Inventing Berlin: Architecture, Politics And Cultural Memory In The New/Old German Capital Post-1989 3030297179, 9783030297176, 9783030297183

Table of contents :
Preface......Page 7
Contents......Page 9
About the Author......Page 12
Abbreviations......Page 13
List of Figures......Page 14
List of Tables......Page 19
1.1 Introduction......Page 20
References......Page 25
2.1 Spatial Symbolism and the Cultural Landscape......Page 26
2.2 Semiotics as an Empirical Entry Point......Page 28
2.2.1 Peirce, Saussure and the Sign......Page 29
2.2.2 Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic Axes......Page 30
2.2.4 Denotation, Connotation, and Orders of Signification......Page 31
2.3.1 Spatial Signifiers: Monuments, Street Names, and Buildings......Page 32
2.3.2 Spatial Syntagms: Positioning and Presenting Spatial Symbols in Cities......Page 34
2.4.1 The Politicization of Symbolic Space......Page 36
2.4.2 National Symbols: Cultural Landscapes of the Cold War East......Page 39
2.5 Post-socialist Symbolism: Nation-Building After 1989/1990......Page 42
References......Page 45
Abstract......Page 48
3.1 Establishing Berlin’s Division Through Politics and Architectural Leitbilder......Page 50
3.2 Destalinization and the Shift Toward Functionalism......Page 59
3.3 After the Wall: The Development of the City Center and the “Housing Question”......Page 64
3.4 Berlin’s 750th Jubilee: Staging the Post-modern City......Page 77
3.5 The Politicization of Housing in Divided Berlin......Page 80
3.6 Discussion: Architecture and Identity in Divided Berlin......Page 83
References......Page 87
4.1 Setting the Stage: Unification and Administrative Restructuring......Page 89
4.2 Power, Legitimation, and the Key Actors......Page 92
4.3 Technocratic Neutrality: Expert Commissions, Architectural Competitions, and the Stadtforum......Page 96
4.4 Media and Discourse: Normalizing the Narrative......Page 98
4.5 Delegitimizing Dissenting Voices......Page 100
References......Page 102
Abstract......Page 104
5.1 Street Renaming: Remediating the Toponymic Landscape......Page 107
5.2 Alexanderplatz: From Socialist to Capitalist City Center......Page 116
5.3 Planwerk Innenstadt: Breaking the Central Ensemble......Page 122
5.4 Critical Reconstruction: From Modernism to Historicism......Page 129
5.5 The Palace of the Republic and the Prussian City Palace: The Fight for Berlin’s “Heart”......Page 133
References......Page 148
Abstract......Page 151
6.1 Synthesizing Myriad Changes: The Remediation of Berlin’s Socialist Built Space and Cultural Landscape......Page 152
6.1.1 Temporal Analysis......Page 153
6.1.2 Spatial Analysis......Page 159
6.1.3 Syntagmatic Analysis......Page 161
6.1.4 Strategic Analysis......Page 165
6.1.5 Conclusion......Page 171
6.2 “Demokratie Als Bauherrin:” Berlin’s Cultural Landscape and the German National Narrative Post-1990......Page 172
6.2.1 East Berlin as a Post-socialist City......Page 173
6.2.2 The “Wall in Our Heads”......Page 175
6.2.3 German National Identity Post-1990 as Seen Through the Lens of Architecture, Memory, and Identity in the New/Old Capital......Page 179
6.2.4 Lieux de Mémoire Perdu and Those Who Long for Them......Page 181
6.2.5 Conclusion......Page 184
References......Page 185
Abstract......Page 188
References......Page 196
Appendix I: Street (Re)naming in Mitte, Friedrichshain, and Prenzlauer Berg, 1947–1995......Page 198
Index......Page 210

Citation preview

The Urban Book Series

Mary Dellenbaugh-Losse

Inventing Berlin Architecture, Politics and Cultural Memory in the New/Old German Capital Post-1989

The Urban Book Series Editorial Board Fatemeh Farnaz Arefian, University of Newcastle, Singapore, Singapore, Silk Cities & Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL, London, UK Michael Batty, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL, London, UK Simin Davoudi, Planning & Landscape Department GURU, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK Geoffrey DeVerteuil, School of Planning and Geography, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK Andrew Kirby, New College, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA Karl Kropf, Department of Planning, Headington Campus, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK Karen Lucas, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK Marco Maretto, DICATeA, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Parma, Parma, Italy Fabian Neuhaus, Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada Vitor Manuel Aráujo de Oliveira, Porto University, Porto, Portugal Christopher Silver, College of Design, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA Giuseppe Strappa, Facoltà di Architettura, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Roma, Italy Igor Vojnovic, Department of Geography, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA Jeremy W. R. Whitehand, Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

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More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14773

Mary Dellenbaugh-Losse

Inventing Berlin Architecture, Politics and Cultural Memory in the New/Old German Capital Post-1989

123

Mary Dellenbaugh-Losse Berlin, Germany

ISSN 2365-757X ISSN 2365-7588 (electronic) The Urban Book Series ISBN 978-3-030-29717-6 ISBN 978-3-030-29718-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29718-3 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For my parents, who never stopped believing in me.

Preface

When I moved to Berlin in summer of 2007, the Palace of the Republic was under deconstruction not even three kilometers from my apartment. I passed through the socialist city center on my daily walks from Prenzlauer Berg to my language school in Mitte, completely unaware of the changes that the city had undergone in the previous 17 years and the role that Berlin would play in my future. As I began my independent doctoral research at the Humboldt University some years later, I was plagued by a great number of questions about the reunification of East and West Germany, stemming from in the year I had just spent living and studying in Saxony-Anhalt. With these questions in mind, I wrote an exposé and found an adviser. In 2010, I did not expect the complexity that I ended up finding— my research covered topics as diverse as semiotics, architectural sociology, urban planning, cultural geography, memory studies, and political science. Along the way, I began to piece together the answers to questions about architecture, stigma, belonging, identity, and foreignness, a process which continued well after my defense. This book is the result of nearly 10 years of research. The distance of time and a dozen years of German-language immersion have afforded me a new degree of nuance and a deeper understanding than was possible after only 3 years of independent doctoral research. I am grateful for this opportunity to expand on my earlier work and have taken full advantage of the chance to undertake a closer reading of primary sources and German-language literature for this book. This research benefitted from the talented researchers whose work fed into and informed this book. Emily Pugh’s definitive work on architecture and urban planning in divided Berlin was an amazing resource, as was Karin Lenhart’s detailed examination of urban development politics in Berlin-Mitte after the fall of the Wall. I will always be grateful to Brian Ladd for his approachable and well-written account, The Ghosts of Berlin, which was one of the first books I read about the city. Hannes Bahrmann and Christoph Link’s Am Ziel Vorbei is a wonderful resource for getting a snapshot of nearly every social, political and economic aspect of life 15 years after reunification. And Maoz Azaryahu’s inspiring work on toponymic inscription helped me take my analysis to the next level. I am further vii

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indebted to the fine scholarship of Arnold Bartetzky and Mariusz Czepczyński, who I am honored to call colleagues. Mariusz was even gracious enough to read and comment on portions of this manuscript, for which I thank him. This journey has been accompanied and assisted by a number of people. I’d like to thank my interview partners in the doctoral research from which this book grew and the many helpful city employees, archivists and librarians who have patiently answered my many questions and helped steer me towards the right sources. I would not have been able to complete this project without the support of many friends and colleagues. I’d like to thank my collective members, Martin Schwegmann, Markus Kip, Agnes Müller, and Majken Bieniok. You four were the best doctoral self-help group I could have asked for. My thanks also go to Stephanie Morgenstern, who offered me my first close look at East Germany, for which I am ever grateful. Yvonne Bräunlich kept my head on straight through months of empirical research. Marie Huber helped me see things from the other side of the Wall and helpfully volunteered to read and comment on portions of this manuscript. Rebecca Pates inspired me with her work on the “symbolic foreigner” and helped me better understand power relations from the perspective of political theory. Simon Koch assisted me with gathering and visualizing the spatial data in this book, including cataloging and mapping street name changes, creating the wonderful maps in the book, and helpfully contacting the Berlin monument protection office for details about which buildings were listed when. I will always be grateful to Anne Ahnis, who helped me finish what I started. And my thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers who helped improve this text through their helpful comments. Finally, this book would not have been possible without my amazing husband, Niko, whose patience and support helped see me through even the toughest writing days. I dedicate this work to my parents, who never stopped believing that I had this book in me. Berlin, Germany July 2019

