Hans Nadler (monument conservator)

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Hans Nadler (born  July 1, 1910 in Dresden ; †  October 8, 2005 there ) was a German architect , building historian and well-known monument conservator . He was the Saxon state curator and honorary professor at the TU Dresden .

Life

Hans Nadler's grave at the Weißer Hirsch forest cemetery

Hans Nadler was born in 1910 as the son of the painter Hans Nadler sen. born in Dresden. While studying architecture at the Technical University of Dresden , he worked as assistant to Heinrich Sulze on excavations in Pompeii on behalf of the German Archaeological Institute . He received his doctorate in 1940 on the Göltzsch moated castle in Rodewisch in Vogtland . After the war he was employed by the Saxon State Office for Monument Preservation from 1945 , in the GDR from 1949 to 1952 as a state curator. After the division of the GDR into districts , he worked as the head of the Institute for Monument Preservation Dresden with responsibility for the districts of Dresden , Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz), Leipzig and Cottbus . He was also appointed honorary professor for monument preservation by the Technical University of Dresden and served on the editorial board of the journal Natur und Heimat .

Nadler became known for his vehement and skilful commitment to the preservation of damaged monuments in Dresden, to which he was "moved" in particular by his role models, his teacher Heinrich Sulze and Walter Bachmann , whom he succeeded in 1949 as head of the Saxon monuments office. The inner old town , including most of the main works of the Dresden Baroque , was largely destroyed by the air raids on Dresden . In spite of the rebuilding, Hans Nadler and his colleagues in the monument office as well as the volunteer monument preservers managed to negotiate important ruins such as the Dresden Residenzschloss , the Semperoper , the Coselpalais , the Taschenbergpalais , the Kurländer Palais or the Dreikönigskirche for a later date in long negotiations with the ruling communists Secure reconstruction. The decades-long enforcement of Dresden's old town with charred war ruins, which seemed strange to visitors, was his work, as was the resurrection of Dresden as "Florence on the Elbe" from 1990 onwards. Fritz Löffler's book Das alten Dresden (1955), which was produced in cooperation with the Institute for the Preservation of Monuments and the Bauakademie was prepared, should keep the memory of the old city alive for the people of Dresden and make it clear to the foreigners, especially the East Berlin politicians, what the ruins once meant.

Without ever being a member of the SED , Nadler's persistent voice was unmistakable in Berlin. He wrote numerous reports for the preservation of endangered architectural monuments, through whose clever argumentation he was able to bring about some salvation. The Zwinger , the Catholic Court Church and the Kreuzkirche were restored under the direction of the Monument Office immediately after the war, the burned-out ruins of the Landhaus , Gewandhaus and the Palais in the Great Garden followed in the 1960s , Nadler was able to save the preserved Kollegienhaus with a lot of effort in 1982, as the middle wing of the Hotel Bellevue. The Moritzburg and Pillnitz castles survived the war unscathed. The later reconstruction of the completely destroyed Frauenkirche was only possible thanks to the preservation of the rubble mountain, which, at Nadler's suggestion, had been declared a war monument as a precaution. From 1989 onwards, Nadler argued vehemently for an early reconstruction.

At the Sophienkirche , Dresden's last Gothic building, the preservationists were subject to; the ruin, which could be restored, was demolished in 1962 and a large restaurant was built in its place. In 1968 the Paulinerkirche in Leipzig was blown up. "We came out as the second winner again," was Nadler's short comment. Countless partially destroyed buildings were finally removed in the course of the reconstruction of the city of Dresden and entire streets fell victim to the scheduled clearing of rubble , including many baroque town houses, but also such important large buildings as the old town hall , the new town hall or the Palais Wackerbarth . The building law of 1950, which ended the efforts of the owners to maintain and rebuild their houses in the ruined areas, proved to be fatal ; they were forced to sell to the state, with the buyer determining the price; Large-scale demolition and rebuilding followed. He was also unable to avert the demolition of many castles and mansions in Saxony, on Order No. 209 of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) of September 9, 1947; At its meeting on December 12, 1947, the State Land Commission of Saxony passed the decision so fatal for the Saxon cultural landscape: "The district soil commissions are instructed to immediately demolish at least 25% of the mansions and castles." That was the death knell for more than 240 castles and mansions in Saxony.

