The Architecture Collection as a Space of Ideas. Pictorial Mediation Strategies of Medieval Buildings (ca. 1815-1871)

The already intensively researched perspective on architectural representations as a means of communication between architects and clients is juxtaposed in this project with the mediation between architecture teachers and students, as well as a broader public. By means of various visual media, knowledge of architectural history is collected, organized, and communicated.
The focus of the investigation is the staging of medieval architectural history in models, drawings, and paintings roughly between 1815 and 1871. Within the project, the processes of form and medial transitions between the different architectural media are primarily described and analyzed.
The subject of research on medieval architecture, which was relatively young in the 19th century, influenced early art historiography and became the object of various collection efforts (museums, private collections, monument inventories, textbooks). In order to research the monuments of the Middle Ages, which were re-evaluated both artistically and in terms of national politics, and “to make the educated Germans intimately acquainted with the great masterpieces of their ancestors” (Georg Gottfried Kallenbach), the first concepts for the presentation of the Middle Ages in museums were developed, in addition to campaigns for the preservation of monuments.