Herb Stovel Memorial Lecture, April 26, 2025, 15:30
Library and Archives Canada (Alfred Pellan Room, 395 Wellington Street, Ottawa, ON)
REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED.
LOST AND FOUND:
THREE PALACES IN ONE IN BERLIN’S CITY CENTRE
with Dr. Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper, Technical University of Berlin
Loss is a powerful incentive for heritage construction. Imminent loss of a cherished or, at least, familiar and respected building or heritage site mobilizes contemporary citizens to articulate protest and resistance, loud or low or silent. The very feeling of loss may be passed on to next and over next generations. Thus, the loss as such may acquire heritage quality and social value of its own. Political and social change may open ways for reconstruction, imagined or material, or both.
The Palace is gone, 2008, Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper
Dr. Dolff-Bonekämper will discuss the destruction and loss of the Prussian baroque palace, heavily bombed during WW2 and blown up in 1950; the construction and loss of the GDR-modernist Palace of the Republic, opened in 1974, closed in 1991 because of asbestos contagion, demolished 2006-2008; and, the reconstruction of the Prussian palace on the spot, a concrete structure covered with baroque looking facades, 2013-2020. A recent exhibition “Gone and away. The Palace of the Republic is Present” invited open discussions; people who worked in and for the Palace were invited to speak up.
About the Speaker
Dr. Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper, Professor of Monument Conservation and Urban Cultural Heritage at the TU Berlin from 2002-2021. From 1988 to 2002, monuments conservator in Berlin, active and controversial participation in debates on the evaluation and preservation of remnants of the Berlin Wall, controversial political monuments in urban space and post-war modernist buildings in East and West Berlin. 2001/02 Scholar at the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles. From 2000-2011 member of the Expert Group on the Common European Cultural Heritage at the Council of Europe. Co-author of the Faro Convention of 2005. Riksbanken Jubiläumspreis 2017 in Göteborg, Sweden. 2016-2021 Spokesperson of the DFG Research Training Group “Identity and Heritage”. Main areas of work: Monument value and cultural heritage theory, historical policies, memory research, architecture and urban planning history of post-war modernism in Europe. Lectures in Paris, Rouen, Caen, Fribourg, Vilnius, Krakow Sofia, Sao Paulo. Freelance consultant since 2021.
* This event directly follows the 17th Annual Graduate Student Heritage Conservation Symposium ON THE EDGE OF COLLAPSE: CHANGING HERITAGE FOR A CLIMATE IN CRISIS. See more information here.
Past lectures
2019 Jill Taylor, Saving the Lived Message
2018 Francesca Russello Ammon, Bulldozer: Demolition and Clearance of the Post War Landscape
2015 Andrew Herscher, Socialist Monuments, Delayed Monuments and a Commons to Come
2014 Jorge Otero-Pailos, Transitional Objects, Why Heritage Shapes the Future.
2012 Christina Cameron, Taking Stock, World Heritage at Forty
About Herb Stovel
Arriving back in Ottawa following a distinguished national and international career, Herb Stovel was Associate Professor and coordinator of the Heritage Conservation programme in the School of Canadian Studies at Carleton University from 2004 to 2012. His legacy at Carleton includes: the enthusiasm for and understanding of Canadian and international heritage ideas and conservation practices he instilled in dozens of students in his undergraduate and graduate courses; the development of a collection of key heritage conservation resources at the library; the comprehensive online resource list he developed as a study guide for heritage conservation; his essential support to building new streams in Conservation and Sustainability in the Schools of Architecture and Engineering; the creation of an annual graduate student-run Symposium on Heritage Conservation; the many community-based student projects he helped foster in Ottawa; and his general development of greater connections between heritage and conservation disciplines within the university and outside. He has also left the University the vast archives of his career’s work.
The National Trust for Canada administers the Herb Stovel Scholarship Fund in his honour. The fund supports the research or conference attendance of one or more students or young professionals in heritage conservation each year. More information on the scholarship can be found here.
- For additional insight to Herb Stovel’s contributions to Carleton and elsewhere: In Memoriam Herb Stovel Testimonials
- Interview of Herb Stovel by Christina Cameron as part of the Oral Archives of the World Heritage Convention.
- Special issue of Conversaciones …con Herb Stovel, 2019