Bowling for Communism: Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany 9781501751684

Citation preview

BOWLING FOR COMMUNISM

BOWLING FOR COMMUNISM U R BA N I NGENU I TY AT T H E E N D O F E A ST G E R M A N Y

Andrew Demshuk

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2020 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. First published 2020 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Demshuk, Andrew, 1980– author. Title: Bowling for communism : urban ingenuity at the end of East Germany / Andrew Demshuk. Description: Ithaca, [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020004274 (print) | LCCN 2020004275 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501751660 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501751684 (pdf ) | ISBN 9781501751677 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Urban renewal—Germany—Leipzig— Citizen participation. | Urban renewal—Political aspects—Germany—Leipzig. | Urban renewal— Germany—Leipzig—History—20th century. | Communism and architecture—Germany—Leipzig. | Architecture and state—Germany (East) | City planning—Political aspects—Germany—Leipzig— History—20th century. | Leipzig (Germany)—Buildings, structures, etc. | Leipzig (Germany)—Politics and government—20th century. | Germany (East)—Politics and government—1989–1990. Classification: LCC DD901.L59 D46 2020 (print) | LCC DD901.L59 (ebook) | DDC 943/.21220878—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020004274 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020004275 Cover photograph: “Leipzig’s Bowlingtreff: subterranean lanes in action, circa 1987.” Photograph by Wolfgang Kluge. StadtAL BA 1988 26091. Used by permission.

For Rebecca and Archie Ray

Contents

Preface ix List of Abbreviations  xv

Introduction: Can Leipzig Still Be Saved?  1 1.  Survival and Despair in Dystopia  17 2.  Urban Ingenuity in the System  53 3.  Utopian Visions in 1988  82 4.  Urban Ingenuity Underground  95 5.  The City as Stage in Revolution  149 Epilogue: Continuities in “the Saved City”  179 Notes 193 Bibliography 233 Index 243

vii

Preface

Along the main ring road across from Leipzig’s monumental new city hall, an octagonal sandstone façade with smashed windowpanes and a coat of graffiti festers behind weedy trees that wave in the wind. In a bowl-shaped depression of broken glass and pavement several meters back from this wreck, a corroded claw arises to clasp a red stone orb. Behind locked gates that face traffic on the ring road, a defunct neon sign gives a clue about this moldering enigma: in a mix of English and German, faded yellow cursive letters reveal that this had been the “Bowlingtreff.” Completed in 1987, this lofty little hall with its vast subterranean bowling lanes, cafes, bars, and hip accoutrements opened its doors to waves of eager citizens: a gleaming, popular magnet alone in a sea of rotting, collapsing historic neighborhoods that suffocated under a constant brown haze from the moonscape of strip mines and lignite power plants to the immediate south. Outfitted with Western technology and cutting-edge postmodern flourishes, this wonder arose thanks to unorthodox, even illegal, daring from local officials and architects, not to mention thousands of hours of free labor from Leipzig citizens. Ten years later, as the city awoke from its communist-era decay to miraculously transfigure into one of Germany’s most lively historic centers, the Bowlingtreff closed because of capitalist mismanagement and steadily metamorphosed into an eyesore akin to what the rest of the city had been back in 1987. The story of this unequaled late-communist, earlypostmodern edifice was forgotten. Only its forlorn neon sign and bowlingball-shaped fountain testify to its onetime identity. Like most passersby, I was dumbfounded when I first stumbled across what was left of Leipzig’s Bowlingtreff. Little did I suspect that this architectural riddle bore within it a host of human stories and contradictions that could unlock the inner workings of East Germany’s second-largest city on the eve of the 1989 Peaceful Revolution, in which it played a principal role. This book first came into being amid a personal quest to understand the oddity that is Leipzig’s Bowlingtreff. Through previous research, I had explored how waves of public protest against heedless regime-led demolitions ix

x    P r e f a c e

had peaked with the destruction of Leipzig’s intact Gothic University Church in 1968; from that point onward, ceaseless communist party (SED) propaganda of “work with us” (mach mit) had lost its dwindling sparkle, and urban planning objectives had met with disinterest, disbelief, and derision as damaging, hideous, and downright impossible anyway, given an ever more chronic shortage economy. Yet for all this profound pessimism, in 1987, 6,675 young Leipzigers devoted 40,050 hours of volunteer labor to ensure that this recreational center arose in only fourteen months on a shady budget—and without the knowledge of central authorities in Berlin until the very end. How did local authorities green-light construction of a major showpiece without permission from Berlin? How could it be that so many people had chosen to work with local authorities by devoting so many hours to such an optimistic project on the eve of a revolution when they marched against the regime? As I delved deeper into archived public letters, architectural plans and correspondence, protest paraphernalia, and discussions with eyewitnesses, I came to realize that the Bowlingtreff in fact typified a larger, ultimately intractable quandary in state-citizen relations as they had evolved by the end of East Germany (the DDR). Though largely neglected in scholarship that investigates the bases of the 1989 revolution that brought down communist rule, runaway urban decay and the usually quixotic struggle to overcome it not only set the stage for the popular upheaval in which Leipzig helped to change the course of world history; they represented a conjunction of other factors already familiar to scholars. By using Leipzig—the capital of the Peaceful Revolution—as a case study, and by homing in on responses to urban blight by both local leaders and public actors, I found intimate details about how economic problems, the housing shortage, ecological disasters, political corruption, and loss of belief (even by party members) laid the groundwork for revolution when external factors, such as perestroika and Mikhail Gorbachev’s pacifism, ensured that it would not end like East Germany’s 1953, Hungary’s 1956, or Czechoslovakia’s 1968. For both local leaders and residents, their dismal surroundings eloquently portrayed how, to attain any positive outcome, one had to work around the system. Economically, functionally, and morally bankrupt, the centralized regime was proven to be an obstruction at best, parasitic at worst, and utterly counterproductive for attaining positive outcomes. The object lesson was plain, if often unstated: Why should locals or even leaders sustain a system that had condemned the historic city to destruction? For years, they had learned to work around it; were they not better off without it? This book’s evidence upends the dual stereotype of both official incompetence and public passivity in the late DDR by documenting pervasive local

P r e f a c e     xi

initiative I call urban ingenuity. On the one hand, it redeems the intentions of a new generation of political and planning elites who expended considerable creative energy and innovation to try to combat urban blight and build a humane city. In their multipronged campaign to unify historical architecture with modern construction methods, they proved that in principle East German professionals were taking full part in the Western shift toward historic preservation after decades of rampant modernist destruction. Conscious that the previous modernist drive for utopia had instead wrought dystopia, they pushed a new vision that increasingly split off from contemporary limitations in material and labor and ultimately broke from reality itself—evincing not only rebellion from Politburo mandates but also disconnect from urgent public concerns. They wanted to revise utopia; political and economic realities made them produce serialized blocks that perpetuated the decimation of urban history and character. They wanted to win back public affections with a palatial bowling alley, wherein Leipzigers would sense they were “bowling for communism,” enjoying recreational fun imbued with gratitude for SED beneficence toward popular desires. But Leipzigers embraced the Bowlingtreff as an island of the West that only whetted their appetites for the better world so obviously lacking in the bleak cityscape outside. On the other hand, urban ingenuity illustrates how disaffected local homeowners, preservationists, church communities, and young people sought to satisfy their needs and interests within the bounds of late communism. Having long since given up on taking part in shaping the overall appearance of their dear city, Leipzigers were nonetheless eager to take advantage of any opportunity to make something out of their rapidly decaying surroundings when the authorities gave them the chance to work with them—often necessarily working around existing strictures in the system. Notwithstanding platitudes from local officials once the Bowlingtreff opened, public participation in assembling the structure implied neither belief that they were building “real existing socialism” nor tacit support for local programs. Even employees at the sparkling new Bowlingtreff were so dismayed by years of accumulated disappointments, endemic corruption, and catastrophic shortages that, rather than stay to relish their East German recreational palace, some of them risked escape to West Germany. And two years after scores of young people had helped to build the Bowlingtreff, they marched against the very leaders who had made it possible. They knew this lone monument could not “save their city.” Numerous interviews in a late 1989 film had inspired its provocative title: Can Leipzig Still Be Saved? Change was urgently needed to ensure that Leipzig had a future. Few could have imagined that this future would mean German reunification and a wave of capitalist

xii    P r e f a c e

speculation that turned the Bowlingtreff into a tarnished specter and time capsule that captures the contradictions and dreams of the last communist generation. In its long and unlikely gestation, this book has accumulated considerable debts. Back in 2006, a fellowship from the Dubnow Institut in Leipzig first exposed me to the city’s complicated urban geography, and a Humboldt Foundation fellowship in 2014–15 gave me access to the first materials that triggered my interest in writing this book. Not only did Leipzig’s Humanities Center for East Central Europe—especially my colleague and friend Arnold Bartetzky—host my Humboldt stay; its members believed in and helped to support a further research trip in summer 2018. Financial assistance from American University (AU) also supported summer research in 2017 and 2018, as well as publication costs. Feedback from colleagues at the German Studies Association and AU History Forum deeply informed how I shaped this project’s contours. Support for an AU book incubator workshop in November 2018 offered timely, specialized insight on the draft manuscript from my colleagues Gary Bruce, Brian Ladd, Eli Rubin, and Sam Sadow, as well as valuable brainstorming with my doctoral student Alexandra Zaremba. In Leipzig, I particularly thank Achim Beier alongside Saskia Paul and Diana Stiehl for their keen advice and support at Archiv Bürgerbewegung. Anett Müller and her colleagues at the Leipzig Stadtarchiv uncovered a host of archival files for me, as did archivists at Leipzig’s Sächsisches Staatsarchiv, Thomas Hoscislawski at Leipzig’s Stadtplanungsamt, Alexander Hartmann at Leipzig’s Stasi archive, and numerous archivists at the Bundesarchiv in Berlin. I also wish to thank Thomas Beyer and Adrian Dorschner for their inspiring 2016 documentary film on the Bowlingtreff as well as their support and encouragement as I pursued this project. Among archivists and librarians, colleagues and friends, participants in workshops and colloquia, and interview partners who furthered my research in Leipzig, I thank Renate Donath, Dietmar Fischer, Martin Helmstedt, Wolfgang Hocquél, Andreas Kalitynski, Hans-Wolfram Kasten, Werner Kießling, Gisela Kluge, Peter Leonhardt, Maximilian Maaß, Uta Nickel, Heike Scheller, Annette and Wilhelm Schlemmer, Liesel Schön, Johannes and Jutta Schulze, Horst Siegel, Christine Skodawessely, Winfried Sziegoleit, Thomas Topfstedt, Ursula Waage, Eva Wolf, Matthias Wolf, and Wieland Zumpe. Friendship and guidance across Germany and North America sustained this project in diverse ways. I extend special thanks to Claudia and Franz Bardenhauer, Matti Bunzl, Jim Chelich, Carol and Tom Demshuk, Jeffry Diefendorf, Amanda Gregg, Ilse and Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, Ursel and Christoph Hohl, Kyrill Kunakhovich, Kristy Ironside, Karen and Archie Mitchell, Will Pyle, the Rump family, John

P r e f a c e     xiii

Takis, Annette and Andreas Wallrabe, Tobias Weger, the intrepid interlibrary loan staffs at AU and Middlebury College, and my colleagues in the AU history department. I am grateful to Contemporary European History for permission to apply data and argumentation from my article “The People’s Bowling Palace: Building Underground in Late Communist Leipzig” in chapter 4. My indefatigable editor Emily Andrew at Cornell University Press believed in this book from the start and worked with me to improve it in so many ways. My copy editor Florence Grant invested considerable skill in helping me to polish the final manuscript. And I thank Mike Bechthold for producing a beautiful “treasure map” of Leipzig’s historic core. My dear friend Ray Bruck passed away as I was writing the first draft: it was with him that I made my initial visit to Leipzig back in 2005, and I hope that his questing spirit and good humor live on in these pages. As this book further coalesced, my son Archie Ray was coming into the world. It is to him and my beloved wife and intellectual partner, Rebecca Mitchell, that I dedicate this work. Rebecca and I discovered the Bowlingtreff together on that meandering walk along Leipzig’s ring road. And though we are not particularly devoted to bowling as a sport, that bowling center in all its faded glory has come to occupy a great many of our conversations. Perhaps one day we will bowl there together.

A bbrevi ati ons

ABL ARD

BAB BCA BdA BfaK BKL BMK BRD BStU

BV CDU DDR DEFA DSF DTSB FDJ

Archive of Citizens’ Movements (Archiv Bürgerbewegung Leipzig) Public Broadcasting Company for the Federal Republic of Germany (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland) Bundesarchiv, Berlin-Lichterfelde Office of the Chief Architect (Büro des Chefarchitekten, Leipzig) League of German Architects (Bund deutscher Architekten), split between the DDR and BRD Office of Architectural Art (Büro für architekturbezogene Kunst, Leipzig) Leipzig Building Collective (Baukombinat Leipzig) Construction and Assembly Collective (VEB Bau- und Montagekombinat) Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) Federal Commission for Stasi Records (Der Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR) regional administration (Bezirksverwaltung) DDR branch of the Christian Democratic Union (Christlich Demokratische Union) German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) (East) German Film Company (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft) Society for German-Soviet Friendship (Gesellschaft für DeutschSowjetische Freundschaft) German Gymnastics and Sporting League (Deutscher Turnund Sportbund) Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend) xv

xvi    A b b r e v i at i o n s

GWL IfD IRS KB KML KMU LVZ MfS SächStAL SED SpA SpA-Z

StadtAL StVuR UAL VEB

VP ZK

Leipzig Building Management (VEB Gebäudewirtschaft Leipzig, 1971–90) Institute for Monument Preservation (Institut für Denkmalpflege der DDR, Dresden) Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (LeibnizInstitut für Raumbezogene Sozialforschung, Erkner) Cultural League of the DDR (Kulturbund) Archive for St. Michael’s Church in Leipzig (Kirchenarchiv Michaeliskirche am Nordplatz, Leipzig) Karl Marx University, Leipzig SED mouthpiece, the Leipzig People’s Newspaper (Leipziger Volkszeitung) Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit; Stasi) Saxon State Archive (Sächsisches Staatsarchiv, Außenstelle Leipzig) Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) Leipzig City Planning Office Archive (Stadtplanungsamtsarchiv, Leipzig) Leipzig City Planning Office Archive, Newspaper Clipping Archive (Stadtplanungsamtsarchiv-Zeitungsausschnittsarchiv) Leipzig City Archive (Stadtarchiv, Leipzig) City Assembly and City Council, Leipzig (Stadtverordnetenversammlung und Rat der Stadt Leipzig) Leipzig University Archive (Universitätsarchiv, Leipzig) Publicly Owned Operation (Volkseigener Betrieb); also Dad’s Former Business (Vaters ehemaliger Betrieb), a joke on DDR collectivization East German People’s Police (Volkspolizei) SED Central Committee of the Politburo (Zentralkomitee)

BOWLING FOR COMMUNISM

Introduction Can Leipzig Still Be Saved?

Ist Leipzig noch zu retten? Can Leipzig still be saved? Such was the despairing title of East Germany’s first free and critical documentary television program just three days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Across the republic’s second-largest city, the camera exhibited Kaiser-era tenement blocks sagging, collapsing, and infested with pigeons. Residents expressed hopelessness and anger. These were “images that hurt,” the director observed staidly. The city had fallen into a “coma.”1 In this capital of the 1989 revolution, decades of demolitions, decay, and slipshod modernism had dramatically fueled the sense that communist leaders were incompetent, corrupt, and illegitimate. A profusion of local photography— typified by the snapshot of a tenement building in Leipzig’s Plagwitz district (fig. 1)—­testified to an urgent sense that the historic cityscape must be captured on film before it was gone. The few residents who bothered attending a 1988 planning exhibition in city hall gave expression to this pervasive public dejection in the largely empty visitor book. Summing up the general sentiment, a young citizen deplored that, although sensible plans appeared on paper, “up to now, much has been ‘asleep’; some of the new buildings and reconstructions in the historic center are patchwork jobs!” By the time the “moldering” city was at all habitable, he concluded with bitter irony, would he “already be a pensioner???”2

1

2    I n t r o d u c t i o n

Figure 1.  “View of a decayed house with broken windows. The windows and doors on the ground floor are bricked up.” Leipzig-Plagwitz, 1992. Photograph by Guntram Fischer. ABL 030–003–027.

With tangible salience, the dismal prerevolutionary cityscape evoked a host of economic, environmental, and political problems that undermined faith in the SED regime. After gaining repute as the first German city cleared of excess rubble (as resourceful early postwar planners reinforced scores of damaged monuments for future restoration), by the 1980s Leipzig was one of the most decrepit cities in Europe, its old town disintegrating after decades of neglect and demolitions under a cloak of brown coal dust. Although by the early 1970s the Erich Honecker administration had promised historic preservation and innovative construction methods, centralized planning had diverted precious funds, materials, and workers to prefab Plattenbau housing in suburbs like Grünau (begun 1976) and prestige projects in Berlin.3 The resulting aura of soul-sucking dreariness and impending doom across the historic city made Leipzigers from diverse backgrounds scorn rhetoric about preservation and civic identity as a tragic farce. All around them, one of Germany’s most intact urban cores was succumbing to ruin. And communist authorities seemed incapable of saving it. Across the republic, the documentary Ist Leipzig noch zu retten? spoke to a general angst that East German cities had become even less habitable than they had been in 1945 after wartime bombardment. “From time to time, the television can still shock you,” a villager southeast of Leipzig wrote to his friend in the city on November 9, 1989. Upon watching footage from

C a n L e i pz i g S t i ll B e Sav e d ?     3

Ist Leipzig noch zu retten?, it had dawned on him that “Leipzig” was everywhere. “Right away, I went to look at Zittau, Görlitz, and Bautzen.” In each of these neighboring towns, he found that “the conditions are in some cases even worse than those in Leipzig.” Just hours before crowds massed at the Berlin Wall, this ordinary Saxon villager was obsessed with urban decay, incensed by the realization that historic structures in his own surroundings were getting demolished all the time, replaced by dull blocks and furthering the ubiquitous aura of architectural misery.4 Late East German towns and cities were pervaded by this sense of urban dystopia, defined here as a conjunction of factors that made the city appear unlivable to both residents and a new generation of architects. And it held deep social implications in the latter half of SED rule. Notwithstanding the utopian visions of earlier architects about constructing a bright and modern communist future, most East Germans experienced their cities as dystopian oceans of decay punctuated by modernist boxes that seldom resonated positively. Whether they arose in place of razed historic ensembles or drew life out of the urban center to dwell in projects on virgin land, modernist achievements were wrought at the expense of the preexisting city. Although outcomes were regularly diminished by fiscal and material realities, even a cutting-edge showpiece like Leipzig’s 1973 university skyscraper desecrated a dear historic space: to clear the modernist ensemble’s footprint for construction on the central and symbolic Karl Marx Square, Berlin party elites (in concert with strident local officials) willfully dynamited Leipzig’s medieval University Church in 1968 despite years of popular protest. Decried as “cultural barbarism,” the dynamiting of this key landmark decimated hope from the onceengaged public that it could work with the regime to build a better city.5 In unfolding the dynamics of urban dystopia, this book draws from two pioneering approaches to East German power structures. Looking from the top down through serpentine SED administrative structures, Lena Kuhl and Oliver Werner rightly identify “the marginalization of East German regions and disappointing planning outcomes” through diversion of resources from the Bezirke (districts) to Berlin as a cause “significantly” contributing to the collapse of the DDR.6 Looking upward from the grassroots situation, Brian Ladd concludes that by 1989 “a failure to provide adequate housing” fueled public support for preservationists and activists “committed to preserving old neighborhoods even in the face of official disapproval.”7 Combining both approaches, this book uses Leipzig as a case analysis through which to sketch out a multilayered schematic of how the East German planning mechanism interlocked at the central, Bezirk, municipal, and private levels. Because so much of this machinery operated outside official ledgers, a thorough reading

4    I n t r o d u c t i o n

of archival and periodical sources had to be supplemented with personal interviews, correspondence, and informal conversations with diverse personalities from late-communist Leipzig, some of whom elected not to be named. Of course, especially after an epochal shift like 1989, memories can be colored by trauma, nostalgia, or an obsession with one’s legacy; but with critical distance and corroboration, they afford a rare, often singular means to recapture a more complete sense of the story. Far more than just a housing crisis, urban dystopia in Leipzig threatened a deep-held civic pride in built history and urban community. Attempts to arrest this seemingly unstoppable decline exhibit the gray zone between legal and illegal activities in a complicated web of human motives and actions through the last decade of East Germany. For both engaged citizens and local officials, SED dictates from Berlin consistently impeded their vigorous efforts to restore a healthy cityscape. With each attempt at saving the city, the truth became more apparent: Leipzig was dying because of Berlin. And so to save Leipzig, both private and official actors had to work around the centralized system through enterprising acts of what I call urban ingenuity. Discourse about urban decay thus illustrates the decay of communist power.

Urban Dystopia as a Window into State-Civic Relations “In our country the communication between state and society is obviously troubled.” After its opening line, the September 10, 1989, founding manifesto of the Neues Forum opposition group went on to assert that this “imbalance” had paralyzed “the creative potential of our society,” to the extent that citizens were “dissipating our energy in ill-humored passivity” at the same time that “loafers and loudmouths” in “cushy jobs” misruled the country.8 While one can understand the frustration Neues Forum activists felt as they struggled to get legal recognition, their diagnosis caricatured an officialdom that was, in all actuality, multifaceted and sometimes in step with grassroots desires.9 By exploring how engaged local officials and residents tried to redeem their urban dystopia, this book offers a glimpse into how civic life functioned in the city that started the Peaceful Revolution and ended SED rule. Neither a totalitarian model nor a halcyon “people’s state,” East German civic life played out at the complicated intersection between local officials’ goals (often distinct from “democratic centralist” objectives in Berlin) and the desires of local residents. This nuances the work of Mary Fulbrook, who has led the charge against the totalitarian model by framing East Germany as a “participatory dictatorship,” within which the state and populace worked

C a n L e i pz i g S t i ll B e Sav e d ?     5

together to attain “common humanitarian goals” such as healthcare, mass housing, organized sports, and universal employment.10 It also builds on my earlier work which found that, when the state pursued a direction at odds with public wishes (such as its 1968 demolition of Leipzig’s University Church), “participatory dictatorship” broke down.11 Combining both arguments in the distinctive context of East Germany’s final decade, I find that local officials successfully garnered public participation to complete shady projects like the Bowlingtreff, because (1) in this joint architectural venture public interests coincided with those of officialdom and (2) Leipzig’s leaders had decided that Berlin’s interests ran contrary to their own and labored discreetly outside the centralized system to produce a visible sign of communist efficacy to combat public alienation. Rather than participatory dictatorship, then, this was participation without dictatorship under the auspices of local communist authorities. To attain socialist goals, Leipzig’s party elite broke with democratic centralism that served Berlin above all else. To win public participation, they circumvented their SED superiors in Berlin. Juxtaposing the 1968 University Church demolition alongside the 1987 Bowlingtreff project certainly highlights just how much the local state-civic dynamic changed over the course of SED rule.12 Back in the 1960s, Leipzig officials under the iron hand of the Bezirk boss Paul Fröhlich had operated in lockstep with the Politburo, and pushed through demolitions that had shattered belief that the regime honestly welcomed (much less heeded) public input on planning. Whereas wartime trauma had at first prompted public enthusiasm for regime-backed architectural exhibitions and plans, after the 1960s, residents lost their dwindling belief that they could take part in shaping the city as a whole.13 In addition to feeling dismay that the authorities would unleash wrecking balls regardless of what they proposed, engaged citizens also grew agitated that the regime was incapable of building a better city. Although East Bloc architects envisioned state-owned prefab apartment estates as an instrument for social reform and although these blocks offered much-needed housing,14 Leipzigers typically saw displacement from a historic neighborhood (or defacement of that neighborhood with Plattenbau rows) as the destruction of community and their sense of rooted space. Like the dereliction of the historic center, whose dilapidated edifices still harkened back to the city’s glory days as Germany’s fourth-largest city at the turn of the century, the rise of a prefab city had little in common with their dreams of a restored metropolis. Such was the cynical state of public belief when at last, in contravention of Berlin’s dictates, local authorities tried to give the people an urban icon like the Bowlingtreff. Although officials professed that the people were working with them as a sign of belief in the

6    I n t r o d u c t i o n

system, in reality the people came, not for communism, but for the sake of Leipzig and their urban community. In its examination of the everyday give-and-take between populace and officials, as well as grassroots adaptation of official precepts, this book builds on twin trends that have featured in DDR scholarship at the Potsdam Center for Contemporary Historical Research: Herrschaft als soziale Praxis (authority as social practice) and Eigen-Sinn (self-awareness, or individual initiative).15 As project leader Thomas Lindenberger observes, Herrschaft als soziale Praxis implies “agency on behalf of both sides within an otherwise asymmetric power relationship.” Not just force, but “mutual dependence,” could thus imply that authorities sought to compensate those whom they ruled in return for subjugation and compliance. Meanwhile, Eigen-Sinn indicates that subjects were not “programmed” by authorities, but exerted their own stubborn or plucky interpretations for how they would behave under and interpret regime expectations.16 For the purposes of this book, I translate EigenSinn to mean “self-conscious selective appropriation and maneuverability in a system of authoritarian top-down strictures and slogans.” If through these twin concepts one reads the last decade of communism without anticipating the 1989 revolution, one uncovers a society that had grown accustomed to working within and around a broken system to survive and find meaning. While previous scholarship has peered into parties, churches, clubs, or deviant lifestyles to identify late-communist spaces where public opinion might exist separate from the SED,17 this book examines how unaffiliated everyday citizens individually practiced their own Eigen-Sinn through acts of urban ingenuity. In addition to a small cast of future activists, local residents disinclined to carry banners in 1989 had long since taken as self-evident that the system could not satisfy their most basic needs. Although they did not believe in working with their leaders in the name of socialist slogans, they were often willing to take action (sometimes collective action) to build a better city for themselves, their friends, and their families. Seldom did this quest to get what they wanted yield a “well-functioning dialogue” with local regime structures.18 And by contributing their time, labor, and creativity to illegal construction projects, Leipzigers demonstrated how Eigen-Sinn meant occupying, reshaping, and appropriating public space— the very opposite of retreating into private niches.19 It should be noted that engaged citizens shared their local leaders’ desire to solve the housing shortage. As Paul Betts has shown, the domicile let individuals seek refuge from officially prescribed public life and find “more private understandings of the self.”20 Yet in their desire to solve housing issues, Leipzigers often militated against the prescribed solution of identical

C a n L e i pz i g S t i ll B e Sav e d ?     7

Plattenbau cities. Against official pressures to migrate them into anonymous prefab settlements, many Leipzigers practiced Eigen-Sinn to repair their homes in historic neighborhoods. A profound sense of Heimat—intimate surroundings deeply tied to memory and personal identity—stood as chief among their motives for working with leaders they generally distrusted, even resented.21 Ashamed of their once-proud city’s decrepitude, they built local landmarks like the Bowlingtreff out of civic pride and even won support from local authorities when their efforts to save the city drifted into legal gray zones. Eigen-Sinn also characterizes how local leaders themselves sought to maneuver and adapt strictures and slogans from the center to serve their purpose of sustaining as much popular engagement as possible within dystopic conditions. Hardly the undifferentiated mass of despotic overlords caricatured in mainstream surveys of communist decline, local officials often exerted considerable dynamism to save their communities.22 As Lena Kuhl and Oliver Werner contend, “at all times, decision-makers on the level of Bezirke and Kreise were bound [to] the state’s overall economic plan. There existed no dependable way to have regional interests recognized, unless these were directly connected to the economic plan.”23 As a result, Kuhl concludes, local officials often pursued “their own, even differing objectives,” enhancing local stability, but failing to stimulate the nationwide reforms needed to save East German cities.24 To attain this goal, Christian Rau adds, local officials had to engage dynamically with the center and navigate extremely chaotic and inefficient overlapping administrative jurisdictions on the ground. Such energy stemmed not least from the fact that “local politicians were also part of the local societies they lived in and were responsible for.”25 While this may underpin Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk’s observation that there were no genuine reformers in the SED, one should perhaps interrogate further what in fact local officials were seeking to achieve.26 For even if they did not question single-party rule, the fact that local authorities sought so assiduously to work around it proves that they were deeply aware of its weaknesses. Incapable of reforming the behemoth of SED bureaucracy, Leipzig’s authorities nonetheless tried to patch its many holes. To prove they could still act in the interests of the people, they strove to stabilize a degenerating situation.27 And by departing from centralized dictates, they achieved symbolic triumphs for Leipzig.

Urban Dystopia and the Decay of Democratic Centralism Those who took action to invest their ruined cityscape with dignity and verve did so in spite of the centralized system. With tremendous energy and

8    I n t r o d u c t i o n

creativity, architects dreamed big in their plans to restore a livable city, but endless compromises and delays inside the system constrained their output to isolated triumphs, lost in a wave of further demolitions and Plattenbau sameness they themselves despised. Likewise, while residents pleaded with the authorities for basic repairs to their homes in repeated petitions (Eingaben), such faith in official channels typically yielded only dejection, despair, and further decay. To save any semblance of a habitable, historic city, everyday experience thus taught local officials and residents alike that they had to maneuver outside the existing system. As their attempts to infuse banal prefab housing with historic flourishes floundered because of centralized dictates that ensured shortfalls, local officials and architects turned to illegal construction and unofficial connections. After years of blockages, their longstanding campaign to build a People’s Bowling Palace only succeeded in 1987 after they circumvented centralized strictures and exploited local labor and connections, usually off the books. Meanwhile, by the late 1970s, grassroots trends toward exploiting illegal construction, unofficial relationships, the black market, and after-hours (even unpaid) labor had become so self-evident that neither homeowners nor squatters who stole supplies and built off the record expressed serious compunction that they were doing anything wrong. If by their actions local officials were demonstrating that the Politburo was a hindrance best overcome, and if in their own experiences locals attained basic repairs only outside of official channels, why should anyone have bothered trying to save the centralized system as it was swept away in 1989? That both local officials and local residents maneuvered around a system they knew was not working builds upon Alexei Yurchak’s pioneering argument that late-Soviet citizens knew their system was unfeasible, but never imagined it could be ending. The cause, for Yurchak, was the ossification of late-communist ritualization, wherein replication of authoritative discourse had become an end unto itself, divorced from its inherent meanings.28 In fact, as the coming chapters show, by the last decade of communism, the very structures of centralized power were often a mere performance—to succeed, local officials built off the balance sheets, and citizens surrendered the ritual of writing petitions, securing renovations by hook or crook. When such illegal actions succeeded, one attained a Bowlingtreff or repaired one’s house or church. Only losers tried to work within the centralized system. This truism was proven at both the official and the private levels. To succeed in the centralized campaign for socialist housing, urban planners could not execute their desired synthesis between historic structures and small-scale new housing beyond a few prototypes; rather, they were increasingly constrained to raze

C a n L e i pz i g S t i ll B e Sav e d ?     9

the historic core and churn out Plattenbauten. Even loyal party members suffered and sometimes died in their crumbling apartments, despite requesting help for repairs through Eingaben to the authorities. Finally, young people contributed free labor to build illegal structures such as the Bowlingtreff, not to express socialist ideals (put forth in their names by the system), but to seize something for themselves in a materially starved building environment.

Visions of a Better Urban Future without 1989 Scholars have traditionally explained 1989 as a result of popular anger at Stasi abuse, housing shortages, travel restrictions, economic shortages, environmental catastrophe, and political corruption, relegating the deeply intertwined factor of urban decay (if mentioned) to a supporting role.29 Such a lacuna is remarkable, given the longstanding credo in both blocs that the urban environment helps to mold the outlook of a population. As the East German Bauakademie professed in 1969, “First the person builds the city, then the city forms the people.”30 By this logic, if the city was desolate, hopeless, even uninhabitable, the people would also feel hopelessness to the point that they might try to leave the city and even the republic. That urban dystopia was generating dangerous public discontent was thus a given for dedicated political and planning officials, who keenly appreciated that the stakes were too high to allow the city’s accelerating decay to go on unabated. Even as conditions deteriorated through the 1980s amid severe shortages in handworkers and materials, they sought to plan and build the city on a human scale in keeping with global trends that overturned previous excesses.31 Despite public cynicism and a hopeless economic outlook, their dreams anticipated the innovation, even optimism, of the sweeping restoration that followed across the historic center. Taken from this standpoint, the stark shift or Wende in planning that swept former East Germany after 1989 was hardly just an imposition from the West; it built upon ideas from the last decade of communist rule. Analysis of discourse about urban decay not only undermines 1989 as a complete break; it uncovers sociopolitical interchange during the latter half of the DDR without skewing it into a prehistory of factors that inevitably led to revolution. When architects dreamed about how to build a better city in 1988, they imagined the 1990s without conceiving of the coming revolution; and the revolution did not nullify all their dreams. In like manner, while residents’ discontent with urban dystopia robbed them of respect for the local authorities, they were not averse to working with those authorities when they thought it might enhance the cityscape to their advantage. Such

10    I n t r o d u c t i o n

dynamic interplay is foreign to previous scholarship that has upheld 1989 as the triumph of democracy over tyranny, when irresponsible officials were finally ousted from despotic misrule, and at last “once docile Germans suddenly spoke out and took control of their lives.”32 It also broadens the cast of characters beyond the minority of opposition actors, whose ironic slogans and behaviors have been likened to a “carnival” of East European revolutions.33 Although some of the most memorable young protestors may have expressed their opposition in joyful, uninhibited ways, one finds that, without knowing the outcome of the revolution (even after November 1989), a much more complicated, grim, even desperate outlook predominated among local residents and leaders alike, who shared real concerns that the world they had known was not working out.

Leipzig as a Dystopian Stage Parallels will be drawn at intervals throughout this book to other East German cities, all of which were similarly intertwined with dysfunctional centralized regime mandates that benefitted East Berlin with prestige projects at their expense.34 And while this book seeks to move “beyond Berlin,” examples from the capital recur as both development magnets and models; just as Berlin should not exist in a vacuum, analysis of other cities must tie in with developments at the center.35 All this being said, however, the DDR’s secondlargest city and trade-fair center merits particular scrutiny both as capital of the 1989 revolution and home to Germany’s largest surviving collection of Kaiser-era neighborhoods (and thus some of its worst decay). Unlike the Dresden old town, much of Berlin, or all of Chemnitz, Leipzig emerged from World War II with isolated bombing damage that left myriad individual structures and ensembles intact. After an immediate postwar generation of politicians and planners had restored or reinforced wartime ruins to ensure a historic urban appearance (augmented with historicist Stalinist confections), from the late 1950s onward high modernist gigantomania devastated the city center. Though its aesthetics could range from serialized Plattenbau apartment blocks to a sleek showpiece like Leipzig’s university tower, in practice unadorned high-modernist hugeness connoted disregard for the scale and substance of the preexisting city. In the service of modernist visions, demolitions rocked Leipzig as they did most cities across the republic, so that by the 1970s the urban core was a wasteland of parking lots, uninspired blocks, and choice landmarks that rapidly decayed from the caustic effects of air pollution and a rising shortage of handworkers and materials. The epitome of this trend was the 1970 Leipzig city plan: a totalizing modernist proposal

C a n L e i pz i g S t i ll B e Sav e d ?     11

to eradicate virtually all remaining historic structures and so attain a sleek, automobile-friendly metropolis that could have vied with urban mistakes unfolding at the time through the so-called second destruction of West German cities like Frankfurt, Hannover, and Hildesheim.36 This tabula rasa approach was only forestalled when Erich Honecker diverted virtually all investment to high-rise settlements on the urban fringe, abandoning the historic city to rapid decay that seemed beyond redemption by the late 1970s. Yet precisely at this moment, a new generation of politicians and planners arose that (in tune with international trends) sought to integrate modern construction with historic character. The last decade of communist rule thus witnessed a wave of plans from local political and planning elites who believed they could “save” Leipzig through a concerted campaign of historic preservation, smaller-scale modern construction, and even the reconstruction of icons razed in the late 1960s—a trend that peaked with a 1988 planning competition whose outcomes profoundly revised what utopia should mean. Through their coal-dust-coated and cracked apartment windows, however, a great many Leipzigers saw only unstoppable urban blight. Everyday experience had given them no reason to believe in official plans, much less that ordinary people could influence them. In keeping with cynical commentaries in the film How We Live Here: Frustration and Decay in Leipzig (smuggled out of East Germany two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall),37 the Leipzig craftsman Andreas Kalitynski recalls that the city was always “prettied up” for the biannual trade fair. “That means unpresentable façades were hidden behind big banners about socialism,” he recounts, to conceal what was otherwise “a dreary, gray, filthy city. The air wasn’t great, the façades were in danger of collapse, etc.”38 A typical street scene from the time conveys the overall impression (fig. 2). For disaffected residents, urban decay wove virtually every other grievance into a single narrative. Ecological disasters, chronic economic scarcity, and political obstructionism not only ate away at public belief in the system—they combined to eat away at the health of the architectural fabric. Given such daily proof that the centralized system was not working, Leipzig authorities fostered self-initiative and illegal construction both in their own and in residents’ projects. Although well-intentioned, this resourceful approach to the decay of centralized efficacy fed a thriving black market in labor and materials that was practically legal by dint of its ubiquity. Leipzig’s ultimate illegal building venture—the Bowlingtreff—spectacularly demonstrated how resourceful local officials took action with their pens and sometimes their hands to save what they could. While such urban ingenuity produced isolated triumphs, however, it could not yield a systematic answer

12    I n t r o d u c t i o n

Figure 2.  A typical street scene in Leipzig-Thonberg: “Two Adults with Stroller and a Child with Scooter walk past Decayed Structures,” July 8, 1989. Photograph by Martin Jehnichen. ABL 021–009–020.

to catastrophic blight any more than patching one’s own roof with tiles stolen from an abandoned building offered more than a rudimentary fix. As the film Ist Leipzig noch zu retten? so eloquently illustrated, locals were exhausted by scattershot attempts to work around the broken system. To save their city and their own well-being, they were ready to march for systemic change. Hence, although the Peaceful Revolution may have prevailed in the end because of Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision not to regain control by force, urban decay helped to set the stage for many Leipzigers to see change as not just desirable, but increasingly inevitable, as events unfolded. Although this book focuses principally on urban ingenuity across Leipzig and the broader East German context, it also informs our understanding of late–Cold War society across both blocs and identifies the pressing need for further research. As the Leipzig example shows, alienation from space can act as a “pressure cooker” that intensifies dissatisfaction with other ongoing sources of grievance. By also researching urban development in late–Cold War West Germany and Poland, I have interrogated how and why “space” compels action in parallel contexts. In capitalist-democratic Frankfurt, citizens formed initiatives to legally protest urban planning disasters and by 1977 toppled the city’s longstanding Social Democratic Party hegemony in a successful bid to save and restore historic landmarks and dimensions they felt

C a n L e i pz i g S t i ll B e Sav e d ?     13

gave the city identity. In Polish Wrocław, by contrast, late–Cold War residents were rather content with the relatively conservative urban aesthetic that was alleged to have confirmed the city’s “Polish” national identity after a complete population exchange in 1945; despite dissatisfaction with comparatively moderate decay, Wrocławian activism in Solidarity had very little to do with the state of urban space. In sum, by the 1980s the first generation of Polish residents in a formerly German city ironically felt less alienation from their urban surroundings than Frankfurters or Leipzigers, who in many cases enjoyed deeper roots in cities far more ravaged by demolition and decay.39 Analysis of semilegal and illegal construction in Leipzig also highlights the need for further study on interchange with the “second economy” in other East Bloc contexts. In his pioneering 1977 study based on written and oral testimonies from recent emigrants, foreign journalists, and his own experiences, Gregory Grossman explored how imbalances and shortages inherent in the Soviet command economy had facilitated decentralized semilegal and illegal market structures. In Grossman’s assessment, the second economy functioned similarly in other East Bloc contexts, “even though general conditions, the extent of permitted private activity, and official policies may vary from country to country.”40 By the 1980s, a wave of studies necessarily based upon a great deal of supposition further investigated the ongoing second economy in the Soviet Union and, more rarely, Warsaw Pact satellites.41 Despite its limitations, this data informs comparison in the analysis to come. With the end of Cold War concerns, however, scholarly interest waned. Despite anecdotes and general knowledge still shared among older eyewitnesses, in-depth research on the second economy largely ceased after 1989. This book cannot speak to breadlines or consumer goods, but it has shown me how to excavate clues about illegal and semilegal construction in our post1989 scholarly context. Although I found more than I expected in hosts of obscure archival files (the most candid data was often penciled into margins), crucial context, figures, and details were absent. To pursue my investigation, therefore, I had to gain access to historical players, who proved to be links in an ad hoc chain interconnected as much by chance teatimes as by my own intent. For instance, I met Pastor Wilhelm Schlemmer after I took part in a panel presentation for the fiftieth anniversary of the 1968 demolition of Leipzig’s University Church; only when I joined him and his spouse for teatime at their home did I discover that the pastor had in fact repaired one of Leipzig’s prominent churches through the urban ingenuity I was uncovering in other contexts across the city, and he generously helped me access and decipher obscure records that documented how the late Cold War–era renovation had been possible. In like manner, teatime at Leipzig’s Café Coffebaum with

14    I n t r o d u c t i o n

Ursula Waage (whose childhood memoir from Polish-administrated Wrocław had informed an earlier project) suddenly turned into an exposition of her proud DDR life chapter, when she had directed the production of industrial and agricultural collectives across the Bezirk and devoted two hundred free hours to secure her first one-room apartment in a Plattenbau in 1962. She put me in touch with the elderly former head of Bezirk finance, who in turn put me in touch with the elderly former head of city finance (who to this day helps fellow retirement community residents with their taxes). Such a broad array of encounters deeply informed my sense for how human beings generated the multidimensional and multitiered process I call urban ingenuity. Given that extant players from late-communist society have aged considerably, it is urgent that specialists immerse themselves in other local contexts so that we can piece together how urban ingenuity functioned across the East Bloc. Hopefully, the mosaic of human stories I have reconstructed in the pages to come will inspire further research to facilitate a comparative story.42

Mapping This Monograph The dreary everyday of dystopian Leipzig, featured in chapter 1, offers the grassroots departure point for local regime decisions. Frequent attempts to get help through the system seldom achieved results; even faithful party members failed to get assistance when they wrote petitions. Only those who took the initiative to effect repairs by their own labor and through informal connections managed to restore a dignified existence. Such urban ingenuity existed at the margins of legality. Officials even condoned construction that lacked central approval and used labor and materials from the barter economy, as this was a practical means of keeping up some modicum of repair. A church community could restore its dilapidated building through internal donations and labor as well as the black market; the authorities took note, even spied, but did not intervene. Others went a step further and squatted. Whereas in the West squatters were openly breaking laws about capitalist property ownership to demand drastic social change, in Leipzig young people squatted to secure housing, and often their repairs ensured that abandoned structures survived despite the failures of central planning. Against this backdrop of public disaffection, chapter 2 showcases how a cast of young architects and their reform-minded older colleagues strove to save the city by correcting the mistakes of high modernism and imbuing the urban core with humane proportions and highlights. Although this version of urban ingenuity meant working within a layered, diverse, and at times chaotic bureaucracy laden with jaded and corrupt offices, dedicated local officials

C a n L e i pz i g S t i ll B e Sav e d ?     15

evinced considerable energy and innovation. Inspired by global trends, Leipzig’s young chief architect Dietmar Fischer spearheaded a campaign to reconcile modern methods with historical substance. Preservationists, at last given their own offices in the mid-1970s, likewise sought to save architectural relics as landmarks for local identity. Unfortunately, financial, material, and labor shortfalls inherent in East Germany’s industrialized mass-production economy helped to ensure that Fischer’s fusion of small-scale Plattenbau with historic housing around Dorotheenplatz remained a prototype without successors; creative measures to fill gaps across the urban core went unrealized or succumbed to prefab banality; and the architects themselves were compelled to perpetuate the sweeping demolition of historic neighborhoods to make way for prefab block construction. Working within the bounds of the system, Fischer and his colleagues found themselves impotent to arrest the tide of faceless, cheap modernism that was destroying the city. Notwithstanding these harsh realities, chapter 3 exhibits how in 1988 Fischer hosted a holistic planning endeavor that—never imagining the impending revolution—meant to restore Leipzig as a national, even global, showpiece. Fully aware of the system’s economic and political constraints, they dared to dream about how the city could be saved in an international architectural competition whose optimistic mood and utopian outcomes were suppressed from public view. Already a brief exhibition of the comparably modest 1987 proposal had revealed a general mood of public hostility to another round of hollow promises. Frustrated that such planning “in the system” failed to yield results, chapter 4 shows how local officials turned to unofficial connections, funding from opaque financial “reserves,” and clandestine construction without approval from central authorities. After applying diverse sources to outline the mechanics of the unofficial economy, the chapter illustrates how local officials embraced an urban ingenuity that steadily turned toward producing illegal structures (Schwarzbauten). This trend from the mid-1970s onward culminated with the Bowlingtreff: a postmodern people’s palace atop a vast subterranean recreational wonderland right across from city hall. Working around the centralized economy, local officials strove to offer the dejected populace architectural symbols to prove that they still had the capacity to act in the public interest. Excited to get this veritably Western edifice in their otherwise decrepit city, thousands of young people devoted free labor to ensure its timely completion in 1987. Yet Schwarzbauten not only evinced officials’ weariness with their own system; they were by nature isolated answers to ubiquitous decay. At best a palliative, at worst they aggravated public dissatisfaction by offering a glimpse of how the rest of the city should look.

