This thesis is a radical reinterpretation of the Hannover Merzbau ( Cathedral of Erotic Misery) by Kurt Schwitters. It proposes and demonstrates that two of Schwitters' own photographs of the work should not be viewed as being descriptions of a "constructed" Merzbau, but rather understood as complex constructions that generate a critical questioning of the modern site of perception. / Through an exploration of language (as understood within Giambattista Vico's New Science) the photographs come to deconstruct themselves within a context of simultaneous readings; allowing both the "secret" space of the modern Merzbau, and the sacred place of the Cathedral to exist simultaneously.

Work of a lifetime and linked intimately to his own life, Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau is the expression of the MERZ collage, in a work that brings together architecture, theatre, sculpture, painting and literature. His work evolves through time, based on two specific moments: the extraction of fragments, and the assembly of these elements into a new harmonious and meaningful entity. To Schwitters, the MERZ collage is not the mere manipulation of forms; it is the continuous process of transformation, from their initial state, of various fragments found in his daily environment, including material doomed to destruction: debris, rubbish, scrap, trash, remnants, etc. This transformation consists of one fundamental theme: uniting two opposing forces of reality---art and non-art---into one world: the Merzgesamtweltbild. Art is singled out as the supreme value of human existence, which has the power of transforming waste matter into a work of art. What is seen, through the artist's eyes and soul, is a colour, a light, a shadow, a line, a form, a space, a depth...What occurs in the MERZ collage is the true metamorphosis of the visible, sensible ordinary world.

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