Abstract
Images of the socialist city
Highlights
The representation of the city in picturebooks is by no means a recent phenomenon
With the economic development of the modern city, showing an increase in traffic, new forms of advertisement, and huge construction activity, an aesthetic incentive was given to mirror this new reality in picturebooks addressed to a bourgeois audience
After the Great War, the depiction of the big city was heavily influenced by avantgarde aesthetics
Summary
The representation of the city in picturebooks is by no means a recent phenomenon. With the economic development of the modern city, showing an increase in traffic, new forms of advertisement, and huge construction activity, an aesthetic incentive was given to mirror this new reality in picturebooks addressed to a bourgeois audience. Kai og Anne i den store By (1933) by Otto Gelsted and Karen Lis Jacobsen (Illus.) and Pers første Bog (1943) by Torben Gregersen and Karen Lis Jacobsen (Illus.) While these books draw a positive picture of the modern city, emphasizing progress and steady development, they were often produced by critics of the capitalist society. The reconstruction of the cities went hand in hand with ideological aims of the Soviet occupation force and the Socialist Unity Party (SED), which wanted to create the «socialist city» along with the «new man» Against this backdrop, it is remarkable that several picturebooks in the 1950s showed ruins and enormous dumps, alongside rubble trains and (mostly female) workers, while, with depictions of cranes and new construction sites, giving hope for the quick restoration of the cities. To which extent this visual culture was specific for the GDR or similar to respective enterprises in other communist countries, is a question for future comparative research
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
