Gothic Gottereau, Paul, 114, 186–87 Götz, Johannes, 162
Gravelotte, 162 Greater Romania, 187–88 Greece, Greek, 7, 9–10, 124–25, 127, 132 Greek-Catholics, 314, 328–32 Grégoire, Henri Jean-Baptiste, 22 Grohmann, Johann Gottfried, 51 Grünanger, Friedrich, 186 Guizot, François, 23 Gustelnica, 223–24 H Habsburg Empire, 6, 78, 176, 188, 214, 290, 328 Habsburg Monarchy. See under Habsburg Empire Habsburgs Franz Joseph I, emperor and king of Austria-Hungary, 235, 280–83 Karl VI, emperor of Austria, 182 Leopold Salvator, archduke, 235 Maria Theresia of Habsburg, empress of Austria, 182, 191n39 Rudolf, Kronprinz of AustriaHungary, 235 Stephanie, princess of AustriaHungary, 235 Halle (Saale), 165–70 Halmhuber, Gustav, 149, 152, 157, 161–63, 168, 170, 172n32 Hansen, Gotthard von, 56–59 Hansen, Theophil, 129–30 Hartog, François, 48 Harvey, David C., 46–47, 64, 77 Hasak, Max, 306 Hasenauer, Karl von, 181 Haugaard, Mark, 4 Hauszmann, Alajos, 183–85 Heimat, 47, 57, 63 Hellenic-Byzantine style, 127, 129–30, 137, 139 Hellenism, 126, 130, 133 Henszlmann, Imre, 182, 197, 201–02, 204, 271, 276, 278, 283 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 93 Heritage Conservation Act, Estonia (1925), 48
Index • 347
heritage studies, 1–2, 5–6, 46, 53, 64, 115 Hetzel, Jules, 39n26 Hidding, Hermann, 162 Higher Building Deputation, 295, 297, 300–01, 303 Hildebrand, Adolf von, 158 Hilgers, Karl, 158 Himalaya, 27, 29 Historic Monuments Commission (Commission des monuments historiques), 78 Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece, 131 Historical narrative, 23, 47–49, 63, 124 Historicism (Historicist architecture), 6–7, 11, 13, 85, 149, 153–54, 169, 171, 175, 183, 188, 200, 221, 231 historiography, 6 in Estonia, 43–65 in Greece, 123–24, 126, 131, 138n10 in Hungary, 199–201 in Poland, 79, 90, 97n72 in Romania, 103 in Russia, 250 history of French historical monument preservation, 22–23 Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, 177 Hobsbawm, Eric, 335 Hoffmann, Godehard, 170 Hofmann, Albert, 161, 164, 166–70 Hofmann, Werner, 7 Hofsfeld, Oskar, 163 Hohenzollern, dynasty, 181 Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, dynasty, 113, 119n29, 150, 154, 161, 181, 186, 290 Holjac, Janko, 220 Hönigsberg & Deutsch, Zagreb architectural firm, 230 Horthy, Miklós, 184 Hroch, Miroslav, 335 Hugo, Victor, 22 Hun, 232, 275 Hunedoara, 232 Hungarian National Museum, 278, 283, 286n46
Hungarian Socialist State, 184 Hungary, Hungarian, 9, 12, 118n11, 175–76, 182–83, 196–207, 208n4, 208n10, 215, 225, 230, 269–284, 285n12, 314, 336, 338 Hurez, 187 I Iași, 103, 107–09, 111, 115–17 identity, 1–2, 5–6, 8–9, 11–12, 15n22, 21, 31–32, 36–37, 43–49, 53, 55, 63–65, 76–79, 86, 91, 93–94, 103, 114, 116, 123, 126, 131, 137, 150, 153–169, 171, 175–76, 182, 197–98, 200, 232, 247, 264–65, 273–75, 297, 316 Idźkowski, Adam, 85, 87 Ihne, Ernst, 152, 160–61 Ilok, 220–21 imperialism, 10, 43–44, 47–48, 57, 94, 276–77, 279–81 India, 102, 261 Indian art and architecture, 234, 256 industry, 178, 198, 221–22, 235, 291, 294 Inkiostri, Dragutin, 234 intelligentsia, 79–80 interwar era, 6, 43–49, 52, 57, 59, 