Ladies and Gentlemen, dear Ms Markovic,

for a historian it is a strange situation and definitely a great honor to be allowed to speak in front of those who create his subject - that is for me as an art historian in front of you, the Bund Deutscher Architekten (Federation of German Architects) as immediate embodiment of building culture.
It is about this notion that I shall speak to you and this means to cut in on a debate which has been going on in Hamburg for about two, three, at the most four years and which has reached its climax in fall at the Norddeutsche Architekturtage.
This, of course, is not an easy task since I am unable to find “building culture“ in any encyclopedia, no matter how often the word has come up since 1988.
I could interpret it in the meaning in which I, as a member of the faculty ‘cultural history and cultural studies’ (to which belong among others, ethnologists, pre-historians and archeologists) should interpret it: in the sense of culture as the sum of people’s objectivizable signs of life in their social fabric. Looked at it this way, I could hand back the topic with a remark that Hamburg objectively does have building culture because in fact, buildings are constructed in Hamburg.
But of course, you expect more or actually something else - not the empiric cultural scientific perspective, i.e. a pair of binoculars or a magnifying glass into the past, but perspectives, i.e. a future projection, perhaps even an orientation. Maybe also the description of a deficit, so to speak a feeling of unease inherent in this building culture which is called for and hence missed. I have to disappoint you: as historian I do not believe in the possibility of prediction or projections from the past. Concerning the present and the past I don’t see a deficit.
However, the term “building culture“ makes me feel uneasy. This stems from my firm belief that above all it is etymology that reveals information about words’ contents. Although I cannot present any proof, I think that the following hypothesis is justifiable: in the notion of “building culture“, a vague longing for harmoniously homogeneous ways of life, a yearning for an ideal world has been and may still be transported. This yearning is embodied in the anti-modern, anti-rational, authoritarian infected and thinking national instead of social life reform movement of the turn of the century. It is the time when the “Americanized“ present, marked by industry, technological intelligence and development of big cities, is loathed as ”civilization“ and put opposite the longing for a holistic, artistically characterized, normative, German “culture“. Reformatory impulses toward modernity have emerged but just as many impulses toward the destructive parts of German history have emerged as well. I see the first evidence around 1910. It is the text written by Paul Böcker in 1908: “Hamburg in trouble! An urgent call for help and a proposal for the rescue of the national building culture.“ Even a Werkbund supporter like Karl Scheffler, a modernist amongst reformists, associates the notion with a pathetic authoritarian idea. In his 1913 published “Architecture of the big city“ he writes: “The nation will only reach building culture, a great modern art of the citizen, if it learns how to organize the monumental power of the capital with a self restricting self-esteem and thus free itself from the arbitrariness of the unqualified and unscrupulous.“
All the more, Fritz Höger belongs to this category. His eulogy after the First World War to his Chilehaus, gives a clear profile of the national-racist North German architectural ideology as German building culture: “... its character outlasted upright and victoriously the dreadful period. The building made the apathetically devastated people soar upwards and hopefully look up at it... I knew exactly that this had to be the turning point of German building culture, the opposite of eclecticism and above all the triumph over the new functionalism. The Chilehaus displayed nothing but old functionalism, the prerequisite for all good and beauty. Nothing is as ‘want to’, everything is as ‘must’ and dictated from deep down inside.“
These words let Höger become the one who made good a prediction from 1890. Back then, it said in a book which was soon to become popular: “In various public articles, the Reichstag representative Reinhold has discussed the artistic duties and aims that must be imposing themselves on the city of Berlin, now that it has become imperial capital. He especially pointed out Hamburg as example worth following. In Hamburg there are no secret government building surveyors but public buildings which are meant to be only practical but nevertheless are beautiful. Despite his broad vista, the North German retains his sense of the natural. That is how Hamburg has managed to become the trailblazer of the good German drama. It does not seem impossible that Hamburg qualified for or at least is capable to play a similar role in the field of the fine arts.“ - The title of the book is “Rembrandt as tutor“, and the author is Julius Langbehn. He mostly relates to the buildings of Hamburg’s chief engineer Franz Andreas Meyer, i. e. the then new Speicherstadt. Some few words about Langbehn: his boasting about German world domination through art contributed to two phenomena: 1. Wilhelm II big talking about the German nature, which is supposed to contribute to the recovery of the world and 2. the ideological buildup of the national movements of the Empire, which “were hoping to break down the predominance of  the intellect and to be able to establish a vital, traditional and unspoiled society. At the beginning of a crucial cultural epoch in modern Germany, Langbehn expressed his alienation from society, his hatred for modernity and his search for well-being“ (Fritz Stern, Kulturpessimismus als politische Gefahr).
Looked at it from this perspective, two of Hamburg’s outstanding architectural monuments - the Speicherstadt and the Chilehaus - give a highly doubtful idea of building culture.
So much about my skeptical feelings about the notion “building culture“. And by exaggerating a little, I would like to add one more thought:

