Ruin, Restoration, and Return: Aesthetic Unification in Post-Socialist East Berlin.

Abstract

This dissertation addresses the transformation of specific public spaces in eastern Berlin after 1990. The underlying question of this study is: Why do some GDR-era structures still stand in post-Wall Berlin, while others were demolished? Memory, politics, symbolism, and financial considerations all play a role in answering this question. In this dissertation, I examine the political decision-making processes involved in determining the fate of particular built spaces in the German capital. In so doing, I analyze how history, memory, and identity figure into the reappropriation of the sites across time. In addition, I address how the visual environment of these sites affects decisions about their future. That is, in addition to staking out the historical and political significance of the sites, I ask what role optic experience in the urban landscape plays in the moment of political upheaval and transition. I argue that ultimately the aesthetic unification of Berlin is a goal which parallels the political integration process during the post-Wall period. I take as examples in this study two locations in eastern Berlin: the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park and the Schlossplatz in Berlin-Mitte. The city of Berlin and federal German government not only saved the former, but renovated it in the 2000s. Demolition of the Palace of the Republic, which was located on the latter, began in 2006 after years of standing vacant. In comparing these two public spaces, I argue that the Soviet War Memorial remains today, not least because of the constraints of a German-Russian treaty, but rather because of the way the memorial grounds visually figure into its surroundings. Alternatively, the construction and later dismantling of the Palace of the Republic are part of a longer history of attempting to create an optically cohesive Berlin center. As I will show, these undertakings recuperate past German unifications while they reconstruct the fragments of 1989.