16    I n t r o d u c t i o n

Ultimately, the apocalyptic state of Leipzig’s streetscapes set the stage for marches in which residents demanded change. As chapter 5 recounts, Leipzigers rebelled against Berlin—loathed as a parasite whose corrupt authorities had sucked the life out of their once-great city. Massing against the backdrop of their rotten landmarks, Leipzigers demanded autonomy from centralized planning, public participation in urban development, and an end to demolitions and mass-produced prefab housing. This peaceful unrest transitioned from the streets and forums of fall 1989 into a local conference in January 1990, in which officials and engaged citizens synergized ideas for saving the city. They also found expression in the biographies of individual landmarks, such as the Alte Nikolaischule—a ruin situated at the very courtyard where the revolution first broke out. Its miraculous restoration bespoke both continuities with earlier planning and new possibilities after the Wende of 1989. Continuities after 1989 were in fact considerable. As the epilogue reveals, many local officials and architects sustained influence under capitalism and perpetuated efforts to reconcile modernism with history. Numerous residents likewise applied the same drive and initiative they had exerted in the old system to save their homes under the new one. Although after an optimistic interlude in 1990 capitalist ownership and speculation took over property relations and planning, traces from the preceding era’s dreams, approaches, and achievements left their stamp on the city’s architectural and social development. Of course, in their drive to rectify dilapidation, postcommunist planners have at times engaged in façade reconstruction and monument fetishism or financed urban reconstruction in ways that expelled inhabitants to serve the interests of privileged investors. Sometimes this has prompted public alienation and inhibited creativity from above and below. While the results are far from perfect, however, contemporary Leipzig has become a multifaceted urban center vibrant with history and innovative new construction. Urban ingenuity by local officials and citizens has played a key role in helping Leipzig, a city almost beyond hope in 1989, to earn its renown as “the saved city.”43

Ch a p ter   1

Survival and Despair in Dystopia

Leipzig could not be saved. Decades of mounting disappointments had filled many Leipzigers with this sad resignation. Through the 1960s, regime-led demolitions and heedless monumentalism had shown them that SED leaders would never seriously consult them as they crafted the city. By the 1970s and especially 1980s, epic deterioration of historic landmarks and whole neighborhoods had proven to residents that SED leaders were incompetent to craft the city on their behalf. Although from the mid-1970s onward a growing cadre of local officials invested considerable time in trying to preserve historic elements, beautify wasted districts, insert prestige buildings at odds with centralized plans, and dream about how to fashion a better urban future, from the public gaze at street-level, the outcome was paltry at best and hopeless at worst. Anyone arriving in Leipzig for its biannual trade fair in the late 1980s was surrounded by signs of a rotten urban fabric. At the northeastern corner of the ring road that marked Leipzig’s onetime fortification walls, Germany’s largest train station—an iconic 1915 poured-cement construction painstakingly reconstructed right after its wartime devastation—now offered a dingy entry point. Flanked by the gleaming white Wintergarten Tower to the left and boxy Robotron Computer Center to the right, the visitor faced sobering rows of dilapidated prewar trade palaces straight ahead on the Nikolaistraße. Further to the right, most of the old town’s northwestern quadrant 17

18    C h a pt e r

1

had been replaced with the cement wasteland of Saxon Square, which was hemmed on three sides by apartment blocks and to the west by a Potemkin village of historic façades whose interiors had been either botched by underfunded preservation efforts or surrendered to total dilapidation. Past the Stasi building on the ring road’s western extremity—across from the blackened behemoth of the once-pristine new city hall, designed before 1914 by the master architect Hugo Licht—one could tour the nearly completed Dorotheenplatz neighborhood: a prototype for combining historic buildings with modern blocks that Berlin had already rejected as too expensive for further implementation. Along the southern rim of the ring road, the visitor encountered a solitary octagonal landmark at the edge of a makeshift parking expanse called Wilhelm Leuschner Square. Abuzz with activity, this was the new Bowlingtreff, whose subterranean leisure halls gave locals a reprieve from everyday dreariness, if (after waiting for weeks, sometimes months) they got a ticket. Past a line of Stalinist apartment buildings, the tour might end at the eastern side of the ring on Karl Marx Square. Abutting the old town on the square’s western side, the former site of Leipzig’s Gothic University Church—­demolished against mass protest in 1968—was occupied by a main university building, already dated and dull for many Leipzigers. It featured a rectangular bronze Karl Marx emblem that only nursed resentment.1 Nonetheless, the neighboring high-modernist university tower with its angular peak had won the affectionate nickname as the city’s “wisdom tooth,” and Leipzigers were generally proud of both the late-Stalinist opera house on the square’s northern side and the newly erected Gewandhaus on its southern side—each an edifice without equal in the republic that promised cultural refinement to distract from choking gloominess. Within the bounds of this ring, the old town festered in a splay of crumbling prewar edifices that included Leipzig’s trademark exhibition halls with their lofty passages, ugly gaps still left from the war or subsequent demolitions, and uninspired modern boxes. Outside the ring, Kaiser-era neighborhoods spanned in all directions: a Dickensian nightmare where most Leipzigers languished in barely habitable conditions. And beyond these inner suburbs, identical rows of apartment blocks were steadily encroaching toward the center, some of them already within sight of downtown. Scores of restorable neighborhoods fell to the wrecking ball through the last decade of communism; in another ten years, the whole city might have consisted of monotonous blocks punctuated by the occasional landmark. Not least because they sustained such a strong sense of civic pride, Leipzigers generally detested what leaders had done to their historic city,

S u r v i va l a n d D e s pa i r i n Dys to p i a     19 to Michaeliskirche and Nordplatz (250 meters)

Leipzig Zoo

Robotron Computer Center

Main Train Station

Blue Wonder footbridge

Wintergarten Tower Stasi HQ

Nikolaistraße

Saxon Square

market

to Ostvorstadt and Lukaskirche (1600 meters) Nikolaikirche Opera

Thomaskirche old city hall

Grimmaisc

he Straße

Karl Marx Square

Dorotheenplatz

Gewandhaus

University Bowlingtreff

new city hall

Moritzbastei

Wilhelm Leuschner Square

University Library Beethovenstraße 8

Dimitroff Museum Beetho

e

ß venstra

site of former Gewandhaus

0

50

100 150 200 250 meters

Leipzig’s historic center, circa 1989. Map by Mike Bechthold.

and they recoiled at the prospect of exile to a monotonous prefab suburb. Even though apartment roofs gushed water when it rained and were infested with pigeon ticks, the sociologist Alice Kahl ascertained an overwhelming desire to remain in older neighborhoods. In her broad survey of residents in a portion of the Ostvorstadt about to undergo Plattenbau reconfiguration

20    C h a pt e r

1

in 1983, she recorded that only one-third would move out if offered lodging in a more comfortable modern district. For the rest, it was worth remaining, despite rampant decay and impending discomfort from construction equipment. She concluded, What unites the Ostvorstädter so closely now with their neighborhood? Why do they want to remain faithful to it, when new districts with modern heated apartments at the edge of Leipzig set the standard for good living? When asked whether they would fundamentally prefer to live in a historic neighborhood or new district, it was actually a majority that chose, rather unambiguously, to live in a historic neighborhood. Amid the ongoing restoration and modernization of apartments, this majority even rose to over 70 percent. A declaration of love for the Ostvorstadt!2 As Kahl’s findings ultimately reveal, few wished to lose their sense of community, rootedness, and history to obtain faceless Plattenbau comforts. And once threatened with the wrecking ball, neighborhoods where one had languished in misery for years became precious. Not least because officialdom had long ignored their advice about saving the city writ large, residents invested their strong sense of communal striving to save their immediate surroundings. Homing in on the intimate, private level of urban experience through the last decade of communism, this chapter explores three approaches by which many Leipzigers tried to save their neighborhoods as the greater city fell apart all around them. First, many citizens took action within the system by mailing petitions (Eingaben) to officials at all levels. Like authorized architectural plans to merge history with prefab construction, however, missives from lawabiding citizens were crushed under the overbearing weight of an industrialized Plattenbau economy, which allocated virtually nothing to help even the most outspoken residents to save neighborhood structures. Even loyal SED party members struck a bureaucratic brick wall when they faithfully mailed petitions in the hope of a return from their “people’s democracy.” Second, some citizens dispensed with mailing complaints and took the initiative; with their own hands, they sought to do what they could to secure livable immediate surroundings. Much as local officials applied Schwarzbau methods to attain isolated victories like the Bowlingtreff, proactive residents exploited semilegal options like personal connections, barter, and financial reserves. Above all, however, such “personal initiative” (alternately called Selbsthilfe and Eigeninitiative) demanded action: residents who repaired their own apartments possessed or gained the required know-how to improve

S u r v i va l a n d D e s pa i r i n Dys to p i a     21

their surroundings through their own labor. Church communities likewise relied on donations and labor from within to repair their sanctuaries. Similar to official examples of “underground” urban ingenuity such as the Bowlingtreff, Schwarzbauten attained through personal initiative skirted the bounds of legality. Sometimes local authorities even lauded the outcome. But they were isolated victories, incapable of seriously enhancing the dreary impression of the surrounding streetscape. Finally, some citizens did basic repairs or otherwise tried to improve their lot through purely illegal means. The black market thrived from theft of private materials and plunder of official construction sites and depots. At the same time, numerous young people denied suitable housing broke into abandoned apartments and through their own labor and guile did what they could to make them habitable. Both makeshift repairs and makeshift housing demonstrated how the state had failed to offer its citizens not just basic housing but also basic order. With its perplexing variegation between centrally approved, partially approved, somewhat illegal, and outright illegal building methods, the SED state itself was a paragon of disorder that confounded any resident’s attempts to follow the law. So confusing and downright impossible were the basic parameters of urban survival that squatters and thieves often felt that what they were doing was socially justifiable, even a given for how things worked in the late DDR. Illegal activities fashioned order where none existed.

Petitions and Despair Because they lacked the practical know-how, personal initiative, or temerity to bend the rules, many sought to better their lot within the bounds of the system. And they almost always lost out. The chief route for legal action was the Eingabe; although the party suppressed collective dissent, it enshrined the individual’s right to petition state officials.3 By the 1980s, East Germans wrote on average five hundred thousand petitions per year to officials at various levels, or about one petition for every thirty-four citizens. As Jonathan Zatlin observes, the party encouraged Eingaben as a means “to deflect discontent by imparting a feeling of personal involvement that was intended to compensate for the experience of material want.” Citizens’ expressions of discontent with prices, distribution, and scarcity were explicitly meant to serve as an indicator of party performance.4 By the last decade of the DDR, a considerable number of petitions had to do with housing problems. For instance, from a collection of 6,822 petitions posted to Berlin in the first half of 1983, 35.51 percent concerned housing and 6.86 percent

22    C h a pt e r

1

urban planning, in contrast to travel (14.6 percent) or resettlement to the West (7.94 percent).5 As Brian Ladd attests, the most fundamental, widespread, and permissible cause for complaint about urban deterioration was always an individual family’s discontent with its own housing. The solution of the housing problem was the primary goal of the regime’s social policy during the 1970s and 1980s. The fact that the problem had not been solved was no secret—it was supposed to be solved by 1990—so it was acceptable to complain about one’s own poor housing, even in a system that refused to acknowledge the existence of many other problems.6 The situation was statistically daunting. Even though by 1990 Leipzig’s population had shrunk to 75 percent of its prewar level and the city limits had increased by 150 percent through prefab suburbs, forty-eight thousand requests for housing had reached the city council at the start of that year alone, because whole neighborhoods in the historic city had been demolished, thirty thousand apartments were uninhabitable, and many thousands were in catastrophic disrepair.7 With enough persistence, most citizens won a written reply from some level of officialdom. But seldom did their petitions attain (much less expedite) meaningful assistance. After years of complaints, a citizen might get a patch on the roof; more commonly, officials let the house rot and eventually resolved the complaint by uprooting the citizen into a new prefab apartment. The process of corresponding with officials thus generated a sense of frustration, even despair, that the regime did not care for its citizens.8 Runaway urban decay and personal attachment to historic housing made petitions from older neighborhoods particularly common and poignant. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the Leipzig Baukombinat (building collective) regularly received petitions about wet cellars, leaky roofs, crumbling façades, and uninhabitable interiors. Many of these properties had been steadily nationalized since the war and collectivized under the umbrella of the VEB Gebäudewirtschaft Leipzig (GWL) in 1971, which managed 65 percent of Leipzig residences by 1990.9 In his extensive analysis of Leipzig’s housing sector, Christian Rau outlines massive shortages in material and competent personnel at both the GWL and VE Kombinat Baureparaturen und Rekonstruktion. Of the 1,460 GWL employees in 1973, nearly 15 percent tended to resign within months of taking on the job because of overwork and poor pay (they could earn about 120 marks more per month working for city building repair companies). By 1975, only 87 of the 145 professional caretakers in the GWL possessed the necessary qualifications to undertake repairs, and 58

S u r v i va l a n d D e s pa i r i n Dys to p i a     23

caretakers lacked any completed degree. Of forty-two technicians, only six possessed the necessary degree qualification as a master, which in combination with the hazardous state of tools and machinery led to high accident quotas.10 As Baukombinat director Martin Schulze complained to his production director in 1976, numerous Eingaben protested that repairs were not happening in a timely manner, and he insisted on making materials available to complete such repairs as soon as possible.11 Even the comparably betterprovisioned Communal Housing Collective in East Berlin suffered from high turnover and incompetence.12 Unfortunately, housing authorities across the republic lacked the means to do much of anything, because of the diversion of resources to industrialized mass housing production, collectivization of handworkers (leading to their sharp decline), poor access to materials, and inadequate funds caused by low rents. This latter deficiency often won official praise as proof that East German citizens enjoyed affordable housing that contrasted with speculative rental practices prevalent in the West. After lauding the resolution of 110,974 “apartment problems” since 1982 (overwhelmingly through Plattenbau construction), Leipzig’s 1988 financial report celebrated that rents had maintained the same low level for over forty years, frozen at a rate of about one mark per square meter. Just as in the aftermath of the Great Depression, a small apartment still cost about 50 marks per month.13 The flipside of such easy living was complete dilapidation. As an eighty-year-old pensioner complained to the new independent opposition group Neues Forum in December 1989, low rents had ensured that there was no money to renovate. Although West German rents were high, he argued, “landlords there can offer everything to their renters.”14 Failed attempts by local officials to solve defects in basic repair practices only deepened public scorn. From 1984 to 1987, Leipzig’s mayor Karl-Heinz Müller championed his Dächer dicht (Secure the Roofs) campaign to fix the city’s leaky roofs through a socialist mass initiative undertaken by repair collectives, the Free German Youth, and after-hours brigades. Hampered from the start by poor coordination between bureaucrats, handworkers, and badly trained brigades, the effort quickly faltered amid severe shortages in roofing tiles, even though the 1988 city financial report claimed that it had been a success by repairing over 2.8 million square meters of roofs.15 As Christian Rau observes on the basis of a 1986 report from the Office of the Chief Architect (BCA), “the planned economy followed its own inner logic, so that building enterprises selected only those roofs that were still intact and carried out only minor repairs because they were measured on the raw numbers of roofs repaired, not on the scale of the renovation.”16 Newly formed

24    C h a pt e r

1

roofing brigades were soon dissolved again, and the authorities’ attempts to clarify the situation met with ridicule. So desperate was Leipzig’s city council that in 1984 it commissioned the understaffed GWL to secure building material from ruins; but by the time their poorly coordinated teams reached a site, the remains had typically been rendered unusable by scavengers who had already helped themselves.17 Meanwhile, those who petitioned for building materials were subjected to endless waiting periods, during which structural decay grew chronic. Some even mailed photographs to prove they had holes in their roofs—in vain. Rather than helping homeowners and renters keep up historic residences, preservation officials at Leipzig’s Office of Architectural Art (BfaK) proved particularly burdensome thanks to a fatal combination of overscrupulousness and meager resources. Property owners who tried to renovate on their own were usually denied reimbursement from preservation offices, because they had not waited for official oversight that never would have happened owing to a lack of funds. When in 1977 the owner of the so-called beehive apartment asked the BfaK for financial help in restoring her historic structure, the office delayed for an absurd length of time before writing that, “because of the concrete situation, no reimbursement of costs is possible.” While admitting that a historic building like hers should qualify for aid, the preservationist groused that “funds for historic preservation [Denkmalpflege] don’t come from some endless big pot, from which we can reimburse all the demands that arise overnight for great and arbitrary sums.” After chastising her for commencing repairs before the bureaucracy could write back, he added that damages which had appeared on her façade nullified any justification for the BfaK to consider her structure worthy of protection. “Hence, this means that the work you have already carried out fails to correspond with Denkmalpflege or urban planning.”18 Preservationists even blocked residents from replacing broken windows in a Stötteritz apartment building on the grounds that it should have historic-looking windows that were, of course, impossible to procure.19 The message was unmistakable: any citizen who dared to believe that historic preservation was more than punctilious rhetoric and asked for aid faced an endless waiting period, in which decay would surely continue; and if the citizen attempted repairs on his or her own initiative, the city’s underfunded preservation office actually had further grounds to deny reimbursement. Through such examples, one sees that a bureaucracy spawned by the new historic preservation law of 1975 failed to answer most citizen requests, and when ultimately prompted to respond, officials offered only excuses and even outright aspersions (rather

S u r v i va l a n d D e s pa i r i n Dys to p i a     25

than funds)—all with the expectation that the general public would keep working with them for no reason. Incredulity thus came to dominate correspondence with preservation officials. When in September 1988 an owner was informed that her historic home was to be given preservation status, she scoffed, “As the owner of this property, I was astonished today to discover that my house is now a ‘Denkmal’! In principle, I am happy when a valuable old structure [wertvolle Altbausubstanz] is thus registered. This action is indeed happening across the whole city. Unfortunately, the historic preservation plaques are often pulled off by rowdies, thus damaging the façade,” as had recently happened to one of her neighbors, and she wondered with all due cynicism if registration implied any assistance with repairs.20 Residents of Eutritzsch (part of Leipzig since 1890) were likewise understandably skeptical of plans by the BfaK to replace their decayed but intact neighborhood with small-scale modern structures punctuated by restored exceptions.21 In his letter to the press (forwarded to the BfaK, rather than printed), an “old Eutritzscher” complained that Leipzig “should be ashamed” that such a historic district was “run down” (vergammelt). In addition to cafés “only recalled in yellowed photos and the narration of disappointed long-time residents,” the Gosenschänke pub was collapsing, even though a plaque noted that it had been frequented by none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in his student days.22 It could hardly have been reassuring when the BfaK wrote back that, having placed Eutritzsch under preservation status, “obviously for most buildings in your neighborhood the preservation law will only find application in that, after the necessary demolitions, the Bezirk building director will be informed that he should only allow replacement with new structures that suit the character of the old appearance of Eutritzsch.” Likely because of Goethe, chief architect Siegel restored the Gosenschänke as a restaurant in 1986.23 It was an exception in a vast sea of housing abandoned to catastrophic neglect. A glance at two routine cases conveys how frustration with poor housing ravaged confidence in socialism for some of its most faithful members. After forty unanswered Eingaben to various offices, a Leipzig-Plagwitz resident’s demand for a “quick, unbureaucratic” resolution read like a divorce letter to the SED. By September 1981, the loyal party member had been issuing complaints about his rotting apartment for three and a half years; irked beyond measure, he warned the Politburo that ramshackle housing had reduced his neighbors’ confidence in the regime to “disgust or laughter.” Should the authorities persist in neglecting his house, he threatened to quit his “socialist labors [gesellschaftliche Arbeit]” and essentially live off the state. “We are

26    C h a pt e r

1

certainly agreed that in a socialist state I ultimately have my rights,” he reasoned. “Unfortunately, all too often one sees only obligations.”24 Almost two more years of misery passed, before he and his family were moved to a new apartment some blocks away, officially “solving” the affair.25 Meanwhile, an elderly party member in Leipzig-Gohlis had been mailing complaints for four years by the time she finally beseeched the Politburo in 1987. By then, the hole in the roof of her “very beautiful” two-room apartment had worsened to the point that she was emptying buckets of water every time it rained. Spreading mold and decay had destroyed her health to such an extreme that she was practically bedridden and could only watch as her historic home disintegrated around her. Her complaint to the Politburo portrayed a life of faithfulness to socialism utterly betrayed by state incompetence: I worked until seventy-one, and never in all my life of hard work have I ever experienced such negligence with material resources as takes place here by liable authorities, whose outrageous irresponsibility borders on economic sabotage [Wirtschaftssabotage]. I have the impression that the authorities wait for my demise, so that they can file away this tedious affair in the archives. Let me ask you whether our republic’s regularly invoked formulation, “the Mensch stands in the middle,” is still true. Or is it only meant as a lovely saying for the newspapers? I have completely lost any belief and trust in our state organs. My final recourse is that you might help me. Wallpaper peels in my apartment; water drips from the ceiling and drains down the walls. The house decays more and more, and apart from inspections, assessments of worsening damages, and promises, everything remains as before. These living conditions meted out to me certainly cannot be a thanks for my participation in building our republic up out of the rubble.26 Her skepticism about promises of imminent aid was justified: her home was not even on the list for repair in 1988.27 Months later, as she sickened in the dank environment, the old woman broke her thigh; from her hospital bed, she entreated the Politburo that at last she was willing to move to Grünau, where at least she could be near her daughter. This wish for a tiny Plattenbau apartment, she noted, “certainly cannot be too great when one is forced to move out again at age seventy-five.”28 Hereupon the Politburo apologized for the fact that “not all damage to buildings in old residential structures have yet been eliminated,” creating “downright complicated problems for affected citizens that cannot always be solved quickly.”29 Although, by February 1988, the old woman’s resilient complaining won a patch for her apartment roof,

S u r v i va l a n d D e s pa i r i n Dys to p i a     27

she never went home again. In June, she was resettled to a one-bedroom apartment in Grünau.30 One wonders whether she lived for another year to see Leipzig explode into peaceful demonstrations that toppled the SED regime she had once served and now scorned. Of course, one should approach Eingaben with some caution as a source base. At the same time that some petitioners crafted biographies of faithful service to communism in the usually vain hope of winning preferential state assistance, a few composed repeated Eingaben out of an apparently pathological obsession with trying to micromanage how the authorities should remedy their ills. For instance, Wieland Zumpe generated a massive file of correspondence that documents both the longstanding failure of authorities to effectively respond to petitions and the extent to which certain citizens harassed officials. As business manager for the Gewandhaus orchestra, Wieland’s father, Karl Zumpe, had long rented a spacious five-and-a-half-room flat on the fourth floor of the palatial historicist house at Beethovenstraße 8, built in 1892 by the famed Leipzig architect Arwed Roßbach. From his balcony, the elder Zumpe had a front-row seat overlooking the wartime bombardment of the Second Gewandhaus and much of Leipzig’s Music District in December 1943. Notwithstanding his father’s high position and his own loyal SED party membership, Wieland Zumpe was not given preferential treatment in the queue of repairs. By December 1988, decay at Beethovenstraße 8 had reached such an extreme that a chimney had collapsed through the skylight into the stairwell, and other chunks of the house were falling into the street. Pigeons roosted in holes across the façade and roof and infested the structure with bloodthirsty ticks. One can easily comprehend why the building’s esteemed white-collar residents had lost faith in SED authorities. The long litany of complaints (summarized here considerably) had already commenced in the early 1960s, when the Zumpe family had appointed itself as spokesperson for all residents in the house and begun issuing complaints about the building’s condition to the landlord (whose control of the building was collectivized into the GWL in 1972). Even at this point, members of the Zumpe family complained about almost everything, including “the extraordinarily bad condition of the potatoes delivered on October 1, 1963,” as well as the apparent negligence by other residents in observing order at the trashcans in the courtyard.31 By the end of the 1970s, most repairs were undertaken by residents with their own limited means. When Zumpe and fellow residents were told in 1979 that 30,500 marks had been set aside for work on the house, they charged that the “emergency repairs did not happen. Where the intended credit went, we do not know.” This was not the only such incident.32 Five years of decay later, Zumpe scheduled a meeting

28    C h a pt e r

1

at the BCA with Dietmar Fischer, but “Dr. Fischer forgot the meeting,” and Zumpe received no response about rescheduling, nor did he succeed in securing a meeting with city officials. Roofers who finally arrived in 1986 actually did greater damage to the house.33 When at last in November 1987 the GWL sent workers to nail metal sheets to the façade, Zumpe soon complained: “For unknown reasons the hydraulic lift, workers, and material vanished a day later. The strips of metal they affixed have created additional nests for pigeons. Why did this happen? And where has the metal gone to?”34 In all likelihood, the workers had decided that their mission was accomplished, and they had taken the metal back to the construction yard in the southern city outskirts, where it could be used for other GWL buildings, or very likely for their own pet Schwarzbau projects. By the time Architektur der DDR gave a special article on the district in 1988 to praise supposed ongoing restorations, the building’s residents (largely from the intellectual and professional classes) were at the end of their wits and starting to join Zumpe in sending complaints.35 After the chimney had collapsed through the skylight, another resident protested to the city that “the label ‘under historic preservation’ that was granted to us in 1988 seems like a farce and certainly does not preserve the house from decay. The behavior of the VEB GWL in the incident with the chimney collapse was especially worthy of criticism, and the fact that no one was hurt is pure luck.”36 In response to letters, the Leipziger Volkszeitung published an article recounting the historic corner building’s scandalous state of decay, but it also reiterated that “energies are lacking at present to comprehensively restore a house like this.” Although the paper called on the GWL to take its responsibilities more seriously, nothing happened.37 Residents had to live with their broken skylight, heat their homes without a chimney, and clean up as much as they could on their own—a situation many other Leipzig residents could identify with. At last, in 1991, the house transitioned back to its pre-1945 owner (in the West). But the new housing administration repaired the structure too slowly for Zumpe, who founded a citizen’s initiative. After years of nagging officials at all levels, Zumpe left his historic family apartment in 2002, right when renovations proceeded in earnest. In concluding this analysis of how citizens engaged “within the system,” it is essential to consider how the public perceived the Plattenbau alternative. After all, the historic city had been doomed in no small part because of the centralized system’s preference for building prefab apartment blocks. Even though renovation of existing structures would have been cheaper than production of entirely new mass housing districts with accompanying infrastructure, through the 1970s and 1980s Honecker’s administration allocated considerable resources to offer residents relocation into Plattenbauten as an

S u r v i va l a n d D e s pa i r i n Dys to p i a     29

impressive physical manifestation that socialism was forging the way out to a better life.38 On the eve of its dissolution, East Germany had built 2.1 million Plattenbau apartments: 83 percent of all housing construction and home to over half the population.39 After failed plans in the 1960s, a five-month national urban planning competition in May 1973 ended with Leipzig Chief Architect Siegel producing an overarching concept for Grünau: the DDR’s second-largest housing estate with twenty-seven thousand apartments west of the city in a rare region unthreatened by spreading coal pits. Spurred on by Honecker’s 1971 declaration that all households were to have their own apartments by 1990, Leipzig’s Baukombinat had won the ultimate opportunity for industrialized mass construction on the open plain. As Thomas Hoscislawski observes, Grünau was considerably “influenced through unspoken Western urban planning models” as well as “intensive use of land under the technological construction possibilities of the Leipzig building collective [Baukombinat].”40 By 1976, a new prefab panel factory was under construction to ensure rapid industrialized assembly. Although, as Florian Urban observes, Honecker’s housing plan always “surpassed the capacities of the East German construction industry,” Leipzig’s Baukombinat put forth considerable effort.41 How did new residents perceive the outcome of this great experiment? Applying Marzahn (the DDR’s largest housing estate) as a case study, Eli Rubin argues that each Plattenbau settlement became an “amnesiopolis,” where intentional separation from all history and rootedness fashioned a drifting universe without past or future. Because socialist housing estates eliminated physical connection to presocialist memories, concrete utopia “meant new sights, new smells, new everyday routines for people’s bodies, new weather patterns, new flora and fauna, and a new sense of space within a vertical and horizontal matrix.” Material rupture weakened bonds with their former lives and previous eras of German history.42 Especially for older residents, this was seldom a healthy development. When a pensioner visited Leipzig’s 1988 building exhibition, he lamented the pending loss of his historic home and ejection into the anonymity of Plattenbau existence. “Allegedly, we are to lose our property in 1989 because of demolition,” he complained, and his many queries had yielded “no clear information. As an elderly pensioner, all this means losing what you yearn for in old age: peace and security, and so no uncertainty today or tomorrow. In my view, the deadlines for eviction are too short. One needs to have at least a couple of years to adjust to it.”43 This sentiment replicated itself in historic neighborhoods across East Germany; for instance, in Potsdam a samizdat reporter heard sentiments like “I won’t survive this” or “I’m not leaving, they have to take me out on a stretcher” from elderly residents. “Not just older residents, but

30    C h a pt e r

1

also quite a few young people and families don’t want to leave this [historic] district,” the report concluded.44 In her survey of residents in Leipzig’s Ostvorstadt in 1983, Leipzig sociologist Alice Kahl concluded that most wished to stay in a historic district where they were close to the center and enjoyed “good relations with neighbors” and “good familiarity with the neighborhood.” Crucial to this overwhelming sentiment, she concluded, was the fact that over half of her interviewees had lived in their Ostvorstadt apartments for two decades, and over one-third for even longer. Thus, she concluded, “the agreeable attitude of feeling at home is actually forged more strongly by the length of residence than through the state of repair, so long as the basic demand of habitability has not been adversely affected.”45 As Jane Jacobs observed in older neighborhoods across the United States’ East Coast, historic communities had formed organic networks of “mutual support” that could not be easily reconstructed in the mathematical sterility of top-down prefab planning.46 East or West, it appeared that older neighborhoods sustained a strong appeal. Once a Leipziger had landed in Grünau, he or she finally enjoyed modern amenities like central heating and hot showers. As BCA architect Johannes Schulze recalls, “in a Plattenbau one had it ‘dry, secure, and warm.’ If modern heating and such had been in the city, one would have wished to live in the city.”47 Catalogues of the time depicted manifold creative possibilities through which one could customize the standardized living room interiors to make home.48 The annual magazine Wohnen regularly featured recommendations for how to individualize a prefab apartment, whether by rearranging furniture, putting in a bunk loft, or installing new lighting. Stefan Wolle goes so far as to celebrate tiny Plattenbau apartments as “the actual emblem of DDR life,” where at last “there were no bounds placed on imagination.” Along with pasted Walt Disney decorations and hanging bouquets, “especially popular were the imitation half-timbered [walls], which gave the cement not just desired unmistakable personal touches, but also displayed the resident’s personal artistic abilities.”49 In 1982, Alice Kahl published her questionnaire findings in Wohnen that 50 percent of Plattenbau residents were pleased with their own living-room arrangements, though only 14 percent would enter a contest for “the most beautiful living room,” because “most nonetheless opine that their living room is no more original than most others.”50 Even the most positive data thus reflected a sense of monotony. Indeed, as Kahl concluded her ten-year study of 1,564 Grünau residents in 1986, she found that, though freed from the decrepitude of their former homes across the historic city, new residents felt uprooted when they first arrived in the Plattenbau suburb.51 And the longer they lived in Grünau, the

S u r v i va l a n d D e s pa i r i n Dys to p i a     31

less satisfactory they found the size and quality of their apartments, their distance from the city center, and their sense of alienation.52 Scores of petitions evinced that, even in new apartments, shoddy workmanship often necessitated repairs that the management collective failed to address. After just a few months in their two-room apartment at Grünau, a party member and his family had serious leaks in their kitchen whenever it rained. Letters to the management, the Leipziger Volkszeitung, and city council failed to deliver any help,53 and only by alerting Berlin did they win higher priority for repairs (at the expense of their neighbors).54 Such stories circulated around the city and intensified the desire by those still living in historic neighborhoods to send petitions for repairs, lest they also suffer exile to Grünau.55 When Kahl updated her study in June 1989, Grünau was nearly complete as a settlement approaching ninety-five thousand residents in eight residential complexes, and many residents had overcome their aesthetic aversion thanks to their preference for modern amenities.56 Nonetheless, in 1989 only one-third of Grünauer questioned by Kahl thought they had an ideal living situation. As a result, Kahl concluded, overemphasis on Plattenbau construction and neglect of the historic city had damaged Leipzig’s overall attractiveness and encouraged young intellectuals to move away.57 Only with time could new roots and attachments form, which meant that Plattenbau communities only really coalesced after the end of communism. Intended for 85,000 people, Grünau fell to 39,700 residents before climbing back to 42,831 by 2016.58 To the question of “do you feel good in Grünau,” the first results in 1979 of 66 percent “yes” had dropped to 35 percent “yes” in 1992 but rebounded to 74 percent “yes” in 2009, because of renovations, improved infrastructure (notably a large shopping center), and proximity to nature. Even though by 2010 Grünau’s population was rapidly aging, and outer districts had been demolished, Kahl’s colleagues established that “the future development of the city district is estimated as thoroughly positive,” as young people moved into the area to take advantage of its low rents and rich offerings for families with children.59 This being said, contemporary Grünau can hardly compete in attractiveness with the restored apartments across the historic city. Those who have means want to live in a Jugendstil apartment like Beethovenstraße 8 in the Music District, not a remodeled Plattenbau in Grünau.

Self-Reliance as Survival Complaining through Eingaben seldom got results. Given this reality, some Leipzigers embraced the maxim that, to get anything done, they had to do

32    C h a pt e r

1

it themselves. Formal and informal interviews have revealed that such selfinitiative was relatively common; residents were empowered through connections, barter, and their own sweat and guile. To get her plumbing fixed, a medical doctor who worked in a town southeast of Leipzig traded favors with handworkers. After repeated failed attempts to marshal materials and conjure after-hours labor, she kindly reminded a plumber that of course he would need her services at the clinic should he fall ill. Within a day, her plumbing was fixed. In like manner, she scrounged up materials and laborers to build a little garage next to her apartment. This pattern replicated itself in cities across the republic. In Halle, an unofficial civic initiative of about fifteen residents unilaterally cleaned up the Renaissance-era Stadtgottesacker cemetery in 1981. By 1983, they started repairing the roofs of abandoned landmarks, some of which were torn down anyway. Although by 1988 some of the seven structures on which they had devoted so much labor and scarce material had been lost, they explained their continued exertions to a samizdat reporter: “you just have to achieve something positive for yourself.”60 Only by immersing themselves in the murky parameters of the second economy could residents and even officials build anything: it was simply how a sizeable portion of the construction sector across the East Bloc functioned. As Gregory Grossman so tersely defined it in 1977, the second economy involved production and exchange either “in knowing contravention of existing law” or as a “perfectly legal private activity” that, he observed, was nonetheless “directly for private gain” so that “its operating principles are sharply different from those of the ‘first’ economy. Furthermore, in many cases one cannot practically draw a line between legal and illegal private activity, since the former often serves as a front for the latter and both support one another.”61 In the Soviet Union (as elsewhere) the second-largest factor in the second economy (after private garden plots) was housing construction. By the mid-1970s, about 30 percent of all new housing in the Soviet Union came from nonstate entities, especially private individuals. From his extensive interviews, Grossman concluded that, “while in principle such construction may be legal, there is little doubt that much of it involves the acquisition of materials on the black market, illegal hiring of construction help, unauthorized use of state-owned vehicles, bribery of officials, and other violations of the law.” Just as in East Germany, across the Soviet Union goods were regularly registered as “spoiled” and then hoarded for some future occasion when a firm needed material “to barter against needed supplies when these are not available through legitimate channels.”62 In Hungary, comparable scarcity in materials and labor by the 1970s and especially 1980s prompted private individuals to solve the housing shortage by drafting family members

S u r v i va l a n d D e s pa i r i n Dys to p i a     33

as manual labor for the “self-help” construction of illegal single-family suburban homes. As Virág Molnár observes, “the architect mainly represented an extension of the state that was constantly busy erecting new administrative hurdles,” which were avoided through bribes. Handworkers were only hired when absolutely necessary—usually through informal family ­connections—and they worked after-hours with equipment they poached from state-managed sites.63 In Josip Broz Tito’s Belgrade, meanwhile, the housing shortage and material scarcity spawned a chaotic mishmash of shanties on public tracts and fine suburban homes on farmland bought in defiance of state plans.64 Far from totalitarian behemoths, the Hungarian and Yugoslav authorities were about as weak as those in Leipzig: unable to halt (or disinterested in stopping) semilegal or illegal private construction at the expense of central planning. From Leipzig to Leningrad, survival under “real existing socialism” thus required self-reliance and initiative on the margins of the system. In this process, citizens who possessed certain know-how or resources sometimes became more powerful than the party elites themselves. If a Leipziger family needed electrical work done, Eingaben could not help them, but the friend of their friend could. This was not always a heroic endeavor, for it had the potential to produce its own abuses through a new range of unequal power relations. Nonetheless, as with official Schwarzbauten like the Bowlingtreff, the sudden move outside the system could also stimulate considerable creativity. Bypassing the stifling bureaucracy, little triumphs became possible. After first exploring the most common space for such survival tactics—the home apartment—this section will also uncover how church communities intervened to save their sanctuaries. In casual conversation with today’s Leipzigers, it quickly becomes apparent that self-reliance—all but absent in archival records—was ubiquitous in everyday life. Sometimes, the obvious shortfalls in centralized planning convinced local authorities to make building materials available for purchase by individuals willing to work for free.65 Major examples include the campaigns Schöner unsere Städte und Gemeinden: Mach mit (from the late1960s) and Dächer dicht (from the mid-1980s), or periodic episodes in which the GWL made building materials available to anyone willing to take on an apartment renovation (Ausbauwohnung) with their own labor. Nonetheless, chronic shortages in each campaign meant that anyone who passively relied upon the authorities to provide materials and laborers lost out. As preservationist Wolfgang Hocquél recalls, “self-initiative was a drop in the bucket, and the Mach mit campaign didn’t function, because there was so little material.” A cause, he recounts, was the dissolution of small companies

34    C h a pt e r

1

and sidelining of artisans.66 The longtime building inspector and organizer Harry Ullich likewise recollects that handworkers were always too few in number to achieve their goals. At times, “the most valuable architectural structures” could get roof patches, but “unfortunately, this was too little for the retention of the entire residential building stock in city districts.” Mayor Karl-Heinz Müller’s Dächer dicht program simply failed to provide enough materials (roof tiles, scaffolding, etc.) and workers for such an enormous action.67 Finally, only about 150 citizens took advantage of the city’s offer in 1984 to grant building privileges to those who could procure materials and labor.68 Those who built on their own typically did so off the charts. Thus, when city records reported that ten thousand house repair plans submitted as part of the Mach mit campaign yielded 327,100 marks’ worth of investment by 1988,69 one should add that (1) this truly was a “drop in the bucket” in such a thoroughly decrepit city and (2) virtually all these renovations mandated personal know-how and cunning outside the bounds of the official system. Looking back on his efforts to refurbish his own apartment, the Bowlingtreff handworker brigade leader Andreas Kalitynski recalls, “Ausbauwohnung, that’s nothing other than laying it out with your own hands, to find materials yourself, and so on. That was a really complex task, and that’s why you knew how much hard work it involved.”70 This being said, the readiness to improve one’s conditions was there when resources materialized. In her 1983 interviews with residents in Leipzig’s Ostvorstadt, Alice Kahl found that almost half of those questioned have already just gone and done the work themselves to raise their personal standard of living. The most common personal efforts were the installation of a hot water heater, the installation of a kitchen sink, installation of a new window, or a false ceiling. In some instances, a bathroom or shower and even gas or floor heating had been installed before [BCA] modernization had commenced. Particularly engaged in such activities were those under forty-five who acted to remain in the Ostvorstadt out of awareness of the advantages of living there. Nearly three-quarters of her interviewees even assisted BCA efforts to modernize their apartments by contributing free labor; very few of these individuals bothered to register their help with painting, cleaning, or even utility work as part of the state-sponsored Mach mit campaign.71 Because he submitted every plan and document from his personal Ausbauwohnung to Leipzig’s Archiv Bürgerbewegung, the case of Matthias Wolf offers a valuable window into how self-reliance became possible and

S u r v i va l a n d D e s pa i r i n Dys to p i a     35

functioned. In 1984, Wolf applied for materials from the GWL to refurbish a forty-three-square-meter apartment at Ludwigstraße 42. It was a spartan little unit in a turn-of-the-century working-class apartment building typical for the neighborhood northeast of the main train station. As will be shown, Wolf ’s apartment was also practically surrounded by abandoned buildings that became a center for squatting and disaffection. “It was an action in which the authorities were hoping that young people would fix their own residences,” Wolf recalls. “Often this meant that the exteriors still looked terrible, but sometimes crafty people got their hands on colorful paint for the façade, which brightened up life in an otherwise brown city.” Why did Wolf choose to commit his own time and labor into repairing a dilapidated GWL rental unit? It was a challenge for young singles who had no chance of getting a new Plattenbau “to have your own apartment at all at age twenty-two,” Wolf reminisces. Energized to make something of his life, Wolf reflects with no small appreciation that “this apartment renovation program was such a good idea, and as a student I had the time to take advantage of it.”72 Thanks to his own training as a handworker and day job at the local technical school, the twenty-two-year-old chemistry student was qualified to do much of the labor himself, and he had connections that allowed him to trade favors with friends who could complete specialized tasks. “Back then, you had to learn the handicraft skills yourself,” he recalls. Thus, in contrast to party intellectuals, artists, or bureaucrats such as Zumpe, Wolf (whose family had no party affiliation) possessed skills that let him operate in a way that was less constrained by systemic proscriptions. Along with his own savings, Wolf received financial assistance from his parents (his mother was a textile factory engineer, his father a mining engineer), who were eager to help him move out of their family apartment in Leipzig-Gohlis, where along with Wolf ’s two younger sisters they shared just sixty-five square meters. Testifying to the frequency with which young people took initiative to get an apartment, Wolf ’s present-day secretary at Leipzig’s Environmental Institute, Christine Skodawessely, also applied for coupons from the GWL in 1981 and “bought planks myself from one of the few depots that existed.” She also worked with friends to repair the floors, tear out walls, paint, and straighten doors. “You needed connections with a roofing company,” she recalls. “Friends helped out—also with the move—but the hardest part was getting materials.”73 When Wolf first examined his future apartment in March 1984, he was pleased to find that the exterior enjoyed relatively new downspouts and (especially) an intact roof repaired just three years before. Inside, however, he gutted out the rotten tile stove, windows, plaster, floors, and utilities, installing a modern bathroom and kitchen, heating, wood floor

36    C h a pt e r

1

planking, a new brick chimney, electrical wiring, and plumbing. For some materials, he received a special coupon (Bezugsschein) to buy planks, heating implements, or bathroom tiles from GWL depots; other materials, such as power cables and power plugs, could be purchased at a store. Even though Wolf secured materials and laborers himself, he faced initial delays in the long after-hours queues of plumbers, carpenters, and chimney builders, whom he paid in cash and off the record (which was legal according to DDR Lawbook 35). Some materials, he recalls, may have come through connections his parents had.74 Much of the time, however, both he and Skodawessely repaired their respective apartments with creative exchanges that were not fully aboveboard. “Handworkers labored for cash after-hours,” Skodawessely recollects. “Often they stole material from their own company, such as the GWL. And you made many exchanges. You didn’t say: I need bathroom tile. You got a message that you could pick up tiles, even if you didn’t need them. You took what you got and hoarded it—which also damaged the economy.” Some residents might have exchanged unused materials for a nice leather jacket; Skodawessely squirrelled away her tiles for five years, so that when around 1986 she moved, she had unused building material for her new bathroom.75 After he completed work on August 4, 1984, at a cost of 12,000 marks, Wolf enjoyed his apartment for nine years. Despite fond memories, however, he and his wife moved out in 1993 because of spreading mold from groundwater, and the building was torn down about seven years later.76 As a member of the youth group at the Michaeliskirche on Leipzig’s Nordplatz, Matthias Wolf had plenty of inspiration for his self-initiated apartment renovation—under the guidance of the Michaeliskirche pastor Wilhelm Schlemmer, the community had rallied together to restore their church interior just a few years before. Indeed, across East Germany church communities had to deploy many of the same tactics as resourceful apartment residents to fashion usable space out of ubiquitous decrepitude. Although DDR preservation propaganda claimed that great care had been taken to restore exceptional religious landmarks like Johann Sebastian Bach’s Thomaskirche,77 it was usually incumbent upon congregations to save their churches—without serious help from the bishop, to say nothing of the state. Any church that failed was finished. Already in 1959 alone, fifty churches had to be closed across Saxony because of structural decay. West German observers believed that this misfortune had “doubtless political-ideological bases”; but the state’s lack of materials, handworkers, and funding certainly played a key role.78 In Leipzig-Reudnitz, the massive neo-Gothic Markuskirche received a new organ and bells in the

S u r v i va l a n d D e s pa i r i n Dys to p i a     37

1950s. But internal momentum from the congregation was apparently lacking by the 1970s, when the Saxon church chose to let the state knock the aging edifice down rather than invest the funds necessary to restore it. For Leipzig’s church building caretaker (Baupfleger) Gerhart Pasch, the loss of the Markuskirche remained a cardinal trauma. At Leipzig’s 1. Volksbaukonferenz (First People’s Building Conference) in January 1990, he complained that the dynamiting had demonstrated the failures of the planned economy with particular clarity: historic buildings, especially churches, had been neglected in favor of prefab apartment construction, depriving whole districts of their architectural heart and so truncating their identities.79 Pasch had long pleaded alongside church superintendent Friedrich Magirius for state aid in church restorations; in June 1985, they protested to the local interior ministry that Leipzig’s churches were in a dire state, and that Eingaben from concerned congregations had no effect.80 But aid was not forthcoming. As local stonemason Andreas Kalitynski recalls, handicraft brigades dealt “above all with state buildings” such as the Bowlingtreff or Gewandhaus; church restoration projects “were typically neglected.”81 If congregations and the surrounding residents wanted to save their churches, they had to do it themselves. An essential precondition for saving endangered churches was an engaged pastor and community. In two exemplary cases—Leipzig’s Michaeliskirche on Nordplatz and Emmauskirche in Sellerhausen—energetic leaders pooled financial, material, and human resources to save their neighborhood’s architectural centerpiece despite the extreme shortage economy. The resulting renovations displayed creativity and beauty that sometimes exceeded achievements that followed after 1989. In 1978—the same year the Markuskirche was dynamited because of ­neglect—Pastor Wilhelm Schlemmer celebrated the successful conclusion of renovations to the Michaeliskirche on the opposite side of town. Born into a religious family, Schlemmer had been forced out of school in the eighth grade in 1952 because of his interest in missionary work and unwillingness to adopt socialist rather than Christian affiliations. In both of his first assignments, the young pastor had gained considerable experience in church renovation that later proved essential in Leipzig. In 1962, Schlemmer had transformed an abandoned village stable into a chapel with a handmade iron altar and fittings. A few years later, he had again marshalled community resources to repair the roof and restore the sanctuary of the eighteenth-century village church at Lobsdorf. For all this preparation, however, the dismal condition of Leipzig’s Michaeliskirche proved daunting when he arrived in 1972. Despite sixty-eight years of neglect, the large Jugendstil edifice (still home to 5,636 members) was a solid structure which, like the doomed Markuskirche,

38    C h a pt e r

1

had only suffered the loss of its windows amid wartime bombardment. Completed in 1904 on Nordplatz, the church’s soaring Jugendstil tower stood at the core of a green island from which every neighborhood street spread out in a star pattern. As church caretaker Pasch observed when defending religious structures on aesthetic grounds, this was a “centerpiece” in the highest sense. Or, to use the contemporary outlook of Jane Jacobs on the other side of the world, it interrupted streets as an “eye-catcher” that gave character and identity to the surrounding neighborhood.82 Unfortunately, in the aftermath of war, exposure to the elements through the church’s empty window sockets had swept brown coal dust throughout the playful turn-of-the-century floral paintings in its vaulting, coated hundreds of carved cherubs and animals, and blackened the once uplifting sanctuary and nave into a depressing cavern that brought Schlemmer’s wife to tears when she first saw it. Even as friends helped the newly arrived pastor restore his decrepit manse across the street, a quarter-meter piece of copper roofing broke loose from the church’s high tower, where it waved like a flag seventy meters over Nordplatz. This was a life-threatening hazard, not just for churchgoers, but also for schoolchildren who used the grand square in front of the church as a schoolyard. When the fire department replied to Schlemmer’s entreaties that it was not responsible for helping churches (apparently even if they burned) and local newspapers (including the East German Christian Democratic Union paper Union) refused to print an article, Schlemmer contacted Pasch, who sent three volunteer mountain climbers from Saxony’s Erzgebirge. The young men scaled the tower with minimal equipment and tore the copper sheathing free. Schlemmer paid them in cash.83 For Schlemmer, this latest test recapitulated the futility of bothering with official organs. When at last Union wrote up the incident in December 1972, it falsified the story to claim that the German Volkspolizei fire department had come to the rescue alongside thirty-five Red Cross workers, from whose ranks a few heroes had scaled the tower.84 “We all knew that such articles were often freely invented for the papers,” Schlemmer recalls. Deprived of any “state building permission, allocation of material, or handworkers,” he turned to “courage, relationships, far-sightedness, and the abilities [of one’s connections] as handworkers.”85 Funding and materials came entirely from collection campaigns within the community. As a donation register testifies, contributors seldom wished to be named.86 A further crucial source was the sister community in West German Hannover-Vinnhorst, which had already shown its generosity through Christmas care packages, Sunday school supplies, and materials impossible to obtain in East Germany.87 Although in theory all churches in

S u r v i va l a n d D e s pa i r i n Dys to p i a     39

the DDR had sister communities in the West, Hannover proved particularly forthcoming in helping the Michaeliskirche to avoid pitfalls common to other East German congregations. To spare the Michaelis community from applying an East German varnish to church benches that inevitably became sticky, Hannover sent Schlemmer a fine West German varnish. In contrast to East German nails that quickly rusted, Hannover mailed copper nails for the slate roof, so that sheets of roofing did not “rain down” on churchgoers as happened after renovations at Leipzig’s Thomaskirche and Peterskirche. And Hannover gave plexiglass outer windows that would not get broken by the stones East German youth often threw into church windows to celebrate state-sanctioned atheism. Labor came from within and without. “I always tried to get handworkers on the church council,” Schlemmer recalls, “because I always needed them.”88 There were systemic reasons why private handworkers were more plentiful in church circles: like Schlemmer, his associate pastor Gerhard Graf had been forced out of school in the eighth grade, entered a trade school, and trained as an artisan. Having become a stained glass craftsman under the Leipzig firm R. Stokinger before studying theology at Leipzig’s Karl Marx University, Graf was well qualified to clean and restore the historic church’s surviving stained glass (fig. 3).89 Starting in 1975, Graf applied his trade in the Michaeliskirche for just 5 marks per hour over the course of 331 hours (earning the practically symbolic sum of 1,655 marks).90 Also on the church council, Paul Tollert had founded a window construction handicraft business and donated considerable personal time for very little money. The council chairman, Tollert’s son Ralf, assisted him in window restorations. Among Schlemmer’s personal friends, Wilhelm Obst completed woodworking, Rainer Kölle did stucco work, and the carpenter Gerhard Koglin made many repairs.91 Finally, Gerhart Pasch saw to historic preservation and at times inserted creative touches with the limited means at his disposal. Thanks to his connections at a glass factory, for instance, the church building caretaker acquired glass balls in bulk; known as Paschkugeln, the orb-shaped light fixtures remain to this day in churches across Leipzig.92 Pasch was also able to procure a hydraulic lift for preliminary repairs, such as clearing dead pigeons that were clogging downspouts. Alongside existing personal connections, Schlemmer sought out help from collectivized labor wherever he could find it. With winter approaching, Schlemmer entered into informal discussions with construction workers from the VEB Gerüstbau and convinced them to “store” their scaffolding inside his church over the winter; rather than sitting idle, they could earn money on the side. Schlemmer also attracted after-hours handworkers from

40    C h a pt e r

1

Figure 3.  Restoration of the Michaeliskirche by Gerhard Graf. Photograph by Wilhelm Schlemmer. Schlemmer Family Collection.

the enormous handicraft collective Produktionsgenossenschaft Handwerker by paying more than the legal rate. After scaffolding arrived in pieces just before Christmas, it arose as a forest of rickety timbers throughout the church interior—an insurance nightmare today (fig. 4).93 Because such VEB state combines had formed from older, expropriated private firms, Schlemmer found elderly handworkers particularly obliging. For instance, using photographs from 1904, an older painter from the Produktionsgenossenschaft Handwerker restored Jugendstil floral patterns across the vaulting.94 Such moonlighting could be seen as a form of personal justice—it was an East German joke, after all, that the acronym VEB (Volkseigener Betrieb, “Publicly Owned Company”) actually stood for Vaters ehemaliger Betrieb (Dad’s Former Business). Since the Saxon church required receipts for all major transactions using church donations, the restoration of the Michaeliskirche produced documentation which, in duplicate, offers a detailed recounting of how selfinitiative functioned in a church restoration.95 Although gratifying for the historian, this was not unproblematic for workers, since as Schlemmer notes “the majority of the work was illegal: that is, without a building registration [Bauanmeldung].”96 To ensure that workers were never caught for receiving illegal payments, the church filed the receipts internally; nonetheless, the paper trail always left open the possibility of detection. As Schlemmer recalls,

Figure 4.  Restoration of the Michaeliskirche: illegal scaffolding. Photograph by Wilhelm Schlemmer. Schlemmer Family Collection.