Mary Dellenbaugh-Losse

Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Spatial Symbolism and Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Spatial Symbolism and the Cultural Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Semiotics as an Empirical Entry Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Peirce, Saussure and the Sign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic Axes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3 Greimas’ Semiotic Square . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.4 Denotation, Connotation, and Orders of Signification . . 2.3 Reading the Cultural Landscape: Decoding Spatial Symbolism in the Built Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 Spatial Signifiers: Monuments, Street Names, and Buildings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.2 Spatial Syntagms: Positioning and Presenting Spatial Symbols in Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Space as a Political Good: National Spaces, National Narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.1 The Politicization of Symbolic Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.2 National Symbols: Cultural Landscapes of the Cold War East . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Post-socialist Symbolism: Nation-Building After 1989/1990 . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 The Politicization of Berlin’s Urban Landscape, 1945–1989 . . . . . 3.1 Establishing Berlin’s Division Through Politics and Architectural Leitbilder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Destalinization and the Shift Toward Functionalism . . . . . . . . . 3.3 After the Wall: The Development of the City Center and the “Housing Question” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3.4 Berlin’s 750th Jubilee: Staging the Post-modern City . . 3.5 The Politicization of Housing in Divided Berlin . . . . . . 3.6 Discussion: Architecture and Identity in Divided Berlin References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 Identity, Politics, and the Creation of Consensus . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Setting the Stage: Unification and Administrative Restructuring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Power, Legitimation, and the Key Actors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Technocratic Neutrality: Expert Commissions, Architectural Competitions, and the Stadtforum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Media and Discourse: Normalizing the Narrative . . . . . . . . 4.5 Delegitimizing Dissenting Voices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Cultural Landscape of the Berliner Republic: Undoing the Socialist Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Street Renaming: Remediating the Toponymic Landscape . 5.2 Alexanderplatz: From Socialist to Capitalist City Center . . 5.3 Planwerk Innenstadt: Breaking the Central Ensemble . . . . 5.4 Critical Reconstruction: From Modernism to Historicism . 5.5 The Palace of the Republic and the Prussian City Palace: The Fight for Berlin’s “Heart” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6 Putting It All Together: Spatial Symbolism, Cultural Memory, Nation-Building, and Berlin’s Urban Development After 1989 . . 6.1 Synthesizing Myriad Changes: The Remediation of Berlin’s Socialist Built Space and Cultural Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.1 Temporal Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.2 Spatial Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.3 Syntagmatic Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.4 Strategic Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 “Demokratie Als Bauherrin:” Berlin’s Cultural Landscape and the German National Narrative Post-1990 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.1 East Berlin as a Post-socialist City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.2 The “Wall in Our Heads” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6.2.3 German National Identity Post-1990 as Seen Through the Lens of Architecture, Memory, and Identity in the New/Old Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.4 Lieux de Mémoire Perdu and Those Who Long for Them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7 Conclusion: Current Outlook, Recent Developments, and Wider Relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Appendix I: Street (Re)naming in Mitte, Friedrichshain, and Prenzlauer Berg, 1947–1995 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

About the Author

Dr. Mary Dellenbaugh-Losse is an urban researcher, independent policy adviser, and author with a concentration on integrated post-industrial urban development, specifically: culture and creative industries, real estate market dynamics, intermediate and adaptive reuse of vacant buildings, citizen participation, bottom-up urban development, and urban commons. She has also published widely about symbolism in architecture. Together with her research collective, the Urban Research Group, she published the edited volume “Urban Commons: Moving beyond State and Market” in 2015. Her most recent book, “Städtewandel durch Kultur” (Urban Development though Culture), commissioned by the Thuringia State Center for Political Education, was published in 2017. A further book, The Urban Commons Cookbook, will be released in 2020. Funded in part by a two-year German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship, she relocated to Germany in 2007 to pursue a MA in landscape architecture at the Hochschule Anhalt, which she completed in 2010. In 2013, after three years of independent interdisciplinary research, she successfully defended her doctorate in cultural geography at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. This book represents the continuation of her research about the city.

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Abbreviations

CDU CIAM FAZ FRG GDR IBA SED SPD

German Christian Democrat Party (Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands) Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany; German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland) German Democratic Republic (East Germany; German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik) International Building Exhibition (Internationale Bauausstellung) Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) German Social Democrat Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands)

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2

Fig. 2.3

Fig. 2.4

Fig. 2.5 Fig. 3.1

Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4

Fig. 3.5

Saussure’s syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes, showing a simple syntagm with a selection of possible substitutions. Source Own work, adapted from Chandler (2007), p. 84 . . . . Three forms of memorials in Berlin: point (the Marx-Engels memorial), dispersed (a Stumble Stone), and area (the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe). Source Marx-Engels Memorial: Author; Stumble stone: Thomas Quine (CC BY 2.0); Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe: Peter Kuley (CC BY-SA 3.0) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Visual axes control the observer’s visual consumption of a building or monument in a highly controlled and curated way. Source Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New construction attempts to dilute the dominance of earlier symbolic structures, here in the example of Warsaw. Source Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Socialist classicism in Berlin. Source Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . Map of Berlin showing the Cold War-era building projects discussed in this chapter. The Berlin Wall is shown as a dotted line. Source Simon Koch; Base maps from Open Street Map and Geoportal Berlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stalinallee, Block C. Source Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Façade decoration on the socialist classicist housing along Karl-Marx-Allee (former Stalinallee). Source Author . . . . . . . Drawing of Stalinallee showing the highly hierarchical spatial organization. Source German Federal Archive, Image 183-11742-0004 / Schack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Model of the International Building Exhibition (IBA) 1957 (Interbau). Source Photo F_Rep_290_0051246: Berlin State Archive/Kiel, Willy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Fig. 3.6

Fig. 3.7 Fig. 3.8 Fig. 3.9 Fig. 3.10 Fig. 3.11

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Fig. 3.13 Fig. 3.14 Fig. 3.15 Fig. 3.16 Fig. 3.17

Fig. 3.18 Fig. 3.19

Fig. 3.20

Fig. 3.21 Fig. 3.22

List of Figures

Interbau was positioned as part of a larger lifestyle of abundant consumer goods linked to the West German “economic miracle.” Source Photo F_Rep_290_0052958: Berlin State Archive/Schütz, Gert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Housing along Karl-Marx-Allee between Strausberger Platz and Alexanderplatz. Source Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kino International, with façade details. Source Author . . . . . . Café Moskau, complete with Sputnik replica. Source Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The mosaic on the House of Teachers. Source Author . . . . . . The first concrete slab housing in Hoyerswerda, constructed in 1957–1958, ushered in a new era of industrial construction. Source German Federal Archive, Image 183-58152-0002/Hesse, Rudolf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The former State Council Building (Staatsratsgebäude), which incorporates the balcony from which Karl Liebknecht declared the Free Socialist Republic in 1918. Source Author . . . . . . . . The 1960s redesign of Alexanderplatz. Source German Federal Archive, Image 183-G1209-0023-003 / Spremberg, Joachim . Fountain of Friendship between Peoples (Brunnen der Völkerfreundschaft) at Alexanderplatz. Source Author . . . . . . The World Clock (Weltzeituhr) at Alexanderplatz. Source Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Relief “Man transcends time and space” on the House of Travel. Source Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The television tower and the central axis towards Unter den Linden, taken before the construction of the Palace of the Republic. Source German Federal Archive, Image 183-M0729-758/Koard, Peter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edmund Collein’s 1951 design of the center of Berlin. Source German Federal Archive, Image 183-12946-0004/Gielow . . . Model of the central ensemble showing the Marx-Engels Forum, the Palace of the Republic, the Foreign Ministry, and the Nikolai Quarter to the left. Source German Federal Archive, Image 183-1983-0408-101 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Palace of the Republic’s asymmetry was intended to enhance its visual and spatial connections in the central ensemble. Source German Federal Archive, Image 183-1986-0424-304/Junge, Heinz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Post-modern infill construction using industrial building materials along Frankfurter Allee. Source Author . . . . . . . . . . Model of the Nikolai Quarter. Source German Federal Archive, Image 183-1986-0925-041 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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List of Figures

Fig. 3.23 Fig. 3.24

Fig. 5.1

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Fig. 5.7

Fig. 5.8 Fig. 5.9

Fig. 5.10

Fig. 5.11 Fig. 5.12

Buildings of the Nikolai Quarter. The pre-fabricated building components are clearly visible. Source Author . . . . . . . . . . . . Modernist inner-city planning in West Berlin in Kreuzberg, between Moritzplatz and Prinzenstraße. Source Assenmacher (CC BY-SA 3.0) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Map of central Berlin showing the buildings and areas discussed in this chapter. The former site of the Berlin Wall is shown as a dotted line. Source Simon Koch; Base maps from Open Street Map and Geoportal Berlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A map of street and place renaming in Mitte, Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg, 1990–1995. District-led changes are shown in orange, senate-led changes are shown in blue, and suggestions made by the expert commission which were not implemented are shown in turquoise. Source Simon Koch; Base maps from Open Street Map and Geoportal Berlin . . . . Map of the location of the former Clara-Zetkin-Straße. Source Simon Koch; Base maps from Open Street Map and Geoportal Berlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The first prize design for Alexanderplatz by Kollhoff and Timmermann, after final adjustments, seen here on the Berlin city models. Source Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A 1:1 model of the Prussian City Palace was erected by the supporting association from June 1993 until September 1994. Source Friedrich-Karl Mohr (CC BY-SA 3.0) . . . . . . . . . . . . A model of Berlin’s city center with Marx-Engels Square, the Palace of the Republic, the State Council Building, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the foreground. Source Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Palace of the Republic from the TV tower following asbestos removal. Source Denis Apel/flyingpixel.de/Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The interior of the Palace of the Republic in 2005, following asbestos removal. Source Mazbln (CC BY-SA 3.0) . . . . . . . . Intermediate use of the Place of the Republic ruin included Lars Ramberg’s neon installation Palast des Zweifels (Palace of Doubt) in 2005. Source Andreas Praefcke . . . . . . . . . . . . . Protest against the demolition of the Palace of the Republic in January 2006. The sign reads “And when is the king coming?”. Source Mazbln (CC BY-SA 3.0) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Demolition of the Palace of the Republic in 2007. Source Michael F. Mehnert (CC BY-SA 3.0) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Franco Stella’s submission to the Palace reconstruction architectural competition was awarded first prize. Source Jean-Pierre Dalbéra (CC BY 2.0) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Fig. 5.13

