On August 13, 1961, under the cover of darkness, East German authorities sealed the border between East and West Berlin using a hastily constructed barbed wire fence. Over the next twenty-eight years ...of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall grew to become an ever-present physical and psychological divider in this capital city and a powerful symbol of Cold War tensions. Similarly, stark polarities arose in nearly every aspect of public and private life, including the built environment.InArchitecture, Politics, and Identity in Divided BerlinEmily Pugh provides an original comparative analysis of selected works of architecture and urban planning in both halves of Berlin during the Wall era, revealing the importance of these structures to the formation of political, cultural, and social identities. Pugh uncovers the roles played by organizations such as the Foundation for Prussian Cultural Heritage and the Building Academy in conveying the political narrative of their respective states through constructed spaces. She also provides an overview of earlier notable architectural works, to show the precursors for design aesthetics in Berlin at large, and considers projects in the post-Wall period, to demonstrate the ongoing effects of the Cold War.Overall, Pugh offers a compelling case study of a divided city poised between powerful contending political and ideological forces, and she highlights the effort expended by each side to influence public opinion in Europe and around the World through the manipulation of the built environment.
Moritz Föllmer traces the history of individuality in Berlin from the late 1920s to the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. The demand to be recognised as an individual was central to ...metropolitan society, as were the spectres of risk, isolation and loss of agency. This was true under all five regimes of the period, through economic depression, war, occupation and reconstruction. The quest for individuality could put democracy under pressure, as in the Weimar years, and could be satisfied by a dictatorship, as was the case in the Third Reich. It was only in the course of the 1950s, when liberal democracy was able to offer superior opportunities for consumerism, that individuality finally claimed the mantle. Individuality and Modernity in Berlin proposes a fresh perspective on twentieth-century Berlin that will engage readers with an interest in the German metropolis as well as European urban history more broadly.
Viele Museen und Sammlungen stehen wegen ihrer Verwobenheit in koloniale Kontexte in der öffentlichen Kritik. Die Aufarbeitung ihrer eigenen Geschichte und Ausstellungspraxis ist längst überfällig. ...Drei Berliner Museen haben sich auf den Weg gemacht, sich selbstkritisch ihrer Kolonialität zu stellen: das Brücke-Museum, das Deutsche Technikmuseum und das Stadtmuseum Berlin. Die Beitragenden geben Einblicke in diesen Reflexionsprozess, die Möglichkeiten der Umgestaltung und die daraus folgenden Konsequenzen für die Museumspraxis. Damit liefern sie Impulse für die langfristige und intensive Aufarbeitung des Themas, die anderen Museen als Anregung dienen können.
Berlin Electropolisties the German discourse on nervousness in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to Berlin's transformation into a capital of the second industrial revolution. ...Focusing on three key groups-railway personnel, soldiers, and telephone operators-Andreas Killen traces the emergence in the 1880s and then later decline of the belief that modernity caused nervous illness. During this period, Killen explains, Berlin became arguably the most advanced metropolis in Europe. A host of changes, many associated with breakthroughs in technologies of transportation, communication, and leisure, combined to radically alter the shape and tempo of everyday life in Berlin. The resulting consciousness of accelerated social change and the shocks and afflictions that accompanied it found their consummate expression in the discourse about nervousness. Wonderfully researched and clearly written, this book offers a wealth of new insights into the nature of the modern metropolis, the psychological aftermath of World War I, and the operations of the German welfare state. Killen also explores cultural attitudes toward electricity, the evolution of psychiatric thought and practice, and the status of women workers in Germany's rapidly industrializing economy. Ultimately, he argues that the backlash against the welfare state that occurred during the late Weimar Republic brought about the final decoupling of modernity and nervous illness.
In Berlin, decrepit structures do not always denote urban blight. Decayed buildings are incorporated into everyday life as residences, exhibition spaces, shops, offices, and as leisure space. As ...nodes of public dialogue, they serve as platforms for dissenting views about the future and past of Berlin. In this book, Daniela Sandler introduces the concept of counterpreservation as a way to understand this intentional appropriation of decrepitude. The embrace of decay is a sign of Berlin's iconoclastic rebelliousness, but it has also been incorporated into the mainstream economy of tourism and development as part of the city's countercultural cachet. Sandler presents the possibilities and shortcomings of counterpreservation as a dynamic force in Berlin and as a potential concept for other cities.
