Gilberto Botti

The bishop's architect

Karljosef Schattner at Eichstätt

In: Lotus international 46, Interpretation of the past, 1985/2, S. 72-85.

Unusual and in some ways unique circumstances define the background out of which the work of Karljosef Schattner has emerged over a span of almost thirty years. Setting, specific sites and design themes are set, superimposed and interwoven within the frame of a small urban universe, one that might almost be surveyed in a single not very farranging glance and that could be traversed in the space of a few minutes. Within it, and with admirable constancy and care, a work of slow but continuous mutation retracing the course of an ancient thread of structure, reinterpreting some outstanding stages in it in terms of new uses and proposing new perceptions.

Schattner (born at Gommern, near Magdeburg, in 1924) has been living and working in Eichstätt since 1957. Situated in the heart of Bavaria and the see of an ancient episcopate, Eichstätt is a city of mediaeval layout and Baroque appearance. Three Italian architects in the service of the prince-bishop - Jakob Engel (Angelini) from Monticello (1632-1714), Gabriel Gabrieli from Roveredo in the Val Mesolcina (1671-1747) and Maurizio Pedetti from Casasco near Lake Como (1719-1799) - remade the city's image in the 17th and 18th century, after the disastrous fires that had almost razed it to the ground during the Thirty Years War. As the diocese of Eichstätt emerged from that conflict considerably reduced and weakened, the work of reconstruction and renewal - much as happened elsewhere, in more recent and no less tragic circumstances - had to sacrifice the geometric perspectives of the age in order to make use of the existing, somewhat tortuous mediaeval layout, even though with different materials and techniques. All the same the results were of definite value: a fine example, to a large degree intact today, of how the new can be created and openly displayed on the stock of a distant and diverse tradition.

In the 19th and 20th century trade and industry, still scarse in Eichstätt today, brought no radical changes in town-planning or building. Even before then there had been no significant alteration, through secularization or political and administrative reorganization, apart from reconstruction of the medieval town hall in a classical style.

Cut off over the last hundred years from the main routes linking up the largest urban centres of Bavaria and spared from destruction in the last war and to some extent from the violent transformations of the succeeding decades, Eichstätt today turns its own past and a geographical position favourable to tourism to profit. Situated in the valley cut by the Altmühl river, it is in fact a mecca for "regenerative" tourism, in direct contact with one of the most interesting and charming natural environments in southern Germany.

Nevertheless the city exerts a strong pull over the Landkreis (regional district), an area with a predominantly agricultural economy of which it is the administrative centre. The town in fact houses the region's principal commercial, administrative and health facilities and a large number of educati-onal institutions. As a consequence of this Eichstätt has seen a considerable "re-awakening" of building activity over the last two decades. It is only thanks to the peculiar conformation of the territory that the adjacent areas to the north and south of the historic centre have been largely spared.

To stimulate and in some aspects to guide this process - which has not just been a matter of expansion, but also a substantial, diversified and contradictory rehabilitation and renewal of existing buildings - there has been a determination to effect a cultural revival on the part of the diocese. As well as bringing new forces and initiatives into the city through the creation of a university, this has been founded on an exploitation of its own historical and cultural heritage, which has been actively revived and incorporated into the circuit of a broader utilization.

Karljosef Schattner, architect to the bishop, has interpreted and translated the decisive stages of this process into spatial, constructive and formal terms. The moment when he took over the position of director of the Bischöflisches Bauamt (Episcopal Building Office) coincided with the start of the project for the construction of a College of Theology and Pedagogy for 300 students. In the mid-seventies this college was expanded and transformed into a university offering a variety of teaching courses. Still growing, it now has 3000 students, almost a quarter of the resident population.

In connection with the university went up administrative buildings, libraries, colleges and student centres. At the same time the offices of the episcopate were renovated and a new

Diocesan museum was set up: from a building to an urban system, whose elements are made up of the university and episcopal institutions, and to the offices of a variety of cultural and service facilities.