64–65, 136, 184, 207, 228, 238n81, 277, 282, 284, 300 irredentism (Greek), 123–24, 137, 139 Istria, 213–14, 234 István (Stephen), king of Hungary, 183, 271–72, 281 Italian Renaissance, Italian Renaissance style, 176–77, 200–2, 230, 293 Italy, 102, 150–51, 159, 175–80, 189n10, 190n17, 190n22, 190n26, 200, 217, 261, 293, 310n53, 314, 328, 335–36 Ivan IV the Terrible, tsar of Russia, 248, 251, 253–55, 260, 264 Ivanić Grad, 233 J Jarrasé, Dominique, 27 Jechel, Hans-Jörg, 166 Jelenia Góra (Hirschberg), 294 Jelić, Luka, 227
348 • Index
Jenkins, Richard, 2 Jõekalda, Kristina, 13, 337 Jokilehto, Jukka, 7 Judson, Pieter, 6, 8 July Monarchy, 78 Juvarra, Filippo, 177, 179 K Kallestrup, Shona, 187 Kamienna Góra (Landeshut), 294 Kant, Immanuel, 26 Karađorđević, Serbian and Yugoslav dynasty, 185 Karatzas, Georgios, 12, 337 Karl VI, emperor of Austria. See under Habsburgs Karling, Sten, 57, 59, 65 Karlovy Vary, 235 Kashmir, 27 Kastromenos, Panagiotis, 133 Kazan, Kazan Khanate, 5, 10, 248–51, 253–64 Kazan University Society of Archaeology, History and Ethnography, 257, 262 Keber, Josef, 109 Kerr, Greg, 25 Késmárk. See under Kežmarok Kežmarok (Késmárk), 205 Khoma, Ivan, 322 Kikuyu tribe (in Kenya), 14 King Aleksandar style, 187 King, Jeremy, 6 Kingdom of Lombardo-Veneto, 176 Kingdom of Poland (medieval, earlymodern), 9, 76 Kingdom of Sardinia, 176 Kirschner, Ferdinand, 182 Klaczko, Julian, 96 Klahr, Douglas, 14, 336 Koblenz, 169 Kocsis, Andrea, 9, 337 Kolar, Nikola, 220 Korunović, Momir, 186 Kosovo, 338 Koumanoudis, Stephanos, 128, 140 Kowary (Schmiedeberg), 294
Krakow, 79, 82–84, 86, 88–89, 93, 96n31, 201, 203, 229 Krakow Republic, 79, 83, 89 Krakow University, 86, 88, 91 Kraus, August, 162 Krause, Johann Wilhelm, 49–53, 66n28 Kremer, Józef, 84, 86 Kremer, Karol, 86, 88–89 Kresy (the eastern region of the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth), 5, 83 Kršnjavi, Iso (Izidor), 217–23, 227, 231–33, 238n62 Kukuljević Sakcinski, Ivan, 215 Kulczinski, Ignazio, 321 Kulturnation, 48–49, 90 Kulturträger, 47–48, 55 Kuncewicz, Josaphat, 316 Kurdiovsky, Richard, 182 Kyffhäuser, 164–66, 169–70 L L’viv. See under Lviv Laid, Eerik, 49 Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste de, 26 Lampakis, Georgios, 131, 134 landscape, 43–44, 63, 269–70 Laon, 33–34 Late Baroque heritage, 177–79, 182–83, 188 Late Baroque style, 177–79, 182–83, 188 Late Mannerist style, 178–79 Latin language, 320–22, 331–32, 118n18 Latin race, 35 Latinization, 320–21, 330, 332n10 Latvia, 11, 43, 47–48, 52 Laugier, Marc-Antoine, 51, 336 Lausanne, 26 Lavabre, Marie-Claire, 5 Lay, Felix, 216–17, 221 Le Pen, Marine, 21–22, 26, 29, 34, 37, 38n3 Lechner, Jenő (Kismarty), 204–06 Lechner, Ödön, 184, 198–99, 230 Lecomte du Nouÿ, Emile-André, 10, 103–4, 106–16, 119 Lecomte du Nouÿ, Jean-Jules Antoine, 104
Index • 349
