ARCHITECTURA PATRIAE; or The Destruction of Germany's Architectural Heritage

by LON KRIER
Architectural Design, volume 54 (1984), Jul/Aug pages 101-102. Also in: "Lon Krier: Houses, Palaces, Cities", Demetri Porphyrios, editor, Academy Publications, London, 1984.

"By building we build our own selves, the individual builds himself and also a people builds itself." This quotation by Paul Schmitthenner could be continued as follows: to build a "Heimat" (home) and to cultivate it is the aim of all human striving; it is the goal of architecture, the arts and of all human work. At present, however, ninety per cent of the German population live and work in new, postwar buildings which after forty years still have failed to become homes. All industrial countries, irrespective of their political constitution, drive towards the functional dismemberment and social fragmentation of their cities with equal ruthlessness. The style with which the rulers disguise themselves changes year after year: at first neo-Classical, then neo-Gothic, then Modernist. Today kitsch triumphs from Las Vegas to Moscow and from Berlin to Peking. While everywhere citizens fight modernist planning, architects carry on threatening us with merciless "expressions of our times". As if they have not helped the Zeitgeist sufficiently, as if democracy is only a question of style, they quarrel about the nature of democratic and totalitarian architecture. But they do not question the fragmentation of the industrial city, and they excuse their own lack of direction and cultural emptiness by invoking the aimlessness of the present historical period. Indeed, this architectural debate plays down a much more important struggle: the struggle between the democratic model of a polycentric city and the almighty industrialtotalitarian model of urban sprawl. The issue is whether our cities continue to be converted into lands of exile, or whether architects learn again to design cities which represent "Heimat". In Germany since the last war, it has become indecent to speak of "Heimat" . And yet we all come from somewhere and always long to be somewhere. Only when coming from somewhere and longing to be somewhere can we speak of having a home.

In terms of industrial development, Germany is the most advanced country in Europe. It is also the ugliest, since beautiful places are only those which have not yet been dominated by industry. Industrial progress and "Heimat" exclude each other like fire and water. Today one associates with "Neue Heimat" only a threatening and corrupt housing monopoly. If, as is the case, Germans are today the people most keen on traveling around the world, this is so because they search for beauty and the old "Heimat", something which the Federal Republic of Germany offers so sparsely. For those who first learned to love German cities from old novels and Baedeker guides, the contemporary urban constructions are but rundown caricatures and pale shadows of once magnificent places. Forty years of industrial efforts have produced not one single place or building that I could long for. Instead, industrial urban development destroyed more "Heimat" than bombs did during the war. After all, sixty per cent of German buildings survived the Second World War. Only less than fifteen per cent of these survived the industrial plans of the last thirty years.

We still use melodious, and alas so promising names, like Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Bremen, but "Heimat" can be found only in a few narrow streets. We all know too well that satellite towns and traffic junctions, pedestrian and industrial zones, curtain walls and office landscapes cannot represent "Heimat". Could anybody long for a housing estate or a business district? The tragic mistakes of industrial urban development become evident only when compared with the few but successful examples of authentic craftsmanlike reconstructions. Today only a few know that Rothenburg-upon-Tauber in Germany and Verona in Italy were half ruined in 1945. The government architect (Regierungsbaumeister) Fritz Florian

