Rozważania o rekonstrukcji w kontekście doktryny konserwatorskiej dawniej i dziś

• Authors: Rymaszewski Bohdan

Title variants

EN

Reflections on reconstruction in the light of conservation doctrines past and present

• Languages of publication: PL EN

Abstracts

EN

It is easier to evaluate the motivation of centemporary reconstruction against the backdrop of examples from the past. Beginning with antiquity, the intention of numerous undertakings was the recreation of objects from past eras. We do not know whether up to the Renaissance they were preceded by doctrinal reflections. Certainly, such reflections were conducted after 1510 at the Florentine Academy, and dealt with the purposefulness of the reconstruction of missing fragments of ancient statues. In these discussions antiquarians supported such operations which, in turn, were opposed by artists. The latter regarded models dating back to antiquity as ideal, and attempted to imitate — reanimatethem. In their opinion, existing works, regardless of their state of preservation, could not be subjected to any form of intervention. At times, however, political reasons were decisive for the purposefulness of partial reconstruction (e. g. sculptures endowed with symbolic significance). The Renaissance did not strive towards the reconstruction of ancient ruins but willingly displayed them (i. a. by pulling down medieval buildings — in this way it disclosed the Pantheon and the Arch of Titus). The beginning of the nineteenth century witnessed specific reconstructions of „ancient edifices” whish actually never stood on the given site (e. g. the Temple of Sybil and the Gothic Cottage in Puławy). Work was also performed on authentic historical buildings with the intention of adding „antique” features by supplementing them with „Classical” or „Gothic” elements. Such projects were prepared in the first half of the nineteenth century for the Cracow Cloth Hall and Floriańska Gate by P. C. Aigner. In the middle of the same century E. Viollet-le-Duc, an adherent of restoration, permitted „the restoration of an integrity which perhaps was never a feature of the given building”. On the other hand, J. Ruskin opposed all intervention as regards historical buildings. Reconstruction was also severaly criticised by A. N. Didron, P. Merimee, W. Hugo and A. France. In Poland a similar attitude was represented by I. Krasicki, J. I. Kraszewski, S. Tomkowicz, J. Muczkowski and P. Michałowski who warned in connection with work conducted on the altar of the St. Mary church in Cracow that „one should leave untouched that what has remained of the accomplishment of a great artist”. Just as E. Viollet-le-Duc in France, so K. Kremer in Cracow tried to provide his restoration praxis with theoretical justification. He claimed that this was the way for raising the „historical merit” of transformed historical buildings which were to serve patriotic purposes. Political arguments were the prime source of inspiration for the restoration and reconstniction of the castel in Malbork. In accordance with the thesis proposed by T. von Schon, the Oberpresident of Prussia, this particular building was to become a „Prussian Valhalla”. At the beginning of the twentieth century A. Riegl and C. Boito justified the necessity of abandoning reconstruction. Their opinion, however, did not put a halt to historicising trends in construction and reconstruction. In 1929 the cathedral of St. Wit in Prague was completed in accordance with a Gothic design, and in 1903-1912 the Campanilla in St. Mark’s Square in Venice was reconstructed. A design for a Polish Acropolis which was to be located on Wawel Hill (St. Wyspiański, W. Ekielski) theoretically assumed that adaptation would be accompanied solely by the conservation of historical buildings and the raising of new ones, maintained „in a contemporary style”; in practice, however, it foresaw the reconstruction on castle hill of the Cracow church of the Holy Cross and the Parisian Saint Chapelle. A project for the restoration of the Wawel, made in the first decade of the twentieth century by Z. Hendel, was rejected by the central conservation authorities in Vienna for doctrinal reasons; the Austrian conservators followed the principles formulated by Riegl. Ultimately, in 1908 M. Dworak accepted, although with certain resarvations, the disclosure of the Renaissance galleries of the Wawel castle. In doing so, he took into account the significance of the buildings for the Poles. Despite a firm adherence to the theoretical principle of non-intervention, the majority of European countries which in the course of the first world war suffered serious losses of historical buildings decided to recognize the purposefulness of their reconstruction, including historical forms. In Poland, this was the method of reconstructing houses of the Old Town market squares