futuante.8.1.0001

Peter Meyer and the Swiss Discourse on MonumentalityAuthor(s): Ákos MoravánszkyReviewed work(s):Source: Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism,Vol. 8, No. 1 (Summer 2011), pp. 1-20Published by: University of Minnesota PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/futuante.8.1.0001 .

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1. Peter Meyer, Moderne Architektur und Tradition (Modern Architecture and Tradition), 1927. The cover was designed by Peter Meyer.



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Future AnteriorVolume VIII, Number 1Summer 2011

Peter Meyer and the Swiss Discourse on Monumentality

Ákos Moravánszky

The American debate on monumentality and modernity, which started with Lewis Mumford’s Essay “The Death of the Monu-ment” in 19371 and continued with written contributions like the manifesto “Nine Points on Monumentality” by Sigfried Giedion with Josep Lluis Sert and Fernand Léger in 1943,2 and by architects like Louis I. Kahn,3 had already been discussed by American scholars such as Stanford Anderson, Joan Ockman, Eric Mumford, and Sarah Williams Goldhagen.4 The signifi-cance of the debate was seen by these authors as an attempt to adjust the program and aesthetics of modernism to the new realities of postwar economy and society. It is lesser known that Giedion’s conception of a new monumentality absorbed arguments of his Swiss fellow countryman, the architect, art historian, and critic Peter Meyer (1894–1984), who addressed this issue from 1937 on—the year when Mumford’s essay was published in the anthology CIRCLE: International Survey of Constructive Art. Ironically, Giedion and Meyer represented positions that were diametrically opposed in the 1930s. Under-standing the Swiss debate and Meyer’s notion of a contempo-rary monumentality is necessary to fully grasp the significance and the arguments of the American discussion about new monumentality. Swiss architecture, generally associated with pragma-tism, simplicity of form, and carefully designed and precisely executed details, avoided grand gestures. The cities of this small country, with an emphasis on its republican tradition and local government, lacked the representative public squares, grand avenues, and monuments familiar from the urban centers of countries with a monarchic past, such as France or Austria. Therefore, one would think that the Swiss debate on monumentality in the 1930s was a critique of monumental forms in architecture. But in reality, it was a far more complex discussion about monumentality, orchestrated almost single- handedly by Peter Meyer. It is important to understand why this heated theoretical debate happened in Switzerland, which, as a Protestant country, generally shunned monumental build-ings, especially at a time when the rise of Nazism, Fascism, and Communism in Europe was spawning new forms of monumen-tal architecture. Peter Meyer, a relatively unknown figure outside of Switzer-land, was an influential and critical thinker who challenged



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the ideas of many of his better- known contemporaries and whose writings attracted the attention of a large audience, both within and beyond academia and the architectural profes-sion. He studied architecture in Munich under Theodor Fischer (1862–1938), whose built and written work he admired, and remained in correspondence with him long after he left Munich and settled in Zurich. His small 1927 book, Moderne Archi tektur und Tradition (Modern architecture and tradition) (Figure 1), summarized what would become his life- long endeavor to reconcile the modernist program of the Neues Bauen with traditional architectural forms. He criticized the masters of the modern movement, pointing out discrepancies between their renunciation of style and their obvious attempts to codify a formal vocabulary. What modern architecture needed was to renounce formalism, he thought. But instead, the formal principles of functionalism were being canonized as the “new building style” (Der Sieg des neuen Baustils), to cite the title of Walter Curt Behrendt’s book.5

