Why do people build castles of dreams?

From the desire to imitate the aristocratic environment to criminal romanticism. From folk art to collective farm baroque. What motivates people to build exceptional buildings reminiscent of castles and royal palaces? The process of imitation has particularly strong influence on the architecture, so, on the basis of René Girard’s mimetic desire theory, let’s try to find out, what the buildings speak of their builders and their desires.

According to Girard, humans are animals that mimic others from birth to death. They imitate each other, even the aspirations of other people. Our desires are not accidental, they are determined by the environment. For example, we all know that taste is a product of culture. However, we believe that this is our choice, although we just reproduce the values of the group we belong to. We often follow a certain authority or want things that belong to our competitor. It is extremely interesting to explore this, because the process of imitation has a strong effect on architecture. Starting from a private person who builds a house and ending with a political system capable of sweeping history off the ground and recreating it. If it were not for the Lentvaris manor house of Tiškevičiai, today we would not be standing here looking at the Timophei’s house. Prototype and repetition, or the desire to emulate is the subject of this presentation.

Let’s talk about the prototype. Both, the defensive and the residential castle are an authentic expression of power and wealth. If a defensive castle is austere and powerful, a residential castle is defiantly gorgeous, demonstrating such power of wealth that is inaccessible to other levels of society. Neo-gothic castles widespread in the nineteenth century result from romanticism. Romanticism opened the way to diversity, mostly distinguishing the Middle Ages and idealizing the past. This worldview is dominated by longing for the past. Romanticism in architecture is best conveyed by the Neuschwanstein castle in the Alps, built by Ludwig II of Bavaria in 1861. Inspired by Richard Wagner’s operas, which embodied the German legends, a young Ludwig built a “fairy castle”, as a place of spiritual recovery, rather than of royal use. There the monarch immersed himself in the poetic medieval world.

Thus, in architecture longing for the past was best expressed by the Gothic style. In England, the Gothic Revival movement originated from the works of art that romantically depicted nature, parks and ruins of former castles. True, architects were free to interpret Gothic motives. John Vanbrugh, for example, was a playwright and an architect, so his buildings were theatrical. Horace Walpole, the founder of a Gothic (horror) novel, built a Gothic-style castle on Strawberry Hill in 1747 and started a new wave of literature there. In the middle of the 19^th century neo-Gothic style has spread throughout Europe. The Manor House Landwarow (Lentvaris) was also built in English Gothic style and its architecture perfectly reflects romantic orientation, international relations and fashion tracking of the nobles of that time. The first manor house was built by Counts Tyszkiewicz in 1860, with an adjacent large park by the design of the prominent French landscape architect Édouard André. Władysław Tyszkiewicz inherited the manor in 1891 and renovated the palace which acquired the current appearance of English Gothic revival.

But let’s talk about duplicates or copies. When and why did the imitation of palaces of the nobles start? The first duplicate is the desire of the bourgeoisie to mimic the aristocratic environment. The industrial society of the 19th century is the age of the aristocratic sunset. The caste-based structure of society collapsed and was replaced by the censorship of wealth and political influence. Entrepreneurs, industrialists who surpassed the old aristocracy in wealth, began to expand their influence in political life gaining more and more power. A new bourgeois elite was formed as a new upper class: bankers, owners of factories, ships and railways, mining tycoons. This elite, just like the previous, had to show up, to give itself certain signs of status. They also pursued the demonstration of their wealth and power and also had to surround themselves with luxury items and goods. Most of the industrially produced items echoed the aspirations of the bourgeoisie and imitated the domestic environment of aristocrats. Food, clothing, furniture, jewellery, in short, luxury that was previously only available to the aristocratic class, became available to the rich too. This new elite did not create any new shapes, but just mimicked the way of life of the aristocracy, which is why writer Oscar Wilde said that “the upper class is not modern“.

Then the talk started about the kitsch, a substitute, something that is not real and inherited, but bought for the money to imitate authentic signs of the status of aristocracy. Kitsch is a concept used to also define the art, which is considered an inferior copy of the style that already exists; a seemingly beautiful, full of and feeling, but in fact, exaggerated, pretentious, garish for the eye, tacky and cheap mass reproduction. At the end of the 19^th century kitsch defined the absence of taste of the newly enriched Munich bourgeoisie. Just as the majority of the newly rich, they strived for the desired status of the elite class and copied their life details.

How did this manifest itself in architecture? At the end of the 19^th century in Vilnius the enriched doctor Hilary Raduszkiewicz built a neo-Gothic style castle. The new member of the bourgeoisie admired the Gothics. However, the architecture of the Venetian Gothic style castle was quite pretentious, and the chosen material – yellow bricks – was mostly used for cheap construction at that time. The modernists of the 20th century criticized such imitation loudly and ruthlessly; they explained that their own age must create their own architecture. Modernism was the symbol of democratic architecture for them, free of tiresome desire to demonstrate status. However, even in the days of flourishing of the modernism, in the second half of the 20th century, the tradition of castle building survived, just shrank to small closed communities.

At this point, it is worth mentioning the second duplicate or a copy. For example, the criminal romanticism. Why do bandits build castles? Because it is the same expression of power and wealth, which is understandable in a strictly hierarchical, not modern community. The mansion with turrets in Užliedžiai of such a local “king” Henrikas Daktaras was the largest and the tallest of all houses of Kaunas criminals. As an example, when you look at the Roma villages in Romania, the baron’s house is always the largest and the richest in decoration. This is also related to Girard’s theory of mimetic desire. Historically, socially and culturally, both, the criminals and the Roma, are rejected virtually anywhere they live, because they do not integrate into local cultures and earn money in unacceptable ways. Therefore, when, for example, the Roma in Romania or Bulgaria succeed in getting rich, they try in such a rather clumsy way to recreate the architecture they have seen in the most beautiful cities in Europe with lots of domes and towers. Those people simply imitate the shapes they have seen. Architectural photographer Frédéric Chaubin referred to such buildings as to “cheaters” of time and space.

These examples are related to the third duplicate, private castles of the Soviet period, which currently are aptly yet ironically referred to as the “collective farm baroque”. These are also the kings of the collective gardens, who sought to realize their architectural dreams on their six acres of land: from Trakai Castles to the Hermitages. Although nowadays such buildings are sometimes treated as postmodern rebellion against Soviet standardization, it is difficult to believe that it was a conscious choice to shock or a desire to refute the prevailing aesthetic provisions. Most likely, the architectural kitsch in late Soviet and post-Soviet Lithuania resulted from the luxury dreamt of too long and from the desire to bring personal life nearer to the imaginary ideal, in an attempt to turn a residential house into a dream castle. With somewhere seen apparently antique columns, pointed or round arches, gothic towers or towers of medieval castles. While building such houses, imitations of imaginary palaces were sufficient. How can we evaluate Timophei’s palace in this context? First of all, it embodies the dream. In 1948, when Timophei Zhevzhikov came to live in Lentvaris and saw the manor house, he created a dream to build his own palace. The boundaries of his imagination horizon were drawn by Tyszkiewicz manor and the implementation was determined by the choice of materials of that time. However, the 4-storey palace of 360 square meters with indoor and outdoor swimming pools that was started to build in 1986 differs from the art of architecture by its naivety. If it were art, art researchers would certainly attribute Timophei’s creation to primitive art. Since the obvious does not have to be named and expressed. This house is exactly the violation of this rule of silence.

You can find photo documentation from the exhibition ‘Warowland’ currated by ‘Lokomotif’ here ^[1].