42    C h a pt e r

1

“construction workers did not do that with great enthusiasm. They preferred to get cash in their pockets.”97 Another reason handworkers preferred to get paid in cash was the fact that they normally had to pay a 20 percent tax on reported income (in contrast to a 5 percent tax for industrial laborers). Finally, Schlemmer attracted workers by paying above-market value for their afterhours labor (which Lawbook 35 technically forbade). Although most money was paid in cash, in certain cases a bank transfer had to be undertaken. For 114 days of use for a hydraulic lift, a transfer of 684 marks was sent to the account for Leipzig’s state bank for handicrafts, as was a transfer to pay for scaffolding.98 Prompt arrival of materials was crucial, Schlemmer observes, since “otherwise the workers would not come.” In displaying materials procured, receipts seldom indicated the actual source. Here again, there was good reason for omissions. For his window repairs, Graf illegally purchased materials from R. Stokinger, the company where he had apprenticed and one of the few handicraft firms that remained private up to 1989 (in part because it had fewer than one hundred workers). Of course, despite illegal levels of generosity for after-hours labor, Schlemmer soon found that his pay scale had not always been high enough. Not long after the congregation celebrated its festive new interiors for Easter in 1979, the pastor ascertained that the Produktionsgenossenschaft Handwerker was trying to take 14,000 more marks than was their due. When he contacted them to correct this error, they retorted that he should never expect help from them again.99 Just as in the case of the Michaeliskirche, community-driven restoration of the Emmauskirche in Leipzig-Sellerhausen over the decade after 1971 was never formally registered with state authorities. Dietmar Koenitz, the pastor at the time, recalls that “the securing of scaffolding, firms, and materials was adventurous, because now as ever no sort of state building license could be secured.” Here too construction collectives illegally set up scaffolding, and a sister congregation in West Germany sent rarities like gold leaf and stained glass (along with coffee and cigarettes for workers). Yet the Emmauskirche evinced one serious difference from Schlemmer’s project on the other side of town: some church members logged their voluntary hours with the state’s Nationales Aufbauwerk free labor campaign. As a result, in 1981 the Emmaus church community won the peculiar honor of a medal and 100-mark prize from the National Front of the DDR for the initiative Schöner unsere Städte und Gemeinden: Mach mit. To honor such free labor in the much-lauded state campaign to beautify decrepit urban spaces, Koenitz recalls, “some SED functionaries entered a church for the first time in their lives.”100 In the end, Matthias Wolf has a universalized explanation for why people engaged in self-initiative, whether to build a Bowlingtreff, fix up a church,

S u r v i va l a n d D e s pa i r i n Dys to p i a     43

or renovate their homes: “wherever you live, you want to make something out of your life.” Although Wolf himself was not a socialist, “perhaps back then you thought more about social community,” he recalls. “You learned to help yourself, or you were lost. And you learned to help your neighbors, so that they might help you later on. Instead of sitting back and complaining all the time, you had to take action and do something.”101 Rather than waiting for the authorities to send help—much less enact meaningful change—self-­ reliant actors like Wolf and Schlemmer sought cracks in the system where they could enact change to their own benefit in their own sphere. They operated at the fuzzy edges of the law, always careful not to push those bounds over the edge into outright rebellion. For others, however, flagrant disobedience could not be avoided in the pursuit of a happy life.

Stealing and Squatting Schwarzbauten arose in the shadow of legality, and they were often tolerated, even celebrated. But the black market (Schwarzmarkt) so inextricably connected to the Schwarzbau economy had long shaken officials and prompted police action. Already in June 1945, the city had warned that anyone who stole building materials for the black market would be fined and could spend up to two weeks in prison.102 As scarcity increased through the latter half of the DDR, illegal requisitioning worsened. By 1978, a communist resident— annoyed at lack of repair to his historic home—complained to the Politburo that a new but empty apartment building on his street had been breached and plundered. “The apartment doors are bashed in, windowpanes broken, switches torn out,” he observed, concluding, “It’s an unbelievably pigsty.”103 In 1981, the Leipzig preservationist Hubert Maaß reported his dismay that decaying historic landmarks were getting plundered for trimmings then sold through unofficial channels. He fumed that despite being locked, the buildings are experiencing substantial plunder and damage to internal architectural details like brass fittings, old door locks, stairways, wrought iron bars, Dutch tiles, handmade door hinges, and many other objects interesting for the antiques market. Along the way, intentional and heedless damage takes place in contempt of the value of these preservation sites. Windows are broken or opened, so that snow, humidity, and pigeons can get in, and further natural destruction can accelerate. Maaß wanted perpetrators caught by the police. Unnamed consequences were to be popularized in the press to keep such theft from happening again.

44    C h a pt e r

1

And landmarks were not to be left empty, he argued, but granted funds for reconstruction.104 Finally, despite an active police guard at the Bowlingtreff construction site, many tons of Cuban marble vanished in the night, likely to adorn some club or even home in a quiet corner of the crumbling city. As the Bowlingtreff architect Winfried Sziegoleit recalls, “maybe they built something for the functionaries’ dachas, but I don’t know.”105 Although it was patently illegal, theft was regularly interpreted as an honest method of survival and self-reliance; for this very reason it was dangerous, since it proved that social order as defined by the state could not procure basic essentials needed for a happy life. As Eli Rubin observes in Marzahn, residents sometimes used the state-sanctioned Mach mit campaign as an excuse to plunder. To build a small playground outside their Plattenbau, Wilfried Klenner recalls, “residents simply took [materials] from nearby construction sites. The benches were ‘outright stolen’ from the state-owned gardening company where one of the residents worked,” since as a VEB “it was all people’s property (Volkseigen), and anyway, it was for the building.”106 In like fashion, Leipzig residents ransacked abandoned buildings for construction supplies and firewood. Why let such scarce resources go to waste on property that belonged to everyone anyway? Indeed, as Christian Rau observes, although officials (hampered by bureaucratic chaos and the shortage economy) encouraged Leipzigers to undertake their own repairs, the chiefly college-age residents who responded often obtained building materials via shady connections at state construction depots or by taking what they needed from abandoned buildings. In 1974 alone, 11.7 percent of all registered economic thefts in Leipzig were related to construction; of these, 37.5 percent were committed by construction workers themselves, often in agreement with their employers as a form of personal assistance (Hilfeleistung).107 Such a loose interpretation of the law incensed Wieland Zumpe, who alongside Eingaben about his decaying apartment alerted officials about the ongoing destruction of an empty house at the corner of Dimitroff and Grassistraße in 1982. Whereas until recently it had been perfectly serviceable, Zumpe protested, “since the start of this year this building has been used at times as a building supply depot. Since then, it has decayed. Usable pieces are dismantled. What used to be largely intact has since then been willfully destroyed and transported away by construction workers, strangers, or children.” Since 1980, he had sent the city queries about who owned the building (apparently it was slated in someone’s imagination to become a music school). And among the photographs he sent to officials, Zumpe featured a

S u r v i va l a n d D e s pa i r i n Dys to p i a     45

rare snapshot of theft in action: an older woman pulling away what appeared to be wooden stairway posts for firewood or building material on a rickety cart (fig. 5, fig. 6).108 Similar patterns of theft recurred across the East Bloc. In the Soviet context, Grossman observed, people stole regularly and without qualms from state collectives but condemned theft from private individuals. Over and over, he noted, “the worker steals materials and tools with which to ply his trade ‘on the side,’ ” and such “income from private activity on the side may be far more important than the wage or salary they earn in their official jobs.”109 Although in Poland the restoration and retention of a comparatively large private sector after 1956 saved productive family farms and skilled handworkers from oblivion, Andrzej Korbonski observed in 1981 that here too “given the chance, a great majority of people in Poland have engaged in a good deal of stealing, cheating and supplementing their incomes by illegal means.” In particular, shortages in labor and materials meant “that it is practically impossible for an individual in Poland today to build a house legally without seeking help from the second economy. . . . Building workers on state construction sites are only too happy to oblige by moonlighting during their regular working hours and also in the evenings, and it is also easy for them

Figure 5.  Ruins at the corner of Dimitroff and Grassistraße, 1982. A scavenger is visible in the lower right-hand corner. Photograph by Wieland Zumpe. ABL 50.004.01.001.

46    C h a pt e r

1

Figure 6.  Ruins at the corner of Dimitroff and Grassistraße, 1982. To lodge a protest with authorities, Zumpe snuck this rare image of a scavenger making off with beams from the abandoned structure for building material, firewood, barter, or some other use. Photograph by Wieland Zumpe. ABL 50.004.01.001.

to ‘borrow’ a bulldozer or a concrete mixer for a few days, and to deliver truckloads of the necessary building materials—all at a proper price.” Private construction further expanded through the 1970s as bureaucracy from the new Edward Gierek regime actively took part in it.110 House occupations were if anything an even greater breach of centrally decreed law and order. However, like open thievery, Schwarzwohnen seldom implied political or social deviance as it did in the West. In both East and West, squatters were primarily young people in need of housing in a system that had failed to give them any. By inhabiting abandoned structures, they were also taking part in the global revaluation of historic architecture. Yet whereas Western squatters were engaged in active social protest against capitalist speculation, Schwarzwohnen across East Germany was a practical effort to secure a home under authorities ready to look the other way. East German squatting was thus simultaneously subversive and sanctioned by “socialism’s social contract” that every citizen should have housing.111 Officials knew that the chronic housing shortage had made the seemingly endless rows of abandoned housing scandalously attractive. As Udo Grashoff observes, “because demolition was expensive and construction resources

S u r v i va l a n d D e s pa i r i n Dys to p i a     47

were insufficient, houses rendered uninhabitable by decay and condemned by the building authorities often stood for decades as partial ruins and dominated the streetscape of many East German cities. A secret study from the Academy of Social Sciences at the SED Central Committee reported in June 1985 that 235,133 East German apartments (3.6 percent of housing) were not inhabited,” a number that may have risen to 400,000 apartments by 1990. In Leipzig, 10 percent of apartments were uninhabited by the last decade of communism.112 Given this large selection of housing residue and aware that they were at the bottom of the state’s priority list, by the 1970s young East German singles started squatting in large numbers as a creative way to solve the housing shortage. In Leipzig, Christian Rau notes, officials allowed squatting “to prevent confrontation with citizens who had applied ‘much energy, effort, and money’ undertaking repair work themselves.”113 It was a trend with a long afterlife in condemned neighborhoods like Connewitz, whose abandoned apartment rows were rife with squatting during and well after the 1989 revolution (fig. 7). Squatters generally tried to keep clear of interaction with the authorities, and neither the police nor the Stasi tended to bother with them. Officially, an exposed squatter had to pay a 500-mark fine and move out. Occasionally, squatters were imprisoned if they had loud parties that attracted the police. But if they were quiet and helped their neighbors, life went on as easily as it did for a legitimate renter like Matthias Wolf. Indeed, reflecting on his neighbors at the infamous squatting premises around the block at Mariannenstraße 46, Wolf comments that his own rent was so low (35 marks per month with utilities included) that squatters were hardly coming out far ahead (and some of them even paid utilities).114 But living conditions for squatters could be far worse. When the first squatters (some of them teenagers) moved into abandoned apartments at Mariannenstraße, they only had cold water in communal bathrooms, and birch trees grew from the roof among bent antennas. To add color to such a depressing world, one resident sowed sunflower seeds in the courtyard and ultimately across ruined acres throughout the postapocalyptic cityscape.115 Squatting, perhaps the ultimate form of theft, demanded further thievery to ensure that stolen homes remained habitable. Failures in the system made such open illegality a socially valuable contribution in decayed neighborhoods. Some of Wolf ’s neighbors lived in the same building as an old woman, whom they regularly helped with repairs that would not have come in any other way. Given the scarcity of materials, squatters sometimes scaled neighboring empty houses and stole roofing tiles to patch their own rooftops. “Voluntarily and without expectation of payment,” Grashoff observes,

Figure 7.  Inscription “House Inhabited” on a bricked-up display window in Leipzig, August 1990. Photograph by Bernd Heinze. ABL 006–015–062.

S u r v i va l a n d D e s pa i r i n Dys to p i a     49

the forty squatters he later interviewed “had produced considerable renovation results at their own direction. Houses threatened with decay were steadily inhabited and transformed into creative islands of life” (fig. 8).116 Occasionally, these “creative islands” also became hotbeds of dissent. As West German ARD correspondent Peter Wensierski recalls, four young people living at Mariannenstraße 46 (Kathrin Hattenhauer, Cornelia Fromme, Uwe Schwabe, and Frank Sellentin) fashioned their illegal dwelling into a “cradle of opposition,” and along with other friends from eastern Leipzig stood at the head of demonstrations from summer 1988 onward.117 Wensierski interviewed the group in their back courtyard—it was hoped outside the view of constant Stasi surveillance—to protest the surrounding urban dystopia in his August 1989 film How We Live Here: Frustration and Decay in Leipzig (Wie wir hier leben: Frust und Verfall in Leipzig).118 The Stasi watched the house, but took no action. Such rare use of illegal apartments for opposition was, however, more a sign of simmering discontent than a common practice. In most cases, as squatters repaired the structures back into usable condition, authorities concerned about ubiquitous decay gladly looked the other way. Indeed, when many squatters moved out after the Wende of 1989, some looked back with pride that they had saved structures that would otherwise not have survived.119 In contrast to sometimes violent house occupations in 1970s Frankfurt which meant to overturn the prevailing West German social order, Schwarzwohnen in Leipzig quietly fostered social stability under a state too weak to get involved.120

Legacies of Self-Reliance after 1989 As the last decade of communism progressed, many Leipzigers wondered why they bothered with the system at all, if it only served as an obstruction toward securing humane living conditions. For all its supposed totalitarian power, the SED state had repeatedly proven itself impotent to help its citizens. The very weakness of the system had mandated the creation of a second economy to get anything done. Real power rested in the hands of those “administrators of shortages” who could exchange labor or materials for a valuable return.121 Of course, the SED claimed to foster local self-reliance as a way to build healthy neighborhoods. However, the establishment of Wohnbezirksausschuss committees as a lower arm of the National Front produced the merest illusion that residents took part in the system. In the documentary Ist Leipzig noch zu retten?, this elected group of renters stood powerless and infuriated amid the ruins of their neighborhoods. Such a bearing was incongruous

Figure 8.  Inscription “International Art Space, hopefully soon: gallery, café, atelier, international exchange,” Leipzig-Connewitz, May 1990. Photograph by Bernd Heinze. ABL 006–015–194.

S u r v i va l a n d D e s pa i r i n Dys to p i a     51

with the Leipzig city government’s boasting in its 1988 fiscal report that the committees were in fact collaborating with official demands by doing whatever they prescribed. “The large number of collaborative rental agreements, home repair plans, and maintenance contracts clearly demonstrate that our citizens are actually conscious of their responsibility to shape their surrounding residential space in the furthest sense,”122 the report began, concluding, “Socialist democracy is reflected in the public discussion of building conceptions with those citizens resident in future renewal districts [Umgestaltungsgebieten] and the adoption of their recommendations and advice in further preparation of these building measures.”123 In practice, this meant that residents in older districts were getting expelled into Plattenbauten, powerless to stay the advance of wrecking balls ever closer to the urban center. So much for democratic participation.124 When demolitions continued seamlessly after 1989, alarmed citizens called for more squatting as a form of resistance. Leipzig’s first independent newspaper lauded house occupiers for saving whole neighborhoods. In particular, the doomed Connewitz neighborhood had been emptied of residents to serve Baukombinat plans, which perpetuated an apparently unstoppable reign of demolitions. In January 1990, illegal residents poured out from boarded-up, abandoned houses and called for an end to Plattenbau tyranny. “Despite the ‘Wende,’ it is impossible for ‘ordinary people’ to get the authorities to look at and talk with them about the area around Connewitz,” a February 1990 article asserted. So desperate were they to stop the destruction of the neighborhood, ten young people occupied a partially abandoned house at Stöckartstraße 6 and “sought to begin bringing order where possible. But here they need certainty that they won’t have to flee again right away,” since the Baukombinat had merely labeled them “interim users” before inevitable destruction. The article concluded, “Everyone who loves Connewitz and is not afraid of work and hectic movement is called upon to labor on abandoned houses and occupy them. Many apartments, for instance on Biedermann or Leopold Streets, are (in spite of everything) still in order, dry, with water and heating. If no one reacts, then despite so much democratic prattle, old Connewitz will still be leveled, and it will never again obtain its old, attractive liveliness.”125 At the First People’s Building Conference in 1990, a student directed his appeal to the city authorities, arguing that, if they did not allow young people to legally occupy abandoned buildings, young people would simply go to the West.126 Squatting—illegal in most global contexts—evinced a continuity of self-reliance across the Wende of 1989 and even a proactive means through which to save threatened neighborhoods with a “democratic” approach.

52    C h a pt e r

1

In sum, by their own sweat and scheming, Leipzigers restored what they could in their neighborhoods, convinced that their hapless leaders could not save the city. Disproving allegations of passivity, longstanding practices of survival at the edges of the system later helped to embolden them to march in the streets to save their city. Local officials were well aware of this seething dissatisfaction; it raised the stakes for a new generation of urban planners to do something to arrest it. Even though they could not reform the system, they sought to work within it to offer groundbreaking plans that merged prefab construction with history. The next chapter explores their creative efforts and ultimate failure.

Ch a p ter   2

Urban Ingenuity in the System

Architects abounded with creative proposals to save East German cities from high modernist mistakes. But a moribund economy characterized by industrialized mass-production, chronic shortages, and bureaucratic blockades blandified their best plans and made them practitioners of the very architectural monotony they had vowed to oppose. This soul-crushing tragedy played as social critique in director Peter Kahane’s Die Architekten, the last major DEFA film (approved in 1988 but only completed after the fall of the Berlin Wall). Reminiscent of the Seven Samurai, it features a young architect who gathers a team of fellow underemployed graduates from the Weimar architectural school to overcome adversity against all odds: a flustered DDR party leader has commissioned him to create a livable recreational center amid Berlin’s massive Marzahn housing district. The young architect’s vision bears great similarity to the innovative, green, bright, and low-scale models that had recently been put forth by talented planners under Leipzig’s chief architect Dietmar Fischer. As in Leipzig, the film’s protagonists face blockages from entrenched interests locked into the routine of cheap prefab construction. An old architect of the prior generation instructs the young architect that “compromises in urban planning are unavoidable” and, to images of the disjointed and dull prefab city, he reminds him that “building is politics.” As the elder architect surrenders himself to drink, the young architect agrees to try. This scene presages the complete 53

54    C h a pt e r

2

bastardization of the young planning team’s project, the destruction of their collaboration, the professional establishment of the literally “compromised” architect by the unimaginative authorities, and the young architect’s choice to abandon himself to alcoholism. At the end of the film, he collapses, vomiting on the very site where his better city was supposed to materialize.1 Although the ossified SED leadership critiqued in Die Architekten was swept away when the film finally appeared to miniscule audiences in 1990, the aesthetic decrepitude it condemned was everywhere to be seen. Such taboo-breaking perestroika art built on years of frustration with the state of East German urban planning. In her posthumous, censured 1974 novel, Franziska Linkerhand, Brigitte Reimann likewise featured an architect protagonist incensed by the identical cement panel walls with window holes that rose over each city. To restore a sense of hominess and Heimat, her architect yearned to forge a synthesis between historical and modern ­construction—and failed because of centralized obstructions.2 Like these fictionalized portrayals, Fischer and his colleagues sought to work within the constraints of the centralized system to realize a circumscribed collection of triumphs in the waning years of the DDR. But the prototype neighborhood around Dorotheenplatz and the reconstructed window turret on a downtown half-prefab café gave the public paltry consolation amid the rotten state of the city. In a climactic statement that epitomized sentiment just days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Leipzig preservationist Wolfgang Hocquél excoriated Fischer in the presence of hundreds of assembled citizens as the representative of leaders who had neglected historic landmarks to the point that Leipzig threatened “to become just a fragment that has nothing to do with the original city. Yes, we are about to entirely give up our identity.”3 As he toured Leipzig in 1990, the West German Bauwelt editor Sebastian Redecke went so far as to assert that in Leipzig “all the architects, planners, and [their] students seem paralyzed. Resignation and overexertion are unmistakable in the face of the desolate situation.” Thanks to top-down repression, he concluded, “a whole generation of architects does not exist. It just wasn’t educated in the first place. Those who intervened for a cultural [approach to] architecture some years ago got out, exhausted, and work as artists, write books, or raise their children. Those architects who remained were set up as ‘production’ technocrats in drafting collectives that deploy prefab processes and construction site organization alien” to the architectural profession.4 Another West German article succinctly observed, “Because the SED economy lacked the means and will to save historical buildings and districts, entire neighborhoods now have to be saved from final decay.”5 As the new system took hold after 1989,

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty i n t h e S ys t e m     55

this indictment became almost cliché: communist-era political and planning elites had killed East German cities. The next three chapters illustrate that the stereotype of corrupt, negligent, and spent leaders—still powerful today—was simplistic and not always justified. After outlining the shifting mechanics of urban planning and historic preservation in Honecker’s East Germany, this chapter features two distinct areas through which architects sought to save the city by working within the bounds of the centralized system: the restoration of Kaiser-era inner suburbs through a complex interplay between historic and prefab construction, and the filling of gaps across the old town with small-scale structures that hybridized history with prefab modernity. As Leipzigers worried about whether their city could still be saved, a new generation of urban planners dreamed of rejuvenating miles of dilapidated neighborhoods by fusing historic preservation with modern construction. Rejecting utopian modernism’s disregard for tradition, by the late 1970s they spearheaded experimental redevelopment projects along the urban core, in which small-scale Plattenbau apartment rows were inserted into the midst of historic buildings. In keeping with global trends, they firmly believed that history had to be sustained in the cityscape to maintain a sense of urban identity and Heimat.6 Across the republic, this trend repeated itself wherever funds and materials could be scrounged together, such as in the Brühl neighborhood immediately north of the ultramodern center of Karl-Marx-Stadt (today Chemnitz), the prefab “five gable house” citing Hanseatic influences on Rostock’s Universitätsplatz, or the showpiece Arnimplatz in Berlin. Nevertheless, after a decade of flailing within the constraints of the system, Leipzig planners had only completed one out of fourteen targeted oldtown gap-filling projects, and their complex restoration of neighborhoods was restricted to showpiece ensembles. Planners in other East German cities faced similar roadblocks. As Lena Kuhl observes, “successes such as the modernization of the old town Brühl area in Karl-Marx-Stadt stood in crass contrast to the concentration of resources in new construction areas such as the Fritz Heckert District, which local authorities could not hinder.” Indeed, “the planned economic paradoxes could not be overlooked: for every second newly built apartment, a historic apartment decayed and was rendered uninhabitable.”7 With no small scorn, Hocquél thus recalls that many Leipzigers wanted to remain in older districts, but could not. After all, “with each Plattenbau, another part of the city went kaput. Decay proceeded faster than they could build, and they did almost nothing for older buildings.”8 Because central elites diverted most resources to mass housing estates or prestige projects in Berlin, local authorities could attain few triumphs.

56    C h a pt e r

2

Faced with the grim reality of ubiquitous dilapidation and prefab monotony, Fischer himself admitted in the 1989 documentary Ist Leipzig noch zu retten? that the entire Plagwitz neighborhood had to be razed in favor of Plattenbauten, just as was currently happening in historicist inner suburbs such as Volkmarsdorf, Thonberg, and the Seeburgstraße. The architects had demonstrated their ardent devotion to saving the city and attained isolated creative solutions against all odds. But critics such as Hocquél were right to question whether Leipzig could be saved by their methods. Like the protagonists in Die Architekten, Leipzig’s dedicated officials and architects were innovative but overpowered by a shortage economy and the centralized dictate of urban planning as industrialized mass production.

The Return to History as Rhetoric, Reality, and Reception Keenly aware that runaway dilapidation threatened the historic city’s urban character, Leipzig’s political and planning elites sought to take part in the global trend to integrate modern construction into existing architecture. Yet whenever they worked within the system, their dreams could find no way out of the spiral of decay, demolition, and dreary construction inherited after almost three decades of high modernism. This first section establishes both the prehistory and prevailing context for their endeavors by laying out the contours of the system itself. A range of top-down political shifts, centralized economic mandates, and shortfalls for planning and preservation had helped bring East German cities to this crux in their urban development. Constrained by this system, young architects grew deeply troubled about whether they could save the once-great cityscapes they had inherited. At the highest level, East German urban planning experienced something of a break between the eras of the two SED party secretaries. Through the 1950s and especially 1960s, Walter Ulbricht had dynamited key landmarks to remake each urban center into a city of the future. In partially intact centers like East Berlin, Leipzig, Rostock, Jena, and Potsdam, modernist hubris had wiped away palaces, churches, and entire old-town ensembles to erect sterile blocks typically punctuated by a vertical highlight such as Leipzig’s 1972 university tower. As the Leipzig art historian Thomas Topfstedt charged in 1988, already in the late 1960s, “the architecture of the city center threatened to fall into an anonymity similar to that which had become characteristic for the industrialized serialized blocks in residential districts.”9 After succeeding Ulbricht as party secretary in 1971, Erich Honecker pursued a policy of raising living standards to secure popular support; abandoning most urban centers to decay, he promised to solve the national housing shortage by 1990

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty i n t h e S ys t e m     57

by erecting “dry, secure, and warm” Plattenbau rows on the open countryside at the urban fringes. Building on prototypes such as Hoyerswerda and Halle-Neustadt, Leipzig’s western periphery became home to Grünau, the second-largest high-rise settlement in East Germany. By the 1980s, low-rise Plattenbauten started to replace entire neighborhoods throughout the historicist inner suburbs. East Germany’s crisis with high modernism paralleled conditions in West Germany, at least in part. Whereas, by the end of the 1970s, East German cities suffered rampant decay and were increasingly threatened by industrialized mass production, capitalist speculation and access to funding had already leveled much of the historic West German cityscape. In his 1979 dissertation, the East German architect Bruno Flierl lamented that the increasing ubiquity of interchangeable high modernist blocks across his republic was leading to “a general discomfort about the ‘loss of meaning’—just as happened a few years ago in Western industrialized capitalist countries.”10 As Brian Ladd tersely recounts, “behind the decision to build new satellite cities lay a conviction that the old tenement neighborhoods were irredeemably bad, the products of the worst sort of capitalist exploitation of the proletariat. Through most of the 20th century this view, expressed in somewhat different language, was widely shared in the West as well. The fateful difference was that the East’s ideological and economic convictions were reinforced by the structure both of the construction industry and economic decision-making.”11 West German cities had been devastated by mass housing projects, a dearth of handworkers, and longstanding disdain for Kaiserera historicism.12 The legacy of neglect and shortfalls in East German centers had given DDR architects a chance to save what their Western colleagues had already lost—but continued neglect and shortfalls could also ensure that their efforts failed. The pushback against wholesale demolitions in East Germany took place at the cutting edge of a global trend toward preservation and history. Just three years after Jane Jacobs published The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the 1964 Venice Charter urged saving the entire historic urban fabric, including once-loathed historicist confections. By the mid-1970s, modernist postwar reconstruction outcomes were failing to satisfy. Intended as liberating and progressive, David Harvey mused in the late 1980s, “modernism lost its appeal as a revolutionary antidote to some reactionary and ‘traditionalist’ ideology,” in actuality monumentalizing established power imperatives.13 This Zeitgeist hit East and West Germany alike: heedless demolition of historic monuments and embrace of high modernism came to symbolize tyrannical misrule that had yielded lifeless aesthetic results and public

58    C h a pt e r

2

opprobrium.14 Disillusionment with modernist outcomes spurred official rhetoric to urge respect for historic structures that were somehow to be integrated into modernism with a human face. In the East German context, it was a particularly intriguing ideological revision to espouse restoration of Kaiser-era and interwar bourgeois neighborhoods that, in contrast to austere prefab Plattenbau blocks, might seem to recreate the very class distinctions the regime claimed to have overcome. Against such concerns, Klaus Rasche contended in his 1979 apologetic article for Architektur der DDR that “there is actually no nonmaterial reason for destroying the Kaiser-era residential environment.” Retaining historicist neighborhoods would not reproduce “the old spirit of subjection” nor empty nostalgia, he concluded, but “the opposite, a sensible redesign, a stimulation for experimentation.” It would also demonstrate change “by valuing historical continuity. Above all, this will hinder a vacuum—material as well as spiritual—right there where, through its eventual development, the working class will mature in its power to fundamentally change social relations.”15 In sum, the critics had revised aesthetic dogmas: workers might live better in historic neighborhoods. The late-communist desire to integrate tradition into a humane modernism was a return to immediate postwar sensibilities. After four years of reinforcing and restoring damaged landmarks, in April 1949 Leipzig’s planning head Walter Beyer drafted a forward-looking plan that integrated historic monuments.16 Even then, however, he warned that the handicraft tradition was dying out: of the forty plasterers commissioned to restore the city’s Kongreßhalle in 1946, only two were under forty years old, and most were over sixty-five.17 Although the 1950 Sixteen Fundamentals of Urban Planning and 1952 Preservation Edict (Denkmalschutzverordnung) granted formal state approval for preserving monuments “whose retention is in public interest because of their artistic, scholarly, or historical meaning,” by the 1960s landmarks were routinely abandoned and demolished in favor of a thinned-out futuristic cityscape.18 Even as this modernist demolition craze was heating up in 1961, East Germany’s cultural minister Hans Bentzien signed a preservation edict calling for retention of the national architectural heritage as proof that socialist society had overcome decades of neglect under capitalism and war.19 In contrast to Walter Beyer, successive Leipzig planners gave little credence to preservation. Looking back in 1988, Topfstedt lamented this as a national trend, concluding, “Decisive was the desire to replace the old with new buildings wherever it seemed possible, because only this approach to architectural and urban planning was seen to express the construction of socialist society.”20 In 1961, Leipzig’s chief architect Walter Lucas advised

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty i n t h e S ys t e m     59

discarding “worthless or unusable pieces” his office had stored from lost landmarks.21 By 1969, chief architect Horst Siegel credited Leipzig’s “care for tradition” on the basis of nameless “retained buildings” on Saxon and Karl Marx Squares—high modernist venues all but liquidated of historical landmarks.22 Siegel himself had helped to ensure the demolition of Leipzig’s intact University Church on Karl Marx Square in 1968, destroying local belief that popular opinion mattered in urban planning.23 Although after 1989 Siegel admitted that, under his long tenure as chief architect (1967–85), “the qualitative condition of the city and its external appearance had increasingly worsened,” he boasted that this lapse in preservation had been thoroughly justified by an “enormous increase in potential for success” in apartment block construction.24 Indeed, had funds and material not proven elusive, Siegel’s 1970 city plan would have eliminated most of the surviving urban fabric in favor of blocks and highways. Given the reality of relentless demolition and Plattenbau construction, rhetorical support for historic preservation rang hollow. On paper, the 1975 East German Historic Preservation Law (Denkmalpflegegesetz) espoused a more complex approach to construction in the historic city. As the Leipzig church preservationist Gerhart Pasch observed, rather than saving “just a few of the most magnificent examples,” the law implied “care and retention of the entire cultural and historical heritage in order to reveal the most comprehensive possible picture of past epochs and thus the progressive achievements and tendencies of social forces over time.”25 In paragraph 11, the law even promised to grant local assistance to owners unable to restore historic properties at preservation standards.26 But in no small part because Honecker had transferred national energies to prefab housing on the urban peripheries and engaged in excessive borrowing practices that increasingly damaged investment possibilities, the preservation law was largely bereft of funds, materials, and skilled laborers.27 In Leipzig, the shift in rhetoric from sweeping demolitions and neglect to gap-filling and preservation commenced in earnest with a 1976 building plan. Annihilation of historic buildings across the city center, foreseen in 1960s conceptions, gave way to detailed plans to fill fourteen gaps across the old town, though as will be shown only the corner structure at Nikolaistraße and Grimmaische Straße materialized before the end of the DDR.28 The subsequent founding of the Leipzig Office for Architectural Art (BfaK) and Leipzig’s Historic Preservation Company (VEB Denkmalpflege) likewise arrested decay for a few select landmarks, often by gutting out or botching interiors.29 In the local cultural league, a chapter for historic preservation formed in 1976 with about 140 members,30 but its influence was also meager.

60    C h a pt e r

2

Repair to the Nikolaikirche following the wave of 1968 demolitions lingered on through 1976 without patching leaks in the roof that damaged restored interiors.31 In 1978, the BfaK proposed restoration of Kaiser-era structures in a neighborhood east of the train station, but it only had money to paint some crumbling facades and tack up a few plaques commemorating 1916 Spartacist activities.32 Across the city, preservation of one house typically coincided with the leveling of an entire neighborhood in favor of prefab blocks. In this spirit, Siegel cut off funds to whole neighborhoods “not worthy of modernization” in 1977, abandoning the historic city to runaway decay as his prefab blocks sprouted up at the outskirts.33 Although in 1979 the Politburo imposed a moratorium on further demolition of historic buildings, a muchabused loophole permitted the razing of buildings “beyond repair.”34 The 1982 Politburo resolution Principles for the Socialist Development of Urban Planning and Architecture in the German Democratic Republic embodied the bureaucratic contradiction that the SED leadership was both upholding and undermining historic preservation. On the one hand, the resolution called for “the harmonious union of newly constructed buildings with existing, valuable architectural substance,” adding, “affectionate care for the city center with its ensembles and historical buildings, with its streets and squares so familiar to its residents, deserves special attention.” Yet such care for history stood in tension with the number-one priority that “the socialist development of urban planning and architecture will be determined above all by the realization of the housing construction program.” City planning offices were to direct industrialized construction to reach quotas for mass housing in urban centers.35 The resulting shortages for all other building endeavors were so rudimentary that, when Leipzig’s mayor Karl-Heinz Müller launched his 1980s Dächer dicht campaign, the dearth of available roofers and roofing tiles became something of a popular joke. Apart from numerous prestige projects in Berlin, the paucity of funds and materials for historic preservation and even basic repair replicated itself across the republic.36 In 1983, the VEB Denkmalpflege in Leipzig’s neighbor Halle finally won “urban planning support funds for renovation” from the city to save the Schleiermacherhaus, one of Halle’s most historic residences. Dating to the time of the Reformation, the northern Renaissance–era house had been home to famous professors and statesmen. After decades of decay, repair began, then was abruptly terminated when it became clear that the half-timbered construction needed more work than expected. In 1989, state preservation officials concluded that the 1983 repairs had actually worsened the landmark’s condition. For instance, by exposing a beautiful Renaissance ceiling, preservationists had allowed it to succumb to rapid decay as moisture

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty i n t h e S ys t e m     61

continued to stream in through open windows.37 By 1987, the DDR Finance Ministry blamed limited resources and muddled planning for impeding a 1984 Politburo resolution to allocate funds for preservation.38 In a separate report to the Politburo, the Finance Ministry complained that the 1975 Preservation Law had not been carried out uniformly or responsibly.39 In a speech banned from public records, even Erich Honecker apparently attacked the “assembly-line system” of housing construction (he himself had produced) for creating monotony, and he blamed the architects for “disregarding the considerable specific ‘spirit of a place.’ ”40 Labor shortages for historic preservation or even basic repairs stemmed in no small part from the death of the handicrafts tradition, which was deeply intertwined with the hegemony of collectivized and industrialized mass production. Already in the early 1950s, all private industry in Leipzig was subjected to supervision from district (Bezirk) authorities. After a preceding wave of expropriations in 1969, by 1972 nearly all remaining smaller enterprises were absorbed into enormous “publicly owned companies” (Volkseigene Betriebe, VEB), whose generally inefficient and quota-driven production had already been damaging the economy after Ulbricht’s nationalization campaigns.41 As Brian Campbell observes, whereas private firms had performed about 50 percent of construction work in 1950, this had fallen to 13 percent in 1970 and 5 percent in 1980.42 Through the 1970s, surviving handicraft firms were liquidated, and those who remained in the profession were absorbed into VEBs, notably building collectives (Baukombinate). Henceforth, already elderly handworkers were almost impossible to find, and only a few private architects survived in Leipzig to maintain tradefairground buildings. Meanwhile, coordinated by overtaxed central offices, Baukombinat campaigns to fulfill housing quotas via Plattenbauten afforded few remaining building resources for efforts by architects, urban planners, and preservationists to save the historic city.43 As Leipzig architect Johannes Schulze recalls, the slogan “ ‘Trocken, Sicher, Warm’ [dry, secure, warm] meant that old buildings received only the most essential repairs.”44 With each passing year, holes in rooftops across the city made level after level of historic housing stock moldy, pigeon-infested, and in danger of collapse. Repair collectives lacked both the resources and competence they needed to save the city. By 1989, the most indebted city departments were the VEB Kombinat für Baureparaturen, with 3.4 million marks in losses, and the collectivized housing office that managed most of the city’s decaying dwellings, VEB Gebäudewirtschaft Leipzig, which reported the greatest losses at 6 million marks.45 As Wolfgang Hocquél recounts, “the Kombinat für Baureparaturen received Barthels Hof as their office with the intention that they could repair

62    C h a pt e r

2

this house on the side. They were so badly over budget that it was impossible for them to repair their own house.”46 Not least given the fact that across East Germany most citizens still paid rents locked at rates set during the Great Depression almost sixty years before, money, materials, and handworkers were rarely to be found outside the Schwarzbauten local officials chose to pursue off the books. A particular drain on local resources came from the increasing diversion of funding, building material, and labor to Berlin. In the centralized system, all companies, combines, and citizens sent revenues from the county (Kreis) to the Bezirk, and from the Bezirk to Berlin. Then, as the long-serving city finance director Liesel Schön recalls, “Berlin planned the budgetary allocations in the Finance Ministry and distributed it out to the Bezirke.”47 As a result, Bezirk authorities often drew resources from each Kreis under their control to satisfy demands from Berlin, thereby “causing small towns and urban quarters in the provinces to fall into disrepair.”48 The result was a showpiece capital city, rotten Bezirk cities, and even worse Kreis towns in the countryside. From 1973 onward, even local architects and planners were compelled to dedicate their time and talent to serve the capital through the notorious program Die Bezirke bauen in Berlin, reducing energies and resources they needed for their own cities and regions. As Florian Urban observes, “workers from Schwerin built the Bersarinplatz, workers from Suhl renovated the Palisaden Triangle, workers from Halle worked on the Greifswalder Straße.” And despite all this effort, historic Berlin neighborhoods continued to get demolished.49 By 1977, Berlin’s budgeted 15 billion marks for construction drew 4.4 billion marks “from collectives from the Bezirke and centrally coordinated construction combines.”50 In the late 1970s, efforts commenced to restore prewar tenement districts in East Berlin, such as on Arnimplatz.51 Perhaps the most notorious prestige project was Berlin’s recreated “old town” Nikolaiviertel: a fanciful and expensive medley of historic replication, reconstruction, and Plattenbauten on a war-devastated tract modernists had slated to transform into a pond. As Florian Urban shows, Berlin officials devoted considerable energy to recreating the Nikolaiviertel into “an imaginary old-town atmosphere.”52 The excessive channeling of resources to Berlin compelled other East German cities to prioritize specific quarters or objects often destined for a fortunate and loyal elite, whose conditions contrasted with decrepit or rudimentary housing everywhere else. Even “neo-traditional prefab construction,” a new series of designer Plattenbau modules that put gables on prefab old town segments in Rostock and Greifswald starting around 1980 and then across Berlin throughout the rest of the decade, was hard to come by in Leipzig.53 In an economy stricken with shortages and prioritization for the capital, East

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty i n t h e S ys t e m     63

Germany’s second-largest city seemed to be getting only leftovers; the statistically pleasing and less costly industrialized block housing had to win out. It was thus a typical plea when Leipzig’s cultural minister Wenzel wrote to Mayor Müller in 1983 with a ranking of eighteen historic monuments for repair and warning that the Cultural Ministry in Berlin had severely cut funding to the Bezirk for the foreseeable future in favor of projects in Dresden and especially Berlin. His grim conclusion was that not one of the eighteen prioritized objects would “be completed or reconstructed by 1990 through what material and funds have been discernable up to now. The gross value of capital from the cultural department encompasses over 300 million marks (including the Gewandhaus). In recent years, on average 1.85 percent of the gross value of capital has been available for restoration projects. An increase of this sum is hardly to be expected.” Even this paltry amount had to cover publishers, art schools, and other cultural institutions alongside preservation at the same time that the city suffered a dearth of handworkers and basic equipment such as scaffolding. He ended with a loaded warning: “The deployment of investments cannot be estimated at present, because the Cultural Ministry will issue to Bezirk Leipzig no or only meager supplies in the coming years (the Cultural Ministry has already concentrated on noted objects in the capital Berlin and in Dresden).”54 As Leipzig’s VEB Denkmalpflege warned after ten years of work in 1988, its 260 workers and 7-millionmark annual budget could not suffice for the 1,400 monuments moldering across the city.55 Looking back in 2002, the former planning administrator Karl-Heinz Blaurock reflected, “The measure of success became more humble with each year . . . the newly formed VEB Denkmalpflege only possessed the necessary resources to reconstruct a very select number of historic structures.”56 In his own retrospective, Leipzig’s city preservationist Hubert Maaß concurred that limited resources had mandated cleaning up façades over interiors either left to rot or damaged through piecemeal restoration.57 Hence the shocking reveal in the film Can Leipzig Still Be Saved? that even restored façades on the west side of Saxon Square constituted a Potemkin village pasted over rotten interiors. Only in official parlance was the ongoing restoration of the historic city a success. In 1986, the city council praised its Work with Us (Mach mit) program for securing popular efforts to clean up neighborhoods and its Dächer dicht program for fixing roofs through the initiative of Free German Youth members.58 Such successes on paper prompted the city cultural department to boast, “The relationship between city residents and historic preservation has been further sensitized.”59 Popular responses were in fact cynical and disengaged. Bureaucracy spawned by the 1975 Preservation Law failed to answer most citizens’ needs,

64    C h a pt e r

2

and when prompted to respond, officials typically gave excuses rather than funds.60 In 1981, workers living in the Kaiser-era inner southern suburb protested that, while the former home of socialist revolutionary Karl Liebknecht had been restored, every other house on the street decayed: a “discrepancy incongruous with care for the cultural heritage.”61 Little consolation came in the official response that long-term plans excluded restoring any other structure on the street.62 Another Leipziger complained to the Politburo in 1987 that the city’s finest architectural monuments were in danger of collapse; although the press often promised restoration, graphic photographs he included proved that nothing had been done, even though basic repairs should have been a “trifle.”63 To this, city officials wrote the Politburo that they would reassure the populace that something would be done soon for historic monuments, though prefab mass housing had to take first priority.64 Indeed, as shown in the previous chapter, mailed petitions reveal that residents fought with officials for years to satisfy basic maintenance requests, at times even submitting photos that showed X marks where roof tiles were visibly coming off.65 As a visitor observed at the city’s 1988 planning exhibition, “Allegedly Leipzig doesn’t have a housing problem anymore, because about three to four thousand houses (uninhabitable today because of damaged roofs) can still be used.”66 Decrepit districts abandoned for demolition in the late 1980s attracted squatters, whose alternative culture occasionally proved hostile to the regime. Beyond the worst nightmares of conscientious latecommunist planners, urban dystopia was setting the stage for protest when Leipzig’s peaceful Monday Demonstrations triggered the 1989 revolution.

Plattenbau Solutions for Historic Neighborhoods? Dietmar Fischer graduated in 1979 from the Technical University in Dresden with the dissertation “Preserving the Character of the Architectural Heritage.”67 His argument—that socialist society was obliged to preserve the built inheritance and make livable cities people could identify with—was, he recalls, deeply intertwined with architectural debates of the day: while half his professors still called for leveling Kaiser-era tenement buildings, the other half had begun espousing their renovation for use in the modern cityscape. Instead of remaking historic neighborhoods as homogenous Plattenbau settlements, he called for integrating smaller-scale prefab elements in the midst of historic construction—an objective he undertook first as head of the department for renovating districts (Abteilung Umgestaltungsgebiete) in Leipzig’s planning office (BCA) (1979–85) and then as chief architect of the BCA itself (1985–90).68

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty i n t h e S ys t e m     65

As soon as he moved to Leipzig, Fischer started taking regular walks through its neighborhoods, and he quickly appreciated that its vast stock of Kaiser-era housing offered considerable opportunity for implementing his theories. Fresh innovations in Plattenbau technology—notably the WBS70 design—inspired optimism about prefab blocks on a smaller scale with flexible options. Fischer’s long-serving predecessor as chief architect, Horst Siegel, declared in 1977 that Leipzig’s inner suburbs were generally unworthy of modernization and should be surrendered to decay. In the leading planning journal Architektur der DDR, he soberly pronounced that “architectural substance that is not worthy of modernization and to be torn down by 1990/1995 can only be rudimentarily maintained, which means that only those repairs are to be carried out that serve to ensure that they are habitable for the remainder of their time in use, and so until their demolition.”69 Even as his superior extolled the proliferation of prefab high-rise settlements on the urban fringes, however, Fischer spearheaded work on restoring the working-class eastern inner suburb (Ostvorstadt) and middle-class western inner suburb (Westvorstadt). “It was about halting construction on the edge of the city,” he recalls, “to do what was possible, since it was clear it could not go on like this.” At least in retrospect, his SED party membership was “about tactics, not belief ”: a tool to attain professional rank and change the trend of Plattenbau blocks destroying the city.70 Unfortunately, experience soon proved that it was too expensive (and still deleterious for older buildings) to shift prefab apartments—optimized for assembly on open land at the urban fringe—to the congested historic city. The working-class Ostvorstadt was a dilapidated but largely intact collection of housing for almost eighty thousand people across a series of districts including Volkmarsdorf, Reudnitz, and the Graphisches Viertel. In 1976, the Berlin Bauakademie concluded that the Ostvorstadt, a “Leipzig workingclass district and site of many class struggles,” was dank and dark, lacked modern amenities, and should get torn down.71 Only in this way could planners satisfy an August 1977 Politburo resolution that all apartments have modern bathrooms, and at least half, long-distance heating.72 This contrasted with the view of Johannes Schulze (chief deputy to the Chefarchitekt, 1967– 90), who argued in Architektur der DDR that the Ostvorstadt needed hygienic updates that integrated old buildings alongside new ones.73 Fischer’s first “experimental reconstruction” plan encompassed an Ostvorstadt area called Volkmarsdorf: a roughly quadratic Kaiser-era neighborhood that emanated out from the neo-Gothic Lukaskirche. As a 1979 study observed, of the planning region’s 2,711 apartments, about three-quarters dated to before 1900, were in poor condition, and lacked private bathrooms.

