Discussions about Bakač‘s tower in Zagreb in 1901: “This awkward, ugly tower...”or ”...a characteristic example of Medieval defence fortification”

U tekstu se raspravlja o polemici koja se vodila od 22. lipnja do 17. srpnja 1901. godine u Zagrebu oko očuvanja ili rušenja Bakačeve kule. U polemici sudjeluju povjesničar umjetnosti Izidor Kršnjavi, arhitekt Hermann Bollé, povjesničar i arheolog Josip Brunšmid i likovni kritičar Vladimir Lunaček. Izidor Kršnjavi i Hermann Bollé zastupaju historicističke teorije, dok Josip Brunšmid i Vladimir Lunaček zagovaraju protomodernističke teorije u gradogradnji i očuvanja spomenika.Josip Brunšmid and Emilij Laszowski wrote the Petition of Croatian Historians and Archaeologists in the Conservation of Middle-Aged Fortresses around Zagreb Cathedral and organized its signing by 28 leading Croatian historians, antiquarians and archaeologists. The petition was published on 22 June 1901 in all daily newspapers and caused a debate among theoreticians, which was published in daily newspapers from 22 June to 17 July 1901. The main bone of contention was related to the following issues: whether to demolish or preserve Bakač’s tower and western wall, whether to rebuild and restore Vinković’s portal or replace it with the new Bollé’s portal and how to evaluate the executed stylistic restoration of the cathedral. The course of the debate was determined by the participants and the state of the cathedral as well as the bishop‘s fortress. Historian Izidor Kršnjavi, architect Hermann Bollé, historian Ivan K. Tkalčić, archaeologist and historian Josip Brunšmid and art critic Vladimir Lunaček took part in the debate. The state of the archiepiscopal cathedral complex is extremely complicated. The cathedral was restored (1880 to 1900) under the guidance of architect H. Bollé. The western facade of the cathedral no longer contains Vinković’s portal (1640–43/1675), which bishop Benedikt Vinković (1637–42) ordered from master Cozmo Mueller and which was completed by canon Ludovik Vukoslavić. At the time, the bishop‘s fortress still kept an unaltered historical form. The release of the petition in 1901 caused a huge debate about urban development, the preservation of building monuments and art history. I Kršnjavi, H. Bollé, J. Brunšmid and V. Lunaček basically followed European trends, and the differences were largely the result of the generation gap. In urban development, I. Kršnjavi and H. Bollé continued to uncompromisingly advocate the exclusion of church monuments from the practice of their alteration with regard to the surrounding construction and the practice of the demolition of old buildings for modern traffic requirements, all stances formed and represented by Reinhard Baumeister, Hermann Maertens and Josef Stübben in the period from 1870 to 1880. Bollé’s concise and specific explanation about the justification for the demolition of Bakač’s tower, in order to open the view of the restored western facade of the cathedral is in accordance with the theories of Hermann Maertens. J. Brunšmid and V. Lunaček, on the other hand, were faithful followers of the theoretical reasoning of Camillo Sitte and his circle of the like-minded when it came to urban development and its regulation. Unlike J. Brunšmid and V. Lunaček, I . Kršnjavi and H. Bollé are much closer to contemporary art history concepts of defensive towers and walls as well as provincial Renaissance works, and therefore also Vinković’s portal, which belongs to the seventeenth century. The theoretical considerations about the conservation of monuments all share the Enlightment’s historicist vision of the past. I Kršnjavi and H. Bollé saw the past as an educational authority that teaches, while for J. Brunšmid and V. Lunaček, the past represented a moral authority that primarily commemorates. For I . Kršnjavi and H. Bollé a historical monument, even if incomplete, is not an object to be left intact and put under the glass bell for preservation. An unfinished monument is an object that should first of all be aesthetically finished so that it could still be used. In the end, none of them aspired to a scientific antiquarian approach, but rather to a creative artistic one. H. Bollé and I . Kršnjavi are no exception to the Central European architecture of the nineteenth century. Most of the interventions on building monuments belonged to an individualistic direction of historicism, where an aesthetic approach to the stylistic restoration prevailed. Far fewer interventions belonged to an antiquarian direction in historicism, which saw the application of an archaeological approach to stylistic restoration. J. Brunšmid, E. Laszowski and V. Lunaček carefully monitored and accepted new knowledge stemming from contemporary theoretical debates which concerned the preservation of monuments and were led wherever German was spoken. They acted highly ethically and posted their sources of influence: the first editorial of the magazine „Die Denkmalpfege“, a report from the first German „Denkmaltag“ and the theory of Paul Tornow. All of them criticized the aesthetic approach to style restorations. H. Bollé followed E. E. Violet-le-Duc and explained the restoration of the cathedral as a rational, technical and absolutely artistic task, which is completely detached from the social context. In reading and evaluating the historical and spatial development of the architectural composition of the cathedral H. Bollé opposed the canon of European quality and the quality of provincial works. As opposed to the European canon, the local stylistic specifics of the cathedral were radically rated barbaric and mercilessly removed. Since J. Brunšmid and V. Lunaček considered the restoration of the cathedral as having a clear role in the social construction of the Croatian nationhood, they accused H. Bollé for a lack of patriotism and piety. V. Lunaček was most prone to an extensive theoretical debate, but his views remained largely ignored by other debate participants. His theoretical critique in some way announced the architecture of Viktor Kovačić and theoretical criticism of Gjuro Szabo. Various considerations from the debate got reflected in Kovačić’s theoretical explanation for the Kaptol and environs tender from the year 1908. Later on Gj. Szabo could conclude the theoretical settling of the theory of regulation, stylistic restoration and the architecture of historicism