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Ever since the Ancient World, architecture provides occidental thinking with plenty of linguistic images which are all pointing out that human existence - especially in the view of the living together of people - is visualized to its full extend in the structure of buildings. Metaphors like the “state as a building“ or the “edifice of ideas“ reveal the fascination for the architect’s ability to find a conclusive form - something that rarely occurs in society or politics. From this point of view, over and over again, architecture becomes the visualization of hope for a harmonious order of the world and its contexts.

As I have already indicated with the etymological excursus, the longing for a harmonious building culture runs the risk of asking for a harmonious political culture, i.e. a nice nation state instead of a nice building.

The ones who demand big achievements in this debate on building culture are willing to also make demands on the men and women of action: on the architects, above all on the powerful and active builder-owners, above all in the public sphere and above all on the state. Without even pronouncing or thinking about it they very often quickly and determined demand a strong nation state. Yet, they inevitably and subconsciously do so by calling out for these great mayors and active senators in charge of urban development who are attracting things and who enable big success. - These demands have reference to the reform movement of the turn of the century as well.

You see, not only the burden of historical but also of political objections rest on the notion “building culture“. It is a political notion.

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Although Hamburg understood Höger as part of its building culture in the twenties, politically and socially it trod a far more moderate way than Langbehn was expecting it to do. Back then, the state was governed in a social-liberal way.
Protagonist of this epoch and guarantor of moderation is Fritz Schumacher. It should be mentioned that also his texts written before World War One are held XXX in a national style. Not to forget the inauguration speech of the Deutsche Werkbund in 1907, in which he calls for “harmonious culture“. However, if there is any epoch in Hamburg’s history of building which is considered by all of us as valuable building culture, it surely is reflected in the achievements from the time when he was in charge of urban planning and national architecture. In the ensembles of the residential town Hamburg and its public buildings, architectural and urban planning harmony, human measure and well-balanced unity are visualized. Undoubtedly, due to this “directing architect“, that architectural accomplishment could be achieved to this extent.
But of course, it is wrong to expect real harmony in the building process and derive from it the standardizing counter image of a present which is perceived as chaotic: the historian finds many evidences for conflicts and frustrations in relation to the history of building - and this goes also for the twenties. There were endless planning processes which ended in nothing or maybe in reduced compromises and enigmatic meshes and entanglements of interest. The “intellectual unity“ that - according to Fritz Schumacher - equaled architecture could be traced only very rarely. As often as he noted the notion harmony: it was exactly this type of engineering, which the “Rembrandt German“ Langbehn had expected salvation from, that Schumacher was fighting back fiercely. And in reality, buildings like the Deichtorhallen which are often attributed to his harmonious building culture, are an offensive taken by the independent engineering against Schumacher.
But even the ordinary work of Schumacher and his administrative body does not always display a harmoniously developing culture. For the most part, the big achievements are but compromise proposals resulting from lengthy planning discussions which had involved many and also many different interests, groups and people. It is often forgotten that the Dulsberg-Plan is a compromise. And one of the most monumental compromises is - the Chilehaus. In reality it is not a stroke of North German genius. It evolved from a highly complex planning process in which the Hamburg authorities have had a considerable productive share: be it the floor formations which are based on one of the authority’s proposals or the belated corrections of the building plan by Fritz Schumacher who ensured the construction of the famous unique bow. Leave alone the influence of the building-owner.
The Chilehaus is just one example of many Hamburg projects that have been designed jointly by many people. Another example is the Rathaus (city hall). It’s construction left Hamburg’s artists and in the end even its most important architect and the advisory consultants (among them Alfred Lichtwark) frustrated - and this is not at all obvious by looking at the building. During the fifty years of planning and constructing until its opening in 1897, countless involved persons literally flogged innumerable models and ideas to death. But yet: the result is one of Germany’s best buildings of historicism. Until today it acts as the city’s identity creating heart and is undoubtedly competent in its function as locality of parliament and government. If there is one historic building in Hamburg that merits to be called “successful“, it is this Rathaus.
Back to Schumacher: foundations for his settlements are antagonisms, a lot of time for negotiation and much frustration about compromises among the involved persons. His achievement of the praised unity stems from the most simple methods of achieving convention and compromise: one means is so well-known to us and will still be used that we even get weary of it - brick. All the more one should remember the other means - the method of planning with the help of a model. Schumacher’s models achieved a lively flexibility through combination of the city as entity with single creative impulses. With the representation of his building plans as Plasticine models, he kept the plans lively and was able to react flexibly to new ideas which he could integrate into his comprehensive concept at any time.
This seems to be leading into the core of Schumacher’s way of thinking of lively processes: he did not focus on the harmonious final state but on exactly these processes, the confrontations, the conflict, the always new compromise and consensus. His main interest was on the dynamics of the starting point. This is best and most clearly illustrated with one of Fritz Schumacher’s fairy tales in which life freezes in lovely boredom after the devil has been banned, “all progress and prosperity are on the decline“, until God releases the devil. Schumacher’s dualistic thought runs all the way through his work in an intellectual, methodical and also creative way. It could not be expressed in a clearer way than in the lord of the heavenly hosts who, after the release of his adversary, “was smiling that the clouds in the sky dispersed into all directions“.
In the end, the dynamic principle of contrast turns out to be the essence of Fritz Schumacher’s building culture in Hamburg.