66    C h a pt e r

2

Alongside wholesale demolition of 2,398 apartments and their replacement with WBS-70 Plattenbauten, a handful of older structures would be preserved in “harmonious relationship” with the new blocks to retain the neighborhood’s “distinctive character”—a goal further supported by the economical decision to retain the existing traffic and subterranean infrastructure.74 Particularly devastating was the leveling of a Kaiser-era row across from the main Lukaskirche façade, a sacrifice justified to make way for a desirable Plattenbau series (WBS-70/10800) that had just been made available.75 After conducting interviews with residents before demolitions proceeded in earnest in 1983, the Leipzig sociologist Alice Kahl emphasized in the Leipziger Blätter that the anticipated mix of renovation and Plattenbau would “noticeably raise the attractiveness of living in the Ostvorstadt.”76 Nonetheless, Dietmar Fischer observed in the same issue, few buildings would be worthy of retention.77 Given that plans had only allowed for the modernization of 210 apartments with further retention of 103 as they were, it should not be surprising that when construction began in 1986, the BCA itself admitted that most doomed structures were not ruins, but suffered from various states of decay.78 As Leipzig art historian Thomas Topfstedt recalls, Fischer’s first major project at Volkmarsdorf already “was largely ruled by the Baukombinat.”79 Prefab blocks prevailed, and residents (who had not been involved in decisions about the radical change to their neighborhood) felt little ownership of the alien landscape that arose in their midst (fig. 9).

Figure 9.  Lukaskirche, Erst Thälmann Square, Volkmarsdorf, 1989. Photograph by Roland Quester. ABL 009–005–017.

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty i n t h e S ys t e m     67

If this was a benchmark for fusing modernism with tradition, it was low indeed. The resulting apocalyptic atmosphere of sweeping demolition and selective gutting horrified Christoph Wonneberger when he commenced his activities as pastor at the Lukaskirche. As will be shown in chapter 5, he salvaged a pair of wooden beams from a doomed house to build a cross for his church sanctuary; presiding before this emblem of urban martyrdom, he oversaw gatherings that set the stage for revolution in 1989. It was thus hardly encouraging when Fischer anticipated in 1984 that results in the Ostvorstadt “should foster experiences in industrial construction in inner-city districts that are necessary to be able to reconfigure areas such as the zone around Ernst-Thälmann-Platz, the Seeburgstraße, and Leninstraße/Stötteritzer Straße”—all of which were to suffer merciless treatment of historic structures and an invasion of identical boxes.80 Far more ambitious, expensive, and arguably successful were Fischer’s reconstruction efforts for an area of the Westvorstadt mere walking distance from city hall: the star-shaped square called Dorotheenplatz and its main westward artery (Kolonnadenstraße). Damaged in the war, most surviving structures dated to 1870–1900, and all had been slated for demolition in the 1970 Bauakademie plan that would have effaced every trace of history with wavy rows of high-rise apartments and shops. In keeping with changes across the republic, the 1975 BCA plan to build 1,650 new apartments here by 1982 alleged greater care for historic preservation and retention of existing street patterns.81 But Siegel’s office put a low priority on the area, so that by the time Fischer’s team planned the neighborhood in 1982, it was a wilderness of weeds punctuated by ramshackle Kaiser-era tenements, garages, and shacks (fig. 10). The new 1982 plan intended a “reinvigoration of cultural traditions of the western Leipzig garden suburb.”82 As Juliane Richter observes, “instead of visions of the future, efforts were directed toward the past.”83 Alongside the objective of retaining as much of the surviving substance as possible, Plattenbau construction was “to tie in with the aesthetic and material language of the existing structures in a modern way.” Such a fusion would “mandate experimentation in a highly complex manner from both an architectural and technological standpoint.”84 A late 1983 revision elaborated, “The closing of gaps with experimental new buildings naturally will not result in a unified historical façade. The façades of the new buildings will share considerably in influencing the street’s aesthetic. Upper areas of the façades will conform in terms of color through use of clinker tiles. The pedestrian and storefront level will experience a contrast between the strongly structured display windows with doors of the old buildings and the broad surfaces of the new

68    C h a pt e r

2

Figure 10.  Dorotheenplatz and Kolonnadenstraße (before renovation), August 1969. Photograph by Gertrud Höhnel. StadtAL BA 1983–16778.

buildings.”85 Such decorative playfulness along the new pedestrian zone of the Kolonnadenstraße paralleled an effort to reestablish memory of Apels Garten, a Baroque green space originally responsible for the square’s starshaped pattern. Of the four statues from 1720 that had once dominated the square, two ( Juno and Jupiter) had been exhibited in Leipzig’s prewar Palm Garden and survived in the inner courtyard of the Grassi Museum.86 They were cleaned and transferred back to their original location, which was to feature granite sidewalks, ground spotlighting to highlight structures, and benches on the square.87 Investment in building a livable reconstruction (punctuated by the central garden and spacious courtyards) was further justified by “numerous unresolved protest letters on the problem of environmental pollution” in the target neighborhood by the time construction began.88 The neighborhood was evacuated; private homeowners were expropriated and compensated with housing elsewhere, usually in Plattenbau suburbs.89 As on-site construction collectives observed, however, costs were typically too high, and technical difficulties abounded in constructing Plattenbauten on a narrow street alongside older structures.90 The crane was positioned on a track in the middle of the street with little maneuverability amid surrounding buildings (fig. 11), and the predetermined width of prefab panels meant that bricks or even poured cement had to fill in foot-wide gaps: a residual dead space between the new and old structures (fig. 12).

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty i n t h e S ys t e m     69

Figure 11.  “Building in the Inner City, Kolonnadenstraße,” May 20, 1984. Photograph by Werner Edel. StadtAL BA 1984 18701.

Notwithstanding such difficulties, by the time the first four apartments opened in late 1984, the East German media praised the emerging ensemble as a successful synthesis of old and new. As Architektur der DDR observed, 1,520 apartments were to be restored across the area in concert with Plattenbau series WBS-70.91 The Leipziger Blätter added, “After 1985, the Kolonnadenstraße will present itself again as a lively commercial street. . . . The strong interest the construction measures on the Kolonnadenstraße have found in broad circles of the public shows how important it is to take up this task for the good of our city and residents, and it is motivation for overcoming the problems that naturally keep arising in such a complex and beautiful task.”92 The Bauakademie concluded in 1988 that the new neighborhood had restored a connection to history that, it implied, was lacking in other housing projects, observing, “The area’s rich traditions were used in décor and landscaping to fashion an appearance typical for the site that conveys to

70    C h a pt e r

2

Figure 12.  Kolonnadenstraße: cement filler between experimental Plattenbau and renovated historic house, 2015. Photograph by author.

residents a sense of historical consciousness and continuity in development. Lost values and traditions will be taken up again in social consciousness and displayed.”93 Thomas Topfstedt recounts that this “showpiece project” was meant to be the model “for a new era.”94 Upon completion in 1990, the Dorotheenplatz ensemble was home to 4,500 people in 1,229 new and 182 reconstructed apartments, more than doubling the population.95 In its 1988 finance report, city council upheld the outcome as a “visible expression of the harmonious union of old and new buildings” and thus proof that it had “closely realized” the national goal of constructing new housing alongside restored old structures (fig. 13).96 Nevertheless, a bird’s-eye photograph in 1988 related the limits of success: the distinctively shaped Plattenbauten situated about the square were shrouded in a haze of brown coal dust, trees were sick and dying, and the surrounding neighborhoods still decayed into oblivion. As the November 6, 1989, film Ist Leipzig noch zu retten? observed amid footage from the freshly completed district, Dorotheenplatz and the Kolonnadenstraße were an “olive branch” to the dejected population, a mere “model” that was never followed and merely served to give party elites a comfortable living environment.97 Fischer’s teams only sought to realize the same

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty i n t h e S ys t e m     71

Figure 13.  A “harmonious union” of Plattenbau with renovated historic apartments? Kolonnadenstraße, 2015. Photograph by author.

modern-historical synthesis (complete with replicas of Baroque statues) on the smaller nearby Nikischplatz.98 As the successor film Wie ist Leipzig noch zu retten? on November 20, 1989, exhibited, the entire district was hopelessly incomplete even after the revolution had ended communist hegemony, and construction workers doubted whether the neighborhood could be saved.99 Having demonstrated the extreme costs and limitations of inner-city Plattenbau, the remade district became a novelty rather than a prototype. Hopes in 1982 that the expensive meld of preservation and small-scale Plattenbauten could “be used in the next period on numerous sites” were not fulfilled, because the approach failed to correspond with how the building economy continued to function.100 As Topfstedt clarifies, “The stairways were not built in Leipzig, but by the technical school in Cottbus, which shipped them here. That alone would have destroyed the budget. It was a pure expression of total powerlessness [Ohnmacht]. It was a shimmer of hope.”101 A 1988 article by Fischer for Architektur der DDR captured how the experience had introduced a certain pessimism into his devotion to preservation in the inner suburbs. “Today we integrate Kaiser-era structures in reconstruction as part of the heritage passed on to us,” he declared, but with the proviso that “there are expansive residential districts, especially from the second half of the nineteenth

72    C h a pt e r

2

century, whose state of repair is very bad and where only a very slight number of buildings is worthy of reconstruction.”102 Such a Janus-faced approach matched the 1988 finance report’s allegation that construction in the historic center (overwhelmingly Plattenbau) evinced a “revaluation of old architectural structures worthy of retention,” even though Grünau remained the “main focus” of building activity.103 Not unlike the protagonist in Die Architekten, the grim realities of an industrial mass-produced housing economy in East Germany compelled Fischer and his colleagues to bow to the pressure of producing the very monotony they had so vehemently opposed in their idealistic training and early careers. Despite official rhetoric about valuing historical construction, building power increasingly fell to the Baukombinate, whose mechanistic drive to achieve quotas meant the wholesale demolition of historic neighborhoods to make way for identical housing blocks. As Leipzig’s communist-era Bezirk finance head Uta Nickel succinctly recalls, “Each year the Baukombinate had to present development costs and parcels to the Ministerium für Bauwesen. Only the most inexpensive variants were accepted.”104 In the film Ist Leipzig noch zu retten?, Fischer demanded a “fundamental change in the politics of urban planning”; namely, “We have to stop shaping the city according to the demands of productivity set by our Baukombinate. Rather, we have to reshape our Baukombinate so that they actually serve the city.” Such a reform mandated disempowering industrialized mass construction in favor of “a radical increase in resources for building repair,” especially on the vast Kaiser-era neighborhoods which, the filmmaker Ruth Geist-Reithmeier observed, constituted “the cultural identity” of the city.105 Fischer wanted to change production to ensure greater repair for historic structures, but by 1989 he doubted that he could ever receive the bare minimum of the building resources he needed, much less what he ideally wanted. Floating above the everyday concerns of architects outside the capital, by the late 1980s SED elites definitively broke with the triumphalist modernism of the 1960s and extolled the importance of history for the urban landscape. In June 1987, no less than East Germany’s BdA vice president Gerhard Krenz wrote a celebratory article in Neues Deutschland lauding the integration of decorative small-scale Plattenbauten into historic areas in Rostock and Berlin. As architects solved the housing crisis by 1990, he asserted, they were simultaneously striving to attain a “harmonious union between new [buildings] and the often unique existing structures” in the urban center. Of course, he admitted, “not everything has been convincingly resolved down to the smallest detail, but the way has been forged to a promising future.”106 The promising future, in fact, looked a great deal like the architecturally

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty i n t h e S ys t e m     73

monotonous recent past; by the time Krenz boasted of a successful fusion, the peril posed by Plattenbauten in historic neighborhoods had already been proven in prototype cities across the republic. Like its neighbors Halle and Leipzig, the medieval city of Merseburg had suffered comparably less wartime devastation. In a fiery recollection, Hocquél charges that “Merseburg had the curse of being the first city to receive a socialist remodeling. The old town was completely destroyed. They gave up the old city plan and built nothing sensible.”107 By the early 1980s, prefabricated construction had also replaced the largely intact historic centers of Bernau and Greifswald. When cities like Rostock or Karl-Marx-Stadt sought to merge history with Plattenbauten in showpiece medleys akin to Leipzig’s Dorotheenplatz, they proved just as prohibitively expensive for implementation on a broader scale.108 Only in Berlin, where construction resources flowed in from across the republic, did prestige projects such as the Nikolaiviertel illustrate how Krenz’s “harmonious union” between history and Plattenbauten might be attained for a full neighborhood. By contrast, Leipzig’s late-communist urban planning ventures succumbed to runaway demolitions and prefab construction. The historic Seeburgviertel directly east of downtown was largely razed in 1988, even though it was allegedly where wartime “worker locales served as spaces where antifascists organized.” Despite the fact that the Seeburgviertel was home to older and more considerable architectural monuments than the area around Dorotheenplatz, a 1984 report concluded, “The Seeburgviertel, marked by ­nineteenth-century rental-block architecture of diverse social castes (worker apartments, bourgeois middle-class homes), displays a conspicuous contrast to the modern big-city architectural style along the ring road right next door. Because of this situation, the area will receive a new character through new buildings and reconstruction measures, and thus will become an example for modern residential and living conditions.”109 By July 1989, city and Bezirk leaders upheld the Seeburgviertel’s serialized rows of gaudy color-tiled block façades—not Dorotheenplatz—as a model for the doomed Connewitz neighborhood.110 For almost anyone walking the streets of late-communist Leipzig, Dorotheenplatz was an isolated showpiece without relevance for a dying city.

Old-Town Preservation and Gap Filling By 1987, over 60 percent of buildings inside the broad ring road that marked Leipzig’s medieval fortifications stood under historic preservation;111 an article that year in the Leipziger Blätter expressed broad social outrage that so

74    C h a pt e r

2

many of these structures, having survived the war, would soon be lost to decay.112 Fischer himself agreed with every critique and insisted that he too was waiting for realization of restoration plans on hold since 1981 for the ­Nikolaistraße—a largely intact street in particularly bad repair—as well as renovation for the Kaiser-era housing in which over 50 percent of Leipzig’s population still lived. But the whole endeavor was challenged by the poor “means that stand at our disposal.” After proposing that local authorities “catch up at last on fixing roofs in our city that have been neglected for decades so that usable buildings remain intact” and emphasizing that of course modern housing had been achieved in Plattenbau areas like Grünau, he dryly concluded that “desires will always remain unfulfilled, because our building resources are limited, and we can only build a part of what we have planned.”113 Such frustration with poor means had only expanded by the time Fischer shared his interview with the filmmakers for Ist Leipzig noch zu retten? in early November 1989. Realities of a shortage economy and bureaucratic entanglements impeded virtually all repairs to the old town that dedicated officials had been demanding since the 1970s. The shift toward respecting tradition in architecture never found substantial implementation in a swiftly decaying city. Small wonder that, for onlookers, Leipzig’s historic core only stopped moldering away when 1989 introduced a new power dynamic and resources that could meet and even exceed the hopes of prior planning. Heeding new DDR preservation laws, by 1977 the restoration of historic edifices and filling of gaps left by the war recurred as official objectives for the old town. Reviewing the “large portion of valuable old structures to be retained,” Architektur der DDR recognized “the obligation to safeguard and further develop an urban character typical for Leipzig.” In keeping with recent statements at the national, Bezirk, and city level, “faster attainment of visible progress” was needed for “historic preservation of the inner-city ensemble” with particular attention to landmarks that “contribute considerable meaning toward the spiritual and cultural life of the city.”114 In 1982, a BCA commission catalogued how decay was consuming the Nikolaistraße, as increasing dereliction exposed its historic trade-passage shopfronts and upperstory apartments to plunder, vandalism, and weathering. Providing graphic photographs of deterioration, it warned that commercial life here had become as lifeless (unterinteressiert) as on side streets in Plagwitz or Stötteritz (notorious Kaiser-era slums) with an atmosphere of “anonymous disinterest.” Immediate restoration and gap filling were needed before the situation was irreversible.115 Creative impetus toward preservation was simultaneously expressed in thesis papers at Weimar’s architectural school, where students proposed flashy new structures for Leipzig’s old town gaps and lauded its

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty i n t h e S ys t e m     75

historic trade-passage system: no longer tainted by the previous, capitalist order, but valuable for offering “certain trademarks and elements” that could foster “experiential hubs” (Erlebnisbereiche).116 Fischer himself took the lead in demanding retention of blighted treasures, like the Alte Nikolaischule, that had been slated in some offices for demolition.117 Advertising rare preservation accomplishments like the Fregehaus and Specks Hof passage, he used a 1988 article for Architektur der DDR to encourage an approach “in which what already exists is preserved and complemented by what is new.”118 Although in practice preservation was delayed, botched, and superficial, the one gap-filling measure (out of fourteen targeted) that saw full realization before 1989 exemplified the meld of tradition with modern methods envisioned by Fischer and his colleagues. Situated at the prominent crossing of two major pedestrian thoroughfares at the heart of the old town, the gap from wartime bombs at the corner of Grimmaische Straße and Nikolaistraße had long been one of the city’s worst eyesores. Already in 1975, preservationists had demanded that the BCA incorporate a particular accent in the corner of any future structure: a copy of a Renaissance-era turret that had once adorned the Fürstenhaus (1558) that had formerly stood on the other side of Grimmaische Straße (recently replaced with a faceless wing of the new university).119 The 1978 Bezirk building plan likewise foresaw reconstruction “to establish full harmony” for pedestrian traffic between the old town market and Karl Marx Square, and it favored a traditionally plastered brick building, arguing that integration of the Fürstenhaus turret impeded a standardized Plattenbau or even steel-skeleton technology like that arising across the Nikolaistraße at the Bezirk pharmacy construction site.120 Unfortunately, radically deficient resources in every area made construction a protracted and onerous affair. Although plans called for completion of the structure by 1980, a city resolution that very year failed to anticipate construction in the next five-year plan because of investments in the Bezirk pharmacy. This blockage prompted an interim landscaping competition for a small park where, in the shadow of exposed brick firewalls from adjoining buildings, pedestrians could buy ice cream cones.121 Planning nonetheless proceeded apace: in October 1980, Siegel tasked the Leipzig Baukombinat with producing blueprints, and by February a collective from the Bezirk building staff (Aufbaustab) under Wolfgang Petzold and Dieter Matthes projected a synthesis that fused the scale of the two adjoining, drastically different buildings (Hansa-Haus and Specks Hof ) while integrating the replicated turret. In contrast to the high flat roofs that would have appeared ten years earlier, slanted tile roofs were to convey a sense of historic continuity (fig. 14).122

76    C h a pt e r

2

Figure 14.  Draft of the replicated Fürstenhaus turret on new construction at Grimmaische and Nikolaistraße. Study by the BdA architect Wolfgang Petzold, February 10, 1981. SächStAL_Baukombinat1552.

The complicated politics that followed illustrated a contradiction in DDR planning that repeatedly stymied creativity: whereas BCA architects embraced a synthesis between modernism and history, the powerful Baukombinat opposed any construction that deviated from the prefab blocks at which its workers excelled. As the BCA architect Johannes Schulze recalls, “The Baukombinat always had to fulfill the apartment construction program. Therefore, it had to do everything precisely as it had to be done. Filling in gaps was all just too complicated. Prefab construction was all much faster.”123 From the perspective of the Baukombinat, investment in a sandstone turret was fiscal suicide; in a building economy tailored to industrial mass production, the diversion of energies on this sentimental trifle cost an unreasonable quantity of energy, men, and materials that could far more efficiently go into prefab blocks to house the population. In March of 1981, the Baukombinat rejected as unrealistic any plan to build a traditional building by 1985.124 In April, the mayor met Baukombinat leaders in the company of a high-ranking party official and reached a compromise that the structure—which would be completed by 1985—could incorporate prefab elements.125 At Siegel’s request, a short-notice competition took place internally in December 1982 for designing the structure’s

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty i n t h e S ys t e m     77

façade, though the Baukombinat saw it as its “duty” to revise the winning draft.126 In contrast to the Baukombinat’s August 1982 blueprint for a Plattenbau box with the turret glued on,127 the BCA architect Wolfgang Müller’s winning plan (coordinated with the Baukombinat) anticipated a hybrid edifice of plastered brick and steel facing Grimmaische Straße with Plattenbau upper floors facing Nikolaistraße—all under a “slanted roof solution appropriate for the old town.” A restaurant on the ground floor would transition up a spiral stair to a café with seating in the little turret, while upper floors would feature small apartments.128 An April 6, 1983, city council resolution approved immediate groundbreaking with completion projected for 1984.129 Tasked with providing funds for the turret replica, the BfaK promised a highlight that would offer “an aesthetic accent oriented toward the historic old town center.”130 Coordination between architects and preservationists nonetheless proved difficult, especially as the Institute for Preservation in Dresden opposed use of Plattenbau elements and a seven-story height on Grimmaische Straße— both of which the Baukombinat demanded and succeeded in retaining in the design.131 If anything, reconstruction and mounting of the turret proved an even greater challenge. After the Fürstenhaus itself was gutted by fire during wartime bombardment, one of its two matching turrets was pulled down and dumped into the collapsing wreckage of the city’s last surviving medieval bastion, the Moritzbastei. When the pieces were discovered, likely amid other debris as student battalions excavated the Moritzbastei to remake it into a student club, it was found that, “because of improper storage, a reconstruction incorporating original fragments was not possible.”132 Somehow, in 1972, these fragments landed in the workshop of the Dresden sculptor Werner Hempel, who sketched plans for a replica but could make little progress without access to the region’s distinctive pink sandstone (Porphyr), from which the original had been made. Upon the elderly sculptor’s death, Leipzig preservationists and cultural department officials heard that his son Christian Hempel was overburdened with other assignments and, if no Porphyr shipments arrived, he could not complete the turret by 1984 as planned.133 On a sudden visit to the workshop in August 1982, Leipzig cultural officials conveyed to the lone sculptor that the turret must be completed on time, and because of shortages it would not be a solid Porphyr construction as the original had been, but would only emulate pink sandstone from the outside.134 By 1985, “the current unresolvable material situation concerning Rochlitz Porphyr” (prompted in part by overexportation abroad) mandated that window frames and detailing on the structure itself had to consist of generic sandstone tinted with silicate-80, and lack of access to the fragments

78    C h a pt e r

2

in Dresden meant that engineers had to make their best guess at what hue to apply.135 When at last the turret took its place on the half-Plattenbau montage at the prominent Leipzig street corner, even the independent local cultural paper Leipziger Blätter had to complain in a historical homage to the Fürstenhaus that “certainly in this instance the happiest symbiosis of historical elements and modern architecture was not found. However, the possibility should generally be welcomed to enliven the cityscape through retaining and incorporating a charming historic structural detail.”136 Industrial building methods that tied in under-resourced fragments of craftsmanship could hardly replicate the grace and organic complexity of the prewar cityscape. The profusion of shortages and coordination issues made completion of the flashy new corner with a Renaissance turret replica in 1986 an isolated success. The rest of the old town continued to rot with gaping holes. On October 31, 1987, the city planning commission’s “Conception for the Further Configuration of the Leipzig City Center” lamented that, apart from the Fürstenhaus turret building, no gaps had been filled. According to a fourlevel classification system, only 6 percent of buildings in the old town were in optimal condition, almost half were in the worst states of decay, and 6 percent fell into an unofficial “fifth” category of “ruinous condition.” As the seemingly endless catalogue of hopeless landmarks displayed, whole streets were simply falling apart, and little progress could be expected before 1990.137 Another report noted that any momentum on this wish list was hampered by obstructionism from the Leipzig Baukombinat. With no small resentment, it concluded, “A stronger sense of accountability and engagement for its city must be expected and demanded here.”138 After years of planning without result, selective gap-filling measures finally resumed just months before the revolution. Despite its slow beginnings, Bezirk council chairman Rolf Opitz was still intent on realizing his Five-Year Plan (1986–90) resolution to increase residency in the historic center via gapfilling measures. As he wrote in Architektur der DDR in 1988, “through filling gaps with industrial building methods, over three hundred apartments will be built in the city center by 1990.”139 Two gaps in particular—Nikolaistraße 31 and Ritterstraße 12—evolved from blueprints for dull Plattenbauten in the mid-1980s into creative medleys that took into consideration the scale and style of their historical environs and were completed roughly to plan amid and immediately after the revolution. Nikolaistraße 31 was one of several gaps left by wartime bombardment, and the resulting green area for children and laundry racks was to be partially preserved behind a new Plattenbau. In 1985, the Baukombinat drafted a box rejected by the BCA for its dullness.140

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty i n t h e S ys t e m     79

Through give-and-take, the final, more interesting July 1987 design was executed to plan (fig. 15), but the diversions from typical Plattenbau methods (plastered bays, wooden window frames, ceramic-tile façades) slowed construction. Thus, as late as March 1990, construction stalled again because of “artistic and economic reasons.”141 Meanwhile, the gap at Ritterstraße 12—facing the broad courtyard between the Alte Nikolaischule and Nikolaikirche—was nearing completion as the Peaceful Revolution unfolded directly in front of it (see fig. 35). Owned by the university, the site had been planned as the new University Guesthouse first in 1971 and again in 1984, with completion in the latter case expected by 1986.142 With Fischer’s approval, in 1985 BCA architects sought to overcome the monotony of yet another box in the city center by making available to the Baukombinat a special new “bay window” Plattenbau module; already implemented in Berlin, as of 1986 the bay window was just entering into mass production for integration into smaller-scale Plattenbauten. At first recommended for the stalled site behind the Alte Nikolaischule, it was implemented as part of the University Guesthouse at Ritterstraße 12 with plans in 1986 that largely resembled the final version, whose off-center gable might inspire the term Plattenbau postmodern.143

Figure 15.  Experimental Plattenbau gap filling at Nikolaistraße 31, 2014. Photograph by author.

80    C h a pt e r

2

Creative variations on Plattenbau for the historic core failed to satisfy Topfstedt. Looking back on his sentiments at the time, he observes, “Nikolaistraße [31] already showed the results, and I was against them. ‘My God, you’re going to tear down even more, and want to replace it with replicas and Plattenbauten?’ ”144 Indeed, in June 1990, a group of architects under the city building director cited “negative resonance of the gap-filling measure at Nikolaistraße 31” as the reason that leading architects demanded an end to Plattenbau construction in the city center during the January 1990 First People’s Building Conference.145 For an increasing number of observers, any sort of prefab construction—or demolition of a historic building for replacement with replicated façade—was a crass violation of preservation principles, and out of place in the historic center.

The Plattenbau as Indictment In his detailed analysis of postcommunist Leipzig as “the saved city” (a play on the 1989 film’s title), Arnold Bartetzky observes that “after at least four decades of neglected repairs, the few restoration projects of old buildings during the late DDR were just a drop in the bucket. Far more consequential were the broad demolitions practiced up through 1989.”146 This chapter has sought to explain the intentions of architects who strove to revise utopia as it had been envisioned by their high-modernist predecessors. Despite creative proposals and dogged determination, however, they produced only isolated results like the synthesis at Dorotheenplatz or reinvented Fürstenhaus turret. Supposedly successful reconstruction zones like the Ostvorstadt bequeathed a monotonous Plattenbau solution punctuated by an occasional older façade. Meanwhile, material and labor shortages rendered the heart of the once-vibrant metropolis ever more gray and barren, punctuated by flavorless block rows. By working within the tangled financial and bureaucratic networks of the centralized system, local officials and architects had clearly failed to save the city. As a 1988 exhibition visitor complained, “Why does the overwhelming majority of all new building projects (including those planned for after 1990) evince a miserable kind of architectural quality?” The latest bathroom-tile-decorated facades on the Seeburgstraße looked just as “stupid and unimaginative as all of Grünau,” he groused, and historic preservation meant chopping off decorative elements, smearing over holes with plaster, and sometimes even gluing on mass-produced components. “All this appears symptomatic to me that one is definitely aware of the existing defects, but is taking no action against it,” he concluded.147 When residents were allowed

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty i n t h e S ys t e m     81

to gather four days before the fall of the Berlin Wall to confront political and planning authorities, the mood was at least as cynical. Speaking up for many of his fellow intellectuals, Thomas Topfstedt assailed the ongoing replacement of historic neighborhoods with “Wohncontainer” that made them look “like Grünau.” Excoriating the extermination of intact Kaiser-era neighborhoods, he asserted, “The identity of this city is not determined by Baroque and Renaissance and Gothic alone, but rather also to a significant degree by the nineteenth century. And only in this way does it identify itself as a global city. Imagine Prague, Paris, Vienna, or Budapest without the nineteenth century.”148 Even after the 1989 revolution, the wave of Plattenbau destruction encroached ever closer to the urban core at a speed that soon would have reduced the whole city to prefab blocks. For a restive public, flagging attempts to spice up Plattenbau monotony with rainbow tile and pink balconies implied continued top-down incompetence and flagrant disregard for the urban character. Could Leipzig still be saved?

Ch a p ter   3

Utopian Visions in 1988

It has been said that the first five years of postwar German reconstruction evoked Träume in Trümmern—a double-sided phrase implying optimistic “rubble dreams” about building a better future and cynical “dreams in ruins.”1 Four decades later, both sides of this phrase still suited East Germany’s catastrophically ruined second-largest city and international trade-fair center. “Out of the ruins of the DDR, it is hoped, cities will come into being that are spared the architectural mistakes of postwar West Germany,” a Hamburg reporter declared from the center of Leipzig in 1993, adding that in these ruins “historical urban structures and streetscapes remain intact that make West German urban planners dream.”2 Almost a decade before, Dietmar Fischer and his BCA colleagues had also celebrated the sheer potential in the city’s omnipresent urban ruins. As the previous chapter illustrated, they embraced the global thrust toward reshaping modern design to integrate historical elements, but foundered when the Baukombinat transformed most of their efforts into mass-produced blocks that ate up what was left of the historic city. Undaunted, they retreated to their drawing boards and crafted their own comprehensive revised vision of utopia that by the year 2000 would have restored communist Leipzig to a metropolis of global standing. Why did Dietmar Fischer so tirelessly campaign for an international urban planning competition for Leipzig’s historic center in 1988, when the 82

U to p i a n V i s i o n s i n 1 9 8 8     83

results had absolutely no hope of realization? For that matter, why did central authorities choose to support it, and why did so many architects invest so much time and creativity in crafting such ingenious plans? Looking back on the 1988 competition, the former Bezirk finance head Uta Nickel scoffs that it “was a complete overestimation. A gaze into the world of fantasy!”3 The local art historian and preservation patriot Thomas Topfstedt agrees that the collectives that took part in the competition “built many castles in the air.” But they were neither daft nor dilettantes. Planners knew the current level of decay was untenable. They knew that the centralized system gave the lion’s share of support to an industrialized prefab building economy that was replacing decay with universal monotony. And they knew that Schwarzbauten could not save the overall city. With their feet planted firmly on the ground of such realities, Fischer and his colleagues chose to draft big plans in the hope that an enticing vision for Leipzig’s future might win greater financial support from Berlin, and at the very least gesture toward a comprehensive way forward. As Topfstedt continues, even if “it was a bit chaotic, the goal was to produce ideas.” And “it created hope. Everything was suddenly possible. The effect was to be able to forge a different consciousness.”4 Perhaps more than any other planning endeavor, the 1988 competition offered architects a sweeping, open canvas for new ideas. In contrast to (1) the taboos and centralized interventions in earlier communist-era competitions or (2) planners’ inability after 1989 to execute a comprehensive plan thanks to the dictates of self-serving capitalist investors, in 1988 late-communist urban planners had carte blanche to comprehensively craft the entire city center. Unsuspectingly, on the very eve of political dissolution, planners had a last opportunity to brainstorm ways to ameliorate every mistaken decision of the past forty years. In an atmosphere of giddy optimism cloistered from harsh realities of shortage and obstructionism they knew existed outside, they systematically restored urban icons and streetscapes lost to war or heedless demolition. The more they shook off the fetters of grim reality, the more late-communist architects found themselves defying past proscriptions, undoing the most bombastic high-modernist failures of previous decades, and proposing sumptuous alternatives scandalous for their remoteness to reality. Sketching out models of palatial postmodern trade-fair palaces, they envisioned wondrous ways through which Leipzig could be saved. Rather than adopting the previous generation’s sleek and prefab high-modernist wasteland, they revised utopia to feature an urban core with history and human dimensions. For Leipzig’s diverse citizenry, however, late-communist Träume in Trümmern exuded an overwhelmingly negative connotation: ruins were

84    C h a pt e r

3

everywhere, and realized dreams were rare. It was a mockery to launch yet another planning competition when existing structures failed to receive basic roof repair. At the spring 1988 exhibition of the BCA’s 1987 building plan, visitors gave vent to these frustrations. “Both German states started from Null after the Second World War,” a typical comment in the visitor book declared, and a quick comparison with glistening West German centers like Frankfurt or Hannover allegedly proved which Germany had competently resolved its postwar reconstruction dilemmas. “Too little has been done in the past forty years to retain existing structures, and the ‘architectural mistakes’ [Bausünden] of the present are considerable,” he continued. “What will future generations say about the tasteless monotony and unimaginativeness of our new buildings?”5 Apart from centrally approved showpieces like the Dorotheenplatz neighborhood or a few Schwarzbauten like the Bowlingtreff, Leipzigers trudged through the faded glory of their once-wealthy city, so accustomed to urban malaise that sometimes they stopped even noticing it. As the latter portion of this chapter will show, their dreams for a better urban future—so vibrant after the war—were a mirage all but forgotten.

Castles in the Air The 1983 collapse of a house in Volkmarsdorf spurred Fischer to action. As soon as he was chief architect in 1985, he deployed twelve new BCA employees to expand upon his regular walks in the city and classify all structures according to their state of decay. After he discussed this tally “one evening over a beer with city leaders,” it was sent in the form of a scathing report to the central Bauakademie. Called to account in Berlin, he vigorously defended his bleak prognosis in person: minimal roof repairs would buy Leipzig’s housing stock five more years; barring that, the city was essentially doomed. Alarmed, the Bauakademie sent a letter to Honecker, and Fischer gave a presentation to the Politburo, which subsequently approved a 1987 building plan and exhibition. This, in turn, was to offer the basis for an international architectural competition for Leipzig’s urban core in 1988.6 Change was in the air. Although in reality the prefab mass-housing juggernaut rolled forward through historic neighborhoods across the republic, party rhetoric in Berlin denounced high-modernist mistakes and prefab monotony for destroying East Germany’s urban environment. In 1987, the DDR Bund deutscher Architekten promulgated its support for greater diversity in construction methods, a balcony for every new apartment, further development of the WBS-70 prefab design to allow for larger interiors, restoration of landmarks, and inclusion of the public in architectural consultation.7 Sponsored

U to p i a n V i s i o n s i n 1 9 8 8     85

by the mayor, Bezirk, and Bauakademie, Fischer directed his 1987 building plan to take this advice literally, projecting renovations for the core that greatly expanded trade-fair facilities, filled gaps, and saved threatened monuments. Explicitly not a “concrete building plan” but rather “a recommendation for a long-term societal, political, and urban-planning spatial building guide,” it constituted a basis for bigger dreams in the pending competition.8 Preservationist advocates who worked on Fischer’s “guide” (including Hubert Maaß, Johannes Schulze, and Wolfgang Müller) desperately yearned to save the over 60 percent of the historic center that stood under preservation status. Unfortunately, even if Fischer’s plan should lock into place, serious repair to historic buildings was only slated to commence after 1990.9 The planning process itself took place in three stages (the last of which was not completed). First, by October 1987, Fischer’s team had completed its initial “guide” to give competition participants a basis of existing BCA priorities to consider in their more aggressive planning. Considerably more humble in its outlook, the “guide” both upheld recent accomplishments, such as the Bowlingtreff or Dorotheenplatz ensemble, and called for relatively modest alterations, such as reconstruction of the Renaissance-era patrician house Deutrichs Hof (senselessly demolished in early 1968) or creation of a trade-fair palace inside an ugly gap behind the high-modernist box of the Messeamt, which stood directly across the market from the historic old city hall. All this featured in the spring 1988 exhibition Bauplatz Leipzig (fig. 16), which elicited public incredulity. In the second stage, Bezirk secretary Horst Schumann and Building Ministry head Wolfgang Junker issued a call for participants in early 1987 to take part in a competition that would determine the Leipzig center’s appearance through the turn of the millennium. Confronted by years of botched planning imperatives that had called for huge squares, broad streets, and “unexpressive new buildings,” organizer Johannes Schulze reflected in 1990, “there were no taboos for the participants. All ideas were allowed. It’s no coincidence that the competition took place at that time. It was a historical necessity.”10 This attracted such high-profile collectives as the Bauakademie, Technical University in Dresden, Weimar Architectural School, Berlin Kunsthochschule, BCA in all Bezirk capitals, and contributions from Leipzig’s sister cities Brno, Cracow, Kiev, and Plovdiv. The guidelines had a restorative thrust, calling for Umgestaltung rather than Neugestaltung (“reconfiguration” rather than a “new configuration”) and for feelings rather than cold rationality. By contrast with the totalizing high-modernist hubris so prized in the 1960s, the call concluded, “Participants of the competition are expected to offer structural, functional, aesthetic solutions that continue the socialist

86    C h a pt e r

3

Figure 16.  The 1987 preliminary models: Bauplatz Leipzig exhibition in new city hall, spring 1988. Leipzig Stadtplanungsamt 84144.

reconfiguration [Umgestaltung] of the Leipzig city center through the unity of old and new; fundamental development of construction methods that ensure a highly effective use of built space; and a deeply perceptive [gefühlsvolle] orientation of new structures to the existing substance.”11 As Fischer related in Architektur der DDR, the competition’s goal was to “perfect” the city center by closing an array of gaps that had become parking lots or other cement wastelands and destroyed the “spatial structure of the urban planning ensemble.”12 The competition ran from September 15, 1987 to March 31, 1988. Once the results were reviewed by late July, jury members (chaired by no less than Karl Schmiechen, state secretary for the Building Ministry) were reminded that the best models should restore a sense of density to the urban center and feature typical Leipzig traits such as passages and integration of the trade fair into the historic core.13 The jury report praised the “diverse and sometimes contradictory recommendations” participating collectives had put forth to “change or expand upon new buildings erected in the 1960s and 1970s.” By thus wiping away inhospitable urban landscapes from the previous generation, the report implied, the twenty-eight submissions revealed “how the

U to p i a n V i s i o n s i n 1 9 8 8     87

surviving [architectural] reserves in the Leipzig city center can be integrated into a more intense and effective use for the extraordinarily valuable building area.”14 As Fischer reflects, competition outcomes proved that leading architects across East Germany and parts of the East Bloc shared his desire to save old buildings and construct the old town on a more intimate scale.15 To attain this result, however, the 1988 submissions also conveyed that extreme possibilities were suddenly on the table. These included elimination of major socialist-modern showpieces like Saxon Square or the Messeamt, and in one case even a reconstruction of the dynamited University Church gable over the 1973 main university building on Karl Marx Square. Each participant’s models displayed wildly creative glass passages with decorative, practically postmodern features like silver balls atop rounded corners and variegated façades. Of the two typically extreme first-prize drafts, the Bauakademie under Wolfgang Weigel proposed the complete restoration of prewar streets and elimination of Saxon Square, while the Kunsthochschule in Berlin under Dietmar Kuntzsch even added postmodern-style construction to encase and hide old town apartment blocks (fig. 17, fig. 18).

Figure 17.  Results of the competition Wettbewerb 1988. Stadtzentrum Leipzig. Winning submission #10 (Bauakademie) for a postmodern glass passage trade-fair hall at the Neumarkt, occupied since 2001 by the bland orange box of Galeria Kaufhof. Leipzig Stadtplanungsamt 123/89.

88    C h a pt e r

3

Figure 18.  Results of the competition Wettbewerb 1988. Stadtzentrum Leipzig. Winning submission #10 (Bauakademie) for a diagonal passage system at the Hallisches Tor, today a parking lot and interchangeable Marriott. Leipzig Stadtplanungsamt 123/89.

In the third and final stage, the jury made its decision on September 23, 1988, and all twenty-eight competition submissions were displayed to impress international visitors from sixteen countries on October 17–21, when Leipzig hosted the Sixth Urban Planning Research Conference, organized by the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE; a branch of the United Nations). Results were supposed to find expression in the next city building plan (to be implemented after 1995). But after Leipzig’s BCA gave a conspicuously vague account of the competition results in the September 1988 issue of Architektur der DDR (only illustrated with the comparably modest gap-filling measures from the 1987 model), the competition itself was essentially buried until peaceful protests were underway in October 1989.16 On the one hand, this silence may have been imposed from above (as the planners later alleged), because centralized authorities were scandalized that every competition submission had broken the taboo of questioning socialist-modern achievements. This factor seems a bit weak on its own, however, given the extent to which even Berlin had been calling for creative answers to the republic’s depressing cityscapes. On the other hand, local authorities themselves may have desired suppression of the results, since they had plenty of grounds to

U to p i a n V i s i o n s i n 1 9 8 8     89

fear that their “rubble dreams” would prompt only public derision. After all, the few who had bothered visiting the exhibition Bauplatz Leipzig in city hall from March 25 to April 9, 1988, had repeatedly expressed little patience with planners’ flights of fancy. They wanted concrete results now.

Castles in the Clouds of Revolution The 1988 competition under Fischer’s leadership inspired visionary models that reimagined Leipzig as a showpiece of aesthetically postmodern architecture on a human scale. But for a public weary with everyday prefab monotony and apocalyptic decay, this latest planning effort was a pipe dream: fantastic at best and insulting at worst. Cynicism, even anger, dominated the meager public responses to images and models displayed in city hall—and these were only the more modest proposals from the internal 1987 study. As a sign of the general bad mood, entries in the visitor book purported that the exhibit itself had never been meant to be visited, since it took place during working hours for a few days and did not even offer brochures. Dejected by the optimistic city model, a typical visitor seethed: “interesting” though the exhibition may have been, “the everyday person is interested in deeds.” A late-middle-aged visitor gave a litany of all the earlier planning exhibitions that had failed to materialize in reality and lamented that his optimism had perished. Another visitor observed, “In the model, everything looks wonderful. But when will the ugly gaps between buildings finally disappear? Hopes abound after every exhibition about building in Leipzig. But unfortunately, up to now very little has been done.” Fearful of spreading monotony, another insisted, “Do more! Less excuses, empty promises, and such. Or else Leipzig’s future will only lie in a [Plattenbau] landscape like a Grünau. Changes now.” Unaware that even more ambitious competition results were to come, one visitor scoffed, “I miss models of the blindfolds you will use to present the dilapidated and decrepit Leipzig cityscape to delegates from the UN-ECE conference ‘Inner City Construction.’ Or will Leipzig’s city fathers seek to deceive them further about the city’s condition with the rose-tinted lenses of this exhibition? In the meantime, Leipzig has attained an appearance of a complete devastation.” For others, the exhibition did not go far enough, and they (rightly) presumed that the urban planners must have a more ambitious plan in reserve. “Hopefully it won’t all stay as it is on the plan!” a visitor declared, adding, “Filling in a few gaps, as in your architectural configuration, cannot satisfy. The interconnection between old and new buildings should be integrated more effectively into the form of the façades. Is it a financial question to infuse a new building with creative forms?

90    C h a pt e r

3

In secret, the architects must have far better drafts.” In their exasperation, many took aim at local leaders, as when one contended, “Further up in the city council and other planning circles, one is apparently not struggling at all. The condition of the city is proof enough.” Another curtly opined, “You should replace the chief architect!”17 Given such acrimony, it can hardly be surprising that the public was kept from seeing the even more fantastic competition results in October 1988. With the best of intentions, Fischer had displayed his initial 1987 “guide” to whet everyone’s appetite for a better future in an international planning competition. Although he himself had known that it had been far-fetched to claim that Leipzig—reconfigured according to his dreams—was fit to host the Olympics, he had successfully used a leap into the realm of fantasy to inspire his fellow architects and Berlin to recognize Leipzig’s urban potential. Unfortunately, his success among peers and elites came at the cost of his remaining public credibility. He had wanted to give the public hope; instead, they wanted his head. Finally, amid the rising unrest in October 1989, Fischer undertook something of a publicity campaign. He confessed in the Leipziger Volkszeitung that he and his fellow architects had been “too quiet” in responding to challenges in the ruined city and apologized for failing to meet public expectations. Alongside promises to accelerate existing construction plans, he advertised open office hours for hearing citizens’ concerns every Tuesday afternoon at four thirty.18 That same month, Fischer sought to explain to residents in the Leipziger Blätter why the competition results—which he described amid street plans without images of projected structures—could not be implemented at once. First, he sought to summarize the general frustration: Here they’ve completed a competition, they’ve given prizes, and again they are already saying they want to do it differently anyway? What is the point of such efforts, what is the point of so many unfulfilled dreams by those who made them and those who saw them? What is the point of the many beautiful pictures, the models that exhibit how it just won’t be? What is the point of such a competition? What has it achieved? What is happening next with our city center?” To these passionate questions, Fischer then offered his staid professional answers. Each competition participant, he began, had taken pains to sustain the city’s character and improve its attractiveness by orienting new buildings toward restored old ones. Though city planners were assessing each submission’s merits, he concluded, “how many steps we will take in the 1990s toward realizing this concept, I don’t know. But I am certain that as much as possible will be done to keep what we have, and I’m almost certain

U to p i a n V i s i o n s i n 1 9 8 8     91

that by the end of the 1990s a honing of the basis for the further development of the Leipzig city center will be assessed again in one form or another.”19 Just as deadpan were Fischer’s responses a few weeks later during his much-publicized interview for the film Can Leipzig Still Be Saved? When asked about public despair with runaway decay, Fischer blamed centralized planning and sparse resources, conceding that whole districts like Plagwitz were too far gone and had to be razed.20 When Fischer agreed to speak that same historic week—as the Berlin Wall was coming down—at an open forum on whether Leipzig was a “provincial backwater,” he was attacked as the representative of an incompetent bureaucracy and reviled for his sober reiteration that decrepit neighborhoods like Plagwitz had to be razed. Surely reflecting on the 1988 competition, he expressed regret that, whenever new concepts were exhibited but not realized, there followed “a new loss of trust.” This was “the problem that is currently bothering me the most,” he continued in earnest, explaining, “we have to understand that these are long-term concepts, and we have to struggle for their implementation.”21 Nonetheless, he wavered in his interview for Can Leipzig Still Be Saved?, observing that planners had to stop “intoxicating themselves with big programs” that could not be realized, and focus instead on “radically increasing capacities for building repair.” In so many words, Fischer was openly questioning why he and his colleagues had just expended so much time and creativity on castles in the air.22 Rapidly spreading graffiti slogans at the time captured the overall public disgust at local leaders’ legacies. On the wall of a hopeless ruin in a dying historic neighborhood, someone had misspelled the demand “Renovate instead of bulldoze” (sanieren statt planieren; fig. 19). Too many castles in the air had frustrated ordinary people who suffered in the ruins below. Given such endless delays and public outrage, the architects were ready in the immediate aftermath of party domination to frame themselves as victims who had been repeatedly defeated by their own failing system. When a 1990 issue of Architektur der DDR finally displayed the competition results, Fischer insisted that for over a year “they had to be silenced. Those who did this never had to submit themselves to the justified annoyance of the competition participants or fury of the Leipzig populace. Just as it was difficult to bring the competition into being, it became impossible to responsibly bring it to its end.” Notwithstanding such official obstructionism, however, the results had demonstrated that planning problems could not be solved by further demolitions and cheap construction.23 The public wanted to know how Leipzig could be saved? His colleagues’ visionary and comprehensive approaches to remaking the city center in 1988 as a cutting-edge trade-fair

92    C h a pt e r

3

Figure 19.  Inscription (misspelled): “Renovate instead of bulldoze,” demolition area in LeipzigConnewitz, May 1990. Photograph by Bernd Heinze. ABL 006–015–145.

mecca interspersed with restored historical icons offered the best answer for a way forward! The editors likewise upheld East Bloc architects as triumphant victims of regime oppression. Touching on the influential film title, they reiterated that Leipzig could be “saved” through implementation of the 1988 competition results “scandalously withheld until today from the Leipzig public and also the experts.”24 In his more recent reflections, Fischer has vacillated between this courageous outlook—that the competition results had proven at last that a broad array of architects shared his desire to unite old buildings with intimate modern design—and a timid explanation that the competition was a mere “playing for time” against some of his more destructive peers at the BCA to save as many historic monuments as possible. Such hesitation is understandable given the fact that, amid public hostility and shifting bureaucratic configurations, by late 1990 he had “lost any desire” to continue in his position and opened a private practice.25 Far from cynical or absent, however, Fischer had spent his brief tenure as chief architect actively exploiting any chance to inveigle burned-out party leaders into supporting schemes that might pull Leipzig out of the grave toward proactive reconstruction. This had even included his attempt to get resources by accepting Honecker’s offer to let Leipzig put in a bid for the

U to p i a n V i s i o n s i n 1 9 8 8     93

2004 Olympics. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the young architect at first continued to play shifting economic and social realities by inviting planners from Hannover and Frankfurt for a tour and conference in April 1990.26 And as a private architect, one of his first and most important projects involved rescuing and modernizing a Kaiser-era building between city hall and his recently completed Dorotheenplatz: a modest but considerable achievement that well suited his mellowed outlook—“You only have limited means to change the world.”27

1988 in 1990 Was the 1988 competition a lost opportunity? It was, after all, the first and perhaps last time urban planners had such an unrestricted arena to openly dream about the city center as a composite whole. Without serious pressures from “democratic centralism” in Berlin or the eclectic aesthetic preferences of capitalist investors after 1989, late-communist architects proposed bold visions for a ruined city. As chapter 5 reveals, when Fischer and his colleagues responded to public outrage at the January 1990 First People’s Building Conference, they eagerly cited their 1988 competition results as an ideal way forward. But the architects who had imagined themselves as so revolutionary in 1988 had become an old guard under assault just two years later. Their daring visions from 1988 had become a nostalgic reference point irrelevant for much of the public, not to mention capitalist investors who had plans of their own. Yet perhaps the very question about a “lost opportunity” is itself mistakenly posed. Although the competition in 1988 proved impossible to realize, it inspired plans after communism. As the epilogue explores, when Westerners arrived in the train of revolution with the financial and material means to remake the city, many late-communist planners held fast to ideas they had refined in 1988. As a private architect, Fischer exemplified this continuity in his postcommunist success at binding historic architecture with modern innovation. Some of the ideas in 1988 in fact anticipated how the city would be saved—though many of the communist collectives’ flights of fancy in 1988 far exceeded the creativity capitalist investors dared to execute into reality. Unfortunately, even as they dreamed in 1988, urban planners faced the insurmountable challenge of a rotting historic core, encroached upon by the fruits of an industrialized mass-production economy. As a visitor to the 1988 exhibition vented, “The plans are good, but I still don’t have an apartment,” just a “pigsty.”28 For late-communist Leipzig residents, castles in the air were irrelevant in their everyday experiences. On all fronts, columns of rebarbative

94    C h a pt e r

3

prefab blocks were marching through once-intact inner suburbs, threatening to conquer the historic center itself by the eve of revolution. Whether they were lucky enough to get an interchangeable prefab apartment or remained in doomed historicist wrecks that yawned across the center, most Leipzigers experienced “real existing socialism” as a dystopian reality, where hope was ever more circumscribed to what they could get through personal connections in the midst of a failing local, regional, and national party authority.

