Dmitry Sukhin's report was presented at the scientific conference of the Russian branch of DoCoMoMo "Restoration and adaptation: functions-space-color" (April 4-5, 2014). The reports of all participants will be published as a collection of articles. We bring to the attention of our readers the text by Dmitry Sukhin in anticipation of the future collection, and also because his topic is now more relevant than ever.
Read the second part of this report here
A piece of land between seas and swamps, fresh sandy pancake; meager, plant life beyond the whimsically whipped coast, high churches, small towns: “you must see him so that there is no gap in your soul” - the Kaliningrad region, East Prussia. But what is the use of that beauty, of the intelligentsia's reflection on it - on the conflagration of the world war?
We are exactly 100 years apart from it: a century ago, on August 1, 1914, Germany declared war on Russia. Russian troops entered East Prussia on 17 August.
The population flees, Hindenburg hurries to the rescue, the rampart rolls back and forth: we get 60,000 partial, recoverable ruins, and 41,400 non-recoverable ruins. In other towns, Shirvindt or Eitkunen, only a house or two survived - appealing to national pride and food security: East Prussia was both the place of the Prussian coronation and the granary of the whole country!
The war only flared up, there were funds, knowledge too: Germany is the birthplace of urban planning science and restoration too. Especially here: we are covering 100 years on the calendar - exactly the same devastation, Napoleon has passed.
Another century - and again, the Northern War. Again, and again, and again: but time after time the earth rose, only now everything will not succeed in any way. Recipes or wrong hands? So let's take a look at the predecessors who did it! And if the decisions of the Order or Napoleonic years, we really can't apply the lessons, then let us turn to the last successful example of the restoration of the province - let him teach us how to do something like that correctly!
How to build, so that what is built is in every sense "to the place"?
A familiar question: Bodo Ebhard's 1915 Kaiser pseudo-styles are no better than Bashin's (post) Soviet 2005 Fish Village. Is it a stranger trouble? - there were architects among the natives of East Prussia, but they rarely worked at home; among Kaliningraders, the situation will probably be the same - but no books have been written about them yet.
Before the war we will find the Tautov brothers from Konigsberg in Berlin, in the same place and Mehring, from Tilsit, Mendelssohn, from Allenstein, and in the same place - the Union of East Prussian Artists. At home, even the Society of Architects and Engineers was mobile - in no single city were there enough architects or engineers for the local cell.
On the other hand, anecdotal cadets were born in abundance (today they are their heirs in spirit): should they, who are greedy for beauty and twist, entrust the East Prussian towns with plaster plans and confectionery domes?
The option of not doing, preserving the ruins as necropolises and setting up Novo-Shirvint or Eidkunen-2 in the neighborhood remained for the French. Barrack towns - to the Belgians. "Restore"? - no, "revive"!
Local (weakly) forces were brought in line, decreeing that the designer could not be associated with the executing contractor, and banning general contracts altogether; they slowed down the masters who were trying to knock out a couple of "fief" cities for themselves - the experience of building behind the eyes was great and negative, even with Schlüter or Stuler; as well as breeders, especially government builders (in the absence of "inventive thinking, resourcefulness, improvisation", as well as the admission of former liberalisms from construction).
Instead of all this, in the middle of the war, in the ring of fronts, an experiment was held to build a homeland, "more Prussian than the previous one." Typification and fabrication found their place in it - but without transferring ready-made solutions from anywhere; tiled roofs did not submit to tarpaulin roofs; half-timbered houses worked, but were not applied; pseudo-castles were not built at all.
Solid forms, restrained patterns and relief, windows without niches have spread; brick with plaster, boulder plinths, high slopes ("the true facades of East Prussia - the roofs"), rare turrets and dormers. Local forces have been retrained. The architect-artist had to abandon the author's pose.
He was ready for that - the long-term upbringing by Werkbund had an effect. Recall: at the end of the 19th century, after attempts to degenerate "style", out of the awareness of design and execution discord, England was born with the "Arts and Crafts Movement", and "German quality" passed the way from a prohibitive sign invented to protect British counters from the German third-grade, to an aspirated predicate - precisely under the leadership of this very Bund. It would be nice for us to be able to do the same! But there is no Russian analogue, there is no one to “appreciate the forms for their loyalty to the material and technology, wherever they come from,” or “to work on the same, studying the customs of local artisans,” as they did. The scholarly works of those years turn yellow unclaimed in the archives - but our reader does not know the languages. He wants recipes.
“The point is not in repetition of certain forms, but in tactful incorporation into the environment,” wrote the founder of Werkbund, Hermann Mutesius. It should be built through the recollection of the past, through consolidated idealization, and not literal detailing, without trying to impersonate a child of another time and without erasing the traces of their predecessors from the face of the earth. The beauties of the past should have “not been squeezed into the tortured, ancient look of town planning plans, but let them grow in them in a natural way, become an integral feature of modernity”, “modernity has a natural right to its own word” in the urban ensemble - this is already the land conservative professor Richard Detleffsen, East Prussia chief restorer.