Fig. 5.14

Fig. 5.15

Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2

Fig. 6.3

Fig. 6.4

Fig. 6.5 Fig. 6.6 Fig. 6.7 Fig. 6.8

Fig. 6.9

Fig. 6.10

List of Figures

Franco Stella’s winning design viewed from the north. The modern, Spree-side facade is visible on the left. Source Roland Arhelger (CC BY-SA 4.0) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Looking across the so-called “Lawn of the Republic” towards the royal stables in 2012. The State Council Building is on the right. Source Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . View of the Palace construction site from the television tower in November 2013. The Humboldt Box is located on the right-hand side of the construction site. Source Author . . . . . . . Timeline of the five examined case studies relative to political events. Source Own work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The key actors’ vision for Berlin-Mitte in 2030, from a 2014 publication edited by Hans Stimmann. The Kollhoff/Timmermann plan for Alexanderplatz is depicted in beige, the Prussian City Palace reconstruction fills Schlossplatz and new in-fill construction, here depicted in reddish brown, recreates the plot-and-square organization of the “European city” throughout the city center, including on the Marx-Engels Forum and the City Hall Forum. Source Bernd Albers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The new “Schlossplatz” street sign in front of the façade of the Palace of the Republic in 2002. Source Eborutta (CC BY-SA 3.0) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the GDR (right) and the Friedrichswerder church (left) in 1990. Source Gerd Danigel, ddr-fotograf.de (CC BY-SA 4.0). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The façade simulation of the Schinkel Building Academy in March 2019. Source Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Neptune fountain is the centerpiece of the City Hall Forum. Source Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A sample portion of the reconstructed Palace façade. Source Taxiarchos228. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A 1:1 model of Schinkel’s Building Academy from Schinkelplatz. The reconstructed sample corner is located on the left. Source Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Ernst Thälmann monument in Prenzlauer Berg (constructed in 1986) with high-rise towers in the background. Source Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . “The human will can overcome anything. This house once stood in another country.” The presentation of the GDR as a hurdle or dictatorship to be overcome is literally written in the landscape of Berlin. Apartment building in Brunnenstraße, Berlin-Mitte. Source Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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List of Figures

Fig. 6.11

Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2

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Graffiti on the foundation of the demolished Palace of the Republic in 2009 reads “The GDR never existed.” Source Schreibkraft (CC BY-SA 4.0) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 The Spree side of the Humboldt Forum is finished from the outside as of February 2019. Source Author . . . . . . . . 177 The Humboldt Forum construction site in February 2019 with the State Council Building in the background. Source Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

List of Tables

Table 4.1 Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 6.1 Table 6.2

Politicians involved in decision-making relevant to the built space of East Berlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Independent Commission’s suggestions for new commemorations and decommemorations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Renamed public transportation stations in Mitte, Friedrichshain, and Prenzlauer Berg, 1990–1995 . . . . . . . . . . Categorization of actor-led strategies for changes to the cultural landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Monument protection status for buildings constructed during the GDR-era discussed in this book. Protected ensembles are indicated in bold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1

Introduction

There is perhaps no other major Western city that bears the marks of twentieth-century history as intensely and self-consciously as Berlin. This city-text has been written, erased, and rewritten throughout this violent century, and its legibility relies as much on visible markers of built space as on images and memories repressed and ruptured by traumatic events. Huyssen (1997) pp. 59–60

Abstract This chapter introduces the main concepts that will be discussed in this book, architecture, urban planning, memory, legitimate history, and post-socialist path-dependency, as well as its subject, East Berlin. It furthermore presents the fundamental assumption on which this study is based, namely that choices about architecture and symbolism in capital cities are attempts at concretizing the values and identity of that country’s residents (or at least the dominant group). Following this assumption, this book argues that the architectural and urban planning choices in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall reflect specific choices about legitimate identity, memory, and history in reunified Germany. Chapter one introduces the three questions which will frame this study, namely: What do changes to the cultural landscape of East Berlin reveal about official narratives of German identity after 1990? In which ways is East Berlin a “typical” post-socialist city and in which ways is it a special case? And who were the key actors, what tactics did they employ and how did their influence and methods change over time?




Keywords East Berlin German reunification wall Post-socialist path-dependence




1.1


Cold war
Street names
Berlin

Introduction

For more than a century, architecture and urban planning in Berlin have been fundamentally imbued with questions of politics and identity. The cultural landscape of the capital of reunified Germany bears the indelible scars of Cold War struggles and their © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Dellenbaugh-Losse, Inventing Berlin, The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29718-3_1

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Introduction

built legacy, and is embedded in a path-dependency that reaches back to before the Second World War.1 The importance of Berlin’s urban and cultural landscape as a physical expression of power and political posturing during the Cold War, in particular, cannot be overstated. On both sides of the Wall, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) produced topographies of forms, structures, and symbols that were intended to exemplify the superiority of their political and economic system to an audience on the other side of the Wall and, to a lesser extent, their own populace. After German reunification, the remediation of the symbolic landscape of former East Berlin, capital of the German Democratic Republic, was a central aspect of forming the city into a representative space in which the new democracy and the hopes and aspirations attached to the so-called “Berliner Republic” could flourish. These changes took a wide range of forms, from demolition to decommemoration, which worked together to fragment and overwrite the socialist urban fabric. Much has been written about individual changes to Berlin’s built space since 1989: the wrapping of the Reichstag, the development and construction of the new government quarter, the renovation of industrial-era housing, the removal or replacement of monuments, and the demolition of significant, socialist-era buildings, to name just a few. Individually, each of these examples offers a glimpse of new concepts of German identity and national narrative expressed in architecture and planning in the post-Wall era. Viewed together, however, these and other changes to the built environment combine to form a cogent picture of the officially condoned identity, history, and memory which those in charge saw as representative and fitting for the new/old German capital. This book poses three questions connected to the concepts of architecture, urban planning, memory, legitimate history, and post-socialist path-dependency based on the fundamental assumption that choices about architecture and symbolism in capital cities are attempts at concretizing the values and identity of that country’s residents (or at least the dominant group). In the countries of the former eastern bloc, this process has provided a window into symbolic nation-building efforts on a range of scales and through a variety of media. What official narratives and the symbols which derive from them include and omit say volumes about the country’s relationship to their recent past and their aspirations for the future; these narratives and symbols serve a range of functions, from attempts at instilling a feeling of collective identity among residents to solidifying visual identity for touristic marketing. Thus, the first question that this book seeks to answer is: What do changes to the cultural landscape of East Berlin reveal about official narratives of German identity after 1990? To answer this question, this book chronicles the changes to the cultural landscape of former East Berlin after 1989 and contextualizes these vis-à-vis the Throughout this text, the social scientific term “path-dependency” will be used as shorthand for the idea that decisions made and actions taken in the past shape and co-determine the options available in the present. The reactive and accretive nature of architecture and planning—buildings and planning frequently reference earlier works or are confronted with existing structures which they must work around or incorporate—lends it to the concept of path dependence. The political and ideological role of architecture and planning in Berlin has, however, greatly intensified this effect; one of the best examples is the taboo on the main north–southroad in the city center as a result of just such a boulevard featuring prominently in Albert Speer’s Germania plans for Berlin during the National Socialist era. 1

1.1 Introduction

3

structural and discursive frameworks that surrounded them both during their construction and following German reunification. In doing so, this book focuses on the relative and often contradicting interpretations of the onerous built legacies of the socialist era in reunited Berlin, and the consequences that these interpretations and the power of those who held them had for the buildings, urban planning, street names, and monuments in question. To achieve this, this study draws on the new cultural geographical concepts of the cultural landscape and the city-text and discursive and semiotic analysis. This approach incorporates the concept of the cultural landscape as a palimpsest, a close reading of which can offer insight into the values and beliefs of the group which has the power to inscribe their historiographical interpretation onto the city and erase or overwrite the symbols of their predecessors. Following this concept, in this book the cultural landscape of East Berlin is conceived as a city-text made up of signifiers, including street names, monuments, buildings, architectural styles, and urban planning, whose meaning changes relative to other signifiers and shifts in the interpretive framework. Thus, in contrast to other works about the transition of Berlin’s built space post-1989, this work attempts a comprehensive examination of the rewriting of the city-text in the wake of German reunification and the return of the seat of government to Berlin and analyzes these changes individually, collectively, and relationally. Following in this vein, this book examines the collective meaning of these individual actions relative to Cold War struggles and the post-Wall reorientation of the German national identity and narrative. In so doing, this book analyzes how changes to street names and architectural and urban planning Leitbilder and the fates of specific, significant buildings reflected deeply entrenched, reactive understandings of “Germanness” which were forged during German division and perpetuated by Western actors after reunification. The study draws on Cold War-era construction in divided Berlin and the propaganda surrounding it to explain changes in German identity creation over the course of German division. The analysis of Cold War-era architectural saber rattling demonstrates that the development of two antithetical German identities was predicated both on the physical delineation of the two states (and city halves) through the Berlin Wall and on the opportunity that the solidification of the two nation-states provided for their individual interpretations of the recent National Socialist past. In the end, the Berlin Wall provided the opportunity to develop an “other” German on the opposite side of the Wall to whom one could attribute the failings of the National Socialists. The construction of the Berlin Wall intensified the polarity of German identity during the Cold War; from the 1960s onwards, “victory” could only be achieved through the abnegation of one German identity. This reification of identity from the 1960s onwards had significant effects on the buildings of the former capital of the German Democratic Republic and the fates and identity construction of its citizens after 1990. These types of changes were characteristic of the symbolic and structural reformatting of post-socialist cities, of which Berlin is certainly one. However, German reunification added an additional layer of complexity to the wave of post-socialist iconoclasm that swept through Central and Eastern Europe in the early 1990s. Thus, the second question that this book seeks to answer is: In which ways is East Berlin a “typical” post-socialist city and in which ways is it a special case?