Moderne Architektur und Tradition presented collage- like plates of various contemporary stylistic tendencies, with ironic comments that both rejected neoclassicism as unable to express the unpretentious spirit of the time and disallowed the modern movement as formalism. He derided significant Swiss buildings, such as the Federal Assembly Building in Berne by Hans Wilhelm Auer (1894–1902) (Figure 2), for embodying a false monumental pathos. The word pathos is common cur-rency in German, and was frequently used by Meyer. It comes from the Greek αθος and signifies a theatrical, exaggerated, emotionally charged expression. Meyer contrasted the formal-ist modernism of Ernst May (1886–1970), Robert Mallet- Stevens (1886–1945), Le Corbusier (1887–1965), and Walter Gropius (1883–1969), which he saw as deviating into the realm of the decorative, with modern buildings derived from English country houses such as those by the California architect G. W. [George Washington] Smith (1876–1930); the German, Karl Schneider (1892–1945); and the Swiss, Max Ernst Haefeli (1901–76) and Paul Artaria (1892–1959). In the next year, Meyer published Moderne Schweizer Architektur (Modern Swiss architecture). In this book he presented more examples, using the arguments of the previous book, while emphasizing that the architects he was supporting—like Haefeli or Artaria—did not regard mod-ern architecture as a style. In 1930 Meyer was appointed editor in chief of Das Werk, the journal of the Swiss Werkbund and the Association of Swiss Architects.6 In his first editorial, he rejected what he called “the foolish delight in pitting the faded slogans ‘modernity’ and ‘conservativism’ against each other over and over again.”7 In subsequent editorials he continued to present a vision of



2. Monumentalbauten (Monumental buildings). Page in Peter Meyer’s book Moderne Architektur und Tradition.



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modern architecture that, while insisting that modernism was not a style, reconciled neohistoricist styles and the new anti-historicist modern styles being built in Sweden and Denmark. Scandinavia was important to Meyer because it was the place where the notion of the “new monumentality” first emerged after World War I.8 The intellectual roots of this con-cept can be traced back to the Scandinavian reception of antiq-uity during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which was later influenced by the renewed German interest in the classical tradition through the work of Peter Behrens (1868–1940) and Theodor Fischer (1862–1938). The best- known Scandinavian protagonists of this direction, also known as “new empiricism” or “Swedish grace,” were Gunnar Asplund (1885–1940) and Sigurd Lewerentz (1885–1975). Gregor Paulsson (1889–1977), the Swedish art and architectural critic—five years older than Meyer and a leading figure in developing the Scandinavian discourse on monumentality—was similarly inspired by the success of the Werkbund in Germany. His 1920 book Den ny arkitektur (The new architecture),9 compared the by- now- familiar images of grain elevators to Josef Hoffmann’s classi-cal Austrian pavilion of the Werkbund exhibition in Cologne (1914) and new Danish projects by Kay Fisker and Ivar Bentsen. He discussed the renewed interest in classical forms as new monumentality, a new approach based on the continuation of classical typologies that he traced back to Alfred Messel’s attempts to adapt existing typologies to new functions, such as with his Wertheim department store in Berlin (1896–1906). As director of the Swedish Society of Industrial Design, Paulsson played a significant role in the important Stockholm Exhibition of 1930, where he successfully integrated modern design and advanced technology with a colorful, light, and elegant appear-ance. The Stockholm Exhibition became an important model for Swiss architecture and urban design, influencing also the Swiss National Exhibition in 1939 in Zurich. Paulsson’s book and the Scandinavian buildings by Asplund and Lewerentz began to change Meyer’s views on monumental architecture. Up until that time, he had regarded monumentality as a hollow convention, not a vital need. He be-lieved there were no architects in Switzerland willing to design monumental architecture and no clients willing to pay for it.10 He criticized the results of the League of Nations competition in Geneva and rejected the Stuttgart railway station by Paul Bonatz (1877–1956), a highly successful building acclaimed by German architectural critics and the general public as the outstanding example of twentieth- century monumentalism. But, shortly after Meyer took over the journal Das Werk, he started to modify his earlier position. He wrote his influential article “Monumental Architecture?” on the occasion of the 1937



