Conclusions to Habsburg Lemberg

What is it about?

The tendency to write history along the narrow lines of national narratives and professional architectural/art history – themselves often written from nationalist perspectives – has led to overly simplistic understandings of Habsburg Lemberg’s architecture. Throughout the nineteenth century, newly constructed buildings and monuments transmitted values that far exceeded the preoccupation with style and building techniques found in standard architectural histories. These values became most visible during street celebrations, restoration practices, and provincial exhibitions. The general public appears to have remained elusive to the nationalist historians who stood alone in their view that architecture’s symbolism exclusively referenced national histories. It is ironic that the national historians who constructed Lemberg’s divergent pasts and who routinely disregarded the achievements of the Vormärz administration in architectural and urban planning projects fell victim to many preconceptions about architecture established by this administration itself. The Vormärz political elite of both Lemberg and Vienna wished to leave its mark on the local environment and legitimize its rule through architecture and through the reshaping of public space. It further viewed these efforts as an integral part of a much more complex set of cultural policies dealing with the restriction, beautification, and cleaning up of public space. The post-1870 Galician rulers modified this approach to fit a very different political arrangement, that of Galician autonomy combined with Polish nationalism still loyal to the Habsburg throne. From serving as the metaphor of Austrian progress, order, and neatness, architecture came to be a metaphor of Polishness, though the precise definition of the nation remained in flux. Yet existing buildings and sites figured as powerful mediums in their own right, exuding diverse, heavily coded messages that often were in friction with arbitrary political intrusions.

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