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Introduction

The description of East Berlin as a “special case” (Sonderfall) is specifically linked to the structural conditions of the economic and legal union of the two German states, the seemingly banal administrative restructuring in the course of unifying two city administrations, and their long-reaching and unexpected consequences. These aspects, which will be discussed as “framework conditions,” highly influenced the ways in which the cultural landscape could be “remediated,” the actors who were involved, the instruments which were used to legitimize the changes, and the relative power relations in the city, especially in the years immediately following Berlin’s reunification. Thus, the third question that this book seeks to answer is: Who were the key actors, what tactics did they employ, and how did their influence and methods change over time? As this study will show, a small group of key actors guided the urban planning discourse in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a circumstance which had significant effects on both the existing built space and in the future planning of the city. These actors not only invoked tropes of memory and identity but also instrumentalized the reactionary zeitgeist and chaotic administrative and property ownership situations in the city directly after the fall of the Wall to further their own strategies and a very narrow political and architectural vision. In addition, these actors employed both technocratic and media-based instruments to create ostensible neutrality in the decisions reached and engender consensus among a wider populace. A temporal analysis reveals shifts in the key actors’ power relations, tactics, and possibilities over time. The amount of power that the key actors were able to bring to bear waned and waxed relative to a number of political and legal decisions. The first and most significant of these was the so-called “reunification” of Germany, in which the German Democratic Republic acceded to the Federal Republic of Germany. This framework condition ensured a continuation of pre-1990 Western discursive and political practices and actor constellations. Furthermore, the intensity and effectiveness of changes were inherently linked to the decision to return the seat of government to Berlin in 1991/1992 and the additional power that this decision lent the key actors. Berlin’s representative role in the new world order and reunified Germany thus became both the justification for the changes and the means to achieve them. The five case studies examined in this book—street renaming, Alexanderplatz, Planwerk Innenstadt, critical reconstruction, and the Palace of the Republic/ Prussian City Palace—reveal a wholesale remixing of the cultural landscape of East Berlin which included active and passive physical changes (removal of monuments, renaming of streets and other places, demolition and neglect of existing buildings, reconstruction of demolished buildings, new planning frameworks, granting or withholding of historical monument status), but also the recoding of broader aspects of the cultural landscape, such as aesthetic form, architectural type, and spatial organization. As the case studies demonstrate, the physical and contextual reformatting of the city followed a western worldview which was geared at priming the city for resuming its role as the capital of Germany, repositioning Germany as the location of the global victory over communism, and also opening the urban landscape to new capital flows, especially in the now prime location of Berlin-Mitte. When viewed together, one can assert that reactionary spatial appropriation in Berlin was significantly affected by the imperativeness of Cold War tensions and

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Berlin’s role in posturing, the accession of East Germany to West Germany, the importation of West German bureaucrats, the moving of the capital and seat of government from Bonn to Berlin, and the necessity to create a new post-1990 national narrative not dominated by the burdened past of the Second World War. A comprehensive look at the changes to Berlin’s urban fabric also demonstrates the conservative, nostalgic stance of the key actors vis-à-vis the built space of the former capital of the German Democratic Republic. Their tropes of memory, history, and identity consistently positioned the former socialist state as an outsider, an “other,” a continuation of Cold War era German identity construction; their aesthetic and symbolic choices reflected and supported this narrative. This book is, however, not only relevant as a detailed case study of cultural appropriation in post-Wall Berlin; the lessons derived from this research also yield important new insights into the up-till-now neglected topic of East German cultural belonging in reunified Germany. The cultural landscape is a critical touchstone for group belonging and identity; wider discussions of the “remediation” of the cultural landscape of Berlin tie into the current theories of the East Germans as “symbolic foreigners” (Pates 2013) disenfranchised and delegitimized in the new political and symbolic order. The lessons learned here and the methodology employed in this study could additionally be informative for a range of other contexts, from former Yugoslavia to the former Confederate United States. This book is organized in seven chapters. Chapter 2 goes into depth about spatial symbolism, the cultural landscape, and the use of semiotics in new cultural geography. It explicates the landscape features that will be the focus of the study, and introduces the major terms and concepts, the concept of space and spatial symbols as politicized goods, the politicization of space in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, and the reactionary stance to these spaces after 1989/1990. Chapter 3 sets the stage for the discussion of post-Wall urban development by presenting and discussing spatial symbolism, ideology, and the politicization of Berlin’s urban landscape during the Cold War. This chapter covers the significant waypoints in the development of architectural discourse in the divided city, including Stalinallee in East Berlin and the IBA 1957 in West Berlin in the 1950s, the redesign of Alexanderplatz in the 1960s, the construction of the Palace of the Republic in the 1970s, and the celebration of the city’s 750th jubilee in the 1980s. This chapter furthermore goes into detail about the central role of housing in both halves of the city and the political instrumentalization of housing typologies. The analysis in Chap. 3 reflects on the development of architectural discourses and propaganda during the Cold War on both sides of the Wall with relation to ongoing processes of Vergangenheitsbewältigung and identity creation both before and after the construction of the Berlin Wall. Chapter 4 examines a number of “framework conditions” that paved the way for the built space changes examined in this book. The legal and political forms that German unification, including administrative restructuring, took were a fundamental prerequisite for the actions which came next. This chapter introduces the main actors who were in charge of urban planning in the city and goes into detail about the tactics and strategies that they used to realize their vision of Berlin. These included an extensive use of technocratic instruments such as expert committees

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Introduction

and architectural competitions, the media, publicity, and publications. Furthermore, these actors effectively engendered consensus and delegitimized dissenting voices through their invocation of tropes of memory, identity, and the “European city.” Chapter 5 examines the concrete spatial changes that took place after reunification through five case studies: street renaming, Alexanderplatz, Planwerk Innenstadt, critical reconstruction, and the Palace of the Republic/Prussian City Palace debate. These case studies have been selected based on their significance in the GDR, their central roles in debates about identity and built space in reunified Berlin, and their parallelism with other post-socialist contexts. These changes were fundamentally influenced by the 1991 decision to return the seat of government to Berlin, which significantly intensified discussions about legitimate memory and identity in the once-divided city. This decision was used as justification to implement a range of spatial changes to Berlin’s inner-city in order to make it “representative.” This included not only specific spaces and icons but also a wider discussion of architectural styles, urban planning, and aesthetics as conveyors of “legitimate” memory and identity in the reunified city. Through the lenses of Planwerk Innenstadt and critical reconstruction, Chap. 5 additionally examines the historical and identity-political aspects of architecture and planning which were critical for the establishment of the city’s new spatial symbolism. Chapter 6 analyzes the five case studies together from the temporal, spatial, syntagmatic, and strategic perspectives. In so doing, it demonstrates the significance of the capital city decision both as the justification and the instrument for the changes examined in Chap. 5. Chapter 6 further examines how the key actors’ tactics changed over time. The second half of this chapter reflects on the architecture and urban planning of the new/old capital as a proxy and product of a new German national narrative and its consequences for belonging and identity among former East Germans and East Berliners. In so doing, it also examines the question of how Berlin is (or is not) a post-socialist city. Finally, Chap. 7 discusses the sea change in the symbolically charged nature of Berlin’s urban development after the retirement of the main key actor, Hans Stimmann, who held a leading position in the Senate Department for Urban Development from 1991 to 2006, and his replacement with a Swiss national, Regula Lüscher. Nevertheless, many of the changes which had their genesis in the reactive and establishment periods are just now coming to fruition, including the potential redesign of Marx and Engels Square, the implementation at long last of Kollhoff’s 1993 redesign of Alexanderplatz, and the reconstruction of the Hohenzollern city palace, which began in 2013. Chapter 7 concludes with a reflection on the topics introduced in this book and their relevance for other spatial contexts.

References Huyssen A (1997) The voids of Berlin. Critical Inquiry 24(1):57–81 Pates R (2013) Einleitung-der “Ossi” als symbolischer Ausländer. In: Pates R, Schochow M (eds) Der “Ossi”: Mikropolitische Studien über einen symbolischen Ausländer. Springer VS, Wiesbaden, pp 7–20

Chapter 2

Spatial Symbolism and Politics

Abstract This chapter goes into depth about spatial symbolism and the new cultural geographical concept of the cultural landscape. Following a detailed examination of the use of semiotics in the interpretation of the cultural landscape, it explicates the landscape features which will be the focus of this study—street names, monuments, urban planning, and architectural styles—and introduces the major terms and concepts which will be used throughout this book. The chapter examines the concept of space and spatial symbols as politicized goods, especially their role in nation-building and national narratives. It closes with an examination of the politicization of space in Eastern Europe during the Cold War and the reactionary stance to these spaces after 1989/1990, setting the stage for a wider discussion of post-socialist cultural landscapes.




Keywords Semiotics Post-socialist city Street names National narrative




2.1


Cultural landscape
Monuments


Spatial Symbolism and the Cultural Landscape

The critical turn in cultural geography, which marks the conceptual shift from “old” to “new” cultural geography, fundamentally changed the focus of the discipline. Instead of studying cultures and their geographic bounds and characteristics as cultural artifacts, cultural geographers began to critically examine new aspects of the spatial world with regard to power constructs and social struggles. The cultural landscape, as it is understood in the context of new cultural geography, is a central aspect of these considerations, described by Sharon Zukin as “the major cultural product of our times” (Zukin 1993, p. 22). Cultural landscapes’ symbolic aspects were first addressed by Cosgrove and Jackson (1987). This text and others written in the late 1980s shifted cultural geography’s conceptualization of cultural landscapes from Cartesian containers to fluid spatial elements of “socially constructed significance” consisting of “symbols rather than facts” (Czepczyński 2008, pp. 9, 17). The term “landscape” in new © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Dellenbaugh-Losse, Inventing Berlin, The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29718-3_2

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cultural geography moves away from the idea of landscape as a container, a set and stable expanse of space, or a natural environment impacted in a specific way by a human group, moving to incorporate sociological constructions of (relative) space (i.e. Lefebvre 1974; Löw 2001).1 David Cosgrove links this conceptual change to the shift from modernity to post-modernity, as “both in theory and practice, space in modernity remained Cartesian and absolute” (Cosgrove 2004). Absolute conceptions of space, he argues, were inherently linked to the “territorial imperatives of the nation-state” (Cosgrove 2004), since Cartesian “containers,” bounded spaces containing physical resources and controllable through military force, coincided well with the struggles of nationalism leading up to and including the Second World War (following Anderson 2006). In new cultural geography, cultural landscapes are understood as both “expressions of culture […] and […] representations which construct and reinforce identities” (Winchester et al. 2003, p. 35). Winchester et al. further argue that landscapes, in particular symbolic landscapes, play a key role in the normalization of dominant value systems; “the hegemonic role of landscapes […] relies on their naturalization of ideological systems, made possible because of their dominance in everyday lives and their very tangible and visible materiality, making that which is socially constructed appear to be the natural order of things” (Winchester et al. 2003, p. 66). Therefore, in the words of Cosgrove, “landscape acts to ‘naturalize’ what is deeply cultural” (Cosgrove 2004). Cultural landscapes, collections of culturally, socially and politically significant symbols, are continuously produced and reproduced. The power over landscape is, therefore, also the power over the means of cultural and social production, and the ability to constrain and guide the symbolic narrative of a space by limiting certain groups’ access to it (De Soto 1996; Rose-Redwood et al. 2010). Again, in the words of Winchester et al. in both urban and rural landscapes, the powerful social groups will seek to impose their own versions of reality and practice, effecting their ideologies in the production and use of landscapes, as well as dominant definitions of their meanings. What they produce are therefore landscapes of power, that is, landscapes that reflect and reveal the power of those who construct, define, and maintain them […] Once constructed, these landscapes have the capacity to legitimize the powerful, by affirming the ideologies that created them in the first place (Winchester et al. 2003, p. 67, my emphasis).