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Schumacher has read the signature of the city into the naturally spatial and economic basic conditions: “... probably like no other city, [Hamburg] is entirely a product of the technical energy of its inhabitants“. This comprises all these long-term traditions which are familiar to us and which I will therefore list only briefly: Hamburg is economic, austere and functional but also comfortable and pleasant, free in the constitutional and individual sense, civil and republican. Enlightened common sense and generous social-mindedness, critical sobriety - all this can be derived from the Hamburg architecture: from the medieval parish and mendicant order churches, from the Dielenhaus, from the Fleeten and warehouses and granaries?, from the country houses and Kontorhäuser (branch office houses), the big settlements and garden cities of the twenties, the schools of the postwar years. But also from the sumptuous Rathaus which is yet deliberately set against the “solid“ luxury of the Bavarian Royal Castles.
I repeat the most important issue: exactly Hamburg’s greatest achievements are the result of discursive planning processes. Technical energy and discourse are the constant factors in the Hamburg building culture.
The clients for the construction of Hamburg’s buildings - either as private individuals or as the politically responsible - have always been its citizens. For centuries, their republican ethos has created an appropriate expression in the homogeneity of the yardstick of town houses. Immoderation caught the eye and was socially put under verdict. This method has always proofed effective to avoid excess. However, applied to architecture, it always also hindered the avant-garde. The development of a culture of civil convention was republican. And this convention is the third constant factor of the Hamburg building culture.

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You see: everything that Schumacher, the Rathaus, town houses and Kontorhäuser mean to me, relieves me from my worries about Langbehn’s and Höger’s perspectives. So, if there is anything at all to learn from Hamburg’s history it is briefly summed up as follows:
In relation to the awful vision of the harmonious-totalitarian building culture that I have sketched above, Hamburg’s building culture could be defined as reasonable (rational but also communication oriented) - in contrast to anti-rational. It is open to the possibilities of the present - the other one is anti-modern. It is critical and willing to discuss - in contrast to the harmonious one. It is conventional - the other one is authoritarian. It is social - the other one is national.
But in the end it is nevertheless also political. Political in the pluralistic-democratic sense what the modern industrial nations - hopefully not only limited to the Western countries anymore - stand for. In these states, the competition of manifold heteronomous interests is organized in open societies which - architectural-metaphorically depicted - form quite a strange structure. It seems rather a garden than architecture. Partly overgrown, partly well-kept, with trivial and peculiar plants, neat and neglected patches, one or two pavilions, altogether quite profitable and lucrative, full of plenty of possibilities to find a suitable place to stay, be it terraced platforms or a niche. Altogether quite chaotic and not without traps.
Now don’t worry, I will not continue with this. And please don’t think that I believe that this metaphor should be translated back into the built structuring of the surroundings.
But it is obvious that, as inhabitant of this garden, I would fight with anyone who claims to express the nature of this garden by establishing the order of the or a or even a particular building culture.
Put into a more sober way, the political system of the pluralistic democracy can be described as: the freedom and possibility to enter in group competition and express one’s own interests, as the transparency of government business, as the right for initiative and critique as well as for indirect control via the parliament and direct control via the public opinion, as the possibility of a vote of confidence or no-confidence, as the constitutional recognition of an opposition. The government and its administrative body have the moral obligation of respecting and integrating critique into planned measures. Mind you this goes for the government. But it appeals just as well to the individual, and just as well to the most effective instruments of the individual’s interests: associations and social organizations as far as they see themselves as democratic.
You have come here to talk about architecture and not to patiently endure a lecture course in civic studies. But I will yet continue.
Taking into consideration the carrying through of irrefutable interests and ideas, it is obvious, that in comparison to some totalitarian society, the pluralistic society shows considerable shortcomings. But this is by far balanced out by the empirical cognition that no totalitarian state has realized, leave alone remedied, the danger to the environment earlier than the Western democracies.
It is obvious that new interests, mostly only shared by a small minority, are usually not able to express themselves or even gain acceptance. But this fact is defeated by the everyday experience of the most entertaining elements of pluralism: mutual curiosity and the desire for tracking down these minorities.
It is obvious that democratic apparatuses likewise become rigid, closed for critique and even opaque.
It is particularly obvious and corresponds to your everyday experiences that inevitably complicated structure of institutions in a pluralistic society hinders quick, effective, new and sensational solutions. Problems are flogged to death and none of the people involved can identify with the result. A result to whose outcome all or at least many have contributed to and which is almost always “only“ a compromise. The frustration of the people involved seeps as constitutive state of consciousness through society.
You see I am getting closer to the beginning, I am not merely referring to politics anymore but also to building culture. You can grasp the meaning of my long story cut short: the deficit feeling which has lead to the debate about building culture and articulates itself in it makes the nature of our building culture. Because our building culture is as pluralistic as the society which it is effecting. And what is at best reflecting the Hamburg building culture in comparison to the building culture of the old seats of royal power, is that its historically deeply rooted republican tradition had had a little lead on its way to an open society.

