La rovina e l'ornamento. Hans Döllgast e la ricostruzione dei monumenti in Germania nel secondo dopoguerra.

Hans Döllgast (1891-1974) is very known due to his work for the reconstruction of important monuments in Munich: the St. Bonifaz basilica (1945 – 1950), the Alte Pinakothek (1946-1956), the blessing hall in the Ostfriedhof (1951-1952), the Nördlichen Friedhof (1955) and the Südlicher Friedhof (1952-1954), the Allerheiligen-Hofkirche in the Residenz(1971). Those works show Hans Döllgast’s ability to intervene on ancients monuments damaged by the WWII, reusing their self-ruins and working on them through a new building. Here we are referring to a very accurate way to define the construction’s parts, and to that constructive perfection – such as the color of the bricks set to be reused, the stucco painting on the bricks, the texture using also the joints and the color of the mortar, the concrete stair’s profile – that derives itself from an attitude to craftman’s work, a true art extended to every part of the building, that is set to become a tectonic necessity. Here it is an oxymoron, but the only way to define this tectonic of the reconstruction and of the replacement that is in common to each example shown, rich in its linguistic articulation but essential to its constructive meaning, is to define that an “ornamental construction”, which attributes character to the architecture through the paths of the memory.