Historical Journals as Digital Sources: Mapping Architecture in Germany, 1914-24 - Duke Muser
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Historical Journals as Digital Sources:
Mapping Architecture in Germany, 1914–24
paul b. jaskot
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jsah/article-pdf/76/4/483/187868/jsah_2017_76_4_483.pdf by Duke University user on 10 August 2021
Duke University
ivo van der graaff
University of New Hampshire
U
nderstanding construction is crucial to analyzing particular works or architects. How does one research and
the meanings of specific monuments.1 Almost ev- analyze the construction industry more broadly as a contrib-
ery serious narrative concerning architectural his- utor to the history of architecture? Aside from some excellent
tory has something to say about the history of construction studies on the history of materials, construction in systemic
when interpreting a particular site. Given that so many build- terms has not been a primary subject for analysis, especially
ing designs are altered in the process of construction, as labor for architectural historians of the modern era. When scholars
conditions, material resources, funding sources, and political discuss construction, the subject inevitably comes down to
influences change, it is not surprising that, for instance, schol- how the process of creating a work of architecture is a hand-
ars of Gilded Age Chicago architecture are interested in maiden to either design or reception. The focus falls on the
topics such as the technical development of steel-frame con- architect, even if unknown, or the audience, however vaguely
struction and the cultural history of concrete.2 In terms of the construed. “Meaning” is located at either end of that spec-
case study at issue here—architecture in wartime and early trum, not in the middle. For art history, the production
Weimar Germany—the literature has often focused on the process—that is, construction as a specific element of a work’s
process of building in relation to how specific materials were history—clarifies something about the significance of design,
used, whether the steel and concrete of Erich Mendelsohn the interpretation by particular patrons or groups, or, occa-
and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe or the subsequent shift sionally, both. The process does not have its own cultural
during the Nazi era to the stone and brick of architects like meaning and, hence, is not isolated as a particular art his-
Albert Speer.3 Apart from filling in this picture between the torical problem.
analyses of major monuments and perhaps asking more ques- But what happens if we do isolate construction as a distinct
tions about labor at these sites, there seems little to add about art historical subject?4 Marvin Trachtenberg comes close to
construction in interwar Germany. an answer in emphasizing the building process over time—
Yet for all the scholarly focus on materials, changes to what he calls the “building-in-time.” For Trachtenberg, the
design, and the give-and-take of the construction site as it
production process contributes one moment of many to the
affects the final structure, the interest in the process of build-
life of a building, with its ever-changing meaning and signi-
ing has remained surprisingly narrow in its concentration on
ficance. The building is a constantly shifting structure in
need of design and construction, but also of repair, addition,
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 76, no. 4 (December 2017),
483–505, ISSN 0037-9808, electronic ISSN 2150-5926. © 2017 by the Society expansion, removal, or restoration, processes that shape
of Architectural Historians. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for its meaning over time.5 But Trachtenberg, too, seemingly
permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of cannot avoid speaking of specific buildings as he inevitably
California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/
journals.php?p=reprints, or via email: jpermissions@ucpress.edu. DOI: https://doi. finds meaning in works of acknowledged significance and
org/10.1525/jsah.2017.76.4.483. interpretive importance, such as the major structures and
483
sites of early modern Florence.6 He does not see the con- means we use, we will still need to rely on social art histor-
struction process as itself meaningful, as events and actions ical methods to make analytic sense of the inconsistent but
that exist on a social systemic level and that make up a compelling information. Hence, we need to find a different
separate art historical question distinct from the associations synthesis of the use of both digital mapping methods and
with particular buildings. By contrast, our focus on produc- historical sources on building activity.11 Such a new syn-
tion leads us to concentrate on the construction process as a thesis will allow us to investigate the scale of the problem
specific technological and social system worthy of its own of construction through the nature of the evidence.
history and analysis. Reconciling qualitative sources with quantitative methods
In order to address the question of whether construction is not a problem unique to the digital humanities, although
is itself meaningful, we need methodological strategies that we would note that it is a discussion topic of particular inter-
are different from those we would normally use when re- est within the historical digital mapping community.12 His-
searching a few buildings or the work of a particular architect. torical sources are never completely interpretive any more
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In this article, we attempt to lay out just such a new mode of than quantitative methods ever produce a transparent repre-
analysis as a first step toward interrogating the importance of sentation of reality. Nevertheless, each of these modes of
construction in architectural history. An investigation into analysis is indexical to the real of society. That is, they exist
construction in wartime and postwar Germany has to occur relationally to the actions and structural conditions of a mo-
at a different scale. Indeed, our argument is that the scale of ment of human production and reception.13 Combining the
the question, which demands looking at thousands of build- relational capacity of evidence from historical journals and
ings at hundreds of sites, requires a new analytical approach the methods of digital mapping is a powerful means of visual-
to the evidence.7 There is, after all, no one single source of izing the social dynamics of architectural production and an-
information on the activities of the construction industry, and alyzing its significance.14
the number of buildings—large and small, vernacular to high Visualization in this sense gives form to otherwise hidden
design—is almost impossible to capture. Digital methods, connections between individual objects and social develop-
however, are meant to tackle large data sets, and the ability of ments. Digital mapping produces a certain kind of new
geographic information systems (GIS) to map and analyze knowledge about architecture; it can give form to the evi-
spatial information can potentially help us to address this dence from historical journals in unexpected ways. This mor-
large-scale problem.8 Our analysis is premised on testing GIS phological relationship between the journal as source and the
as a method by looking at a single data set derived from one map as representation is neither transparent nor predictable
of the most prominent architectural trade journals of the pe- but rather relational.15 It points to how the capacity for cer-
riod, the Deutsche Bauzeitung (DBZ) (Figure 1). By developing tain cultural, political, or economic events to dominate a so-
methods to extract evidence of construction from the pages cial field builds gradually in micro-durations. As just one
of the DBZ and visualizing this evidence with GIS, we will example in our case, the development of housing estates is ex-
demonstrate that GIS helps us to raise and clarify important posed over a much greater length of time and extended geog-
questions central to understanding building in Germany in raphy than has generally been assumed, as we shall see.