in Kalisz and Kazimierz. During World War II the scale of destruction was much greater. In an outline of a post-war conservation programme, J. Zachwatowicz declared that ruined historical buildings would be reconstructed from their foundations, without undermining the principles of science; this task was necessitated by the intentional destruction of the Polish cultural heritage. The reconstruction of cathedrals in Gniezno and Poznań ignored, for emotional-political reasons, valuable eighteenth-centaury strata. In turn, the reconstruction of Warsaw cathedral did not take into consideration the strata introduced in 1838 by A. Idźikowski. Work on the Poznań town hall restored Renaissance polychromies depicting Polish monarchs, which were no longer extant when fire was set to the building during the war. Further more, quotations from the Constitution of People’s Poland were added. The reconstruction of Old Town complexes in Poznań and Olsztyn was supposed to „free” certain elevations from Prussian impact. This process consisted of the liquidation of details from the middle of the nineteenth century and their replacement with pseudo-Baroque elements. The usage of modern stylistics during the reconstruction of burnt down houses in Opole, the majority of which were actually Baroque, did not prevent declarations which claimed that the work was conducted on „Piast buildings”. The intention of such announcements was to ensure approval for the undertaking. National and emotional factors made it possible to reconstruct the Warsaw statue of F. Chopin, destroyed during Nazi occupation, in the Sezession style during a period when the latter was totally condemned (1958). A sizeable group of martyrological monuments composed the heritage of the war years. The leading representative of this group is the former KL Auschwitz whose significance obligates retention and at the same time excludes the purposefulness of any reconstruction. On the other hand, patriotic emotions as regards the Warsaw Old Town and Royal Castle gave rise to a universal conviction about the reconstruction of those monuments. Political arguments formulated by German communists were the reason why the local authorities ordered the shell of the St. Mary church in Dresden to be treated as a „permanent ruin”. A special plaque was to recall the Allied bombings of the town and ,Anglo-American barbarity”. In Berlin only a Baroque portal with a balcony was transferred from the ruined and burnt down castle to a new building. This fragment was regarded as particularly valuable because it was precisely from this balcony that K. Liebknecht made his speeches. The recent transformations in Germany resulted in the reconstruction of the Dresden church and serious discussions on the need to reconstruct the Berlin castle. Certain architectonic reconstructions in the former Soviet Union were also the outcome of ideological inspirations. They included the selection of a form for the dome of the palace chapel in Peterhof. The postwar choice was that of an unrealized eighteenth-century design which the tsarina regarded as un-Orthodox and thus contrary to Russian expectations. The Soviet authorities, on the other hand, recognised it as safer from an ideological point of view. One of the symptoms of glasnost was a wave of reconstructions of churches devastated during the Stalinist era. Such work has been initiated on a seventeenth-century church in the Moscow Red Square; here, the chief argument was the fact that Suvorov prayed in this building on the eve of his expedition to the West. Respect for questions of religion was the reason for considerable reconstruction of murals containing Talmudic texts during the rebuilding of an seventeenth-century synagogue in Tykocin. In the seventeenth century, decisions made by the Cracow synod required that the administration of churches restore the sculptures and paintings entrusted to them; should this task prove to be impossible, they ware to burn them. The refusal to remove fragments of ruins in certain Warsaw churches resulted form a wish to retain permanent traces of the Warsaw Uprising. This inclination is well illustrated by the interior of the church in Żytnia Street or the display of a semi-charred cross in the St. Martin church. A total condemnation of reconstruction 0. Ruskin) or the association with this term of smallest supplementations (A. Lauterbach) was not, andis not observed in practice. In certain instances it is required by the very nature of things (e. g. historical parks). As a rule, conclusions formulated as regards Old Town complexes constitute a sui generis proposal for the reconstruction of a spatial configuration (the supplemention of historical solids) even if this task is to be implemented by operating with contemporary architectonic forms (e. g. the tower next to the Hilton Hotel in Budapest).

