سیاست‌های احیای گوتیک آلمان: آگوست رایشن‌اسپرگر

Although the contribution of August Reichensperger (1808-1895) to the European Gothic Revival has long been recognized, this is the first modern study of his work. It clearly establishes Reichensperger as the major figure in the German neo-Gothic movement, not only through his buildings, but through his writings and manifestos as well.The Politics of the German Gothic Revival is both a biography and a critical study of a designer and theoretician committed to historical fidelity as opposed to a progressive, developmental view of architecture. Reichensperger insisted on masonry construction and, convinced that Gothic architecture reflected laws of geometric order, was suspicious of architectural experimentation and innovation. His contemporaries were widely influenced by his doctrine as well as his building.Lewis looks at Reichensperger's buildings and ideas in the context of his time, taking up the architect's ties to English Gothic Revival, his activities in the area of architectural education, and the interconnections between Reichensperger's political and architectural ideas and the political, religious, and social institutions of nineteenth-century Germany.Michael J. Lewis is currently Historiographer at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. August Reichensperger was central to the German Gothic Revival and a major figure in German public life in the critical years before and after national unification in 1871. An architectural theorist, politician, preservationist, and journalist, his wide-ranging interests make this account of his life a veritable intellectual history of Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century. While his colleagues A. W. N. Pugin in England and Eugene Viollet-le-Duc in France are known for their Gothic designs, Reichensperger's Gothic Revival went beyond the purely architectural to address the totality of modern life. Seeing his native Rhineland dominated first by French armies and later by Prussia, Reichensperger became in his youth a champion of Rhenish autonomy and came to see architecture as a powerful symbol of regional identity. In his maturity, Reichensperger became the unquestioned arbiter of the Gothic, leading an intimate circle of architectural disciples. The author's examination of key buildings of this period is based on Reichensperger's lively and irreverent correspondence with the architects themselves. Final chapters deal with Reichensperger's efforts in the German Reichstag to carry on the Gothic Revival as a social movement over the fierce opposition of Chancellor Bismarck during the so-called Kulturkampf. In addition to rich photographic material, contemporary caricatures, some savage in nature, are reproduced to indicate how seriously Reichensperger's Gothic quest was still taken and how important was the role of architecture in expressing the character of a united Germany. In the end Reichensperger emerges as one of the most lucid and activist Gothic Revivalists, interested not in copying medieval forms for their own sake, but in applying the lessons of the Middle Ages to the problems of modernity. Frontmatter Acknowledgments (page vii) Introduction (page 1) I August Reichensperger: Background, Biography, and Political Philosophy (page 7) II August Reichensperger and Cologne Cathedral (page 25) III Die Christlich-Germanische Baukunst: Reichensperger's Campaign for Architectural Reform (page 57) IV English Inspiration (page 87) V The Shape of Reichensperger's Gothic (page 111) VI Building Gothic Society: Reichensperger in Berlin (page 139) VII "Better Rust than Whitewash": The Conscience of the Gothic Revival (page 165) VIII Reichensperger Triumphant: High Tide of the Gothic Revival (page 205) IX "Dignified Detachment": Architectural Politics in the German Empire (page 241) Notes (page 269) Bibliography (page 295) Index (page 301) Credits (page 307)