VI.I.I
HARDEGGER'S CONTRIBUTION
Up to the middle of the eighteenth century, the church
which Abbot Gozbert built between 830 and 837 was still
essentially intact, except for its transept and choir. From
1755 onwards, however, not only the church itself but
most of the conventual buildings as well were torn
down to make room for the magnificent and stately rococo
buildings that form the pride of modern St. Gall (figs. 505
and 506). The street pattern and the alignment of the
houses that cluster around the abbey retain with astonishing
precision the shape of the original site, but of the Carolingian
buildings that once rose on this precinct not a single
stone appears to be left above ground level. A satisfactory
answer to the question of whether, or to what extent,
Abbot Gozbert and his successors adhered to the Plan of
St. Gall as they rebuilt the monastery could only be found
through a systematic program of excavations, for which at
present there does not appear to exist a glimmer of hope.[1]
If we are nevertheless not entirely ignorant about Gozbert's
work, this is due to the existence of a precious set of
architectural drawings made early in the eighteenth century
when much of the Carolingian work was still discernible.
These late drawings have been brilliantly analyzed by
August Hardegger, first in a dissertation published in
1917,[2]
and a few years later in a volume of the Baudenkmäler
der Stadt St. Gallen, which Hardegger wrote in
cooperation with architect Salomon Schlatter and Traugott
Schiess.[3]
It is to the imaginative, yet sober and cautious
reasoning displayed in these studies, that we owe whatever
tangible knowledge can be gleaned from the available
sources about the design and layout of the monastery
rebuilt by Abbot Gozbert and his successors.