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archi tectural competition for a new congress center and con-cert hall in Zurich.11 He thought that the “architectural misery” of his time was rooted in the problem that architects had lost the instinct to recognize when monumental form was required and when it was unnecessary.12 The “solemn tone of sublime monumentality,” characteristic of religious buildings and preserved in their sacredness, has an inflationary effect when applied to banal everyday buildings. Even such “Babylonic climaxes of formal pathos”13 as the Palace of Justice in Brussels (Joseph Poelaert, architect, 1866–83) or the already mentioned Federal Assembly Building in Berne were devaluated by preten-tious hotels, department stores, and parvenu villas. Earlier in his career, Meyer had believed that everyday buildings would be designed more appropriately by following the model of the English country house. But he later admitted that such a residential model could not possibly serve as the basis for new forms when monumentality was required and appropriate, especially when the client was the state. He stressed that

the theory of modern architecture has a gap here, but it avoided an explanation thinking that if we keep silent on the question of monumentality, as if it did not exist, it will be solved by itself. This was the expression of a danger-ous haughtiness: as if the architect would be in position to decide freely about the legitimacy of a problem he is faced with, when in fact his social task is that of the prac-titioner, of the executor of collective will and taste. All this has resulted in the situation where the construction of monumental buildings has never ceased, but these monu-mental buildings are emerging outside of modern architec-ture: like in Italy, Germany, or Russia, or in the case of the unfortunate art museum in Basel. Instead of developing an organic modern monumentality, the whole area of the monumental has been left as fallow ground, and today the embarrassment is obvious, as the results of the Zurich competition demonstrate.14

Meyer was critical of the winning entry to the Zurich Congress Hall competition by M. E. Haefeli, W. Moser, and R. Steiger (Figure 3).15 He preferred the contribution of Karl Egender, which he identified with a monumentality that was justified because it felt modern; it looked forward “but backward as well, this is of great importance, because monu-mentality claims a place on a scale of values, on a comparative sequence, that reaches back into the past. Monumentality always strives for eternity, permanence; it is not by coinci-dence that the word ‘monumentum’ comes from ‘monere’ = reminding.”16



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Despite the recognition of this connection, Meyer was not much interested in issues of historic preservation. For the American reader, “historical monument,” “national monu-ment” (protected landscapes under federal jurisdiction), and monumentality are all connected etymologically. In German, a “Denkmal” (monument) is not necessarily “monumental”; a nonmonumental monument sounds only paradoxical in English translation. Not one of Meyer’s several hundreds of texts, listed in the excellent monograph of Katharina Medici- Mall on Meyer,17 is dedicated to issues of preservation, which is not as strange as it might appear. Like in the later American debate on new monumentality, the adjective “new” was just as important as monumentality, since it was not about com-memoration but about a form that was able to structure its environment, a role that could not be filled by the “intentional monuments” of the past anymore. As the Austrian writer Robert Musil (1880–1942) noted in his witty essay “Denkmale” (Monuments), the most noticeable thing about historic monu-ments is that they are not noticed anymore—they are almost sealed against attention.18 To fix a commemorative stone on the monument of a person is the best way to sink him into a sea of oblivion, wrote Musil, and this was very likely also Meyer’s opinion. New monumentality had an entirely different purpose. A building that makes monumental claims should stand out from the rest, both visually and in terms of its mean-ing, stressed Meyer. The “artistically gifted modernity”19 of Le Corbusier or the Egender competition entry had their own charm as joyful, floating expressions, unburdened by the past. They were improvised, exhibition- like, festive decorations that would soon disappear. If they did remain standing for too long, they would strike us as tedious precisely because of their exaggerated modernity. Such buildings do not make claims on historical permanence, thought Meyer; they stood for the “sublimated essence of modernity,”20 without the substance of the culture that carried them. By contrast, monumental build-ings stemmed from this particular cultural substance. This was the reason why monumental intentions inevitably led European architects toward architectural forms stemming from antiquity,

3. The winning entry by M. E. Haefeli, W. Moser, and R. Steiger, Zurich Congress Hall competition, 1937. Façade to the lake (Das Werk, 1937).



