(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

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ROLF J. GOEBEL
toward the past with continuity and organicity of tradition, he misconstrues
Benjamin’s notion of the past. For Benjamin, traditions are not
organically grown presences to be taken for granted; instead, the commodification
of cultural substance by high capitalism in modern cities like
Paris indicates a profound crisis in the relation between past and present.
People try to compensate for this historical alienation by resorting
to simulations, haphazard borrowings, and the frantic collecting of
bits and pieces from the past. Benjamin notes, for instance, that among
the “Traumhäuser des Kollektivs” (“dream houses of the collective,”
L1,3) — arcades, winter gardens, panoramas, factories, and so on — the
museums combine scientific research with a dreamlike nostalgia for bad
taste and a “Durst nach Vergangenheit” (“thirst for the past,” L1a,2).
In this respect Benjamin’s nineteenth century is not at all different from
our own; indeed, it anticipates it strikingly. Certainly Bürger is justified in
doubting that the Dresden Frauenkirche can “rescue” the genuine spirit of
the Baroque. But in a different sense, the edifice — with its combination of
old and new stones, reassembled through authentic building techniques for
contemporary uses (worship, concerts, and tourism) — is nonetheless a striking
allegory (in Benjamin’s sense) of our time. The church’s visually overwhelming
presence — one is tempted to call it its resuscitated aura — signifies
contradictions that are as significant for Dresden’s self-identity as they are for
the self-understanding of Germany as a reunited nation. Like few other recent
architectural landmarks, the Frauenkirche signifies the tensions between the
terrors of Second World War destruction and the popular desire for redemptive
healing; between the need for commemorating a grand period of art history
and the vision for new beginnings; between the desire for “authentic”
reconstruction and the recognition that recovering the past must necessarily
remain a process of artful simulation. 24
This dialectic seems to haunt cities worldwide. Post-reunification Berlin
proudly displays the historic Reichstag façade with its high-tech dome
not far from the corporate futurism of Potsdamer Platz surrounding the
old-fashioned Weinhaus Huth and the remnants of the Hotel Esplanade.
In New York’s post–Rudy Giuliani phase, Times Square, Greenwich Village,
SoHo, and other parts of gentrified Manhattan begin to resemble
nostalgic theme parks, where historic building substance is restored to satisfy
nostalgic desires as well as commerce and tourism. Signifying China’s
international presence, Shanghai showcases a particularly uncanny collage
of European colonial architecture and ultra-futuristic skyscrapers that
especially in photographic and cinematic night shots look totally unreal.
Thus we are witnessing everywhere a global city culture that radicalizes
Benjamin’s modernist analysis of the dynamic simultaneity of different
time-layers, the translation of the receding past into the uncertain present,
and the intrusion of authentic historical remnants into image-driven
urban renewal projects. 25