These symbols can be used for political and economic gain, to express belonging, to rebel against dominant worldviews, or simply to express presence. Various groups use the cultural landscape as a tool to reach their political and social goals, in particular through the capacity of the cultural landscape to naturalize ideological choices; “by becoming part of the everyday, the taken-for-granted, the objective, the natural, landscape masks the artifice and ideological nature of its form and content” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 41). The concept of “landscape” has been used to talk about nationalism (Sörlin 1999; Anderson 2006), belonging and identity

1

See also the concept of relational space, for example (Murdoch 2006) or (Allen et al. 1998).

2.1 Spatial Symbolism and the Cultural Landscape

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(Winchester et al. 2003), and power constructs (Cosgrove 1998), as well as cultural and semiotic spaces (Czepczyński 2008), and will form the main terminology of spatial collectivity in this book. The shift in value systems from modernism to post-modernism, from hard to soft spatial qualities, from finite and material to changeable and symbolic landscapes, and from metanarratives to narrative plurality formed the necessary foundation for the shift from absolute to relative conceptions of space mentioned above. This shift also coincided with new conceptions of social and cultural production, which, above all through the shift from metanarratives to narrative plurality, changed the focus of cultural production from a top-down process to a broader base involving multiple groups with varying resources, agendas, and means (de Certeau 1984). Therefore, the shift from absolute to relative spatial conceptions can be framed not only within the context of the changing valuations of physical and symbolic goods for local, regional, and national economies, including the defense and acquisition of resources, but also concurrently in the shifting abilities of various actors to change, adapt, co-opt, and subvert this emergent symbolic capital. This change plays a significant role in both the construction of national identity and the economic struggles within and between (physical) spaces. Cities play a crucial role in these struggles. One of the main analytical concepts for examining the cultural landscapes of cities is the “city-text.” The individual elements of the landscape—street names, place names, monuments, urban planning, architectural styles, and so on—form the elements of the city-text, which can be “read” and examined using semiotics and textual analysis. These landscape features are examined individually, relative to each other, and relative to other features, including those which have been destroyed or were never constructed (Huyssen 2003, p. 7). As such, the analysis of the city-text draws on deep, inductive analysis based on a close reading of primary sources and associated semiotic and discourse analysis. Following this understanding, the city’s cultural landscape becomes both a palimpsest (Huyssen 2003), written and rewritten by successive waves of political and social actors whose traces are never completely obliterated, and a critical theater of struggles for identity and belonging (Czepczyński 2008). In this context, control over the cultural landscape is tantamount to control over the means of social production, legitimate history, and built cultural narrative with wide-reaching consequences, since “the past, manifested in the memory practices of commemoration and rejection, influences contemporary identities and, to a further extent, future opportunities and developments” (Czepczyński 2010, p. 33).

2.2

Semiotics as an Empirical Entry Point

If we understand that “every landscape is a code, and its study may be undertaken as a deciphering of meaning, of the cultural and social significance of ordinary but diagnostic features” (Meinig 1979, quoted in Winchester et al. 2003, p. 24), then semiotic analysis presents a fitting theoretical framework for the analysis of cultural

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landscapes (Gottdiener 1985; Torop 1999; following Chandler 2007; Rose-Redwood et al. 2018b). The use of semiotics and textual analysis in new cultural geography links to the wider “linguistic turn” in cultural studies, in which structural linguistic analyses, such as semiotics, are used to decipher non-linguistic cultural structures. Following Cosgrove and Jackson: Conceptualizing landscapes as configurations of symbols and signs leads inevitably towards methodologies which are more interpretive than strictly morphological. Among the most commonly favored are those associated with post-war developments in linguistics and semiotics. This interpretive strand in recent cultural geography develops the metaphor of landscape as a ‘text’ to be read or interpreted as a social document (Cosgrove and Jackson 1987, p. 96)

The semiotic analysis of the urban landscape involves the identification of symbols and their constituent parts. Prior to operationalizing this technique for empirical work with cultural landscapes, it is first important to go briefly into the development of the field from its origins at the beginning of last century.

2.2.1

Peirce, Saussure and the Sign

The field of semiotics was developed concurrently in Europe and the United States, unbeknownst to the two researchers involved: Ferdinand Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce. Saussure and Peirce, however, took slightly different approaches to semiotics.2 The main difference between their approaches is the division of the sign into either two or three constituent parts. Whereas Saussure divided the sign into signifier (the form the sign takes) and signified (the concept to which it refers), Peirce divided the sign into three parts: the representamen (the form that the sign takes), the interpretant (the sense made of the sign), and the referent (the object or concept referred to) (Chandler 2007, pp. 14, 29). Thus, “the Peircean model explicitly allocates a place for materiality and for reality outside the sign system which Saussure’s model did not directly feature” (Chandler 2007, p. 33). For the purpose of clarity, the Saussurean terminology, signifier and signified, will be used throughout this book. Both Peirce and Saussure concurred that signifiers are arbitrary, the important aspect of them is that they are derived from a process of social consensus, that is, English speakers all agree more or less on what a tree is, however arbitrary the combination of letters (written signifier) or syllables (aural signifier) are. “There is no necessary connection between the sign and its meaning and no word or sign is inherently meaningful” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 35), or in the words of William Shakespeare, “that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet” (Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II). However, Lévi-Strauss rightly notes that “the sign is arbitrary a priori but ceases to be arbitrary a posteriori—after the sign has come into historical existence it cannot be arbitrarily changed. As part of its social 2

For an in-depth description, please see Chandler (2007).

2.2 Semiotics as an Empirical Entry Point

11

use within a sign-system, every sign acquires a history and connotations of its own which are familiar to members of the sign-users’ culture” (quoted in Chandler 2007, p. 27). In addition, it is important to note that the meaning and interpretation of signifiers are not stable and fixed, but can rather change over time as a result of historical and cultural developments or significant changes in social context. From a constructivist point of view, language and signs contribute to the construction of reality; indeed, the “postmodernist stance [is] that there is no external reality beyond sign-systems” (Chandler 2007, p. 10). Baudrillard takes this concept to the penultimate in his assertion that the post-modern world is hyperreal, that is, that reality consists purely of symbols and images (Firat and Venkatesh 1993; Gottdiener 1995). Control over the construction of signs and the signification of signifieds is, therefore, of utmost importance in the control and framing of discourses.

2.2.2

Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic Axes

Meaning is generated in semiotics through the positioning of signifiers along two axes: the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes. Saussure asserted that signs are only ever defined negatively, that is, by that which they exclude. In analyzing a syntagm, defined as “an orderly combination of interacting signifiers which forms a meaningful whole within a text” (Chandler 2007, p. 85), Saussure analyzed not only the position of the words relative to each other (syntagmatic axis) but also the range of possible substitutions for the individual words (paradigmatic axis) (Fig. 2.1). Syntagms exist over several scales; “in language, a sentence, for instance, is a syntagm of words; so too are paragraph and chapters. […] A printed advertisement is a syntagm of visual signifiers” (Chandler 2007, p. 85). Roland Barthes operationalized these axes, for example, for the “garment system” in the following way: “The paradigmatic elements are the items which cannot be worn at the same time on the same part of the body (such as hats, trousers, shoes). The syntagmatic dimension is the juxtaposition of different elements at the same time in a complete ensemble from hat to shoes” (Chandler 2007, p. 86). Thus, the options on the paradigmatic axis can be understood as mutually-exclusive interchangeable options whose composition together in the syntagmatic axis (following the given rules of the system, i.e. one does not wear a hat on one’s hand) creates a comprehensible whole, the syntagm. Linking back to the cultural geographical perspective, the Fig. 2.1 Saussure’s syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes, showing a simple syntagm with a selection of possible substitutions. Source Own work, adapted from Chandler (2007), p. 84

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cultural landscape itself can thus be understood as a syntagm, and the nested systems within it (i.e. architectural style, street names, monuments) can also be understood as syntagms. An analysis of these syntagms following Saussurean semiotic logic would involve analyzing both their position in relation to one another and questions of choice, substitution, and alternate possibilities.

2.2.3

Greimas’ Semiotic Square

A second source of structural analysis stems from the work of Algirdas Greimas, who developed the semiotic square for the examination of meaning (Chandler 2007, p. 107). The concept behind the semiotic square is the study of paired contrary signifiers in relation to each other and their contradictories. Thus, if we take the example of red (S1) and green (S2), then the contradictories would be “not red” (Not S1) and “not green” (Not S2). Greimas’ semiotic square allows a detailed examination of the range of paradigmatic possibilities, including the unvoiced contradictories, above and beyond Saussurean syntagmatic analysis.