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“carriers of the monumental side of European culture since two thousand years.”21

Meyer compared monumental form with typography. The printed text was able to express the finest nuances of moder-nity, but the use of newly invented characters would make the text unreadable:

There are no other choices: we will either slide back to re-signed, passive, more- or- less tasteful stylistic imitations, as we witness them today in Germany or Russia. . . . Or we will opt for an energetic, fundamentally new and unbiased use of monumental forms, to make them serve the modern feeling of life and carry a specifically modern monumental-ity, a direction advanced by the valuable contributions of the Perret brothers and Swedish architects. Only in this second direction of an active process can we clearly distin-guish between the new monumentality and the conscious and deliberate non- monumentality. . . .22

The nature of monumentality in modern architecture seemed like a burning question in 1937, the year of the Paris World’s Fair. The French magazine L’Illustration featured the illuminated pavilions of two dictatorships, Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. Meyer described these two pavilions with sarcasm, rejecting the first for its naïve mediocrity, and the second for expressing an empty and antiquated pathos (Figure 4–5). Later, Giedion would also describe these two buildings as examples of pseudomonumentality, framing the Eiffel Tower, which was partly covered by what he considered a more adequate example of contemporary monumentality: the colorful fireworks at the 1937 Paris exhibition and at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York.23

Other important new ideas about monumentality appeared that same year. Leslie Martin, Ben Nicholson, and Naum Gabo published the anthology CIRCLE: International Survey of Constructive Art,24 featuring rich illustrative material along with programmatic texts by European and American artists and critics of the avant- garde. In his introduction, Gabo describes art and science as separate paths to knowledge. It is the “con-structive idea” that expects art to perform positive work rather than keeping a critical distance. Constructive art is a way out of previous empty formalisms, which had been based only on artistic considerations. The concluding text in the anthology was Lewis Mumford’s essay “The Death of the Monument,” an excerpt from his upcoming book, The Culture of Cities, to be published the next year. Like Sullivan and Wright before him, Mumford found in “germ plasm and in social heritage” the energy that is the basis of organic evolution, in contrast to the



4, 5. The Russian and the German pavilions of the Paris World Fair, 1937. Double spread in Das Werk.



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“hollow monuments” of the past, such as the Victor Emmanuel Monument in Rome by Giuseppe Sacconi (1885–1911), or the New York Public Library by Carrère and Hastings (1897–1911). Monumentality contradicted the modern principles of flexibility and adaptation: in ancient Rome, roads, water pipes, and sew-ers were monumental but “the more the energies of a commu-nity become immobilized in such material structures, the less is it ready to adjust itself to new emergencies.”25 Therefore his much- quoted conclusion: “The notion of a modern monument is veritably a contradiction in terms, if it is a monument it is not modern, and if it is modern, it cannot be a monument.”26

Mumford’s theory of culture assigned a vital role to sym-bolic forms in the renewal of community life. However, he saw a discrepancy between the advanced design of technical equipment and the more “backward” aesthetics of architec-ture, which made him regard the functionalism of Le Corbusier and Gropius with growing skepticism. Mumford’s critique of architectural monumentality was counterbalanced by other voices in the CIRCLE anthology. Le Corbusier’s “The Quarrel with Realism” argued that a new monumentality would emerge from architects working with sculptors and painters and paying closer attention to real phenomena as opposed to abstrac-tions. Following Wilhelm Worringer’s distinction between abstraction and empathy, Le Corbusier described French art as the most realistic for being empathy- based, and therefore better suited for the development of a new monumentality internationally: “At the basis of international production is French art, which, abstract in name, is really concrete. It is es-sentially concrete. It contains realism. [. . .] Perhaps the Nordic race—the Anglo- Saxons or the Germanic peoples—allowed themselves to indulge in abstractions.”27 Quoting Léger, he emphasized the value of monumentality in the much- awaited synthesis of the arts: “In the collaboration [. . .] mural paint-ing and sculpture with the architecture, restraint is necessary, special qualities of monumentalism and careful preparation.”28

