Leo von Klenze in St. Petersburg 1834 – 1858 (vol. I “Commented edition of letters and selected source-materials”, vol. II “The New Hermitage: Architecture, museology and cultural transfer in consideration of new source-materials”)

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Adrian von Buttlar; Privatdozent Dr.-Ing. Sergej Fedorov
• Subject Area: Art History ; Architecture, Building and Construction History, Construction Research, Sustainable Building Technology
• Term: from 2016 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 283882402

The present application sees itself as a corona-related continuation application of a joint research project at the TU Berlin and the KIT Karlsruhe, which was first carried out in 2016 and as a follow-up application in 2019 was approved by the DFG. The basic objective of the project has not changed substantially and since the last application, which included an expansion of the task, which was welcomed by the experts, namely the project of a two-volume edition, methodologically and conceptually nothing has changed. As an interdisciplinary and bilateral research project, the project develops the first complete picture of the extensive work of the then leading German architect Leo von Klenze in the Russian Empire after the death of Friedrich Schinkel in 1841 and the associated cultural transfer in the artistic and political field of tension between the European east and west. The project is well advanced on the basis of the work plans for 2016 and 2019, which were presented in detail at the time: the pool of documents, which has grown to around 500 items and is only known in fragmentary form, has been transcribed according to strict editorial rules and, with a few exceptions, has now been almost completely commented on. At the same time, the necessary registers were created: in addition to the central register of persons, the place register, the constantly updated bibliography, the list of recorded documents and the growing directory of the relevant image sources (plans, sketches, Klenze views and image documents from third parties). In accordance with the expansion of the objectives of the follow-up project in 2019, parallel to the "commented edition" of the sources (volume 1), the conception of the comprehensive monographic volume (volume 2) on the building and museum history of the New Hermitage Klenzes has been completed. It is intended to provide a brief but comprehensive new insight into the origin and reception of one of the most important European museum buildings. In particular, the new questions and results from the document pool in the current research phase were answered by extended context-related literature and archive research (e.g. in the Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage, the manuscript department of the Bavarian State Library and by queries in other archives) as well as by extended research in published sources (diaries, editions of letters, etc.) are taken into account.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants