Thinking Rubble: Ruin and Repair at War's End

Abstract

Working amidst the ruins of war, post-war German architects saw themselves as “the Idealists…who had thrown themselves into the battle against want and rubble, those who had remained amidst the destruction.” The decision to repair is one that might begin with material considerations: the nature of the original artifact, the availability of and desire to exercise artisanal skills, the value of materials and labor. Two hand-drawn ink sketches of a dilapidated church within a natural environment, and in a city surrounded by buildings. The immediate need to rebuild was overwhelming. More than half of all the housing that existed in Germany before the bombings, some 19 million units, had been destroyed or made unusable, at a moment when some 8 million displaced persons were moving into German territory. Schmidt proposed four distinct actions: to clear the ruins away; to rebuild them in approximation of their original form; to leave them as they were; or to subordinate them within new construction.