2.2.4

Denotation, Connotation, and Orders of Signification

A final source of structural analysis is that of connotation and denotation. Chandler defines the terms as follows: “‘Denotation’ tends to be described as the definitional, literal, obvious or common-sense meaning of the sign. [… while] ‘connotation’ is used to refer to the socio-cultural and ‘personal’ associations (ideological, emotional, etc.)” (Chandler 2007, pp. 137–138). Post-modern critique (above all from Barthes) argues, however, that the neutrality posited in the concept of denotation is fiction. Since all meanings are socially agreed upon and produced, denotation must also be a form of connotation (Gottdiener 1995, Chap. 1; Chandler 2007, pp. 138–139); “from such a perspective, denotation can be seen as no more of a natural meaning than is connotation but rather a process of naturalization. Such a process leads to the powerful illusion that denotation is a purely literal and universal meaning which is not at all ideological, and indeed that those connotations which seem most obvious to individual interpreters are just as natural” (Chandler 2007, p. 139). Barthes, therefore, suggested the division of orders of signification for the analysis of the hidden narratives behind the ostensibly neutral denotation. This is achieved by dividing signification into two steps: “the first order of signification is that of denotation: at this level there is a sign consisting of a signifier and a signified. Connotation is a second order of signification which uses the denotative sign (signifier and signified) as its signifier and attaches to it an additional signified” (Chandler 2007, p. 140). Analysis according to the orders of signification allows a deeper and more contextual study of the cultural landscape by examining the deeper culturally embedded meaning of denotations. Thus, architectural styles and place names can

2.2 Semiotics as an Empirical Entry Point

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be examined not only according to their denotative characteristics but what these characteristics mean in the specific cultural and historical context.

2.3

Reading the Cultural Landscape: Decoding Spatial Symbolism in the Built Environment

If we approach the cultural landscape as a form of text, then it follows that, in order to be able to analyze it, we must identify which aspects of the city-text are relevant. Czepczyński gives a first indication of what these features might be: “the most obvious manipulations [of the cultural landscape] include forms, texts, and spatial organization. Scale or size indicates the significance and importance, forms connote historical memory and imaginations of the past, organization of space can increase or diminish certain social groups” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 49). Thus, a comprehensive analysis of the cultural landscape must include not only the identification of individual signifiers in the landscape (such as monuments, street names, or architectural styles), but also their relative positioning and presentation. Syntagmatic analysis further allows the simultaneous study of nested aspects, and thus the examination of “monuments, buildings, neighborhoods, or entire cities as symbolic texts that reflect social, economic, and political relationships of power and resistance through their aesthetics, function, layout, and scale” (Diener and Hagen 2015, p. 4).

2.3.1

Spatial Signifiers: Monuments, Street Names, and Buildings

The presentation of a selected history requires the selection of appropriate symbols which are then imprinted on the cultural landscape. These symbols range from overt to subtle and can be organized into several sub-categories. By far, the most visible and explicit form of spatial symbolism is that of memorials. Memorialization is a conscious and deliberate act which involves several layers of meaning and symbolism. Apart from location and spatial orientation, the form and size of memorials as well as any textual elements incorporated into them can be the basis for analysis. Due to their high visibility, memorials are both the most overt form of spatial symbolism and one of the most contested. The act of memorializing can fulfill a range of different functions; it can praise achievements, highlight significant citizens, or commemorate military victories, to name a few common uses. Memorials can be points, areas, or dispersed (Fig. 2.2). Street and place names form an important sub-category of memorials. Toponymy, that is, spatial naming practices, have received quite a bit of interest among new cultural geographers (Rose-Redwood et al. 2010, 2018a). Critical

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Fig. 2.2 Three forms of memorials in Berlin: point (the Marx-Engels memorial), dispersed (a Stumble Stone), and area (the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe). Source Marx-Engels Memorial: Author; Stumble stone: Thomas Quine (CC BY 2.0); Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe: Peter Kuley (CC BY-SA 3.0)

studies of place naming examine street and place naming as “a strategy of asserting sovereign authority, ideological hegemony, and symbolic power” (Rose-Redwood et al. 2018b, p. 2) through the inscription of meaning onto the backdrop of everyday life.3 Both memorials and street names represent an official sanctioning and promotion of a specific person or event and thus serve as salient indicators of officially condoned narratives and historiographies. Memorialization is, therefore, “more than a passive artifact but [is] rather a means of claiming a city’s landscape, symbolically and materially, and using the power of urban space to legitimize or de-legitimize certain worldviews and identities” (Rose-Redwood et al. 2018b, p. 5).

3

For a comprehensive examination of the history of street naming research and the changing role of street names in cultural geographical research, please see Rose-Redwood et al. (2018a), in particular Rose-Redwood et al. (2018b).

2.3 Reading the Cultural Landscape: Decoding Spatial Symbolism …

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Commemoration involves the conference of a new name or the installation of a new monument. However, the historical embeddedness of these practices sometimes also involves decommemoration: the removal or replacement of existing commemorations. Following Azaryahu, decommemoration “involves a twofold procedure. One is […] the decommemoration of heroes and events associated with and representative of the old regime. As is often the case in such circumstances, [this] is both a celebration of triumph and a mechanism for settling scores with the vanquished regime. The other is the commemoration of heroes and events representing the new regime and its vision of history. When regime change is construed in terms of restoration, commemoration may assume the form of recommemoration, namely, the reinstitution of names removed by the former regime” (Azaryahu 2018, pp. 56–57). In addition to memorials, buildings, ensembles, and architectural styles can be important symbolic aspects of the cultural landscape. If we consider architecture to be “the bodily expression of the ways of thinking, the experience, and the hierarchies of values and culture of each of the groups as well as of each individual” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 2), then architectural styles can be used to convey important messages about the identity, history, and desired future trajectory of the dominant group. Following constructivist understandings of architecture and urban planning, “the aesthetic form is never neutral—power is written into the landscape through the medium of design” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 2). This is the case for single buildings, groups of buildings conceived and built together (ensembles), and architectural styles or paradigms which are promoted through political or other channels. An analysis of individual buildings, groups of buildings, and architectural styles examines how these landscape elements “naturalize and legitimize selective visions of the past [and are] instrumental in spatializing the social boundaries of belonging and exclusion” (Rose-Redwood et al. 2018b, p. 17). In addition to stylistic considerations, the scale and position of buildings and ensembles are relevant analytical traits.

2.3.2

Spatial Syntagms: Positioning and Presenting Spatial Symbols in Cities

The signifiers described above can be interpreted both individually and relatively. The following section operationalizes the concept of the syntagm, “an orderly combination of interacting signifiers which forms a meaningful whole within a text” (Chandler 2007, p. 85), for the analysis of the cultural landscape. Cultural landscapes lack “narrative structure and the clear sense of ‘before’ and ‘after’ that this entails” (Rose-Redwood et al. 2018b, p. 8). Thus, the interpretation of syntagms in the cultural landscape must rely on either spatial relationships, historical context, or both. The spatiality of landscape elements relies primarily on how they are experienced by the observer. Visual axes are one of the most traditional ways to focus viewers’ gaze on particular facets of the landscape. Axes create highly structured

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Fig. 2.3 Visual axes control the observer’s visual consumption of a building or monument in a highly controlled and curated way. Source Author

and hierarchical spaces in which the pedestrian is reduced to the role of the subject and observer (Fig. 2.3). Spatial symbolism also relies highly on the legibility of landscapes (Lynch 1960) from the position of the pedestrian. The legibility of a space is based on several key elements, including nodes, edges, paths, districts, and landmarks (Lynch 1960; Bentley et al. 1985). Together, these features combine to create coherent spaces in which locals and visitors alike can orient themselves. Such spaces need not be homogenous in order to be legible. That is, it is not necessary for all the buildings to be of the same shape, size, height, or architectural style in order to form a coherent landscape—in fact, just the opposite may be the result. Visible landmarks can provide both orientation and a clear historiographical message. Furthermore, landscape elements’ position relative to one another can be a relevant analytical element, in particular where contested historical elements are vying for primacy. New elements can work to reduce earlier elements’ spatial and visual dominance (e.g. Fig. 2.4); a relative analysis of scale, position, and aesthetic choices can help to make the cultural struggles inherent in these decisions explicit. For all the critical potential that spatial signifiers and syntagms hold for the analysis of cultural landscapes, it is important to issue one caveat. While the acts of commemoration and construction inscribe ideological agendas onto the urban landscape (Azaryahu 2018), “physical persistence does not guarantee continued

2.3 Reading the Cultural Landscape: Decoding Spatial Symbolism …

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Fig. 2.4 New construction attempts to dilute the dominance of earlier symbolic structures, here in the example of Warsaw. Source Author

resonance, or that a site will continue to be used in that way that its creators intended” (Jordan 2006, p. 60). Spatial symbolism can be altered, sometimes dramatically, through symbolic, narrative, discursive, and spatial recontextualization of varying degrees. In addition, the role of the urban landscape as both a technology of political and normative power and the banal backdrop of daily life may rob these symbols of their desired effect; in the example of street names, “all the commemorative posturing of the ruling elites may lose much of its force when we consider that street names often become empty signifiers to many urban residents who use them as spatial identifiers on a daily basis but may not know, or care, who or what has been commemorated in a street name” (Rose-Redwood et al. 2018b, p. 8). This has, however, not hindered political actors in using the urban landscape as a tool for expressing national identities and agendas.