the period 1914–24. More specifically, digital mapping gives Digital mapping uncovers new problems and areas for re-
us a clearer picture of the construction industry because it en- search, particularly around the mediating role that culture it-
ables us to begin looking more expansively at what was built, self plays in developing and reproducing dominant social
where, and when.9 structures like concepts of property associated with dwelling.
But while GIS has applicability in managing the quantity Thus, we argue that by mapping historical journals, we can
of building activity, it faces the daunting problem of the qual- expose potential activators or inhibitors of social and cultural
ity of the data.10 For example, any data set is by its very nature change.16 Such a visualization is a morphological intermedi-
incomplete, and ours is no exception, given that the task of ary step that gives shape to social developments by reforming
going to every German locality to record every building the evidence and its biases. It can lead to patterns and results
permit, looking at the archive of every architect, mining that we can analyze as the characteristic relational factors of a
every newspaper and trade journal for building activity, and social system—in this case, the complex society of Germany
somehow getting access to all construction firms’ archives is during World War I and in the early Weimar Republic. In
nearly inconceivable. On the other hand, gathering a large other words, the database extracted from the journal and the
set of data from a single source like the DBZ also raises iterative mapping method used to give it form do not positiv-
qualitative issues impractical to tackle with existing digital istically represent the system but rather visualize, albeit par-
methodologies. The evidence in architectural sources like tially, the emergent aspects of cultural systems. These
the DBZ seems too hazy to be relevant for the methodo- aspects exist at the level of the whole (as a system) but also
logically Cartesian framework of GIS. Whatever digital as a coalescence of innumerable individual features (the
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Figure 1 Sample cover, Deutsche Bauzeitung 48,
no. 74 (16 Sept. 1914).
buildings), only some of which are captured in the data. problem by analyzing the nature of the journal as a source
Hence, the spatial method—that which gives shape—is in be- and how we went about making decisions concerning con-
tween the chaos of historical experience and the artificial uni- structing the database from this evidence.17 In the next sec-
formity of historical analysis. The role of art history in this tion we discuss problems with the source and the database,
equation is not to explain a few monuments but—through a focusing particular attention on the decisions we made
focus on what was built, where, and when—to increase our around capturing ambiguous historical data typical of many
knowledge about the very social structures in which archi- if not the majority of sources used in architectural history.
tects and buildings dynamically participate. In the final section we assess how well the data work when
What follows are initial steps to establish this broad imported into and geocoded in ArcGIS (the specific mapping
thesis by focusing on our methodological approach to the de- system that we used). We ask how the iterative process of
velopment of a database from the important architectural digital mapping may or may not raise innovative questions
journal DBZ and the database’s initial implications for an for historical analysis. This last section returns us to the po-
analysis of construction. First we establish the historical tential for seeing the digital mapping of historical sources in
HISTORICAL JOURNALS AS DIGITAL SOURCES 485
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Figure 2 Draft map, all 1914–33 building sites referenced in Barbara Miller Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918–1945 (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1968) (authors’ map, produced in ArcGIS). See JSAH Online for full-color versions of all ArcGIS maps and other figures.
relationship to its ability to reveal something new for archi- precisely because the period seems so well known in terms
tectural history. In spite of the limitations that we highlight of construction history. Could mapping tell us anything dif-
(particularly the bias in the data and human error), the visual- ferent? Given the upheaval of both a world war and sub-
ization of the database gives form to human actions and struc- stantial social instability, the general narrative of the period
tural patterns that redirect the art historical concern from the naturally seems to begin in earnest only after 1924, with the
object to what construction can tell us about society as a flowering of housing estates in Berlin and Frankfurt, the
whole. In the process, it allows us to investigate a much move of the Bauhaus to Dessau, and the rise of Mies van der
broader history of German architecture from 1914 to 1924. Rohe, among other signposts. The art historical approach to
German architecture 1914–24 certainly does include key
structures, such as Mendelsohn’s Einstein Tower (1921), but
Building the Database these relatively few buildings are most often placed in stark
Much has been written on the architecture of Weimar contrast with the many utopic projects and designs that existed
Germany, including the initial years of revolution and infla- only on paper for the period. Even though such a summary
tion before the economic recovery of 1924. In terms of social is reductive, it nevertheless emphasizes a historiographical
history, scholars have completed substantial interpretations narrative that essentially has little to say about World War I
of the architecture of Bruno Taut, Walter Gropius and the and architecture, adding not much more than a few excep-
early Bauhaus, Erich Mendelsohn, and Peter Behrens, tional projects in the immediate postwar period. Given the
among others, as well as, more recently, important work on political and economic conditions, from war to revolution,
the German architectural diaspora.18 We began our study that presumably shattered the ability to build, it would
with World War I and the early Weimar Republic, however, seem that there is no pressing need to correct this view.
