Professor of Monument Studies - Prof. Dr. Paul Zalewski

Monumentology as a practical field of work does not only refer to surviving objects with their repeatedly altered and obscured structures. It also deals with processes of creating meaning and assigning value, through which cultural assets become (or do not become) protected heritage.
The term Denkmalkunde has been around since historicism. In the last two decades of the last century, it was used in the official practice of monument preservation to refer to the specialist methods of recording, describing and classifying, but also to the problems of assessing and justifying the value of monuments. This intrinsic perspective reflected above all the methodological needs of institutions that were (and still are) faced with the challenge of argumentatively and analytically working out and legally sanctioning the uniqueness of latently endangered cultural assets. This art-historically based understanding of monumentology, centered on the evidence of the past, used to take little account of subjects. A milieu-specific logic of perception and appropriation of infrastructures worthy of preservation by society was hardly addressed. A targeted transfer of knowledge was also largely outside the self-defined field of work. This one-sided, object-oriented understanding of heritage studies and heritage conservation is now a thing of the past. Similar to participatory urban development, the opportunities for cooperation with civil society are also being recognized in the protection of tangible cultural assets in public spaces. The holistic understanding of heritage culture is leading to an increasing „pedagogization“ of heritage conservation and a differentiation of actors and roles in heritage conservation.

A particular challenge in this expansion process must be faced by an institution that is located at a faculty of Social and Cultural Studies, free from the acute problems of heritage conservation practice. Due to it´s immediate proximity to a faculty of history, social and cultural studies, politics or linguistics, social, political or linguistic research, the understanding of heritage studies can and should be expanded here. Accordingly, it is understood as a praxeological field. Here, various scattered individual experiences of monument culture are empirically summarized and abstracted in order to be subsequently considered in the light of various sciences. Discipline overlaps with regard to the theory and methodology of research are sought out precisely because the practice of heritage conservation itself does not take place in a vacuum, but in social, economic or legal contexts. It is precisely because of this diversity of references that this field is often referred to in the plural in English-speaking countries (heritage studies or sciences). Heritage studies defined in this way is at odds with all established real sciences.

The modern, late modern and contemporary periods are considered to be particularly important and informative for heritage studies research. The reason for this lies in the acceleration and intensification of paradigmatic changes in social and cultural space, which are not without consequences for the cultural policy practice of monument protection. Therefore, the topics of modernity and the handling of older cultural assets in the age of modernity are taking up more and more space in the activities of the Professor. This includes not only the fascinating topic of border shifts and the resulting implications for the cultural landscape, which is right on our doorstep. It also includes interdisciplinary research into the urban spaces in Central Eastern Europe before and after the Second World War. Another complex of topics is formed by various unconventional or completely new demands on heritage conservation, which cannot be covered in the curricula of relevant degree courses. It is precisely this spectrum of knowledge and research that is closely related to the further education Master's degree course in the Protection of European Cultural Heritage.