Mumford greatly influenced Meyer’s thinking on monu-mentality. He reviewed the German edition of Sticks and Stones in 1926, agreeing with Mumford’s double criticism of the backward- looking neoclassicism and the forward- looking machine aesthetic, and extending that criticism to reject the historicism that undergirded Russian Socialist realism and German National Socialism, as well as to disallow the rational-ist modern style embraced by Italian Fascism.29 In an important departure from his previous blanket opposition to monumental architecture, he suggested that modern architects could begin to explore a new monumentality so long as they reserved it for particularly significant public building programs. The emblem-atic type of program he had in mind as sparking the search for



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this new monumentality was the 1939 Swiss National Exhibition (Schweizerische Landesausstellung) in Zurich: “The buildings of the National Exhibition make an important contribution exactly to the dominant problem of monumentality,” he concluded.30

Meyer was involved in the debates surrounding the plan-ning of the exhibition. Early on, he had argued for siting the exhibition on the shores of Zurich Lake because the narrow strip of land along the lake would prevent monumental axial compositions (Figure 6). Meyer was convinced that to properly express the republican traditions of Switzerland a less formal layout was required, without the symmetry, axiality, and grand gestures of entrance pavilions common in exhibition architec-ture. Still, exhibition director Armin Meili and his chief architect Hans Hofmann (1897–1956) preferred a conservative image: the architecture of the village was a model for some of the new pavilions; others were built as light constructions of wood or metal. Le Corbusier was not invited to participate. Meyer praised the final design as a great success, al-though he criticized some details, such as the entrance gate designed by Hans Leuzinger, because he felt it was inappropri-ate for an entrance to a subdivision “to claim the pathos of a main gate”31 (Figure 7). Meyer thought a more appropriate

6. Swiss National Exhibition (Schweizerische Landesausstellung) 1939 in Zurich, area on the left shore of Zurich Lake (Das Werk, 1939).



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handling of transitions would have been a scalable system of spaces that would register the varying importance of their content and message through subtle material shifts, such as different flooring systems; for instance, he thought granite should be reserved for “spaces, which are related to the idea of the state, having therefore a monumental character.”32 He was pleased to find that monumental expression had been restricted to two particularly significant spaces: the one dedi-cated to the “Wehrwesen” (Defense) and that devoted to the

7. Swiss National Exhibition, 1939. Entrance gate by Hans Leuzinger (Das Werk, 1939).



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“Rütlischwur,” the oath taken on the Rütli Meadow, surrounded by mountain peaks, the mythical foundational act of Switzer-land (Figure 8). “The restrictions in the use of the means of monumental expression,” he wrote, “resulted in very moder-ate measures of monumentality yielding a disproportionately strong effect.”33 It was not necessary at all to produce colossal dimensions and theatrical effects. Meyer also praised the light, almost improvised appearance of the “flag street,” which was covered by hundreds of flags emblazoned with the coats of arms of the Swiss towns (Figure 9). He summarized the “sty-listic criteria of modernity” of the exhibition buildings as open spaces, floated ceilings, bodiless (slender) supports, trans-parence, and structured surfaces (lattices, geometric patterns, etc.).34

Reassured by the popular success of the Landi, as the exhibition was popularly called, Meyer developed his posi-tion on monumentality further, focusing on the issue of adequately representing the idea of the state, a central theme of the National Exhibition. The Swedish architecture magazine Byggmästaren devoted a special issue to the theme of monu-mentality. The Swedish architect and urban designer Gunnar

8. Swiss National Exhibition, 1939. “Rütlischwur” with sgraffito by Otto Baumberger (Das Werk, 1939).



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Sundbärg took Peter Meyer’s position as an opportunity to reflect critically on the issue and rejected the use of the forms of Greek classical architecture because of the acceptance of slavery in Greek antiquity. Meyer’s response, entitled “Discus-sion on Monumentality” (Diskussion über Monumentalität), considered the architectural implications of “state pathos.” The citizens, he wrote, perceived the state as a metaphysical entity, a symbol that made the citizens aware of the idea of unity in a spontaneous and unreflective way, even if this was neither intended nor desirable. This perception of the state was not necessarily based on its power but rather on cultural differences with neighboring states, a common language, the common cultural origins, geographical location, religion, and so forth.35 Therefore, he argued that it was not necessary to

