DENKWERKSTATT 2022: AUTHENTICITY – A ‘GUIDING STAR’ ON THE TEST BENCH OF HIGH MODERNITY

12. October 2022, in the auditorium of the Bauhaus building Dessau
06846 Dessau-Roßlau

The second think tank of the DFG focus program Cultural Heritage Construction addressed the concept of authenticity, a central standard of value in the field of historic preservation. Authenticity has become an omnipresent term, which is basically characterized by one thing above all: it has a positive connotation, it is quickly associated with terms such as “credible,” “genuine,” ” united,” perhaps also “truthful. In any case, authentic is good. This has also been true of historic preservation for almost 60 years, because in 1964 the Venice Charter elevated the concept of authenticity to the central value standard of historic preservation.

The building constructions of high modernism have so far received little attention in the countless discourses on this topic. The equally significant and blurred category of authenticity was therefore elevated to the annual topic 2022 of the SPP 2255. In the think tank, renowned experts traced the challenges, criteria and processes of concrete handling in the special field of ultra-modern building constructions. On closer inspection, the ‚guiding star of monument preservation‘ proved to be a fragile and dynamic construction, especially here.

In addition to sharpening the content of the term in its application to ultramodern constructions, the think tank also served to develop a common basis of understanding about a central term of monument preservation between the broadly based disciplines in SPP 2255. In this context, it was also necessary to clarify the extent to which this conceptual model developed in the monument sciences can be made useful at all as a category for dealing with the cultural heritage of construction.

The think tank „Authenticity“ of the SPP 2255 was held as a public event in the auditorium of the Bauhaus building in Dessau.