by Ana-Teodora Kurkina (University of Regensburg)

“The face of a nation”

The development of the 19th century German Neoclassical architecture, which is mainly studied from the point of view of its artistic, cultural and ideological value, has rarely been linked to similar advances in the national revival in the newly established kingdom of Greece. The Greek-German connections, given a new stimuli after the ascension to the throne of the Bavarian prince Otto in 1832, present a complicated picture of interdependence. These interdependencies can only be fully assessed when one pays attention to the “adjusting” aspect of those artistic networks that are usually understood as part of the general European Philhellenic movement. The current essay offers a wider view on the German-Greek social and cultural networks by addressing the problem of reconciliation between the German and Greek nation-building propaganda strategies. Both countries had multi-layered and non-homogeneous pasts that were reconciled through neoclassical architecture. Weiterlesen →