문화비평가 벤야민에 의하면 현대인의 도시적 삶속에서 개인의 다양한 일상적 경험들은 과거의 경우처럼 기존의 문화적 전통의 기억 속에 유기적으로 동화되지 못한 채 기계적이고 일회적인 특징을 갖는다. 따라서 더 이상 문화적 연속성을 발전시켜가기가 불가능하게 되었다. 벤야민은 이러한 기억의 위기를 현대인의 수집문화와 연관시킨다. 즉, 수집은 다양한 경험들의 불연속적인 파편들을 문화의 연속선상에 유기적으로 동화시키고자 하는 불가능한 기획의 대체행위라는 것이다.
벤야민은 하지만 이러한 기억의 불연속성을 가장된 총체성보다 더 진실에 가까운 것으로 파악한다. 그렇기에 그는 이러한 파편성을 문화적 응집성의 구축이 불가능해진 현대 사회에서 그 시대를 반영해주는 효과적인 표현방식이라고 보았다. 벤야민은 이와 관련하여 상징과 알레고리 개념의 구분을 시도하였는데, 그에 의하면 상징은 예술에서의 이념의 체현으로서 “유기체적 총체성”을 지니며 아름답게 승화된 변용된 자연을 제시한다. 반면에 알레고리는 총체성이라는 거짓된 가상을 폐기하고 무형적 파편 조각, 폐허의 잔재를 통해 진실을 드러내고자 한다. 반 계몽주의적 역사관을 피력했던 벤야민은 “변용된 자연”을 통해 “유기체적인 아름다운 가상”을 추구하는 상징에 대해서 비판적인 입장을 취하며 알레고리를 이 시대에 가장 적합한 표현방식이라고 보았다.
슈비터스 역시 파편화된 현대사회에서 유기적인 전체성의 실현이 불가능함을 깨닫고 있었는지 모른다. 그가 <메르츠바우>에 부여한 부제 “에로틱한 비애의 대성당”은 이러한 씁쓸한 아이러니를 표현한다. 결국 <메르츠바우>는 현대의 도시적 경험의 알레고리이며 동시에 문화적 상속과 건설에 대한 이룰 수 없는 희망의 기념비인 것이다.Merzbau is the most ambitious project of Hanover Dadaist, Kurt Schwitters, which is considered as the summa of his work. It is ever-expanding collage environment, which Schwitters transformed his studio and adjacent spaces in his house into. It consisted basically of two part: an inner core of collage material, a more or less formless accumulation of things discarded, and a exterior shell of clear architectural form created with wood and plaster in white. The structured shell contrasts with the chaos within. Within the Merzbau 10 Merz-columns and numerous grottos were incorporated, which consist of various fragments of found objects. This collaged objects captured a moment in personal or universal cultural history. Each grotto has special theme dealing with either his personal memory or social and cultural issues in his time. In its origins, the Merzbau foregrounds theme of memory, deploying accumulations of mnemonically significant fragments from both public and private spheres. It reflect the social or individual memory culture of modernity which is represented by monument in public place and collection in bourgeoise interior.
Benjamin understands the collector's activities in relation to a crisis in the structure of memory: No longer was the individual able to experience the past as continuum in which he himself moved. Collecting becomes a compensatory effort to incorporate the fragmented experience of daily life into the organic construction of cultural system of the past.
The structure of the Merzbau also foregrounds the instability of memory. Accumulations of fragments, souvenirs and keepsakes related to the artist's public and private history fill the niches and grottoes as materialized memory. The obsessive quality of collecting within the Merzbau suggest disturbance in the sense of continuum with the past and the chaotic accumulation of the objects reflect the messiness and incoherence of everyday experience.
Benjamin's analyses of conceptual distinction of symbol and allegory is helpful to understand the structure of Merzbau. According to Benjamin, symbol is the manifestation of ideas in art. It is characterized by organic wholeness and represent the realm of the perfected beautiful individual. On the contrary allegory overthrows semblance of organic wholeness and reveals the truth trough the ruin, destruction and formless fragmentation. The ruin's opposition to the perfected building is like the opposition of allegory to symbol. Faced with the impossibility of a coherent culture, according to Benjamin, the historical truth of the destruction of experience could be effectively expressed only through allegory. Benjamin's concept of allegory is exemplified in Merzbau. The piling up of numerous discarded objects of modern civilization suggests less the harmony of peace than traumatic disturbance, reflecting the reality of the experience in the modern society. It is allegorical, recalling the death and ruin.
But the Merzbau has also the aspect of symbol. The chaotic part of the discarded fragments of daily objects was integrated in an ever growing and complexly interwoven whole and the many opposite components finally subsumed under a crystalline, cathedral-like white shell. In doing so Schwitters infuse this construction with utopian idealism. This aspect of Merzbau reminds us Benjamin's conception of symbol as a embodiment of an idea in form of transcendent organic wholeness. In this way Schwitters combines in Merzbau the two contrary concepts of allegory and symbol.
According to Benjamin, attempt to embed the experience of modernity as historical discontinuity and fragmentation of experience within pre-existing organic cultural constructs, is pathological, for it's just impossible. In its invasiveness, the Merzbau's growth also seems to go beyond normative patterns to something more pathological. It moves without respect for boundaries, transgressing limits between rooms, between inside and outside, between terrain above and below ground. Undoubtedly Schwitters also kew that the transformation of fragmented experience of modern society into the culture as a organic whole is impossible, so he gave expression about this bitter irony with the subtitle of the Merzbau, “the Cathedral of erotic desire”. In conclusion, the Merzbau is an allegory of the experience of the modern and at the same time a monument to unfulfillable desire for the construction of culture as a harmonious and dynamic whole.