Legnica (Liegnitz), 292, 294, 299, 306 Lemberg. See under Lviv Lenoir, Alexandre, 22 Leo XIII, pope, 328–29, 332 Leopold Salvator Habsburg, archduke. See under Habsburgs Łepkowski, Józef, 88–91 Levoča (Lőcse), 201, 204–05 Lewestam, Fryderyk, 81 Libelt, Karol, 81, 84–85 lieu(x) de mémoire, 273, 277, 283 Liman, Karel, 186 Linné, Carl von, 26 Lipótszentmiklós. See under Mikuláš Liptovský Lithuania, 316 liturgy, 51, 317, 319–22, 326, 328, 330 Livonia, 52 Livonian Governorate of Russia, 11, 44, 47 Ljubljana, 229 Lobmayer, Anton, 223–24 Lőcse. See under Levoča Lombardy, 176–77, 189n4 Lombardy Renaissance, Lombard style, 176–77, 189n4 London, 102, 176, 294 Louis XIV style, 186 Louis XIV, king of France, 31 Louis XV style, 186 Louis XVI style, 186 Louis XVIII, king of France, 23 Louvre, 182, 186, 191n34 Lowenthal, David, 77 Lübeck, 55 Lunaček, Vladimir, 227, 232 Lupu, Vasile, 107–08, 118n18 Łupienko, Aleksander, 9, 337 Łuszczkiewicz, Władysław, 88–89 Lutheran Church/Lutheranism, 23, 48, 51, 57, 62, 294 Lutsch, Hans, 296–97, 305, 307 Lviv, 83, 93, 200, 229 Lwów. See under Lviv M Magne, Lucien, 130
Maiorescu, Titu, 106, 112 Mannerism, 182, 188 Mannerist style, 179 Márai, Sándor, 184 Marek, Michaela, 13 Maria Theresia of Habsburg, empress of Austria. See under Habsburgs Marie of Edinburgh (Queen of Romania), 113 Marienburg (Malbork), 49, 56, 64, 68n63, 78 Marija Bistrica, 223, 231 Martynowski, Franciszek Ksawery, 92–93 Matthias (Matyás), king of Hungary, 183–84, 200, 282 Matuszewski, Karol, 92 Maydell, Friedrich Ludwig von, 55–56, 62 Mazzucchetti, Alessandro, 177 Medieval churches, 9–10, 12, 21–37, 43–65, 83–85, 89, 93, 115, 123–37, 139n38, 139n39, 216, 225–29, 247–48, 269–84, 293–94, 298, 305, 307, 316, 318, 326–27, 336, 338 Medievalism, 56 Mediterranean, 335 Medium Regni, 271 Megali Idea, 124, 131 memory studies, 6, 56, 63, 77, 273 Menpiot, Emil, 109–10 Mérimée, Prosper, 23 Mertens, Franz, 39n51 Meštrović, Ivan, 234 Metz, 162 Michelangelo. See under Buonarroti Middle Ages, 22–25, 32–33, 76, 80, 104, 132–34, 177–78, 184, 197, 226, 235, 247, 270, 272–73, 281, 290, 293, 299, 303–04 Middle Volga region, 248, 255, 265 Middleton, Robin, 7 Mieroszewski, Ludwik, 82 Mihai I, king of Romania, 113 Mikuláš Liptovský (Liptoszentmiklos), 205 Milan, 51, 177–78
350 • Index
Millennium celebrations, 198, 205, 221–22, 235, 270, 279, 283 Millet, Aimé, 31 Mincu, Ion, 111, 114–15, 187 mnemotopos, mnemotopes, 5, 12, 83 Mochnacki, Maurycy, 81 Mocker, Josef, 94 Modernism, Modernistic, Modernist, 5–6, 227, 235, 331 Moldavia, 102, 107–09, 117n9, 118n18, 118n20, 118n25 Moltke, Helmut von, 166 Monastery, 11, 103–04, 106–08, 115–16, 117n6, 118n11, 119n25, 127–28, 134–36, 140n40, 141n74, 141n79, 248–49, 251, 255, 258–59, 291, 294, 296, 303–04, 307, 317, 328, 338 Moncalieri (near Turin), 190 Montoreanu, Filip, 106 monument protection, 47–49, 104, 113, 135, 137, 214–15, 295–98, 307, 309n27, 309n32, 337 Moscow, 248, 255, 257–61, 263–64 motherland, 47 Munich, 149, 191n34, 217 Municipal Art Commission, 176 Muses, 125 Myskovszky, Viktor, 202 mythomotor, mythomotoric, 77–78, 81, 95 N Nagyenyed. See under Aiud Naples, 177 Napoleon I, emperor of France, 79, 254, 292 Napoleon III, emperor of France, 31, 35 Našice, 217 Nation (general), 1, 4–6, 8, 15n12, 76–78, 184, 188, 196–97, 208n2, 213, 247, 273, 275, 335–38 British, 79 Croatian, 214, 232–33 Estonian, 43–48, 63–65 French, 21–22, 24–25, 30–32, 34–37, 39n48, 79, 332n4 German, 78, 90, 149–51, 156, 159, 170
