Dóra Mérai
PhD in Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest (2017)
MA in Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest (2007)
MA in Archaeology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest (2006)
MA in Art History, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest (2005)
MA in Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest (2007)
MA in Archaeology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest (2006)
MA in Art History, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest (2005)
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Books by Dóra Mérai
Az Apafi-tumba Elias Nicolai szebeni kőfaragó munkája. A kötet nemcsak Elias Nicolai és műhelye szerepét értelmezi újra mind a szász kőfaragás, mind a művészettörténeti szakirodalom összefüggésében, hanem azt is, milyen értelemben beszélhetünk mesterekről és műhelyekről, ha a korszakból fennmaradt síremlékeket vizsgáljuk. A síremlék elemzésén keresztül közelebb visz az Apafi család, az erdélyi arisztokrácia és a fejedelmi udvar, a szász városok, kézművesek és 18-19. századi utódaik világához, de ahhoz is, hogyan reflektáltak mindezek emlékezetére az azóta eltelt évszázadokban Erdélyben és Budapesten.
This collection of papers presents the results of the international project “From Burden to Resource: Industrial Heritage in Central-Eastern Europe.”1 The project connected experts focusing on the preservation and reuse of industrial heritage. The aim was to identify the challenges specific to the Visegrad Group countries and find new solutions by adapting strategies of heritage management developed in those deindustrialized regions where such approaches have a long tradition and are happening in the context of supportive policies. The project also addresses the gap that exists in these countries between heritage specialists focusing on heritage assets and policymakers and developers in urban planning focusing on social and economic development.
Az M0-s autópálya ÉK-i szakaszának feltárása, Nagytarcsa - koordinátor: Kővári Klára,
Az M0-s autópálya északi szakaszának feltárása, Budakalász - koordinátor: dr. Ottományi Katalin,
Az M6-os autópálya Pest megyei szakaszának feltárása, Érd - koordinátor: dr. Ottományi Katalin,
A 4-es sz. főút Abonyt elkerülő szakaszának (15,3 km) és szélesítésének (7,2 km) megelőző feltárása - koordinátor: Dinnyés István
Papers by Dóra Mérai
The paper discusses ethical issues related to the adaptive reuse of ruin heritage on the example of the so-called ruin bars in Budapest's District VII. It explores how heritage discourse can contribute to the sustainable development of urban neighborhoods. The authors address the question by focusing on how a processual approach can be instrumental in identifying responsible and socially sustainable ways to reuse dilapidated heritage in a residential area.
Design/methodology/approach
The problem is analyzed through a case study based on field observation, participant observation, stakeholder interviews, policy analysis and media and social media content analysis.
Findings
The authors argue that ethical reuse of ruin heritage must take into consideration the values and interests of multiple stakeholders and the broadest range of consequences at the level of neighborhood and city. An integrated heritage and planning policy should consider and involve as active participants all the heritage communities concerned. Importantly, these groups, comprising both new and longtime residents, must include the vulnerable and marginalized.
Practical implications
The findings can be used by heritage managers for identifying and addressing ethical issues in their adaptive heritage reuse practices and by policymakers for integrating heritage management in urban development and making cities more inclusive (SDG #11).
Originality/value
The paper explores how ethical it is for business enterprises to build on the ruin esthetics in a residential district and what the ethical implications of this reuse process are for various stakeholders.
Recent years have seen growing international interest in the practice of ‘adaptive reuse’ of heritage buildings, promoted as a financially more viable and environmentally sustainable way to achieve both regeneration and conservation. In parallel, adaptive reuse has emerged as an aim in national policy frameworks and EU governance. Much of the writing on adaptive reuse reflects its nature as a design practice and concentrates on the material form intervention may take. This paper has a different approach, considering the institutional factors that support adaptive reuse occurring,
as part of a multi-faceted and complex conservation-planning assemblage, across fifteen European countries. Focusing on regulatory systems for heritage and planning, governance systems, human and financial resources and policies on civic engagement and participation, thematic analysis is used to generate a typology of approaches across the continent, grouping the countries considered into three clusters. The typology proposed is not fixed, but a way to conceptualise the similarities and differences in institutional and policy-contexts that facilitate or restrict adaptive reuse. It contributes to a more informed overview of the context for adaptive reuse and the possibilities of learning from different policy contexts.
Half-figure funerary monuments appeared in Transylvanian churches of the Lutheran Saxons in the second half of the sixteenth century, following the tradition of medieval priests’ memorials but also diverging from that in some respect. The model of these portrait memorials can be identified among the Humanists’ epitaphs in Vienna set up in the first half of the sixteenth century. The stone epitaph of the scholar and poet Conrad Celtes was placed on the wall of the Saint Stephen Church in Vienna. In addition, he, still in his lifetime, had a printed epitaph made in woodcut by Hans Burgkmair, which was intended to preserve his memory, his intellectual presence in the circle of Central-European Humanists. By this, he successfully shaped the memory discourse: some of his disciples even had their own funerary monuments made based on this graphic model. The ledger stone of a Transylvanian Saxon priest, Franciscus Elisius, who died in 1593, also follows this model, though with a simplified composition and in a rather poor sculptural quality.