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Figure 3 Draft map, all 1914–24 building sites referenced in Barbara Miller Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918–1945 (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1968) (authors’ map, produced in ArcGIS).
We can put this narrative in different terms if we map the Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne, which were technically
building sites mentioned in the historiography. Let’s take two completed before the war started. Our point is not to say that
texts: the canonical and, in our eyes, still exceptional analysis Pehnt and Lane are wrong; indeed, their work is exceptional.
of Barbara Miller Lane’s Architecture and Politics in Germany, Rather, the issue here is that scholars have focused on only a
1918–1945 (1968) and the most definitive scholarly survey of very narrow selection of the built environment and thus have
the period to date, Wolfgang Pehnt’s Deutsche Architektur seit not yet addressed the broader systemic question of construc-
1900 (2005).19 If we look at the results for the entire Weimar tion, which we are confronting in this article.
Republic, we see that Lane mentions a pretty good geo- Of course, we do not need a database to help us realize
graphic spread of building sites (Figure 2). However, if we how selective art history is for the history of construction.
concentrate only on our period of study, 1914–24, in Lane’s Construction firms such as Hochtief, Dyckerhoff & Wid-
work (Figure 3), large gaps begin to appear in the map. For mann, Phillip Holzmann, and Siemens-Bauunion did not
example, all the building sites mentioned in the Rhineland stop their building activity either at the nadir of the war or
are post-1924. While Pehnt seems to have more coverage, during the trauma of the revolution.20 Certainly, these crisis
even the building sites he mentions for the period are not ex- conditions limited these major firms, restricting their access
tensive: twenty-nine buildings sites active from 1914–24, to war-important materials and curtailing their production at
which includes buildings pre-1914 or post-1924 that were ei- specific times or directing it to functional industrial facilities,
ther finished or started in the intervening decade (Figure 4). among other buildings necessary for the war or mere survival
If we look at just World War I, Pehnt’s sample gets even in the postwar economy. But there must have been also much
smaller, with only sixteen sites (Figure 5). This, too, is a bit of more building than we previously assumed, from major com-
a distortion, since it includes four buildings from the 1914 plexes designed by high-end architects to the most minor
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Figure 4 Draft map, all sites of structures completed or begun 1914–24 referenced in Wolfgang Pehnt, Deutsche Architektur seit 1900 (Munich:
Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, 2005) (authors’ map, produced in ArcGIS).
vernacular structures. These buildings sustained and condi- in the whole of Germany. Within a year, its subscription base
tioned the few architectural stars, both real and on paper, on had grown enough to allow for an expansion of the journal’s
whom so much attention has been focused.21 content, and its popularity remained unabated until its pub-
Instead of selecting a few dozen buildings and projects, we lication ended in 1942, during World War II. The journal
need to turn our attention to the tens of thousands of struc- had an on-again, off-again relationship with the architecture
tures that have been hiding in plain sight. No single archival union (after 1871, the Verband Deutscher Architekten- und
source gives us access to this evidence of the built environ- Ingenieur-Vereine), which by the late nineteenth century
ment. Perhaps because of its vast scale, no one has attempted meant that it had established itself as relatively independent
to look at the broad built environment in any systematic way. and developed its own editorial policy. It was not only
Yet we can glimpse specific parts of it. Historical journals by exemplary as one of the few journals that attempted to be
and for architects offer one way of gaining access to this dark comprehensive about German architecture in the period
matter, and the Deutsche Bauzeitung is an excellent example but also exceptional because architects and engineers exalted
that enables us to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of its status and kept its circulation high. The DBZ editorial
translating this kind of evidence into a database for the crea- policy was generally conservative, favoring established ar-
tion of digital maps (see Figure 1). Founded in 1867 by the chitects and academic practices; its editors were themselves
Architekten-Verein of Berlin, the journal had from the begin- architects, often with connections to or experience in gov-
ning the goal of being a premier professional venue for news ernment offices. Hence, for example, major architectural
about projects, building technologies, competitions, job op- schools like those in Stuttgart and Berlin were well repre-
portunities, legal issues, and other matters related to building sented in its pages. A significant proportion of articles also
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Figure 5 Draft map, all sites of structures completed or begun 1914–18 referenced in Wolfgang Pehnt, Deutsche Architektur seit 1900 (Munich:
Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, 2005) (authors’ map, produced in ArcGIS).