The first stone to be laid in the formation of this newsys-tem, which we might take as a symbol of the transition from the old Bischofsstadt to the new Universitätsstadt, was at the eastern edge of the oldest core of the city, on an undeveloped site alongside the 18th-century episcopal Sommerresidenz.

But the later ones showed a progressive tendency to approach, overlay and in part replace those of a substantial portion of the Altstadt, proposing a new use and perception of the historic centre: a development "along internal line'" which leaves a valuable strip of land untouched to maintain the ancient relationship, to the south, between city and river.

Looked at in terms of the overall results so far attained, this effort of salvage and transformation - still under way - seems to be exceptional in a variety of aspects. This 1s certainly true with regard to the continuity of intentions and objectives pursued and the determination/necessity to manage and adapt to new uses a heritage of buildings and monuments that is quantitatively and qualitatively very considerable. From the professional point of view it constitutes an experience comparable with very few others: the long and meticulous work of planning so far carried out by Karljosef

Schattner has been concentrated and realized almost entirely within a space whose structure was laid down in the distant past, and which has survived essentially intact in its 17th and 18th-century reformulation, covering an area which can be traversed from side to side in a matter of minutes.

If one tries to find analogies with other parallel situations, one cannot help but think of De Carlo's Urbino, another his-

toric city cut off from the main lines of regional and national communication. It too escapes an exclusive dependence on tourism thanks to the creation of a university, which has been able to develop a vast range of uses for spaces that would otherwise be fated to become "empty forms of existence." However there is a difference in the dimensions and the basic direction of the operation, which in Eichstätt is highly - although not exclusively - concentrated on the old core and to some extent tends, with the buildings of new construction, to close off once again its boundary to the south-east.

While in Urbino development scheme goes hand in hand with architectural project in order to reshape and link together fairly substantial parts of the city and its environs in morphological and architectural terms, intervention in Eichstätt has remained closely anchored to the historical morphological foundations, largely operating on the available material through rehabilitation or the introduction, grafting on or fusion of new "pieces" of architecture.

The overall scale of the operation, though considerable, is for the most part confined to the reservoir of existing buildings at the diocese's disposition.

Given the quality of this work and of the setting in which it has been carried out, and given the continuity of commitment and the proximity of the sites and buildings on which it has been concentrated, it may be of particular interest to trace, however summarily, the paths of its development. In this way can be discovered a number of stages, internal connections and breaks, giving the measure of the progress of an idea of architecture that is created in the discovery, never definitive, of specific and complex situations and relation-ships.

The characteristic which has perhaps most shaped Schattner's approach resides, to my mind, in the living presence of an initial ethical position, essentially derived from his study of the early modern tradition (1), associated with a continuous effort of experimentation and modification and stimulated - rather than inhibited - by the discovery of ever new relationships between the specific architectural problem and a world of environmental situations.

The aim here is to isolate several of these relationships, rather than pursuing a hypothetical, and as unlikely as it is consistent, line of interpretation, in order to make a problematic - not totally comprehensive - approach to the construction of an idea of architecture with a special view to the dialectical link between "old" and "new."

As in the majority of German cities at the time, the years of Schattner's arrival in Eichstätt were dominated by the climate of tensions, expectations and attitudes stirred up by the process of "reconstruction" and by the increasing thrust of subsequent growth. To stay in Eichstätt, to contend right from the start with the context, grasping and accepting its dimensions, striving to take in its language without losing track - indeed to some extent anticipating them - of the patterns of urban change current elsewhere and of his own cul-ture, is clearly a choice of no small significance.

Twenty years were to pass before he received any official recognition. (2) By the end of the seventies, Eichstätt began, in comparison with what was going on in most other urban centres, to be seen by its increasingly frequent visitors as an unusual phenomenon, and as an indication of how it would have been possible to transform many other German cities

without perverting their nature.