Already in January 1915, more than half a thousand architects went to the front-line Prussia, genius loci to revive. The competition was 1.6 people per seat. In the packs of the racer, the volumes of Camillo Zitte and Paul Schulze-Naumburg, in the roadside - a new title: "Arch-intercessors". Defenders of the spirit of architecture.
The first construction projects began on 22 August 1915. The natives of all regions and regions of Germany were united - the spirit of the Cologne exhibition of 1914, which did not find application in the metropolis.
The words of Hugo Hering, the famous functionalist, about the estate in Garkau, cannot be distinguished from the words of the provincial president Adolf Max Johannes Tortilovitz von Batotzky-Fribe, about the principles of restoration - and after all, Haring started here, rebuilt Allenburg, the current Friendship.
We could not rebuild it.
Architects created the world - their work opened the "First East Prussian Art Exhibition", the branches of the Union of German Architects and Werkbund (1915, both chaired by Detleffsenn) and even a special "Society (Struggle) for Decent Architecture" … A critical mass that was so lacking before local architecture. Literally critical, by "architectural assessors" in the triplets of artistic councils, justices of the peace in front of the East Prussians themselves. How many times do we - them! - did it succeed after?..
Honored and inquisitive practitioners, researchers and typists, district architects and their "construction consultations" (mandatory for use) neutralized the mistakes of the liberal years, corrected the construct and society: apartments less than 36 m2, floors below 2.80 m in the light, plots built up completely …
Other ownership became inconvenient - it was combined with the neighboring one; another project turned out to be wasteful, with a mirrored or display window, carpet or linoleum paths, paneling or massive beams - the laws did not allow such a building ticket to be denied, and the restoration allowance was easy to prohibit!
The hardships of the war forced them to turn to their own needs and skills. To justified changes without obsessive beauty and harm to the established whole. Towards workable designs here and now. It is “modern” to cover the roof with tarpaulin or bitumen, but those break the structure of traditional-peaked roofs, and we cannot lay them without leaks - we find our own in the tiles. No brick - we take half-timbered, paint - sluggish plaster and cheaper, and more technical, hygienic and honest. Passionism, longing not only for a city or style, as in Lukomsky's - such is the garden city in Dresden-Hellerau, Grimnabor in Berlin-Falkenberg, we find an analogy in Nikolsky's village councils - and in the East Prussian restoration. Truth time.
Unambiguous rules, orders of the authorities, with a private-proprietor-comradely organization of construction and the most severe lack of materials gave rise to a new style and method of work, the "dawn of a new Germany" (Mutezius). The houses met both the requirements of modern comfort and traditions.
Where the town hall was previously bypassed by a flat line of high roofs, and the 19th century built fractional, uneven, domes and bay windows - the forms were again aligned under a single cornice or the rhythm of the pediments.
The corners, knocked down for transit, from a technical necessity turned into an elegant motive, showcases were built in with arcades of the new era.
The rural town of Shirvindt was completely rebuilt.
Stallupenen added propylaea to the chain of three baroque squares: arcades at the exit to one square, stepped tongs at the exit to another.
The Kaiser, passing in 1917, drew a triangle pediment here: "Agree, it would be more beautiful?" - why not the hotel "Moscow"? Architect Frick didn’t reach into his pocket for a word: “If only, Your Majesty!”; the Kaiser's flourish did not erase, but he refrained from other refinements.
Outwardly - restrained expressionism or modernized traditionalism; internally it is a unique school of the “new Prussian spirit”, artistic, civil. A lot of work and forgotten names.
Kurt Frick, the builder of the garden city in Hellerau near Dresden, Paul Kruchen, the builder of hospitals in Berlin and Buch, others like them: Wolf-Heilsberg, Stoffregen-Delmenhorst, Lulei-Bremen, Chopal-Nicholassee and others - but they built something not they. Who had erected 42,368 buildings by the end of 1918, so much so that they truly became a new homeland? It is customary for us to explain such "accuracy of hitting" by some kind of blood closeness, birth - only after 1914 they were not building "ours" … unless they became "ours" along the way.
Hans Scharoun associates, Kurt Frick, Paul Kruchen, Hugo Häring, Paul Fischer, Johannes Batotsky, Heinrich Temming on the one hand.
Timofei Amelin, Ivan Komarov, Yegor Kuntselevich, Dmitry Oleinikov, Tit Pliska, Ivan Popov, Riduan Sabirkhanov, Badershakh Khairitdinov - on the other: "Construction of East Prussia … is being carried out almost exclusively by the forces of construction battalions," the State Chancellery testified in August 1918. Under 150 thousand, whole armies were left by Russia as prisoners of war - they were building the notorious "German quality". Perhaps they were the reason for such reduced forms - they were not masons and carpenters.
They were taught here and learned on their own, in design bureaus and craft associations. Such a school would not be bad for us today, otherwise the designer will continue to draw with us, and the builder will continue to erect - each one in his own little world.
