Heritage Preservation, Nationalism and the Reconstruction of Historical Monuments in Germany during the Long Nineteenth Century

In the course of the nineteenth century, the predominant politics of heritage conservation strongly promoted the reconstruction of historical monuments. A new historical landscape was constructed, which became part of the popular image of German history, and which helped shape German collective memory. Different periods of German history each interpreted the historical monuments and their message anew. The monuments acted as reservoirs of memory for different social groups and generations. As landmarks, historical sites and tourist destinations, they became part of popular history and worked their way into the histories of individual families, and thus remained core components of German collective memory. The popular image of the past survived even the great historical ruptures that ensued in the twentieth century. The paper explores these notions first by means of a survey of individuals, organisations and ideas involved in historically orientated movements in nineteenth-century Germany. It then discusses core features and representative cases of historical restoration in practice, and finally focuses on one specific example: the Hohkonigsburg in Alsace-Lorraine.