There is hardly a place in Saxony where you don't come across his tracks. "Without Professor Nadler there would be nothing here": Sentences like these can be heard everywhere between Leipzig and Görlitz. Hans Nadler was an honorary citizen of Dresden , Görlitz , Bad Muskau , Rodewisch , Torgau and Elsterwerda , his father's birthplace. Here he supported, among other things, the establishment of the small gallery "Hans Nadler" , which bears the name of his father, the painter Hans Nadler. From 1955 until his death, Nadler lived with his family as a tenant in Dinglinger's Weinberghaus , in which he decided not to install central heating for conservation reasons. Hans Nadler died on October 8, 2005, 22 days before the Frauenkirche was re-consecrated, the reconstruction of which he initiated together with Ludwig Güttler , Karl-Ludwig Hoch and Manfred von Ardenne with the call from Dresden on February 13, 1990. His grave is in the Weißer Hirsch forest cemetery . In 2000 he was voted one of the “100 Dresdeners of the 20th Century” in the daily newspaper Dresdner Latest Nachrichten .

Performance and criticism

Comparable to the reconstruction of Warsaw's old town under Jan Zachwatowicz , the attitude of Hans Nadler must be seen similar to that of Margarete Kühn in Berlin or that of the Bavarian monument preservation after 1945, which was generally eager to reconstruct, in connection with the architectural losses caused by the bombing war : Compared to the school of monument conservators who Oriented himself to the principles finally laid down in the Charter of Venice in 1964 after a long discussion , Nadler believed that reconstruction should not just have an "exceptional character" (Article 9), since he continued the concept of identity that should be preserved through monument preservation wanted to see composed. Because of the traumatic loss of identity in Dresden, he therefore deviated from the concept of preservation , which was linked to the original substance , which sees it as an archive-like testimony value, and no longer assumed a currently endangered protected property but rather a property that was re-created from memory. In this model, a historical location that was associated with a specific building design was worth protecting. For example, the ruins of the Dresden Frauenkirche, which as such had achieved historical importance in 1990, were given up in favor of an archaeological reconstruction. The criticism countered that a reconstruction is clearly influenced by the will to create the reconstructor and therefore it is not a question of monument preservation in the strict sense , but of a new creation. The objectification, which consists in understanding only originally preserved historical building fabric as worthy of protection, since it transmits a multitude of - sometimes even undesired (Huse) - properties, he dissolved in favor of a subjectification, a hope of overcoming destruction.

Awards

literature

  • Sigrid Brandt: History of Monument Preservation in the Soviet Zone / GDR. Berlin 2003.
  • Jochen Helbig : Hans Nadler , in: Preservation of monuments in Saxony 1894–1994. Boehlau, Weimar 1997, Vol. 1, pp. 47-51.
  • Norbert Huse: Inconvenient architectural monuments. Munich 1997.
  • Association for rural building values ​​in Saxony (ed.): Hans Nadler 1910–2005. A life in five state orders. A life for the Saxon cultural landscape. Dresden 2016, ISBN 978-3-938390-32-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Circular decree No. 7 of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in the state government of Saxony of December 29, 1947, copy in the Saxon State Archives Leipzig, district administration Oschatz, volume 684, p. 152.
  2. ↑ Hans Nadler - Memories of a Monument Conservationist , article in: Barock in Sachsen , Monumente Edition, published by the German Foundation for Monument Protection , page 26–31
  3. ↑ 100 Dresden residents of the 20th century . In: Dresdner Latest News . Dresdner Nachrichten GmbH & Co. KG, Dresden December 31, 1999, p. 22 .
personal data
SURNAME Nadler, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German preservationist and architect
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH October 8, 2005
Place of death Dresden