Yet this emphasis on the exceptional character of Eichstätt, and on the special conditions in which it had been possible to work, laid itself open to justificatory arguments about the many occasions missed elsewhere. Moreover, this at once eulogistic and restrictive view has not so far resulted in an analysis of Schattner's architecture in terms of its broader framework of connections with cultural circles in Germany and abroad and in relation to the not always idyllic conditions in which it was carried out. (3)

Favourable "external" conditions to one side - although these must be taken into account - the route that Schattner took over this period turns out to have actually been internal

and aware of the difficulties and developments of contemporary architecture, influenced by the debate and the experiments that were going on in other settings.

His earliest works were located outside the historical city, but not at a great distance from it. This allowed Schattner to try out the first language he had learned in a still relatively "open" setting, where the terms of the confrontation with the established Stadtgebilde, with the image and urban structure so strongly rooted in the memory and values of the com-munity, still left some room for calm experimentation with modes of expression. But where, at the same time, it would have been hard - without an absolute indifference to aesthetics and culture - to avoid considering the historically stratified and moulded natural and urban surroundings.

In the Pädagogische Hochschule, the Staats-und Seminar-bibliothek and the Zur Heiligen Familie church the first two of which were located at the edge of the Altstadt and the third further out, "bringing together" the line of development along the axis coming in from the east; all three built in the first half of the sixties (4) - it is easy to see his determination to make use of what he had learned during his university studies (5) and at the same time his keen interest in what the "masters" (especially Le Corbusier) had been coming up with shortly before or over the same period.

And yet the dimensions of the projects, his handling of their planimetrics and his introduction of local materials alongside bare concrete make equally clear his concern with the setting, the characteristics of the site, its morphological conformation and material constitution. They bear witness to the terms of Schattner's early approach to Eichstätt, which coincided with his first professional experiences; an approach that was not yet directed towards the Altstadt but towards the more "suspended" and unmistakable Stimmung generated by the city and its particular relationship with the territory.

Above all it is the first demanding task of design faced by Schattner, the building for the College of Pedagogy and Theology, that appears to thoroughly resolve the intricate range of tensions that give life to his creation, by expressing them in a unitary but richly articulated system that is open to out of its close rapport with the Baroque Sommerresidenz and especially with its Hofgarten. The relationship is not based on any kind of formal mimicry, but is set up through the adoption of a respectful dimensional reserve that is both enriched and qualified by the establishment of a dialogue based around courts that open onto the garden and the Residence.

The materials and techniques speak tranquilly of their time, but they also call to mind nearby places and the building traditions bound up with them: the mountains of the Jura, whose stone was extensively used even in the old constructions with an exposed wooden structure. Schattner does not use it sentimentally: he makes a careful study of techniques of working and assembly, in order to bring out their plastic and chromatic qualities within a severe and yet enfolding structural frame of bare cement.

Inside this ordered mesh a number of transgressions and asymmetries are permitted, lending movement, identity and specification to the different locations; however it is still possible to perceive, through transparent diaphragms or over the boundaries of material, what lies beyond or alongside in a multiple series of visual relations. (6)

Schattner's first important intervention within the old fabric of Eichstätt dates back to 1965-66. This involved the rehabilitation and radical internal restructuring of the building used by the episcopal Ordinariate. It was to be followed by many others, especially over the course of the seventies, directly aimed at the restoration, renovation or adaption to new uses of a substantial part of that system of monumental buildings and connective fabric of which the Bischofsstadt was made up in the past.

This group of interventions is so rich and varied in its functional and typological thematics as to provide an almost exhaustive picture of the wide range of situations which anyone who works in an existing and historically structured context can find himself faced with.