The scholarship of medieval and early modern funerary monuments in Europe, inspired by social anthropology, the social sciences in general, and literary criticism has recognized that these objects in their original context were shaped along cultural and ideological expectations which cannot uncritically be connected to the concept of artistic production. Scholarly literature defined the primary function of funerary monuments as preserving the presence of the dead, setting up models to follow for the living, and supporting various memory practices. Funerary monuments re-constructed, even manipulated memory, and this purpose determined how the patrons and tomb makers chose the type, form, material, images, texts, even the site of the memorial.
Humanistic education appears as a dominant element in the memory created, shaped, and preserved by the funerary monument of Franciscus Elisius as well as in a group of stone memorials created for Transylvanian Saxon priests in the following decades. Though the texts and images on the monument of Elisius emphasize his excellence in the sphere of religion, the form and composition define his place among the European Humanist intellectuals. The same can be concluded about a group of funerary monuments for pastors produced from the 1590s, which also follow a model from the circle of Viennese Humanists, the epitaph of Johannes Cuspinianus. The paper offers an analysis of the visual and textual aspects of the monuments to explore the intellectual network the early modern Transylvanian Saxon intelligentsia identified with, as well as the actual relationships, knowledge, and experience behind this self-perception. The aim of the research was to understand how all these influenced the image they wished to leave behind about themselves for the contemporaries and the future generations.
Az Apafi-tumba Elias Nicolai szebeni kőfaragó munkája. A kötet nemcsak Elias Nicolai és műhelye szerepét értelmezi újra mind a szász kőfaragás, mind a művészettörténeti szakirodalom összefüggésében, hanem azt is, milyen értelemben beszélhetünk mesterekről és műhelyekről, ha a korszakból fennmaradt síremlékeket vizsgáljuk. A síremlék elemzésén keresztül közelebb visz az Apafi család, az erdélyi arisztokrácia és a fejedelmi udvar, a szász városok, kézművesek és 18-19. századi utódaik világához, de ahhoz is, hogyan reflektáltak mindezek emlékezetére az azóta eltelt évszázadokban Erdélyben és Budapesten.
This collection of papers presents the results of the international project “From Burden to Resource: Industrial Heritage in Central-Eastern Europe.”1 The project connected experts focusing on the preservation and reuse of industrial heritage. The aim was to identify the challenges specific to the Visegrad Group countries and find new solutions by adapting strategies of heritage management developed in those deindustrialized regions where such approaches have a long tradition and are happening in the context of supportive policies. The project also addresses the gap that exists in these countries between heritage specialists focusing on heritage assets and policymakers and developers in urban planning focusing on social and economic development.
Az M0-s autópálya ÉK-i szakaszának feltárása, Nagytarcsa - koordinátor: Kővári Klára,
Az M0-s autópálya északi szakaszának feltárása, Budakalász - koordinátor: dr. Ottományi Katalin,
Az M6-os autópálya Pest megyei szakaszának feltárása, Érd - koordinátor: dr. Ottományi Katalin,
A 4-es sz. főút Abonyt elkerülő szakaszának (15,3 km) és szélesítésének (7,2 km) megelőző feltárása - koordinátor: Dinnyés István
The paper discusses ethical issues related to the adaptive reuse of ruin heritage on the example of the so-called ruin bars in Budapest's District VII. It explores how heritage discourse can contribute to the sustainable development of urban neighborhoods. The authors address the question by focusing on how a processual approach can be instrumental in identifying responsible and socially sustainable ways to reuse dilapidated heritage in a residential area.
Design/methodology/approach
The problem is analyzed through a case study based on field observation, participant observation, stakeholder interviews, policy analysis and media and social media content analysis.
Findings
The authors argue that ethical reuse of ruin heritage must take into consideration the values and interests of multiple stakeholders and the broadest range of consequences at the level of neighborhood and city. An integrated heritage and planning policy should consider and involve as active participants all the heritage communities concerned. Importantly, these groups, comprising both new and longtime residents, must include the vulnerable and marginalized.
Practical implications
The findings can be used by heritage managers for identifying and addressing ethical issues in their adaptive heritage reuse practices and by policymakers for integrating heritage management in urban development and making cities more inclusive (SDG #11).
Originality/value
The paper explores how ethical it is for business enterprises to build on the ruin esthetics in a residential district and what the ethical implications of this reuse process are for various stakeholders.
