>Throughout the room were pictures of Cologne Cathedral, an 1880 church in Germany and one of Dr. Bork’s favorite buildings. The images, seemingly, caught the student’s attention. “Dr. Bork,” he said. “Why does it look so evil?”
Having grown up in Cologne, it never seemed evil. As the article alludes to when pointing out the architectural differences in LOTR with the endorsement of Roman architecture for the "good guys" and the gothic architecture for Mordor, it's obviously an artifact of American culture.
Fascination with America as a Roman empire offspring, very cartoonish ideas about the middle ages and a very saccharine offshoots of Christianity compared to continental Catholicism. It's sort of like asking "why does British sound evil?" Because the studios made all the evil geniuses British (or sometimes German or Russian).
Having visited Cologne for the first time about 35 years ago while inter-railing I was completely in awe of the building - I am a atheist but my impression was very much "The people who built this really believed".
I was so impressed that I purchased a number of architectural drawings that I still have on the walls of our house!
Funny. Growing up near there, and often passing by I just thought 'what a mess'. Because it's made out of soft stones which erode easily, and thus large parts of it are always encrusted in scaffolding for repairs. And when they are ready with that part, they can move the scaffolding to the next part, and start all over again. Without pause. They still believe. I believed in taking it as a shortcut from main station to shopping street during rain :)
It also gave my hometown 'interesting' acoustics, because of this:
I'm sure they used the soft stones because they were easier to carve. But I'm surprised someone in the modern age hasn't come up with a way to treat porous stone like this to make it more weather-resistant, so they don't have to do so much maintenance and repair on these old stone structures. It would be similar to how we use treatments in dentistry to fill the pores in teeth and make them less sensitive and wear longer.
I think that's because of "Denkmalschutz", which means not changing the 'character' of the building, down to not really changing the building materials, even if they wouldn't look different from the outside.
It was more like not believing wasn't an option to express publicly in a feudal society partially managed from Rome, in the country that became the extension of the Roman empire after the fall.
>I am a atheist but my impression was very much "The people who built this really believed".
Did they really believe that strongly? Or were they the best master craftsmen in the whole region, who were getting paid handsomely to work on a project that was pretty close to no-expense-spared?
It seems an odd reaction and not entirely explained by American culture - most gothic buildings in Europe attract tourists, including lots of Americans, who visit them because they find the beautiful. I have not heard that reaction from any American i know, nor from other people from multiple cultures (who all watch American media, of course!).
Gothic does convey a sense of age, which helps with spooky, but feeling an association with evil sounds like an very individual reaction.
If you’d like to experience the reverse effect, look around at how the American Wild West has been depicted in Europe. It’s a fantastical, cartoonish view of a period which is already fetishized in the US but when taken out of context it becomes (to my American eyes) bizarre.
This may be fading, because it clearly originated in 1940s and 50s Westerns from Hollywood. But whenever I’ve encountered it I’ve felt like I’m looking into a funhouse mirror.
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Having grown up in Cologne, it never seemed evil. As the article alludes to when pointing out the architectural differences in LOTR with the endorsement of Roman architecture for the "good guys" and the gothic architecture for Mordor, it's obviously an artifact of American culture.
Fascination with America as a Roman empire offspring, very cartoonish ideas about the middle ages and a very saccharine offshoots of Christianity compared to continental Catholicism. It's sort of like asking "why does British sound evil?" Because the studios made all the evil geniuses British (or sometimes German or Russian).