Eduard Führ, Cottbus
0. Introduction
Speer, the architect of the ‘Fuehrer’ and at that time Minister for Armament reported in his postwar diary an event he had in 1944 in Breslau, the Silesian city which had then been occupied by Germany, when the Russian Army approached:
"In the evening I met Hanke, the responsible Gauleiter (the Nazi head of a region). He told me that he will destroy all the famous Breslavian architecture mainly the Opera-house (which was supposed to have been designed by Schinkel), in order to save German culture from misuse by the Barbarians.
I was very shocked - so he wrote - and I succeeded in convincing the Gauleiter after long talks to refrain from these plans."
(Speer, Erinnerungen 1971, S. 430)
Speer considered his intervention as a
cultural humanistic activity against the Nazis and presented it
in his postwar diary as a proof of his opposition to their
system.
The Nazi Gauleiter intended to save the purity of the
architecture by its destruction. Speer tried to save the
architecture from destruction but worked on the industrialization
of armament to destroy people.
Both, the Nazi Gauleiter and Speer
considered themselves as rescuers of culture.
Both pretended to act humanistically.
Today we don’t agree with their behaviour and their way of thinking. But to criticize their understanding of the term 'culture' and to point out their implications will be productive for our workshop.
Their understanding of culture - let me use the German word ‘Kultur’ for a short time - was developed at the end of the 18th and at the beginning of the 19th century. ‘Kultur’ had different sources - let me mention two:
- The first one not only in my list but
also from the point of history is Goethe with his early (ca 1770)
analysis of the Cathedral of Strassburg. In this text he puts the
German gothic cathedral - ‘German was of course an
usurpation - in contrast to French classicism. French classicism
is - in Goethe’s analysis - only the application of
aesthetic rules without any creativity and engagement of heart
and soul. German art is personal and emotional, it comes from the
heart, has to do with citizens and it always deals with
metaphysical problems. On the other hand, French art means an
abstract order and rationality, it comes from the mind and deals
with problems of the feudal world.
Goethe’s article was titled ‘On German culture and
art’ (Von Deutscher Art und Kunst).
- Later, Goethe changed his mind, but
the romanticists took over his position and extended it.
Their philosophical and aesthetical aims were to get into touch
with the metaphysical universe. Their scientific method was a
direct emotional feeling of - or better - empathizing with the
universal spirit and not with an empirical and rational
recognition, a position which they refused as French.
The unification with the universal spirit is simultanously a
dissolution of the subjectivity of man.
This understanding of ‘Kultur’ is
in the minds of Gauleiter Hanke and Speer when they had their
argument about the destruction of the Breslavian architecture.
‘Kultur’ is metaphysical and timeless and thus
independent of people. It is more likely a lasting object, a
piece of art, a picture, a building than a developing, changing
and decaying person.
‘Kultur’ is a humanistic value, but not necessarily a
humane, not even a human one.
‘Kultur’ is always singular; either you have it or you
don’t have it. And - in parentheses - Germans have it
(according to Hanke and Speer).
Cross cultural activities are not possible.
‘Kultur’ is a counterterm to ‘Zivilisation’ - I use here the german term, too. ‘Kultur’ is superhuman, ‘Zivilisation’ is only human; and therefore not that valuable. (According to Hanke and Speer).
However, I want to expound a definition of culture which corresponds to civilisation, as an empirical human culture of everyday life. Let me remain focused on Germany, too
1. Structure (Cultural levels)
A. Nation
But what is german culture?
Maybe you Americans know better from outside.
Anyway, it has to do with Leibniz, Goethe, Schinkel, the
Cathedral in Cologne, maybe with Gropius and the Bauhaus and so
on.
But when Goethe wrote his Faust and Schinkel built his Berlin, there was no Germany. Germany was founded in 1871 - and that is worth mentioning - in the French Royal Palace of Versailles. Goethe lived and worked for the State of Anhalt, Schinkel for the State of Prussia.
It's not the language either: Leibniz wrote
in Latin, the Great Fritz (Frederick the Great) spoke French.
Whatsoever, I would concede that there has been a German culture,
but it's very unspecific and Americans can recognize it better,
because they have a certain distance to get a good perspective
and gain an overview.
B. Ethnic Groups
As a German I have an interior view to
German culture. I would say, that we have different cultures in
Germany; a Bavarian, a Saxonian, a Swabian as well as other
different ethnic cultures.
But also this level is very unspecific. It has a lot to do with
the differentiation into a catholic, a protestant or a jewish
religion and with the kind of political power through the
centuries.
The margins of the ethnic cultural circles
are undefined and melt together with others.
In the 19th century we had a big migration and urbanization
process.
The 'Ruhr-District' (Dortmund, Bochum, Essen, Duisburg), for
example, was and is a 'melting pot' of Rhenish and Westphalian,
of Austrian, Silesian, Polish, Italian and Turkish groups.
Ethnic cultures are not given by nature. They are subject to history. The differentiation of the way of living was caused by special constitutional regulations (market laws), by different qualities of the soil, economic inventions (economy of three fields), and the ways of storing and preserving the crops (for example the 'all-in-one-house-solution' or the ' solution with separate buildings for farmers, serfs, animals and crops')
C Everyday-culture
I have choosen the rural examples with intention. Usually you give urban examples (opera, theater, museum). The rural examples show, that culture is not only existent in selected, extraordinary moments and places (a Saturday evening at the opera). Religion, administration, how to deal with social problems and how to generate an atmosphere of technical and aesthetical creativity are also aspects or parts of culture. Culture is a certain way of living, not only certain moments in life.
