The Past and the Posthumous

In 2007, through circumstances not entirely of my own choosing, I found myself resurrecting a family ancestor, my grandfather, the architect, Martin Elsaesser. I was asked to write a biographical essay for a catalogue accompanying a retrospective of his work at the Deutsche Architekturmuseum Frankfurt. The exhibition honoured him as one of the chief city architects in Frankfurt between 1925 and 1932, during the peak years of what came to be called Das Neue Bauen. His key building from the period, the Frankfurt Central Market, had been acquired by the European Central Bank in 2004 as the site of the Bank's new headquarters. Although a listed building and therefore protected as a national monument, the Grossmarkthalle was under threat: the plans envisaged by the Central Bank – along with the notoriously deconstructionist impulses of the star architect designing the ensemble – meant that the integrity of the building, and thus its value as a historical landmark had to be sacrificed. The general context of the retrospective was therefore as much an act of compensation or restitution as it was of celebration and recognition: the temporary nature of the exhibition and the online existence of the Foundation had to substitute for the physical survival of the architect's most famous building.