The fortunes of the Hans Dollgast’s works in Munich and their echos in the German culture
Hans Döllgast’s interventions (1891 -1974) on famous building erected in Munich during the first
half of the nineteenth century and devastated by the Second World War have been strongly altered or
deleted. A few essential, refined additions were enough to recompose the ruins in austere buildings.
Keeping the vestiges of the bombings, Döllgast encouraged not to forget neither the horrors of
the war nor those that preceded it. This severe message transcended architecture, used it as a mere
tool, but also rejected both the surface modernity of the international style and the opulence of the
Sixties. Döllgast was an isolated voice, but his approch was among the most original ones not only in German but also in European post-war period. It is no wonder, everything has been done to
erase it - as in the Basilica of Sankt Bonifaz, or in the Alte Pinokothek, to leave a sort of sweetened
simulacrum, testimony of a historical moment but also a sample of an architectural language to be
proposed in an eclectic way.