covered historical architectural projects of interest, which While architectural historians read journals like the DBZ
were usually canonical choices.22 The DBZ thus had its own for telling articles, information on obscure architects, and
identity and a selective approach to what its editors con- patterns in debates, they are not used to mining them for in-
sidered “building.” It was also an important journal of re- formation to visualize broader systemic changes. In other
cord that reported on changes in the building economy in words, such journals have not been used as sources from
Germany and, less systematically, abroad. which to extract data for a database. One reason for this cir-
As a digital source, the DBZ raised two crucial considera- cumstance is obvious: the facts and figures in the archive that
tions as we weighed our decision to use it as our sample for a appear suitable for tabular or quantitative analysis do not ap-
study of construction. The greatest limitation would be if it pear in journal writing, which emphasizes authorial voice and
turned out that mapping the source only showed the editorial carries editorial bias. Because of the often indirect or sum-
bias of the journal, thus providing us with a deeper under- mary nature of information in journal articles, extracting evi-
standing of this publication but not much else. Yet even with dence actually proves to be exceedingly qualitative in nature,
the limitations of the source, it was clear to us that the prom- relying on deeply humanistic modes of interpretation to
inence, frequency of publication, and importance of the jour- make sense of what may be relevant.23 As a result, in con-
nal would allow us to map a much larger segment of the structing a database from the DBZ, we placed importance not
construction projects carried out in Germany during the pe- only on extracting information but also on capturing and
riod 1914–24. However partial, the data set would be far visualizing such crucial factors as editorial bias, selectivity of
more comprehensive than any previous methodology had reporting, and ambiguity of evidence.
been able to provide. Given the latter factor, we determined Our first decisions concerned the scale and resolution of
that the DBZ was a good choice for testing what such a his- our study. Because we were not interested in individual build-
torical source may or may not reveal with digital methods. ings but rather in patterns of construction activity, we decided
HISTORICAL JOURNALS AS DIGITAL SOURCES 489
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Figure 6 Sample entries from the Deutsche Bauzeitung data set (image used courtesy of the authors).
to work at the resolution of the city; this also seemed appro- that meant focusing on structures that were the subject of
priate because this level of precision was of most concern main articles and then focusing on the “Chronik” section on
to the readers of the DBZ as well.24 The national borders the last page of each issue, which listed building openings, the
of Germany made sense as the scale of our project, although laying of foundation stones, and other information on con-
we also recorded information about building sites outside struction activity. This blueprint enabled us to construct our
those borders for comparative purposes. Our basic re- first 1914–24 database from the DBZ over an eight-month
search questions concerned what kinds of buildings were period. Van der Graaff made the first pass through the jour-
built, when, and where. Temporal and spatial data were nals and then Jaskot “scrubbed” and cross-checked the results
thus to be queried in relation to typological functions. in a second pass through the data set, readying it for import-
The individual building in this case is relevant only as it ing into ArcGIS. As critics both within and outside the digital
exists relationally to others of the same or different type humanities have pointed out, however, more data does not
(as determined by us), time, or approximate geography. equal more truth.27 We approached our evidence analyti-
This is a proportional study that gives us density of con- cally rather than positivistically, leading with the research
struction; when visualized, it may provide information on questions of what was built, when, and where. We also in-
patterns of activity that could lead to further exploratory corporated information that captured the potential to eval-
work in the archives. Constructing the database and cre- uate the bias of our sources and planned to address any new
ating the attendant visualizations form part of the re- research questions that might arise from the data. Organiz-
search project—they are not merely ways of gathering ing the data is analyzing the data, an important humanistic
data and representing results.25 endeavor whether the research involves scientific study of
Given our focus on what/when/where, the next question star systems, sociological investigations of poverty rates, or
was how to approach the source material. Although all issues art historical mapping of architectural production.28
of one journal over ten years do not exactly constitute “big Our first group of evidence involved basic information,
data,” it would have been too massive an undertaking to resting on standard architectural historical approaches: the
search through every article for the occasional mention of name of the building (with each building getting a unique
a building under construction.26 Hence, what would be a identity number), the architect or architectural firm, and a
workable model? Most architectural journals of the period “comment” field that allowed for the addition of potentially
were broken down into feature articles and small reports interesting, relevant, or problematic historical information
from the field on topics such as new regulations in building (Figure 6). We anticipated that these fields would be impor-
codes and restrictions on the use of certain materials during tant as the visualization of the database led us to particular
wartime. Thus, we decided to capture information at two lev- local disparities in national patterns that might best be ex-
els: the feature article and the building report. For the DBZ, plained through detailed analyses of case studies. In a second
490 JSAH | 76.4 | DECEMBER 2017
group, we attempted to capture something of the journal’s allowed us to separate out buildings within specific typologies.
editorial bias. Like any architectural historical journal, the This became important for distinguishing social patterns such
editors favored some geographies over others, a specific as differences between Protestant and Catholic church con-
range of styles and buildings, and other conditioning factors struction, which would otherwise both have fallen anony-
brought on by the war and other circumstances. To get at mously under the type “Non-Government Institutions.” The
these biases, we developed a field to record when a building lack of information on specific buildings made this one of the
was mentioned, as well as subsequent fields to record how most subjective categories in the database. However, the basic
many times it was referenced (i.e., how interesting it was to association between “Use” and “Type” still enabled us to map
the DBZ and its readership). A separate field recorded construction activity on a broad scale while leaving some of the
whether the building was the subject of a featured article or more ambiguous granular analysis for later archival work.
