Georg Moersch

Georg Mörsch (born March 15, 1940 in Aachen ) is a German art historian and monument conservator who has taught at the ETH Zurich for decades .

Live and act

Originally from the Rhineland, Mörsch initially worked for the state curator there and was responsible for Cologne. He then became Professor of Monument Preservation at the ETH Zurich . During his many years in Zurich, he remained in close contact with the German institutions for the preservation of monuments.

In November 2005 he received the Karl Friedrich Schinkel Ring, the highest German award for monument protection, awarded by the German National Committee for Monument Protection. On the occasion of his 70th birthday, Hans-Rudolf Meier and Ingrid Scheurmann published the commemorative publication worthy of monumental contributions to the theory and topicality of monument preservation (Berlin 2010).

Mörsch has positioned himself as a consistent advocate of self-confident contemporary building, including in a historical setting, and as a critic of reconstructions and harmonizing, adaptable architecture .

For example, he favored a new building project for the Rapperswil City Museum , which was planned between the Breny Tower from the 13th century and the late Gothic Breny House from 1492:

“Why does it have to fit together, please? Or in what way does it have to fit together? Anyone who walks through the old town with a building history guide in hand sees a lot of jumps in time - that is, it is our perception that believes we have to discover a harmonious overall picture. Not only large metropolises, but also our smaller cities, even our villages, are full of structural fractures, which only come together because they all date from a time before the present day. But it is the individual traces of time that together make up the aura of a place. It is therefore actually a matter of course that we - with all due care, with all due care - try to add something to this temporal stratification. It can be this planned new building, it can also be something completely different. There is only one possibility that is ruled out from the outset from a monument preservation point of view: an imitation of what is already there. Firstly because this means that this place is denied this new layer of time, and because the imitation also endangers the recognizability of the existing. "

Publications (selection)

• Enlightened resistance. The monument as a question and a task. Birkhäuser, Basel 1989.
• with Adrian von Buttlar Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper , Michael S. Falser, Achim Hubel (eds.): Monument preservation instead of dummy cult. Against the reconstruction of monuments - an anthology. Bauverlag, Birkhäuser, Gütersloh, / Berlin / Basel 2010, ISBN 978-3-0346-0705-6 . ( Bauwelt Foundations , 146)

Web links

• Literature by and about Georg Mörsch in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Hiltrud Kier : Reconstructions - a new architectural style? The funny in art history and monument preservation. In: Roland Kanz (ed.): The comical in art. Böhlau-Verlag, Cologne 2007, p. 281ff, p. 286.
2. ↑ Quote on Linth24.ch