Ch a p ter   4

Urban Ingenuity Underground

It was a bowling alley like no other in all the world. From the day it opened in July 1987, thousands of lucky Leipzigers passed into its elegant glass-and-sandstone foyer with its hipped glass ceiling, oak parquet floors, and pink Egyptian-themed pillars. They descended the broad marble stairways to fourteen bowling lanes, a fitness center, five billiard tables, six Poly-Play video game machines, and extensive eateries in a repurposed subterranean power station. Thanks to 40,050 hours of volunteer labor from 6,675 locals, it took shape in only fourteen months and without knowledge from Berlin until the very end. How did local authorities get away with building such a showpiece without permission from the center? How could it be that so many people had chosen to work with local authorities on the eve of a revolution when they marched against the regime? What can this incident of apparent optimism tell us about state-citizen relations as they had evolved by the end of East Germany? At the opening of Leipzig’s new Bowlingtreff on July 25, 1987, Rolf Opitz, the powerful chairman of the Leipzig Bezirk council, framed the whole affair in terms that would have suited ostalgic yearnings by postcommunist characters in the 2003 film Goodbye Lenin.1 Celebrating close and collegial coordination between the Bezirk and city councils, 110 firms at the building site, and ample volunteer labor, he professed, “Fourteen months ago as construction started, hardly anyone suspected that, from gray and dreary [underground] 95

96    C h a pt e r

4

spaces, such an architectural gem could ever come into being; it bears such obvious witness to the imagination of our architects, their creativity and sense for what is economically possible.” Now, thanks to the labor of so many workers and volunteers, Leipzigers could go bowling for communism: through the act of bowling, they could embrace communist ideals and accomplishments, rededicating themselves to the communist cause. As Opitz elaborated, “With this beautiful structure, you have created an edifice that, after this sport festival, will continue to offer joy, relaxation, and recreation for many workers and guests, and in this way perhaps one or another of you will enjoy regular athletic activity. Let us not forget that active recreation can also decisively increase the productivity of any one of us.”2 In 1980s Moscow, residents could descend to palatial metro stations; in Berlin, people could celebrate life in the Palace of the Republic or stroll through the city’s “new old town” in the Nikolaiviertel. Now at last—after decades of failed promises, demolished landmarks, and outright indifference from Berlin—local party elites had taken it into their own hands to make sure that, beneath the catastrophic decrepitude of East Germany’s second-largest city, the people had a bowling palace where they could find joy and belonging in communism. This, at least, was the rosy, official version of the story. Beneath such an attractive, even triumphal depiction, what had actually taken place was hardly some ostalgic evidence of socialist paradise lost. At the party level, local authorities only produced their People’s Bowling Palace by working around centralized failings. Overcoming years of bureaucratic proscriptions, dedicated local authorities built “off the record” through personal connections and guile. In contrast to Jeffrey Kopstein’s claim that East German bureaucrats were too constrained to “innovate and adapt in a way that would rival capitalism and provide an alternative route to modernity,”3 in the Bowlingtreff local officials had innovated a leisure emblem superior to bowling alleys under capitalism. This was a refreshing change from the outright hostile and dogmatic leadership that had wrecked local trust in the 1960s. Unable to reform the system, leaders with diverse jurisdictions banded together to work within local power structures to give the people an isolated victory in their putrid surroundings.4 In a climate where nothing was possible, they had to prove to the people (and themselves) that they could attain something. In so doing, however, they were also illustrating the brokenness of the centralized system. Only through a rogue action accomplished by local initiative could they yield a graspable achievement. Unintentionally, they modeled patterns of decentralized self-initiative from the top down that engaged citizens had been applying from the bottom up to save their neighborhoods.

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     97

At the grassroots level, meanwhile, local residents only took part in their leaders’ initiative as a way to get something out of an otherwise broken system. Though disillusioned with communism, they helped their leaders complete the mother of all Schwarzbauten to win a piece of “the West” for themselves and for Leipzig: a spontaneous mass action in the name of Heimat and personal interests. In offering the people a fun space that was (in effect) open-ended, local leaders expected gratitude and fresh enthusiasm. “Bowling for communism” was meant to prove that people were still aboard with some semblance of SED rhetoric; rather than merely emulate bowling halls in the West, its palatial contours were intended to demonstrate the superiority of communism to capitalism, most especially in what the system could offer its lucky citizens. But for most who built and used the Bowlingtreff, “communism” had nothing to do with it. Instead, the new bowling palace gave them a piece of what Alexei Yurchak has called the “Imaginary West” in the heart of their dead city—a simulated realization of the fantasies they saw on Western television.5 Never imagining that their shiny new bowling center was architecturally grander than any of its Western counterparts, their often fleeting experience of its diverse leisure facilities whetted their appetite for a better reality and inspired young people to plot within its walls about how to escape from the DDR. Hence, in contrast to claims by Opitz and his colleagues that the people were happily working with those in charge, most residents only volunteered in the hope of an attractive return. Defying labels like “belief ” or “collusion” or “resistance,” they appropriated Heimat despite centralized incompetence and repression that had wrought a city of ruins.6 Then just over two years later, Heimat and personal interests again fueled spontaneous mass action, this time in revolution against the regime.

The Mechanics of Illegal Construction and Free Labor Schwarzbauten are structures built and sometimes used without permission from the requisite authorities. Until 1989, the term never appeared in official registers or newspapers, and it was generally spoken of in hushed tones.7 Nonetheless, Schwarzbauten became an integral part of urban planning and private initiative at the local level, since in the shortage economy it was usually the only way to make dreams come true. East German ­Schwarzbauten— like Schwarzwohnen (squatting)—had a very different meaning than in West Germany, where officials almost never participated in Schwarzbau construction and eliminated them as soon as they could. In early postwar Frankfurt am Main, stopgap shops and dwellings in the ruined old town only remained in use until officials ended a building freeze in 1952 and wiped such private

98    C h a pt e r

4

initiative away.8 In early postwar Munich, Holocaust survivors erected wooden huts without permission; although American occupiers turned a blind eye, the shift to Bavarian jurisdiction in 1949 ended them.9 By contrast, in East Germany local officials directed Schwarzbauten, and even at the private level they were typically meant to survive as a “permanent-temporary” measure. It was a scandal against centralized planning, but sufficient frustrations had taught engaged officials that they had to work around the system to build what they could. Before tracing the evolution of how local leaders turned to Schwarzbau construction, this section establishes the mechanics for how Schwarzbauten functioned within East German power structures, how they were funded, where supplies were acquired, and why citizens stepped up to build them. East German Schwarzbauten were above all an attempt to work around impossible balance sheets, where material and worker shortfalls otherwise proscribed the most attractive projects. As Lena Kuhl has shown, officials in Karl-Marx-Stadt secured much-needed renovations to the opera house, and officials in Frankfurt an der Oder constructed a hospital and hotel (none of which was anticipated in any central plan) by drawing from funds off the balance sheets. Assessing these “precarious realms of power,” Kuhl concludes, “Schwarzbauten, diversion of state-planned building materials, and work after-hours produced somewhat anarchic results in both private and [local] planned economic areas—certainly also based upon the experience that one’s objective could hardly be realized through normal channels.” This impression that “binding central programs flew in the face of local problems” inspired “local functionaries to deviate from [centralized] targets and programs.”10 Indeed, Kuhl adds alongside Oliver Werner, “illicit construction work that was undertaken in disregard of the official plan and instead in the interest of local actors, became surprisingly common and was often tolerated by the central leadership.” At the same time, however, “regional and local decision-makers had to refrain themselves from finding too many additional construction resources as this would cause the state’s central planning department to suspect that materials were being withheld deliberately.”11 Through combining archival analysis with interviews from key players, it becomes possible to reconstruct how this informal and deeply complicated patchwork construction method functioned at Leipzig’s district (Bezirk) and municipal (Stadt) levels, where the budget was managed respectively by the finance chairwomen Uta Nickel and Liesel Schön. Each year, Schön asserts, her city finance department received funds from the Bezirk “precisely according to the budget plan we had to submit precisely one year previously. Certain funds were tied to their usage (education, culture, etc.). When funds

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     99

were insufficient, and this was common, we made the funds available through city [council] resolutions.”12 Thus, if a favored department lacked sufficient funds (such as for athletic facilities), the managing finance office could adjust the flow with internal “reserves.” Such murky reserves had existed since the dawn of the DDR as a means through which local authorities could attain centralized planning objectives.13 Discretionary and off the official balance sheets, they occasionally appear in archival records with such cryptic designations as “budget reserves,” “unused funding,” “Haushaltsmittel” (budget resources), or the “Volksvertreterfond” (peoples’ representatives’ fund). In its 1988 financial report, the Leipzig city council described the latter fund with stunning opacity: “Proceeding from the principle that something can only be distributed and used that had previously been carefully managed, the income carefully managed in excess of the annual budget plan (the resulting Volksvertreterfond) will be purposefully applied toward additional measures in the cultural and social realm,” a sum which in 1988 numbered 4.4 million marks!14 So not only were discretionary funds for Schwarzbauten built into local planning: Schön claims from her records that as much as one-third of funds distributed back from Berlin were discretionary and fell into reserves.15 In contrast to the West, where unused funds were typically returned each year to central coffers, reserves left unused for official local projects in East Germany were not sent back to Berlin. They were earmarked for whatever project the finance minister saw fit.16 This coincides at least in part with what Richard Ericson observed in the Soviet context at the time: official funds could quite literally be “created as needed to finance production and trade in the State sector” separate from actual cash availability, while theft and other means of resource allocation could make materials available for projects outside official plans.17 Both Schön and Nickel saw in their everyday interactions that Leipzigers were starved for recreational spaces. Honecker had provoked expectations that living standards would rise for the ordinary person, but prefab housing with modern heating and hot water could offer only minimal comforts. As Alice Kahl observed in her 1980s interviews, a prefab block alone in a field of mud was dull, if not depressing. And the widespread decrepitude across the inner suburbs could hardly provide the residents of East Germany’s secondlargest city with sufficient quality of life. Leipzig was not a fun city, and both finance ministers were keen to see that change. Here it is essential to emphasize the role of “personality” in making Leipzig’s strong record of Schwarzbauten possible. Acting as Bezirk finance minister (Bezirksrat für Finanzen und Preise) from 1983 to 1988 before rising to head the East German Finance Ministry amid the unfolding revolution,

100    C h a pt e r

4

the economist and mathematician Uta Nickel had previous experience in various branches of construction, infrastructure, and financial planning, all of which gave her connections and know-how needed to work around centralized dictates to get things done at the local level. Recalling how Nickel had presided over the grand opening of Leipzig’s Handelshof arcade (whose restoration she had financed), Johannes Schulze (then deputy to the chief architect) notes, “She always intervened to enhance the city’s attractiveness.” As finance minister, “Nickel gave out money and was extremely powerful.”18 Liesel Schön likewise remembers, “I acted on my own authority in my own area,” dictating the direction of “reserve” funds at will.19 Each month, city bank representatives had to present their plans to her.20 By the time she assumed office in 1974, the party regarded her as deeply reliable: she had already traveled outside the East Bloc with Leipzig’s famed St. Thomas Boys’ Choir to guard the suitcase that held the Western money, and by the 1980s she regularly represented Leipzig on trips across West Germany.21 Given the practically godlike power of the finance officers, a great deal depended on which areas most suited their interests and which officials were the most engaged, creative, and charming in their presence. “To whom it was given was crucial,” Schön recollects. “We always amassed something to support culture, such as for the Moritzbastei or Bowlingtreff.” That Nickel and Schön worked in tandem to support cultural and athletic projects was in no small part due to Theo Ullrich, the winsome city minister for international work and recreation (Stadtrat für Internationale Arbeit und Erholungswesen) and veritable godfather of Leipzig’s Schwarzbauten. “Ullrich was a good partner for me,” Schön recalls, noting that “he built most of it through his own initiative. He used connections with construction firms. And so recreation and culture were areas we financed through surpluses.”22 With each successive Schwarzbau as the DDR tumbled through its final decade, the cast of characters at the city, Bezirk, and BCA crystalized ever more solidly into a working team, until it produced its magnum opus: the Bowlingtreff. Once funding could be drawn from reserves, building materials were often acquired through informal connections and even barter. In an economy determined by shortages and where Western currency had greater ability to buy scarce goods, material resources were often far more crucial than marks, whose overall value was questionable.23 While a quarry might trade stone with a trusted official in return for something it needed, trading for East German currency with someone it did not know or trust was far less likely. In building such connections, it was also possible for the most dedicated and lucky officials to convince Kombinaten to make materials available out of belief in a project. Where at first no labor or materials could be found

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     101

for a project, suddenly high-quality sandstone or skilled laborers appeared at a building site. As Leipzig’s Bowlingtreff architect Winfried Sziegoleit recalls, “The city council had connections to receive materials. Today you would call that networking.”24 How illegal was a Schwarzbau, if it was pursued by local officials with local coffers? As will be shown in the case of the Moritzbastei, perhaps Leipzig’s earliest significant Schwarzbau, the “youth object” was widely known and even approved from higher offices. Much more secretive was the steady series of local workarounds that evolved from the late 1970s onward—mainly cafés or athletic facilities like swimming pools. Such an approach was not without its risks. For instance, in 1979 central authorities visited Bezirk Magdeburg, scrutinized illegal construction, and demanded that local authorities divert their apparently “substantial efficiency reserves” toward even higher economic targets in the central plan.25 Hence it was not a given that the Bowlingtreff—a recreational facility of the highest order—would elicit just a slap on the wrist from capricious Berlin authorities. Recalling the complexity of the situation, Ursula Waage recalls, “It wasn’t a ‘Schwarzbau,’ but it also wasn’t a planned building project for which money and material had to be procured.”26 At least some proof of this partial legality can be found on the building site itself, which was guarded by local police and never generated serious observation from the Stasi, who failed to care that local authorities were dissenting from top-down prescriptions. Far too busy with spying on private individuals who deviated from expected norms or (especially) showed interest in the West, the Stasi only homed in on the Bowlingtreff when it became a center for scheming about escape to West Germany. In the end, although Schwarzbauten were constructed at least partially off the balance sheets, they were typically celebrated upon completion as socialist achievements. As the Bowlingtreff opened its doors in July 1987, Leipzig mayor Bernd Seidel bragged to Neues Deutschland reporters about the “hard work and commitment” Leipzigers had shown in completing such highlights as the Bowlingtreff and Schönefeld swimming pool as part of the “everyday fulfillment of plans,” even though both had been Schwarzbauten built without central approval.27 In its 1988 financial report, the Leipzig city council went so far as to uphold the Moritzbastei and Bowlingtreff as among the city center’s top seventeen architectural achievements since 1971.28 As projects “off the books,” Schwarzbauten were particularly vulnerable to shortages in skilled labor (or labor in general). Fortunately for these projects, “volunteer labor battalions” (freiwillige Arbeitseinsätze) were something of a national tradition in East Germany (and much of the East Bloc) by the 1970s. Often referred to by the Soviet term Subbotnik, voluntary labor was

102    C h a pt e r

4

frequently deployed on farms, for garbage collection, and in major projects that demanded manual labor. Already in the early 1950s, Leipzig’s youth contributed over five hundred thousand hours of voluntary labor to build the city’s Central Stadium with seating for 120,000 spectators—the largest such facility in East Germany—as part of the National Reconstruction Effort (Nationales Aufbauwerk) shortly after it was founded in November 1951. By the late 1960s, the National Reconstruction Effort was tied to the Mach mit campaign, through which most East Germans had to contribute community service to “make our cities and communities more beautiful.” For instance, in East Berlin’s Marzahn district, residents took part in landscaping initiatives every two weeks.29 Propaganda organs spared no ink to emphasize this activism as proof of grassroots participation in state initiatives. How “free” was such free labor? Enthusiasm was strongest in the first postwar decade, as residents sought to rebuild after apocalyptic destruction. Having suffered through the senseless annihilation of her hometown of Breslau and two years of forced labor under Polish administration as the city became Wrocław, Ursula Waage landed in Leipzig in 1947 eager to build a better Germany from the ashes of Nazism. As she recalls, in the early DDR a “mood of readiness” (Aufbruchsstimmung) had predominated, especially among the youth, “to build a new, peaceful society without war and exploitation, with your own strength and without the Marshall Plan. In this light, [free] hours of labor were more of a voluntary necessity [freiwilliges Muss].”30 By the 1950s, as Molly Johnson has shown in the case of the Leipzig Central Stadium project, “most citizens who performed voluntary work on sports facilities did so for individual and community reasons or due to necessity, not out of a desire to contribute to socialism.”31 Johnson’s research finding that a free Subbotnik often meant “voluntary obligations” (freiwillige Verpflichtungen) has been reaffirmed through my numerous informal interviews with elderly Leipzigers.32 Waage herself admits that, to get her name on the list for a Plattenbau apartment, she was expected to perform “free labor.” Once she had her own Plattenbau residence in the 1960s, she was expected to perform free labor each month on a Saturday to maintain the grounds and building.33 By the 1970s, according to Eli Rubin, 67 percent of Marzahn residents helped in campaigns to keep up the grounds; although in retrospect some said they had volunteered out of a sense of neighborliness, those who did not help faced social pressures to do so, as well as Stasi observation.34 “Everyone had to contribute hours of free labor,” Liesel Schön recounts, “and it was always tallied.”35 As belief in socialism diminished, raw compulsion to perform a Subbotnik was increasingly entangled with a sense of incentive. When choosing where to contribute free labor, East Germans preferred to measure where

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     103

they could secure the greatest benefit. Reflecting on lessons learned in the 1970s with the Moritzbastei, Uta Nickel observes that the key to inspiring free labor was “to explicitly relate what the goal was, to fire up the youth.” Given the dearth of free-time possibilities, Nickel (herself a bowling fan) concludes that free labor “was not forced,” since “suddenly everyone wanted to go bowling.”36 By the last decade of communism, Leipzigers thus worked for free in no small part to secure better facilities otherwise impossible because of regime frugality. As Eva Hoffmann reflected when interviewed for the 2016 Bowlingtreff documentary film, she had been “called up” for work, but did so gladly.37 So was there any sense among those engaging in “free labor” on a prestige object like the Central Stadium or even a Schwarzbau that they were “building up” socialism, as the prevailing rhetoric suggested? In my interviews and readings, I have found only a few instances where young labor brigade members actually embraced the socialist rhetoric attributed to their actions. Most of the time, Leipzigers found meaning in a Subbotnik that did not coincide with official rhetoric.38 Sometimes they built a Schwarzbau to avoid a Subbotnik in a less pleasant area, such as to renovate the water treatment center or clean barns. On other occasions it was to ensure that they could pursue a career, enjoy a university education, or win a promotion. Sometimes students took part to avoid paying student fees. But residents were also genuinely excited to secure attractive new recreational facilities such as the Moritzbastei or Bowlingtreff—and for their labor, some got free entry tickets. Civic pride also spurred such Eigen-Sinn to build new landmarks, despite permanent distrust of SED platforms after the 1960s reign of demolitions. Wolfgang Hocquél captures this general sentiment in noting, “People were always ready to do something for the city, but not for the Party.” Neither the Moritzbastei nor the Bowlingtreff “was a propaganda object; these were projects that showed one was proud of the city.”39 In addition to “free labor,” Schwarzbau projects regularly made use of after-hours work brigades, or Feierabend Arbeit. The consequence for some craftsmen, construction workers, and manual laborers was a paycheck that came in cash and was never taxed. During the workday they punched the clock and undertook whatever tasks were demanded of them; then in the evenings or on weekends they moonlighted on projects that paid better or they believed in (or both).40 As a building manager recorded in Leipzig’s southeast in 1981, “Whoever works in the construction industry is of the view that his work will not be so very monitored by us and he can find more favorable conditions for private jobs on the side during working hours, for after-hours work and so on.” On the basis of such evidence, Christian Rau

104    C h a pt e r

4

observes that “even construction depot leaders profited from the authorities’ loss of control, such as the fact that they allowed the execution of private repair work ‘illegally’ [Schwarz] at the expense of the company.”41 To get workers to stay on the job, officials overlooked their more lucrative black market labors. In the Soviet context, Grossman went so far as to surmise that legal wages were low, because the state presumed that everyone earned their real income from the second economy.42 As an added sign of the convoluted nature of the late-communist republic’s slippery bureaucratic levers, the 1970s law code made after-hours labor on Schwarzbauten tax-free—in effect legalizing it. Undertaken under the auspices of the program Schöner unsere Städte und Gemeinden: Mach mit, the logic behind the 1975 Lawbook 35 allowing after-hours work was to intensify national production.43 In addition to labor campaigns by “free, unpaid actions by the population” and “honorary reconstruction offices,” the law explicitly permitted tax-free after-hours work whose wages registered as “reimbursement.” Although the workers were supposed to be qualified for their efforts, the law was far more concerned with forbidding wages above the going rate and hindering the possibility that “resources from other companies or contracts be used to carry out the additional work.” Stolen material or excess wages could result in up to a 300-mark fine. Just where the resources would come from, however, was vague. The law concluded, “Construction measures can only be carried out as additional labor if the necessary construction materials, tools, and equipment—such as for heating, plumbing, and electrical installations—are made available according to schedule or can be additionally tapped through the use of local reserves,” whatever these reserves might be.44 Peter Kunze, who directed labor at the Moritzbastei and Bowlingtreff (among other illegal or at least partially unofficial projects), applied his SED status and connections to exploit Lawbook 35 whenever he could to employ handworkers and harness materials. Small wonder, given so much tax-free labor, that state coffers strained to find resources, and that (despite threat of punishment) building materials sometimes vanished for other uses. As Werner Kießling recalls, “it was a bizarre law book, since through it the DDR state had de facto encouraged and at the same time legitimated that it would get ripped off.” In his own work managing a Leipzig tool-and-die factory, he often procured materials for repair through Lawbook 35; thus did he “bring much into order outside the planned economy and with much initiative.” For instance, his construction of a dining hall for workers “was not in any plan. And we had all the materials (which were actually not available in the DDR) at our disposal. There was so much like this, when I think about it today. It’s crazy in retrospect.”45

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     105

As a further sign of how confusing labor compensation on Schwarzbauten could be, sometimes those contributing their labor “for free” nonetheless received a menial allowance for their work or some other incentive (such as entry tickets for the recreational facility when it was completed), and of course many youth were also excited to secure a rare venue for their free-time activities. Hence, when the Free German Youth (FDJ) called up its members for a Subbotnik on a Schwarzbau, pressure to conform and contribute service combined with the incentive of the final result and, sometimes, compensation as well. Tracing motivations in Schwarzbau work is thus challenging, but enthusiasm for socialism was generally a minor factor, if it appeared at all.

Learning to Build Illegally Leipzig’s Bowlingtreff was the culmination after years of smaller or partial Schwarzbau projects. Frustrated by their impotence and alarmed at public disdain, local leaders and architects had realized by the mid-1970s that they had to emulate less-regulated popular practices to get anything done. To probe what was possible without serious pushback from Berlin, they attempted a series of projects whose scale increased and centralized involvement diminished until they finally commenced their truly outrageous campaign for a People’s Bowling Palace.46 Arguably the first major Schwarzbau was the Moritzbastei, which (unlike later instances) had been centrally approved for eventual construction, but with barely a fraction of the necessary allocation of material or labor. These would have to be requisitioned outside mainstream channels. What was more, despite official claims that the Moritzbastei should serve as a center for socialist interchange between workers and students, the ad hoc nature of its construction played no small part in ensuring that it quickly and permanently evolved into an alternative cultural scene for young intellectuals. The Moritzbastei itself was the only surviving remnant of Leipzig’s latemedieval fortification walls. Built in 1551 by the city’s legendary mayor and architect Hieronymus Lotter to honor his patron Moritz, elector of Saxony, at the end of the eighteenth century it was transformed into the cellars beneath Germany’s first Bürgerschule. This neoclassical edifice was renovated at the end of the nineteenth century into a vocational school for women, then closed in the 1930s and devastated by wartime bombardment. Although all later accretions were lost, the multilevel subterranean brick vaulting survived under a wilderness of weeds as a depot for rubble (including remnants from the Fürstenhaus turret). Surrounded by the Karl Marx University campus

106    C h a pt e r

4

that stretched toward Karl Marx Square, it was regularly considered for renovation even after the historic university ensemble itself was demolished in 1968 and replaced by a modern skyscraper with adjoining blocks by 1973. Although it was owned by the city, the ruin’s nearness to the university inspired the city council to place responsibility for reconstruction on the university administration and FDJ. The university regularly responded that it was administratively too overburdened with other tasks and expenses to direct efforts at the complicated building site. Thus, until the end of the 1970s, extensive planning wrought nothing. Although he voiced support for historic preservation, Leipzig’s chief architect Walter Lucas hoped to bulldoze the Moritzbastei to make way for a green space in the late 1950s. Assailing “the ruin of the Moritzbastei” as “a blemish and liability in our city,” he only yielded to protests from preservationists that this was the historic “last testimony to the four hundred years of the old city fortifications.” And in any case, demolition of the thick labyrinth of catacombs would have been too expensive. The best compromise, as Lucas imagined it, was to seal the cellars and pave the top as a terrace.47 As of October 1959, the city preservation advocate Hans Schüppel considered remaking the historic bastion to serve as part of a restored art museum, but the ruined historicist gallery on the southern side of Karl Marx Square was dynamited in 1962. The resulting lawn exposed a clear view of the Moritzbastei from the central square, until the new Gewandhaus occupied the former museum site in 1981.48 Through the 1960s, the medieval ruin was frequented by students and children, who used the precarious debris as a hangout and playground. At times, students set fires and became sick from inhaling toxic levels of smoke. Plans in 1964 to reconstruct the Moritzbastei as a Tango or Intelligentsia Café for the anticipated new university came to naught.49 A Hungarian wine collective even considered opening a restaurant there in 1969, a scheme torpedoed by urban planners. A 1970 blueprint to convert the ruin’s upper surface into a restaurant for the new Gewandhaus also yielded nothing. Amid construction of the new campus in the early 1970s, university officials could no longer ignore the increasingly dangerous ruin right in the midst of their flashy modern facilities. However, after the city proposed giving the Moritzbastei to the university in 1972, KMU president Gerhard Winkler groused in 1973 that his institution could not commit any funds, and he attacked the East German education ministry for refusing to underwrite a plan to remake it into a worker and student club.50 Formal commencement of reconstruction in 1974 at the behest of city council had projected a grand opening for that year’s twenty-fifth-anniversary celebration for the founding of the DDR. On February 24, Winkler designated the Moritzbastei as a

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     107

“youth object” for restoration by local FDJ leaders. But the whole endeavor foundered because of continued poor coordination between the city, the university, and the FDJ.51 Nothing came of university efforts to entice military funds by opening the site to “political-ideological education and cultural formation of students and soldiers.”52 By then it was truly shameful that Leipzig lacked a student club, since in Weimar (1962), Dresden (1968), and Halle (1972) students had freely labored to make clubs out of diverse medieval relics. As Moritzbastei historian Ulrike Schuster observes, “renovation of a medieval ruin was not among the projects favored in Erich Honecker and Günter Mittag’s economic conceptions, and thus had no chance to enter normal state plans,” not least because of its expected expense at up to 8 million marks.53 It was ultimately the FDJ university youth functionary Werner Teichmann who broke this deadlock toward saving the Moritzbastei in 1973. Inspired by the recent completion of a student club in a medieval tower at Halle, the philosophy student took fellow students through the ruin to muster enthusiasm for ignoring bureaucratic blockages and getting to work. Even as the university and city wrangled about who had jurisdiction over the site, Teichmann and friends such as the FDJ Kreis-secretary Norbert Gustmann promised to help the city renovate other moldering sites if it gave them tools, materials, and expert advice. Limited in its financial resources to membership dues, the FDJ could hardly have paid for a sliver of the project on its own. As the later Moritzbastei administrator Peter Kunz recalls, both the East German entry into UNESCO in 1973 and “bad conscience after the demolition of the Augusteum and University Church” helped to smooth the way for reconstruction.54 By 1973, architectural oversight came from Reinhard Plewe and Bernd Lauenroth, personal friends of Teichmann who had recently crafted the club in Halle. As Plewe recalls, “There we were, looking at the vaulting of the passable but largely debris-filled upper chamber. We were surprised by the dimensions of the vaulted catacomb, downright enthusiastic. Bernd Lauenroth and I exchanged a look of agreement.” It was going to require “an unbelievable amount of work” to remake the old fortification, and it was best to take the project one step at a time, never letting on just how massive it would be.55 Also essential was support from select officials, notably the city transportation minister Wilfried Schlosser, who was constantly buffeted by the university, East German planning offices, and a considerable faction in the city council, which opposed the cost and effort that would be involved.56 Official backing further increased in 1975 with the arrival of Theo Ullrich in Leipzig as city minister for international work and recreation, as well as the

108    C h a pt e r

4

promotion of Liesel Schön as city finance minister: key local officials whose collaboration ensured, not only progress on the Moritzbastei, but also a basis for future Schwarzbau projects. For the next two years, students cleared out rubble and stabilized the surviving historic substance for free, generally ignoring high-level intransigence. As Kunz recalls, “many students and also individuals active in university culture showed great readiness to help out with remaking the old Moritzbastei.”57 They were enticed both by local patriotism and the promise that, for fifty hours of work, one could enter the completed club ahead of the queue (and for over 150 hours of work, one would win permanent free entry).58 Although the sheer cost of excavation and reinforcement of the vast medieval passageway system already manifested itself by 1975 (Leipzig’s city council contributed a mere 50,000 marks), from 1974 to 1982 about thirty thousand students ultimately invested over 150,000 free hours to expel forty thousand cubic meters of rubble in shovels and buckets.59 Further funds came from opaque internal “reserves.”60 Once they had cleared the interiors, students poured about 140 cubic meters of cement to create floors. At times aided by apprentices from the chronically underfunded VEB Kombinat für Baureparaturen as well as a brigade of after-hours workers, students plastered over damaged vaulting, established twenty air conduits, and restored 120 meters of walls—at times using bricks from housing torn down to make way for Plattenbauten (fig. 20).61 As will be shown in the case of the Bowlingtreff, material concessions to political elites had potential to “sweeten the deal” for officials otherwise opposed to seeing the Schwarzbau through. While students created “accomplished facts” without official permission, city and university authorities dickered about further investment and who would administer the resulting structure, if it came into being at all.62 By 1976, the crisis in city council had reached a breaking point. A block of critics assailed Mayor Müller and his allies for allocating too many resources to the club at the expense of other projects. To overcome this deadlock, Moritzbastei advocates including Wilfried Schlosser conceived of the “city councilor vault” (Ratstonne), a section of the Moritzbastei owned by the city where local political elites could have drinks together. Over protest from preservationists, the classy cellar would have a separate entrance, be sealed off from the student areas, and get such accoutrements as the leaded glass decoration Lotter und seine Zeit (1982) by Hans-Wolfgang Siegenbruk. Student leaders decided that giving up this major piece of the club was a necessary sacrifice to sustain city material and financial aid. Once tempted by a new club for themselves, city councilors became less reticent to support the project.63 Henceforth, the city never broke

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     109

Figure 20.  Moritzbastei: the Student Club under construction. View from above, circa 1978. UAL FS N01026.

with its guidance of restoration efforts, and the university took on permanent responsibility for “orderly business operations and upkeep of the facility in keeping with historic preservation.”64 Feuds persisted over the secured shell’s future purpose (notwithstanding student labor, the university and city debated using it for the Gewandhaus, a wine cellar, or a restaurant for trade fairs), and construction momentarily halted in 1977. But university support increased with the departure of the often obstructionist President Winkler just as the city strove toward the enticing prospect of an elite gathering place for its officials. As Liesel Schön fondly recaps, “We secured every [resource], and so we got the Ratstonne.” Until the city lost it after 1989, she and her colleagues regularly enjoyed using it for meetings and gatherings, and she retained two beer steins with the chamber’s special insignia.65

110    C h a pt e r

4

In the end, official documentation noted in 1980, “rescue and renovation of this object would not have been possible without extensive manual labor” by tens of thousands of students under FDJ direction (among them the Leipzig physics student and future German chancellor Angela Merkel, who contributed over fifty hours of free labor).66 After the Moritzbastei entered use as Germany’s largest student club in 1980, work persisted for two more years.67 Had the project proceeded through normal channels, concern about costs would have nixed any chance of realization; nonetheless, former students interviewed after 1989 recall that construction had proceeded in “loyal agreement” with local authorities, not in opposition. As Schuster reflects, “Eigen-Sinn” had meant “occupying public space” rather than retreating into private affairs.68 Anticipating the dynamic with the Bowlingtreff, the Moritzbastei reconstruction saw ordinary residents work with local officials to get something they wanted. And local officials helped them work with the system by working around it. Unlike the Bowlingtreff, the catacombs of Leipzig’s Moritzbastei became a center for critical discussion amid the revolution in 1989—not least in its comparably capacious Veranstaltungstonne (fig. 21)—and it survived the transition to capitalism through the

Figure 21.  Moritzbastei: “Veranstaltungstonne” (literally, “event drum”), circa 1973. SächStAL 21695.

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     111

establishment of a foundation in 1994, which continues to manage the site as a student and local cultural center. As the 1980s progressed, the pattern of Schwarzbau creation perpetuated itself in recreational highlights that included a rustic resort called the Wildpark in the wooded riverbank area south of town; a swimming pool by the Schönefeld Plattenbau suburb; and a pavilion called the Schäferei in a makeshift park atop an abandoned coal mine. As Schön recalls, “Ullrich was often building three things at once.”69 In contrast to the earlier Moritzbastei or later Bowlingtreff, however, the Wildpark and its kindred Schwarzbauten were far from the city center, relatively small operations, seldom approved by the BCA, and free from significant outside attention, although they won accolades in the city’s 1988 internal financial report, which promised further projects in the future.70 In essence, these were hidden jobs Ullrich meant to keep off the radar. Already in 1975, Ullrich’s city recreational office won permission from the Bezirk council to divert investment and labor toward an unofficial project deep in one of the district’s most remote areas: a five-hundred-square-meter marshy forest immediately south of the city, wedged between the spreading lignite pits and decaying Connewitz neighborhood (slated for wholesale destruction ten years later). A 1970 report steeped in communist rhetoric had proposed restoring the historic animal park and recreational zone that, since its wartime desolation, had degenerated into a wilderness devoid of visitors. Leipzigers could no longer find refuge from physical and psychological toxins in the industrial city by fleeing to southern forests such as the Harth, which had been consumed by coal pits. To “further local recreational areas to reproduce strength for labor,” the report concluded, city fathers should restore the Wildpark.71 However, as in the prehistory for most Schwarzbauten, the centralized system gave no serious indication of forward movement for some years thereafter. When in 1975 the local Environmental Protection Ministry took the reins with aid from the Baukombinat and a “public-economic mass initiative,” classified documentation noted that the project lacked a registered contact in Berlin and was an “undertaking without central resolution.” There was no preceding plan, official investment numbers from Bezirk funds were far too menial to be taken seriously, and only seventeen people were designated as having any connection with the project.72 Internal documents from 1974 sketched out where animals could be penned, the swan pond could be dug out, and the restaurant should be built.73 Rather than inform any higher office, the planning and finance office of the city’s southern district merely confirmed the project with the note, “Realization of the project is to be

112    C h a pt e r

4

conveyed to the city planning commission in writing.”74 Set beside a new “Russian teahouse” log cabin, the crowning achievement was the Wildparkgaststätte (1977–79), a flashy lodge deep in the woods with vaulted timber ceilings designed by freewheeling BCA architects such as Winfried Sziegoleit and Volker Sieg, who later directed plans for the Bowlingtreff. By 1981, Ullrich and his seasoned allies in various city offices pursued yet another of many projects whose approval was mostly inferred: the restoration of a large swimming pool damaged in the war and now in the vicinity of the Schönefeld Plattenbau district, where 120,000 people lived within walking distance. Upon completion, the pool was one of two to have been reconstructed; the city’s remaining eleven pools were still so decayed they were seldom usable.75 Lacking concrete documentation, a cavalier city official observed, “The conditions and information from the urban planning confirmation, as well as other agreements and statements, suffice in the sense of permission to allow building on this site.”76 Surviving documentation testifies that, as building commenced in 1982, at least some of the “reserves” for the project came “from budget resources” (1 million marks), “surplus 1983” (1.052 million), “surplus 1984” (380,000 marks), and funds diverted from a stalled pool project in the park by the Schwarzbau Zur Schäferei in LößnigDölitz (500,000 marks).77 When by 1983 these funds failed to suffice, Bezirk chairman Opitz and his secretaries scraped together another 1,052,500 marks thanks to a “coal replacement achievement.” After they “updated” records to reveal that the city needed less coal than projected, the resulting excess funds could be “prioritized for the start of construction” on the pool. So ad hoc was the financial arrangement that the Bezirk noted, “These funds cannot be immediately designated by a reference number,” and decisions about how and when to use them could be made spontaneously through 1985.78 With help from twelve after-hours workers in May 1984 and twenty “young skilled workers” by July 1984,79 as well as further support from city hall, timely completion became possible despite construction delays and budget shortfalls.80 Although technically a reconstruction, the end result was a completely new pool far larger and more up-to-date than most in the DDR. The fifty-meter-long pool with six lanes was accompanied by an area with slides, fountains, and a splash pool, dressing rooms, bathrooms, technical facilities, playgrounds, and a café with 192 seats.81 The overall complex could accommodate 6,800 guests per day. As with the Bowlingtreff, Ullrich sought to secure support for his fait accompli by inaugurating it at a major socialist event, in this case the Eleventh SED Party Congress on May 15, 1986.82 Once completed, the pool itself was chiefly staffed and maintained by about twenty volunteers, most of them either pensioners or accruing money after-hours.83

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     113

In a third and final example, Ullrich transformed a centrally located wilderness expanse in Lößnig-Dölitz into a choice leisure space for the local population without alerting central authorities. In the planning stage in 1983, the VEB Garden and Landscaping undertook the transformation of over sixteen hectares that had been undermined by subterranean coal mines. Once the mines had closed in 1959, the derelict meadow had been surrounded by high-rise districts constructed on more solid ground. On the basis of a complex botanical study, as well as analysis of unofficial pedestrian and bike paths already present in the fields, the location of various ponds that had sunken into the old mines, and even sites where people were already feeding the ducks, VEB Garden and Landscaping officials configured the space to meet the existing “needs of the people.”84 As funds and personnel were limited, they promised to complete the project “with as little mass transport and as economical material usage as possible”; in practice, however, they built first and submitted the costs later. For instance, when setting up a wooden shelter by a pond, they observed that “precise blueprints for construction are not available at the time of drafting; the provisional price will ultimately be paid after construction has been carried out.”85 The greatest coup was the creation of the restaurant Zur Schäferei (At the Sheep Farm). In a July 1983 meeting where Ullrich presided over teams of landscapers and recreational staff, the practically treasonous decision was reached that, “contrary to previous agreements, the ‘Jugendtreff ’ [Schäferei] has to happen.” Designating the one-story L-shaped Schwarzbau as a “Feierabendprojekt” (meaning after-hours labor was a given), Ullrich hoped to complete the project for something between just 10,000 and 30,000 marks. Particularly tricky was the fact that “drafting capacities are scarce anyway” (meaning the BCA would almost surely refrain from supporting, and thus approving the project). And the VEB Garden and Landscaping was not technically permitted to engage in construction. Hence, the building’s construction was hidden even from local planning officials; Ullrich mandated that the start of construction (code-named “first groundbreaking [1. Spatenstich]”) and all public relations correspondence were to pass solely through his hands.86 Further plans called for playgrounds, horseback riding areas, a lookout platform, an ice cream bar, bathrooms, and storage spaces in the midst of a cultural center.87 In the end, the park came to feature a pergola with a youth meeting place, a ring for model car racing, playgrounds, mini golf, and a stage. In a city dominated by prefab blocks, this chance to build a “sheep farm” restaurant off the books offered a lunge into invented traditions and homey Gemütlichkeit. The very name was fantasy: in living memory there had never been a sheep farm on the site. The whole ensemble conveyed a sense of what

114    C h a pt e r

4

I call historyness much lacking in the surrounding apartment complexes: “a consoling, selective visual testimony of historical authenticity in place of alienating modern urban surroundings.”88 The interior sported wooden paneling and homemade stained glass; up to thirty-seven people could dine here in a rural idyll of their imaginations. The spartan exterior proved that poured cement could be charming: nestled up to the concrete L of the fake sheep barn, an improvised slab courtyard with cement tables provided openair space for almost one hundred visitors. The pastoral scene was completed by a carved wooden buffalo with cart, replaced because of decay in 2013 by a wooden shepherd figure alongside his puffy sheep (fig. 22). It is hard to imagine a greater contrast between this benign playground statuary and the city’s fierce, angular Karl Marx monument. Whereas the sheep farm figures—­ devised by local officials for public recreation—have remained much beloved by nearby residents, the bronze Marx plaque—imposed by the highest party officials as their new highlight for the city’s central square after the demolition of the University Church in 1968—was exiled to a remote courtyard in 2008 on account of its tainted past.89

Figure 22.  Semilegally constructed Restaurant Zur Schäferei, at the park in Lößnig-Dölitz, 2018. Photograph by author.

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     115

Alongside its customized interiors, Zur Schäferei also anticipated the Bowlingtreff by its complicated building site, which could not accommodate typical prefab-block construction because of subterranean cavities. “You could not construct a Plattenbau on this complex parcel,” Nickel recalls in both cases.90 Here too, the site could only bear a small above-ground structure. Set beside a neighboring pond where the ground had sunken, the Schäferei enjoyed a broad vista of meadows where nothing else could be erected. In contrast to continued local pride in the comparatively central and sizeable Moritzbastei, modest Schwarzbauten like the Wildpark restaurant, pool in Schönefeld, or recreational meadows around Zur Schäferei never came up in informal interviews I conducted with older Leipzigers in 2017. But they were even less known to higher authorities. Only through the resourcefulness of their creators could they get built. In this respect, they further anticipated the apex of Schwarzbau construction: Leipzig’s Bowlingtreff.

Leipzig’s Third Gewandhaus and the Struggle for Prestige Buildings Local officials countenanced Schwarzbauten in no small part because, in contrast to Berlin or even Dresden, late-communist Leipzig suffered a glaring dearth of new prestige buildings. Whereas in the Ulbricht era, East Germany’s second-largest city had won such landmarks as the republic’s only new opera building or a brand-new university complex with tower, one of the only notable additions to its core in the 1980s was a flavorless annex for the Stasi surveillance bureaucracy—more a depressing sign of the times than a landmark to inspire popular identity or enthusiasm. Without any serious debate and to the disgust of residents, the Stasi headquarters (Bezirkszentrale) received an addition so massive that it consumed the Matthäikirchhof (before the war an entire old-town neighborhood complete with Gothic church). As a local citizen complained at an open forum just days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Stasi “monster building” embodied grotesque excess. “I don’t even want to know what that cost,” he concluded.91 Otherwise, as local worker Werner Kießling recalls, “There were no exclusive buildings, it was the planned economy. And a Plattenbau in Grünau? Yeah fine, naturally that was not so very interesting.”92 In fact, throughout the Honecker era, Leipzig could only count one centrally planned prestige building: the Third Gewandhaus. The inception of this famed concert hall on the southern side of Leipzig’s Karl Marx Square showcased (1) how cumbersome centralized planning had become; (2) the

116    C h a pt e r

4

sheer exceptionality of any “gift” from Berlin, exhibiting the necessity for Schwarzbauten; and (3) a rare chance for young Leipzig architects such as Winfried Sziegoleit and Volker Sieg to garner experience with high-quality materials and build connections that later helped them on illegal projects like the Bowlingtreff. Even before the restorable shell of the historic Second Gewandhaus in Leipzig’s Music District was dynamited in 1968, plans had circulated for a new concert hall. With the world-famous orchestra intent on abandoning its old hall in favor of a state-of-the-art facility, study trips to examine orchestra halls in the West had coincided with avid debates that favored placing the new hall in the Matthäikirchhof (later site of the Stasi Bezirkszentrale with its deep bunker).93 Intentions by 1971 to put the Gewandhaus at the southern side of Karl Marx Square (to be shared as a university auditorium) failed because of funding shortfalls.94 After Gewandhaus director Kurt Masur wrote a personal complaint to Honecker in June 1974, BCA plans were executed under the direction of Rudolf Skoda. The acoustically stunning hall with its distinctive sandstone and glass façade (a veritable postmodern outcome citing the opera on the north side of the square) was completed on October 8, 1981, for the orchestra’s two hundredth anniversary. On par with the best global architecture of the time, the Gewandhaus functioned as an oasis from the depressing everyday of runaway decay. But what about local residents who wanted to have a good time without wearing a suit or gown? Despite his promise to fund clubs for nonelites in his classless society, outside of Berlin Honecker generally failed to deliver resources for recreational facilities like the Schwarzbauten Ullrich had been quietly pushing through for the people.95 In contrast to the centrally sanctioned and administrated construction of the Third Gewandhaus, Bezirk and city officials came to learn that an everyday recreational center could only come into being without permission from Berlin.