D Social Strata and Classes
I mentioned Goethe and Schinkel. Both were - during their lifetime - and are today upper-class culture. Schinkel worked for Prussian princes and kings and built some palaces and monuments for them; he devised buildings and monuments in Berlin to represent and demonstrate the cultural power and ability of the Prussian regime, he drew a cathedral for peace in gothic style to fight the Rhenish movement of liberal citizens who wanted to get rid of the Prussian influence. Schinkel intended to integrate their cultural attitude into the Prussian culture. He built four churches for the poor in Berlin to prevent revolutionary thinking and actions.
Schinkel’s buildings have an extremely
high aesthetic quality. They are very intelligent and
sophisticated in their reference to antiquity. They represent an
extraordinary culture.
But it is without doubt an extraordinary culture of the feudal
upper classes which also was a means to maintain their political
power.
The liberal Rhenish citizens had their own
culture, too. Schinkel referred to a Greek - what he thought
would be Greek - humanism. The Rhenish citizens referred to the
north-European Middle-Age with the culture of the cities and the
cathedrals as cooperation of all inhabitants unifying them by
this work and giving them an everlasting sign of their identity.
The quality of the cultures of the lower classes lies less in
their architecture than in their social attitudes like
solidarity, their personal ability to survive against all odds
and their flexibility.
Ethnic cultures as well as classes and their culture are distinguishable but not distinct. There aren't any clear-cut boundaries and they are subject to history.
Ethnic cultures are intermingled and disturbed by class-cultures, class-cultures are modified by ethnic cultures.
E. Groups
There is a fourth sublevel of culture, the group cultures. We talk about female and male cultures. We know the culture of the academics (with their conferences and workshops). And we also have sport cultures, youth cultures, cultures of certain family clans etc.
They all jam with other cultural levels, too.
2. Values and qualities
Culture is an ethical entity, institution
or behavioral system. It has to do with values and qualities.
Single values are hard to discuss and I want to exclude them here
from consideration.
I’d only like to emphasize that there are certain behavioral
sets (for example European Hooliganism, torture, circumcision of
clitoris) which I cannot assess as culture.
There is another destruction of cultures regarding culture as a whole.
A Folklorization
This is a loss of all inner values. What remains is only an amazing superficial performance, the - let me give a picture - cold leftovers of the previous day.
B Artificializing
We have an ethnic (Slavonic) minority, the Sorbs. They have been very much sponsored in Cottbus for more than 100 years, even by the Nazis who generally fought every Slavonic ethnic culture. The Sorbs were supported in the GDR, they were the first group that got financial support after the wall had been torn down to improve their buildings and meeting places. They have always been used as a group to demonstrate pars pro toto the good relationship of Germany to Eastern Europe. Streetnames in Cottbus are in both German and Sorbian, even the name of the city is given in German (Cottbus) and Sorbian (Chosebuz). Today they have their own radio station and, of course, a lot of special public parties.
But when you listen to the radio program you will see that they use their old language in the same monotonuous and unemotional way I. e. having no words for car, airplane, heating and the Internet as if we would speak Latin.
It is a dead culture, only for tourists and for political purposes.
C Fundamentalizing
This is a kind of elitist racism and the denial of culture as subjected to historical development and to adaptation to practical problems.
3. Individual Perspective
Finally there is a level of personal culture.
This level gives me the chance
a) to think about the relationship of the levels and
b) to change my perspective totally.
The different levels are only in an open
and unspecific relationship to each other. There is no hierarchy
in which the national culture is on top and the personal culture
is on the bottom.
Rather, the individuum is the medium in which all the cultures -
more or less - exist and come together. There is no culture
without the behaviour and experience of a person; and there is no
person with one culture only.
Everyone takes over some national cultural values without embodying these completely. Everybody incorporates during his life certain aspects of the cultural values of foreign nations, for example while learning a foreign language or traveling or simply watching TV films from abroad. Everybody grew up in a certain social environment and in a specific ethnic culture. But only to a certain extent and immediately he integrates culture from neighbors, friends etc.
An individuum is a 'gumbo' of different cultures and different levels, sometimes matching in certain aspects, sometimes fighting each other.
A person is always a multi- and a
pluricultural entity. 'Pluri' that means (according to Roman
Jacobson) that a person is indeed a 'gumbo', a mixture of
different cultures. 'multi' means, that a person is able to
acquire new cultures and to get rid of old ones.
Cross-cultural - to come to the title of our workshop - means
that a person is able to 'visit' foreign cultures for the purpose
of gaining a perspective on his own culture from outside, to
prove and doublecheck the values of one’s own culture and of
the foreign ones and to think about changing and transforming.
Culture is not a result, but a process. Maybe, cultural objects are art, but they are instruments only for the culture people have to use and to perform. Objects could remain the same but as to different cultural activities and understandings they will change.
4. Architectural Decision Finding
Schinkel did not built for the art historian nor for a tourist of the 20th century to photograph; but he built for princes and kings to live in. They brought into existence what Schinkel designed his buildings for: a feudal as well as enlightened everyday culture with humanistic references to the antique.
The visiting tourists of today don't live the same culture. But they develop culture with the help of these buildings as well; their culture is to have a good time with their family, to perform family values in taking the wife to such a fine place and explaining historical things to the children; to admire the husband and father for all he knows and for all the inconveniences (long drive, delay etc.) he undergoes. It is also to enjoy the peculiarity and luxury of the old architecture, and to see a different lifestyle.
The architect cannot bring culture into
existence, alone, without his client in his studio, as an
armchair planning.
He has to collaborate with his client, otherwise he will design
buildings but not devise cultures.
Let me finish my paper with a picture given by Filarete, the
Renaisasance architect, to illustrate the relationship between
architect and client:
The architect is a midwife for a pregnant woman. The client has
to produce life, the architect is obliged to support and to help,
that means to find and not to make it.