Greek, 123, 125–27, 134, 137, 139n26 Hungarian, 198, 201, 269–84, 285n12 Italian, 176, 189n2 Polish, 12, 79–82, 90–94, 326 Prussian, 78 Romanian, 113, 116, 186–87 Russian, 10 Ruthenian/Ukrainian, 329, 330, 332n2, 332n4 national heritage, 10, 15, 21–22, 43–49, 63–65, 76, 80, 89, 123, 199, 200, 223, 225, 273, 335–39 national monument(s), 10, 35, 37, 43– 49, 63–65, 103, 107, 149, 154–55, 158–59, 162, 164, 179, 274, 281 national narrative, 10, 13, 22, 24, 30–31, 35, 44, 46, 48, 123, 125, 131–32, 176–77, 183, 187–88, 234, 269–70, 274, 276–78, 283, 336–338 National Romanticism, 187 national style in architecture (general), 44, 336–37, 339n2 Croatian, 13, 213–35, 236n1, 238n62 in Estonia, 44, 48, 63 French, 9 Hungarian, 13, 182–83, 196–207, 219, 230–32 German, 63, 231–32, 290, 293, 296–98, 303, 305–6 Greek (‘avant-garde’), 125, 130, 137 Italian, 14, 176, 178, 188 Polish, 97n71, 201–4, 207 Romanian, 102–16, 187–88, 219 Russian, 258 Serbian, 228, 232 Yugoslav, 232, 234 Nationaldenkmal, 149, 152–53 nationalism, 1–2, 4–6, 31, 77, 80, 96, 123, 126, 214, 225, 230, 269, 272– 74, 276–79, 281, 285n12, 335–36 nation-building, nation-formation, 1, 6, 8, 46–47, 76–80, 94, 269–84 Nazi German occupation, 44 Nazi ideology, 338 neo-Baroque, 149, 151–53, 161, 169–70, 179, 181–82, 184–86, 229, 231
Index • 351
neo-Byzantine, 129–30, 132, 137, 140n51, 140n53, 222, 225, 227–29, 232, 234, 330–31 Neoclassicism, 12, 44, 49, 51, 62, 125, 127–28, 130, 133, 137, 138n18, 150, 152, 175, 179, 181, 185, 231, 234, 249, 258, 260, 262, 308n22, 309n29, 319 neo-Gothic, Gothic Revival, 8, 12, 22, 24, 59, 62–64, 77, 82, 85, 94, 95n26, 216, 218, 222, 233, 283, 299, 305, 307 neo-Moorish, 232 neo-Renaissance, Renaissance revival, 149–53, 169–70, 179, 181, 183, 185–86, 200, 205, 207, 216, 222–23, 229, 231, 234, 303, 305, 329 neo-Rococo, 161 neo-Romanesque, 153, 169–70, 183, 216 Nering, Johann Arnold, 191 Neugebauer, Wolfgang, 155 Neumann, Wilhelm, 44, 63 Neumann, Wilhelm Anton, 226 Nevole, Jan, 189n13 Ney, Béla, 201–02 Nice, 190n22 Nicholas I, emperor of Russia, 57, 80, 247, 250, 254–55, 258–61, 264 Nicholas II, emperor of Russia, 247 Nicolle, Emile Fréderic, 107 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 11 Nill, Gustav, 109 Nipperdey, Thomas, 164, 170 North-Hungarian Renaissance architecture, 197, 199–201, 203, 207 Nottbeck, Eugen von, 57 Nouÿ, Hyacinthe-André du, 104 Novo Čiče, 233 Noyon, 34 Nugmanova, Gulchachak, 10, 337 O Obrenović, Serbian dynasty, 185 Odobescu, Alexandru, 114, 118n11, 119n41 Oldenburg, Johann, 58
Ollanescu, Dimitrie, 115 Olwig, Kenneth R., 5 Opole (Oppeln), 292, 300–07 Orăscu, Alexandru, 106, 112 Ormós, Zsigmond, 183 Ortega y Gasset, José, 5 Orthodox Church Greek, 116, 124, 127, 130, 134, 137, 138n10 Romanian, 118n25, 187–88 Russian, Ukrainian, 247–49, 251, 253–55, 258–60, 263–64, 316, 320, 331n2 Serbian, 222, 232–33, 338 Osijek, 215–16 Ottoman Empire, Turks, 5, 9, 11, 102, 117n2, 123–24, 126–28, 130, 134, 137, 138n10, 141n73, 183, 185–87, 199, 218, 271, 282, 338 Ottoman era. See under Ottoman Empire Oxford, Franz, 58 P painting, 22, 55, 57, 62, 