Paul Stangl. Risen from Ruins

The history of twentieth-century Berlin provides a source of endless fascination. This latest volume adds to the already significant body of literature on the politics of the city’s built environment, most specifically that of East Berlin between 1945 and the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The first line of East Germany’s national anthem provides an apt title and indicates the central theme of Paul Stangl’s investigation: “Risen from ruins, and facing the future . . . ” At the heart of Risen from Ruins: The Cultural Politics of Rebuilding East Berlin are thus questions concerning the intersection between past, present, and future architectural traditions, political regimes and associated symbolisms, as well as urgent housing needs. Stangl frames his study by outlining two key approaches relating to collective memory. First, he argues that his work is distinct through the “spatialization of memory,” in which he claims to examine a...

Aesthetics · Anthem · Art · Art history · Collective memory · East-Central Europe · Economic history · Media studies · Period (music) · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spatialization · Theme (computing) · Anthropology · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies