Global Gothic - Neo-Gothic sacral architecture in the 20th and 21st centuries

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Bruno Klein
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 406434623

More than hundred large neo-gothic churches around the world were founded and built during the 20th and 21st centuries, many of them still under construction. These are mostly cathedrals of various Christian confessions or pilgrimage churches of monumental dimensions, largely ignored by art historical research for various reasons. At first because stylistically independent "Neo-Gothic" seems historically finished with the beginning of the modern age in art. What was built later in this stylistic idiom is considered artistically inferior. Furthermore, most of the buildings are located outside the "Gothic core continent" of Europe, which is why they are viewed rather condescendingly by traditional Gothic and Neo Gothic research.The project wants to reverse the perspectives: the buildings are taken serious because their construction requires a great deal of organizational, financial and artistic effort. Their role in the process of nation-building and identity-building is examined, as is their role in relation to religious and confessional assertions. Especially in such contexts, the fact that they are mostly outside of Europe plays a particularly important role. For from this there are perspectives for the development of the until today ongoing global Gothic-Revival in the sense of a postcolonial art history.In addition, attempts are made to understand and classify these buildings as elements of an ignored architecture and style history of the 20th and 21st centuries. Practical questions have to be asked too, such as how Gothic forms and building techniques have been transferred to the modern age, who the architects are, what training they have experienced, etc.The project attempts first to a systematic capture and analysis of this global phenomenon. In second, detailed studies will be carried out in various cultural areas, which usually requires local archive studies in selected locations. This is to be done in three regions of the world: In Latin America, where neo-gothic architecture really became a relevant topic only in the 20th century; in North America, where gothic revival tendencies have existed since the nineteenth century, but where in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries a quite independent and original development of neo-gothic architecture took place; and finally in Australia, where a continuation of English Gothic Revival from the 19th century to the present day can be observed. All regions are also exemplary for others (for example, South Africa and India), which for pragmatic reasons can not be dealt with within the period for which funding is requested.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Barbara Borngässer