82, 92, 104, 106–10, 112, 118n11, 156, 178, 204, 217, 222, 233, 294, 301, 310n54, 317, 322, 326–27, 329 Paisie, Radu, 109 Pammer, J., 237n44 Paparrigopoulos, Konstantinos, 125–26, 137, 139n23 Papp, Gábor György, 13, 336 Paris, 21–22, 37, 39n69, 53, 103, 105, 111, 114–15, 130, 151, 167, 169, 178, 189n1, 190n15, 198, 201, 221, 281, 294 Paris-Lyon-Méditerrané, railway company, 178 parliament German Reich, 155 Greek, 124 Hungarian, 198 Italian, 176–79 Romanian, 112 Pasteiner, Gyula, 202–04
352 • Index
patriotism, 21, 34–36, 37, 52, 63, 83, 111, 188, 227, 279 Paul I, emperor of Russia, 249, 259 Pekár, Károly, 203 Peroš, Marko, 226, 229 Perrault, Claude, 191n34 Persian art, 107, 234 Pest, 183 Pest-Buda, 182, 271, 278, 282 Peter the Great, emperor of Russia, 9, 48, 247–48, 250, 254, 258–59, 264 Petondi, Foma, 259–60 Pfann, Paul, 158, 168 Philadelpheus, Alexandros, 133 Philippot, Florian, 21 Piedmont, 103, 190n22, 190n26 Pilar, Martin, 220, 224, 237n44 Pinelli, Achille, 327 Pisa, 102 Plitvice Lakes, 224–25 Podhorsky, Stjepan, 220 Poelzig, Hans, 296, 304 Poggi, Valerio, 323 Pohlmann, Robert, 62 Pokutyński, Filip, 92 Pol, Wincenty, 91 Poland, 9, 12, 76–79, 83, 85, 88–89, 92, 176, 202–3, 290, 316, 326, 330, 336 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 5, 11–12, 76–77, 79–80, 82–83, 86, 90, 316, 330 Polo, Marco, 178, 190n21 Ponza di san Martino, Gustavo, 176, 178 populist discourses, 21–22, 36–37, 163, 337 Porta Westfalica, 165–66, 169–70 Posilović, August, 233 positivism, 9, 27, 36, 81, 90, 92 postmodernism, 6 Potlogi, 187 Potsdam, 155 Poznan (Poznań, Posen), 83, 204 Präger, Christmut, 166 Prague, 200, 229 preservation of monuments (general), 9–10, 13, 44, 91, 94, 336, 338 in Croatia, 214–15, 219–22
in Estonia, 48, 52–53, 57, 59, 63 in France, 22–24, 27, 29, 33, 35–36, 78 in Greece, 131–32, 134–35, 137 in Habsburg Empire, 78, 214–15 in Hungary, 275–76 in Prussia, 295–99, 306 in Romania, 112–13 in Russia, 44, 247, 250, 255–56, 258, 262, 264 Prešov (Eperjes), 205 Promis, Carlo, 177, 179 Protestantism/Protestant Churches, 48, 51, 62, 82, 290–91, 294, 303, 316, 320 Provincial Commission for the Protection of Artefacts and Historical Monuments in the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia, 215 Prussia, 11, 26, 31, 35–36, 57, 76, 78, 80, 83, 89–90, 150, 154–56, 158, 161–62, 170, 181, 290–307, 309n27 Prussian (German) partition, 81, 83, 89 public buildings, 14, 336 in Croatia, 228–33 in Estonia, 43–65 in Romania, 103, 111, 114 in Germany, 151 in Greece, 133 in Hungary, 197–98 in Italy, 177 in Prussia, 297, 300, 306 public monuments, statues, 6, 14, 22, 25, 27, 29, 30, 35, 39n69, 59, 62, 102, 115, 149–71, 172n33, 178–79, 183, 205, 233, 304 Pugin, Augustus Welby Northmore, 82, 94 purification of monuments, 9 Q Quast, Ferdinand von, 78, 295–96, 298, 309n29 Quattrocento (fifteenth century), 176–78, 301 Queen Maria style, 187 Quittner, Zsigmond, 205
Index • 353
