On the origins of Alois Riegl’s conservation theory

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ABSTRACTRecent years have seen an increased interest in theoretical writing on conservation, notably in Alois Riegl’s seminal early text Der moderne Denkmalkultus sein Wesen und seine Entstehung, traditionally translated as The Modern Cult of Monuments, its Character and its Origin (1903). Considering the context in which Riegl’s formidable essay was created seeks to make it both more accessible and more relevant to contemporary concerns. The paper situates the document within European and specifically Austrian trends in architectural conservation, and recalls its origins within a draft of an unsuccessful monuments preservation law. The Denkmalkultus is then explored as a historically determined synthesis of ideas, an intellectual bricolage. Its discussion of age value is related to the renewed influence of John Ruskin and to emergent populism and individualism. The subjective definition of its aesthetic value and the universal-historical character of its memory value are considered. The structure of relative values itself is finally related to contemporary currents in economics and philosophy.