Before the Bowlingtreff In 1926, a 27,960-square-meter subterranean machine hall was completed immediately south of the Leipzig old town and a stone’s throw from the Moritzbastei. In an atmosphere that would have been at home in the contemporaneous Fritz Lang film Metropolis, its ceiling featured stark, almost expressionist rows of cement ribs, its machinery towered over balcony arcades, and between even rows of square pylons, massive transformers converted direct current to alternating current, while battery rows held enough energy to provide the city with two hours of emergency power (fig. 23). By 1965,

Figure 23.  “Electricity Everywhere”: subterranean power conversion station near new city hall, circa 1920s. StadtAL BCA V 987 Bl.4.

118    C h a pt e r

4

transition to alternating current rendered the transformer hall obsolete, and it served a dull purpose as storage shed for the district police. Descending through multiple levels 16.5 meters beneath a footprint of 140 square meters that stretched under the city’s traffic ring and adjoining Wilhelm Leuschner Square, an intact and centrally located series of halls awaited development. Above ground, Wilhelm Leuschner Square itself spanned an area where before the war residents had frequented both the city’s market arcade and its 1883 hexadecagonal panorama exhibition hall beside one of its most beautiful parks. Three decades after Hitler, the last wreckage had been pulled away, leaving a yawning wasteland of weeds and slipshod parking lots despite years of planning schemes. Even today it is bereft of attractive development—with the sole exception of the Bowlingtreff. “Why don’t we have a gathering place anywhere where you can eat out in style?” This was a regular complaint of ordinary Leipzigers.96 In April 1974, the Leipzig BCA architect Wolfgang Horn proposed turning the unseen subterranean lair into a recreational center with the objective of giving the beleaguered public a leisure space it could “adopt.” It was his belief that public patronage would ultimately pay for the facility “as in the case of the Bowling Center on Rathausstraße in Berlin.” He concluded, “Functions were chosen which coincided with the most diverse needs of the population in terms of communication, leisure, and athletic activities, so long as they can be realized in the existing architectural shell at minimal expense.”97 Blueprints proposed incorporation of a solarium, sauna, fitness center, video-game area, newspaper stand, bars and restaurants, table tennis, card tables, and bowling lanes. Exerting his authority as chief architect, Horst Siegel mandated that Horn incorporate the existing above-ground piece of the former underground power station. Spartan, even dull, the resulting block-shaped above-ground entry hall resembled a bus stop more than the palatial future Bowlingtreff— though even this humble beginning anticipated an elevator shaft to make the entire facility handicap accessible. The early plan also called for converting the decayed cellars of the former market hall into a 150-car parking garage, but in contrast to the power station this underground expanse was in relatively poor condition and hard to access.98 Siegel demanded consultation rights and refused to approve the project unless explicit state investment figures were forthcoming.99 Despite such obstruction, Horn traveled to Berlin in August 1974 to examine the prototype for his ambitions: the first ever bowling center in the DDR. It had just opened in 1971 in the basement of the massive Rathauspassagen complex beside the Berlin city hall: a showpiece for East German high-modernist architecture with some of the most elite shops in the republic. Through discussion with

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     119

technical facilitators on-site, Horn ascertained that no East Bloc company could produce the technology needed for bowling lanes. In like manner, the small bowling hall slated for the basement of Berlin’s Palace of the Republic could only come into being if the regime spent vast quantities of scarce Valuta, or Western currency ($200,000: worth over $1 million today), on equipment from an American firm (AMF). The American patent further inhibited East German firms from easily manufacturing bowling technology.100 This hurdle alone was considerable. Berlin already enjoyed the lion’s share of investment, especially where Valuta was concerned. One of Leipzig’s greatest prestige projects—a university auditorium on the southern side of Karl Marx Square—had been torpedoed in no small part because the nonoxidizing copper projected for its roof could only have been acquired from the West.101 If a showpiece approved by Ulbricht himself and designed by his star architect Hermann Henselmann had floundered because of Valuta, how could Horn expect Berlin to secure American bowling equipment for an abandoned Leipzig machine hall?102 Before anyone could even consider the issue of Valuta, however, the project was effectively killed through the coming years by delays and blockages, because budgetary funds were not forthcoming from Berlin and Horst Siegel’s BCA had no interest in pursuing the project. Such obstructionism demonstrated well that nothing could be accomplished if attempted through official channels as they stood. Nonetheless—in a sign of future ­developments—Horn’s passion for the project evinced that at least one BCA architect was willing to differ with Siegel’s iron adherence to the centralized bureaucratic prioritization of a prefab city. At first, city recreation minister Theo Ullrich tried to proceed as he had on his earlier Schwarzbauten, giving the “project without centralized resolution” the ambiguous name “recreational center Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz.” Once more designating his office as “investor,” Ullrich predicted an immediate start to subterranean renovations with completion already in 1980.103 In anticipation of construction, the district police formally gave their storage area to the city council in July 1976, and promised to guard the construction site when precious building materials arrived.104 In his missive later that year to the city planning commission, Ullrich observed that, at a projected cost of just 9.9 million marks, “the renovation of the former underground power station represents an effective utilization of unused areas that are in very good structural condition. The social use of the underground power station as a leisure and recreational center will satisfy the manifold needs of Leipzig residents and their visitors for sensible recreational and athletic activities.”105

120    C h a pt e r

4

Although in March 1977 the city council approved advanced planning on the recreational center, in June 1977 Horst Siegel’s BCA rejected any construction on the vacuous square, because it was (momentarily) slated for use as an open-air produce market after 1980106—an excuse that conveyed how little Siegel cared to divert resources from his preferred prefab projects. BCA officials let the whole affair languish further by November on grounds that, amid efforts to accommodate the anticipated produce market, “no concrete partner for the revision of the existing study can be named.”107 In effect, Siegel was withholding his architects. Alongside further complaints about expected costs of moving or incorporating the above-ground ruin from the former power station (which contained stairs and an elevator), Siegel demanded a statement of affairs and evinced weariness with Horn and his allies.108 When at last in December the BCA consented to construction of the recreational center, it added that centralized approval of the plans had to come before any further action.109 Siegel had effectively erected enough blockades to kill the project indefinitely. By January 1978, Ullrich complained to the mayor himself that Siegel was in his way. “Between the city building director, participating city councilors, and Dr. Siegel, no agreement can be found,” he lamented, begging the mayor to personally intervene, “because this controversy has already lasted over half a year.”110 Although in time the mayor’s office also threw its weight behind the endeavor, Siegel successfully sustained a bureaucratic stalemate in the short-term with his insistence that the above-ground relic had to be integrated into any future recreational center on “urban planning and aesthetic considerations.” Such obsession with preserving an unremarkable 1920s leftover was beyond absurd for a chief architect who had looked the other way during the destruction of landmarks like Leipzig’s University Church and actively dynamited scores of restorable neighborhoods to make way for his Plattenbauten. In a show of power, he demanded compliance from Ullrich when a final plan was presented to his offices in May 1978, insisting, “Agreement rests in principle on the entry building.” Even after every office in town had confirmed the plans, it had to return to Siegel’s desk for yet another approval.111 Over a year later, 1.8 million marks had been invested in drawing up blueprints, clearing the building site, and pouring some foundations. For all this, the mayor’s office gave a cryptic but clear enough recollection some years later that “on December 13, 1979, the project was called off on account of part I/42 of a legal paper on a survey of uncompleted investments,” concluding that “remaining work on this building project was completed in 1979.” After years of obstruction from the chief architect, Berlin summarily cancelled the

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     121

project out of cost concerns, and all work was halted in a matter of days.112 As Winfried Sziegoleit later reflected, supply and labor shortages had made the project seem “illusory,” and the choice to favor other priorities such as Siegel’s apartment settlements had undermined unified resolve from local organs.113 For five years, the abandoned construction site decayed in view of city hall under rain, snow, and fresh weeds: a festering token that dreams were a delusion under real existing socialism—at least outside Berlin. Just over a year after Wolfgang Horn had visited Berlin, the Palace of the Republic opened its doors on April 23, 1976, on the site of the former Hohenzollern city palace (dynamited in 1950). Building materials and workers had been drawn from across the entire DDR, and on average two thousand workers had been active each day on the building site over the course of one thousand days of construction. This flagrant prestige project with its daily capacity for over 12,000 people was one of the most expensive in East German history. Of its mysterious final price tag of anywhere between 485 million and 800 million marks, 80 million consisted of Valuta so that, in addition to granite from Upper Lusatia, custom-made light fixtures, and metal trim, the palace incorporated West German escalators, a Viennese air-conditioning system, orange thermo-glass from Belgium, spray asbestos from Britain, and marble from the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Sweden. A particular feature was an eight-lane bowling center in the basement with views of the Spree river.114 As a guidebook at the time boasted, the facility sported the latest technological features (namely, American-built mechanisms acquired through West Germany) and had been built to international specifications (meaning it could be commandeered from the public for sporting events).115 Photographs reveal a bowling facility at home in any Western suburb, complete with hardwood slat floors identical to those in the 1971 prototype Rathauspassagen by city hall. Years later, Berliners recalled the bowling lanes and restaurants in the Palast der Republik with great fondness.116 By 1981, yet another bowling center had opened in the new Sport and Leisure Center in Berlin-Friedrichshain, with sixteen automated bowling lanes. Bowling fever was gripping the republic, and only Berlin was benefitting. Long lines and waiting lists at each Berlin bowling center testified to an overwhelming urge to “test the West” (to apply a 1989 revolutionary slogan). After all, near the bowling center in the Palace of the Republic, youth could also enjoy a Diskjokeybereich. Not only did SED leaders fail to care that their capital’s architectural centerpiece was literally built on top of a Westernstyle leisure icon; they were eager to use their connections to cut in line and bowl first (a trend to be replicated in Leipzig). The profusion of bowling centers in Berlin grated on officials in Leipzig (notably recreation minister

122    C h a pt e r

4

Ullrich), who were outraged that Berlin should win an outpouring of magnets for public gratification, while the second-largest city in the republic had nothing.117 By 1985, a Bezirk report fumed that not just Berlin, but even Karl-Marx-Stadt, Rostock, and Cottbus had received bowling alleys in recent years, and their popularity forced local residents to apply up to a year in advance to use them.118 As the flows of money and material toward Berlin increased for showpieces like the restoration of its neoclassical concert hall or its new old town, Nikolaiviertel, in anticipation of the capital’s 750th anniversary in 1987, Leipzig’s political and planning elites realized that it was time to play outside the rules.

Planning the Greatest Schwarzbau Ever “Right now we have to have something that projects a positive aura: above all something that gives to the people and frees them a bit from everyday grayness.”119 Such was the prevailing mood Winfried Sziegoleit recalls among Bezirk officials in the economic doldrums of the mid-1980s. Notwithstanding a paucity of registered funds, material, and workers, a cast of Leipzig officials from the Bezirk, city, and urban planning offices joined forces to build off the books. As Leipzig art historian Thomas Topfstedt recalls, “Inspired by the East Berlin building boom, Leipzig’s SED Bezirk leadership found its ambition and—in accord with the Bezirk and city councils—resolved to counter the public’s low morale with something positive through a new recreational center for the urban center. Because this building proposal would very likely have been rejected in Berlin, the project was taken up in 1985 as a ‘Schwarzbau’ off the books.”120 This was “a secret plan,” he elaborates, in which local political “insiders” sought to achieve “a politics of accomplished facts” to “show the Leipzig population they could attain a victory.”121 Out of the dead weight of complacent bureaucrats, a cast of idealists came together to plot the creation of the biggest Schwarzbau ever—right across from city hall. As Johannes Schulze observes, “Theo Ullrich had connections everywhere and invited influential people to the Wildpark restaurant, and there they found inspiration.”122 Reclining in Ullrich’s flashy Schwarzbau deep in the forests south of town, officials from the Bezirk and city schemed about how they would build the Bowlingtreff.123 Under a guiding hand from the Bezirk party secretary Horst Schumann, Bezirk council chairman Rolf Opitz, and especially Bezirk vice-chairman Jochen Draber, Ullrich brought in city support from the mayor’s office. Close collaboration and much ingenuity from the respective finance ministries under Uta Nickel (Bezirk) and Liesel Schön (Stadt) was essential. As Sziegoleit recalls, “The Bezirk and city

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     123

councils worked well together. It wasn’t without risks that they played this game. They protected our endeavor, even as Berlin had no idea what was happening in Leipzig.”124 BCA participation was assisted by the departure of Horst Siegel for a professorship in Weimar and the promotion of Dietmar Fischer as chief architect; strongly supportive of creative answers that might bring life back to the dead city center, Fischer happily delegated planning for the Bowlingtreff to a pool of talented young architects who had worked on the Gewandhaus, notably Winfried Sziegoleit and Volker Sieg.125 Finally, an already accomplished Schwarzbau building director (Oberbauleiter) named Peter Kunze was to direct construction, and Baukombinat architects under Frieder Hofmann assisted in overall execution. Technically, no such project could be undertaken without signed approval from the Ministerial Council and State Planning Commission in Berlin. Local architects planned it anyway, and construction was undertaken almost to the end through local funds and labor: out of sight and underground using “local reserves” (as ever, this was shorthand for ad hoc finance off the books). Despite the enormity of the endeavor, the posting of a police guard, extensive correspondence to secure supplies, and a massive campaign for volunteer labor, Berlin remained somehow oblivious that anything important was getting built under Wilhelm Leuschner Square. Only when the shell of the above-ground entry hall took shape in the final months of rapid construction did local leaders petition Berlin for emergency funds—too late for central authorities to refuse without scandal and public outrage. “It is unique that there were party leaders in Leipzig that supported something over Honecker’s head,” Werner Kießling recollects, “and that was something really serious, actually a moderate crime against the state. But they did it anyway.”126 Prospects were not good when the Bezirk council building staff (Aufbaustab) was commissioned in 1984 to estimate costs for renewed efforts on a recreational center. Whereas in 1979 it had been expected that the total project would require over 13 million marks, this had been raised to 17.2 million in 1984 (an exclamation point was penciled by this figure in the report), and construction was projected to last for over three years (thanks to volunteer labor it took less than half as long). Fear about finances led officials to pencil question marks next to “sauna” and “solarium” and “massage room,” none of which appeared in the plan again.127 After the October 1985 draft plan lowered estimates to 15 million marks, of which 8.4 million would come from mysterious “Haushaltsmittel” (the considerable fund set aside for rainy-day projects), by the time construction was completed in August 1987 the price tag had risen to 19.8 million marks, of which 11.9 million had come from Haushaltsmittel.128

124    C h a pt e r

4

Costs would have skyrocketed much further had development of the entire square been taken into account (and Berlin would have surely taken note); thus it was always presumed that the little entry hall would stand alone in a wilderness whose future development could follow any aesthetic or course. As the final report observed in 1987, “no long-term plan for the total configuration of Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz was available, so the entry building was to stand for the time being as an independent architectural element without any neighboring structures on the square.”129 This limitation freed planners to craft the new entry hall’s appearance as they wished, for there was no need to coordinate with any larger plan for the square or win approval from higher officials. Plans from the 1970s were still said to be valid in principle, and foundation pylons already driven into the square in 1978 were to be integrated as supports for the new entry building; but here at last the above-ground power station relic was approved for demolition.130 If the project was to proceed illicitly and in earnest, mediocrity must be abandoned. In keeping with Ullrich’s earlier Schwarzbauten, the planning effort had little in common with classic East German protocols and competitions, but this time the scale of ambition was much greater. Dissatisfied with Volker Sieg’s February 1985 draft of a dull glass box for the entry building,131 on April 1 the BCA and Ullrich’s department oversaw an internal competition to ensure an “entry building whose architectural configuration is fashioned with the highest quality.”132 As Sziegoleit recalls, “The chief architect suddenly told us: there’s going to be a competition, and you are all allowed to take part. Try something out, and we’ll see what happens. After eight days, we came back, and the decision had to be reached. It was not a secret competition. The jury consisted of all the participants.”133 Just three days later, the eight submissions had been judged, and Winfried Sziegoleit unanimously won first prize for his glamorous octagonal edifice. Sziegoleit himself was astonished. And one wonders to this day: as the only non-SED member of the competition, had he also been chosen as the fall guy if the risky endeavor failed to work out or was prematurely exposed? Ultimately, in concert with Sieg’s plans for remaking the subterranean halls, Sziegoleit’s entry ­building—to his amazement executed almost exactly as projected—was to have little in common with bowling alley cellars in Berlin and bowling alley strip malls across the West. This was to be a People’s Bowling Palace. Long had Sziegoleit meditated on how to fashion his entry hall: already in the 1970s he had toured the subterranean machine halls. “You entered the tiny entry building, passed down a stairway, and there wasn’t a bit of light down there,” he recalls. “It was a shocking experience when the light came on. And I knew: you have to be accompanied by light down here.” As

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     125

a result, he installed experimental skylights over the bowling lanes.134 Then his experiences with the Gewandhaus exposed him to building a mixed steel-frame and brick construction with expansive windows. It was a pricey­ approach—far more accommodating for innovation than Plattenbauten—

Figure 24.  Bowlingtreff: above-ground café areas and foyer, circa 1988. Photograph by and courtesy of Hans-Wolfram Kasten.

126    C h a pt e r

4

that lent itself to a postmodern aesthetic. Although reigning East Bloc dogmas denounced postmodernism as a decadent Western style, Sziegoleit’s 1985 plan employed flamboyant details alien to high-modernist monotony, such as a bar-shaped hipped-glass ceiling that bisected the roof and paid tribute to the city’s nineteenth-century passage systems; and its unusual shape consciously cited the 1883 panorama. The soaring foyer’s ostentatious pink pillars, the architect later insisted, had been born out of necessity: because the foundation atop the machine halls had dictated a hanging construction with steel elements, the pillars were at first “too thin” in appearance, and thus “covered with ancient Egyptian capitals, all handmade.” But they further evinced his familiarity with postmodern theorists (fig. 24).135 In its inception, creation, and public appropriation, this touch of Las Vegas in Leipzig proved the maxim that no one style is inherently indebted to national or otherwise ideological tenets.136 Throughout its construction and ten-year life span, local culture breathed vitality into the postmodern edifice that made it a living landmark the people appropriated as their own. Meanwhile, through personal connections established in building the Gewandhaus, Sziegoleit and his colleagues secured the very best materials, including marble, oak parquet, high-quality steel and glass, and sandstone panels (fig. 25). For instance, Elbe sandstone acquired for the Gewandhaus via

Figure 25.  Bowlingtreff: the Cuban and Bulgarian marble grand stairway, leading from the above-ground foyer to subterranean bowling lanes, circa 1988. Photograph by and courtesy of Hans-Wolfram Kasten.

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     127

a firm in Cotta, south of Dresden, was attained for the Bowlingtreff thanks to existing ties with the Aufbaustab.137 Naturally, as the former construction site manager Jörk Buch recalls, the firms that gave them such rich materials expected that one day they would do something for them in return.138 Even now the quality of materials inspires awe from craftsmen who had worked on site, one of whom recalls, “The white Saalburger marble was like a palace. It left such an impression. Until then, you only knew such a thing in the Gewandhaus, and I don’t think it was as successful as down there” in the Bowlingtreff. He concludes, “People rightly noticed: somebody invested money here. This is something big.” After all, under normal circumstances, such material “was only exported, sold for hard currency.”139 Local lore that the Bowlingtreff actually profited from leftover building supplies from the Gewandhaus—unlikely and impossible to verify—further testifies to the “magic” dedicated officials displayed when they tapped into established contacts to access export-ready materials that never should have been available for a bowling alley. As Sziegoleit himself later confessed, “even I wondered where it all was coming from.”140 But Nickel—who coordinated the flow of money and goods from her perspective as Bezirk finance head—can still remember how excitement about the bowling palace convinced various firms to divert some of their hoarded materials. Although “the bowling center was only built with resources made available by the city or Bezirk,” she recalls, “there was great readiness from companies [Betrieben] to take part in the structure. The companies wanted to build with us. One cannot exclude for certain that some things were decided outside the budget.”141 Leipzig’s mayor justified the enormous investment and (it was implied) risk of building without Berlin’s approval as a way to give the dejected public a forum for “sensible free time and athletic activities,” concluding, “In the center of the trade-fair city, this facility will offer a meeting place for active relaxation.”142 Perhaps for this reason, Ullrich had the bowling lanes designed a few centimeters shorter than international standards, so that Berlin would not be able to hijack the recreational center for use in professional competitions.143 Another point of pride, reflected in the 1987 final report, was the fact that “for the first time in the DDR, all the bowling lane surfaces were installed with synthetic plastic,” which was expected to have greater durability than the wooden lanes in Berlin.144 This decision likely evolved out of an unofficial inspection of the bowling alleys in Berlin’s Palast der Republik and Rathauspassagen by Bezirk chairman Opitz with a colleague in late February 1985.145 On November 29, Bezirk vice-chairman Draber signed Resolution 184/85, formally approving construction and earmarking 8.41 million marks to complete the basic superstructure by the end of 1986.146 The grand opening was slated for Leipzig’s hosting of the Republic’s Eighth Gymnastics and

128    C h a pt e r

4

Sport Festival in July 1987—a seemingly impossible but prestigious deadline that, if attained, would put pressure on Berlin to retroactively approve the project when it became known. The thumbscrews tightened, however, as the project was dogged by serious problems throughout its rapid and unwieldy progression. On June 5, 1986, construction equipment accidentally cut power cables, leaving nearby apartments, the state bank, and a central shopping center in the dark.147 Then a heap of precious Cuban marble vanished one night, even though the Bezirk had commissioned police to uphold their 1976 agreement to secure the building site with lighting, fences, secure entry points, and guards. Fortunately, planners quickly replaced it with marble from Bulgaria.148 Some problems had been inscribed into the building plan itself. For how was the structure to receive the first functional ventilating glass ceiling in East Germany or bowling lanes without reliance on Western currency? The firm Leichtmetallbau had already built a glass façade for the Gewandhaus (after insisting to Sziegoleit at the time that it was impossible). Unfortunately, as Sziegoleit later recalled, the glass ceiling mandated a rare flat form of steel that “was impossible to find. But then someone remembered that a different steel company still had a remnant stock of Zehner-Doppel-T-Profilen from a Soviet export commission. And we got them.” Architects also had to regularly intervene to ensure that these rare resources were properly installed. “The construction head refused to believe us that this special construction could function,” Sziegoleit later recounted. “Then the roof was mounted, and it rained through! I knew why: it wasn’t the fault of the design, but the execution!” Against indignant cries from work teams, architects inspected the roof and found that glass plates had not been installed tightly. This was rectified.149 If anything, the hunt for a workable bowling mechanism proved an even greater challenge—and ultimate triumph. Plans to secure mechanisms from a sporting equipment collective in Plauen or Schmalkalden had already failed when Draber took a “vacation” to visit the firms in August 1985 and discovered that the technology simply did not exist. So a spontaneous meeting was set up during Leipzig’s fall trade fair with the Hungarian firm Vilati, which agreed to build the bowling mechanisms for 800,000 marks using an American license.150 One by one, each hurdle was overcome, but ever there loomed the most intractable problem of all: how was sufficient labor to be secured on such a short deadline, when skilled hands were few and the money was fast running out? Professional handworkers were rare, though the mere fact of their deployment once again proved the importance of the project. As Sziegoleit recalls, “the craftsmen saw the chance to practice their trade really well. The

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     129

carpenters were proud of their achievement with the spiral stair. And they could use materials that normally could not be obtained.”151 Andreas Kalitynski, who had learned the art of stonemasonry in Leipzig’s VEB Denkmalpflege, had led his overtaxed handicraft brigade of six men in projects across the city, not least at the Gewandhaus. At the Bowlingtreff, they were tasked with mounting the external sandstone façade and grand stairway— fine work alien to the industrial construction occurring across most of the city. All the while, the time crunch compelled them to commit overtime amid considerable harassment from the public. “Everyone peeped over the building fence,” the craftsman recalls, and they asked, “What are you doing here? What’s getting built here?”152

Summon the Free Labor Even though the above-ground octagonal palace only took shape toward the end of construction, rumors were running wild across Leipzig about what workers were doing in the long-abandoned halls under Wilhelm Leuschner Square. As the future patron and bowling aficionado Werner Kießling recalls, “every Leipziger was asking himself, ‘What’s going to happen with this old transformer station?’ ” As building activity commenced, passersby noticed the appearance of unusual building materials like sandstone façade tiles, and “rumors spread that it would eventually be an interesting and maybe even prestige building that wasn’t so very socialist in appearance.”153 In time, particularly bold passersby slipped through a hole in the fence, and the rumor mill intensified.154 Then in summer 1986, local leaders went public and capitalized on their extravagant Schwarzbau to raise public spirits. First, a model of Sziegoleit’s octagonal entry building with detailed subterranean layouts was displayed in the information center on Leipzig’s Saxon Square (fig. 26).155 By October, the local press kept the public informed about ongoing construction. According to a Bezirk report on the eve of the grand opening, public excitement was palpable. Surveillance had revealed “that even four weeks ago great skepticism reigned among observers about whether completion would happen on schedule; then this steadily shifted to quiet hope and finally spontaneous recognition of measurable progress visible in each day’s achievements.”156 Kegeln—an old German sport with nine pins and a smaller ball— could not match excitement for the hip Western bowling experience: a luxury reserved for happy Berliners in the Palast der Republik, and well out of reach in the gray doldrums of the once-grand trade-fair city. Though they had seen bowling on Western television, few Leipzigers had any experience with this American pastime, which lived entirely in their imaginations. Eva Wolf—weary

130    C h a pt e r

4

Figure 26.  Summer 1986 exhibition model of the Bowlingtreff in the Leipzig information center on Saxon Square. SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag 22402.

of living in a “demolition-ready Hinterhaus” without flushing toilets—saw the construction site as proof that money was finally “there” for a place she still recalls as “the beautiful best house in Leipzig—the Bowlingtreff!”157 Genuine enthusiasm played an important role in mobilizing so much volunteer labor—but it had its price. Although previous Schwarzbauten like the Moritzbastei had demonstrated the value of volunteer labor, the Bowlingtreff, Sziegoleit recalls, “was always a dangerous affair, because so many helped out who hadn’t a clue. That’s why the building director was so afraid.”158 Out of concern that untrained workers would burden, or even jeopardize, the construction site for so complicated a project, the building staff delayed deployment of free labor until it was manifest to everyone that the deadline could not be attained without it. In August 1985, the Bezirk Aufbaustab chief rejected employing a few dozen lightly paid “FDJ or other workers” for “hard manual work,” arguing to the Bezirk vice-chairman Draber and other leaders, “Either this object is important—then preconditions for carrying it out according to plan are to be created—or this cannot be incorporated into plans, and then it has to be cancelled.” If students and other rabble were deployed regardless of his reservations, he threatened to cut funding.159 When the Aufbaustab followed through and slashed 460,000 from the 1.3 million marks it had allocated for the assigned Southern District Construction and Assembly Collective (VEB BMK-Süd), diverting it instead to

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     131

fund the Max Riemann heating plant, Ullrich begged Draber to intervene.160 The subsequent spike in youth labor demonstrates that, if the Bowlingtreff was to happen at all, such draconian reactions from the Aufbaustab had to fail. Construction was underway, local officials were in too deep, and anyone with reservations about working around the system had to get overruled. Volunteers poured onto the construction site, Buch reflected in 2015, because of profound restlessness to “do something” for the decrepit but “actually incredibly beautiful city.” As site manager, he was quickly overwhelmed by the “catastrophic” flood of inexperienced and enthusiastic young men, whom he still recalls meandering around the construction site “like a big beehive.”161 Ullrich reported just before construction commenced on May 26, 1986, that the site needed “constant deployment of forty students during summer initiatives to be supervised by VEB BMK-Süd.”162 When five students had to cancel in July 1986, Oberbauleiter Kunze received assistance from fifteen Leipzig technical school (Ingenieurschule für Bauwesen) students through late August.163 From August 29 onward, the Bezirk deployed twenty officials each day to labor on-site and round up other comrades to help. The middle-aged finance official Ursula Waage worked twice on the Bowlingtreff, recalling that even among her colleagues in the local bureaucracy “it was unknown who procured the necessary building materials and how. No one cared about that. Only completion was important.”164 By September, the Aufbaustab was so frantic about the pending deadline that it begged for further laborers—regardless of whether they came from the construction collective or other firms. “It is crucial,” they concluded, “that forty workers are allocated for the main thrust of construction in October 1986.” They also insisted that, “given the extraordinary situation,” overtime pay should be accrued by all expert personnel overseeing the site until it was completed.165 As the building engineer Matthias Flechsig recalled in 2015, after-hours work was paid outside of budget and without tax deduction.166 By October, the FDJ had adopted the site as a “youth object” and released a call for all local organs to contribute students for evening shifts at five marks per hour to realize “this great political highlight,” adding, “above all this concerns support labor that does not require previous training.”167 After they had completed paid labor at day jobs, volunteers arrived in shifts from three in the afternoon to midnight; they wore their own clothing and shoes, but were given protective gear like helmets, gloves, and raincoats. They focused on support tasks like moving earth, materials, and equipment. Each month, a different collective supplied the largest block of workers. These included Leipzig university students in November 1986, the city technical colleges in December, high-school students in January 1987, and volunteer

132    C h a pt e r

4

firefighters in February.168 As noted in a Bezirk report, “The Arbeitseinsätze [labor deployments] are to be carried out under the auspices of a volkswirtschaftlichen Masseninitiative [peoples’ economic mass initiative], and are therefore free of charge. As recognition and thanks, after the end of one’s Arbeitseinsatz, each participant will be granted one ticket per person for a single visit to the Bowlingtreff.” Apart from a few FDJ workers paid just five marks per hour, most laborers were thus only compensated with a complimentary entry ticket for the future Bowlingtreff.169 In his recollection, BCA architect Johannes Schulze notes that “one had to register long in advance to get in. If one had worked there [as a free laborer] one received priority [Vorrecht], but still had to pay.”170 Desperation crept into Ullrich’s correspondence through the last months of construction. As work increased on the above-ground hall in April 1987, it was projected that the sandstone façade, to begin May 4, had to be completed within just thirty days. Landscaping with a fountain at the main entrance was undertaken in “after-hours labor” by a collective pulled together by the city council.171 The aesthetic result—a polished red bowling-ballshaped core that gushed up water into surrounding metal arms—gestured yet again to quality that could result from such a spurt of pent-up creative energies. By the end of May, Ullrich was frantic, urging that “all reserves have to be mobilized” to finish on time; along with “extended shifts,” work was to take place on Saturdays and even Sundays to ensure daily progress.172 In the final weeks, the building site was abuzz with workers of all ages. Regardless of whether this was socialist solidarity, it truly was a collective effort to complete it on time.

The Palace Doors Open Berlin only discovered the Bowlingtreff in the last month of construction. When the sport festival officially began the evening of July 25 with a longanticipated speech at Karl Marx Square, it now had to be preceded just hours before by the grand opening of the Bowlingtreff.173 Draber choreographed the whole event so that party bosses could see for themselves how 40,050 volunteer hours by 6,675 citizens in concert with 110 firms over the course of fourteen months had produced fourteen bowling lanes, numerous cafes and restaurants, a fitness center, billiard tables, and a videogame area, whose six Poly-Play machines had been made in the DDR.174 In the company of Bezirk and city officials, Bezirk secretary Schumann himself greeted his eminent guests on August 6 with a toast in the larger bowling hall, where potato soup, bratwursts, sandwiches, and beer had been prepared to smooth tensions. To

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     133

accommodate elderly party bosses dazzled by all the bowling revelry, the structure was even handicap accessible.175 Meanwhile—in a flagrant jab at Berlin—the palatial Schwarzbau won the annual Bezirk architectural prize on June 28, which was conferred on Sziegoleit’s team amid festivities at the opening ceremony. Without betraying any scandalous details, the award protocol recounted that “given circumstances” had ensured that Sziegoleit’s team could execute its “original idea” in unaltered form—a purity of conception and realization unheard of in earlier projects that usually turned out mediocre results (fig. 27). Praising the entry hall for “welcoming visitors with friendly and merry gestures,” it lauded the aesthetic effect, observing, “Light beaming down from above accompanies the guest into the depths through the hall in the lower level, as well as above in Café Venus, reached via a ‘floating’ spiral stair.” The underground bowling halls, meanwhile, “sought to attain the most striking interior configuration possible through intense use of color with relatively meager financial demands.”176 Local officials were keen to portray the Bowlingtreff as a success for local belief in socialism—and thus steal any possible glory from Berlin. Right

Figure 27.  Bowlingtreff: above-ground main entrance seen from Wilhelm Leuschner Square, circa 1989. Photograph by and courtesy of Peter Leonhardt.

134    C h a pt e r

4

after work concluded on July 20, the Bezirk council paid for three receptions ( July 21, 22, and 23), wherein 250 volunteers from worker collectives were invited to the main bowling hall for congratulatory speeches delivered by Draber and Ullrich. Those who were married could bring their wives. Draber praised all those gathered for making possible a “monument” that (in apparent contrast to monotone blocks everywhere else) “carries the distinctive signature of many experts and specialists and testifies to the great ability and solid quality from all the construction workers who contributed here.” Although the scale and timetable of the project had been difficult, he concluded, “it has shown what genuine socialist communal labor is capable of, what is possible when all involved are animated by the will to keep to schedule.”177 The morning of July 25, workers were given awards in the company of “honored guests” on the steps of city hall to the wordless theme of the national hymn.178 The Bezirk council decorated all twenty members of the Renovation and Outfitting Collective (Ausbau- und Ausrüstungskollektiv) with the Banner der Arbeit (third class) for tackling each challenge “in genuine socialist communal labor” (even though only three of them were SED party members).179 A second collective was awarded the same decoration, followed by a long train of further workers, whom the mayor pinned with two East German service medals, five outstanding activist medals, twenty ArturBecker medals, ten honorary golden needles from the German Gymnastics and Sport League, and ten honorary needles from the National Front. Opitz handed out additional prizes, five permissions were granted for travel outside the country, and selected workers were singled out for special thanks.180 In essence, every possible honor was accorded to those whose exemplary labor had forged this physical sign that socialism worked. When the assembled workers were interviewed, however, they tended to celebrate the thrill of a job well done, rather than a triumph for socialism. “It’s a terrific facility,” the twenty-one-year-old VEB BMK-Süd worker brigade leader Jan Himpel professed to a Neues Deutschland reporter at the grand opening. Recalling their “often after-hours” labor, he added, “it was a matter of honor for us that we completed this new gem on time for the Gymnastics and Sport Festival.” Although he and his construction brigade preferred soccer, the experience of trying out the new lanes had convinced them to spend evenings bowling as well.181 Erich Honecker failed to show up for the opening ceremony, reinforcing rumors that the Bowlingtreff was indeed a Schwarzbau. The DDR despot only deigned to visit it later during a trade fair, at which point he purportedly admitted, “It’s a stylish building.”182 Sziegoleit recalls that upon completion

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     135

local authorities “had to justify what they had supported. Anger and wrath were unloaded on the Bezirk council.”183 Perhaps to dissipate any such rancor, Bezirk chairman Opitz included in the requested package of project finance papers the glowing speech he had given at the opening of the Bowlingtreff— to convey his sunny rhetoric yet again that the magnificent Schwarzbau had excited locals about working with their leaders.184 Berlin had plenty of reason to resent Leipzig’s unexpected success for real existing socialism. Bezirk finance officer Uta Nickel communicated to Opitz in August 1987 that costs had reached 19,835,000 marks, of which only 11.9 million came from internal Bezirk funds.185 A good deal of the remainder had to get filled in from central coffers. And Berlin had to comply, as Nickel recalls, because “in the end this project could not be left half-finished.”186 It was thus hardly a surprise when, immediately after the sport festival, the State Planning Commission (which oversaw the Building Ministry in Berlin) assembled a commission to examine “the legality of the construction of the bowling center.” The Stasi, who had known and failed to care about the locally commissioned Schwarzbau as it had arisen across from city hall, took pains after it opened to document some of the rumor mill about its existence. Through a certain informant who drifted in high circles, the Stasi learned that, during the sport festival, the East German education minister had attacked Opitz for allowing construction of “such a lavish building like this bowling alley with focused resources,” rather than building more schools and kindergartens. The director of Leipzig’s state bank apparently even alleged “that according to his calculations, people in the Leipzig building staff enriched themselves,” figuring that there must be “a sum of 300,000 marks in personal bank accounts.” Although nothing came of these allegations, the chief concern, the Stasi gathered, was the question of “who gave permission to allow this bowling alley, which had imported lanes [paid for] with Western currency [Valuta].”187 In the end, Berlin gave the Bezirk planning commission just a slap on the wrist for proceeding without central approval. In its final report, the Building Ministry was practically aglow that “this concerns a popularly effective project. The extent of construction work carried out is clear. Documentation proves that the Bezirk and city councils took up active influence in the construction project and practiced regular inspection and control” through oversight from the district police. It made special note that prefab apartment construction had not suffered, and celebrated how “the economical application of means is astounding and led to a tasteful arrangement. The architectural solution is noteworthy.” Nonetheless, it concluded, “critique must be stressed that, although the project was approved by the Bezirk council, it

136    C h a pt e r

4

was not contained in the central plan.” In particular, it attacked the rise in costs from initial estimates in 1985, an expense they claimed that the Bezirk itself had admitted was “indefensible.”188 This was a mild critique: plans often overshot initial costs. The report extolled the outcome, but demanded that future efforts of such magnitude should only go forward with central approval.

An Island of “the West” in the Dystopian East The Bowlingtreff itself enjoyed over two years of resounding success. Visitors flocked from across the region and packed the bowling palace from nine in the morning to midnight each day. Rumors circulated about how best to acquire tickets. As Andreas Kalitynski recalls, a new round of tickets went up for sale each Monday morning at eight; even though this was a workday, “a huge line formed” at both the Bowlingtreff and Leipzig information center on Saxon Square, and visitors made their plans based on what was available. For Kalitynski himself, the real draw was the fitness center, “because I definitely wanted to work out there.” Through connections with building director Kunze, he acquired three tickets for the Bowlingtreff and was thrilled to use “real machines that were shipped in, probably for hard currency.”189 Food and service were of high quality at moderate prices. Some guests who booked bowling lanes gave them up for a nice meal—and vice versa. Four hundred pairs of bowling shoes were available for those who wanted to play; hundreds of seats at cafes and restaurants awaited those who wished to dine. As the regular Bowlingtreff visitor Werner Kießling recalls, “Especially at first the Bowlingtreff was the talk of the town. At work, each person was proud to have been inside.”190 Even if some of this activity constituted what Robert Putnam has called “bowling alone”—individual rather than league bowling—the Bowlingtreff became an emblem of communal life, a place to take friends and finally feel pride in being a Leipziger.191 Both at the time and in reminiscences, the Bowlingtreff sustained a particular draw as a simulated island of “the West.” If, as Yurchak contends, East Block residents projected an “Imaginary West” as their object of desire, this phenomenon was even stronger in Leipzig than in cities farther east like Dresden, because their antennas could receive West German television.192 Kießling wistfully recollects that it was always a relief to escape from everyday dreariness outside and descend to the bowling lanes. “You said farewell to socialism and came into a totally new, unusual world,” he recalls, “lots of light, really shiny, much glamor, everything gleamed and was stylish. Lovely aromas came up from the kitchen. A pair of glasses clinked at the bar.” And

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     137

when their magical journey was through, he and his friends climbed back up and out into the city, where at once they recognized “that they had landed back in the ‘terrific’ socialist world of DDR existence.”193 Observing this contrast from the perspective of a craftsman, Andreas Kalitynski recounts that the city was “gray, dreary. It was horrible. There was no money. To repair anything was marvelous. Only patchwork jobs were really carried out. And right in the midst of this patchwork town, a top modern building like the Gewandhaus or Bowling Center suddenly came into being. You were so happy to take visitors in there.”194 Kießling even took a cousin from the West near Stuttgart into the Bowlingtreff, and she was convinced that the overall atmosphere was “finer” in quality than what she enjoyed back home.195 Fond memories of this enchanted “Western wonderland” are still palpable in conversations with older Leipzigers. Of course, the Bowlingtreff also showcased hierarchies and nepotism inherent in late-communist rule. Interviewees inevitably recall that waiting time for an entry ticket could last up to six months. Draber’s own July 1987 usage protocol anticipated that 70 percent of the center’s capacity would be filled by people who ordered tickets in advance; the rest were sold at reception until exhausted. However, “insiders” could get in more regularly to use a “reserved” lane. For instance, Kießling used his familiarity with Bowlingtreff technical operators to get in for bowling contests. As he observes, “it was easy to get awarded one of the bowling lanes that was always reserved for

Figure 28.  Bowlingtreff: subterranean lanes in action, circa 1987. StadtAL BA 1988 26091. Photograph by Wolfgang Kluge. StadtAL BA 1988 26091. Used by permission.

138    C h a pt e r

4

‘special customers.’ ”196 Most of these “special customers” were Bezirk and city officials, who won perpetual use of a reserved bowling lane in the soldout facility; in the event officials neglected their privilege, the Bowlingtreff administrator could decide whether to make it generally available. Much like the Ratstonne in the Moritzbastei a decade before, officials also won restricted use of the “prestigious space” of the “small bowling den” (a cramped banquet room) “in order to preserve the space’s character and secure its prestige.”197 Petty corruption was once again the price for getting some officials to back a Schwarzbau. In the end, local political and planning elites rightly basked in their victory over Berlin’s obstructionism. Their dogged advocacy for Leipzig had yielded a bowling palace that knew no equal in the world. Yet stepping back for a moment, it is a bizarre story! A bowling alley had somehow come to embody triumph in the workers’ paradise? Cities crumbled across the republic, and Berlin hoarded precious funds to build its own lucky residents bowling alleys. To rebel, Leipzig had illegally built its own American-style bowling mecca. And the result? When they descended under their dead city, Leipzigers did not feel they had finally encountered real existing socialism. This was a taste of the Imaginary West they hungered for each day through their illegal but largely tolerated Western television receivers. They were hardly grateful to the leaders who had so tirelessly striven to “give it to them.” They were depressed to be stuck in the monotonous grayscale world of Kansas, rather than the glitzy Oz they imagined in the West (fig. 29). Perhaps as a result, Stasi files illustrate that the palliative People’s Bowling Palace failed to prevent deviance. On the contrary, mere months after it had opened, the shining emblem of SED benevolence became a hub for conspirators so tantalized by the West that they dared an escape. This coincided with the Stasi observations at the time that “now as ever, illusionary conceptions [illusionäre Vorstellungen] about the lifestyle in the capitalist West” played a key role in prompting illegal emigration from the DDR.198 As Leipzig’s proud showpiece, the Bowlingtreff was awarded 150 of the city’s best gastronomical and technical personnel. Its gifted manager was affiliated with virtually every acronymic that could signify loyalty: the SED, DSF, DTSB, FDJ, and KB.199 For his volunteer labor in building the Bowlingtreff, he earned the Banner der Arbeit. Unbeknownst to him, he regularly trained at the Bowlingtreff fitness center with a friend whose double life included Stasi snooping as informant “Walter.” Once, the manager had mentioned to Walter that he had sold his car. In retrospect, Walter later admitted, this sudden conversion of material assets into cash should have raised his suspicions.200

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     139

Figure 29.  “Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz Bowling Center” with view toward the sooty new city hall, September 1989. Photograph by Dagmar Agsten. StadtAL BA D 930.

On November 7, 1987, the Bowlingtreff manager was taking part in a coveted journey through West Germany with colleagues from the FDJ Bezirk leadership. That night, he wandered out of their hostel in Saarbrücken. He could not be found when the group was ready to leave town the next day. On November 9, he telephoned his mother in East Germany, and related that he would not be returning to the DDR. Although his mother and tour leader were vigorously questioned, no motive was ever identified.201 A year later, the Stasi recorded that he had abandoned the DDR, “because he was impressed with the Western way of life and better career opportunities.”202 He had been a model DDR citizen, lavished with the best job in Leipzig’s sterling new bowling center—but this taste of the West had not been enough. Bowling lane manager Eva Wolf keenly recalls the day she and her colleagues found out that their boss had made it free into the West. “Naturally, that was

140    C h a pt e r

4

[really something] for us,” she reminisces, “already at nine in the morning, we were drinking champagne.”203 And this was just the beginning. Stasi attentions bloomed after the scandal of November 1987. An army officer appeared on staff as a waiter, and general opinion was that he worked for the Stasi. By early 1988, two Bowlingtreff personnel had traveled to West Germany citing urgent family events; neither returned. A relative of the former Bowlingtreff manager requested emigration; he was denied. By November 1988, a total of nine Bowlingtreff workers (once so loyal) had issued requests for emigration, citing six key motives: “personal dissatisfaction; the economic situation in the DDR; discrepancy between income and availability of goods; better career development chances; limited freedom to travel; the development of prices.”204 Given the spike in emigration requests, the Stasi identified Leipzig’s Bowlingtreff as “the absolute epicenter” for potential escapees among Leipzig businesses—a clear sign that this showpiece of Western aesthetics and leisure options was inspiring interest in flight to the West. To make matters worse, both the Bowlingtreff administration and local political elites were leery about interrogating Bowlingtreff employees.205 Stasi officers used this nuisance to explain the even greater scandal that soon followed. The incident was classified as Operation Fire: three Bowlingtreff employees followed their former manager’s example and attempted an escape for themselves. The ringleader, Andreas, was a machine operator and mechanic (no party affiliation, working-class family background).206 During his obligatory military service from 1982 to 1985, he had served as a petty border officer near Sonneberg and come to know a potential weak point in the ­German-German no-man’s-land. Thereafter, he had worked for Leipzig’s Polish Cultural and Information Center and fallen in love with a coworker who had traveled to and illegally remained in West Germany. As of June 15, 1987, he had taken up employment as an operator in the newly opened Bowlingtreff machine rooms. Perhaps to reunite with his sweetheart or perhaps solely to reach the “golden West,” he applied to the Bezirk on September 22 for emigration on the grounds that he wished to marry; he was denied December 11, 1987. Inspired by his manager’s recent exploit, he lost patience with official channels and started to conspire with his two coworkers. Bernd was a metalworker (no party affiliation, white-collar family background) who started work as a cook at the Bowlingtreff when it opened on June 15, 1987; his application to leave for West Germany on March 13, 1988 was rejected by April 27. Christoph was a waiter (no party affiliation, working-class family background) and had been a star athlete until an injury in 1979. Although he had since continued his athletic training, he had grown discontented with

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     141

life. The eldest member of the group, he applied for emigration to marry a girlfriend in West Germany, but the SED had determined that this was just a pretense. On October 25, 1988, Andreas rented a green Wartburg from VEB Taxi Leipzig near Johannis Square. The morning of October 27, all three called in sick at the Bowlingtreff, and they sped off in a plume of brown exhaust toward the border frontier. By five that evening, they had reached a lonely place Andreas knew from his patrol days, where a country road met the first border fence. Here they parked close enough to jump over the fence from the roof of the car. Extraordinarily avoiding buried mines, barbed wire, and other obstacles, they dashed through the weeds to the next barrier fence, which Andreas knew they could surmount by climbing up a tree that had grown near to it. The next day at three thirty in the afternoon, they telephoned the Bowlingtreff to alert a female coworker that they had made it safe and sound, and they even publicized their exploit in the West German Tagesschau evening television program.207 It was a rare thing for DDR citizens to achieve Republikflucht by the 1980s, and the Stasi were mortified that the trio had successfully emulated their manager (and apparently one other coworker). They scrutinized the abandoned Wartburg and border area, but to no avail: they only reached the scene of the crime after border guards had trampled the ground and so obscured where the three escapees had made their run. Orders followed to reinforce the fence, and border residents were to be further compelled to cooperate with guard personnel.208 At the Bowlingtreff itself, the Stasi sniffed around for any possible hints of collusion or further interest in escape. Stakes were particularly high in a prestige building where “state and leading economic functionaries and personas pass through” (to use their little board room and reserved bowling lane). As the Stasi observed, “Back when the Bowlingtreff opened for business, all personnel were examined. There were none among them who evinced desire for emigration or other operationally relevant inclinations.”209 Now they flooded the Bowlingtreff with informants and harassed the Bowlingtreff management to closely observe its personnel.210 Although they claimed that the SED should try to win back the affections of the apparently disgruntled employees, the Stasi chose to disperse the staff “to break up the concentration of those seeking emigration” at the Bowlingtreff.211 As part of this new campaign, the Stasi planted an informant at the Bowlingtreff in December who was concurrently infiltrating a local gay bar to seek out disaffected citizens who might attempt an illegal departure. He exposed a waiter working at the Bowlingtreff gallery level who was peeved “that he

142    C h a pt e r

4

receives relatively few tips. Along with this, he critiqued the fact that fewer and fewer skilled workers are employed at the Bowlingtreff, because some of the skilled workers had to take on other work on account of their desire to emigrate to West Germany.” Through the waiter, the informant ascertained that Bowlingtreff workers had cheered on their three colleagues’ escape, and felt overwhelming satisfaction afterward that the escape had been a success. They had engaged in regular telephone calls with the three in the West until this had been expressly forbidden, and another worker had recently traveled to Berlin and not returned, generating fresh rumors about yet another successful flight. The waiter concluded that Stasi interference had wrecked the recreational center’s once-renowned service. The mass of new employees simply did not “possess the necessary standards to care for guests with the appropriate high level of quality. In addition, the constant change in personnel brings with it problems in forming a collective team spirit.”212 Shortly thereafter, the Bowlingtreff informant was himself doubted as particularly reliable or useful, and the Stasi terminated his service.213 Given this aura of suspense and interrogation, as well as the dispersal of some of the best parts of the staff, the prized recreational center became known on the eve of revolution for dismal service.