R race, 9, 21, 25–27, 29–30, 32, 35–37, 141n72 racialization, 22, 25, 27 Radić, Frano, 226–27 Radu from Afumați, 104, 113 Radwański, Feliks, 96 Raffet, Auguste, 108 Rampley, Mathew, 76 Raschdorff, Julius, 152, 181 Ratti, Gaetano, 177 reburial, 276, 278–81, 283 reconstruction, 37, 46, 49, 51, 55–57, 64–65, 78, 86, 88, 105, 116, 134–36, 142n80, 177, 181, 184, 186, 218, 258–60, 264, 269–70, 282–83, 296, 301, 304–06, 324, 337–38 red-brick in architecture, 49, 59, 130 Regat (region in Romania), 188 Reichensperger, August, 78, 85, 94 Reissenberger, Ludwig, 104 Renaissance, Renaissance style, 86, 89, 92, 124, 127, 150, 152, 167, 169–70, 176–78, 182–84, 187–88, 190n26, 196–207, 208n4, 209n18, 230, 293, 299, 301, 309n29, 338 Rendić, Ivan, 233–34 Renouard, Charles Paul, 107 restoration of monuments, 7, 9, 337 in Croatia, 215–16, 218, 222–23, 231, 233, 238n62 in Estonia, 45, 51, 57, 62, 64 in France, 7, 9, 23–24, 31, 36–37 in Germany, 9 in Greece, 129, 134–37, 141n67 in Hungary, 184, 197, 200 in Italy, 318, 323 in Poland, 85 in Prussia, 298, 304–06 in Romania, 102–16, 118n16 in Russia, 247, 258, 260, 262, 264 Rettig, Wilhelm, 158, 168 Reval. See under Tallin revival, 12, 22, 44, 57, 125, 129, 133, 137, 216–17, 235, 303, 305, 317 revivalism, 13, 44, 57, 59, 62–64, 207, 329–31
Révoil, Henri, 112 Revolutions of 1789 in France, 23–24, 34–37, 39n69, 81, 138n10 of 1830 in France, 23 of 1848/49 in Europe, 86, 155, 269–71, 278–79 of 1905 in Russia, 11 of 1917 in Russia, 170 Rhineland, 78 Rickers, Heinrich Wilhelm Joachim, 53, 55, 67n50 Riga, 52, 62–63 Rijeka, 234 Rococo, 179 Roman Empire, 82 Roman Rite, 320, 326, 332 Romanesque, 24–25, 63, 127, 130, 177, 183, 188, 198, 227, 301, 304 Romania, Romanian, 9–10, 102–17, 117n2, 117n6, 117n9, 118n11, 118n25, 119n25, 119n29, 119n41, 175–76, 185–88, 205, 219, 221, 275 Romanian architecture, 102–03, 110–12, 114–16, 187 Romantic movement, Romantic period, Romanticism, 8, 12, 22, 24, 44–45, 51, 53, 55–56, 63, 77, 80–83, 90–91, 187, 216 Rome, Roman, 9, 13, 30–31, 82, 114, 127, 133, 139n39, 159, 167, 169, 176–78, 189, 190n17, 249, 261, 275, 314–31, 331n1, 332n4, 332n10, 333n26, 337–38 Rossi, Aldo, 63 Royal court of Romania, 109–10, 113, 118n11 Royal crypt French, 22, 37 Romanian, 107, 113 Royal graves (French), 22, 37 Royal Household Administration, 179 Royal Household Ministry, 179 Royal palaces, 14, 111, 151, 154–55, 175–89, 190n23, 191n38, 271 Rudolf, Kronprinz of Austria-Hungary. See under Habsburgs
354 • Index
ruins, 10, 37, 49–53, 55, 58, 64–65, 78, 82–83, 86, 107, 109–10, 127–28, 139n38, 139n39, 153, 203, 248, 251, 253, 256, 259–262, 270, 272, 275, 278, 282, 284, 297 Rum Millet, 124 Rümann, Wilhelm von, 160 Rumpelmayer, Viktor, 186 Rundbogenstil, 177, 183, 301 Ruskin, John, 44, 52, 94, 199 Russia (Russian Empire), Russian, 5, 7, 9–11, 43–49, 51, 57–58, 76, 80–81, 88–89, 92, 102, 107, 127–29, 170, 172n23, 221, 234–35, 247–51, 253–65, 269, 316, 338 Russian partition, Kingdom of Poland (after 1815), 9, 11, 77, 79, 83, 85, 88–90, 92, 96 Russian revolution, 170 Russian style, 234, 258 Russification, 47 Ruteni. See under Ruthenians Ruthenians, Ruthenian, 314–17, 319– 21, 324, 327–331, 331n2, 332n2, 332n4, 336 Ryberg, Heinrich, 55, 58 S Saint-Antonin, 24, 32 Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin, 23 St. Petersburg, 248–49, 257–59 Salem (Mass.), 294 Sándy, Gyula, 207, 231 Sárospatak, 205–06 Sarrazin, Otto, 167 Savoy court, Savoy dynasty, 178–79, 189 Săvulescu, Alexandru, 106, 112 Saxony, 162 Schaper, Fritz, 158 Schleissheim (near Munich), 191n34 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Josef von, 81 Schilling, Johannes, 158 Schinkel, Karl Friedrich, 78, 150, 152, 157, 163, 168, 295, 297–302, 306, 309n27 Schlüter, Andreas, 152, 181
