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MODERNISM
Mitchell Schwarzer chromy, classicaland Gothic structure and formed allegiancesto the Greekand Gothic
GERMANARCIHIECTURAL
THEORYAND ornament-were, in themselves, modern revivalsearly in the century and, later on,
THE SEARCHFOR MODERN IDENTITY phenomena. The argument may not be to the Italian and German Renaissances
New York: Cambridge University surprising,but it is elaboratedwith determi- and to neo-Baroque. Second, and more
nation and erudition. Schwarzer works subtly,it tracesthe changing terms bywhich
Press, 1995, xiv + 364 pp. $74.95 (cloth).
hard to establish the changing contempo- such allegiances were defended. The Ber-
ISBN 0-521-48150-3.
rary valences of historical consciousness, lin architecturalhistorian Alois Hirt serves
"No systematic account of German nine- and he is attuned to the contradictions in as a pivotal figure: he accepted the Greek
teenth-century architectural theory has as architectural thought as well as the com- ideal as a matter of dogma but sought to
yet been published," wrote the late Hanno- plex of crises they signaled. Most impor- ground this dogma empirically. Heinrich
Walter Kruft in 1985. Mitchell Schwarzer tantly (though at times a bit too allusively, Hfibsch is introduced not merely for giv-
does not claim to have written such an perhaps), he calls attention to a refrain ing a name to the debate (in his text of
account, but GermanArchitectural Theoryand heard in many forms in the writings he 1828, In WhatStyleShould WeBuild?), but
theSearchfor ModernIdentityis the only book surveys, one he defines as doubt over the because the focus of his own answer on
to cover that wide and varied terrain;and if validity of the kind of knowledge embod- function, structure, and contemporary
not "systematic,"it is at least an ambitious ied in architecturaltheory. The failure "to needs was paradigmatic of nineteenth-
synthesis of a kind and scope rarely at- devise a system for architectural knowl- century German discussions of the issue.
tempted in contemporary scholarship. edge as a replacement for faith in classi- Schwarzer argues that the historicist de-
Schwarzer contributes to the project of cism" (173), he asserts, accounts for the bates had within them the seeds of their
looking back beyond the early decades of pattern of sharp but ultimately ambivalent own dissolution: as the terms of the de-
the twentieth century to find serious and rejections that characterize the relation of bates changed, the grounds for the de-
productive confrontations of architectural turn-of-the-centurytheory to the rich body fense of any style as style were steadily
thought and modernity, a project that has of thought it inherited. This is perhaps the eliminated.
to date centered on the figures of Otto most interesting line of thought in a book The second chapter looks at how archi-
Wagner and Gottfried Semper and on the that seeks to establish a continuity of con- tectural theory sought to assimilate ad-
important translations published by the cerns between the eras of historicism and vances in industry; the focus is on the
Getty Center. His book is a salutarycorrec- modernism while respecting the historical applied arts as a testing ground for the
tive to an image that has prevailed since specificity of ideas that later "turned into relation of form to new technologies. Again
the days of Giedion and Pevsner-that of modern theories of architecture" (xiv). Schwarzeroffers, one could say, a binocu-
the dusty nineteenth century with its anti- The book is organized thematically, lar view: he looks at the many positive
quarian debates, its ornaments sold by the though the final chapter, looking at the approaches to machine production at the
yard, its irresolution in the face of modern situation in architectural theory before same time as he calls attention to a shift
materials, and its deeply suspect national- World War I, gives the book a chronologi- from monumental architectureto the envi-
ism. (It is indeed remarkablehow resilient cal thrust; it also echoes the narratives ronment of the domestic consumer as the
this caricature has proved: its currency has sketched out in preceding chapters. Since locus of cultural change. He proposes that
long outlived that of the heroic narrative Schwarzer'sgoal is to rewrite the history of the road to the more famously affirmative
of architectural modernism it served to a century known mainly for its debate over moments of early modernism was paved by
shore up.) style,he is wise to dispense with this issue in an important strain of historicist thought
Schwarzer's thesis is that the debates his first chapter. His exposition here works that accepted machine production as a
central to nineteenth-century German ar- at two levels. First, it is a survey of the valid tool for providing the middle class
chitectural theory--over historicism, poly- associations and "affiliations" that in- with the sorts of goods previouslyreserved
BOOKS 97