merely mentioned in the “Chronik” among other news
items.29 We again used the comment field to record any
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problems or anomalies of note or in need of further research Cracks in the Foundations:
for this editorial evidence. Problems in the Database
Most important for the current research questions were Within a month of our initial forays into the journal, the most
the “Date,” “Place,” and “Typology” fields—that is to say, obvious but structurally difficult problem came into focus:
when, where, and what. We broke these down further when how to deal with the ambiguity typical of much of the evi-
we realized that we needed a more granular analysis. We dence derived from historical sources like the DBZ. We faced
included start dates by year, since there was rarely anything the uncertainty created by unclear start and end dates of con-
more precise, but end dates could be more specific, so we struction. For example, long-term infrastructure projects
broke those down by year, month, and day.30 The “Country”
such as the Mittelland Canal and the Berlin U-Bahn were
and “City” fields were fairly straightforward, although the
completed in sections and stages over many decades. This
war changed some of the borders and names—for example,
became a burning problem as we came across important
cities in occupied Belgium had German names. For the pur-
projects demanding many resources and large numbers of
poses of accuracy in our mapping we recorded the current
laborers that had nevertheless disappeared from the architec-
country of a city or town in a separate “Address” field, but we
tural record. How to capture a building in process when you
also included a subsidiary field for the historical country or
have no idea when it was started or whether it was even com-
city if it differed. More difficult was labeling the German
pleted? We returned to this issue again and again, as different
state for a building, an important category given that building
cases arose. This problem also forced us to rethink exactly
activity was usually organized regionally rather than nation-
what we wanted to visualize. Given the ambiguity,
ally. For this, we used historical atlases and maps to determine
mapping “construction” seemed too precise a term, as it
appropriate locations, since current state boundaries do not
match those of the war and postwar years.31 Finally, we cre- seemed to imply that we could identify a very particular
ated the crucial “Type” and “Use” fields that were necessary phase for all sites. Instead, it became increasingly clear that
for sorting the results and running queries on the data. The we were going to capture not the granular nature of the
“Type” field forced us to characterize the basic nature of each construction industry but rather “building activity” at
of the building activity sites, differentiating, for example, particular places and times. Such give-and-take in the
a single-family home from an apartment block or a city process of extracting the data makes clear how that process
government building from a federal one. In the few cases itself requires the rethinking of important categories of
of indeterminacy—for instance, when a judicial structure knowledge about what one presumably knows, for exam-
was mentioned without any clarity as to whether it was ple, about the construction industry. In this instance,
a state or federal institution—we made our best guesses “building activity” seemed to capture especially those cases
given the contexts of the articles and the discussions of where we had no clear start or end dates.
the sites. Coupled with our efforts to account for the Through such decision making, we settled on a working
editorial bias of the journal, the “Type” field allowed us definition of a new “Ambiguity” field that included marking
to capture a sense of the monuments and buildings that all entries with a simple Y/N, with a yes indicating ambiguity
helped define the cultural developments of the period, relating to completion date as well as the amount of work at a
and hence the political and ideological concerns on the site (Figure 7). Thus, for example, a building that was funded,
minds of the readership and the architects. with the property purchased and the site cleared, but for
The “Type” field expanded over time as we began to see which we could not be sure even the foundation had been
what was working and what was not. To make these entries in dug was labeled Y in the “Ambiguity” field. Certainly, there
the database more precise, we created the “Use” field, which was a fair amount of subjectivity in this process; the language
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Figure 7 Draft map, comparison of entries for which construction dates are certain and those for which construction dates are ambiguous, Deutsche
Bauzeitung data set, 1914–24 (authors’ map, produced in ArcGIS).
in some cases was cloudy. For both of us, as recorded in the otherwise disappear from a date-based record and be able
Project Narrative, deciding on how to use this field proved to visualize these cases differently to reflect our partial knowl-
difficult.32 Were we talking only about ambiguous end dates edge base. Even without specific end dates, such cases would
for construction, or would we also be capturing other kinds enable us to visualize where construction was occurring in a
of ambiguity, such as when we knew a building had been given year.
approved but had no idea whether any actual building activity The issue of ambiguity points to how much of the digi-
had occurred on the site? Ultimately, we decided on a tal work lies not only in extracting evidence but also in
narrower definition as most useful to guide our extraction of organizing that evidence into an appropriate database
evidence. We limited ambiguity to ongoing projects that had structure. This process remains altogether unseen in much
no definitive end dates and for which we were unsure about digital humanities scholarship and comes through only
the amount of activity that occurred in a given year. when we focus on method. Dealing with ambiguity raises
Large infrastructure projects were particularly prone to the problem that occurs when we take the fluid informa-
fall into this category; the Masurischer Kanal is an eloquent tion of historical articles and archives and attempt to rec-
example. Begun in 1911 to link the Masurian lakes in East oncile it with the binary language of the digital. This is,
Prussia with Königsberg, this project was interrupted during after all, one of the central contradictions of the digital hu-
World War I, resumed in the 1920s, and then never com- manities. Large data samples can be visualized spatially
pleted. In another instance, the “Chronik” in the DBZ of 13 only with digital tools, whereas the digital methods em-
June 1923 reports fifty-two houses under construction in ployed are often fundamentally inappropriate for the sam-
Hagen with no start or end dates.33 By means of the “Ambi- ples of data.34 Signaling ambiguity helps us to address that
guity” field, we hoped to capture building activity that would contradiction.
