This is a book about old buildings and memories of national community. Although I did not know it then, the idea for this study began in the 1970s, when I was still researching my doctoral dissertation on Marburg, a small university town in Germany. It was obvious in those years that Marburgers, like their counterparts in similar cities throughout West Germany, were much more concerned about the historical ambience of their community than at any time since the end of World War II. Involved in a research project with a quite different focus, I had little opportunity to pursue this observation then. My interest in how people enhanced the historical qualities of their towns and cities took on more distinct shape only in the early 1980s, when as an assistant professor of history in Los Angeles, I observed what appeared to be a most unlikely movement to preserve historic landmarks, from Craftsman houses to McDonald's hamburger stands, in this, the most unhistorical of U.S. cities. By the middle of the decade I became fascinated with the revival of the concept of Heimat in German culture. Inadequately translated as "home" or "homeland" or even "nation," Heimat had become the leitmotif of so many cultural practices, encompassing cinema and literature as well as architecture and urban planning, that it was necessary to focus not on the phenomenon in its entirety, but on specific strands. The preservation of historical buildings, a movement with modern roots in the nineteenth century that gained impetus from the recent Heimat revival, was a fitting candidate.
I remembered that in the 1970s large parts of the historic core of Marburg had become construction sites as many half-timbered houses and other buildings underwent a costly and time-consuming renovation. I was inter-
