Berlin's Architectural Citations: Reconstruction, Simulation, and the Problem of Historical Authenticity

Reunified Berlin's ubiquitous examples of architectural citation—such as the Reichstag, the plans for the Stadtschloß, the Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz, the new Hotel Adlon, and the FriedrichstadtPassagen—variously inscribe contemporary architectural styles with allusive reinventions of previous forms and cultural discourses, incorporate remnants of older edifices, or use partial reconstructions for new social purposes. In the process, these projects problematize conventional principles of architectural restoration by dramatizing a productive tension between past and present, between authenticity and simulation, between genuine nostalgia and the sometimes cynical manipulation of historical memory. Relying on the synchronicity of (seemingly) nonsynchronous styles, architectural citation goes beyond postmodern pastiche; such citation signifies Berlin's renegotiation of its identity as the new-old capital by recycling half-obliterated and yet irrepressible traces of urban history within the parameters of international capitalism, Europe-directed national politics, and the rampant tourist industry.

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IL RESTAURO ARCHITETTONICO AL POLITECNICO DI MILANO: L’APPORTO DI LILIANA GRASSI

Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere - Incontri di Studio ◽

10.4081/incontri.2016.246 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Amedeo Bellini

Keyword(s):

Technical Skill ◽

Historical Interpretation ◽

The Social ◽

Historical Authenticity ◽

Post War ◽

Architectural Restoration ◽

Conceptual Foundations ◽

Formal Style

Liliana Grassi, who works since the crucial moment of the post-war reconstruction, in the architectural restoration has to tackle the problem of the use of the language of Modernism, whose conceptual foundations are based on anti-historical authenticity, moving both from the acceptance of the new language and from the refusal to consider it a sort of “ultimate formal style”, separating it from the social and existential contents on which it was based. Liliana Grassi stays inside the tradition that links restoration to the historical interpretation of architecture from which she infers selective parameters, but in a view that goes beyond the old positivist stand: she shuns the tricky definitions of art and “not art” of the neo-idealistic culture. With great planning sensibility she carries out restorations of cultural and formal excellence, she succeeds in making the old, recuperated with high technical skill, discuss with the new, as it occurs in the old Ospedale Maggiore in Milan.

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Mozart's Figaro and Don Giovanni, Operatic Canon, and National Politics in Nineteenth-Century Prague

19th-Century Music ◽

10.1525/ncm.2018.41.3.183 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 41 (3) ◽

pp. 183-205

Author(s):

Martin Nedbal

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

National Museum ◽

National Politics ◽

German Culture ◽

Don Giovanni ◽

The World ◽

German Speaking ◽

Historical Authenticity ◽

Nozze Di Figaro ◽

World Premiere

After the enormous success of Le nozze di Figaro at Prague's Nostitz Theater in 1786 and the world premiere of Don Giovanni there in 1787, Mozart's operas became canonic works in the Bohemian capital, with numerous performances every season throughout the nineteenth century. These nineteenth-century Prague Mozart productions are particularly well documented in the previously overlooked collection of theater posters from the Czech National Museum and the mid-nineteenth-century manuscript scores of Le nozze di Figaro. Much sooner than elsewhere in Europe, Prague's critics, audiences, and opera institutions aimed at historically informed, “authentic” productions of these operas. This article shows that the attempts to transform Mozart's operas into autonomous artworks, artworks that would faithfully reflect the unique vision of their creator and not succumb to changing audience tastes, were closely linked to national politics in nineteenth-century Prague. As the city's population became more and more divided into ethnic Czechs and Germans, both groups appropriated Mozart for their own narratives of cultural uniqueness and cultivation. The attempts at historic authenticity originated already in the 1820s, when Czech opera performers and critics wanted to perform Don Giovanni in a form that was as close as possible to that created by Mozart in 1787 but distorted in various German singspiel adaptations. Similar attempts at historical authenticity are also prominent in Bedřich Smetana's approach to Le nozze di Figaro, during his tenure as the music director of the Czech Provisional Theater in the late 1860s. German-speaking performers and critics used claims of historical authenticity in the 1830s and 40s to stress Prague's importance as a prominent center of German culture. During the celebrations of the 1887 Don Giovanni centennial, furthermore, both the Czech and German communities in Prague appropriated Mozart's operas into their intensely nationalistic debates.

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Politics of the Blessed Lady: Catholic Art in the Contemporary Hungarian Culture Industry

Religions ◽

10.3390/rel12080577 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (8) ◽

pp. 577

Author(s):

Marc Roscoe Loustau

Keyword(s):

Material Culture ◽

Cultural Production ◽

Multiple Scales ◽

Historical Memory ◽

Culture Industry ◽

Cultural Preservation ◽

National Politics ◽

Political Processes ◽

Institutional Legacies ◽

Professional Disciplines

I examine Hungary’s Catholic arts industry and its material practices of cultural production: the institutions and professional disciplines through which devotional material objects move as they become embedded in political processes of national construction and contestation. Ethnographic data come from thirty-six months of fieldwork in Hungary and Transylvania, and focuses on three museum and gallery exhibitions of Catholic devotional objects. Building on critiques of subjectivity- and embodiment-focused research, I highlight how the institutional legacies of state socialism in Hungary and Romania inform a national politics of Catholic materiality. Hungarian cultural institutions and intellectuals have been drawn to work with Catholic art because Catholic material culture sustains a meaningful presence across multiple scales of political contestation at the local, regional, and state levels. The movement of Catholic ritual objects into the zone of high art and cultural preservation necessitates that these objects be mobilized for use within the political agendas of state-embedded institutions. Yet, this mobilization is not total. Ironies, confusions, and contradictions continue to show up in Transylvanian Hungarians’ historical memory, destabilizing these political uses.

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