| Abstract | (14). Stirling's design for the Wissenschaftszentrum was criticized for its "deliberate links to [Albert Speer]." Michael Brix, "Monumente der NS- und Trümmerzeit: Bewertungsprobleme der Denkmalpflege -- Beispiel München," Kunstchronik (Apr. 1983): 179. See also "Stirling in Berlin," Architectural Record (Jan. 1989): 96. The Neue Pinakothek museum, which was the first important work of postmodern architecture actually completed in West Germany, was derided as a building that would likely lure "a lost local Nazi official (Ortsgruppenleiter) searching for Hermann Giesler's [Nazi] Ordensburg Sonthofen." Reinhard Müller-Mehlis, "Buntes Architektur-Allerlei von Rothenburg bis Westwall," Münchner Merkur, 1/2 Sept. 1979, 8. Cf. idem, "Brancas Bau wirkt wie ein Stück Mittlealter," ibid., 21/22 Mar. 1981, 10; and Johanna SchmidtGrohe, "Die Zukunft für Münchens 50jührige Vergangenheit...?" Der Architekt, no. 4 (1983): 206. Similar criticism was directed toward Diethard Siegert and Reto Gansser's postmodern design for the new Bavarian State Chancellery (1981-1994) and [Alexander Freiherr von Branca]'s neo-historicist department store for the Hertie chain in Würzburg (1977-1980). Gottfried Knapp, "Vom Armeenmuseum zum Kasernenhof," SZ, 24/25 Oct. 1982, 73. Dieter Klein wrote of the Chancellery draft that "the impartial viewer is reminded more of Speer and [Paul Ludwig Troost] than the architecture of the 1980s." "Das Alte mug nicht schlechter sein," Münchner Merkur, 5 Nov. 1982, 18. Paulhans Peters, "Kroll, Bienefeld und das Armeemuseum," [Baumeister], no. 12 (1982): 1160. [Peter Neitzke] observed that Branca's turn away from functionalism had resulted in his producing "forms which were models in the fascist era." See Bauwelt, no. 17/18 (1980): 693.
The first phase of the Architects' Debate focused on the controversial issue of whether or not postmodernism was "fascist." As indicated by the increase in such politicized attacks against new examples of postmodern architecture in the Federal Republic in the early 1980s -- Alexander Freiherr von Branca's Neue Pinakothek in Munich (1975-81) and [James Stirling]'s Wissenschaftszentrum in Berlin (1980-88) were but two prominent examples -- many German critics perceived postmodernism as heralding worrisome political developments.(14) Leading this charge were modernist architects such as Helmut Spieker who, in an angry essay entitled "Totalitarian Architecture and the `New Style'," published in early 1978, articulated the widely held belief in the immanent links between political content and architectural form. Believing that "certain political conditions produce a certain type of architecture," Spieker worried about the political implications of the fact that the new "historical monumental architecture" of Rationalist architects like [Aldo Rossi], [Giorgio Grassi], [Oswald Mathias Ungers] and [Josef Paul Kleihues] found their closest precedents in the architectural traditions of "totalitarian...forms of state," from the "Roman empire...[and] Absolutism...[to] the fascist dictatorships in Italy, Germany, and Spain."(15) Other modernists such as Günter Behnisch shared Spieker's fears. Rejecting the Rationalist belief that form was independent of function, [Behnisch] argued in early 1981 that specific forms actually produced specific functions -- and worrisome ones at that. A straight axis, in any era, he insisted, tended to encourage the militaristic activity of marching; "it is undeniable," he noted "that...closed forms [correspond to]...feudal systems, [while] diffuse forms [correspond to a]...pluralistic society. Long straightaways lie in the vicinity of war and death. Squares lie in the vicinity of state and power." The resurgence of such authoritarian forms in postmodern architecture, Behnisch continued, cast suspicion upon the movement. For in "placing architecture once more on a pedestal" and "declaring it high art," postmodernists not only "removed it from reality [and] aestheticized it" but duplicated a practice "last [used] in the Third Reich."(16) Architecture, he concluded, could not solve contemporary problems by seeking an aesthetic solution derived from the styles of the past, but could only do so by remaining focused upon the reality of the present.
|
