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More than two decades of deconstruction, renovation, and reconstruction have left the urban environments in the former German Democratic Republic completely transformed. This volume considers the changing urban landscapes in the former East — and how the filling of previous absences and the absence of previous presence — creates the cultural landscape of modern unified Germany. This broadens our understanding of this transformation by examining often-neglected cities, spaces, or structures, and historical narration and preservation.
“The volume provides its audience with enormously helpful insights in the question of how the transformation processes after the Wende affect different layers of the city and how these transformations can be interpreted from a variety of academic fields.” · Urban Studies Journal
“The essays in this collection resolutely de-center Berlin as a privileged subject of cultural studies, reconstructing the social histories, architectural rebuilding efforts, and other issues marking the transition from the former GDR to postunification in Dresden, Erfurt, Hoyerswerda, Frankfurt (Oder), and elsewhere… Fascinating and insightful.” · Rolf J. Goebel, from the Afterword
“I think the premise of the collection is a promising one, to shift focus from the Berlin-centric approaches to the relationship between the past and urban space, towards the areas of Eastern Germany that are frequently overlooked… the book forms a useful complement to other studies of the cityscape in the post-unification period.” · Simon Ward, University of Aberdeen
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Gwyneth Cliver and Carrie Smith-Prei
PART I: GROUNDWORK
Chapter 1. Preserving the Past Before and After the Wende: A Case Study of Quedlinburg
Heike Alberts
Chapter 2. No Man’s Land: Fiction and Reality in Buddy Giovinazzo’s Potsdamer Platz
Christopher Jones
PART II: PROJECTIONS
Chapter 3. Cinematic Reflections of Germany’s Postunification Woes: Architecture and Urban Space of Frankfurt (Oder) in Halbe Treppe, Lichter, and Kombat Sechzehn
Sebastian Heiduschke
Chapter 4. Reclaiming the Thuringian Tuscany: The Touristic Appeal of Bad Sulza and its Toskana Therme
Erika Nelson
Chapter 5. Berlin through the Lens: Space and (National) Identity in the Postunification Capital
Susanna Miller, Jennifer Ruth Hosek, Tamara Nadolny, Heidi Manicke, Flavia Zaka, Trevor Blakeney, and Jude Hirman
Chapter 6. The Amputated City: The Voids of Hoyerswerda
Gwyneth Cliver
PART III: THEORIES
Chapter 7. Sounding out Erfurt: Does the Song Remain the Same?
Heiner Stahl
Chapter 8. Restoration and Redemption: Defending Kultur and Heimat in Eisenach’s Cityscape
Jason James
Chapter 9. The Bauwerk in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility: Historical Reconstruction, Pious Modernism, and Dresden’s “süße Krankheit”
Rob McFarland with Elizabeth Guthrie
Afterword
Rolf J. Goebel
Notes on Contributors
Index