Risen From Ruins: The Cultural Politics of Rebuilding East Berlin

Abstract

Paul Stangl’s Risen from Ruins offers an in-depth study of East Berlin’s reconstruction in the first decade after World War II. In 1945, much of the city had been destroyed by a combination of allied bombs and street fighting. Almost immediately, the city’s new administrators began to rebuild the ruined Nazi capital as a modern city reflecting the new ideological priorities of a socialist state. Stangl captures the combination of openness, excitement and frustration that marked the architectural rebuilding process in these years, revealing the complex processes that belie the simplicity of Socialist Realist theory. The book is divided into six chapters, which move from questions of commemoration through city plans, and then discuss several sites in depth, including the monumental architecture of Unter den Linden and the attempts to produce a new city centre featuring a combination of broad boulevards and housing on the Stalinallee. Each chapter follows a similar format, beginning with an historical introduction to the particular location and then taking the reader chronologically through the debates of the 1940s and 1950s. This structure means that Stangl’s book will be quite useful for teaching purposes and can also serve as a reference book of sorts. It bears mentioning here that sometimes Stangl’s recounting of these debates can lack a degree of signposting and framing, which will make it hard for the non-expert reader to grasp the significance of the questions that architects, urban planners and government officials were wrangling over. Yet Stangl rewards careful readers by offering nuggets of new information or telling anecdotes on nearly every page.