Archival memories: Marcell Restle’s research in Anatolia and beyond

Abstract

Marcell Restle was born in 1932 in a small town named Bad Waldsee in southern Germany and studied art history, Byzantine studies, and the history of Christianity at the universities of Tübingen and Munich. The classes Restle took from German and Turkish professors at Istanbul University, where he studied for a year, opened up new horizons for him. The studies he made of Islamic, Seljuk, and, especially, Ottoman art and architecture, as well as of Byzantine art; the classes he taught at the universities of Vienna and Munich on these topics; and the countless study trips he made around the Eastern Mediterranean, including to Istanbul and Anatolia, made him an expert in the field of architecture, especially in the systematic documentation of buildings. “Archival Memories” on the one hand informs viewers about how a researcher organized his working day, how he systematically allotted his time, and what methods he used in the pre-digital age. On the other hand, it aims to present from retrospective perspectives the states of numerous cultural assets, most of which remain today only as memories within urban structures.