492 JSAH | 76.4 | DECEMBER 2017Yet that very act also points to the incompleteness of the developed a process that was selective (main articles and the
process, and this is where the rubber meets the proverbial “Chronik” sections) but would inevitably involve error. Even
road. For critics of GIS and other geographical approaches, with two scholars scrubbing and checking the database,
no amount of care with the database and the extraction of errors will happen. It was exactly this kind of possibility that
evidence will result in a map that is anything but a mere led us to shift our description of the data from evidence of the
representation, an artificial image that attempts to dominate “construction industry” to evidence of “building activity,” a
a narrative.35 In recent years, even scholars who use GIS have phrase that seems altogether more modest but also more
argued for the necessarily contingent nature of map making. accurate. The implication here is that, as with any historical
They point to the abstracting and reductive nature of GIS, as data set, constant refinement is needed, even though we
it attempts to turn variegated spatial earth surfaces into pixels defined clear parameters for using the sources and are open
on flat screens. These more theoretically driven critics tend about our process.
to be sympathetic to the possibilities of GIS, but they are gen- And, of course, there is the other end as well: the human
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erally more interested in its relationship to philosophies of error, caprice, or intent of the authors writing the articles and
representation or epistemology. The inevitable distortion “Chronik” entries in the first place. For instance, the opening
involved in GIS is, for them, a point to be theorized. Such DBZ issue of 1919 begins with an article on the new
work often comes together with critiques of the seemingly reception hall of the train station in Karlsruhe. The first
neutral status of GIS that masks its well-known use for the paragraph—a bittersweet commentary on the end of the
military–industrial complex.36 Our work on the database has war—stresses that this article is only now possible because the
undeniably shown that the resulting maps are distanced from war is over and government censorship has been lifted. We
a complete picture of the real: they do indeed exist as mere can only wonder how much this censorship influenced edito-
representations and are at best reductive and abstract reflec- rial choices up to this point. Another example comes from the
tions of bits and pieces of the real, as filtered through the supplement of the DBZ titled Mitteilungen über Zement,
selective references in the DBZ. Beton- und Eisenbetonbau (DBZM). This specialized comple-
But whatever the status of the visualization, one cannot ment to the main journal contains, as the title suggests, infor-
so easily dismiss the gathering of historical evidence into a mation on structures erected in concrete and steel, such as
database as a limited positivist exercise where the resulting bridges, skyscrapers, and industrial facilities, which usually do
digital maps are of no more interest than as mere represen- not appear in the main journal. This gap in the editorial em-
tations. Particularly given how few buildings scholars have phasis of the DBZ was important enough that we decided to
actually studied in our chosen period—itself an example of extract information from the DBZM separately. And finally,
a highly selective process—we should not be too quick to a particular crisis arose for us starting with the first issue of
reject what a methodology at a different scale of analysis the DBZ of 1924. Before this point, Albert Hofmann and
can offer. Rather, the approach to gathering evidence and Fritz Eiselen were coeditors, until Hofmann became the sole
the use of GIS to interrogate that evidence produce analyt- editor and publisher in January 1920; thereafter Eiselen
ical knowledge as well. Our analysis indicates that we would remain the editor of the supplement (DBZM). In
should think of both the historical journal and the digital 1924 Erich Blunck took over the publisher’s job from
map as having an indexical relation to the real, a relation- Hofmann, and Eiselen became the editor, effectively folding
ship that is mediated and constructed but also given form the DBZM into the main journal and thus changing the edi-
in and through the database. Such relational thinking does torial balance of the DBZ. In conjunction with the economic
have limitations, especially the serious difficulty in getting recovery of that year, and the added information formerly
at specific kinds of historical events, such as giving form to relegated to the DBZM, Blunck and Eiselen also dramatically
individual experiences or the ebb and flow of the design pro- increased the number of buildings featured and highlighted
cess. But it does allow for a glimpse of the systemic nature of more statistical reports on the state of the building industry.38
society and moments in which the cultural production of The uptick we registered in entries was thus as much the re-
building indicates an activator or inhibitor of social change. sult of editorial changes as it was a reflection of economic re-
These questions still lie at the heart particularly of social art covery. At the same time, the increase in statistical reports
history but also of many disciplinary problems both within meant that much of the evidence became more comprehen-
and outside the humanities.37 sive, but predominantly at the resolution of the state, not of
Aside from questions of theory, building a database from the city. So, while we knew more about the impact of housing
historical journals also presents some practical limitations estates as a significant component of the building economy,
that stem from the scale of the project. The most obvious of we knew that only for states such as Bavaria, not for Bavarian
these is the issue of human error in extracting the data. Given cities like Munich or Nuremberg. Given our database and the
the scope of the material that needed to be covered, we focus of our research question at the level of urban centers,
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Figure 8 Statistical set 1 of Dyckerhoff &
Widmann construction sites, all German points
between 1918 and 1923, average nearest neighbor
analysis. Since the data cannot be statistically
random and the ANNA values are more than
22 standard deviations from the mean, it can be
statistically concluded that this data set is indeed
spatially clustered around cities (statistical analysis
and visualization courtesy of Alex Temes).
we relegated such reports to later references for the maps we construction firm archives, we will be incorporating our
would produce. “Construction Firms” field into further visualizations.
