Problematyka identyfikacji narodowej i regionalnej na przykładzie architektury Gdańska lat 1871-1914. Gdańska czy(li) niemiecka?

English Title: The question of national and regional identity on the example of Gdansk architecture in 1871-1914. Gdansk's or (rather) German?

In: Nowacki, Dariusz (Hrsg.): Mecenat artystyczny a oblicze miasta. Kraków 2008, pp. 169-184

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Translation of abstract (English)

The architectural heritage and the mode of its analysis and interpretation, specially in the perspective of national and regional question, can and often becomes the issue prone to manipulation. The attempts to define national and regional identity by means of cultural legacy have been accompanying the research into art and also the creation of modern architecture in the spirit of national historicism already since the 19th century. The place where the phenomena can be observed in a particularly acute way is Gdansk, a city of extremely complicated identity, multicultural structure, and a rich architectural output, the latter having been on a number of occasions a subject to national interpretations or over-interpretations. The architecture of Gdansk has for years been the subject of a heated debate of both German and Polish architects, historians of architecture, and conservators. In the recent years also politicians have joined in the debate, and so have writers. Discussed have been the general attempts to define factors and means of visual identification, definitions of cultural belonging, and definitions of the historical-architectural affiliation of the cultural heritage of the city. Other debate issue has been the need to apply all this heritage or its element to the creation of urban landscape (both as new districts and filling in the architectural substance in the old ones) as elear signs of regional identification. At the same time, the bulk of monuments has become the subject of scholarly abuse and interpretative manipulations, used for the sake of propaganda, or merely rhetoric, often with no understanding of architectural issues or the specificity of the history of architecture on this territory. The paper analyse the issue of the relation of architectural forms and rhetorical formulas, namely the combination of architecture and specific contents treated as signs of local identity, as well as changeability and interpretational flexibility of those issues with regard to the needs of political circumstances (idioms versus interpretational variants, stereotypes, research myths, likings versus scholarly idiosynerasies). Special attention is paid to the Gdansk architecture of the 2nd half of the 19th century and its contemporary and later interpretations in the perspective of regional and national identification.