and the mayor of Rothenburg Mr. Hrner realized that it was impossible to reconstruct the town and at the same time meet the demands of modern traffic and industry. Instead, for the benefit of the community, traffic and industry had to meet the demands of the town. The gigantic wounds of these two towns were healed completely by 1953. In contrast, modern urban developments still appear today fragmented and incomplete. For example, Stuttgart, Hannover, Bremen and Frankfurt have all succumbed to an industrial re-designing mania. But even the most frenetic building activity can yield but a limited new reality. Furthermore, it is characteristic of industrial development to ruthlessly exploit and destroy all achievements, culture, ideas and values that the world has built up over thousands of years. What can the protectors of landscape and "Heimat" achieve in their leisure time when in their professional life most of them -- though with bad conscience -- participate in the industrial exploitation of nature and mankind? The countryside spoiled by industrial development is indeed a reflection of an inwardly torn society. The invention of the European city was a spiritual and technical achievement, the historical significance of which surpassed by far that of the discovery of fire or the invention of the wheel, since the European city had no model in nature. Nowadays we mistakenly credit every large accumulation of buildings and people with the term city, whereas only the highest form of human work and order really deserves this expression. A city comes into being and prospers only if it represents the highest common aims of its founders, builders and inhabitants. If it is not guided by a sense of measure and proportion, by a knowledge of materials and construction and by order and form, it can easily degenerate into a heap of rubbish. If we destroy our most beautiful cities, we betray ourselves. Our most precious memories will then become an unbearable agony. Critical distance from contemporary reality, however, is not sufficient. Critical distance reveals our wounds but does not show the way to recovery. Criticism without a project is merely a higher form of surrender. At a time when millions of people are unemployed, we are faced with the paradox that craftsmanship has become prohibitively expensive. We should remind ourselves that in the past, a few thousand craftsmen and artists would have managed to build the most beautiful cities and the most significant monuments. In that sense, the re-establishment of a wide range of independent and highly qualified crafts is the precondition for every urban reconstruction. To reconstruct the polycentric city and reestablish a craftsmanlike tradition, however, one cannot count on political opportunism or the power of mass movements. Urban reconstruction needs neither revolutions nor bloodshed. It only needs people who are prepared to assume responsibility for their work and ideas. Only global economic, technical and cultural efforts can halt a process of global destruction. This will be achieved only if these efforts prove competitive in quality to their industrial alternatives. Their superiority will then help curb the frenzy of industrial production.

The polycentric city of independent communities is not the product of mass politics, planned economy or democratic centralization; it is rather the product of the moral power of free and self-confident human beings. The city is the main carrier of all artistic and artisanal culture. Architecture and the arts are necessarily its focus and meaning. At the same time, they are its means and purpose. The reconstruction of the German city requires that we completely revamp our current tools of city planning. If we dissect a creature we kill it. That is exactly what modernist land utilization plans (functional zoning) do to the urban body. Zoning dissolves the infinitely complex fabric of urban communities. Zoning is an instrument of industrial monopoly planning, and it is not democratic but totalitarian. Within a zone, all functions not explicitly stipulated are forbidden. Here technical dictates rule against democratic constitution. The rule stands against the law: here lies the core of all forms of dictatorship. By tearing the city into functional zones, every citizen is forced into a maximum daily consumption of energy and time. Indeed, zoning is the main reason for the huge waste of energy in our society. A great saving of energy will be possible only if zoning is abolished. This can be achieved, however, only by means of the polycentric reconstruction of the city with complex and independent urban districts. The urban district (quarter) is an independent small city, an ideal creation with qualities between the village and the metropolis. It integrates all functions such as dwelling, working, leisure, etc., with all the public and private institutions of the urban community. A recollection of the past, however, remains academic and fruitless, if we do not study and adopt the universal and human principles upon which the classical city was based. And yet in Germany, classical urban architecture is still seen as an accomplice in tyranny and genocide. The erection of a beautiful colonnade embarrasses modernist architects much more than the granting of building permission for a dozen nuclear reactors. A perspective formed by wonderful classical columns and windows appears to them politically more dangerous than a row of Krupp tanks. These so-called "architects" hardly suffer from the Stalingrad of Modernist architecture, since they have made sure that they themselves live in nice old bourgeois urban districts. In Germany, after 1945, the complete vocabulary of classical urban architecture and of the building crafts was dogmatically suppressed. Classical architecture, however, always occasions a feeling of nostalgia; for nostalgia is that enigmatic longing for what survives deep down in most people's hearts. Only modernist architects fear classical urban architecture. On the contrary, for most people the reconstruction of Rothenburg is the constant proof of the fact that even in strenuous times, there is no excuse of making ugly cities out of beautiful ruins.