PUBLISHED BY THE GETTY CENTER DISTRIBUTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OE CHICAGO PRESS TEXTS & DOCUMENTSD IN WHAT STYLE SHOULD WE BUILD? THE GERMAN DEBATE ON ARCHITECTURAL STYLE HEINRICH HUBSCH, 1828 RUDOLF WIEGMANN, 1829 CARL ALBERT ROSENTHAL, 1844 JOHANN HEINRICH WOLFF, 1845 CARL GOTTLIEB WILHELM BOTTICHER, 1846 HEINRICH HUBSCH, 1847 INTRODUCTION TRANSLATION BY WORLFGANG HERRMANN THE GETTY CENTER PUBLICATION PROGRAMS Julia Bloomfield, Kurt W. Forster, Thomas F. Reese, Editors TEXTS & DOCUMENTS Architecture Harry F. Mallgrave, Editor In What Style Should We Build? The German Debate on Architectural Style David Britt, Translation and Manuscript Editor Margarete Kiihn, Editorial Consultant Lynne Hockman, Copy Editor Published by the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica, CA 90401-1455 © 1992 by The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities All rights reserved. Published 1992 Printed in the United States of America 98 97 96 95 94 93 92 7654321 Publication data for the original German texts may be found in the source notes following each translation. Cover: Heinrich Hiibsch, Polytechnische Hochschule, Karlsruhe (1833-1835). Drawing. Karlsruhe, Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is to be found on the last printed page of this book. TABLE OF CONTENTS xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1 WOLFGANG HERRMANN INTRODUCTION LfI»r*vJl HEINRICH HUBSCH IN WHAT STYLE SHOULD WE BUILD? 103 RUDOLF WIEGMANN REMARKS ON THE TREATISE IN WHAT STYLE SHOULD WE BUILD? ilB CARL ALBERT ROSENTHAL IN WHAT STYLE SHOULD WE BUILD? A QUESTION ADDRESSED TO THE MEMBERS OF THE DEUTSCHE ARCHITEKTENVEREIN 125 jOHANN HEINRICH WOLFF REMARKS ON THE ARCHITECTURAL QUESTIONS BROACHED BY PROFESSOR STIER AT THE MEETING OF ARCHITECTS AT BAMBERG 147 CARL GOTTLIEB WILHELM BOTTICHER THE PRINCIPLES OF THE HELLENIC AND GERMANIC WAYS OF BUILDING WITH REGARD TO THEIR APPLICATION TO OUR PRESENT WAY OF BUILDING 169 HEINRICH HUBSCH THE DIFFERING VIEWS OF ARCHITECTURAL STYLE IN RELATION TO THE PRESENT TIME 178 BIBLIOGRAPHIES 193 BIOGRAPHIES 199 INDEX INTRODUCTION WOLFGANG HERRMANN HEINRICH HUBSCH CHOSE A STRAIGHTFORWARD QUESTION AS THE TITLE FOR THE FIFTY-PAGE BOOK THAT HE PUBLISHED IN 1828. Nevertheless, a complex of problems, con- flicts, and uncertainties underlay its seemingly simple wording, occupying the minds of those who, like Hubsch, were concerned about the unsatisfactory state of archi- tecture. Over the next few decades attempts were made to answer the question or at least to consider seriously its implications. Arguments and counterarguments were advanced in quick succession; traditional values were upheld against radical pro- posals, and a materialistic approach was opposed by an idealistic point of view. A lively debate, carried on in speeches and in print, arose among those whose profes- sions and predilections inclined them toward an interest in the controversy-architects and, quite frequently, art critics and academics. The main theme of the discussion-and the one on which this introduc- tory essay will focus-was the question of style. Naturally, many other factors were pursued in the course of often quite elaborate argumentation, but it is those that relate most closely to the concept of style-such as construction, material, customs, or religious and aesthetic values-that are of particular interest. Those men who were to take part in the style controversy were born around the turn of the century. During their formative years the mainly literary cur- rent of the Sturm und Drang period swelled into the full flood of Romanticism in all the arts; and in this movement they found the fulfillment of everything they longed for: escape from the confines of traditional rule and conventional order into a world that responded to their emotions. This generation chiefly owed its serious interest in medieval art and architecture to two men: Sulpiz Boisseree and Friedrich von Schlegel, the former through his collection of early German paintings, the lat- ter through a publication describing medieval art and the deep impression that the cathedrals of Cologne and Strasbourg had made on him.1 The enthusiasm with which the younger generation responded to the newly revealed beauty of Gothic churches led many to choose architecture as the subject of their studies. Naturally, their teachers, who belonged to the preceding generation, firmly believed in the universal validity of the architectural canon of antiquity. Sooner or later, this was bound to lead to conflict. The way in which Heinrich Hiibsch's professional life developed is a good example. Looking back to the day when, as a twenty-year-old, he had entere Friedrich Weinbrenner's studio, Hiibsch recalled how deeply impressed he had been by the "pointed-arch" style (Spitzbogenstil), "probably because the views of Goethe, Schlegel, and others had a strong influence on me."2 It is therefore not surprising to hear that even after two years of studying the classical canon under Weinbrenner, he still held to his first conviction "that ancient architecture