East Berlin, 1945--1961: Ideology, politics, identity, and the urban landscape (Germany)

This dissertation examines how ideology, political practice, and concepts of identity factored into communist political leaders' planning, material alteration, social use and representation of Berlin's urban landscape during the period between 1945 and 1961. Landscape has a dual physical and symbolic nature, which enables it to provide a meaningful context for social activity ranging from the mundane to the ceremonial and to act as a repository of collective memory, a bearer of identities. German communists were keenly interested in utilizing this potential for landscape to act as a communicational resource. They effaced sites that were incompatible with their ideology and worldview, attempted to reinterpret historic sites in Berlin to correspond to their ideology and worldview, inscribed their versions of history and visions of contemporary society on other sites, and cultivated the urban landscape as a supportive context for mass demonstrations that reiterated their beliefs and goals. Much of this was celebrated in the mass press to reach a wider audience and reinforce the messages through repetition.; Sites that had acquired similar cultural meanings were often treated in similar ways, although nuances of identity could lead to considerably different responses. There were also similarities and variations in the interpretation of identities of particular sites through time; changes in political context and ideological shifts within political parties prompted shifts in the way places were interpreted and treated. There are four periods in the practice of urban landscape interpretation and use during the period of time covered in this study, during each of these, German communists approached the urban landscape in distinct ways as a result of their mediating between ideological convictions and immediate political concerns.