Contact – Demarcation – Imaginations. Spatial Practices in the Occupied City under National Socialism.

In recent years, research into everyday life under National Socialism has questioned the dichotomous juxtaposition of the occupied and the occupying, instead focusing on questions of interaction within societies in the state of occupation and the varying degrees of scopes of action (Handlungsspielraum). In our workshop, we combine that notion with that of space of imagination (Imaginationsraum), and start form the initial thesis that both were interrelated. Thus, on the one hand, we ask about practical interventions by the occupiers in the spatial and symbolic configurations of the occupied cities or rural settlements, and their impact on the socio-spatial organisation of everyday life. But we also ask about the forms in which resistance to German dominance over space evolved and was articulated. On the other hand, we want to relate these spaces of action to imaginative spaces, for instance articulated within various forms of media. These may be media that aimed to condition behaviour and interaction between different groups in public, semi-public, and private spaces. However, we are also thinking of imaginations that could serve to cope with the occupation, and thus as a means of ‘settling in’ ("Sich-Einrichten", Jan Philipp Reemtsma) in the given situation.
The workshop is the third in a series of workshops on architecture and urban planning in Eastern Europe occupied by the National Socialists (https://arthist.net/archive/41437; https://arthist.net/archive/43440). The outlined theoretical programme of the workshop is interwoven with two objectives of this series. Firstly, we want to discuss sources that have received little attention to date in the history of Nazi architecture and urban space planning. Secondly, we want to engage in a methodological-theoretical discussion about whether and how the notions ‘space for action’ and ‘space of imagination’ could be used to relate different sources to each other, theoretically and methodologically. These objectives are intended to contrast the history of planning based on sources of German provenance, with sources and approaches to architectural and urban history that allow the multi-layered spatial practices of the occupying society to be analysed and represented.

Programme

9:00 a.m.
Welcome

9:15 – 10:30 a.m.
Introduction: Theoretical questions/methodological approaches
Katja Bernhardt (Berlin)

Männer und Maiden or Returning to the Sources
Hanna Grzeszczuk-Brendel (Poznań)

11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Kraków or Krakau? Real and symbolic struggles for urban space as exemplified by occupied Kraków, 1939–1945
Anna Czocher (Kraków)

Photographing architecture during the occupation, exemplified by an archival find
Żanna Komar (Kraków)

The German population in Nazi settlement policy in Ukraine, 1941–1944. Plans, expectations, discrepancies
Dmytro Myeshkov (Lüneburg)

2:30 p.m – 4:00 p.m
Design and Reality of Territorial, Administrative Governmentality. The Case for Lithuania
Waltraud Indrist (Wien)

Visions of Urban Planning in Lithuania under Nazi Occupation
Marija Drėmaitė (Vilnius)

4:30 p.m. – 5:15 p.m.
Introduction into the collection of the Nordost-Library

5:15 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Final discussion

Concept an organisation: Katja Bernhardt and Hanna Grzeszczuk-Brendel.

The workshop is an event organised by the Nordost-Institut (IKGN e.V., Lüneburg) in cooperation with the Poznań University of Technology. The event is sponsored by the German-Polish Science Foundation.