(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

In 1858, German architect and surveyor Albrecht Meydenbauer used the term Photogrammetrie to describe a method he had devised, using projective geometry, to extract three-dimensional measurements from two-dimensional photographic images. In transforming photography from a mode of representation or commemoration into an instrument of architectural documentation, photogrammetry enabled the production of architectural surveys and drawings from mere photographic images and without direct measurements. Meydenbauer’s objective, and that of Königlich Preussische Messbildanstalt—the cultural heritage archive he established in 1885—was to photographically document all cultural heritage buildings in Germany and do so with such precision that could enable their restoration and even reconstruction. As a national archive for cultural preservation, the Messbildanstalt collected over 11,000 photogrammetric plates of nearly 1,200 monuments and buildings in Germany, including Berlin’s Stadschloss and Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s seminal Bauakademie—which housed the institute itself until 1917. In the years and decades that followed, Berlin was radically transformed through two consecutive World Wars and a Cold War that divided the city along ideological, and ultimately architectural, lines. During this period, many of the cultural heritage buildings were demolished and replaced by modernist buildings that represented the new national identity of the German Democratic Republic. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November of 1989, the urban development policy of reunified Berlin, termed “Critical Reconstruction,” has established the goal to redefine the urban identity of Berlin through its pre-war legacy. As a result, the modernist Cold War era buildings like Palast der Republik and the GDR Ministry of Foreign Affairs were razed to make room for “the true-to-original reconstruction of the historic façades” of the Stadschloss and the Bauakademie that occupied those sites over half-a-century earlier by primarily relying on the photogrammetric images of the buildings. The “critical reconstruction” of historical monuments as such marks the final chapter of the photogrammetric project and signals a new phase for the Cultural Heritage Archive where architecture—seen as an image or a simulacrum—has emerged as an essential ingredient in the reconstruction of the modern German state.