“Everything Flows”: Hans Döllgast’s post-war Cemetery Reconstructions in Munich

Abstract

The architect Hans Döllgast (1891-1974) is known for his pioneering reconstructions of war damaged monuments in Munich in the 1950s. His work has recently gained currency as architectural discourse has foregrounded the themes of repair and reuse in the wake of large-scale crises. Döllgast’s approach to the damaged facades of Munich’s most significant art museum, the Alte Pinakothek, has become emblematic of his unique ability to seize reconstruction as an opportunity to creatively retain, adapt and reinvent historic buildings, transforming them into distinctive memory sites. Resisting standard historiographic labels such as ‘traditionalist’, ‘modernist’, and ‘other modern’, Döllgast remains an enigma and eludes definitive classification. It was his understanding of the temporality of architecture that made his work untimely in the post-war period, his designs gaining in widespread recognition only decades later.