Germany and the Ottoman Railway Network: Art, Empire, Infrastructure
Max von Oppenheim (attributed), views of Carchemish station under construction, 1915. Universität Köln.
Peter Christensen is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Rochester. His specialization is modern architectural and environmental history, particularly of Germany, Central Europe and the Middle East. He maintains a strong interest in infrastructure and its aesthetic histories. His book, Germany and the Ottoman Railway Network: Art Empire, and Infrastructure is forthcoming from Yale University Press. Peter received his PhD from Harvard University. Peter has served as Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the TU Munich (2012-2014). Peter holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University, and a Master of Design Studies from Harvard University. Peter is the recipient of the Philip Johnson Book Award (2010) from the Society of Architectural Historians and grants from the NEH, Fulbright Foundation, and DAAD, among others. Peter's writing has appeared MUQARNAS, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, The International Journal of Islamic Architecture, and Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, among others. He is the co-editor of (with Vimalin Rujivacharkul, Hazel Hahn and Ken Tadashi Oshima) Architeturalized Asia: Mapping a Continent Through History (HKU Press & University of Hawai'i Press, 2013) and (with Barry Bergdoll) Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling (MoMA, 2008).
Germany and the Ottoman Railway Network: Art, Empire, and Infrastructure
The Ottoman railway network, considered the pride of that empire’s modernizing impulses, was largely engineered by Germans. While it employed local builders and craftsmen, and advanced Ottoman goals of imperial consolidation and modernization, it also accelerated German influence in the region, and set the stage for an ambiguous form of colonialism. Historians have examined the railway for its clear political and economic importance, while architectural historians have focused on major architectural and urban changes of the era and how they represented modernization. However, no one has yet examined the relationship of the built environment to political agendas in this ambiguously colonial environment. This project looks at the politics surrounding the construction of railway stations, settlements, maps, bridges, monuments, and an archaeological canon within the context of the Ottoman railway network. Examining four discrete subsections of the Ottoman railways simultaneously, this book looks specifically at the goals of the agents involved in the railways’ realization from political, geographic, topographic, archaeological, constructional, architectural, and urban perspectives. I argue that the early internationalization of infrastructure construction bore some of the trademarks of imperialism while also syncretizing cultural difference in a new visual idiom that expressed emergent nationalisms as well as multiculturalist philosophy.
