I.1.5
THE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
AT ST. GALL, 1957
It had been one of the wishes of Hans Bessler that the
publication of the facsimile edition of the Plan of St. Gall
should be followed by a symposium of scholars concerned
with the Plan, and that the work that would emerge from
this gathering should subsequently be made available in a
scholarly publication. Hans Bessler did not live to see both
of these dreams fulfilled. A symposium, organized and
conducted by him and Dr. Johannes Duft, was held in
St. Gall from July 12-16, 1957.[27]
The publication of the
studies that emerged from the symposium had to be undertaken
by Dr. Duft alone and appeared as a memorial for
Bessler under the title, Studien zum St. Galler Klosterplan,
in the Mitteilungen zur Vaterländischen Geschichte, published
under the auspices of the Historische Verein des
Kantons St. Gallen.[28]
It contained, apart from a masterful
review of the previous literature on the Plan by Johannes
Duft,[29]
a fundamental analysis of the paleographical
problems of the Plan by Bernhard Bischoff;[30]
two articles
by the writer of the present study, one on the question of
the originality of the Plan,[31]
the other on the relation of the
Plan to the monastic reform movement;[32]
an article on the
altars of the Plan by Iso Müller, OSB;[33]
a study of Hildemar's
commentary on the Rules of St. Benedict and its
implications for the Plan by Wolfgang Hafner;[34]
a study of
the plants and gardens by Wolfgang Sörrensen;[35]
and two
brief essays by Heinrich Edelmann, one dealing with the
relation of the Plan to the actual building site of the
monastery of St. Gall,[36]
the other with the history of the
three-dimensional model of the buildings of the Plan which
was executed in 1877 by the sculptor Jules Leemann of
Geneva for the Historisches Museum of the city of
St. Gall, where it is still on display.[37]
THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE
SCALE OF THE PLAN
A new study dealing with the "dimensional inconsistencies"
and the presumptive scale (or "scales") of the
Plan was published in 1963/64 by Adolf Reinle.[38]
It departs
completely from all previous views expressed on this
subject and offers a radically different interpretation of the
large axial title of the Plan that records the length of the
Church as being 200 feet. The merits and demerits of this
thesis, as well as the opinion of others who had been
intrigued by this problem, were discussed in an article of
my own published in the September-December issue of the
Art Bulletin of 1966.[39]
The old, yet still controversial,
problem "Schema oder Bauplan," was briefly and successfully
reviewed by Konrad Hecht,[40]
in an article published
in 1965, which also offered some new and important
observations about the shrinkage of the parchment upon
which the Plan is drawn, and the relevance of this change
to the interpretation of the scale of the Plan.