The Bowlingtreff in Revolution and Capitalist Anticlimax In his speech to workers in the freshly completed Bowlingtreff, Bezirk vicechairman Jochen Draber pleaded for further volunteer labor on the “demanding construction tasks that await.” Declaring a shared responsibility for saving the decrepit historic city center, he avowed his “firm conviction that what you have demonstrated here will also bear out in further work for the betterment of our citizens. May the Leipzig Bowlingtreff thus prove a symbol of successful socialist communal work, evidence of the high ability our workers have to achieve, and encouragement for our citizens to mobilize all their creative powers for the further strengthening of our socialist German Democratic Republic and reinforcement of peace.”214 When dedicated officials made the means available, Leipzigers had joined together to build a showpiece for their rotten city. But Draber and his colleagues had misread why people had devoted so much time and sweat to their project. Years of disappointment hardly left Leipzigers expecting that socialist free labor battalions could save Leipzig from its abyss. Kießling recalls that the Bowlingtreff in fact served as a “sedative pill” two years before the mood for change grew strong.215 But sometimes it arose as a grievance: scandalous for its exceptionality. After lambasting the monotony

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     143

of Leipzig’s sprawling prefab district at Grünau and deploring the ubiquity of ruins in the historic center, a visitor to the 1988 exhibition concluded: “certainly there are also highlights in Leipzig’s building activity, such as the Bowlingtreff, Gewandhaus, and Dorotheenplatz, but that is just too little for a city like Leipzig. Even city hall looks terrible—or is this something the proprietors fail to see? I’d prefer not to call them city fathers.”216 Not long after, a group of young Leipzigers led by Uwe Schwabe marched in front of the belching brown coal stacks at the Espenhain power plant just south of town with the banner “Bowling Center—no thanks! Filter—yes please!” (fig. 30). Hardly demanding abolition of the recreational center, they were referencing a familiar icon to protest injustice. Why celebrate this isolated underground extravaganza, when the air outside was poisoning the population? Why did local leaders expend precious Valuta for bowling mechanisms, but not for filters that could save lives? However amazing, this lone Schwarzbau could not solve the city’s problems. Even Draber gave up on socialism shortly after he was promoted to Bezirk council chairman in December 1989. By January 1990, the dedicated local official who had tried to redeem the system by working around it abandoned the SED party as too ossified to reform, and by April he had left his post in frustration. One of the last believers in “successful socialist communal work” had helped to give Leipzig its Bowlingtreff. But as an isolated Schwarzbau

Figure 30.  “Bowling Center—no thanks! Filter—yes please!” Uwe Schwabe and a fellow agitator hold a banner at Espenhain Lignite Power Plant, south of Leipzig, June 21, 1987. Photograph by Frank Sellentin. ABL 003–005–004.

144    C h a pt e r

4

built with free labor outside centralized control, the Bowlingtreff itself had offered Draber all the evidence he needed that the centralized system had to be drastically reformed, or end. Capitalism, meanwhile, had no use for the Bowlingtreff. Like something out of a fairytale, the gleaming People’s Bowling Palace exchanged fortunes with the surrounding decayed city after 1990. At the same tempo with which the city emerged from its scaffolding as a shining mix of historic and postmodern glitz, the Bowlingtreff seemed to absorb all the malaise that had once surrounded it. As capitalism vastly expanded the possibilities for local leisure activities, the long lines at the Bowlingtreff disappeared. This was not improved by the city’s decision to lease out the property to the private Aubo Restaurant Administration Company, which went bankrupt in 1993; this reduced the opulent entry hall to a cheap textile clearance house. Sziegoleit was furious at the chintzy neon signs unimaginative Western developers stuck onto the fresh sandstone façade; the “Italian village with fake grapevines” in the once-proud café prompted him to send an (unanswered) protest letter to the League of German Architects. Particularly devastating, however, was the dark-tinted glass that replaced his clear-glass ceiling; from their penthouses in the West, developers had apparently failed to appreciate that his brighter design also effectively ventilated the structure.217 The result was a much gloomier impression inside and a dramatic loss for the elegant external aesthetic. But the worst was yet to come. In 1997, just after the bowling palace’s tenth anniversary, it was closed forever by investors who lacked the creativity needed to keep it in operation. Looking back after a decade of runaway vandalism and decay in 2007, Topfstedt concluded that “apparently the city had no interest in the further existence of the Bowlingtreff,” not least given (thankfully unrealized) plans for a flavorless shopping mall that would have supplanted it on Wilhelm Leuschner Square—now mistakenly celebrated by the new officialdom as a center for the recent peaceful revolution that had happened elsewhere.218 Crestfallen, Werner Kießling protests to this day that the Bowlingtreff had remained a popular recreational site, arguing, “It wasn’t cast off, God forbid! There were also pretty strong protests—naturally not in the form that people marched in the streets, but public discussions that it would really be a mistake to close this Bowlingtreff, and that one should seek out possibilities and solutions to retain the Bowlingtreff as it was. Certainly for its exclusivity. And as an advertisement for the city of Leipzig.”219 At last, in 2007 the Leipzig architectural historian Annette Menting succeeded in breaking open the graffiti-covered blocks that sealed its entrance and, in the dim light that came through those overly tinted windows that

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     145

were not yet smashed and covered with tin, she presided over the local technical school’s annual architectural exhibition. Here again, unpaid volunteer labor filled the tarnished hall—this time to clear as much vandalism as ­possible—and Sziegoleit mourned with them over the oak parquet floor vandals had destroyed, and which they now had to push aside in heaps. They dusted off ancient relics from a mere decade ago: bowling pins and shoes, dishes and little teapots with their trademark b logo, still packed away in cases. For an instant, their exhibition filled the hall with life. It ended with hope that “many visitors [will] consider this site’s potential.”220 Spontaneous interviews with passersby at the time elicited rosy memories and hope that the bowling palace had a future.221 Sadly, even though in 2009 it was placed under historic preservation status, the Bowlingtreff was further abandoned to rats, cockroaches, and vandals (fig. 31). Although the 1920s subterranean cement construction remained watertight on its outer edges, rainwater flowed down through cracks in the skylights Sziegoleit had installed with such optimism in 1986. The city’s peculiar plan to remake the Bowlingtreff into a natural science museum foundered on financing and the decision to place the museum elsewhere. In early 2009, the Kulturstiftung Leipzig sought to convince city hall to remake

Figure 31.  The Bowlingtreff in ruins, 2014. Photograph by author.

146    C h a pt e r

4

the structure into a cultural center, a concept prepared in cooperation with Sziegoleit with an expected cost of 3.8 million euros. As of 2017, Wolfgang Hocquél insisted that “the Kulturstiftung Leipzig has not given up its idea about restoring and converting [the Bowlingtreff], and will remain further involved to this end.”222 Despite its excellent location, however, the monument failed to attract private investors. Building on a 2008 resolution, in 2015 Leipzig’s city council mandated integration of the Bowlingtreff into future plans for the square. Alongside its preservation status, the city upheld the Bowlingtreff as a “unique example of socialist postmodernism” that had “courageously broken with the theoretical narrowness of socialist construction” in favor of European influences. Unfortunately, the entirety of the square was a “nonplace” (Unort), in which the Bowlingtreff was a “forgotten object on a forgotten site that ceased to exist in 1997.” Although “many older Leipzigers remember the Bowlingtreff as a much beloved and desirable recreational site whose possibilities well exceeded the word bowling,” the resolution continued, “tourists and many younger Leipzigers without this horizon of experience perceive the Bowlingtreff more as a devastated bunker at the edge of a vacuous urban wasteland. The Bowlingtreff is thus a building in need of explanation. The current appearance of this inaccessible structure cannot deliver this explanation.”223 Two young Leipzigers sought to convey just such an explanation on their own initiative that same year: very briefly in 2015 life again returned to the bowling catacombs, when Thomas Beyer and Adrian Dorschner accessed the sealed ruin through the outside delivery hatch and produced an artistically powerful documentary, wherein architects, officials, and ordinary citizens exchanged insights on the yet-intact but threatened landmark.224 By summer 2017, the city’s plan for Wilhelm Leuschner Square incorporated the distinctive octagonal entry hall amid far larger (and all too mundane) blocks. As of August 2018, the city had removed ninety-eight tons of rubbish from the vandalized interior in the hopes that it might expedite attracting an investor.225 The elderly BCA architect Johannes Schulze still hopes that a portion of the vacuous square can be “beautifully restored as the old Königsplatz” as it had been before the war, lined by apartments and services, adding, “The Bowlingtreff should be the cultural centerpiece of the area.”226 Kießling wonders whether, just as the Bowlingtreff was a reprieve from Eastern drabness, it might yet become a retreat “from the daily stress in our Western world in which we now live, where we can just go bowling and be sociable and relax.”227 Topfstedt continues to uphold the tarnished edifice’s “influences from postmodern building style on a qualitative level

U r b a n I n g e n u i ty U n d e r g r o u n d     147

seldom matched by other contemporary structures built in the DDR,”228 and concludes, “The experts say it’s possible to save it, but one has to do it.”229 But it remains to be seen whether Leipzig—gleaming amid fresh global capitalist investment—has enough creativity and willpower left to save and reinvigorate its People’s Bowling Palace.

Why Leipzig Could Not Be Saved by Schwarzbauten Rather than reading history backward to understand how the 1989 revolution was possible, this chapter has used Leipzig’s Bowlingtreff to read history forward and so illustrate the local dynamic as it unfolded through the 1980s. It has examined real existing late-communist public behaviors and desires before the city’s peaceful demonstrations unexpectedly helped to end communist rule.230 The Bowlingtreff story proves that the people were not passive before 1989, nor were they a hostile mass of protorevolutionaries, nor were they blithely “working with” socialist plans as claimed at the 1987 inauguration of the Bowlingtreff. Rather, youth who could not remember regime atrocities in 1953 or 1968 got involved to build something for themselves in a city they were certain the party could not save from catastrophic neglect and decay. Meanwhile, local officials were neither a mass of inept authoritarians nor protorevolutionaries. Rather, they evaded centralized incompetence and creatively used informal connections to offer the disillusioned public an attractive leisure space, because they knew that physical gestures had to manifest themselves in the desolate urban surroundings. In sum, a latent sense hovered among dedicated leaders and engaged citizens alike that change was urgently needed, but revolution hardly surfaced as a remote possibility. With questionable funds, material, and labor, local officials produced pockets of the Imaginary West in the Moritzbastei and Bowlingtreff. In 1989, the public took to the streets to demand more. Fully aware of popular despair, local officials and planners used the final years of SED rule to pursue increasingly desperate piecemeal measures that might secure basic repairs for historic landmarks. Schwarzbauten were not enough. They had to move even further outside of centrally approved plans, competitions, and financing. They had to beg. Anyone. For anything. By 1986, the city was beseeching any group it could think of for men and material. When the city’s Polish Cultural and Information Center asked that year for permission to restore and occupy an old-town structure (with provision that this would exempt it from rent), Chief Architect Dietmar Fischer eagerly offered a list of “acutely endangered” historic landmarks.231 By February 1987, the city passed a resolution calling on state worker collectives to adopt

148    C h a pt e r

4

endangered landmarks across the historic core and deploy volunteer workers to somehow renovate and maintain them.232 Although collectives ranging from coal pits to metal shops agreed to sponsor historic buildings, virtually nothing was accomplished over the next two years. As the director of a collective for radio and television explained to Leipzig’s mayor, his local division “agreed in principle” with the idea of restoring a historic landmark, but his nationwide collective’s costs and obligations prevented him from sending a building brigade; meanwhile, “because of its [limited] resources, the building department of the VEB Industrievertrieb in Leipzig alone is not in a position to carry out the reconstruction.”233 In its 1988 financial report, the city council boasted that the endeavor had been a success, but it could only offer two examples in which state worker collectives had done any meaningful renovation work, in each case a small house that, two years later, still looked just as terrible as its neighbors.234 As the Bowlingtreff took shape, local leaders were desperate enough to try to extend freewheeling measures that had worked on a few Schwarzbauten to historic sites across the urban core. But as Lena Kuhl observes in the context of Karl-Marx-Stadt, “even if through such initiatives certain improvements could be attained, they could not solve fundamental problems” such as ubiquitous dilapidation and the housing shortage. “The decay of old towns across the entire republic and the meager resources of cities and communities to stop it visually demonstrated to a great extent the structural weaknesses of the urban planning system and state construction methods.”235 Schwarzbau methods could yield isolated victories, but they could not save the city as a whole.

Ch a p ter   5

The City as Stage in Revolution

In October 1984, the restive young pastor Christoph Wonneberger arrived at the Lukaskirche in Leipzig’s working-class Volkmarsdorf district in the Ostvorstadt. Conditions were worse than after World War II: whole city blocks had decayed and collapsed in on themselves. As the Saxon church administrator Dieter Auerbach later observed, “The area around the Lukaskirche had a spooky feeling: rows of empty houses and empty window holes, abandoned streets. It was amazing that the church building stood so inviting in the midst of the ruins.”1 Yet even the supposedly intact appearance of the neo-Gothic edifice was misleading: slate tiles rained down from the roof and tower, the furnace did not work, and there was no cross. Like Wilhelm Schlemmer at Leipzig’s Michaeliskirche, Wonneberger tapped into as much grassroots skill and enthusiasm as he could to make his parish habitable. Unable to find (much less pay for) scaffolding, he let young parishioners scale the roof with mountain-climbing equipment to eliminate loose tiles. And, as Wonneberger’s biographer recounts, “because there wasn’t a single cross, the forty-one-year-old, practically romantic pastor set off to take roof beams out of one of the houses slated for demolition. From these he fashioned a big wooden cross.”2 Although chief architect Dietmar Fischer had hoped to make the area around the Lukaskirche a showpiece for amalgamating old and new architecture, the pastor’s daughter was traumatized that this neighborhood, “dilapidated to an unimaginable 149

150    C h a pt e r

5

degree,” was largely torn down on all sides of the church over the next two years and “replaced with grayish-pink Plattenbauten” (fig. 32).3 Abandoned to catastrophic decay and then erased with cheap boxes, a historic workingclass district was no more. Only the Lukaskirche testified to history with its lofty tower over fresh Plattenbau roofs and a few gutted leftovers. Within its walls, brazen youth gathered from all corners of the city and, under Wonneberger’s direction, started to make history in a nonviolent opposition movement that ultimately helped to end SED rule. In fall of 1989, Leipzigers took to the streets to save their city. All around them, urban wreckage decayed as a dreary backdrop for everyday life. West German television had long shown them what a city should look like, and the Bowlingtreff or Gewandhaus had given them a glimpse of this Imaginary West on their own soil. Now as Gorbachev preached perestroika, the city became a stage on which to indict the system. The medley of Plattenbauten and wrecks around the Lukaskirche, the collapsing school façade across from the Nikolaikirche, the mundane box behind a Marx relief where in 1968 Leipzigers had protested the heedless demolition of their University Church: at these venues and more, tens of thousands marched to declare that they were the people. Long ago, they had reached Yurchak’s paradigm shift, in which state rhetoric was not to be taken seriously. Honecker’s motto that “the person is most important [Im Mittelpunkt steht der Mensch]” was laughable in a world where streams of petitions could not penetrate democratic centralism, where local officials had to work around the system to get things

Figure 32.  Leipzig-Volkmarsdorf: new Plattenbauten, demolished and collapsing houses, with the Lukaskirche spire rising in the background, 1989. Photograph by Roland Quester. ABL 009–005–005.

T h e C i ty a s Sta g e i n R e vo lu t i o n     151

done, and where, in the jungle of a collapsing city, people had to practice self-reliance in a barter economy just to survive. Small wonder that the Stasi recorded numerous instances in which East Germans had left the DDR because of dissatisfaction with their living situations, while “the burdensome situation in many cities” was cited as a primary rallying cry on October 1, 1989, for the Demokratischer Aufbruch movement in Berlin.4 Leipzigers had retreated to their neighborhoods, they had squatted and stolen, not because they wanted to overturn the system, but because they wanted to live their lives in spite of it and, where possible, manipulate it to their advantage. The result could not save the city, but perhaps in their private spheres they could forge a humane existence.5 But patchwork lives in a patchwork city could not satisfy. Surrounded by crumbling turn-of-thecentury grandeur, they saw every physical consequence of environmental decay, economic malaise, regime corruption, and Stasi infiltration. As initial activists such as Pastor Wonneberger and his congregation got the Peaceful Revolution moving, more and more Leipzigers began to wonder: If democracy could prevail over democratic centralism, could Leipzig still be saved? This chapter explores the consequences of urban decay over the course of the revolution and its immediate aftermath. In so many ways, the prehistory of hopeless dystopia predestined Leipzig—not Berlin—to become the initial hotbed of unrest. For Leipzigers, Berlin had prospered from its parasitic draw of resources from the rest of the country. In 1989 alone, the Berlin Wall had consumed 1.2 billion marks that could have saved a great many historic neighborhoods.6 With bitter irony by summer of that fateful year, Leipzigers took note that the capital was getting spruced up for the republic’s forty-year anniversary celebration at the expense of much-needed repairs across their city (fig. 33). In sum, Berlin embodied the ignominious symbol of the centralized system. It was in no small part to revolt against Berlin that Leipzigers coalesced in ever greater numbers with each week in the fall of 1989 to declare that they—and not Berlin’s den of apparatchiks—were the people. Accepting that the end of SED hegemony in 1989 and the DDR itself in 1990 constituted a considerable caesura, this chapter also illustrates continuities in planning objectives and personal outlooks before, during, and after this life-changing Wende. To begin, this chapter traces the role of urban decay in rhetoric and action over the course of 1989, as the story took root that local officials were to blame for centralized planning failures. After this, it features the biography of a single historic ruin—the Alte Nikolaischule—whose economics, aesthetics, and politics straddled the flux to either side of the Wende. Finally, it concludes with the First People’s Building Conference in January 1990: a

152    C h a pt e r

5

Figure 33.  The upper story of a typically decayed multistory apartment building bearing the inscription “40 [years of the] DDR, 1949–1989.” A flag hangs at the window. The roof is ruined. Pölitzstraße in Leipzig-Gohlis, Summer 1989. ABL 018–004–003. Photograph by Burkhardt Starke.

creative interim moment when, despite profound anxieties, years of self-­ initiative turned into citizens’ initiatives. Tracing this evolution in political and public approaches to saving the city, the stage is then set for the epilogue, which highlights individual stories of transition, as former officials and ordinary citizens navigated the aftermath of revolution to their advantage in a rocky day-to-day experience. In the end, manifold trends in urban ingenuity through the last decade of communism translated into the post-Wende environment with all its fulfilled and failed dreams.

Leipzig against Berlin A year before Leipzig became the “hero city” that helped to end communist rule, local officialdom sustained a dual myth: (1) Leipzig would soon become a gorgeous global city, and (2) the people were excited to help build it. Such hopes actually rang true in January 1990, when citizens and experts exchanged ideas in the heady revolutionary atmosphere of the First People’s Building Conference; but back in 1988, urban planning endeavors prompted only bitter disenchantment. In no small part to avoid public disparagement, the 1988

T h e C i ty a s Sta g e i n R e vo lu t i o n     153

competition had to be suppressed for its dangerous optimism about erasing modernist mistakes. And after Leipzig architects toured Berlin’s gleaming new Frankfurter Allee, Bezirk chairman Rolf Opitz’s promise to “pursue the goal of more intensively involving citizens in the reshaping of their residential areas” had no meaning in reality. Every decision had already been made, so why should any citizen want to take part? The Bezirk had already resolved to fix the housing problem by stamping 7,300 prefab apartments right up to the city center, so who could believe Opitz’s tired slogan: “Beautify our cities and communities—work with us [mach mit]!”7 In reality, “public collaboration” meant that the Bezirk filed annual reports with glowing statistics to edify central authorities in Berlin. And public spirits dropped even further. One can respect the predicament local officials faced: incapable of stemming rapid decay because of a shortage economy tied to industrialized mass production, they had to give the Baukombinat free rein to raze neighborhoods and plant Plattenbau rows. But by force-feeding monotony on the once-vibrant city, all rhetoric about public participation came off as aloof, if not insulting. Architects like Fischer, who proposed a creative interchange between history and modernism, spoke a different language from the Baukombinat, whose prefab quotas were devastating the city with drabness. Schwarzbauten like the Bowlingtreff stood out as bright exceptions that in many ways made the surrounding city look even worse. Castles in the air had no resonance for the residents who gathered before Wonneberger’s simple wooden cross, composed of beams from neighboring houses doomed to demolition. The urban carcass was getting mutilated into an “amnesiopolis” in the most dystopian sense of the word. Everyone wondered if Leipzig could be saved, and they blamed Berlin for their anxieties. A West German visitor to the Nikolaikirche captured this overriding sentiment when he wrote in the church guest book on April 19, 1987, “What’s the use of a beautiful church, when the land all around it decays?”8 Capturing the inhumane conditions in which so many people suffered, a mother wrote a despairing letter to both the city government and opposition initiative Neues Forum on behalf of her children, young working-class residents in Leipzig, protesting, “With much energy and commitment, without help of any organization or other support, they renovated an apartment over the course of many years on Kochstraße.” The situation was still so dreadful that chunks of the façade had been torn off so as not to threaten pedestrians, while inside the renters were “finished” with so many inadequacies. “The anxiety is unbearable, because pigeon ticks climb on the apartment walls,” she concluded, leading her children to “despair,” as their infants and toddlers developed blotches on their skin.9

154    C h a pt e r

5

All rhetoric to the contrary, the centralized system was making things even worse on the eve of revolution. Economic shortfalls compelled the radical reduction of historic preservation budgets in the late 1980s. In 1989 alone, preservation funds were cut by 40 percent. As Brian Ladd observes, late-­ communist authorities “decreed the much more rapid removal of tenements to make possible efficient inner-city construction and thus to meet production goals. Fragmentary news of these decisions enraged many residents,” who in some neighborhoods actively opposed demolition plans.10 People wanted neither ruins nor a Plattenbau city. On the eve of 1989, the desolate condition of the urban landscape and sense of impending doom had thus become “a source of rebellion against the regime.”11 Despair at the wretched state of the city translated fluidly into “hatred of Berlin.” It was common knowledge among Leipzigers that undue resources were flowing to build the capital at the expense of their city. Already during the exorbitant festivities for Berlin’s 750th anniversary in 1987, Leipzigers carried banners such as “822 years of Leipzig: Berlin will never [look] so old.” In some instances, Leipzigers may have even slashed the tires of cars with Berlin plates.12 As a West German reporter observed in conversation with residents in 1993, the peaceful demonstrations of October 1989 “had their origins in the fact that the citizens were no longer willing to put up with the everyday experience of destruction in their city,” not least as “craftsmen and construction workers from the local building collectives necessary for repair work had been commandeered to build the capital in East Berlin.”13 Leipzigers marched against Berlin during the Peaceful Revolution in no small part to protest this criminal draw of scarce resources to the capital. Hatred of Berlin became a form of civic pride.14 Times had also changed. Too young to remember the massacre of demonstrators on Karl Marx Square in 1953 or willful demolition of the University Church on the same site after years of protest in 1968, many residents exerted biting critiques and sometimes brazen behaviors that would have shocked their predecessors in the 1970s. Of course, they knew all about Stasi infiltration, police brutality, and regime corruption; even the most outspoken activists sustained a level of caution. Yet for years anyone who wanted to get ahead had been forced to work outside the system; already accustomed to pushing the bounds of the law, they knew full well that the mechanisms of tyranny helped to explain why the city was so messed up. So it was that, fed up with the hypocrisy of party rhetoric and general misery of the population, a group of young intellectuals who lived at Mariannenstraße 46 (near Matthias Wolf ’s recently renovated apartment) chose to create a home

T h e C i ty a s Sta g e i n R e vo lu t i o n     155

movie with footage of their dystopian surroundings and broadcast it to a national audience. Already, they had seized an abandoned flat. Where the regime had forsaken the neighborhood to its doom, they had restored life to a building for themselves and for pensioners whose monthly rent had failed to win them much-needed repairs. In August 1989, they teamed up with the West German correspondent Peter Wensierski to create How We Live Here: Frustration and Decay in Leipzig (Wie wir hier leben: Frust und Verfall in Leipzig). At a simple table in the courtyard, twenty-seven-year-old Uwe Schwabe directed a frank discussion about everyday conditions. On the streets, the forty-nine-year-old Leipzig railroad inspector Ernst Demele guided two East Berlin cameramen across his ruined city. As Wensierski recalls, “he was enraged by the rotten condition of every railroad bridge, the collapsing historic buildings, and the catastrophic environmental damage all around Leipzig. Where he lives just around the corner [from Mariannenstraße] on Meißner Straße, one building’s entire outer wall collapsed in the night. The former apartment interiors can now be seen from the street. Like many DDR historic districts, the entire East of Leipzig stands on the brink of collapse.”15 As Demele and his cameramen interacted with half a dozen of Schwabe’s colleagues (all of them employed on staff with a retirement home), they met with dejection about the state of the city and incredulity when they revealed that Leipzig was making a bid for the 2004 Olympics. After a Spiegel correspondent smuggled the cassettes to Wensierski in West Berlin, the documentary appeared on the West German public broadcaster ARD’s TV magazine Kontraste on September 12, 1989—instantaneously accessible to millions of homes across the DDR that picked up West German television. As Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk notes, “nearly all were shocked. First, they pitied the Leipzigers. But then many realized: ‘Leipzig is everywhere.’ The condition of the cities proved to be a portrayal of the state of society.”16 Friedrich Schorlemmer, an activist pastor in Wittenberg, later told Schwabe that “the images of urban decay opened my eyes.”17 Although the Leipziger Volkszeitung attacked the film as “pointless [überflüssig],” hopeless scenes burned the imagination. People were incensed at the sight of a mother peering out with her small child from a crumbling alley house with the appeal, “Show them how we have to live here!”18 Despite the illegal film’s scathing verdict, the Stasi merely stepped up surveillance and did not take violent action against the perpetrators. Although Leipzig’s deteriorating neighborhoods were particularly vast, urban decay and pending wholesale demolitions prompted anxiety across all of East Germany as the perestroika era fermented. “Without the ecological

156    C h a pt e r

5

reconfiguration of production and supply structures, not much will remain of our historical old towns other than isolated fragmentary architectural monuments,” a samizdat paper lamented in February 1989, adding, “Isn’t this decline also a cause for the uprootedness of many people accustomed to an urban lifestyle? The retention of diverse and vigorous old towns is therefore a task for us all!”19 In his 1988 study of urban planning across the republic, Thomas Topfstedt recorded how demolitions in the 1960s and scandalous decay thereafter had damaged virtually every urban center—many of which had not suffered serious damage in the war. “The dangers of monotony and schematism were in any case still not eliminated with the implementation of the WBS-70,” he recounted, adding with critique striking for the time, “It would be to close one’s eyes before the urban planning facts if one should judge the new residential areas and complexes only according to architectural and structural standpoints and so overlook the often extremely rigid uniformity of the architectural outcome.”20 Even though Leipzig had the highest quantity and density of intact but decaying historic neighborhoods, Topfstedt directed particular scorn toward the needless decay and ongoing demolitions in neighboring Halle, and he reiterated in 2018 that the state of historic structures was “far worse” in smaller cities like Görlitz, Altenburg, or Greifswald.21 Although he was stationed in Leipzig, Bezirk preservationist Hocquél was likewise obsessed with saving Altenburg, an intact town on the brink of ruin.22 Anyone who wanted to see how East German cities would look in just a few years needed only take in what a wholesale Plattenbau overhaul had done to Gera or Merseburg. Although these ancient historic centers had been spared widespread destruction in the war, already in the 1970s prefab building collectives had razed virtually everything apart from the occasional church or corner structure, planting in their stead low-quality lowrise blocks. At the same time, intact but decayed districts in Leipzig, Halle, and Potsdam were getting ripped down. An enraged Gera resident sent an Eingabe to his city building director in February 1978 protesting a local newspaper article, “Gera’s Old City Center Blooms in New Beauty,” asserting that, “if one considers the wholesale tearing down of the inner city,” this would not be a “blooming” old town, but rather one that “will cease to exist.”23 By February 1989, a samizdat paper interviewed a small cast of self-reliant activists in Halle, who lamented the needless destruction of historic neighborhoods that might easily have been saved.24 Potsdam citizens at the time credited heedless demolitions to the fact that they were closed out of urban planning decisions. “The population is completely excluded from the ­decision-making process,” the paper observed in early 1989, adding that

T h e C i ty a s Sta g e i n R e vo lu t i o n     157

“affected citizens on Dortustraße only learned about the planned demolition of their houses through a random conversation at a kindergarten. An underling for a worker at city council ‘prattled.’ ” When bulldozers destroyed completely intact, sometimes even recently restored structures that stood under historic preservation, residents started protesting: not even façades were spared, as had been promised; the whole neighborhood had been transformed into “big cement blocks that defile” the urban character.25 In Jena, meanwhile, whole neighborhoods decayed into oblivion and by 1989 were considered unsalvageable, even though the town hosted one of East Germany’s most historic universities and the lucrative Karl Zeiss optical works.26 Particularly scandalous was Görlitz: a Renaissance gem all but untouched in the war, scheduled for almost total destruction in 1989. As a Görlitzer observed to the samizdat press, in 1988 alone 5,000 homes stood empty and 2,300 were slated to be destroyed. Exacerbating the loss of handworkers, she lamented, was their redeployment to Berlin; whereas Görlitz had been repaired by 260 roofers in 1946, only 26 remained. “Are our city fathers asleep?” she wondered when she looked upon her once-beautiful and now-doomed town. “We just can’t destroy the whole history of the city. We live in a time of perceivable disarmament, which has freed up money that could be used for reconstructing our cities and building an updated infrastructure. Our cultural heritage remained intact for many generations. Are we to be the ones who destroy everything for future generations?”27 Residents across East Germany justifiably panicked that their historic centers had reached the eleventh hour. In February 1989, a samizdat paper issued a “call for help” to all citizens of the DDR to stand in “solidarity” with Potsdam and other cities threatened by the tyranny of an SED wrecking ball.28 If something drastic did not happen soon to change how the Politburo did its urban planning, East Germans feared they would lose their history and inherit the depressing banality of ubiquitous Plattenbauten. “Historic preservation is architectural protection of the environment [baulicher Umweltschutz].”29 Wolfgang Hocquél’s declaration just after the revolution reaffirmed common knowledge across the devastated region: urban blight was inextricably combined with ecological damage. In particular, lignite mining, burning, and refining into products such as oil and plastic had ravaged Leipzig and the surrounding countryside. Although a comparatively small coal pit had been successfully transformed into the Kulkwitzer See recreational area by Grünau, photographs from the last years of the DDR reveal a moonscape of dusty pits immediately south of the city line. As far as the eye could see, this lifeless landscape stretched on, punctuated by the Espenhain power station and Leuna refinery beyond (fig. 34).

158    C h a pt e r

5

Figure 34.  Lignite strip mining immediately south of Leipzig, circa 1980s. Photograph by Jürgen Hanisch. ABL 028–001–012.

East Germany had few natural resources. Thanks to brown coal—one of the dirtiest fuel sources in the world—it sustained its oil supply through the 1970s embargo. But the motto “Brown coal at all costs” swallowed up medieval villages, poisoned waterways, and choked the city with enough dust that it was foolhardy to hang the laundry for extended durations outside. By the last decade of communism, rumors even circulated that Leipzig itself would be demolished to harvest a rich seam of lignite, a fate that had already struck the city of Most across the border in Czechoslovakia. There, too, a deeply historical cityscape had been abandoned for decades to runaway decay. Why repair anything, the Czech authorities had decided, when the whole population was to be transferred into a fresh Plattenbau city of tomorrow?30 Was it so hard to imagine that SED rulers were secretly plotting the same fate for Leipzig? What if Grünau was the future of Leipzig, and the city itself— purposefully abandoned to runaway decay—was destined for oblivion in a brown coal pit? Notwithstanding catastrophic cultural losses, the raw winnings could have been great: just a few years after the end of communism, excavations for the Petersbogen shopping center next to Leipzig city hall exposed “black gold” directly beneath the surface.31 Of course, local authorities sought to assuage any such anxieties. The 1988 city financial report went so far as to allege that “the ecological situation has stabilized itself in accordance with the circumstances of an industrial big city.”32 But for any resident,

T h e C i ty a s Sta g e i n R e vo lu t i o n     159

such “stabilization” apparently meant a withering biosphere, toxic air and water, and acid rain that blackened and chewed into the city’s already threatened architectural heritage. Akin to the closely related protests against urban decay, opposition to ecological devastation was diverse and not always openly hostile to the regime. Often it was expressed in jokes: “In the DDR, everything is gray—only the rivers are colorful.”33 Most Leipzigers maintained gardens and tried to preserve some modicum of green in their surroundings despite their urban dystopia. Already in 1970, a faithful communist campaigning to restore the Wildpark as a forested recreation area south of town submitted an official report which observed, “In calm weather, the solar penetration is considerably weakened by the ‘dust cloud’ over the city, especially in the important ultraviolet area. On a single square meter, fourteen to thirty-four grams of dust fall in thirty days.” The physical and psychological consequences, he warned, were staggering.34 The report was filed, and Ullrich used it as ammunition in his quest to restore the Wildpark. However, individuals who strayed too far from the system faced censure for their ecological activism. In 1986, a Leipzig theology student, already under Stasi observation for his ties with West German Protestants, was blocked in his attempt to create a Christian “agricultural and environmental” garden near Wittenberg. Denounced in Stasi reports as too active in “ecological and religious” problems, he was disciplined in his fourth-quarter studies at Leipzig’s Karl Marx University in 1986 and kept under observation.35 Recognizing that individuals were vulnerable on their own, in June 1988 Pastor Wonneberger decided to exert power in numbers with a “march on the Pleiße.” Even though Protestant authorities insisted that the church did not support the procession along one of Leipzig’s totally dead waterways, the lone pastor mustered up about eighty youth (including Uwe Schwabe from the squatter settlement at Mariannenstraße 46) after a flier campaign on May 30 (coincidentally the twentieth anniversary of the demolition of Leipzig’s University Church). A police van stood in silent vigil at two in the afternoon on June 5, as Wonneberger arrived on his bike and the gathering coalesced. A gray-haired informant eagerly snapped photos from his beige Wartburg; once he paused to change film, they marched past. For two hours, their “unapproved” march processed behind the provocative funerary banner “First Pleiße Memorial March [Gedenkumzug].” It ended with a picnic on the dam where the Pleiße met the equally dead Weiße Elster river.36 Spoofing the official Mach mit campaign of “voluntary work brigades to beautify cities and communities,” one of the young participants wore a sign around his neck: “Comrades—care for waterways! Mach mit!” Their chants also

160    C h a pt e r

5

lampooned articles in Neues Deutschland which claimed that the ecological situation had been addressed.37 All this intensifying unrest among nascent activists and accompanying public weariness with woeful living conditions formed a backdrop as the first, moderate phase of revolution unfolded for about a year before October 1989. As yet small and sparsely organized, activist circles such as Wonneberger’s Lukaskirche urged meaningful reform, rather than an end to socialism.38 Meanwhile, local functionaries like Opitz, Draber, and Fischer— who had sought to humanize socialism with Schwarzbauten and rhetoric of public involvement—tried to form a bridge between the typically aloof, dysfunctional, and repressive central organs in Berlin and popular discontent they could well understand and thought they could manage. Even as, by the fall of 1989, the revolution expanded to encompass broader public involvement, the growing sea of protesters remained a largely rational body capable of articulating longstanding grievances about corruption, travel restrictions, and damage to the ecological and urban environments.39 The peaceful “Monday Demonstrations” for which Leipzig became so famous had actually been happening since 1981. Early each November, Leipzig churches (which supported SED legitimacy in no small part because it granted relative freedom for religious pursuits) had hosted ten-day prayer events. Youth had marched with candles and prayed for world peace, while the Stasi had taken down names and stepped up their observations.40 Along with church guest books, samizdat publications became key sources for exchanging information. As crowds increased from dozens to hundreds in 1988, church visitor-book entries about demilitarization started to include outrage at the recent imprisonment of nonconformists and the ban on outside travel. Praying for salvation from Gorbachev, one commentator wrote: “When will the Soviet Union free us for the second time???” Directly below, someone scrawled “Super!”41 By September 1989, Monday Demonstrations were filling the courtyard by the Nikolaikirche, skirting the ruinous Alte Nikolaischule and the construction site for Dietmar Fischer’s prefab University Guesthouse (fig. 35). Twenty thousand demonstrated on October 2, 1989. Seventy thousand marched from the Nikolaikirche around Leipzig’s ring road on October 9: a decisive night when the police held back from exerting brutal force. To further defuse any escalation into violence, three civic leaders (including Gewandhaus conductor Kurt Masur) and three Bezirk functionaries joined forces as the “Leipzig Six,” and appealed for solidarity and peaceful dialogue. By late October, hundreds of thousands of people were swarming about the Nikolaikirche, Karl Marx Square, and ring road each Monday. Politicians and ordinary citizens spoke to the crowds with

T h e C i ty a s Sta g e i n R e vo lu t i o n     161

Figure 35.  “Monday Demonstration at the Leipzig Nikolaikirchhof, September 4, 1989: A gathering of people.” The Plattenbau University Guesthouse at Ritterstraße 12 was nearing completion behind the fence at the upper right-hand corner. Photograph by Armin Wiech. ABL 015–006–005.

megaphones. And forums between officials and concerned citizens recurred in the Academixer, Moritzbastei, and Gewandhaus. It was in this context of sudden openness—as the revolutionary mood was beginning to radicalize from reform to political transformation—that Ruth Geist-Reithmeier prioritized urban decay as the subject for East Germany’s first free documentary. Just days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dystopian footage in Can Leipzig Still Be Saved? unleashed a storm of furor across the DDR. In contrast to most of his peers in the city government, Fischer invited the filmmakers into his office in an attempt to explain to them what he wanted for the city, and why his best intentions had been impossible, given the constraints of the centralized system. During his interview, he was careful not to mention the 1988 competition results or any of the optimistic plans that draped his surrounding office walls. In his distinctive deadpan manner, he warned that the entire Plagwitz neighborhood must soon be torn down, and chronic decay elsewhere could only be overcome if residents themselves labored to save own their homes.42 This repeated his somber position in leading journals that economic realities mandated sweeping demolition of Kaiser-era neighborhoods.43 Before a live crowd of hundreds of residents in the November 5, 1989, debate “Leipzig: Trade Fair Metropolis or Provincial Backwater?,” Fischer again lamented that, “where the surroundings and living conditions are

162    C h a pt e r

5

so horrible, for example in Plagwitz, these areas—as hard as it may be for people living in these buildings to hear that they will only exist for a while longer—these areas must be gradually cleared away and put to other uses, for example industry.”44 In his genuine attempt to stand between public ire and regime failures, Fischer inadvertently drew much of the blame to himself. Professors, preservationists, students, and workers throughout the hall rejected further demolitions and demanded political change to save the city. For instance, after lamenting the widespread loss of architecture he remembered from before the war, an elderly resident (surely looking at Fischer on stage) concluded, “I don’t know who is responsible. Nobody will be called to task today, he will only be dismissed.” After strong applause and some laughter, the old man wondered why Vienna, Paris, and Munich (someone in the crowd called in “Warsaw”) had restored their historic centers, but not Leipzig.45 As a local historian warned, demolition of landmarks had damaged a sense of home and well-being [Sich-heimsch-Fühlen, Sich-Wohlfühlen] and increased the rate of flight to the West.46 After particularly biting critique from Wolfgang Hocquél, only Thomas Topfstedt was at all sympathetic. He advised that all decision makers should experience a crash course on Leipzig culture and history to give them a clue about what they were building or destroying, then asserted that a chief architect needed power to implement his plans, balanced of course with fulfilling democratic expectations by the public. He concluded, “Whoever is actually carrying responsibility, and indeed as an expert, also needs the necessary power to truly carry it out.”47 As the atmosphere at these meetings reveals, urban decay had not only stimulated public unrest: it was instilling a sense of urgency that was helping to radicalize the revolution as it became clear that local officials—however good their intentions—could not save what was left of Leipzig. After one hundred thousand people marched around the Ring on October 16, they felt empowered enough to steal the stage from officials—to much applause. As the SED rapidly found itself under siege, local functionaries like Fischer were the only ones still calling for dialogue. Bezirk chairman Opitz captured this quandary in a November 1 letter to state council chairman Willi Stoph, wherein he warned that dialogue was encouraging expressions of hatred for party leaders, rather than good will. Having long sought to fashion a sense of collaboration with the local populace by spearheading actions like the Bowlingtreff, he alerted the center that at this point these so-called dialogues, in which tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people took part, in no way help to calm the scene or situation. On the contrary: they churn up a wave of hate and fury against

T h e C i ty a s Sta g e i n R e vo lu t i o n     163

the functionaries who turn up there. If effective central decisions do not succeed in calming the situation, further escalation must be expected. At the same time, it must be mentioned that a considerable number of responsible functionaries will fall away; their nerves can no longer withstand these actions against the party and state against which they stand so powerless. He concluded with frustration that, “as soon as demands are fulfilled or answered, new ones are immediately raised which ultimately have a political character.”48 Opitz’s predictions were spot on. Five days later, protests prompted the Ministerial Council in Berlin to form a commission to address the catastrophic condition of the city. Having succeeded Bernd Seidel (who had stepped down on November 3), the provisional mayor Günther Hädrich (previously a Leipzig urban planning bureaucrat) sought to address the loss of public trust by embracing a narrative of Leipzig patriotism that would have been familiar to participants in the Bowlingtreff adventure two years before. At long last, he promised, Berlin would not benefit at Leipzig’s expense. “We demand that the government finally bring Leipzig into central decision-making as this city deserves,” he proclaimed. Practically plagiarizing the film Ist Leipzig noch zu retten?, he declared, “This city doesn’t need a little bandage, but surgical intervention.” But the crowd no longer cared about reforming SED rule. “First learn to work!” someone shouted at the end of the speech. This prompted the trembling mayor to beg the people to sustain a peaceful bearing.49 Even as officials absorbed blame for all that had gone wrong, ordinary citizens were stepping up to the microphone to give freewheeling manifestos about what had to change. As the local doctor Rolf Haupt declared (in agreement with preceding speeches), “we are one of the most neglected cities in our country” in no small part because Berlin received so much special aid. So incompetent had centralized planning proven to be, he concluded, “I want everyone with expertise to share in the new construction of our city in an architectural, cultural, and ecological manner; I do not want a new concept forced on us from Berlin. There have to be groups in this city that can prepare these decisions with expertise, understanding, and training.”50 After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a teenager named Fred spoke out on November 20, complaining that Leipzig had become a boring Plattenbau city with too many “demolition houses” and long lines at the few recreational possibilities like the Free German Youth club or Bowlingtreff. The way to get the youth off the streets, he professed, was to legalize squatting: youth should be given funds and materials (and not from the SED) to restore abandoned houses.51

164    C h a pt e r

5

When the new party secretary, Egon Krenz, visited Leipzig’s historic center on November 25, he was confronted by resident complaints about urban and environmental devastation that grilled the SED system.52 Socialism as it had been was no longer acceptable. As Julius F. professed at the Monday Demonstration on November 27, the system’s own embrace of illegal construction had driven down wages and so undermined its effectiveness. Formerly an engineer on the Bezirk planning commission (until he had been expelled from the party in 1973 on account of “difficulties in conforming”), he argued, “I myself am a construction manager on an after-hours work brigade, and I know what I’m talking about when I demand a revision of Lawbook 35 and the steady dismantling of after-hours labor. At last, this accursed trickery will end that is so hated by all who take part in it. No one in this country actually works after-hours for five marks per hour. I am for newly registering private building companies and drafting offices.” Particular scorn he reserved for the “idiotic” levels of taxation on construction workers. He concluded, “Lenin’s New Economic Policy has achieved a broad social differentiation. For forty years, we stood under the motto ‘No one is allowed to get rich’! Some people [got rich] anyway, but all [the rest] of us became poorer.” If only the building industry could be reformed, he argued, the economy would do better as well.53 All across the republic, Topfstedt recalls, this pattern of protest replicated itself. “Historically informed people wanted to contest, not just the decay of residential buildings, but also the decay of historic identity,” he asserts. “In Erfurt, Bautzen, Wittenberg, etc. there were protests, and churches were protected spaces. Decay in Halle was especially moving in an exhibition in the market church, similar to an exhibition in St. Michaelis in Erfurt.”54 A decade of scattershot preservation in Erfurt had rendered one of Germany’s most intact urban centers into a wholesale ruin; in December 1989, the population formed a human chain around the old town in a bid to save it.55 In Görlitz, the disintegration of communist power on November 11, 1989, coincided with a citizens’ initiative to demand “retention instead of demolition; modernization of existing structures, rather than new construction of prefab settlements.” In the space of a week in early 1990, activists collected twenty thousand signatures to preserve the city’s architectural legacy.56 The Wende came too late for towns and districts across the DDR like Gera or Merseburg or Leipzig’s Volkmarsdorf or Seebergviertel neighborhoods, which had lost broad swathes of their architectural identities in the last decade of communism. But thanks to citizens’ initiatives and timely aid from West Germany, countless historical ensembles survived which DDR planners and preservationists may not have been able to save.

