Exploration of a company archive: Between the poles of scientific evaluation and marketing.

For decades, the company Josef Gartner from Gundelfingen on the Danube has been one of the world's leading manufacturers of high-quality facade constructions. Gartner facades cover an almost incalculable number of architectural icons of the second half of the 20th century, the company was responsible for some of the most important technological developments. The exploration of the company archives enables an architectural-historical re-evaluation of the relationship between designers, planners and executors. After 150 years of company history, Gartner has an almost unmanageable and spatially distributed, cast-off archive stock of highly diverse historical documents. Exceptional are the company-own advertising calendars, which combine high-quality architectural photographs with detailed drawings and descriptions of execution. With the support of the Wüstenrot Foundation, initial access to the vast number of realized objects in form of a repertory took place via the digitalized calendars. It aimed to develop a chronological and geo-referenced overview of all facade constructions made by Gartner in Germany from the 1950s to the 1980s, supplemented by data on the conservation status. Based on this project, the company's plan archive is currently being viewed and processed. Ten thousand of microfiches are to be sighted. The article addresses the question of whether and in what way this large number of unexplored sources can be objectively and effectively assessed for historic research. In doing so, the contradictions between self-representation in the company's own advertising calendars and historic evaluation through the plan archive will be discussed. The extent of preserved material in this company archive is unique, but also its constantly changing nature, as the company is still making use of it for the renovation of its facades. Accordingly, the architectural and building historical investigation stands in constant tension with the legitimate interest of Gartner to retain the authority to the prerogative of interpretation of its own history.     «

For decades, the company Josef Gartner from Gundelfingen on the Danube has been one of the world's leading manufacturers of high-quality facade constructions. Gartner facades cover an almost incalculable number of architectural icons of the second half of the 20th century, the company was responsible for some of the most important technological developments. The exploration of the company archives enables an architectural-historical re-evaluation of the relationship between designers, planners a...     »