2.4 2.4.1

Space as a Political Good: National Spaces, National Narratives The Politicization of Symbolic Space

Cultural landscapes, and specifically urban cultural landscapes, have long been instrumentalized as a political technology for the normalization of national

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narratives and agendas. In this context, space is a political and symbolic good, through whose use a selected past or mythos is normalized through presentation and representation in the landscape. There are two main reasons for symbolic spatial appropriation: cultural domination and territorial establishment. The inscription of symbolic capital represents a powerful form of cultural domination, following Lefebvre’s claim that “one of the consistent ways to limit the economic and political rights of groups has been to constrain social reproduction by limiting access to space” (Lefebvre 1974, p. 22). Furthermore, the spatiality of symbolic capital can additionally establish the boundaries of a group’s sphere of influence, since “urban space has a symbolic dimension, as the built environment projects messages about who, historically and in the present, should be entitled to feel at home in it” (Strom 2001). If we understand the cultural landscape as “a unique composition that represents the relationships of powers and history in a system of signs, written in many layers, reflecting aesthetic, political, ethical, economic, infrastructural, legal and many other elements” (Czepczyński 2010, p. 17), then the interpretation of these signs will grant us insight into the relative power relations of the actors in charge of imbuing the urban landscape with symbolic meaning and their conceptualization of their respective national narratives, as “both architectural and urban planning, both designs and ordinary buildings, offer privileged instances for understanding how power operates” (Foucault, quoted in Guy 2004, p. 77). The majority of symbolic spaces are developed by urban planners with the help of architects and artists (Lefebvre 1974, p. 38). Therefore, the creation of symbolic space represents a highly politicized process led by a small group of powerful actors. Intentionally planned symbolic spaces often serve to mass-produce traditions by legitimizing the worldview of the administration responsible for planning (Hobsbawm 1992; Azaryahu 1997); “from this perspective, urban identity becomes a product of deliberate selection processes by urban elites and governments in order to create the intended narrative or story” (Tölle 2010, p. 349). The commemoration of space through the naming of places and consecration of memorials and the decommemoration of space through the replacement of existing names and the removal of monuments therefore represents a form of ideological domination through spatial domination (De Soto 1996; Azaryahu 1997; Rose-Redwood et al. 2010). In this way, planning, architecture, and urban development become inherently political acts, imbuing the landscape with political and symbolic meaning. These acts select an appropriate version of historical events to portray as “the” past by selecting from among the many possible historical discourses (Wodak 1994). In this respect, “the” past is a subjective selection, a politicized ideology, and a discursive process. The introduction of these ideologies into the landscape normalizes them and allows the politically selected historical narrative to become part of the “natural order” through “a process of formalization and ritualization, characterized by reference to the past, if only by imposing repetition” (Hobsbawm 1992, p. 4). In this way, official symbolic spaces say just as much about what should be remembered as what should be ignored (Altrock et al. 2010).

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Naming and describing, in the formal sense, therefore define the structure that the social world (may) have (Bourdieu 1992). Consequently, officially implemented symbolic spaces serve in the construction of social reality through their solidification and presentation of a selected historiography (Bourdieu 1992; Altrock et al. 2010); “the past serves and legitimizes open political goals, or supports a specific genealogical or teleological representation of history or simply reinforces the dominant political culture” (De Soto 1996, p. 45). Indeed, the selection of one historiography at the expense of all others emphasizes the legitimacy of the dominant cultural group and simultaneously the illegitimacy of all other groups and viewpoints; “the results of these […] struggles have a direct bearing on whose vision of ‘reality’ will appear to matter socially, since landscapes are not just the products of social power but also tools or resources for achieving it” (Rose-Redwood et al. 2010, pp. 462–463). The topographic ascription of symbolic capital is therefore an act of power and cultural control through which some groups and individuals have the authority to name while others do not (Rose-Redwood et al. 2010). In this respect, place making can be seen as an act of cultural dominance (Bourdieu 1992) through the topographical inscription of a selected past, and the resulting canonization and normalization of hegemonic political power (Azaryahu 1997, 2011). This power is exerted by the dominant cultural group; “dominant class fractions, whose power rests on economic capital, aim to impose the legitimacy of their domination […] through their own symbolic production” (Bourdieu 1992, p. 168). This is of particular importance in the contexts of colonialism and post-colonialism (Yeoh 1992, 1996; McBride 1999; Horanr 2002; Saldanha and Keynes 2002; Whelan 2002; Weber et al. 2003; Glasco 2010), but also belonging (Århem 1998), norming and control (Berg and Kearns 1996), and the conceptualization and presentation of history (Azaryahu and Kellerman 1999; Alderman 2003; Swart 2008; Georgiou 2010). The selection, representation, and canonization of a selective historical narrative form a discursive practice set in motion by one or more powerful actors and furthered by other lesser distributors (e.g. mass media, professionals, and academics) (Altrock et al. 2010). These powerful actors are legitimate representatives of the dominant power, and, following Bourdieu’s division of specialized labor, are vested with a power to signify symbolic power and capital (Bourdieu 1992); they are “legitimate speaker(s), authorized to speak and to speak with authority” (Bourdieu 1992, p. 41). The distinction of one or more legitimate speakers excludes the legitimacy of all other speakers in a self-reinforcing cycle: the legitimate speakers support the dominance of the dominant group, and the dominant group supports the legitimate speakers’ claims to legitimacy. As a political act, the power to ascribe meaning and historiography onto space is a fundamental resource for expressing national identity. Benedict Anderson, in his groundbreaking exegesis on nationalism, describes nations as “imagined political communit[ies]” (Anderson 2006). The concept of a nation, he argues, exists in contraposition to imperialist Cartesian notions of sovereignty backed by military power and empires based on the disposal over land, capital, and labor (Cosgrove 1998; Anderson 2006), paralleling the concept of the cultural landscape as “a

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story… [people] tell themselves about themselves” (Geertz 1973, p. 448) and dovetailing with the concepts of relative space and post-modernism discussed earlier. Thus, the creation of cultural landscapes is “intimately linked with competing efforts among various cultural and political movements to embed specific identities, especially narratives of national identity, into the built environment” (Diener and Hagen 2015, pp. 4–5). Ernest Gellner, in his earlier work on the subject, additionally argues that “nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist” (Gellner 1965, p. 168); such constructs require symbolic and narrative vehicles for the creation and maintenance of hegemonic power and the development of “deep, horizontal comradeship” (Anderson 2006) between their citizens. Following Huyssen, “the main concern of the nineteenth-century nation-states was to mobilize and monumentalize national and universal pasts so as to legitimize and give meaning to the present and to envision the future: culturally, politically, socially” (Huyssen 2003, p. 2), a tradition which continues today. Symbolic spaces play a significant role in these struggles, as “the urban landscape serves as a text for symbolizing and transmitting specific visions of national identity” (Diener and Hagen 2015, p. 5).

2.4.2

National Symbols: Cultural Landscapes of the Cold War East

Thus, the cultural landscape has become the battlefield on which the fights about meaning, history, and identity are fought. At no time was this more apparent than during the Cold War, when the cultural landscape was instrumentalized as a weapon in the battle for “hearts and minds.” The creation of a symbolic landscape saturated with either democratic or socialist architecture, street names, and monuments was imperative on both sides of the Iron Curtain as a way to naturalize the respective political hegemony and dominant ideology. On the eastern side of the Iron Curtain, “communist regimes and their leaders [actively used] ideological ‘place making,’ based on the creation of significant structures and coding ideas into architectural shapes. Communism celebrated the city and its landscape as the ultimate expression of political life and national spirit” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 19). In order to create a common identity, socialist states developed and deployed a canon of selected symbols, people, events, and memories (Gellner 1965; Hobsbawm 1992; Anderson 2006; Czepczyński 2008); these included both allegoric abstract concepts such as revolution and the Party and specific people, including Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and a cadre of “lesser saints” such as military leaders and martyrs to the cause (Czepczyński 2008, pp. 64–65). In their search for a historical narrative to legitimize the socialist and communist state, political actors “incorporated almost all leftist, social democratic, socialist and workers’ rights traditions, heroes and heritages. They assimilated all the 19th and

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20th century protagonists and activists as theirs” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 71). Place naming followed a hierarchical schema in which the most important places, squares, and streets were named for the most important concepts and people (Czepczyński 2008, p. 71). But above and beyond simple commemoration, the built form of the cultural landscape itself became a vehicle for ideology; “landscape was an important tool for empowering the communist rulers. Forms, functions and meanings of urban landscape appeared to be the perfect medium to communicate the relationship of powers, as well as the new aesthetics and styles. Landscape was also monumental, vast and relatively easily understood by the masses. State socialism was characterized by a general ideologization of practically every aspect of social life, and there was no exception of urban and cultural landscape” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 63). Similar to the naming of streets and placement of monuments, centrality was a dominant organizing principle with cities at the top of the hierarchy, and the city center as the most symbolically and politically important space in the socialist cosmos (Pugh 2014). Socialist ideology and cultural landscape were fundamentally connected in socialist thought (Czepczyński 2008, p. 60); “there was a strong structuralist belief that social and living conditions create the individual, his or her personality and value system” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 63). Under the motto that “cities make people” (Jackenkroll 2008), the built landscape of socialist cities was intended to embody and engender socialism, a strategy made possible through the practical elimination of private property ownership and state control of the building economy. This led to landscapes characterized by a fundamental cognitive dissonance. Many of the declared goals of socialism can be described as egalitarian and humanist (i.e. equal rights, equal distribution of resources); however, in practice, socialism in Central and Eastern Europe often employed tactics of terror, oppression, and a curtailment of basic rights (Czepczyński 2008, p. 61). These characteristics also marked the cultural landscapes created under this regime, which can be both interpreted as both totalitarian and egalitarian; “socialist architecture and landscapes [were] created in relation to both aspects of socialism: the humanist ideology of helping the poor and the Marxist oppression machine” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 64). The humanist aspects of the landscape included housing, cultural and sporting facilities, social infrastructure, and schools while the totalitarian aspects of the landscape were characterized by overwhelming demonstrative political landscapes, including spaces for rallies and marches and oversized political buildings (Czepczyński 2008). Furthermore, under socialist rule, space was divided into a strict dichotomy of good and bad. “Good” spaces were linked with progress, the future, and the Party and included “grand socialist designs and constructions, industry, infrastructure, and housing” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 65). Pre-socialist spaces and those representing earlier capitalist, religious or imperial regimes, on the other hand, were categorized as “bad.” In addition to active neglect of the spaces of pre-war capitalism and aristocracy, acts of cultural iconoclasm such as demolition, above all of imperial and religious structures, were not uncommon (Czepczyński 2008; Bartetzky 2010).

