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63 CHAPTER TWO Writing the City: Bureaucrats, Historians, Technicians, and Nationals The official architecture of the Austrian Vormärz, the neoclassicism of Pietro Nobile (1776-1854), the Royal Court architect and director of the Viennese Academy of Arts that was influential in Lemberg until the 1830s, has traditionally received little appreciation, even though leading Polish interwar scholars recognized Nobile as one of the most outstanding architects of the epoch.1 Neither his figure nor his architectural school has been studied in any depth until recently, and his contributions to the architectural history of Central Europe,2 as well as his involvement in the Galician capital,3 still await revision. One of the reasons for the neglect of Vormärz architecture lies in the assumption of rupture, which has its roots in the Polish historiography of the early twentieth century and the interwar period, which traditionally emphasized the great difference between neoclassical architecture and later historicist styles, and interpreted this difference as a consequence of political modernization in Galicia. Similarly, this historiography distanced itself from the German writing of the Vormärz, inasmuch as the evaluation of buildings and styles was concerned.4 This line of argument culminates in an emphasis, still current in the scholarship on Habsburg Lemberg, on a great change that occurred in architecture in the second half of the nineteenth century when Julian Zachariewicz established a historicist architectural school at the Lemberg Technical Academy.5 Following the lead of Maria Kłańska, who was the first to call for a rethinking of the Vormärz “German” written legacy in Galicia,6 this chapter is meant to challenge the assumptions of early twentieth-century historiography. Closer examination reveals that it is inadequate to judge neoclassical architecture according to late nineteenth-century concepts of beauty as much as twentieth-century historiography did. Fin-de-siècle writing in both Polish and Ruthenian was profoundly influenced by authors of the Vormärz and appropriated, developed, and 64   ◆   Chapter Two at times inverted the latter’s normative judgments for its own purposes. Writings by several high-ranking clerks of the Vormärz, neoabsolutism, and Autonomy eras, and also architects’ views, show lines of continuity as well as rupture. The continuity between the earlier texts in German and the later ones in Polish and Ruthenian can be especially traced in the interpretation of new architecture, planning , and greenery. The new urban planning was seen as both “beautifying” and “healing”; the quality of architecture – “baroque,” “barrack,” or “national” – was equated with the nature of government; and an intellectual arrogance vis-à-vis the “backward” local population, especially against the Jews, has survived.7 In fact, great change took place only in the early twentieth century, when the discussions over Lemberg’s new cultural institutions transformed from intellectual musings into a political issue with a clear national agenda. Bureaucrats and Reason: Franz Kratter, Joseph Rohrer, and the Polish Context Vormärz neoclassical architecture in Lemberg was most strongly informed by Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s writings; Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s drawings of Ancient Greek sites (notably Herculaneum and Paestum) and Roman buildings; English Palladianism; and the principles of antique architecture and planning as conceptualized by Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and Francesco Milizia.8 TheAustrian Vormärz bureaucracy’s arrogance notwithstanding, neoclassical views – including views on architectural beauty – were neither limited to nor introduced by the authors writing in German in Galicia. As pointed out by Tadeusz Mańkowski, contemporary Polish literature on the subject existed as early as the late eighteenth century: specifically, works by Kajetan Zdzański, Florian Strawiński, and Michał Szulz.9 Architecture based on Vignola’s principles had been taught in prepartitioned Poland in Jesuit colleges since the early eighteenth century. Throughout the nineteenth century, local professionals in the lands of partitioned Poland knew Sebastian Sierakowski’s theoretical writings on architecture, especially his Architektura obejmująca wszelki gatunek budowania i murowania [Architecture as Overarching All Kinds of Building and Mural Works] and Stanisław Potocki’s O sztuce u dawnych czyli Winkelman polski [On the Art of the Ancients or Polish Winckelmann]. Both works were strongly Winckelmannian.10 Local professionals were also aware of Alberti’s writings on Vitruvius, and not only in German, but also in Polish translation. Although major architectural trends did not pass Lemberg before the arrival of the Austrian architectural bureaucracy, the actual blossoming of neoclassicism in the city took place in the late Vormärz. Local Lemberg architects of the Vormärz have left us little...

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