United City, Divided Memories? focuses on the basic question of how Berlin today deals with three specific Cold War-era legacies: the presence of the four Great Powers, the East German Stasi, and the Berlin Wall. Dirk Verheyen looks at monuments, museums, and memorial sites as illustrations of Berlin's struggle to craft an effective shared identity that ties together its western and eastern halves. Verheyen's comprehensive and critical analysis is considered against the broader background of Germany's efforts at coming to grips with its dual twentieth-century totalitarian past. This book demonstrates that important elements of east-west contrast linger and complicate the city's efforts at crafting a more definitively future-oriented united identity. United City, Divided Memories? will stimulate debate among German studies scholars, as well as among those interested in German history and cultural studies.

History, Memory and Public Life introduces readers to key themes in the study of historical memory and its significance by considering the role of historical expertise and understanding in contemporary public reflection on the past. Divided into two parts, the book addresses both the theoretical and applied aspects of historical memory studies. ‘Approaches to history and memory‘ introduces key methodological and theoretical issues within the field, such as postcolonialism, sites of memory, myths of national origins, and questions raised by memorialisation and museum presentation. ‘Difficult pasts‘ looks at history and memory in practice through a range of case studies on contested, complex or traumatic memories, including the Northern Ireland Troubles, post-apartheid South Africa and the Holocaust. Examining the intersection between history and memory from a wide range of perspectives, and supported by guidance on further reading and online resources, this book is ideal for students of history as well as those working within the broad interdisciplinary field of memory studies.

This book is a cultural history of post-Wall urban, social, political, and cultural transformations in Berlin. Branding Berlin: From Division to the Cultural Capital of Europe presents a cultural analysis of Berlin’s cultural production, including literature, film, memoirs and non-fiction works, art, media, urban branding campaigns, and cultural diversity initiatives put forth by the Berlin Senate, and allows readers to understand the various changes that transformed the formerly divided city of voids into a hip cultural capital. The book examines Berlin’s branding, urban-economic development, and its search for a post-Wall identity by focusing on manifestations of nostalgic longing in documentary films and other cultural products. Building on the sociological research of urban branding and linking it with an interpretive analysis of cultural products generated in Berlin during that time, the author examines the intersections and tensions between the nostalgic views of the past and the branded images of Berlin’s present and future. This insightful and innovative work will interest scholars and students of cultural and media studies, branding and advertising, urban communication, film studies, visual culture, tourism, and cultural memory.

This book examines the paradox of collective identity in eastern Germany in the wake of German reunification. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, citizens of the former German Democratic Republic were confronted with a dilemma: Were they already Germans without qualification, like their compatriots in the West? Or did they remain "East Germans" for the time being, with an identity tied to their distinct past, as if they were foreigners who had migrated without leaving home? How Memory Divides shows that these questions remain unresolved even today, less because of any "incomplete unity" between Germans in West and East, than because of the contradictory ways in which "easterners" themselves have remembered their past. Drawing on a unique study spanning two decades, the author reveals how divergent biographical memories have given rise to life stories with a diverse array of genres and storylines at odds with official accounts of the GDR and its demise. Over time, efforts to effect unity between West and East have reproduced divisions within the East. This book will appeal to scholars and students of sociology and politics with interests in memory, heritage, and identity.

A revelatory history of the commemoration of the Berlin Wall and its significance in defining contemporary German national identity.

How sound and its atmospheres transform architecture Acoustic atmospheres can be fleeting, elusive, or short-lived. Sometimes they are constant, but more often they change from one moment to the next, forming distinct impressions each time we visit certain places. Stable or dynamic, acoustic atmospheres have a powerful effect on our spatial experience, sometimes even more so than architecture itself. This book explores the acoustic atmospheres of diverse architectural environments, in terms of scale, program, location, or historic period—providing an overview of how acoustic atmospheres are created, perceived, experienced, and visualized. The contributors explore how sound and its atmospheres transform architecture and space. Their essays demonstrate that sound is a tangible element in the design and staging of atmospheres and that it should become a central part of the spatial explorations of architects, designers, and urban planners. The Sound of Architecture will be of interest to architectural historians, theorists, students, and practicing architects, who will discover how acoustic atmospheres can be created without complex and specialized engineering. It will also be of value to scholars working in the field of history of emotions, as it offers evocative descriptions of acoustic atmospheres from diverse cultures and time periods.

Remembering the Cold War examines how, more than two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cold War legacies continue to play crucial roles in defining national identities and shaping international relations around the globe. Given the Cold War’s blurred definition – it has neither a widely accepted commencement date nor unanimous conclusion - what is to be remembered? This book illustrates that there is, in fact, a huge body of ‘remembrance,’ and that it is more pertinent to ask: what should be included and what can be overlooked? Over five sections, this richly illustrated volume considers case studies of Cold War remembering from different parts of the world, and engages with growing theorisation in the field of memory studies, specifically in relation to war. David Lowe and Tony Joel afford careful consideration to agencies that identify with being ‘victims’ of the Cold War. In addition, the concept of arenas of articulation, which envelops the myriad spaces in which the remembering, commemorating, memorialising, and even revising of Cold War history takes place, is given prominence.