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But nevertheless some perspectives:
The demands of pluralistic theories of democracy on the organization of society are easily applicable to a correspondingly organized building culture: the competitors will never go so far as to destroy parts of the society or push through their own interests at other people’s costs. Building culture rather demonstrates the ability to peace-keeping conflict management, the ability to compromise. In this sense, the task would be the reciprocal integration of individual interests. And I would be repeating myself if I pointed out the reference points of Hamburg’s history of building. But of course, at this point, our long internalized ideas of good life in a pluralistic society meet the traditional myths of autonomy of art and artists - whose courtly provenance might be stressed here.

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In fact, it is not a new instrument of social conflict management that calls for building culture. It is rather necessary that the Free Hansa Town of Hamburg (an organization that we allow ourselves together, a constitutional corporation, i.e. city parliament and senate, political parties and delegations, associations and chambers) develops a better sense of responsibility for building activities.
But this means that building culture can only consist of a system of open rules and less basic values. The most important rules comprise that it is not individuals who have the final say, that there are no binding cultural norms and that such norms are not to be represented by small subgroups (not even by experts), that majority decides in case of doubt but on the other hand does not exclude minorities from the discourse. But most of all, building culture should be supported by improving the possibilities of equal opportunities and participation and possibly eliminating restricting elements.
I slightly paraphrase the political theory of pluralism and assert: if there is anything like a public interest in the realm of building culture, it can only emerge from the socio-political balancing of interest, because a pluralistic society has to reject a priori an objectively identifiable building culture. Building culture in a pluralistic democracy is not to be defined normatively - it develops a posteriori.

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For a long time, the debate about a new way of organizing Hamburg’s building culture has been going on. The experiences, now and then gained with advisory boards of experts are literally calling for such a new way of organization. Just look at the example of Salzburg in the times of the green city councilor Johannes Voggenhuber or the current city forum of senator Hassemer in Berlin. I have great difficulties of getting used to such a concept. In Hamburg, we might recall the time when there was the 1912 founded ‘Baupflegekommission’ which made fundamental contributions to the flowering and high overall quality of Hamburg architecture in the golden twenties. After all, it was a very big commission and many groups were involved in it - and it had little to do. Because it was the commission itself that was actually the result of common ideas of all people involved with the building - therefore they didn’t need to control it. And after all, the members of the commission were highly liberal citizens and experts who approved basically any idea that came up because from the very beginning these ideas corresponded to what was capable of consensus anyway.
In my personal opinion, the call for an advisory body seems like a climb-down in the face of the difficulties of life in the open society: the situation reminds me of these Italian medieval towns (known to us as the most beautiful ones) which, since the 12^th Century consulted an independent city sovereign from outside to calm down inner conflicts. This “podestà“ was for a limited period of time in charge of leveling out interests. He was well paid and extremely strictly controlled. But you know the outcome of it all, the despotic rules in Pavia, Milano, Mantua: the incapability of settling their own local conflicts, brought the Italian towns the end of their inner freedom. Of course, an advisory body does not equal a podestà - but it is not a guarantor for pluralistic building culture either.