Schmidt, Alexander, 252, 254, 262 Schmidt, Friedrich von, 94, 216, 218 Schmitz, Bruno, 158, 164–70, 172n27, 172n32 Scholarly Society connected to the Krakow University, 89–91 Schön, Theodor von, 78 Scott, George Gilbert, 94, 208n5 Scythe, 275 secularization of monasteries, 11, 292–93, 297, 303–04, 306–07 secularization, secular ideas, 32–34, 36–37, 84 Seidel, Paul, 154 Semper, Gottfried, 27, 152, 181, 199, 217 Serbia, Serbian, 140n53, 140n57, 185, 187, 228, 232, 338 Seville, 51 Shelkovnikov, Yakov, 249 Sibiu, 104 Siemering, Leopold Rudolf, 160 Silesia, 11, 204, 207, 290–300, 303–07, 309n27, 309n29 Sinaia, 104, 186–87, 191n47 Sissi. See under Elisabeth of Bavaria Slavonia, 213, 215–16, 218–25 Slonim, 317 Smith, Anthony D., 5, 79 socio-Darwinism, 90 Socolescu, Ion, 111 Sofia, 176, 186 Solntsev, Gavriil, 254, 256–57 Sørensen, Marie Louise Stig, 46 Soufflot, Jacques-Germain, 37 Spânu, Anda-Lucia, 10, 337 Split, 234 Srijem, 215, 218–25 St. Emericus, king of Hungary, 271 St. Stephen. See under István (Stephen), king of Hungary Stachowski, Franciszek, 84 Starčević, Ante, 230 Starov, Ivan, 249 statutory protection. See under monument protection Ștefan cel Mare (Stephan the Great), prince of Moldavia, 108–09, 118n25
Index • 355
Stephanie, princess of Austria-Hungary. See under Habsburgs Sterian, George, 111, 119n35 Stier, Wilhelm, 55 Stockholm, 181 Storck, Karl, 106 Stramucci, Emilio, 179–80 Strasbourg, 149 Stremme, Christoph Conrad, 58 Stronczyński Kazimierz, 88 Strossmayer, Josip Juraj, 215–18 Strzygowski, Josef, 226, 237n46 Stückelberg, Ernst Alfred, 226 Stüler, Friedrich August, 150, 183 Summerson, John, Sir, 7 Suyumbeki, Tatar empress (tsarina), 253–54, 259–60, 264 Sveta Marija pod Okićem, 233 Swedish lands, 5, 44 Swiss-style villas, 223 Switzerland, 27 Szabo, Gjuro, 232 Szathmari, Carol, 118n11 Székesfehérvár, 269–272, 275–278, 280–284 Szklarska Poręba (Schreiberhau), 294 T Tallinn (Reval), 43, 46, 50, 53–54, 56–58, 60–65 Tallinn Civil Engineering Office, 55 Târgoviște, 103, 108–10 Tartu (Dorpat, Yuryev), 43–46, 49–50, 52–53, 55, 57–59, 61, 64–65, 66n10 Tattarescu, Gheorghe, 112 Texas, 58 textiles, 203, 215–17, 221–22, 229–31 Theodoric, 165, 169, 172n23 theory of architecture, 36, 56, 93, 105, 199, 217, 219, 226 Thiers, Adolphe, 23 Thiersch, Frederick von, 149 Thiesse, Anne-Marie, 77 Thon, Konstantin, 259–60 Titelbah, Stojan, 186 tombstones, 233, 248, 254, 261, 304 town hall, 9, 24, 32–36