Ultimately, we still have issues to work out that are central Moving forward, other problems will inevitably arise as we
to German architectural history and will give a more accurate negotiate ever more complex iterations in the mapping
form to the nature of the evidence. State-level data on em- stage with the journals and other historical sources.
ployment, voting patterns, and the like will be a means to re-
late building activity to political dynamics between parties, to
capture any economic shifts that affected micro-geographies Laying the Cornerstone: The Promise and
and micro-typologies of building, and to visualize a possible Possibility of a Building Activity Database
relationship of construction with overlooked constituencies, In spite of the difficulties and editorial distortions described
such as urban working-class and women voters.39 In addition above, the processes of making the database and visualizing
to these historical layers, we have to develop our visualization the data extracted in digital maps have also provided results
techniques to highlight the ambiguity of the temporal evi- that speak both to rethinking the architectural history of early
dence. Mapping such ambiguity has been part of visualizing Weimar and to the value of digital methods. In other words,
practices since the eighteenth century, as in the example of the approach itself produced new knowledge. In our process,
Joseph Priestly’s famed Chart of Biography (1765). We will have the map is not a mere representation of our results, an after-
to engage with cartographers to develop a kind of shadow sym- effect of our analysis completed after we have done all the
bolization to display building activity that may have started necessary archival or extracting work; rather, the iterative
before or extended beyond known dates. In this regard, the process of mapping is itself crucial to the analytical goals of
database construction extends problems important both for our project. Anyone who works on a historical database in a
the history of German architecture and for debates within GIS environment knows that surprises will arise in the query-
historical GIS.40 In addition, as Jaskot digs deeper into the ing of the database. Each of our few maps reproduced here is
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Figure 9 Statistical set 2 of Dyckerhoff &
Widmann construction sites, German points
without the top ten largest cities between 1918
and 1923, average nearest neighbor analysis. A
z-score of –19.921, or nearly 20 standard deviations
away from the mean, and a nearest neighbor ratio
output of 0.3504 can indicate a highly spatially
clustered set of data (statistical analysis and
visualization courtesy of Alex Temes).
just one of dozens and, cumulatively, hundreds of queries run journal. Only the visualization brought this obscure town to
on the database in an attempt to find new art historical ques- light as an architecturally interesting construction site.
tions or reveal new patterns of production in the building What is even more surprising is the reason Forbach was so
economy of Germany during the years examined. Extracting frequently referenced. The editors and, presumably, the ar-
and systemizing the information from the DBZ and then chitectural readership were fascinated by the construction of
querying it using GIS produced areas of research that we a major hydroelectric dam on the Murg, in spite of the war
expected and others that we did not. These features of the years. The dam combined an engineering feat with the use of
maps are thus proxies for problems that need further research massive concrete construction that was sometimes finished
and explanation.41 For example, it was not a surprise that with vernacular treatments of local stone (Figure 11).45 It em-
the very act of constructing the database would decenter the bodied the kind of project that would stir the mind of the
geographic concentration of art history on large cities. While burgeoning modernist movement but also had elements that
Berlin and Hamburg are still important, so too are less familiar appealed to nationalist and traditional (architectural) constitu-
locations such as Forbach and Welschenburg. Statistically encies.46 The first full DBZ article on the dam appeared in the
speaking, this shows a wider distribution of construction activ- first issue following the armistice of 11 November 1918—
ity although not an outright shift of focus to “rural” sites possibly a coincidence, but the timing is certainly intriguing
(Figures 8 and 9).42 Forbach as a site of building activity was when we consider elements such as editorial bias and the ap-
particularly revealing (Figure 10).43 Located in the valley of parent censoring of the journal during the war years. Clearly,
the Murg River, it is a small isolated town with a population this monument focused interest and knowledge of experimen-
hovering around the 2,300 mark during the war years. And yet tation. Such a location or structure would have remained
our mapping process revealed that it is one of the most-often largely invisible if we had approached the historical journal
referenced sites of building activity, especially when one com- with more conventional methods. Indeed, the mapping pro-
pensates for cities with populations above 100,000 in the pe- cess forces new buildings of consequence to their historical
riod.44 One could not “see” this result merely by reading the periods into the architectural history narrative, buildings that
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Figure 10 Draft map, number of building sites of current construction mentioned more than four times in the Deutsche Bauzeitung data set, 1914–24,
with historical pre-1900 structures mentioned but not under construction shown in ghost imagery. Forbach is the largest dark-gray circle near the bottom
center of the map (authors’ map, produced in ArcGIS).
ways. It also raises the historical question of how specific
large-scale engineering projects can focus architectural debate
and in turn influence architects’ capacity for experimentation.
The iterative production of GIS maps from the database
has also spurred questions that lead us to unexplored areas of
art historical research. Above all, we have to question the ar-
chitectural historical consensus on the postwar period of rev-
olution and inflation. Taut and other avant-garde architects
were intimately involved in utopic planning and the political
organization of architectural practice, but not only much
talk of architecture but also quite a bit of practice has es-
caped notice. There were significantly more micro-durations
Figure 11 H. Wielandt (with Siemens-Bauunion), Murgtal dam complex, and micro-geographies of building activity in this period—
Forbach, 1914–18, first phase (Deutsche Bauzeitung 54, no. 3 [1 Oct. industrial and vernacular structures of all kinds—indicating
1920], n.p.). a more imbricated development of architecture.47 For ex-
ample, while we already knew that 1921 was an active year
otherwise are ignored by the traditional repeated focus on a of planning for utopic projects in Berlin and elsewhere, our
few canonical structures. This extends in important ways the maps displayed clear evidence that the year was surprisingly
methodological issue of looking at the dark matter of art important for the completion of housing estates (co)sponsored
history to analyze our seemingly fixed narratives in different by municipal governments, especially in Saxony (Figure 12).