This has led some people to see Schattner's works as something in the nature of a textbook, seeing it as a collection of "good examples to follow" when one finds oneself operating in similar conditions. (7) It is a view that runs the risk of overshadowing Karljosef Schattner's predilection for research and constant experimentation and can only be accepted in part, so long as it is limited to a recognition of the continuity (but not immobility) of an ethical attitude and a method that were adopted right from the start and have always been maintained: his unshakeable determination to make use of a language that expresses his own time as well as respect for and utilization - though not uncritically or indiscriminately - of the testimonies of the past, and his search for the melding of old and new in the clear emphasization of their points of junction (in which room is found for a marked predilection for attention to detail and a refined poetics of contrast).

But these "behavioural" premises do not give rise to static models. The stages reached are not fixed and definitive points, but opportunities for a real test and for a temporary and necessary suspension of a conceptual and figurative process whose development is never linear or predictable: «Für mich ist dieses Arbeiten an Architektur ein Prozess ständiger Wandlung, so wie Leben sich auch laufend ändert" (For me this work on architecture is a process of continual change, in the same way in which life is constantly in transformation). (8)

The solutions emerge out of the location: in the first place out of the constraints it imposes (of a spatial, cultural, legal or financial nature), but also out of the suggestions that it conveys, as well as out of the building materials employed and the construction techniques adopted, and finally out of innumerable cultural and visual "contaminations" : from frequent journeys (especially in Italy) and from many conversations held with his colleagues, mainly German, Swiss and Italian.

Schattner's relationship with the "old," with what is cur-rently described in German as "historische Substanz," is marked by time and its circumstances, and in the specific solution time and its circumstances are rendered in a tran-sparent manner, at times emphasized to the point of provo-cation. His historicism is not of the anti-historical type in the manner of "Anpassungsarchitektur" (new building that conforms to the past style). (9) On the other hand his interest in the "modern" cannot be put on completely the same footing as the post-war revival of the "Neues Bauen"; it might be said that he was more and more consciously looking tor at least a part of his roots in the original conceptual positions of the "moderne Architektur." (10)

In examining the work of restructuring carried out on the episcopal Ordinariate, where only the outer shell has been maintained in its Baroque guise while the internal structure and functional distribution have been dealt with by the use of exclusively modern techniques and materials, one cannot avoid referring to what was a widespread cultural attitude in those years, involving fierce opposition between the most open-minded advocates of the New and the most strenuous defenders of the legacy of the Past. Despite Eichstätt's "difference," it too was subject to the developments, limits and uncertainties of the debate and of the experiences relating to post-war "reconstruction" and to the major transformations which the central areas of many cities subsequently went through. (11)

Over the course of the seventies a noticeable evolution took place in the terms of Schattner's approach to the monumental heritage of Eichstätt. Nevertheless, apart from a few exceptions, one fact remained unchanged: the external image of the Baroque city and the formal and spatial relations between the buildings that constitute the skylines of streets and back-drops of squares can only be reconfirmed; the alterations will be minimal, although sufficient, for anyone who looks at the city from the outside, to reveal that something in it has changed.

Between this delimitation of the possible field of intervention, expression of a collective ethical choice (a not always consistent choice, however, and at the same time not consistently sustained), and the requirements of a clientele open to arguments that are neither merely quantitative nor a matter of crude symbolism, lies a specific world of operation: that of an architecture carried out within the frame of an existing structure and formalization of space, of which it accepts and preserves parts and expressions, on which it expresses clearly recognizable "judgements," and with which it attempts to re-establish a meaningful connection between new uses and new perceptions.

Between the episcopal Ordinariate and the Ulmer Hof (1978-80, with Jörg Homeier) - the last important project to have been completed that involved a historic monumental building - fifteen years went by. During this period the idea of the rapport between the old and the new was extended to include differentiated techniques of intervention, whose languages were tempered and made more specific.

It is enough to look at some of the principal works to get an immediate grasp of the evolution that has occurred. The "Willibaldsburg" - the original bishop's residence, overlooking the city from its location at the summit of a hill around which the river winds and abandoned for a see within the city itself after the Thirty Years War - was restored (1973-76) on the basis of the criterion of maintaining and consolidating spaces and structures just as they were at the moment of intervention. But where structural sections have collapsed or had to be replaced, the same or similar materials and techniques were not used for their reconstruction.

