BestandTeile – Das Jahrbuch der KIT-Fakultät für Architektur 2022

Archival Gaps
Manuela Gantner
On the Trail of Female Perspectives in the
History of Architecture.
An archival holding is a fundamental organizing element for
objects in an archive. At saai, around 240 holdings of important
architects, engineers and designers are currently stored
and form the basis for scientific research. With well over one
million documents and models, it is Germany's most extensive
architecture collection and thus an important source for
the architectural discourse of the 20th century.
Architecture is one of the central forms of thought
and knowledge in our society. However, what we will remember
in the future does not only depend on what was built, but
whether a project was documented and in what form the
documents on it are made available. Deciding what to preserve,
collect and make accessible is a subjective process. The
archive thus becomes a controlled site for the construction
of knowledge, discourse and reality.
Against this background, how is it to be assessed
that among all the material held by the saai, there are only
six (partial) estates of women? What does it mean when an
entire group of builders, designers and thinkers, namely
the female ones, are not represented, remain invisible and
thus do not become part of the architectural history?
Paradoxically, the six estates of the female architects
Hilde Axster-Trappmann, Maria Verena Gieselmann,
Johanna Meffert, Marlene Poelzig, Herta-Maria Witzemann
and Ingrid Goetz in their vanishingly small share of the total
archive, testify to the lack of awareness of gender equality,
but also its relevance for a contemporary and multifaceted
historiography. These female protagonists should be understood
as an appeal for a cultural change towards a more
diverse research and academic practice!
Gantner
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