DOPPELGÄNGER – The Double Lives of Monuments
Esper Postma


PROLOGUE

Berlin in those days could barely live up to its status as a capital. I alone elevated it beyond its semblance of a rural town. I embodied the sophistication and grandeur that it needed. I kept on growing, in step with the expanding empire. Just as the army general is decorated after each territorial gain, I acquired ever more ornaments. Giant cartouches of the Prussian coat of arms, flanked by Fames blowing their trumpets. Hercules, Minerva and Jupiter standing on tall pillars, casually looking out over my courtyards. My cupola was my crown, topped by a towering golden cross flashing in the sunlight, leaving no doubt that God was on my side.

I looked after generations of the Hohenzollern family. Without me, they would have never sustained a world power. Can you imagine a state banquet without a grand hall? A crowd addressed without a balcony? Colonies seized, without a room of maps and globes?

I set the stage for history, but after the Great War, the curtain fell. The emperor fled the country, leaving me unprotected. My empty hallways reverberated with the sounds of angry masses outside. Everything I stood for – the monarchy, militarism, imperialism – suddenly rendered meaningless. The democratic government had no use for a grand palace. Having lost all sense of purpose, I slid into a deep depression – and became a slob. I could no longer bring myself to halt the wood rot, or to keep my roof tiles in line. I surrendered myself to the elements. And as happens when you stop caring, the weather grew darker, and more destructive. During the Second World War, bombs rained down, blasting out my organs. Fires raged on for days, liquidating my memories, along with the Venetian mirrors and crystal chandeliers. At the end of the war, I was nothing but an empty shell.
The government of the German Democratic Republic did not think a second about rebuilding me. As my dome came tumbling down, it all went black.

I woke up after a long period of nothingness. The city around me was bustling; there was no trace of the destruction of war, as if time had been reversed. My appearance was magically restored to something like my heyday, but more polished and streamlined. I looked like a hyperreal version of myself, but only on the outside: my interior was a stark contrast to my former lavishness. My rooms were as clinical as the mind of an amnesiac. It was as though someone had cloned my skin in a laboratory and had pulled it over an empty skeleton.

There was no use for me; there was no king, no emperor, not even an army parade to march through my courtyard. Soon, it became clear to me that I needed to fulfil an entirely different purpose. My old self had nurtured a colonial power – to be welcomed in a democracy, I had to do the opposite: to become a place of exchange, diversity and a multiplicity of voices. What better way to do so than to become an anthropological museum? My interior once celebrated Prussian culture; now it was filled with the treasures of other continents. To a new life belonged a new name, celebrating the achievements of science and enlightenment: Humboldt Forum.

Still, not everyone was satisfied. Many people found it intolerable that I, a symbol of imperialism, had been remade from scratch. They protested me, boycotted me, even called for my destruction. I tried to shut out their critique, but the objects in my midst were a constant reminder of my colonial past. Every night, Kū, the Hawaiian god of war, chanted his dissent. Moai Kavakava howled mournfully through my hallways. I couldn’t get one minute of peace.

UNDERSTANDING MONUMENTS

How to use the motif of the doppelgänger to deepen an understanding of monuments? Historical architecture, memorials and public statues can be the subject of heated debate. In these discussions, a monument is often caught between two camps: one wants to preserve or even reconstruct the monument because it would provide a sense of identity, while the other camp wants it altered or destroyed to emancipate society from the old values it represents. These debates can deeply divide society.

However, the meaning of a monument is not set in stone. Initially, a monument is constructed with clear intentions: to propagate the dominant ideology. But, when the spirit of the time changes, it can transform itself in ways that are contradictory to its original purpose. A different side emerges, as if an alter ego suddenly takes control. Consider the memorial for the composer Orlando di Lasso in Munich. This nineteenth-century statue recently gained new relevance by transforming into a monument for Michael Jackson.

This essay explores how monuments can abruptly change course. It does so by reversing the usual perspective: instead of viewing the monument through the eyes of society, it views society from the monument’s perspective. In investing monuments with human qualities, this essay uses a motif that explores the depths of human psychology: the doppelgänger.

Monuments can have different kinds of doppelgängers. Here, I focus on two national contexts with their own specificities: Germany and Italy. Virtually every major German city was bombed during World War II, leading to the destruction of countless monumental buildings. A number of these buildings have lately reappeared, as if rising from the grave. The Berliner Schloss (Berlin Palace) is one example, but also the Garnisonkirche in Potsdam – a reconstruction of a Prussian military church – and the ‘Old Town’ in Frankfurt, the reconstructed historical centre of the city.

Italy suffered less destruction from the war, and much of its heritage remained intact – including its fascist heritage. In fascist buildings, some of the most obvious symbols have been removed, allowing them to acquire a different function; public statues have sometimes been altered so that they can stand for something other than fascism. These monuments have thus become their own alter egos.

