Shattered spaces: Encountering Jewish ruins in postwar Germany and Poland
ruin, ruine, Jewish, juif, World War II, Seconde Guerre Mondiale, post-war, après-guerre, histoire urbaine, tourisme, mémoire, patrimoine urbain, Meng Michael, Germany, Allemagne, Poland, Pologne
<div><b>Abstract from the publisher:</b></div>
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After the Holocaust, the empty, silent spaces of bombed-out synagogues, cemeteries, and Jewish districts were all that was left in many German and Polish cities with prewar histories rich in the sights and sounds of Jewish life. What happened to this scarred landscape after the war, and how have Germans, Poles, and Jews encountered these ruins over the past sixty years?<br />
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In the postwar period, city officials swept away many sites, despite protests from Jewish leaders. But in the late 1970s church groups, local residents, political dissidents, and tourists demanded the preservation of the few ruins still standing. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, this desire to preserve and restore has grown stronger. In one of the most striking and little-studied shifts in postwar European history, the traces of a long-neglected Jewish past have gradually been recovered, thanks to the rise of heritage tourism, nostalgia for ruins, international discussions about the Holocaust, and a pervasive longing for cosmopolitanism in a globalizing world.<br />
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Examining this transformation from both sides of the Iron Curtain, Michael Meng finds no divided memory along West-East lines, but rather a shared memory of tensions and paradoxes that crosses borders throughout Central Europe. His narrative reveals the changing dynamics of the local and the transnational, as Germans, Poles, Americans, and Israelis confront a built environment that is inevitably altered with the passage of time. Shattered Spaces exemplifies urban history at its best, uncovering a surprising and moving postwar story of broad contemporary interest.</div>
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<b>Michael Meng</b> is Assistant Professor of History at Clemson University.</div>
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Michael Meng
Harvard University Press
November 2011
368
Ouvrage
The transatlantic collapse of urban renewal : Postwar urbanism from New York to Berlin
post-war, après-guerre, twentieth century, vingtième siècle, renouvellement urbain, histoire de l'urbanisme, aménagement urbain, politique urbaine, Klemek Christopher
<div><b>Abstract from the publisher : </b></div> </div> The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal examines how postwar thinkers from both sides of the Atlantic considered urban landscapes radically changed by the political and physical realities of sprawl, urban decay, and urban renewal. With a sweep that encompasses New York, London, Berlin, Philadelphia, and Toronto, among others, Christopher Klemek traces changing responses to the challenging issues that most affected the lives of the world’s cities. <br /> <br /> In the postwar decades, the principles of modernist planning came to be challenged—in the grassroots revolts against the building of freeways through urban neighborhoods, for instance, or by academic critiques of slum clearance policy agendas—and then began to collapse entirely. Over the 1960s, several alternative views of city life emerged among neighborhood activists, New Left social scientists, and neoconservative critics. Ultimately, while a pessimistic view of urban crisis may have won out in the United States and Great Britain, Klemek demonstrates that other countries more successfully harmonized urban renewal and its alternatives. This much anticipated book provides one of the first truly international perspectives on issues central to historians and planners alike, making it essential reading for anyone engaged with either field.</div> </div> <b>Christopher Klemek </b>is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at George Washington University.</div> </div>
Christopher Klemek
University of Chicago Press
July 2011
328
Ouvrage