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Philip Broadbent and Sabine Hake, eds., Berlin. Divided City, 1945-1989 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010)
German postwar history manifests itself to a large degree in the development of the city of Berlin. Contemporary Berlin can only be adequately understood if one takes a closer look at post 1945 history. Today Berlin reflects an energetic and equally disparate mix of East and West, old and new, West Berlin's backwardness and Berlin Mitte's vibrancy. More recently, Berlin symbolically epitomizes Germany's metamorphosis from a divided country to a unified postclassical nation state in Europe, aptly referred to as the road from the "Bonn" into the "Berlin Republic."1
For the previous twenty years, post Wall Berlin has conjured up new images informed by two distinct German histories finally merging into one on 3 October 1990. Subsequently, an intricate set of overlapping discourses has evolved mirroring the city's troublesome past, but also heralding the novel status of Berlin as German capital.
As a Frontstadt, the city stood at the parting line between two ideologically antagonistic blocs. Each part of Berlin, East and West, was seen as a display window (Schaufenster) showcasing two opposing political systems and, more widely, the superiority of the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic respectively. Berlin represented the focal point of the political Cold War environment, not only in a central European dimension, but also seen from a global perspective. Like a magnifying glass the divided city sharpened the existence of two politically hostile systems.
The book, edited by Philip Broadbent and Sabine Hake, is a rich collection of essays dealing with architecture, art, music, literature, photography, and film in Berlin between 1945 and 1989. By establishing the main lines of a Cold War setting, "the volume also asserts, through interdiscipli- nary readings of city images, narratives, practices, and ideologies, the central role of Berlin within postwar discourses of urbanism, modernism, and postmodernism" (2). Even today, as the editors claim in the introduction, more than twenty years after unification, there is a discernible "interest in the ongoing revisions and representations of the city's troubled past in contemporary practices and texts" (3).
During the Cold War, Berlin served as a powerful projection screen for different images of urban space. Each side claimed...