DOPPELGÄNGERS

The term doppelgänger (literally double-goer) was first coined by the novelist Jean Paul in 1796. But the principle of a double, or alter ego, has played various roles in many different cultures throughout history. In his study of the doppelgänger motif, Otto Rank traced it to the ancient belief in the eternal soul. Pagan beliefs, folk tales and religious myths fathom the human soul in double images, such as shadows and mirror reflections. In many pagan cultures, the shadow is seen as the manifestation of one’s soul, evinced by the fact that the same word is used for ‘shadow’, ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’. Therefore, a dead person has no shadow: the soul has moved away, but lives on. Rank concluded that the belief in this form of a double ‘energetically denies the power of death’.^[1]

Where the double in pagan myth is a symbol of the immortal, in modern culture it has acquired a much darker connotation. It is an agent of chaos, or, as Freud called it, ‘the ghastly harbinger of death’.^[2] Romantic and Gothic novels use it as a tool to describe the complex psychology of people in an age of modernisation. The doppelgänger is usually the manifestation of a repressed part of the psyche, such as a youth trauma or a secret drive to violence. This repressed quality is embodied in the form of another person, a double who in most cases looks much like the protagonist. It is effectively an uncontrollable alter ego, which starts haunting the protagonist, derailing their daily life.

Fiction writing used the doppelgänger as a metaphor for aspects of human psychology that had not yet been systematically described. This systematic exploration began with the invention of psychoanalysis. In his essay The Uncanny, Freud analyses the doppelgänger as a literary trope and explores what the double can signify for the psychoanalyst. According to Freud, every human being experiences a form of double psychology, particularly after passing through what he called the ‘narcissistic phase’. At the start of life, an infant is self-centred and perceives no distinction between the self and the environment. As the child grows, this sense of wholeness is disrupted. In order to function in the family and in society, the child gains all kinds of self-regulating mechanisms, which Freud identifies as the conscience. This is where Freud locates the double. A person’s conscience functions as a separate faculty from the ego, in that it judges their own thoughts and actions to stay on a path that is socially acceptable. While in literature the double often embodies the repressed aspects of a character, Freud reverses this notion and situates the double in the repressor.

TWO PALACES

[H]e was almost saddened by the reflection of ruin that time brought on beautiful and wonderful things. He, at any rate, had escaped that.

– Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray^[3]

Through its resurrection as a doppelgänger, the Berliner Schloss has escaped death and aimed for the redemption of its sins. The Humboldt Forum represents its reinvigorated self, who has learned from its mistakes in early life.

In Romantic literature, the doppelgänger often has a similar function. The protagonist can use the figure of the double to escape from the present situation: to cheat their fate, so to speak, and reach beyond their current existence. In Jean Paul’s novel Siebenkäs (1796), the protagonist, Siebenkäs, is plagued by financial problems and an unhappy marriage. His friend Leibgeber, who looks exactly like him, sees opportunities in their resemblance. He suggests that Siebenkäs fake his own death and take on his identity to start a new life. In the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, the double is also used to trade with. In this story, the doppelgänger takes the form not of a person, but of an image. Dorian, a handsome and wealthy young man, has his picture painted. Marvelling at his own beauty in the portrait, he is overcome by melancholy at the transient nature of his looks. He wishes that he could stay young for ever, while the picture would age in his place: ‘I would give my soul for that!’ His wish miraculously comes true. Dorian keeps his good looks forever. But what does deteriorate is his character: he becomes boundlessly narcissistic. He ruins the life of anyone crossing his path, which leaves him lonely and isolated. Meanwhile, his portrait becomes increasingly disfigured, visualising the degradation of his soul. The picture becomes an obsession to Dorian. At first, he is fascinated with ‘the most magical of all mirrors’, which has to ‘bear the burden that should have been his own’. Later, it becomes the object of his guilt and self-loathing.

The Humboldt Forum is in a similar predicament. Although it has escaped death, it keeps on being confronted with repressed feelings of guilt. Just as Dorian’s conscience finds manifestation in his portrait, the conscience of the Humboldt Forum is manifested through its anthropological collection. The objects compel a constant negotiation between its colonial legacy and its progressive ambitions for inclusivity.

GENIUS OF FASCISM SPORT

Divided in my being more than ever, I became ambiguous to myself.
– E. T. A. Hoffmann, The Devil’s Elixirs^[4]

This is how the Genius of Fascism must have felt when its environment changed after the Second World War. The Genius of Fascism was a towering bronze statue of a Roman male making the fascist salute. It stood in the Esposizione Universale di Roma (EUR): a new district in Rome built as a showpiece of fascist urban planning. Surrounded by grand palaces, breathing a nostalgia for ancient Roman times, the Genius was at home.