Restoration ensured the continued existence of this build, but at the same time it documented the conditions of its previous decay, dating from the years of secularization. In renovating the building and adapting some of its rooms to be used as a museum the scars of that decay have not been healed, so as not to give the false impression of historical continuity and integrity. Just as the materials on exhibition - evidence of the past - continue their existence in an abstract form, the space that houses them - itself a testimony of the past - displays a part of itself in museographical terms. (11)

Looking at the wooden trusses used for the roofing of the Diözesan-Museum (1977-82, with Jörg Homeier), one finds an application of the same concept, but turned, in a manner of speaking, on its head. While in the Willibaldsburg the new alla coffered ceiling of reinforced concrete is joined on to the original brick vaults at a higher level so as to leave the section caused by the collapse exposed to view, the old truss roof in the Diocesan Museum, still intact but no longer structurally sound, is supported by steel "shoes" which transfer the load to the external walls by means of reticular frames. Although in this case the original sructure was still present and could be preserved in its entirety, the way in which it has been reinforced also reveals its weakness and natural aging. Thus it is presented in an estranged form, no longer fulfilling its original function, and therefore in the act of portraying it.

The theme of „Verfremdung“, or "estrangement," has become a dominant feature of Schattner's approach to "historische Substanz.“ In the Sommerresidenz (1970-74) restoration of the original structure was already clearly distinct from the alterations needed to make its spaces usable for administrative functions.

The offices were created in the form of pavilions within the large corridors, vestibules and halls, allowing them to contain the new activities with a degree of "detachment," displaying themselves, at the same time, as spaces and representations of another time.

In the Ulmer Hof - and we have now reached the end of the seventies - the theme of functional estrangement is temporal and is unfolded in various parts of the operation. Principally on the facade overlooking the existing internal court, now "reused" as a library. This facade is in fact the meeting place of old and new: in it are concentrated the conceptual, structural, figurative, spatial and chromatic tensions due to the changes resulting from the new use to which the building has been put. What remains, all that has been rediscovered on and around it, is restored in the form of document, represented in its original guise and function. But, since we are dealing here with a building that has been subject to alteration on several occasions, the guises are many and all "origi-nal": this is the point at which the theme of Verfremdung takes on a hint of irony, provoking reflection on the "scientific nature" of methods of restoration that follow the prescription of the official "Denkmalpflege" (Protection of monu-ments).

All the works mentioned and others carried out over the course of the seventies are characterized by the simultaneous use of different forms of intervention: from restoration understood as maintenance and also partial renovation of existing structural, architectural and decorative features to structural reinforcement achieved by the employment of new materials and techniques; from the replacement of structures and vertical connections to the addition or modification of individual sections.

The determination and fitting in of different techniques of intervention occurs in a highly complex and articulate manner and varies from situation to situation. And yet this does not give rise to fragmented spatial and figurative sys-tems. The whole is linked together functionally by routes of utilization and perceptually by a coherent choice of materials and their processing, as well as by a clear definition of spaces, while retaining the dense network of mutual relationships resulting from forms of separation that are at times obtained solely by the use of chromatic means and illumina-tion, artificially or naturally filtered and regulated.

One cannot fail to mention the fundamental role which Schattner's encounter with the work of Carlo Scarpa has had in this process of evolution.

It should be pointed out straightaway that Schattner has not limited himself to a study of specific solutions and examples of Scarpa's work - which it is in any case difficult not to be fascinated by. Rather he has dug down to the roots of Scarpa's methods in order to grasp their more widely applicable essence.

In an article published in 1981 Baumeister Schattner states that he got to know Scarpa's architecture purely by chance, "coming across" it during a trip he made at the end of the fif-ties. Since then he has made a number of journeys to Italy in order to get a precise and correct view of this architect, to whom he feels so strongly attracted. They are alike in their marked predilection for detail, their research into internal spaces and their work on existing buildings. They also have in common a concern for and sensitivity to the materials and techniques of construction, the intention to bring out expressive possibilities that are usually quite unsuspected, their constant presence on the building site and the close and never one-sided rapport that this leads to between design and realization.

