Abstract
The post-Second World War period was a golden age of New Towns. Throughout Europe and the United States and beyond, in the Middle East, Australia, and Asia, New Towns were a campaign to construct—literally—a completely new world.1 All these projects shared a utopian rhetoric and conception, the imagery of the marvelous. In Eastern Europe, this utopian archetype was imagined as the Socialist City. The ideal Socialist City, built from scratch, was the experimental arena for a new society, one in which harmony and happiness would reign.2 Some 60 “New Towns” appeared in the Eastern Bloc countries along with hundreds in the Soviet Union. For the most part, they have been written off by scholars as worker dormitories at steel plants and oil refinery sites. And indeed the New Towns were the flagships of the Five-Year Plans. They were linked to the development of heavy industry. However their ideological and symbolic content was enormous. As political ciphers, they became almost as important as the Red Flag. They were conceived as complete, coherent urban places and imagined as “splendid living environments, economically and culturally, that would promote the collective life of mankind.”3 This “concern for mankind” was transmitted in the housing, schools, parks and recreation facilities, and houses of culture. Here were all the prerequisites of the new socialist man. In response to this rhetoric, discussions about these ideal Socialist cities during the Cold War years also focused on their distinct characteristics. What made them “socialist” was an analytical device for delineating the ideological differences between the two Blocs, especially the assertion that city planning was “based on the philosophical tenets of Marxism-Leninism.”4
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
See Arnold Bartetzky and Marc Schalenberg, eds., Urban Planning and the Pursuit of Happiness: European Variations on a Universal Theme (18th–21st Centuries) (Berlin: Jovis, 2009); and
Robert H. Kargon and Arthur P. Molella, Invented Edens: Techno-Cities of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA and London, UK: MIT Press, 2008).
Cor Wagenaar, ed., Happy Cities and Public Happiness in Post-War Europe (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers/Architecturalia, 2004).
Grundsätze des Städtebaus (Berlin, 1950), quoted in Michel Grésillon, “Les villes nouvelles en République Démocratique Allemande. Problèmes d’intégration,” L’Espace géographique 7, no.1 (1978): 27–34, 32.
Jack C. Fisher, “Planning the City of Socialist Man,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 28, no.4 (1962): 251–65, 251.
Jack Wawrzynski, “New Towns Concept in Poland,” in Learning from Other Countries: The Cross-National Dimension in Urban Policy-Making, ed. Ian Masser and R.H. Williams (Norwich, UK: Geo Books, 1986), 115–24. See also
David M. Smith, “The Socialist City,” in Cities After Socialism: Urban and Regional Change and Conflict in Post-Socialist Societies, ed. Gregory Andrusz, Michael Harloe, and Ivan Szelenyi (Cambridge, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1996), 70–99.
This point is also made by Christoph Bernhardt, “Planning Urbanization and Urban Growth in the Socialist Period: The Case of East German New Towns,” Journal of Urban History 32, no.1 (2005): 104–119.
See the excellent discussion by Jay Rowell, “Du grand ensemble au ‘complexe d’habitation socialiste’. Les enjeux de l’importation d’une forme urbaine en RDA,” in Le monde des grands ensembles: France, Allemagne, Pologne, Russie, République Tchèque, Bulgarie, Algérie, Corée du Sud, Iran, Italie, Afrique du Sud, ed. Frédéric Dufaux and Annie Fourcaut (Paris: Editions CREAPHIS, 2004), 97–107. See also
Andreas Schätzke, “Nach dem Exil. Architekten im Westen und im Osten Deutschlands,” in Grammatik sozialistischer Architekturen. Lesarten historischer Städtebauforschung zur DDR, ed. Holger Barth, Ingrid Apolinarski, and Harald Bodenschatz (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2001), 267–278.
The New Town of Schwedt would also fulfil this function. Ökonomisches Forschungsinstitut der Staatlichen Plankommission, Planung der Volkswirtschaft in der DDR (Berlin: Verlag Die Wirtschaft, 1970), 191; cited in William H. Berentsen, “Regional Change in the German Democratic Republic,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 71, no.1 (1981): 50–66, 54
For a comparison of Stalinstadt and Nowa Huta, see Ingrid Apolinarski and Christoph Bernhadt, “Entwicklungslogiken sozialistischer Planstädte am Beispiel von Eisenhüttenstadt und Nova Huta,” in Grammatik Sozialistischer Architekturen, ed. Barth, pp. 51–65. On Nowa Huta, see Bołeslaw Janus, “Labor’s Paradise: Family, Work, and Home in Nowa Huta, Poland, 1950–1960,” East European Quarterly 33, no. 4 (2000): 253–274.
Ruth May, “Planned City Stalinstadt: A Manifesto of the Early German Democratic Republic,” Planning Perspectives 18 (2003): 47–78. See also
May, Planstadt Stalinstadt: ein Grundriss der frühen DDR, aufgesucht in Eisenhüttenstadt (Dortmund: IRPUD, 1999).