After the Second World War, its surroundings turned hostile: the neighbourhood came to include the offices of the new democratic government. Contemporary buildings sprung up all around it, sporting pan-national flags and democratic symbols. Faced with rejection for its fascist appearance, the Genius needed to protect itself; it needed to become its own double. In order to change its identity, it started wearing cesti: ancient Roman boxing gloves. The fascist salute was now transformed into a gesture of victory after a boxing match. From then on, it bore the name Genius of Sport.

Adopting the identity of a boxer saved the Genius from destruction. But in repressing its violent drive, it now displayed it in a different way. Roman boxing was an extremely violent sport; the cestus was made of metal. Rather than softening the punch, it hardened the impact. Under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, boxing received a new impetus. The regime saw it as a tool for creating strong citizens that would be ready for war, and encouraged it amongst the population.^[5]

Instead of emancipating itself from its ghosts, the Genius kept on conjuring them. Freud called this behaviour ‘repetition compulsion’. During the treatment of war veterans from World War I, he observed that they tended to repeat traumatic experiences that they repressed. Instead of remembering the event, they would unconsciously act it out in the present in the form of a neurosis.^[6]

Freud wondered why his patients did not instinctively avoid the pain of reliving their traumas. He concluded that people not only have a drive that incites them to develop and adapt – that keeps them alive, in other words. They also have a drive that is directed towards regression, a conservative drive that makes humans return to a previous state. He termed this the death drive.[7] Freud argued that all human beings come from a state of immateriality and will eventually return to it. From the moment of birth, the life drive motivates learning and adaptation, while the death drive strives for stasis and inanimation.

If the Genius were Freud’s patient, it would have recognised its struggle between the life drive and the death drive. On the one hand, the Genius adopted the identity of a boxer to evade destruction. But in doing so, it remained overtly fascist, entailing a very high risk that it will fall victim to a critical reassessment of public space in the future.

CONCLUSION

The Genius of Fascism was created to propagate the strength of the regime and thereby win the support of the people. Memorials, public statues and monumental buildings are designed to unify society under the prevalent ideology. They also project this ideology into the future: monuments are made for eternity. However, no ideology lives forever. Monuments typically outlive the status quo from which they sprang. They then no longer unify public opinion; they fracture it. When the construction of the Humboldt Forum was completed in 2021, the decision to rebuild it – made in 2002 – already seemed to belong to a different era. In the years leading up to the Forum’s opening, the Black Lives Matter movement surged, heightening the urgency of decolonising public space. In this context, the construction of the Humboldt Forum looked like an absurdity.

When political circumstances change, a monument needs to renegotiate its identity in order to avert death. A monument is never ‘completed’ any more than a person is; like a person, it needs to adapt to its circumstances. Attributing human qualities to a monument helps to explore the complexities of this struggle to survive and is a prism that can make shifting ideologies visible.

The doppelgänger motif was invented to reflect on the contradictions in human psychology and behaviour. By casting a monument as the protagonist of a Gothic novel, its story becomes filled with passion, wonder and magical events. It can highlight qualities of cultural heritage that are hard to explain, hard to account for with reason alone. Treating a monument as a patient in psychoanalysis is a way of exploring its underlying motives. It can reveal the complexities of its history and its appearance.

Society constantly reviews its monuments. But what would a monument see if it could look back at society? It would see people clinging to feelings and memories out of fear of losing their sense of self. It would understand that its size reflects not only how deeply people want to remember, but also how much they wish to obscure. It would often feel treated like a human: worshipped, decorated with flowers or, conversely, blindfolded, scrawled with messages as if they were its own words. Over time, it would witness every generation shaping the surrounding landscape in accordance with its convictions. It would recognise tidal waves in these shifting values. The ghosts cast off by one generation return in the next. It would realise that, even if it would be destroyed, it might never truly die.

^[1] Otto Rank, The Double: A Psychoanalytic Study, trans. and ed. Harry Tucker Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971 [1914]), p. 84.

^[2] Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny (London: Penguin Books, 2003 [1919]), p. 142.

^[3] Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (London: Alma Classics, 2008 [1891]), p. 126.

^[4] E. T. A. Hoffmann, The Devil’s Elixirs, trans. J. Calder (London: Oneworld Classics, 2008 [1816]).

^[5] Eleonora Belloni, ‘The Birth of the Sport Nation: Sports and Mass Media in Fascist Italy’, Aloma: Revista de Psicologia, Ciències de l’Educació

i de l’Espor 32, no. 2 (2014), p. 60, revistaaloma.net.

^[6] Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans. J. Reddick (London: Penguin Books, 2003 [1914]), chapter 3, para. 2.

[7] Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans. J. Reddick (London: Penguin Books, 2003 [ 1914]), chapter 5, para. 8.