As far as the last point is concerned, it is worth mentioning that right at the start of his work for the bishop of Eichs-tätt Schattner set up a permanent artisan workshop, specializing in the execution of details and in techniques of processing and assembling materials. In this way the process of design and construction could be controlled from the tice.

The adoption of "modern" techniques and materials should not mislead one about the significance that Schattner attributes to them. In the relationship with existing structures they serve to draw attention to the temporal gap and to the different nature of the present, the historical, social and cultural exactitude of the intervention. In themselves they do not answer to the ideological assumptions of a technological "teleology."

They are a means to be used in order to obtain spatial and perceptual results and the way in which they are handled depends not only on their suitability for use and factors of economy, but also on an investigation of the expressive possibilities that they themselves allow and "suggest." For this reason there is no reluctance to use what is available "on the market," as long as it lends itself to being reworked or simply reinterpreted in terms of an idea of composition. Hence there is no uncritical adaptation, nor nihilistic rejection, but an exacting confrontation with what exists and is widely available, with what "speaks" of our time; and the pleasure, at the same time, of shattering fossilized visual habits (Sehgewohnheiten) by the use of more common materials.

But Schattner's range of operation is not confided to the interiors of existing structures. It includes a number of additions or substitutions of elements in the urban scenery. In this case too, it could be said that an "internal" and contextual outlook dominates in the solutions proposed.

All the main works of this kind have been carried out since the end of the seventies and have therefore developed in parallel with the more mature works of restoration and reconstruction examined above. The "house" for offices of the university on Ostenstrasse (1978-80, with J. Homeier and Richter), the expansion of the episcopal Seminary (begun in 1981, with Ditzinger and J.Homeier), the house for the provost of the chapter (1983-84, with N. Ditzinger and  J. Homeier), even the building for teachers (979-80, with J. Homeier) annexed to the Pädagogische Hochschule that Schattner had built some fifteen years earlier, clearly show signs of an assimilation and critical employment of the surrounding whole into which they manage to fit with dicretion, consciously altering their perception.

It is difficult to reconstruct a common grammar beyond common methodological and conceptual approach that presides over the design: the diversity of ways in which surfaces are handled, the different articulations of facades and masses lead to equal attention being paid to what is alongside and around, to a tension that is constantly aimed at grasping the essence of a setting. It is against this setting that the functional and structural necessities and effects of the project itself are guaged.

Looking back from the point we have now reached at some of the earlier works, we cannot help noticing in them a relative detachment with regard to the material presence and consistency of history. It was during the course of the seventies that every residual attitude of detachment dissolved, making room for increasingly thorough forms of dialogue and "common reasoning" with existing structures on the fundamental themes bound up with the project: its functional purpose, research into dimensions, proportions and spatial and figurative relations, into the identity that should once again be assigned to the whole and to its parts in their multiple internal and contextual relationships, and finally into the links and the gaps that must bind together or distinguish these simultaneous levels of reflection.

This evolutionary process could be seen in part as the effect of a sort of "acclimatization" to or "taking root" in the place and in its historical identities. But not an "acclimatiza-tion" or "taking root" of the contemplative type. Interventions at the crucial points of the episcopal urban system in fact form an opportunity for deepening the knowledge of the place and of its histories: in this way they become part of the very identity - and, by this means, of the language - of those who experience it. Yet this cognitive experience, this forming one's own idea of surrounding and existing things in the act of transforming them, leads to an awareness of the dynamism of historical processes, of the temporariness and precision of their "achievements," of the necessity - vital to them - of change and, at the same time, of the ties that exist between the most lasting and telling change and a poweful tradition.