Eric Mumford, “CIAM and the Communist Bloc, 1928–1959,” The Journal of Architecture 14, no.2 (2009): 237–254.
See Kurt W. Leucht, Die erste neue Stadt in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. Planungsgrundlagen und -ergebnisse von Stalinstadt (Berlin: VEB Verlag Technik, 1957).
On the role of the city center in socialist utopian planning, see Elisabeth Knauer-Romani, Eisenhüttenstadt und die Idealstadt des 20. Jahrhunderts (Weimar: Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 2000), 89–108.
Dagmara Jajeśniak-Quast, “Ein lokaler ‘Rat für gegenseitige Wirtschaftshilfe’: Eisenhüttenstadt, Kraków Nowa Huta und Ostrava Kunčice,” in Sozialistische Städte zwischen Herrschaft und Selbstbehauptung. Kommunalpolitik, Stadtplanung und Alltag in der DDR, ed. Christoph Bernhardt and Heinz Reif (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2009), 95–114, 99.
For a comparison of East European steel towns, see Dagmara Jajeśniak-Quast, “In the Shadow of the Factory: Steel Towns in Postwar Eastern Europe,” in Urban Machinery: Inside Modern European Cities, ed. Mikael Hård and Thomas J. Misa (Cambridge, MA and London, UK: MIT Press, 2008), 187–210.
Heinz Colditz and Martin Lücke, Stalinstadt. Neues Leben—Neue Menschen, vol. 1 (Berlin: Kongress Verlag, 1958). All translations are my own.
Iris Grund, ed., Selman Selmanagić. Festgabe zum 80. Geburtstag am 25. April 1985 (Berlin: Kunsthochschule Berlin, 1984), 44.
Philipp Springer, Verbaute Träume. Herrschaft, Stadtentwicklung und Lebensrealität in der sozialistischen Industriestadt Schwedt, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2006), 199–200.
Kurt Liebknecht in Deutsche Architektur 4, no. 2 (1955): 56; and Liebknecht, “Die Wissenschaft im Dienste der Industrialisierung des Bauwesens,” Deutsche Architektur 5, no. 3 (1956): 103–105.
Kurt Leucht, “Die Industrialisierung gibt uns die Generalperspektive,” Deutsche Architektur 5, no.4 (1956): 153–54.
Ulrich Wilken, “Probleme des Städtebund Wohnungsbaus in Belgien und Holland,” Deutsche Architektur 6, no. 1 (1957): 27–30.
Hans Mucke, “Industrieller Wohnungsbau in Frankreich,” Deutsche Architektur 6, no. 6 (1957): 342–345.
On this point, see Miles Glendinning, “Cold-War Conciliation: International Architectural Congresses in the late 1950s and early 1960s,” Journal of Architecture 14, no. 2 (2009): 197–217. On the increase in the exchange of ideas with Western European planners see also
Thomas Topfstedt, “Die nachgeholte Moderne. Architektur und Städtebau in der DDR während der 50er und 60er Jahre,” in Städtebau und Staatsbau im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper and Hiltrud Kier (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1996), 39–54.
Richard Paulick, “Hoyerswerda—eine sozialistische Stadt der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik,” Deutsche Architektur 9, no. 7 (1960): 365.
Wolfgang Thöner and Peter Müller, eds., Bauhaus-Tradition und DDR-Moderne. Der Architekt Richard Paulick (Berlin: Deutsche Kunstverlag 2006), 126.
Paulick, “Hoyerswerda,” 357. Excellent material on the design of Hoyerswerda can be found in Thomas Topfstedt, Städtebau in der DDR 1955–1971 (Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1988), 31–36.
On these points, see Anthony Vidler, “Diagrams of Diagrams: Architectural Abstraction and Modern Representation, Representations 72 (2000): 1–20.
Brigitte Reimann, Franziska Linkerhand (Berlin: Aufbau, 2000).
Reinhard Sylten, “Zur Prognose und Analyse im Städtebau,” Deutsche Architektur 17, no. 4 (1969): 217.
Alexei Gutnov et al., The Ideal Communist City, trans. Renée Neu Watkins (New York: George Braziller, 1971), 101.
Boleslaw Malisz, “Threshold Analysis as a Tool in Urban and Regional Planning,” Papers in Regional Science 29, no. 1 (1972): 167–177.
Büro für Städtebau und Architektur des Rates des Bezirkes Halle, Halle-Neustadt. Plan und Bau der Chemiearbeiterstadt (Berlin: VEB Verlag für Bauwesen, 1972), 41, Ibid, Ibid.
Richard Paulick, “Rationelle Technologie für die Modernisierung von Wohnbauten in den USA,” Deutsche Architektur 16, no. 2 (1967): 117–118.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2014 Jeffry M. Diefendorf and Janet Ward
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wakeman, R. (2014). Was There an Ideal Socialist City? Socialist New Towns as Modern Dreamscapes. In: Diefendorf, J.M., Ward, J. (eds) Transnationalism and the German City. Studies in European Culture and History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137390172_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137390172_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-48257-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-39017-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)