was unsuitable for our buildings, even when applied in the freest possible manner, and that it deprived them, as works of art, of the organic correlation of their parts." He admitted, however, that he was still too immature to be able to suggest something else to supersede what- ever had been done hitherto.3 He still preferred the "vivid splendor of Gothic archi- tecture" to the "lifeless planes... of facades built in the antique style"4 when he decided two years later, as was then quite usual, to continue his architectural edu- cation by studying the antiquities of Rome. Moreover, as the center of the Romantic German Nazarene movement, that city had an additional attraction for him. 2. HERRMANN What interested him was not so much the ancient monuments as the medieval Italian churches and the manner in which their architects had simplified the Gothic forms. He adopted these simple forms in the first year of his stay in Rome, when he worked on designing churches in the Gothic style. During his second year, he traveled to Greece. His reaction to the important event of seeing Greek architec- ture in its pure form, and not in the corrupted interpretation presented by succeeding generations, is most revealing. "On my return from Greece to Rome," he recounted later, "I had completely changed my views. The prolonged contemplation of Greek monuments strengthened me in my belief as to the inadequacy of Greek architec- ture for our extensive needs... and at the same time convinced me... that in order to establish a new style, alive to the demands made by the present, I had to proceed more radically than I had done so far."5 Thus, by 1819 he already had a goal that from then on would guide all his thoughts: to overcome what he called the "crisis of present-day architecture."6 Hubsch felt that progress toward the aim he had set himself-the establishment of a new style-was impeded by the tenets of classical doctrine. One important task that he intended to undertake was to demonstrate the falsity of the notion of imitation that was so deeply ingrained in architectural thought. He developed its refutation in a book entitled Uber griechische Architectur (On Greek Architecture), published in 1822. Unremittingly, he attacked the teachings of Aloys Ludwig Hirt, the leading theorist on classical antiquity. It was not the imitation of Greek art that was the object of Hubsch's critique; this ideal had lost much of the appeal that it had in Johann Winckelmann's day. The "imitation" to which he strongly objected related to the genesis of Greek architecture. According to a widely held view that had its root in Vitruvian tradition, Greek stone temples were modeled on earlier wooden buildings. Hubsch demonstrated that structural laws and the properties of the building mate- rial determined the construction as well as the form of the major parts. It was absurd, therefore, to deduce the stone structure of the Greek temple from a strange-looking, old wooden building. The idea that the trabeated system was the result of the imita- tion of a wooden structure ran counter to basic architectural principles.7 These ideas matured until in 1828, Hubsch was ready to elaborate them and to speak out against the idealistic approach to architecture. "After my final return from Italy in 1824," he wrote later, "I had a clear picture in my mind of the new style, the elements of which I then tried to develop as objectively as possible in the book.. .In welchem Style sollen wir bauen? [In What Style Should We Build?]"8 To this end he reviewed the major architectural systems. These had also been the subject of a book published a year before Hubsch's treatise by the well- known historian Christian Ludwig Stieglitz. Yet in their objectives and final conclu- 3. INTRODUCTION sions the two authors differed greatly. Stieglitz gave a historical account of the manner of building as it differed among nations. Resignedly, he concluded that for the present, "all that can be done, in view of the impossibility of creating new forms, is to imi- tate."9 But Hubsch, pursuing an uncharted route, undertook an analytical examina- tion of the major styles and concluded with confidence that the new style, as outlined by him, would "freely evolve and respond to any fair demand without hesitation."10 Hubsch admitted four factors as the basic determinants of style: mate- rial, technical experience, climate, and present needs.11 By limiting his analysis of ancient styles to what might be called materialistic factors, he could have found sup- port in, and might indeed have been influenced by, a debate between Johann Karl Schorn and Carl Friedrich von Rumohr over the nature of style that had taken place in an exchange of letters published in Kunst-Blatt a few years earlier.12 Rumohr (whom Hubsch knew well enough to send a drawing to from Greece)13 countered Schorn's idealistic approach by stressing the clear distinction that had to be made between, on the one hand, the raw material to be subjected to artistic treatment and, on the other, the ideas and their artistic representation in the final work of art.