One cannot take Schattner's work out of the contemporary and international cultural context which has accompanied and in part influenced its development, but nor can one leave out the background picture formed by the Baroque renovation of Eichstätt and by the work of three Lombard architects in the service of the prince-bishop who grafted the prototypes of Italian architecture onto the building tradition of this city.

Just as the work of Eichstätt's Baroque architects forms part of a broader movement which, radiating out from the Alpine zones of central Europe, was able to lend its own characteristics to an architectural culture that spread over some areas of Northern Italy and over Switzerland and Southern Germany, so that of Schattner should be located within a cultural and geographical area with very largely similar boundaries and traditions. Although this area is no longer characterized by consistently homogeneous traits, some clearly recognizable areas of research and expressivity can be found within it that are in communication with each other.

1) The one that reaches up to the threshold of the twenties and forms the premise for the emergence of the rationalist and functionalist movement. In the fifties-the experience of the "Modern Movement" was not covered by the syllabus of the Technische Hochschule in Munich, where Schattner completed his studies.

2) The first recommendation dates from 1977 and was connected with the "Deutscher Architekturpreis." It was followed by other awards and recommendations in the same year and in 1979 and 1981. The first publication of Schattner's work of international import came in 1979, in Architectural Review, "Schattner in Eichstätt."

3) The only one so far who has tried this kind of approach is Manfred Sack, "Karljosef Schattner," in Reißbrett, no. 2, Braunschweig 1983; "Kontrastreiche Beziehungen," in Die Zeit, 25.3.83.

4) The Pädagogische Hochschule was designed by Schattner in collaboration with Josef Elfinger and was constructed from 1960 to 1965. The Staats- und Seminarbibliothek was built in 1963-64. The church Zur Heiligen Familie dates trom 1963-65.

5) Among Schattner's teachers at the Munich TH it is worth singling out Döllgast and Hart. Schattner would work in Hart's studio before going to Eichstätt. This experience was dominated by the influence of Scandinavian and Swiss architec-ture. Asplund's book, he recalls in a colourful image, was used in the studio as a "Kochbuch" (cook-book). Among the major exponents of the post-war revival of the Neues Bauen, Schattner was chiefly influenced by Egon Eiermann.

6) It is of some interest to make a comparison with other school buildings dating from the same time or shortly before (many were constructed over the fifties).

7) This is the viewpoint of the essay by Günther Kühne, "Ort und Stunde: Eichstätt heute," in U. Conrads and Manfred Sack, (editors), Karljosef Schattner, op. cit., pp. 5-11, and of the majority of articles that have appeared in specialized reviews and journals like Die Zeit and the Basler Magazin.

8) Cf. Daidalos, no. 5,1982.

9) In this connection he maintains that the attitude of the Anpassung, seen as imitation, "while it creates no new situation, neither does it preserve the previous one, on the contrary it devalues it, reducing the existing quality" (from a speech at the convention on "Historic Centres" held in Modena in 1983).

10) Significant in this connection is Schattner's renewed interest, not only in the architecture, but also in the writings of Otto Wagner. In support of many of his opinions he often cites a booklet containing the text of a series of conferences held by Wagner at the "Wiener Volksbildungsverein," entitled Die Qualität des Baükunstlers, Leipzig and Vienna, 1912. In it Wagner dwells at length on the theme of the relationship between old and new and on that of the artistic training of architects, which alone, together with a knowledge of technique and construction, will permit them to solve the problems of the salvage and reutilization of historic monuments not in terms of "Stilarchitektur," but in an authentically modern language - that is to say an expression of its own time.

11) Although there has been no need to rebuild on the ruins of war in Eichstätt, the level of maintenance and structural state of many buildings were such as to require a great deal of reinforcement and at times radical reconstruction.

12) It is interesting to note here the conceptual affinity with the method by Döllgast in the immediate post-war years for reconstruction of the monuments damaged in the bombing of Munich. The work of reconstruction should not wipe out the memory of the ruins. It was an approach that was definitely neglected.