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Fig. 2.5 Socialist classicism in Berlin. Source Author

Common spatial typologies in socialist cities included central grand squares and boulevards, usually proximate to the party headquarters, for marches and rallies, made possible by the lack of land rent and the state control of planning and construction (Czepczyński 2008, pp. 65, 71–72). The Stalinist era saw the construction of representative and hierarchical landscapes characterized by socialist classicism (Fig. 2.5), which gave way to industrial construction methods during the Khrushchev era. Post-Stalinist building embraced the International Style and constructivist and functionalist slab construction (Czepczyński 2008), and a wave of inter-socialist iconoclasm wiped Stalin’s name and likeness from the cultural landscape. While many of the physical structures constructed on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain aesthetically paralleled those being constructed simultaneously in the west, “this landscape was socialist mainly because of the ideological texts attached to almost every project. Virtually everything was or was supposed to be socialist in meaning. […] There was very little room, if any, for neutrality in social life, language, culture and cultural landscape under socialism. […] Forms, functions and meanings reflected national hopes and aspirations, powers and fears, together with ambitions and limitations” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 107).

2.5 Post-socialist Symbolism: Nation-Building After 1989/1990

2.5

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Post-socialist Symbolism: Nation-Building After 1989/ 1990

The period 1989/1990 marked a significant turning point in Euro-American history. The collapse of socialism profoundly changed the global order and ushered in a range of changes in Eastern Europe. Economic reorganization throughout the former eastern bloc countries was underpinned by fundamental symbolic restructuring; signs of the former regime were cleared away to make way for capitalism, democracy, and the free market. These changes took many forms, from street names to urban planning. While national variations exist, the symbolic restructuring of post-socialist and post-communist space can be grouped into three main types: the removal of icons of the former regime, the reframing of extant structures often too large or prominent to change, and the creation of new symbols and structures.4 Many authors have written about symbolic landscape cleansing in post-socialist cities (Andrusz et al. 1996; i.e. Foote et al. 2000; Light et al. 2002). The first symbols to be remediated were those which were the most overt: monuments and street names. Post-socialist political iconoclasm involved the rapid and widespread renaming of streets and removal of monuments; the more steeped in socialist iconography and ideology, the more pressing the need for removal. Due to the socialist era concentration on the centrality of the most important names and icons, this amounted to nothing less than the symbolic reformatting of the largest, most central, and most important structures in the city. Outright demolition of buildings was more seldom, and subject to their ability to be recontextualized and reused (Czepczyński 2008, p. 123); usually only those fundamentally imbued with socialist ideology (especially buildings which had housed political organs) needed to be removed. The decision to demolish or reuse was dependent on a range of factors, “not only on its subject matter but also […] on its location and compatibility with current projects” (Bartetzky 2010, p. 57). Monuments or buildings which could not be demolished for one reason or another were often spatially recontextualized, either through the creation of new symbolism in the immediate vicinity or the removal of the offending symbol to a more peripheral location (Bartetzky 2010, p. 58). Large central buildings, in particular Stalinist “palaces,” remain the topic of heated debates (for example in Warsaw, Fig. 2.4), as the sheer scale of these buildings does not lend itself to speedy remediation and many have since become integrated into city branding schemes due to their high visibility and centrality. In addition to the removal of socialist icons, the remediation of post-socialist landscapes is characterized by a complex relationship with pre-socialist history.

4

These tendencies were shared both in nation-building processes in existing post-socialist nationstates like Poland, where these acts were chiefly concerned with reinterpretation, and in newly created nation-states like Bosnia and Serbia, where these acts primarily focused on differentiation. This book and the following discussion focus on the former. For more information on the latter, please see for example Pavlaković (2012a, b, 2013).

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Street names were often reverted to their pre-socialist commemorations. Similarly, post-socialist countries also saw an upswing in the reconstruction of buildings and ensembles which had been demolished during the socialist era (Diener and Hagen 2015; Bartetzky 2017) and a revival of historicist and “nationalist” architecture styles. The reconstruction of historic buildings in post-socialist countries did not involve the restoration of the building with all of its original flaws and problems, but rather much more the construction of an idealized version of the original building. As such, these (re)constructions can be understood as a form of simulacra, “copies of originals that […] perhaps never existed in the first place” (Soja 2014, p. 101). The reconstruction of significant historical buildings is often framed as the victory over humiliating cultural debasement during foreign rule and the restoration of the proper, interrupted course of historical events (Bartetzky 2017); this is particularly true in post-socialist countries. The reconstruction of single buildings and the promotion of historicist and nationalist architectural styles serve to strengthen the national consciousness by normalizing these structures and their associated ideologies and historiographies in the built landscape. Especially in countries which have experienced repeated foreign domination (e.g. Poland, following Bartetzky 2017), these tendencies act as the built proof of a long, national tradition and serve to legitimize the fledgling nation-state’s political agenda. In post-socialist cities, reconstruction canonizes a specific history before socialist times which represents a period before the “interruption” of normalcy began, and bridges the gap through the simulation of continuation in the built environment. Even when the ostensible motive for reconstruction is the reversal of destruction, these plans have often meant the demolition of buildings which were constructed during socialist times (Bartetzky 2017). Such projects can be clearly understood as historically revisionist. These acts of historical correction through the remediation of the built space and symbolic landscape are based on “the reflective or mimetic approach to representation, derived from the belief that meaning remains in the objects, places and buildings in the real world” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 115). Through the removal of socialist street names and the re-creation of demolished buildings, the “interruption” of socialism could be replaced with a simulated continuity with earlier historical periods. The bent toward reconstruction is a symptom of a more fundamental identity crisis among post-socialist nation-states, which have frequently and forcefully realigned themselves with the West, Europe, and the EU in their search for historical continuity: this reorientation to the West is a key force behind discourses of political identity which attempt a ‘Europeanisation’ of these countries, particularly through a particular representation of their histories … In almost all cases the making of post-socialist national identities has been based on a noisy rejection of the socialist past and a search for new models. This is often accompanied by (yet another) process of historical revisionism which seeks to overturn the ‘distortion’ of history during the socialist period, by establishing a ‘return’ to an earlier historical trajectory which was ‘interrupted’ by the ‘aberration’ of four or more decades of state socialism. Often this involves the rediscovery and reassertion of a European heritage […] In other cases it entails the harking back to a former ‘golden age’ of national greatness (Young and Light 2001, pp. 947–948).

2.5 Post-socialist Symbolism: Nation-Building After 1989/1990

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Thus, the new orientation of post-socialist national narratives involves both curated remembering and active forgetting, with “resistance to [socialism as] merely the most recent example of nationalist struggle against repressive rulers or foreign subjugation” (Diener and Hagen 2015, p. 3). The fate of the symbols of the socialist era can thus be interpreted as a type of “‘litmus paper’ indicating the fears, ambitions, and aspirations of post-socialist societies” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 182). However, despite their “noisy rejections of the socialist past,” post-socialist cultural landscapes are characterized most of all by ambiguity: they remain bound to the past both through the contextual “post” and the remaining socialist traces on the urban palimpsest. Despite the fact that many street names, monuments, and prominent buildings have been removed or replaced, “tangible and symbolic reminders of the socialist experience permeate the urban landscape, complicating efforts to solidify new official narratives” (Diener and Hagen 2015, p. 15). Forty years of socialist symbolic accretion could not be obliterated in a few short years and, after the most central and significant icons had been remediated and the revolutionary and reactive fervor had given way to more quotidian woes, the high costs of the removal of less ideologically burdened names and structures became more difficult to justify. Even more than this, in some ways what is absent says more than what is present, as “empty pedestals and former sites of monuments […] silently speak of ‘the recent past’” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 125). Although cities try to create a consensual and all-inclusive narrative, these efforts are complicated by the presence of other identities (Diener and Hagen 2015, p. 3) and the “burdensome meaning of communism […] left deeply coded into both external and internal structure of urban landscapes” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 114). The transitory and ambiguous nature of post-socialist cultural landscapes lends them to analysis through the lens of liminality (Czepczyński 2008, pp. 113–114). The post-socialist cultural landscape as a liminal landscape is in the process of recontextualization, reinterpretation, and physical and mental reconstruction. The lasting ambiguity and indeterminacy of the contextualization of remaining symbols in the new system of signification indicates that the transition to the post-liminal phase, in which the division between old and new becomes less significant and eventually disappears, has not yet occurred. Thus, post-socialist cultural landscapes “are liminal in an essential sense of the word: not socialist anymore, but still not truly liberated from the old traumatic and totalitarian burdens, […] sandwiched in between things they want to remember and things they would be happy to forget” (Czepczyński 2008, p. 182). Furthermore, Czepczyński links the liminality of post-socialist cultural landscapes to the concepts of polyphonic memory and Pierre Nora’s Lieux de Mémoire (Nora 1989; Czepczyński 2008). The national identity crisis following the revolutions of 1989/1990 unleashed a wide range of changes to the cultural landscapes which had been shaped during the socialist era. However, as already discussed, these spaces were not just the political infrastructure of the dominant hegemony, but also the landscapes of everyday life. Post-socialist cities’ cultural landscapes thus echo with lost features, lieux de mémoire perdu, which collide in the overlapping

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spatialities of biographical and officially condoned memory. This cognitive dissonance between official historiography and narrative and individual memories contributes to the ambiguity of post-socialist landscapes and undermines sometimes heavy-handed official historical revision. In cases where the symbolic reinterpretation seems to come from outside, it can additionally lead to resistance and disaffection among the post-socialist population, a case which will be examined in depth in later chapters of this book.

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