Discursive Strategies, Visions, and Outcomes in the Transformation of Croatian Historic Towns, 1945–1960

Abstract

The historic towns of the People’s Republic of Croatia greeted the triumph of the partisan forces in 1945 mostly with war damage and in ruins. In the first post-war years, the new political authorities at both federal and republican levels required society as a whole, and those professionals who were in charge of the preservation of historic monuments and urban planning, in particular, to make a radical turn towards the Soviet model. Croatian architects, urban planners, and conservators responded to these requests in different ways. What united them was an attempt to establish a form that could integrate multiple damaged historical environments. While a number of conservators tried to remain faithful to the heritage management traditions and theory developed in the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires at the turn of the 20th century, the practical needs of art historians – who were soon followed by architects and urban planners – demanded a turn towards reconstructions or new architectural creations. A new vocabulary of reconstruction was thus created, one that drew on the theoretical positions of Dehio, Gurlitt, Dvořák, and Riegl, but was also in accordance with the political demands of the communist elite. Visions of the future of historic buildings and sites were accompanied by doubts, debates, and polemics comparable with those taking place in other European countries, which tried to steer a course between the principle of reconstructing lost forms and the principle of substitution with new architectural works. The common point of the two interest groups was accompanied by another: the desire for social transformation. This sought not just the physical replacement of lost forms with new ones, but also the reorientation of the meaning of the reconstructed sites in line with the political purpose of re-education and the creation of a harmonious socialist society. This chapter discusses the fundamental concepts, actors, ideas, and accomplishments in the preservation and transformation of Croatian historical towns in the first fifteen post-war years.