• Publisher: Narodowy Instytut Dziedzictwa
• Journal: Ochrona Zabytków
• Year: 1993
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 227-236

Dates

published

1993

Contributors

author

Rymaszewski Bohdan

References

• M. Kurzątkowski w Małym słowniku ochrony zabytkow (Warszawa, 1989), ktorego jest autorem.
• J. Karłowicz, A. Kryński, w V tomie Słownika języka polskiego (Warszawa 1919) na s. 506
• Z. Waźbiński, Muzea i zbiory artystyczne epoki nowożytnej, cz. II Wiek XV-XVI, Warszawa 1970, s. 25.
• H. von Einem, Der Torso als Thema der bildenne Kunst, „Zeitschrift fur Aesteties und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft”, 1935, nr 29, s. 331.
• D. Ettlinger, Herkules Florentinus, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz”, 1972, z. l6, s. 119.
• A. Barbacci, Konserwacja zabytkow we Włoszech, „Biblioteka Muzealnictwa i Ochrony Zabytkow”, seria B, t. XVI, Warszawa 1966, s. 35.
• J. Frycz, Restauracja i konserwacja zabytkow architektury w Polsce w latach 1795-1918, Warszawa 1975, s. 29;
• E. Kiełczewska, Poglądy Anny Potockiej na ochronę dziel sztuki jako konsekwencja postawy romantycznej, „Ochrona Zabytkow”, 1980, nr 3, s. 223-231.
• T. Jaroszewski, Piotr Aigner 1756-81, „Studia i materiały do historii i teorii architektury i urbanistyki”, t. 5, Warszawa 1965, s. 25.
• J. Ruskin, The seven lamps of architecture, London 1849, cyt. za E. Małachowicz, Ochrona środowiska kulturowego, t. 2, Warszawa 1988, s. 322.
• E. Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonne de l'architecture francaise du Xle au XVI siecle, Paris 1868,
• P. Leon, La vie des monuments francais. Destruction. Restauration., Paryż 1951;
• I Krasicki, Dzieła, Warszawa 1803;
• St. Tomkiewicz, Nieco o zabytkach krakowskich, ich miłośnikach i niszczycielach, „Czas” 1887, nr 29, ss. 52-53;
• J. Muczkowski, Jak konserujować zabytki przeszłości, .Architekt”.
• J. I. Kraszewski, Obrazy z życia i podroży, t. 2, Wilno 1842, s. 68.
• M. Abramowicz, Karol Kremer jego stosunek do starożytności i udział w zakresie restauracji zabytkow, Praca magisterska, Studium Zabytkoznawstwa i Konserwatorstwa UMK w Toruniu, mps. 1957.
• M. Arszyński, Dzieło sztuki-historia-polityka na marginesie książki Hartmana Booskmanna „Die Marienburg in XIXJahrhundert", „Zapiski Historyczne” 1986, z. 4.
• B. Schmid, Die Denkmalpflege in Westprussen 1904-1910. Danzig 1919.
• Konferencja konserwatorska, .Architekt” 1909, nr 10, s. 108.
• A. Riegl, Der Moderne Denkmalkults sein Wesen und seine Entstehung, Wien- Leipzig 1903.
• C. Boito, I nostri vecchi monumenti, 1866,
• Akropolis "projekt zabudowy Wawelu obmyślany przez Stanisława Wyspiańskiego i Władysława Ekielskiego, ,Architekt”, 1908, z. 5-6.
• B. Rymaszewski, Zagadnienia zabytkoznawcze w tworczości St. Wyspiańskiego, Toruń 1957.
• M. Dvorak, Das Konigschloss am Wawel, „Kungstgeschichtlisches Jahrbuch der Zentralkomission”, Wien 1909,
• В. Rymaszewski, O przetrwanie dawnych miast, Warszawa 1984.
• T. Zarębska, Kalisz, K. Żurawski, Kazimierz Dolny (w:) Zabytki urbanistyki i architektury w Polsce. Odbudowa i konserwacja, t. 1, Miasta historyczne, Warszawa 1986.
• B. Rymaszewski, Era ochrony zabytkow Jana Zachwatowicza, „Ochrona Zabytkow” 1984, nr 2, s. 118
• J. Zachwatowicz, Program, zasady konserwacji zabytkow (w:) J. Zachwatowicz, Wybor prac, „Biblioteka Muzealnictwa i Ochrony Zabytkow”, seria B, t. LXVIII, Warszawa 1981, s. 37. 38.
• H. Kondziela, Stare Miasto w Poznaniu, zniszczenia, odbudowa— program, dalszych prac, Poznań 1971, s. 80.
• J. A. Chrościcki, A. Rottermund, Atlas architektury Warszawy, Warszawa 1977, ss. 200-201.
• P. Jasienica, Święte popioły, „Tygodnik Powszechny” 1959, nr 38 (326),
• L. Tyrmand, Sacco di Varsovia, ib. 1950, nr 37.
• Z. Rewski, O odprusaczaniu architektury Ziem. Zachodnich, „Odra” 1949, nr 7, s. 7.
• R. Horoszewicz, Orły piastowskie w Opolu, „Ochrona Zabytkow” 1950, nr 2-3.
• Denkmale der Geschichte und Kultur. Ihre Erhaltung unci Pflege in der Deutschen Demokratischen Repuhlick, pr. zb. pod red. L. Deitersa, Berlin 1976, s. 177.
• M. Rymaszewska, Problemy konserwatorskie wystroju malarskiego sali w.elkiej dawnej synagogi w Tykocinie, „Rocznik Białostocki”, t. XVI, 1989・
• J. Pasierb, Ochrona zabytkow sztuki sakralnej, Warszawa 1971, s. 17.
• A. Lauterbach, O konserwacji historycznej i romantycznej. Pierścień sztuki, Warszawa 1929.

Identifiers

ISSN

0029-8247