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So much for the general issues. Just a few more clues of the real existing, empirical building culture of our present times. The most important asset in the Hamburg building culture in the sense of pluralism is the public that enjoys the architecture of this city. I only have to quote Gert Kähler, who in 1989, noted in the architectural yearbook: “I don’t know of any city where architectural issues are discussed in such an immediate and direct manner like they are in Hamburg. - I don’t know of any city where current constructions are discussed in such a controversial and public way, in front of an audience of 300 to 400 people who are not all architects...“ Maybe I should list those whom we are indebted for: the presidents and chairmen of the architectural associations, the Hamburg architectural historians, the architecture archive, the universities and colleges and the patriotic society...
And I have to end here because there are, simply said, just too many assets which make up the public discourse: the coverage of architectural features in the local press are part of it. It can be criticized, but it exists - often and critical. And we must not forget the supraregional criticism of architecture with one of its focuses on Hamburg, with Manfred Sack, Gert Kähler, Dirk Meyhöfer and others. The fact that these prophets look at their native country more critically than they look at Munich or Berlin is an asset to Hamburg.
I should not fail to also mention the Oberbaudirektor and the Denkmalschutzamt (department for the protection of historical monuments) who enrich the architectural discourse with their publications. Did I forget about the architects?
I consider the Stadtentwicklungsbehörde (authorities for urban development), which will start work these days, to be one of the most important assets. The Stadtentwicklungsbehörde takes up the course of “planning culture“: the organization of democratic discourse during the planning process, in its relation to politics, to the public and - equally important - within the authorities themselves. Of course there is one danger that derives from the hope for a new kind of planning culture:
The new planning culture might expect full success and might despair of compromises. It might not realize that its cultural significance is the method and that planning in a discursive planning culture first and foremost opens up to the democratic fundamental right of criticism. The new method might result in compromises and at best in conventions but other than that it will be exposed to the disgruntlement of the competing interests without any chance of ever achieving eschatological harmony. But it is a method, whose cultural, political-cultural and building-cultural value is contained within.
I could actually end here. If there is any message in my talk at all, it is this message. I would have liked to add some good and bad opinions on some buildings. It would have enabled you to see that I also do have an opinion on architecture. I’ll leave it and mention only two - much as I like Hamburg - dark abysses of the building culture panorama. They created virtually inhuman conditions and can be experienced - esthetically and physically - only in a negative way: the Hamburg traffic systems and the University. Of course, neither one is the problem of architects. They are both terrible political deficits and from that point of view both are typical examples of the political dimension of building culture: speaking documents for the shortcoming of public attention to the vital infrastructure of society - which, as you can read in the newspaper lately, starts to defend itself.

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These true deficits of the Hamburg building culture make it obvious that the Normal in the city is not guaranteed by a creative “adding, subordination, division, hierarchy - a good average“ (just as summarized by Gert Kähler for the example of Hamburg). It is the total opposite: tough positions for living human needs, confrontation of competing interests, ruptures and at best “grinding” compromises are the order of the day. Much wasted effort will be made as well as a lack of recognition for achievements and good ideas will show. It seems to me, it is not by coincidence that Thomas Mann, the son of a Hansestadt, used the metaphor of a hanseatic town house to depict the artist’s frustration in the open society: “It is said to calm down with the old saying which I have read in my childhood days on a Lübeck gable ‘It is impossible to please all’. But isn’t it rather the effect and not the pleasure that is more important? The effect that evolves from misunderstandings, disputes, embarrassments and eventually gets cleared up. Of course, this clarification has a morbid touch or is carried out even only after death. Life is torment and only as long as we suffer, do we live.“

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Don’t be surprised if all the people from Hamburg who display a permanent critical attitude, who are demanding vehemently, who are disputing and who eventually are tormented with compromises, if they have no quick answer to the question where on earth it could be nicer than in Hamburg. I would like to not make much of an effort and leave it at the reference to opinion polls tendencies: except for Hamburg, no German city is currently described as attractive and worth living as Hamburg. And whatever the parameter in specific cases might be, they are always linked to the townscape - which is characterized by architecture. It is the substrate of building culture. And therefore I could now lean back and state: yes we do have building culture.
The people of Hamburg have created a unique place from among themselves and for themselves. It is one of the most beautiful and most peculiar cities of the world. Harvestehude and the Speicherstadt, St. Pauli and the harbor, classicism and brick, the Chilehaus and the Passagen, the Jarrestadt and the Ohlsdorf cemetary - and construction is still going on within the framework of a remarkable history of civil freedom. And there are critical debates about it. What else could be building culture?
 

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Vol. 8, No. 2 (March 2004)