9. The “flag street” of the Swiss National Exhibition, 1939 (Das Werk, 1939).



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express the state’s emotional pathos through architectural gestures suggestive of contrition, intimidation, or other formal expressions of brutality. On the contrary, it could be expressed through uplifting and festive forms, generating a feeling of col-lectiveness. Sundbärg suggested a distinction between state pathos and popular pathos (Volkspathos), a separation that Meyer did not consider necessary. He also rejected Sundbärg’s view that modern bridges, stadia, and other public works of engineering and mass spectacle were the best suited for the new monumentality. Certainly, these were great achievements, but Meyer felt they were profane building programs, and he considered it a grave error to consider them worthy of monu-mental expression. As World War II raged in Europe, Meyer’s earlier opposition to classicism weakened. “For monumental architecture,” he wrote in 1940, “a new classicism will establish itself, not out of resignation, but through the recognition that only the classical family of forms with its unlimited capacity for nuances is able to express the tonality of the sublime and festive in a European way.” Meyer, who always criticized political or aesthetic ex-tremes in favor of a nuanced position, drew parallels between European classicism and Japanese traditional architecture because both could use the same tectonic vocabulary in simple homes and in imperial palaces. Some of his readers disagreed. The writer Fritz Flüeler pointed out that Gothic architecture was an example of monu-mental architecture that broke with classicism: why would the development of another nonclassical style for monumental buildings be unthinkable? Another respondent, the historian Theodor Willy Stadler, criticized Meyer’s endorsement of monumental state architecture as a way of ceding to the state “unrestricted power in a social disguise.” Stadler used the example of monastic architecture to demonstrate that the ver-nacular and “profane” in architecture was intertwined with the monumental and sacred. Meyer answered his critics, stressing that the microcosm of the medieval monastery did not exist anymore, and that the differentiation between the sacred and the profane, the monumental and nonmonumental, affected all realms of life.36

In 1942, Meyer praised in his journal the new architectural ensemble of the Miséricord University of Fribourg, Switzer-land, by Fernand Dumas and Denis Honegger (1938–41, Fig-ure 10a, b), a work strongly influenced by Auguste Perret (1874–1954), who was both Honegger’s teacher and later employer. He viewed the Miséricord University as an alter-native to the more radical version of Swiss modernism as represented by Hans Schmidt (1893–1972) and Hannes Meyer (1889–1954); the building’s fine concrete ossature suggested



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a different avant- garde that was just as modern in its spirit but was also able to synthesize historical precedents from Greek antiquity, the Gothic period, and their nineteenth- century reinterpretations. At this time the division between the Swiss avant- garde, supported and organized by Sigfried Giedion, the secretary of the CIAM, and the program of the “New Monumentalism” as put forward by Peter Meyer became visible—only to disappear very soon, since Giedion’s theory was about to undergo signifi-cant revisions. For Meyer, Giedion’s embrace of technology as the driving force of modern culture was just as unacceptable as Meyer’s emphasis on convention and historical continuity for Giedion. A direct polemical exchange between Meyer and Giedion took place in 1934, when Meyer reminded his audience of Giedion’s earlier rejection of the use of human proportions in architecture, contrasting it with Le Corbusier’s and Aalto’s recent interest in proportioning systems. Giedion responded by distinguishing between the human dimension of architecture related to needs and social responsibility, which he embraced, and a mimetic anthropomorphism, which he rejected. But his subsequent interpretations of the human dimension suggest that Meyer had a point. Lewis Mumford raised in 1947 a very similar polemical argument. In his contribution to The New Yorker, he pointed out a shift among the East Coast proponents of the modern movement—who organized the important and influential 1932 exhibition Modern Architecture in the Museum of Modern Art—regarding their theoretical affiliations:

10, 11 (opposite). Buildings of the Miséricord Uni versity, Fribourg, by Fernand Dumas and Denis Honegger (1938–41). Photographs by Ákos Moravánszky.