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Figure 12 Draft map, housing and urban planning sites under construction as cited in the Deutsche Bauzeitung data set, 1914–24, with historical
structures mentioned but not under construction shown in ghost imagery. Saxony forms the cluster of icons below Berlin at the right center of the map
(authors’ map, produced in ArcGIS).
The unusual focus on Saxony was lost in the thousands of to urban policy and taxation laws, we do not know about the
articles and notices that one comes across in reading the significance of housing estate construction before the eco-
DBZ page by page. The activity in this state must have been nomic recovery. Developments such as Mockau likely built
something of real consequence to the German architectural significant practical, aesthetic, and ideological capacity for the
community, which other visualizations also seem to confirm, arrival of the avant-garde on the scene after the implementa-
as in a map of the activity of the construction firm Dyckerhoff tion of the Dawes Plan in 1924.50 Even from our partial sam-
& Widmann (Figure 13).48 The DBZ editorial focus became ple of one journal, we have evidence of dozens of housing
clear to us when we extracted the evidence and then mapped estates completed all over Germany, which must at least
the number of building sites referenced in various ways complicate this previous narrative’s emphasis only on later
throughout the journal. In this case, we sorted the data by Weimar housing estates. Production of maps indexically
type (housing estate or large-scale urban settlement) and then points to emergent construction activity previously hidden
represented the data proportionally in terms of the number from an architectural historical account of Weimar Germany.
of buildings of a given type that occur in any one location. By allowing for flexibility in database design, we were able
This drew our attention to Leipzig and, in the process, to capture the information particular to the kind of journal
brought up new building sites that exist at the fringes of we were examining efficiently. This work includes revising
architectural historical knowledge. protocols and making changes that require revisiting articles
Mockau, a district in Leipzig, is a good example. It showed and issues to extract and refine the information. Such work
consistent construction activity in housing throughout the almost by definition requires collaboration. We found that
whole period 1919–23 (Figure 14).49 Thus, although we the back-and-forth process of reading, extracting, correcting,
know that the work of Taut and Martin Wagner in Berlin and debating, revisiting, and revising our categories of analysis
Ernst May in Frankfurt occurred after 1924 through changes was especially important in our first few months, as we settled
HISTORICAL JOURNALS AS DIGITAL SOURCES 497Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jsah/article-pdf/76/4/483/187868/jsah_2017_76_4_483.pdf by Duke University user on 10 August 2021 Figure 13 Draft map, distribution of building activity of the construction firm Dyckerhoff & Widmann across Central Europe, 1918–23 (map courtesy of Sarah Levesque, produced in ArcGIS). on the structure of the database itself. Most of all, it is impor- and developing new databases that will accommodate fur- tant to understand how sources like historical journals, which ther evidence. While the archives of most construction are often our only way into a broader structural understand- firms that were active in Germany in 1914–24 are closed, ing of cultural production, can be usefully “given form” in a an accessible archive exists for Siemens-Bauunion, which database. In turn, that repository of information can be sub- formed at exactly this time and was involved with “high- ject to iterative visualizations that will help to validate digital design” buildings, vernacular buildings, and industrial mapping as a method for organizing a space between an structures such as the Murgtal dam. As a point of com- incomprehensible variety of historical events and the unifor- parison for the DBZ and to gather further information, mity of standard historical analysis. Our work and preliminary we have also created a database for mapping the Baumeis- visualizations are promising for showing “building-in-time” ter, another one of the leading architectural journals of in a manner that isolates the construction process as itself a the time. The archive for Dyckerhoff & Widmann has focus that raises problems worthy of art historical analysis. As also already proven helpful in complicating the picture a result, we can begin to glimpse the broader development of presented by the visualizations.51 Jaskot succeeded in re- architecture and society during World War I and in the early covering a list from that archive that details all the proj- Weimar Republic (Figure 15). ects the firm conducted from 1914 through 1930. In In addition to further digital mapping iterations, the our further research, this information will provide vital geographical, typological, and building patterns revealed points of comparison that may highlight the editorial bias will require detailed and supplemental research. As part of the journals. The initial maps from this evidence have of this continuing work, we are addressing other sources produced interesting parallels but also tensions with the 498 JSAH | 76.4 | DECEMBER 2017
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Figure 14 Sample article in the Deutsche
Bauzeitung on the Leipzig-Mockau housing estate
(Deutsche Bauzeitung 57, nos. 74–75 [15 Sept.
1923]).
DBZ source, extending the questions raised concerning relationship between the building industry and society at the
construction in the period (Figure 16). scale of the social as a whole. Throughout the process, we will
In addition to expanding the sources specifically coming build up an analysis that is largely an architectural history
from the architecture and the construction industry, we will without individual buildings.53 Construction is a separate
need to incorporate important evidence to address our area of building activity with social significance, distinct from
question of how construction relates to the structural political design and reception and thus in need of its own analytical
economic development of Germany. We will have to include methods and visualization.
other information, such as voting, demographic, and economic
data, that will show the intersection (or not) of building activity
with social struggle, politically dominant forces, and the re-
Building-in-Time
covery of a capitalist economy after the war.52 As with the con- We have shown in our methodological approach to the data-
struction of the database, our engagement with this additional base construction not only the analytical decisions necessary
evidence will further elucidate and complicate the in the scholarly process but also how preliminary new areas
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