Recent years have seen growing international interest in the practice of ‘adaptive reuse’ of heritage buildings, promoted as a financially more viable and environmentally sustainable way to achieve both regeneration and conservation. In parallel, adaptive reuse has emerged as an aim in national policy frameworks and EU governance. Much of the writing on adaptive reuse reflects its nature as a design practice and concentrates on the material form intervention may take. This paper has a different approach, considering the institutional factors that support adaptive reuse occurring,
as part of a multi-faceted and complex conservation-planning assemblage, across fifteen European countries. Focusing on regulatory systems for heritage and planning, governance systems, human and financial resources and policies on civic engagement and participation, thematic analysis is used to generate a typology of approaches across the continent, grouping the countries considered into three clusters. The typology proposed is not fixed, but a way to conceptualise the similarities and differences in institutional and policy-contexts that facilitate or restrict adaptive reuse. It contributes to a more informed overview of the context for adaptive reuse and the possibilities of learning from different policy contexts.
Half-figure funerary monuments appeared in Transylvanian churches of the Lutheran Saxons in the second half of the sixteenth century, following the tradition of medieval priests’ memorials but also diverging from that in some respect. The model of these portrait memorials can be identified among the Humanists’ epitaphs in Vienna set up in the first half of the sixteenth century. The stone epitaph of the scholar and poet Conrad Celtes was placed on the wall of the Saint Stephen Church in Vienna. In addition, he, still in his lifetime, had a printed epitaph made in woodcut by Hans Burgkmair, which was intended to preserve his memory, his intellectual presence in the circle of Central-European Humanists. By this, he successfully shaped the memory discourse: some of his disciples even had their own funerary monuments made based on this graphic model. The ledger stone of a Transylvanian Saxon priest, Franciscus Elisius, who died in 1593, also follows this model, though with a simplified composition and in a rather poor sculptural quality.
The scholarship of medieval and early modern funerary monuments in Europe, inspired by social anthropology, the social sciences in general, and literary criticism has recognized that these objects in their original context were shaped along cultural and ideological expectations which cannot uncritically be connected to the concept of artistic production. Scholarly literature defined the primary function of funerary monuments as preserving the presence of the dead, setting up models to follow for the living, and supporting various memory practices. Funerary monuments re-constructed, even manipulated memory, and this purpose determined how the patrons and tomb makers chose the type, form, material, images, texts, even the site of the memorial.
Humanistic education appears as a dominant element in the memory created, shaped, and preserved by the funerary monument of Franciscus Elisius as well as in a group of stone memorials created for Transylvanian Saxon priests in the following decades. Though the texts and images on the monument of Elisius emphasize his excellence in the sphere of religion, the form and composition define his place among the European Humanist intellectuals. The same can be concluded about a group of funerary monuments for pastors produced from the 1590s, which also follow a model from the circle of Viennese Humanists, the epitaph of Johannes Cuspinianus. The paper offers an analysis of the visual and textual aspects of the monuments to explore the intellectual network the early modern Transylvanian Saxon intelligentsia identified with, as well as the actual relationships, knowledge, and experience behind this self-perception. The aim of the research was to understand how all these influenced the image they wished to leave behind about themselves for the contemporaries and the future generations.
In a group of funerary monuments around Cluj-Napoca, dating from the late 1550s to the second decade of the seventeenth century, each stone displays the name of the patron, which was otherwise not a general custom in early modern Transylvania. The medieval church in Someşeni was renovated in the 1530s by László Mikola, vice voivode of Transylvania, who was the first member in his family to hold important state offices. His funerary monument was set up there in 1557, by his son, Ferenc. Later Ferenc had a second monument created for his own son, also László. Through the inscriptions, Ferenc was presented as a patron in the church interior, similarly to his father. At least four more funerary monuments were set up in the Someşeni church in the same half-a-century, all kept in the National History Museum of Transylvania in Cluj-Napoca now. Two fragments have been connected by researchers to the wife of vice voivode László Mikola, Anna Kemény, which, however, belong to two separate slabs. A third stone of unknown provenance was the memorial of a male family member, and a fourth ledger was set up for a third László Mikola, who died as a child in 1601. Erzsébet Mikola, daughter of the vice voivode, was buried in the church of Dumbrava. The text on her ledger says that it was set up by their son, János Gyerőfi, in 1575. The common monument of János Gyerőfi and his son has also survived, in the church of Căpușu Mic. There is another memorial for another János Gyerőfi in the same church; the text names his wife as the patron.
Members of these related families found it important to present themselves as patrons of funerary monuments. The texts on the monuments show that the family memory attributed great significance to the common burial site, which was closed by the memorial of the last descendant in the eighteenth century. Monuments set up in a series communicated the prestige of the individual, but also of the entire family,
and the Mikola family was aware of this and consciously used this means.
Death, emotions, and memory in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Transylvania. Funerary monuments as sources for the history of emotions (in Hungarian; the file is the postprint version)