Counterpreservation is part of Berlin's fabric: in the city's famedHausprojekte(living projects) such as the Køpi, Tuntenhaus, and KA 86; in cultural centers such as the Haus Schwarzenberg, the Schokoladen, and the legendary, now defunct Tacheles; in memorials and museums; and even in commerce and residences. The appropriation of ruins is a way of carving out affordable spaces for housing, work, and cultural activities. It is also a visual statement against gentrification, and a complex representation of history, with the marks of different periods-the nineteenth century, World War II, postwar division, unification-on display for all to see. Counterpreservation exemplifies an everyday urbanism in which citizens shape private and public spaces with their own hands, but it also influences more formal designs, such as the Topography of Terror, the Berlin Wall Memorial, and Daniel Libeskind's unbuilt redevelopment proposal for a site peppered with ruins of Nazi barracks. By featuring these examples, Sandler questions conventional notions of architectural authorship and points toward the value of participatory environments.
In the first English-language history of the Berlin zoo, Gary Bruce traces the fascinating story of one of Germany's most popular cultural institutions, from its 19th century displays of "exotic" ...peoples to Nazi attempts to breed back long-extinct European cattle. As an institution with broad public reach, the zoo for more than 150 years shaped German views not only of the animal world, but of the human world far beyond Germany's borders.
Metropolis Berlin Boyd Whyte, Iain; Frisby, David
2012., 20121028, 2012, 2012-11-27, 20120101, Letnik:
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eBook
Metropolis Berlin: 1880-1940 reconstitutes the built environment of Berlin during the period of its classical modernity using over two hundred contemporary texts, virtually all of which are published ...in English translation for the first time. They are from the pens of those who created Berlin as one of the world's great cities and those who observed this process: architects, city planners, sociologists, political theorists, historians, cultural critics, novelists, essayists, and journalists. Divided into nineteen sections, each prefaced by an introductory essay, the account unfolds chronologically, with the particular structural concerns of the moment addressed in sequence—be they department stores in 1900, housing in the 1920s, or parade grounds in 1940. Metropolis Berlin: 1880-1940 not only details the construction of Berlin, but explores homes and workplaces, public spaces, circulation, commerce, and leisure in the German metropolis as seen through the eyes of all social classes, from the humblest inhabitants of the city slums, to the great visionaries of the modern city, and the demented dictator resolved to remodel Berlin as Germania.
By drawing together widely dispersed yet central writings, the Berlin Reader is an essential resource for everyone interested in urban development in one of the most interesting and important ...metropolises in Europe. It provides scholars as well as students, journalists and visitors with an overview of the most central discussions on the tremendous changes Berlin experienced since the fall of the wall. It covers a wide range of issues, including inner city renewal, housing and the local economy, gentrification and other urban conflicts. The book breaks ground in two dimensions: first, by offering also non-German speakers an insight into the very controversial debates after reunification, and, second, by highlighting the ambivalent consequences of Berlins urban transformation in the past decades.
How has »ethnic entrepreneurship« emerged and developed since the late eighties in Berlin? In his study, Baris Ülker answers this question by relying on the experiences of immigrants from Turkey. ...Most academic studies on »ethnic entrepreneurship« have focused either on the »most unitary« structure available in the »natural flow of history« or on the pre-given »cultural« characteristics of immigrants. This book instead sets historical ruptures, conditions of possibility and individual practices in context. It analyzes how human beings have been turned into »ethnic entrepreneurs« and explains the ways of governing the self and others in the neoliberal urban context.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, Berliners grappled with how to rebuild their devastated city. In East Berlin, where the historic core of the city lay, decisions made by the socialist ...leadership about what should be restored, reconstructed, or entirely reimagined would have a tremendous and lasting impact on the urban landscape.Risen from Ruins examines the cultural politics of the rebuilding of East Berlin from the end of World War II until the construction of the Berlin Wall, combining political analysis with spatial and architectural history to examine how the political agenda of East German elites and the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) played out in the built environment.
Following the destruction of World War II, the center of Berlin could have been completely restored and preserved, or razed in favor of a sanitized, modern city. The reality fell somewhere in between, as decision makers balanced historic preservation against the opportunity to model the Socialist future and reject the example of the Nazi dictatorship through architecture and urban design. Paul Stangl's analysis expands our understanding of urban planning, historic preservation, modernism, and Socialist Realism in East Berlin, shedding light on how the contemporary shape of the city was influenced by ideology and politics.
