Fines for Defacing Heritage Considered June 5, 2009
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The practice of fining offenders for defacing heritage is certainly not a new process, indeed as Anthony Tung reports in Preserving the World’s Great Cities (by the way, if you don’t have a copy of this faboulous book buy one), “in 458 Emperor Marjorian decreed that Magistrates who gave permission for [Rome's] Imperial monuments to be stripped of their stone should be fined 25 kilograms of gold and have their hands cut off.” For what it possesed in severeity, it lacked in effectiveness, as evidenced by the loss of much of the ancient city. Fast forward 1551 years and we still face many of those same problems. Our heritage, even our protected heritage, is constantly under attack, with threats both large and small. The Indian Express recently reported (you can find the article here) that the recently restored Bandara Railway Station is being defaced by some and shabbily treated by others. They are thinking of imposing fines to help put a stop to this. Hopefully their fines will have the reverse formula that Majorian’s dead, what they lack in severity, they will possess in effectivness.
Anthony Tung is Coming! April 19, 2009
Posted by history in : Uncategorized , add a commentPreservation Week is coming (May 3-7). The Student Preservation Association (SPA) has lined up an action packed week of speakers, you can check out the schedule here. The theme this year is International Preservation. Kicking off the week will be Anthony Tung, author of one of my favorite HP books, Preserving the World’s Great Cities. Go immediately to you favorite book purveyor and buy a copy so that you can read it in preparation for HP week. Tung’s book is insightful, inspiring, heart-breaking, fascinating and easy to read. We are so lucky to have him here. For those of you that are majors/alumni, for your friends and relatives that are perplexed by what it excatly is that you are doing/studying, this would make a suitable gift for the next occassion requiring one. If you can’t afford a copy or don’t have the time to read it all before he speaks on Sunday, May 3, you can read an excerpt here, both are excellent although the chapter on Warsaw might bring a tear to your eye. In the US, the destruction of our heritage comes from within, in other countries, heritage is lost not only to these forces but also to war. Below is pasted an excerpt from his chapter on Warsaw:
“In Warsaw they fought. That is the first and most important fact.
The Poles fought the Germans again and again and again, refusing to be subdued. They died by the hundreds of thousands in battles, concentration camps, and ad hoc daily executions. And it was here, in the Warsaw Ghetto, that members of the Jewish resistance—realizing the ultimate futility of their desperate struggle and equipped with but a few stolen guns, bricks, and homemade bombs—pitted themselves against storm troopers wielding the most modern of military hardware.
Citizens in Warsaw resisted the Third Reich, and by their dissent and death they put a price on their metropolis. They established the price they would not pay to keep it whole. They would not sell the soul of their city in order to save its body. They would not refrain from resistance in order to spare their metropolis from becoming a battleground. And once it was evident that the cost of their defiance would be the destruction of the city, Varsovian architects, planners, and teachers, in a perilous act of disobedience, documented their architectural past so it could be rebuilt sometime in an unknown but better future.
In Warsaw they fought, and as a result the city and its people were almost totally eradicated, and not just by the missiles, bombs, and bullets of combat. In Warsaw the Nazis devised a systematic program of cultural annihilation.
German architects carefully identified the historic monuments of the city: the most beautifully proportioned buildings, the buildings designed by distinguished architects, the buildings where famous Varsovians had lived, the places where important historic events had taken place, the buildings with gracious sculptural decoration, the buildings of symbolic importance, the best examples of different architectural styles, the most meaningful buildings of various periods, the proudest churches, the richest palaces, the most beautiful homes, and the neighborhoods where the architecture of Warsaw was knit into an artistic whole—the panoply of Warsaw’s pride, built across seven hundred years of history. Then, having ascertained the patrimony of the metropolis, the German occupational forces sent out squads to rob these places, to strip them of their art and artifacts and, afterward, to dynamite the architectural accomplishments of Polish culture. The structural integrity of buildings was analyzed. Explosives were set and detonated from a safe distance. In World War II, it became German national policy that the culture of Warsaw be erased as a way to quash the spirit of resistance among the Polish people.”
What happened to Warsaw and its inhabitants during the war is heart-breaking and horrifying. What happened during and after the war to reclaim their history, their identity and the landscape of their city is inspiring and reminds us that HP is about a lot more than just old buildings.
Go buy the book now. Come to the lecture.