'Urban Berlin - Memories of a City', in Stadtkolloquium 2015 Annual Workshop (UCL, London, 30-31 March 2015). (original) (raw)
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Georg Ulrich Grossmann and Petra Krutisch, The Challenge of the Object = Die Herausforderung des Objekts: 33rd Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art (Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art - CIHA) Nuremberg, 15th-20th July 2012, Germanishes National Museum, Nürnberg, 2013., 2013
Abstract: In an attempt to resolve contested memory narratives, the urban landscape of Berlin has given rise to the process of reconstructing German identity itself. This paper provides a critical analysis of the controversial cycle of growth, demolition and reconstruction of the built environment on Schlossplatz in Berlin-mitte. In the context of Erinnerungskultur, it will argue that the removal of the Palast der Republik is not as significant as the planned Wiederaufbau of the former Prussian Stadtschloss in its place. Independent of the Stadtschloss’ resurrection as potentially detrimental to the organic authenticity of the urban landscape, this paper will ask what this action may tell about Germany’s current relationship with its Prussian past. Does the decision to rebuild the Stadtschloss (even in partial form) represent a normalized relationship with Prussian identity, and if so, exemplify a ‘mastery of the past’? Could a confrontation with complex historical legacies help forge a new sense of united German identity on the urban landscape? If so, would this be desirable, or could it present a slippery slope of renewed nationalism? What is at stake for the identities of former East (and West) Germans to achieve an emotional integration and a sound historical self understanding? Finally, in relation to Germany’s continued dialogue with GDR memory, is destruction of the Palast/reconstruction of the Stadtschloss reminiscent of the same dialectic of memory and repression that facilitated a kind of self-justification rather than an acceptance of responsibility in the immediate post-war era? These questions should act as prisms through which wider problems of collective memory and cultural identity in reunified Berlin can be examined. Citation: MaryKate Cleary, "Destroying the Palace/Rebuilding the Castle: Collective Memory and the Search for Historical Identity in Berlin," in: Georg Ulrich Grossmann and Petra Krutisch, The Challenge of the Object = Die Herausforderung des Objekts: 33rd Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art (Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art - CIHA) Nuremberg, 15th-20th July 2012, Germanishes National Museum, Nürnberg, 2013, pp. 460-464.
A Critical Deconstruction of Berlin's New Royal Palace
1 Architecture obeys political power more directly than any other art." (Lefebvre 1995: 325) "Because of the primacy of the spatial in imperial projects, postcolonial politics is also often explicitly spatial." (Said 1993: 721) Cities are central to the definition of national identities as they become symbolic representations of the identity of the nation. Ideology has always affected the city as space is always shaped to support a particular conception of the world. Nowadays, we observe in Europe the rise of narratives that are looking towards the past to find remedies for the complex challenges of a globalised present. This essay will argue that by deconstructing spatial practices and the highly imaginative narratives supporting them, we can illustrate the persistence of a colonial mythology that is currently reproduced and naturalised through language and the production of space.
The Surfaces of Memory in Berlin: Rebuilding the Schloß
Journal of Architectural Education, 2007
This article uses the demolition of the Palace of the Republic, razed in order to reconstruct the Hohenzollern City Palace, as a lens to view the complex relations between the urban manifestations of collective memory and the contemporary architecture in Berlin. Berlin’s search for a historical identity is manifested in contradictory ways; while the concern for architecture shrinks to surfaces as representations of “traditional” images, the surface of the city expands, transforming Berlin into an archaeological site, unearthing historical layers beneath it. The site of the Palace of the Republic constitutes a micro model, representing these facets of urban transformation.
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BETWEEN SENSE OF TIME AND SENSE OF PLACE DESIGNING. HERITAGE TOURISM, 2022
Urban public open-space design and the creation of atmosphere and environmental quality, together with architectural design, can contribute positively to the creation of a sense of place. The character of a place is certainly tied to the overlapping of elements that shape it but also to the events which have animated it and both the visible and invisible history which have crossed it. Therefore each place expresses in more or less perceptible ways a city’s sense of past. During the past 30 years, through several contemporary urban regeneration projects, public parks have had a decisive role in narrating the history of the place. In the city of Berlin, the object of our study, after the fall of the Berlin Wall4 in 1989, the void that was created in the urban fabric by the so-called Death Strip created the occasion for reflecting on a vacant land design project.
Is the way the German people dealt with architecture - belonging to the former totalitarian regime - a reflection of grief, or a way to dissociate and forget the past ? Can the five stages of grief, as defined in the field of psychology, be traced through the actions of the German people towards the remaining architecture of the former political regime, or do the contradictory opinions regarding these remaining architectural objects render this process impossible ? Are memorials places of perpetual remembrance, or just civilized and polite manners of dissociating from the past in order to forget ? National Socialist ambitions and ideals are visible in the architecture it produced and left behind. Power is best reflected in the drastic urban measures planned for the capital city and in the scale of the architectural objects proposed for its development. The political regime has left behind buildings burdened with memory of past crimes and suffering. • There is a great quantity of scientific literature discussing the link between space, perception and psychology, as well as the influence these factors bear upon each-other. The way architectural remnants of the former political regime were dealt with mirrors the social events, the spirit of the epoch and the general point of view towards the events symbolized by this unwanted architecture. The five stages of grief, as defined by the American Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 work “On death and dying” are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Since the publishing of her book, the five stages of grief have been identified by modern psychologists in other situations. The paper will trace down the five stages of grief as reflected by the German people’s actions on architecture of the Third Reich.
Chapter 7. Disappearing History: Challenges of Imagining Berlin after 1989
Cultural Topographies of the New Berlin, 2017
The book : Since Unification and the end of the Cold War, Berlin has witnessed a series of uncommonly intense social, political, and cultural transformations. While positioning itself as a creative center populated by young and cosmopolitan global citizens, the “New Berlin” is at the same time a rich site of historical memory, defined inescapably by its past even as it articulates German and European hopes for the future. Cultural Topographies of the New Berlin presents a fascinating cross-section of life in Germany’s largest city, revealing the complex ways in which globalization, ethnicity, economics, memory, and national identity inflect how its urban spaces are inhabited and depicted.