in Berlin, 181 in Levoča, 205 in Opole, 306 in Posen, 204 in Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, 24 Silesian, 291, 293–94, 300–03, 306, 309n29 Transleitania, 182–84, 188 Transylvania, 102, 188, 199, 201 Treaty of Plombières, 190n22 Trenk, Henri, 105, 118n11 Trier, 151 Trieste, 221–22, 234 Trinci Cecchelli, Margherita, 317 Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, 213, 215, 218–19, 231 Trzebnica (Trebnitz), 304 Turin, 175–80, 188, 190n17, 190n22, 191n34 Turković, Dragutin, 222 Turopolje, 223 U Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, 314–16, 320–22, 328–31, 332n2 Ukraine/Ukrainian, 13, 314–18, 321, 328–31, 331n2, 332n2, 337 Ukrainization, 329–31 Unger, Georg Christian, 182 Ungern-Sternberg, Alexander von, 57 Union of Brest, 316, 332n2 United Kingdom. See under Britain United States of America, 58, 102, 153, 294, 308n20, 338 University of Tartu, 49–53, 55, 57–58, 66n10 Upart, Anatole, 13, 337 Urban VIII, pope. See under Barberini, Maffeo V Vaga, Alfred, 45, 48, 52 Vaga, Voldemar, 45, 52, 59, 65 Varaždin, 215, 237n44 Vasi, Giuseppe, 318–19, 327 Vatican State, 176
356 • Index
Vaudremer, Auguste-Émile, 103 Veleševec, 233 Venetian style, 183, 319 Venice, 176 Vercingetorix, 30–32 vernacular architecture, 184–85, 187, 198–99, 205, 214–25, 229–35, 336 Versailles, 186 Vienna, 79, 92, 102, 104–05, 130, 176–77, 179, 181–83, 188, 198, 200, 214–20, 291, 297, 306 Vienna Congress, 79, 297, 306 Villas, 186–87, 220, 223–25 Vilnius (Wilno), 89 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène-Emmanuel, 7–9, 21, 23–37, 38n26, 45, 85, 94, 103–6, 110–11, 116, 298 Visegrád, 200, 271 Vistula-Baltic Gothic, 89, 93 Vitet, Ludovic, 23–25 Vittorio Emanuele, king of Italy, 159 Volga region. See under Middle Volga region Volga Bulgaria, 248 Volz, August Franz Leberecht, 62 Vomm, Wolfgang, 166 W Wägener, Ernst, 162 Waidmann, Kuno, 223–24 Wallachia, 102, 104, 109, 117n6, 117n9, 187 war Civil war in Greece, 136 Crimean War, 117n7 First Silesian War, 299 First World War, 44, 62, 93, 165, 172n23, 175, 182, 187–89, 201, 204, 207, 213, 225, 227–29, 291–92 Franco-Prussian War, 31, 35–36, 162 Great Northern War, 43, 62 Greek war of indenpendence, 12, 124–25, 127–29, 132, 135 Hungarian liberation war of 1848/49, 271, 278–79, 283 Napoleonic Wars, 248–49, 254, 291–92, 297, 303, 306
Romanian war of independence, 106 Roman-Gallic war, 31 Second World War, 44, 58–59, 117n9, 135, 137, 138n10, 153, 170, 184, 309n29 War of 1877–78, 127 War of the Austrian Succession, 11 Wars after the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1990s, 338 Warburg, Aby, 43 Warsaw, 77, 79–80, 83, 85, 87–89, 92–93 Warsaw Academy of Friends of Learning, 80, 89 Warsaw University, 89 Weiss, Zagreb family, 223 West-German, 59 Wilhelm I, emperor of Germany, 14, 149, 151, 153–55, 157, 159–66, 168–71, 172n32 Wilhelm II, emperor of Germany, 149, 152–64, 169–71, 296 Wilson, David, 86 Wood, Christopher S., 56, 63 wooden architecture, 13, 26, 178–79, 184, 187, 217, 219–24, 249–51, 254, 300, 323 Wrocław (Breslau), 291–94, 297, 304 Württemberg, 162 Y Ybl, Miklós, 182–83 Yeats, Johana, 166, 172n32 Yugoslav (today Croatian) Academy of Arts and Sciences, 216, 222 Yugoslavia, 228 Yuryev. See under Tartu Z Zagreb, 216–24, 227–33, 235, 237n26 Żebrawski, Teofil, 88 Zimmermann, Max Georg, 226 Zorinić, Albert, 222 Zubrzycki, Jan Sas, 93 Zuccalli, Enrico, 191n34 Żyrowice, 317, 323, 325–26