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The very critics, such as Henry- Russell Hitchcock, who twenty years ago were identifying the “modern” in architecture with Cubism in painting and with a general glorification of the mechanical and the impersonal and aesthetically puritanic have become advocates of Frank Lloyd Wright. [. . .] Sigfried Giedion, once a leader of the mechanical rigorists, has come out for the monumental and the symbolic, and among the younger people an incli-nation to play with the “feeling” elements in design—with color, texture, even painting and sculpture—has become irrepressible. [. . .] The rigorists placed the mechanical functions of a building above its human functions: they neglected the feelings, the sentiments, and the interests of the person who was to occupy it. Instead of regarding engineering as a foundation for form, they treated it as an end.37

Indeed, Giedion’s change of mind regarding monumen-tality is striking, as he seems to echo ideas of his Zurich opponent, Peter Meyer. Giedion began teaching at Harvard University in 1938, just about the time when Peter Meyer devel-oped his theory of modern monumentality. Giedion gave the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in 1938–39, which he published in 1941 in revised form as Space, Time and Architecture, a synthetic treatment of new discoveries in science, technical achievements, and new tendencies in art and architecture. But just two years later, in 1943, he wrote with Josep Lluís Sert, Fernand Léger, and Sigfried Giedion the manifesto “Nine Points on Monumentality.” This “revisionism” was an important message for Giedion’s American audience, which was looking already for possibilities to modify the program of European modernism to make it fit the needs of postwar American society. As in Switzerland, the American debate on new monumentality did not focus on the issue of historic preservation. The chapter on new monumentality in Paul Zucker’s New Architecture and City Planning, which is the most important early contribution to the American discourse in the topic, contains Giedion’s text “The Need for a New Monumen-tality,” Louis I. Kahn’s “Monumentality,” Philip L. Goodwin’s “Monuments” (discussing the issue of memorials), Ernest Fiene’s “Figurative Arts and Architecture: Mural and Architec-tural Sculpture,” but no contribution on preservation.38 In 1958, when Lewis Mumford wrote against the demolition of Pennsyl-vania Station, the debate was already over, both in the United States and Switzerland. Henry Hope Reed’s 1952 essay “Monu-mental Architecture, Or the Art of Pleasing in Civic Design,” in the first issue of Perspecta, connected the term monumentality with “GRANDEUR, MAJESTY, MAGNIFENCE” befitting of “the



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most powerful nation of the world.”39 Reed proudly emphasized that the representation of this power was the real monumental task of time, rejecting any preservationist claim: “We may an-nounce to the world ten thousand times a day that we are plain simple folk like the rest, but the world will persist in thinking that we are more fortunate. While we pass our time in tell-ing the world of our youth and of our abundance, we are bold enough to declare that we have invented everything ourselves and that, particularly in the arts, we have no use for the past or the example of other nations.”40 Obviously, issues of “state pathos,” spirituality, and community, discussed by Peter Meyer in Zurich, entered the intertwined web of aesthetics, psychol-ogy, and political ideology to shape the American debate.

