Modern Ruins -Restoration, Reappropriation and Reference: Considering Erich Mendelsohn’s Hat Factory and the effect of war on historical value
“We are nostalgic for the ruins of modernity because they still seem to hold a promise that has vanished from our own age: the promise of an alternative future.”1
- Huyssen, 2006
Erich Mendelsohn’s Hat Factory is not neglected. Neither is it celebrated. Instead, it sits in a state of indifferent equilibrium. It serves not only as an example of early modern industrial architecture, but also of the dilemma of how we approach a modern ruin with a complex national history. In mind, the term ruination invariably calls up images of vernacular buildings that have been reduced by the ravages of time to mere traces of what they were. Benjamin2 saw in ruins “allegories of thinking itself”. Encountering such ruins shake us from our own temporal state and provoke contemplation; a past that could have been, a divergent present, and futures that have not been met. Piranesi illustrated ruination as a means to construct and project glimpses of alternative modernities and to challenge the latent Vitruvian ideals into the Enlightenment. The ruination of modern architecture has become more prominent as buildings lose their function and meaning in the present3 ; they have been surpassed by increasing population, social, or technological demands. Yet the protection of these modern buildings is a paradox in itself. The rhetoric of the modern movement had little place for the concept of conservation, still less for the decrepitude of its own inherent philosophies4 . Yet many modern ruins are already fragments of the moment they come into being5 . These fragments represent moments of technological advancement, reflection of social change that preceded the devastation of World War II, or even a sense that someone had an idea which was fought to be realised. It is these qualities that saves them from destruction, and may even evoke a sense of nostalgia. Twentieth century history lends the ruins of modern buildings to a significance that goes beyond the architectural, particularly those buildings constructed during wartime Germany. They have been appropriated for, or affected by the ravages of both time and war do not necessarily evoke nostalgia but 1
A. Huyssen, "Nostalgia for Ruins," Grey Room 23, no. 1 (2006). Walter Benjamin et al., The Arcades Project(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1999). 3 S. Boym, "Ruins of the Avant-Garde," in Ruins of Modernity, ed. J. Hell, & Scholne, A.(London, United Kingdom: Duke University Press, 2010). 4 K. Powell, "Conserving the Revolution," in Ruins of Modernity : Erich Mendelsohn's Hat Factory in Luckenwalde, ed. Frank Barkow and Architectural Association (Great Britain)(London: Architectural Association, 1998). 5 Michael S. Roth et al., Irresistible Decay : Ruins Reclaimed, Bibliographies & Dossiers (Los Angeles, CA: The Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1997). 2