Architektur. Vergessen. Jüdische Architekten in Graz
Antje Senarclens de Grancy/Heidrun Zettelbauer (eds.)
Vienna/Cologne/Weimar: Böhlau, 2011
German, 300 pages, paperback
ISBN 978-3-205-78472-2
EUR 35.00

Five buildings in Graz, constructed between 1910 and 1934, open a perspective onto forgetting as a cultural practicein the field of architecture. The authors describe a range of strategies from (an area of tension between) the quotidian processes of renovating and rebuilding, functional changes, and spatial redesign to the violent actions of political recording of demolition.
The examination of an employment office, a swimming pool, a Jewish ceremonial hall, a children´s home, and a suburban settlement reveals different dimensions of forgetting: accidental, intentional, private, public, non-narrated, (in-)visible.
What ties the four architects of the buildings together is not their Jewish origin or identity, but rather the history of Nazi persecution as an aspect of oblivion.

Antje Senarclens de Grancy teaches and conducts research in the Institute of Architectural Theory, Art History and Cultrual Studies.