BiographyÁkos Moravánszky is professor of the theory of architecture at the Institut gta (Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture) of ETH Zurich since 1996. Born in Hungary, he studied architecture at the Technical University in Budapest. He re-ceived his doctorate from the Technical University in Vienna, Austria, in 1980. From 1986 until 1988 he was a research fellow at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich. Between 1989 and 1991 he was invited to the Getty Center for History of Art and the Humanities in Santa Monica, California, as a research associate. From 1991 until 1996 he was appointed visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Endnotes1 Lewis Mumford: “The Death of the Monument,” in CIRCLE, ed. J. L. Martin, B. Nicholson, N. Gabo (1937, reprint, New York: Praeger, 1971), 263–70.2 José Louis Sert, Férnand Léger, Siegfried Giedion, “Nine Points on Monumen-tality,” in Siegfried Giedion, Architecture, You and Me (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-vard University Press, 1958), 48–51.3 Louis I. Kahn, “Monumentality,” in New Architecture and City Planning: A Sym-posium, ed. Paul Zucker (New York: Philosophical Library, 1944), 527–88.4 The debate on monumentality in the United States was summarized as parts of monographic publications on its main protagonists; for example, Joan Ockman, “The War Years in America: New York, New Monumentality,” in Sert: Arquitecto en Nueva York, ed. Xavier Costa and Guido Hartray (Barcelona: Actar, 1997), 22–47; Eric Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2000); Sarah Williams Goldhagen, Louis Kahn’s Situated Modernism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).5 Walter Curt Behrendt, Der Sieg des neuen Baustils (Stuttgart: Fritz Wedekind & Co., 1927), trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave, The Victory of the New Building Style, ed. Detlef Mertins (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2000).6 Das Werk was published as the journal of the Bund Schweizer Architekten and of the Schweizerischer Werkbund from 1914. Until 1941 it was the leading review of art and architecture in Switzerland, read by a large audience.7 Peter Meyer, Editorial in Das Werk 1 (1930): 1.8 Gregor Paulsson’s book Den ny arkitektur (Copenhagen: Forlagt af H. Aschehoug, 1920) included a chapter, “New Monumentality” (Ny Monumentalitet), 110–27.9 Ibid. The book was the revised Danish edition of his earlier Swedish book Den nya arkitekturen (Stockholm: PA Norstedt & Söner, 1916).10 Peter Meyer, Moderne Architektur und Tradition (Zürich: Girsberger, 1927), 19.11 Peter Meyer, “Monumentale Architektur?” in Das Werk 3 (1937): 68–73.12 Ibid.13 Ibid.14 Ibid. Meyer is referring here to the new Kunstmuseum (Museum of Art) in Basel, by Rudolf Christ and Paul Bonatz (1932–36).15 Reto Geiser and Martino Stierli, “Architecture Officielle Maudite” in Future Ante-rior 4, no. 1 (Summer 2007), 1–11.16 Meyer, “Monumentale Architektur?” 72.17 Katharina Medici- Mall, Im Durcheinandertal der Stile: Architektur und Kunst im Urteil von Peter Meyer (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1998).



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18 Robert Musil, “Denkmale,” in Musil, Nachlass zu Lebzeiten (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1962), 59–63.19 Ibid.20 Ibid.21 Ibid.22 Ibid.23 See Jorge Otero- Pailos, Architecture’s Historical Turn: Phenomenology and the Rise of the Postmodern (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 40f.24 Martin, Nicholson, and Gabo, ed., CIRCLE.25 Mumford, “The Death of the Monument,” 268.26 Ibid., 264.27 Le Corbusier, “The Quarrel with Realism,” in CIRCLE, 70.28 Ibid., 73.29 Mumford’s book was published in Germany as Vom Blockhaus zum Wolken-kratzer: Eine Studie über amerikanische Architektur und Zivilisation (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, [1925]).30 Peter Meyer, “Die Architektur der Landesausstellung—kritische Besprechung,” in Das Werk 7 (1939): 321–52.31 Ibid.32 Ibid., 327.33 Ibid.34 Ibid., 330–34.35 Peter Meyer, “Diskussion über Monumentalität,” in Das Werk (1940): 189–95.36 Peter Meyer, “Situation der Architektur 1940—Antworten und Entgegnungen,” in Das Werk 4 (1941), 111–20.37 Lewis Mumford, “The Sky Line: Status Quo (Bay Region Style),” in The New Yorker (Oct. 11, 1947), 104–10, reprinted in What Is Happening to Modern Architecture: A Symposium At the Museum of Modern Art. The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, Spring 1948: vol. 15, No. 3. S. 2.38 Zucker, New Architecture and City Planning, 547–604.39 Henry H. Reed Jr., “Monumental Architecture, Or the Art of Pleasing in Civic De-sign,” in Perspecta 1 (Summer 1952): 56.40 Ibid.



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