Editor: Dipl.-Ing. Benjamin Schmid

Model statics is a method in which a load-bearing structure is reconstructed using true-to-scale, geometrically and elastically similar models in order to gain an idea of the load-bearing behaviour of these models and to determine measured values that can be transferred to the actual load-bearing structure with the help of similarity mathematics. The so-called measurement models used for this purpose were mainly used in the 20th century against the background of ultra-modernism, because until the first powerful computers were used in the construction industry from the 1960s and 1970s, it was very costly to dimension complex geometries and daring constructions purely by calculation. However, as these measurement models were built in order to gain knowledge about their load-bearing behaviour in load tests, most of the objects have been destroyed or lost today.

In recent years, models in engineering and thus also the aforementioned measurement models have occasionally received more attention; in addition to an extensive anthology by Bill Addis from 2021, a few articles on the subject have appeared in several international conference proceedings and journals. Nevertheless, the topic is still barely visible in the current research landscape and the difficult source and archive situation has resulted in a desideratum in the history of structural engineering to record the last surviving evidence of model statics, to process it scientifically and to preserve it as technical cultural heritage. For this reason, the research project ‘Last Witnesses’, which was funded by the German Research Foundation as part of the priority programme ‘Cultural Heritage Construction’, set itself the goal of documenting the few surviving measurement models in German-speaking countries, classifying them in terms of the history of structural engineering, evaluating them in terms of restoration and preserving them.

The dissertation on the personal and institutional networks in the field of model statics was written as part of this research project and the core of the work is formed by studies on the history of structural engineering on individual measurement models and overarching topics of model statics. The main testing facilities, engineering offices, universities and associations in German-speaking and comparatively European countries were systematically analysed in the studies and the main players identified. From this, the national and international networks of knowledge accumulation and method transfer in the field of model statics became apparent and, in correlation with the technical-historical progress of high modernity, showed their significance for developments in the construction industry.