T h e C i ty a s Sta g e i n R e vo lu t i o n     165

A Ruined Landmark Narrates the Revolution In all of Leipzig, the Alte Nikolaischule was perhaps the most precious monument on the brink of collapse, yet this was not for lack of trying by latecommunist politicians and planners. Situated directly opposite the heart of revolution in the Nikolaikirche, this decrepit landmark—and the ugly gap directly beside it at Nikolaistraße 6–10—offer a snapshot for how planning approaches and aesthetics evolved before, during, and after the revolution. Although as usual the Baukombinat and its allies had wanted to replace the entire corner with a cheap Plattenbau to fulfill housing quotas, late-­ communist planners campaigned hard to save the Alte Nikolaischule and integrate it into a neighboring prestige building at Nikolaistraße 6–10, whose final form would merge cutting-edge design with a restored sense of historical scale and character. The aesthetic outcome in the early 1990s was not so very unlike the ideal scenarios chief architect Fischer and his supporters had sought to realize in the late 1980s. However, transformed priorities in the budding capitalist economy meant that the new building would not contribute to solving a housing shortage: it hosted a tourist hotel, shopping passage, and (in the Alte Nikolaischule) cultural center that served as home base for the new Kulturstiftung (Leipzig Cultural Foundation)—the city’s first privately endowed institution after the revolution. The long process toward restoring this key landmark, which in and of itself possessed no ideological relevance, exhibits both the activism but also impotence of communist planners, the evolution of their plans away from prefab solutions, and continuities (even outright borrowing) from communist-era plans in postcommunist priorities and outcomes—even though postcommunist figures asserted that of course they were breaking with the past. In effect, the effort to save the Alte Nikolaischule encapsulated processes of urban ingenuity that unfolded both before and after the Wende to save the city as a whole. The Alte Nikolaischule, built in 1512, had been preserved as a ruin since the 1970s in no small part thanks to advocacy from the preservationist Hubert Maaß, preservation-minded BCA architects like Johannes Schulze, and especially Fischer.57 Having educated notable students including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Richard Wagner, Leipzig’s oldest school building (and one of its oldest pieces of secular architecture) had lost its original function and already needed renovation before the war. Then, in 1978, Karl Marx University abandoned the humble rectangular structure, because it lacked basic amenities like bathrooms and a serviceable stairwell. By then, planning officials were already classifying the Alte Nikolaischule as having decayed to the point of “ruinous condition.”58 Directly beside the festering landmark,

166    C h a pt e r

5

Nikolaistraße 6–10 had formed a weedy, rubble-strewn hole since its wartime bombardment (fig. 36). As the BCA complained in August 1987, “the current gap with the ruins of the former courtyard building Nikolaistraße 6, the damaged gables facing the street and misshapen fire walls and open view of the yard resulting from the war—these represent at present the worst eyesore in Leipzig.”59 As usual, the answer was Plattenbauten. Back in 1978, Chief Architect Horst Siegel had earmarked the site for a banal housing block, and by 1985 the city council had approved a plan that would have demolished the historic school to make way for forty-nine Plattenbau apartments. However, by May 1988, pressure from architects, preservationists, and citizens had convinced city council to stay the wrecking ball from the Alte Nikolaischule and ensure that the smaller Plattenbau set into the neighboring gap would emulate surrounding buildings as much as possible, including the Alte Nikolaischule, even though the ruin still languished without plans.60 Since taking office as chief architect in 1985, Fischer had tirelessly agitated against Baukombinat plans. Having intervened to retain the Alte Nikolaischule, he had called for a more decorative Plattenbau façade in the neighboring gap that blended in with its historic environs (fig. 37). In particular, Fischer had favored the creation of a passage (a trademark feature for the Leipzig historic center) that would run

Figure 36.  The gap at Nikolaistraße 6–10, exposing the ruinous back side of the Alte Nikolaischule, 1989. Photograph by Manfred Ulmer. ABL 008–001–028.

T h e C i ty a s Sta g e i n R e vo lu t i o n     167

Figure 37.  “Development Concept for the Leipzig City Center, Draft,” October 15, 1987. Images of Nikolaistraße 6–10 in 1928, 1981, and artist’s impression for 1987. Chief Architect Dietmar Fischer, BCA, SächStAL Bezirksleitung 907j.

perpendicular to Nikolaistraße through the new building and penetrate to Ritterstraße 7 on the other side of the block. Ritterstraße 7 was another ruin that Fischer’s team had hoped to restore with a replica of its historic façade. After the sudden success of the revolution, Fischer’s campaign to restore the Alte Nikolaischule and enhance the neighboring gap coincided with prevailing political sentiments. At the First People’s Building Conference in January 1990, a new Group Initiative of Leipzig Architects singled out Nikolaistraße 6–10 for its planned Plattenbau execution. Not only did they demand that the Baukombinat give up what had been its primary building methodology: they also questioned the overarching goal of filling the historic center with apartments. Thanks to a building permit and its apparent failure to notice the ongoing revolution, in December 1989 the Baukombinat had already been putting the first pylons in place for a future Plattenbau on the fresh foundation at Nikolaistraße 6–10. Jobs were at stake, after all, in a prefab housing industry that could not be retooled. It was a great irony: whereas local leaders had sidestepped Baukombinat priorities for years to build their Schwarzbauten, under the new regime the Baukombinat’s attempt to sustain business as usual meant that they were the ones engaged in illegal construction. Attempting to navigate this rapidly fluctuating state of affairs, in March 1990 Fischer withdrew the city’s December 1988 building permit, because “the façade configuration fails to denote the needs to be further developed at the site.” Such needs were, namely, designs that meshed well with a restored Alte Nikolaischule and a passage reaching to Ritterstraße 7.61 After the Baukombinat persisted in illegal work for two weeks, the mayor himself demanded an “immediate

168    C h a pt e r

5

stop to construction,” to be overseen personally by the head of the building staff.62 This essentially transformed the feud between Fischer and the Baukombinat into open war. The reconstruction of the Alte Nikolaischule and adjoining parcel narrate how architectural designs could continue almost seamlessly before and after the Wende. As one of its first major actions, in June 1990 the new Kulturstiftung took over as investor for the Alte Nikolaischule and ultimately redesigned it as its headquarters. As it evolved as the first private foundation registered after 1989 in Bezirk Leipzig, the Kulturstiftung also sought to configure the future structure to be built at Nikolaistraße 6–10 as a “perpetual lease” closely tied to the Alte Nikolaischule.63 After Leipzig and Frankfurt am Main entered into a treaty of cooperation on German Unification Day (October 3, 1990), assistance from Frankfurter Aufbau-AG and the city of Frankfurt on the order of 8.9 million marks proved essential to completing the site.64 Meanwhile, construction continued under a branch of the former Baukombinat (now the First Building Society). Thanks to Fischer, redevelopment of the gap at first unfolded according to plans developed by the Group Initiative of Leipzig Architects. This ensured that many of the same construction workers once again earned wages at the building site, and many of the same architects quickly produced a design for Nikolaistraße 6–10 that retained earlier plans to accommodate the differing height of each neighboring building; the biggest difference was a flashy gable over what was now a hotel entrance with large display windows.65 However, Fischer had made considerable enemies among former Plattenbau supporters, who wanted revenge for delays that included demolition of the partially completed ground floor they had executed by December 1989. On June 8, 1990, a group of seven architects led by the head of the city building office wrote a protest letter to Mayor Lehmann-Grube squarely blaming Fischer for their sense that “the situation on this endeavor has become indefensible and incomprehensible for all involved, and we have to fear a one-sided tendentious representation.”66 Fischer’s demand for a building freeze after the First People’s Building Conference had, in their view, lacked sufficient grounds. “More than questionable,” however, had been his choice in May 1990 to once more retract his support for the revised plans. “His approach to this individual case, shifting from position to position, has been common for us since he took over the office of chief architect, all due to his membership in the former SED party,” they complained. Alongside his apparently interchangeable communist-autocratic behaviors, the architects chose to “protest Fischer’s insinuation that we haven’t been sufficiently creative. This is also how he judged us in the relevant SED committees. We architects

T h e C i ty a s Sta g e i n R e vo lu t i o n     169

and construction workers, who are also Leipzig citizens, love Leipzig,” they concluded, warning the mayor that “as voters we expect from you and the city councilors that former, SED-affiliated leaders of the dissolved city council receive no leadership functions in the future city council. This includes Dr. Fischer as well, whose bearing (or better: his mistaken bearing) has endangered jobs and created confusion in these times that are so difficult for us.”67 Such dissention from within matched accusations from without. For instance, the West German Bauwelt editor Sebastian Redecke squarely blamed Fischer (whom he mistakenly presumed was head of Leipzig’s Baukombinat) for everything wrong with the city.68 Even as Fischer’s influence was slipping, his coveted Alte Nikolaischule won the highest possible priority for reconstruction. Work commenced in August 1990—without an architectural competition—to secure the roof on the collapsing edifice, initiating a restoration process that lasted until 1994. Alongside the funds from Frankfurt, financing came from 49 million DM the city received from the federal government for emergency construction efforts.69 In 1995, the completed structure (fig. 38) by the Kulturstiftung, the Hannover architects Storch & Ehlers, and the Leipzig architect Rüdiger Sundau won the Saxon Architectural Prize (for historic preservation) and the

Figure 38.  The completed ensemble: Nikolaistraße 6–10 with restored Alte Nikolaischule (side façade) to the right, 2018. Photograph by author.

170    C h a pt e r

5

Beton Architectural Prize (for the glass atrium stairway and support area behind the historic part of the building). By 1997, the Alte Nikolaischule even won honorable mention for the German Architectural Prize.70 Meanwhile, a flashy, Vegas-style postmodern “Strohsack passage” (complete with fan-shaped pillars that cited the neighboring Nikolaikirche) soon connected the new Nikolaistraße 6–10 with Ritterstraße 7, which was reconstructed from 1995 to 1997 with a Baroque façade reminiscent of its 1701 condition—an approach akin to what Leipzig’s Office of Architectural Art had ideally wanted on the eve of revolution. Through restoring and replicating the façade in front of twenty-seven one-room apartments by 1995, communist-era BCA architects had planned “to restore the architectural and spatial structure of this old-town quarter.”71 Some of these same architects were able to oversee completion of the project under the auspices of the postcommunist city planning office. As capitalist and private forces took over construction in the wild and stimulating months at the advent of democracy, the Alte Nikolaischule and neighboring gap testified to a new age whose means and expertise could execute and even exceed late-communist planning dreams. As Kulturstiftung chairman Friedrich Magirius reflected when the Alte Nikolaischule opened its doors in 1994, it had been unclear until recently whether Leipzig could be saved. It was a sign of progress, he concluded, that at least “the Alte Nikolaischule has been saved.”72

From Self-Initiative to Citizens’ Initiatives After years of self-initiative and months of expression in small forums and street protests, the sudden end of communist hegemony in November 1989 sounded the alarm to save the city. Immediately, a close circle of Leipzigers founded the Initiative to Save Leipzig and called for the First People’s Building Conference on January 6–7, 1990. Heinz-Jürgen Böhme’s poster montage for the conference captured the sense of overwhelming urgency: two masked figures in white paper suits struck the bells atop Leipzig’s prominent Kroch tower with sticks, signaling an emergency situation. This was “not a call of despair, but rather a call for constructive change,” Leipzig economics professor Peter Heldt declared in his opening comments, concluding, “This conference should build up, not destroy.”73 After masses of East Germans had proclaimed “we are the Volk” in the streets of the “East German Hero City,” the First People’s Building Conference attracted over one thousand engaged citizens to the AGRA agricultural exhibition hall south of town. Here the “Volk,” excluded from power in the “people’s democracy,” took part in

T h e C i ty a s Sta g e i n R e vo lu t i o n     171

democratic brainstorming sessions about how to save their city. Those who pushed for significant change came from diverse walks of life: some of them were renegade architects and preservationists already parting with the old regime; others were neighborhood activists now coming into their own. As Topfstedt recalls, the First People’s Building Conference brimmed over with heady enthusiasm that at last people had “a free space for completely free discussion.”74 As Arnold Bartetzky notes, “in this period of a few months, a politics of urban planning that rested on the direct rule of the Volk actually seemed possible.”75 For a fleeting moment, it truly looked like engaged citizens—rather than party leaders or capitalist speculators—would sculpt the future of their city. Of course, subsequent invasion by Western investors meant that there never was a Second People’s Building Conference. Yet this brief intermediary moment of flux allowed local elites and engaged citizens to consolidate coherent statements for how they dreamed of building a better city out of the ruins. At the tipping point before the new system had arrived and the old one had fully passed away, the conference posed a devastating question—whether Leipzig could be saved. As Sebastian Redecke observed in a 1990 article poignantly titled “Trauer um Leipzig” (Mourning for Leipzig), the First People’s Building Conference and subsequent exposure to the city had opened his eyes to a “catastrophe of unimaginable scale.” Thanks to their “thoughtless demolition of valuable architectural substance and rigid insistence on huge Plattenbau construction that destroys the city,” he averred, architects and planners (who had granted him access to their files) “shared guilt for the murder of this cultural city. Nonetheless, Leipzig can still be saved and must be saved!”76 And indeed—notwithstanding the moribund state of the city—conference participants expressed remarkably proactive proposals for how the city would be saved through addressing (1) faulty power relations and (2) faulty aesthetics. To correct unbalanced power relations, two consensuses emerged, overlapped, and sometimes vied for dominance: first, local planners should have greater autonomy from central authorities; and second, local planners should be open to informed advice from engaged citizens. Harkening to anti-Berlin rhetoric, local architects insisted that the key to democratic planning was liberty from centralized proscriptions and better access to scarce resources; usually, this implied that, although they would consent to listen to public feelings, they as professionals knew best. In assigning blame for catastrophic decay, the architectural theorist Harry Schilka assailed “four decades of party-driven self-satisfaction with ideological narrowmindedness and state-organized centralized-bureaucratic incompetence.”77 The simultaneous publication of the

172    C h a pt e r

5

1988 competition results in Architektur der DDR featured a preface that “the Leipzig slogan ‘We are the Volk’ must also be respected and realized in urban planning,” meaning that publication of the suppressed 1988 competition results “should inform public discussion by responsible citizens and simultaneously serve as a plea for free architectural creativity in our land. Neither can be done without any longer.”78 As the BCA architect Johannes Schulze declared to his fellow conference participants, Leipzig should embrace its new political and economic possibilities to apply the results of the 1988 competition. This was not to be an imposition of elite plans, he argued; rather, “every citizen has the right to give his opinion about the development of his city, and this is to set the preconditions.”79 So edgy less than two years before, however, the 1988 competition results were suddenly a wistful bid by the urban planning old guard at the start of 1990. When communist-era planners—recently so revolutionary in their rejection of faceless high modernism—sought to defend their accomplishments and push their plans as somehow democratic, it elicited old rancor. After taking such flak for his sober prescriptions about inevitable demolitions in the film Ist Leipzig noch zu retten?, Fischer had no patience with the advice he kept receiving in letters from citizens. The cold reality, he asserted, was that most of the city was too decrepit to be saved. Plattenbau construction, he still believed, should be creatively advanced until an alternative could be found. And German reunification would not offer an easy fix for Leipzig’s problems. “Fleeting promises of quick happiness, new euphoria: these would be new lies that would collapse tomorrow,” he predicted, adding, “What we need is patience, courage, and farsightedness.”80 Such direction, a leading official from Leipzig’s Bezirk building office observed, had to come from local planners, whose experience uniquely positioned them to find the best way forward. Notwithstanding the devastating diversion of resources to Berlin, he boasted, local planners had already been doing what they could to save the city by constructing nearly eighty thousand new prefab apartments since 1971. Regrettably, the roughly half of the city that still consisted of historic architecture was in ruinous condition, and he observed with typical rigidity, “This architectural substance has a highly uneven architectural and material value. Not all of it can or must be saved.”81 From Berlin, the Hans Modrow regime’s new building minister, Gerhard Baumgärtel, promised to assist in further demolitions and prefab construction by sending a handful of bulldozers, trucks, and cranes from Berlin, as well as the appropriate building materials (fig. 39).82 Baumgärtel’s speech elicited boos from the crowd. After years of planning failures, engaged citizens were skeptical about egalitarianism from on high,

T h e C i ty a s Sta g e i n R e vo lu t i o n     173

Figure 39.  The First People’s Building Conference: speech by Gerhard Baumgärtel, January 6, 1990. Jürgen Böhme’s poster montage for the conference features on the podium. Photograph by Bernd Heinze. ABL 006–035–070.

not to mention further demolitions and Plattenbauten. Observing the conference as a West German reporter, Redecke noted that Baumgärtel’s speech immediately convinced spectators that the “catastrophe unfolding before everyone’s eyes” would go on as before, “undisturbed in the thinking of the old centralized distribution machine.”83 When West Berlin’s building minister Wolfgang Nagel repeated his mantra to participants that “Democracy is in charge of building [Demokratie als Bauherr],”84 most of those present chose to take his sentiment to the widest extent possible. As a group led by engineer Jürgen Löber summarized at the end of the conference, saving Leipzig would demand “a comprehensive democratic collaboration of all citizens, a comprehensive dialogue between citizens and representatives at the communal and higher levels.” All urban plans had to involve “a plebiscite from residents.”85 Bernd Sikora, an independent architect and founder of numerous citizens’ initiatives, fully agreed that “it is a false path when politicians, urban planners, and architects only inform and question the population after they have already developed their ideas.” Attacking Fischer’s apparent weariness with public opinion, he asserted that a new politics of planning had to imply the “ability to accept critique.”86 In this spirit, Bowlingtreff architect Winfried Sziegoleit had already joined with other Leipzig architects in leaving the

174    C h a pt e r

5

“speechless” League of German Architects with its centralized bureaucratic tangles, and forming the Initiative of Leipzig Architects in November 1989. This tightknit coalition emphasized ecological protection and collaborative planning approaches at the local level.87 Paucity of democracy in planning was repeatedly alleged to have impoverished the urban outcome. Lambasting prefab construction as a physical token of failed centralized planning, the independent architect and ecology activist Angelika Wandelt joined Sziegoleit in arguing, Now as ever housing construction remains concentrated in the inflexible style of the Baukombinat Plattenbau methodology, which constructs unchangeable cement boxes (Products). Prefab panel factories have been built and continue to produce. Buildings are not drafted for specific sites; rather, one frees up city districts for the Product. Thus, the manufacturing process has become more important than the planning process. This sort of urban planning politics was upheld before now as political dogma and made itself self-evident. Alternative methods were destined in advance for failure through price manipulation. This centralized rationalization, she concluded, had produced “barbaric outcomes in our organic urban structure,” such as in Volkmarsdorf, Thonberg, and now Connewitz. It was an unyielding mechanism of destruction from national and local leaders that had “compelled us as architects and citizens to take up initiatives for our city.”88 With this meld of paternalism and Plattenbau in mind, medical doctor Helmut Hartmann specifically attacked Fischer’s assertion in Ist Leipzig noch zu retten? that all of Plagwitz was rotten and had to be demolished after 1990. Leipzig’s western industrial region was in fact so valuable, he argued, that it should be given historic preservation status as a “systematically designed Kaiser-era industrial suburb.” He dreamed of restoring the disgusting open industrial sewer that snaked through the district under thirteen bridges into a recreational canal for boating, lined by gentrified factories, warehouses, and historicist neighborhoods.89 Although not a few planners present at the conference may have smirked at Hartmann’s vision as yet another castle in the air, today a boat ride along the Heine Canal in Plagwitz is a major tourist attraction, considerable wildlife has returned to the waterway’s ecosystem, and the surrounding district has become so desirable that, alongside restored warehouse lofts, a housing boom is underway. In terms of aesthetics, today’s mix of old and new in Plagwitz would have delighted participants at the First People’s Building Conference. Despite disagreements over the particulars, almost everyone agreed that the “saved city” had to embrace a healthy mix of modernism and history amid

T h e C i ty a s Sta g e i n R e vo lu t i o n     175

a restored biosphere. Over and over, participants concurred that the city suffered decay on a scale that surpassed the destruction of World War II, and they generally attacked ongoing demolitions (such as in Connewitz) and proposed Plattenbau construction (such as behind the Alte Nikolaischule). As Harry Schilka proclaimed, roof repairs had to commence at once on old buildings to “stop the encroachment of monotone modern complexes on the city!”90 By the end of the conference, Heldt observed, everyone seemed to “want to prevent further architectural abominations [Mißbauten] that destroy our city and extinguish the ability of citizens to identify with it. Filled with pain, I’m thinking about the Messeamt building on the market, the Interpelz building on the Nikolaistraße, Saxon Square, and so on.” Ongoing prefab invasion along such formerly intact historic neighborhood thoroughfares as Seeburgstraße or Leninstraße (soon to be Prager Straße) terrified participants, and prompted calls for repair rather than demolition. This was not a rejection of all new construction, but a fiery excoriation of heedless street-wide demolitions. “As a priority,” Heldt concluded, “new apartments have to be constructed in such a way that the people of our city appropriate them, identify with them, and don’t just relate to them anonymously.” Rather than alien dullness, “people have to be proud of these new buildings and not ashamed of them.”91 Although he opposed Fischer’s apparent distaste for public input, Sikora and his colleagues advocated for the chief architect’s longstanding aesthetic ideal. Rejecting a purely prefab approach or the “Heimattümelei” of obsessively preserving everything, Sikora urged for an approach that “seeks a sensible form derived from the living urban organism and from a dialogue between existing structures and a further development oriented toward the future.”92 Despite many lapses, this aesthetic ideal remained the driving force as local politicians, planners, and residents strove to save their city.

Architectural Activism after Thermidor Every revolution has its Thermidor. Perhaps German reunification on October 3, 1990, and conquest by capitalist forces stole some of Leipzig residents’ fire about saving their built environment, as control passed more solidly into the hands of new elites. In his nostalgia for the vibrant synergy at the First People’s Building Conference, Thomas Topfstedt laments that afterward “the whole revolutionary potential fizzled out. After 1989, concerns turned to unemployment rather than historic preservation, although there was still always a hard core” of support.93 Certainly, a frenzy of capitalist investment swept the city, and a wide range of prewar and communist-era monuments

176    C h a pt e r

5

fell prey to the wrecking ball. In this disorienting tumult, the spirit of collaboration between the populace and urban planning elites could not sustain the intensity it had enjoyed in the heady atmosphere of revolution. Nonetheless, engaged citizens invigorated by the First People’s Building Conference worked hard through the coming decades to realize its revolutionary potential in their actions to save the city. Anticipating and then building upon proclamations from the First People’s Building Conference, urban ingenuity through the last decade of communism transitioned seamlessly into campaigns to save neighborhoods in early democracy and capitalism. “Whether or not Leipzig can still be saved depends above all on the extent to which the architecturally valuable turn-of-the-century residential districts are successfully preserved,” Hocquél mused shortly after the First People’s Building Conference, “since even more than the historic center, it is precisely these [districts] that determine the specific image of our city.”94 Already before the revolution—in July 1989—the badly decaying Waldstraßenviertel villa district had become home to Leipzig’s first major organized citizens’ initiative. Back in 1988, residents had learned of plans to convert the whole area into Plattenbauten. Under direction from five initiators including Thomas Topfstedt and with the consent of city hall, the Kulturprojekt Waldstraßenviertel was formed as a means to get Leipzigers to share ideas about how to save a historic district. Presuming that the population was suffering from years of indifference and lack of initiative after communism, the Kulturprojekt meant to fire up residents to save their surroundings. “Politics from ‘above’ has been shown to be unworthy of belief,” the project’s manifesto read. “The citizens are disillusioned. A positive vibe can only be created for Leipzig residents through directly perceivable changes.” Hence, as “the most substantially valuable and historically meaningful neighborhood in Leipzig,” the Waldstraßenviertel was to serve as an example through which renovation, small-scale gap filling, and incentives for cultural, commercial, and leisure facilities would restore a dilapidated district into a sign for the future.95 On August 23, 1989, Neues Deutschland reported that by 1995 Fischer intended to give the Waldstraßenviertel (along with two other intact but decayed neighborhoods) a prefab makeover akin to the Volkmarsdorf area around Wonneberger’s revolutionary Lukaskirche. Even though in such districts much of the historical architecture “had to go on account of its poor structural condition,” Neues Deutschland reassured its readers, city planners wanted to make certain “that many residents engage with and feel shared responsibility for the appearance of their new residential district.”96 On September 1, 1989, the Kulturprojekt initiators gave party leaders a tour of their

T h e C i ty a s Sta g e i n R e vo lu t i o n     177

district to convince them to stay the wrecking ball. Amid revolutionary crescendo on October 7 and 14, residents engaged in volunteer efforts to clean up the streets and neighboring river. On January 15, 1990, initiators sought help from architects in Hannover to save particularly threatened landmarks, such as the historicist icon Deutscher Hof. Inspired by the democratic mood at the First People’s Building Conference, in early 1990 residents of the Waldstraßenviertel were integrated for the first time into discussions about the future of their district. Meanwhile, the stimulating atmosphere of the First People’s Building Conference prompted fourteen intellectuals, artists, scholars, and ministers to gather at Leipzig’s Café Coffebaum on January 26, 1990, and establish the Kulturstiftung. As chairman Friedrich Magirius reminisced in 1994, the Kulturstiftung dedicated itself to redressing the “cultural decay of the city, and to intervene to retain and reinvigorate the city’s historical appearance.”97 In its campaigns for historic preservation, environmental protection, and cultural life, it took over editorship of the nearly decade-old biannual cultural journal Leipziger Blätter and seized the initiative to restore the Alte Nikolaischule. After collecting 27,000 DM from its initial supporters, Kurt Masur, one of the Kulturstiftung founders, raised 500,000 DM from a benefit concert he directed in Frankfurt am Main a few months later.98 After German reunification, assistance flowed in for historic preservation: a reversal after years of sending money, material, and labor away to Berlin. As the preservationist and Kulturstiftung advocate Wolfgang Hocquél recalls, “after the Wende, there were new possibilities. Many buildings were reprivatized, and we received an unbelievable quantity of funding from various places.”99 Finally, from the time of its founding at a café in Connewitz on February 21, 1991, the Pro-Leipzig initiative stimulated public consciousness about historic preservation across the city with its appeal that “the future development of Leipzig can only succeed from a city [aware of] its own centuries-old identity.”100 In its first twenty-five years, it printed three hundred publications, developed numerous exhibitions, guided regional development projects (such as the creation of bicycle and hiking paths), sponsored protests against demolitions, and supported student research projects. Of particular importance was the exhibition that nascent Pro-Leipzig leaders sponsored in the Messehaus am Markt in November 1990, which successfully perpetuated some of the spirit of civic engagement begun at the First People’s Building Conference. Self-reliance and initiative thus came into the open as officially supported aspects of civic life. Through the decades after the 1989 revolution, engaged

178    C h a pt e r

5

Leipzigers showed profound energy and ingenuity as they strove to build their longstanding dreams into a better future. Already in 1992—less than three years after the Klartext film had asked “Can Leipzig still be saved?”— Hocquél celebrated that “the first hope has returned. The prospects for this city’s revival are favorable, renewal of the city is visibly underway.” Indeed, he concluded, “I dare to forecast that Leipzig will again belong to the most attractive Central European big cities in the year 2005.”101 In so many respects, he was proven right.

Epilogue Continuities in “the Saved City”

On April 9, 1990, East German building minister Wolfgang Junker killed himself in despair. Since 1963, the sparsely educated apparatchik had steered the centralized Ministerium für Bauwesen on an inflexible course that had funneled resources into the capital, doomed historic cities across the republic to runaway decay, propagated identical housing blocks everywhere, and prompted local political and planning elites to launch so many Schwarzbauten and vain planning escapades that the public had wondered if anyone was really at the helm. In the film Ist Leipzig noch zu retten?, construction workers detested Junker as an aloof bureaucrat, out of touch with the desperate state of affairs in East Germany’s second-largest city. “If he’s only driving his car through Leipzig to the trade fair one or two times a year and then back to Berlin,” one of them stammered at the camera, “then he doesn’t have a clue.” Another seethed, “Our construction workers haven’t seen our [building] minister for years.”1 In a cameo at city hall, Junker evinced such indolence and indifference during his interview with filmmakers that he struggled not to slide out of his chair. Immediately upon his return to ­Berlin—at the very same October 18 Central Committee meeting where Erich Honecker handed over power as general secretary to Egon Krenz—Junker protested to his SED colleagues: “But on television, in the broadcast up there, sure, the city falls into ruin, which just isn’t true, it’s just parts of the city. There

179

180    Ep i lo g u e

I’m represented as an idiot. What’s all that about? If I’m an idiot, the Party has to decide it.”2 As at last the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, Junker admitted that it had been “a mistake” to require “Bezirke to engage in such intense and prolonged building efforts in Berlin,” since the resulting decay across the republic’s leading cities had led to unrest.3 Shortly thereafter, he was finally ousted, charged with misuse of power, and took his own life in jail, a broken man. Junker embodied the overcentralized system that had destroyed East German cities. In 1995, the longtime Bauakademie authority Joachim Tesch tried to rehabilitate his ill-fated colleague in the old SED newspaper Neues Deutschland as a “tragic” figure. “The following memories are painful,” Tesch recounted; “he never succeeded—despite his growing personal reputation— to break free of challenges in DDR planning and in himself.” Although the ex–building minister had yearned “with an honest heart to achieve the impossible” and “with the highest personal involvement desired the best” for East German urban planning, he had perished as a scapegoat who had lacked the strength to transition to the new system.4 This romantic reframing did hold a single grain of truth. Although plenty of former party officials, such as Dietmar Fischer or Theo Ullrich, might have questioned Tesch’s ostalgic ruminations about the halcyon age of Wolfgang Junker, they would have agreed that a great many personal biographies had sputtered out when revolution smashed “democratic centralism.” For Junker, 1989 had been the end of history. While they saw no reason to end their own lives, some of his SED colleagues had ended their careers. The city finance chief Liesel Schön claims that Leipzig’s new mayor Hinrich ­Lehmann-Grube (whom she had met shortly before when he was Oberstadtdirektor in Leipzig’s sister city Hannover) had wanted her to stay on the job, but she had chosen retirement instead. Traumatized by her sudden loss of powers in June 1990 and winded by considerable public antipathy toward her years of service, she withdrew from public life just before her sixtieth birthday.5 Nonetheless, for a great many local officials, professionals, and activists, it was hardly a great loss to shrug off the old system and take advantage of the new one. For years, they had worked around the centralized bureaucracy to get anything done; why not continue without it? Key cogs from the old system whirred into action to thrive in the new one. Tapping fresh sources of investment and material, their lives went on and even became more interesting, if not enjoyable. There was, after all, a city to save. In carrying this story into the postcommunist period, I wish to conclude by illustrating how continuities in urban planning biographies and ambitions contributed to transform Leipzig into what Arnold Bartetzky has termed

Co n t i n u i t i es i n “ t h e Sav e d C i ty ”     181

“the saved city.”6 As Thomas Hoscislawski argues, “the DDR certainly represents a self-contained historical epoch with a temporally clear beginning and end. However, over the course of both changes in system there existed continuities in institution and personnel, which were also reflected in urban planning conceptions.”7 For instance, plans to build a rail tunnel under the old town between the main train station and Bavarian station had originated decades before the Nazis took power, recurred throughout the communist period, and were finally executed in the new millennium. Architects who had planned in previous epochs deeply influenced what came after. Hence, the prevailing opinion of Dietmar Fischer and his colleagues in the 1980s— that modernist advances had to respect and combine with historical scale and style—helped to determine much of the architectural outcome after 1989. Although the 1988 competition vanished from memory, its overall gist profoundly influenced postcommunist planning.8 Restoration of the prewar street plan, rescue of historic architecture, synthesis between tradition and modernism, and clearance of high-modernist eyesores—these approaches crafted Leipzig into “the saved city,” not just because they were global trends in urban planning, but also because Fischer and colleagues from all levels of local administration sustained influence in private and even official offices. At the grassroots level, meanwhile, self-reliance and initiative under the old system deeply influenced how active citizens took on the new. As will be shown, capitalist Westerners infused Leipzig with wealth and ideas that deeply influenced how it was saved; but reconstruction after reunification must be understood as a collaborative effort, in which “Ossies” at all levels applied previous experience of exploiting informal connections, scarce resources, and luck to survive, mobilize, and innovate under the new system. In effect, although many former East German residents failed to adapt under capitalism, some took the initiative, as they had under communism, and achieved feats of urban ingenuity with roots in some of their wildest dreams. Of course, ruptures were sweeping. By unification day, Plattenbau factories were closing, most of the broad-scale demolitions were cancelled, and Western investors introduced previously unfathomable stores of funding into the dying city. A gleaming glass-and-steel trade-fair complex popped out of virgin land off a distant highway exit on the way to Halle; after centuries of hosting trade fairs in its historic center, Leipzig’s old town and even its sprawling fairground between the Battle of Nations monument and “tradefair thoroughfare” (Messemagistrale) Straße des 18. Oktober were bereft of their fundamental historic purpose. As the old fairground decayed into an eclectic array of shopping centers amid weedy lots and abandoned shells, the old town’s gaps and empty trade-fair halls filled with offices and department

182    Ep i lo g u e

stores. Particularly devastating for Leipzig was the elimination of much of its industry, which prompted the abandonment of whole quarters like Plagwitz that the BCA had already slated for demolition, as well as an exodus of talented young people to the West. Newly arrived West German planners nonetheless recognized the potential in Leipzig’s faded historic architecture—still extant to a greater degree than in Western cities like Frankfurt am Main or Mannheim—and salvaged disintegrating monuments that Fischer and his allies had at least preserved from destruction. Such preexisting sensitivity for historic East German streetscapes was evident, for instance, in the West German art historian Klaus von Beyme’s 1987 prediction that timely intervention might yet turn years of neglect in East German old towns into an advantage: “Those older structures which survived the stormy early years of socialist reconstruction have good chances to continue to survive, for the benefit of the cityscapes of the DDR.”9 Indeed, since the early 1980s, the Leipzig art historian Thomas Topfstedt had been meeting with West German colleagues like von Beyme to exchange ideas about how to evaluate postwar architecture and possibly integrate it aesthetically and historically into the surrounding older cityscape—a transborder conversation that expanded considerably with the Wende.10 On April 23, 1990, Fischer built on his own pre-1989 West German connections and guided twenty-five architects from Leipzig’s sister cities Hannover and Frankfurt through devastated neighborhoods, spurring an exchange of ideas at an urban planning seminar on April 25.11 In 1990, the former Hannover Oberstadtdirektor Hinrich Lehmann-Grube became a stabilizing influence as Leipzig’s first post-Wende mayor, as Hannover itself continued to support Leipzig with financial aid and assistance in restructuring its bureaucracy. At the same time, the Mannheim planner Niels Gormsen became director of Leipzig’s new city planning offices with a program to halt demolitions and urge “where possible to retain, renew, and restore.”12 Whatever local officials intended, however, their influence was often outstripped by speculators and showmen who bought up and remade significant portions of Leipzig to suit their personal ambitions—sometimes in ways that destroyed urban monuments and sometimes in ways that restored them. Massive inflows of funds and material from capitalist investors as well as philanthropy from West German citizens and the federal government brought urgent repairs to historic monuments and historicist housing across the city. Of particular importance was the restoration of turn-of-the-century masterpieces whose connection to the city’s heyday made them landmarks for local identity, including the main train station, Battle of Nations monument, new city hall, and many passages that included Auerbachs Keller,

Co n t i n u i t i es i n “ t h e Sav e d C i ty ”     183

famous from Goethe’s Faust, beneath the Mädler Passage. As a West German reporter observed in 1993, “wherever sweeping demolitions, Plattenbau, and socialist laziness haven’t damaged cities of the ex-DDR, numerous historical urban structures and streetscapes remain intact where West German urban planners can let their dreams fly.”13 In this context, illegal construction could still play a major role. The gentrification escapades of the Frankfurt financier Jürgen Schneider yielded breathtaking restoration of Leipzig landmarks like the Mädler Passage and Barthels Hof, and was followed by a notorious billion-mark bankruptcy. While Schneider sat in jail, local resentment of the failed Western capitalist mixed with gratitude, for without his shady dealings, a great deal of the historic city might have been lost. Even as “Wessies” stormed into Leipzig, some Ossies navigated the changing political and economic waters to their advantage and realized some of their longstanding “dreams in the ruins”; the end of East Germany thus did not end the relevance of preceding players or their plans. As human beings each with their own prehistories, they perpetuated approaches they had practiced under the old system and, with luck and stamina, proved flexible enough to prosper under the new circumstances. Although Dietmar Fischer left the BCA in November 1990 because of pressures from old adversaries such as the former Baukombinat or new players like the incoming planning chief Niels Gormsen, venerable BCA planners like Johannes Schulze retained their positions and influence for some years to come, while young members such as Heike Scheller continued for decades as integral members of the new city planning staff at city hall. Employed at the BCA since 1983, Scheller recalls that planners could decide for themselves whether to keep their posts and transition from communism to capitalism.14 Such continuity was furthered in 1990, when the first freely elected city assembly chose to apply the 1987 plan as a basis for further development. Those who swore off politics or otherwise left their posts also used possibilities under the new system to realize some of their life objectives. Dietmar Fischer’s aesthetic manifesto in his dissertation and six-year tenure as chief architect translated into his manifold activities in private practice, where he applied capitalist mechanisms to attain historic-modern fusions in once-­ decayed landmarks near city hall itself.15 The Bowlingtreff architect Winfried Sziegoleit founded a private firm with his fellow BCA architect Eberhard Göschel, and gutted ground floors of the high-modernist ensemble on Saxon Square for capitalist investors.16 Meanwhile, having briefly ascended to head the DDR Finance Ministry for the Modrow government in December 1989, Leipzig’s former Bezirk finance chief Uta Nickel had the sudden epiphany: “You won’t remain in Berlin. You know Leipzig. You know the city from

184    Ep i lo g u e

previous work.” And at age fifty, she took up a private practice to begin networking with capitalist investors and finance enormous projects on the urban fringe such as the Paunsdorf Zentrum, Leipzig’s first shopping mall, which she ensured was accompanied by rows of public offices to house the district police and state archive, among others. As she recalls, “the city planners could entrust themselves to me one hundred percent. My knowledge from DDR times at the finance ministry showed me when something was too expensive; this they recognized.”17 The Bezirk preservationist and Office of Architectural Art director Wolfgang Hocquél, meanwhile, transitioned smoothly into leading the charge to save the city’s architecture through the new possibilities of Western aid and capitalist investment. Already in March 1989, Hocquél had sought to improve coordination between the BCA, Bezirk cultural officials, and the Institut für Denkmalpflege in Dresden.18 The Initiative to Save Leipzig he helped to found in late 1989 instigated the January 1990 First People’s Building Conference. He also played a leading role in creating the Kulturstiftung, which in its first, enduring contribution directed the restoration of the Alte Nikolaischule. Continuous in his interest to save the architectural heritage, Hocquél had solidly turned on the regime that had once employed him to embrace what came next. As he recalls, “I was not active in the opposition, although as a preservationist you got involved. It was an opposition by specialists [Fachlicher Widerstand].”19 As in most contexts around the world, historic preservationists got patriotic to save buildings; patriotism which served other goals they typically left to someone else. At the grassroots level, a Leipziger promised in the film Ist Leipzig noch zu retten? that “there certainly won’t be a lack of readiness” to save the city. In the sequel released just two weeks later, Wie ist Leipzig noch zu retten? (How Can Leipzig Still Be Saved?), a broad spectrum of actors from below applied survival skills learned under communism to save the city. Given the vast areas slated for demolition, Schwarzwohnen and accompanying creative approaches to repairs expanded in earnest. “Everyone has to do what he can,” a young resident observed, after she and her husband had put in hours of amateur free labor to fix up their apartment.20 When two young men moved into an abandoned apartment in western Leipzig in early 1990, they invested 7,000 marks on electricians, plumbers, and bricklayers to put in new windows, a makeshift bathroom, and heating. They even paid rent to the state housing authority (GWL). When told the apartment had been meant for a young mother with her child, they wrote a petition to local authorities incredulous that the state would have put a young mother in such a house. Housing authorities intervened and, after the two men had paid their 500mark penalty, they were allowed to stay.21

Co n t i n u i t i es i n “ t h e Sav e d C i ty ”     185

Other residents took the initiative by securing private property. Even as the GWL prepared to expropriate Renate Donath’s family home in eastern Leipzig, she was able to launch legal proceedings to secure it in her name, and made use of the sudden availability of materials to launch a thorough renovation so that she could start renting out rooms.22 Finally, personalities like Wieland Zumpe kept up their tactic of mailing in petitions—now to private landlords and their administrative companies, rather than party elites and the housing collective. Thanks to free speech, Zumpe publicized his vision for the neighborhood in as many forums and platforms as he wished.23 But capitalist investment (rather than his letters) proved to be the guiding force toward gentrifying his home at Beethovenstraße 8. After spinning his wheels on a local citizens’ initiative, he moved out and funneled his considerable energies into other projects, such as helping to found Pro-Leipzig and joining the new Paulinerverein to push for a historic replica of the dynamited University Church.24 Despite substantial goodwill from both local and Western players, not all continuities saved the city’s architectural heritage. As Birk Engmann observes, notwithstanding rhetoric about democracy, Leipzig’s public still had little influence to stop demolitions—now executed by local leaders hungry for capitalist investment.25 Particularly damaging was a widening project on the Prager Straße—already planned in 1988—that eliminated the entire southern side of the street to create a four-lane highway with streetcar track in the median. Projected and actually commenced at the end of communism when it was still the Leninstraße, prefab block apartments were still under construction in the area in 1991 and only completed in December 1993.26 It thus reads as ideologically suspect when the West German Bauwelt correspondent Sebastian Redecke assailed the decimation of the Leninstraße as a typically socialist blunder.27 This devastation of the intact Thonberg neighborhood and Prager Straße continued through the first years after reunification despite protest from activist groups such as Pro-Leipzig (fig. 40). The 1990s also sustained an earlier DDR tradition of gutting dilapidated structures. For instance, Specks Hof only retained its classic passages and staircases through intervention from citizens and preservationists; the rest of the interior was wiped away.28 Such painted-façade planning prompted the formation of a Pro-Leipzig initiative in 1996 to protest street widening such as the Prager Straße and campaign against further gutting and demolition of Renaissance, Baroque, and Kaiser-era buildings in favor of faceless new structures that served capitalist objectives. Given this at times hollowed-out result, “the saved city” has come up short against many of the dreams that late-communist architects had stored up

186    Ep i lo g u e

Figure 40.  Ongoing Plattenbau construction, Leipzig-Thonberg, 1990. Photograph by and courtesy of Renate Donath.

for a better future. Today’s city is largely shaped by uncoordinated capitalist investors usually interested in high returns rather than honoring local architectural history. As Leipzig’s city planning chief Niels Gormsen observed in 1993, “it’s enough to make you despair. Here in the East, the capitalists are behaving precisely as the communists told the people for forty years that capitalists would behave.”29 The days of the grand citywide schema like the 1987 building plan and 1988 competition results (which could also overlook private property) have passed away, perhaps forever. Where late-communist architects had planned to reconstruct the Renaissance-era Deutrichs Hof (needlessly dynamited in 1968) in conjunction with a passage system, private investors wrought the Deutrichs Hof Parking Lot. Where participants in the 1988 competition had pondered filling the yawning socialist-modern void of Saxon Square with a stylized postmodern trade-fair passage system, piecemeal planning gave the post-Wende city a boring black shopping mall alongside an almost universally detested green-glass box that passes for an art museum.

Saving the Communist Architectural Heritage The politics of memory is selective. And as Leipzig shows, aesthetic taste can sometimes prove just as decisive as ideological taint in the decisions that

Co n t i n u i t i es i n “ t h e Sav e d C i ty ”     187

sculpt the postcommunist city. On the one hand, ascription of ideological stigmas helped to ensure prominent demolitions, notably the replacement of the lackluster 1970s university main building with a postmodern citation of the University Church dynamited in 1968.30 On the other hand, however, the elegant contours of the contentious former Stasi building (known as the Runde Ecke, built 1911–13) helped to ensure that already in 1990 it was faithfully maintained as the Stasi museum and documentation center. Such was not the fate of the adjoining modern annex for the Stasi Bezirk administration (Bezirkszentrale, built 1982–85), which was all but abandoned (only partially retrofitted in the 1990s as the Alpenmax disco club). On the basis of his theory of aesthetic distaste for modernism, Bartetzky predicted in 2012 “that this part of the complex will sooner or later get torn down, not because of its demonic past, but due to its crude, functionalist architecture, which today is seen as extremely ugly.” To make matters worse, it is simply hard to find interested investors for such buildings, not to mention a future use.31 An August 2017 plan to remodel the 1980s wing would have retained features such as the local Stasi head’s office and a subterranean bunker; the vast remainder would have been refashioned into an archival center for local collections that, in addition to Stasi files, might have included the Paulinerverein or Archiv Bürgerbewegung. Out of 1,588 Leipziger Volkszeitung readers, 55 percent voted to tear down the structure, 37 percent called to retain it, and 8 percent did not care. Partial demolition was not an option in the survey.32 By October 2019, it was common knowledge in Leipzig’s planning offices that “that the old Stasi complex will certainly get torn down at some point,” since “even the historic preservationists don’t care so much about the building.” Further cause for razing the eyesore came from the fact that it rests on “a choice piece of land in the city center that we don’t want to squander.”33 Although alongside the Gewandhaus and Bowlingtreff it represents the most sizeable piece of 1980s architecture in Leipzig’s historic center, the aesthetically despised Stasi block cannot be saved. Leipzig’s postwar architecture has suffered from the added burden that it was associated with communism. But the divergent outcomes for each half of Leipzig’s Stasi block offer just one striking proof for how demolition choices since the Wende have also stemmed from a prevailing distaste for aging modernism, with parallels across much of the world. As Thomas Topfstedt observes, whereas the 1990s already saw restoration of decorative Stalinist structures, a significant portion of Leipzig’s communist-­modern heritage was destroyed or renovated beyond recognition. Sometimes the demolitions struck generally hated blocks like the Messeamt, which since the 1960s had blighted the market square right across from the Renaissance

188    Ep i lo g u e

gables of the old city hall. However, investors also won carte blanche to remake well-proportioned modern structures that had respected surrounding historic architecture, such as the late 1940s Messehof and early 1960s Messehaus am Markt, mutilating them into boring shopping blocks that both blandified and disrupted the old-town aesthetic.34 Just as damaging to urban character was the capitalist replacement of two admittedly dull high-modern trade-fair buildings—flanking the east and west sides of the Nikolaikirche—with, if anything, even less inspired white boxes that host the Motel One chain. Ever consistent in his advocacy for the most threatened heritage, Topfstedt evolved from defending historicist architecture from communist neglect and demolitions in the 1980s into a vocal critic of capitalist destruction of communist-modern monuments, lest the city lose this authentic layer of its identity. Already in 1995, he pleaded in the Leipziger Blätter for understanding that “the architectural legacy of the DDR period consists of more than just decayed buildings, demolition zones, out-of-place new buildings, and failed planning intentions. Through historical expertise, cultural-political consciousness, and economic good sense, it should be carefully evaluated which buildings and urban planning achievements of the last four decades can be retained as indispensable monuments of Leipzig urban history, and which architectural mistakes [Bausünden] can be corrected through careful further development of existing architectural stock rather than hasty demolition.”35 Such vigilance and sensitivity to a city’s multifaceted architectural heritage can cut against the grain under any political or economic system.

Has Leipzig Been Saved? “The inner city has been veiled for a year,” Western journalist Wolfgang Gehrmann reported with excitement from Leipzig in January 1993. “Bluish scaffolding tarps hang around the colossal new city hall and the tower of the Thomaskirche. Scaffolding with blank plastic coverings as high as the eaves have made the Alte Börse vanish. . . . In the vanished city, construction workers play a diverse symphony.” East Germany’s second-largest city had become “Germany’s biggest construction site,” he concluded. “Leipzig is no longer recognizable, and residents wonder what is happening to their city.”36 Back in January 1990, the triumphal banner “Nuremberg congratulates the Hero City” had been tacked onto the “Blue Wonder” footbridge which had so recently conveyed protesters on their march for change. Like so many communist slogans that had come before it, passersby may well have found the phrase out of touch with their daily reality of urban surroundings frozen

Co n t i n u i t i es i n “ t h e Sav e d C i ty ”     189

in dystopian ether. By 1993, however, Wessies and Ossies could agree on this much: capitalist investment was remaking the East German trade-fair city. The interim phase of the First People’s Building Conference was history. Just like the 1988 competition. And soon the Bowlingtreff. By all appearances, the city had passed through its zero hour and was racing headlong to its architectural transfiguration. One should temper praise for postcommunist accomplishments, however, with the reality that plans to save Leipzig predated 1989. When in 1987 Fischer’s BCA put forth dreams for Leipzig “by 2005 and beyond,” it brimmed over with enthusiasm for the city’s existing potential and prioritized the restoration of historic icons like Barthels Hof, Grönländer, and the Alte Nikolaischule, all of which had reached ruinous condition.37 After 1989, all these buildings were rescued, and many of the dreams in 1987 were attained under the new system. As Gewandhaus architect Rudolf Skoda asserted at the First People’s Building Conference in January 1990, “many of these plans have already been considered before, but because of financial, labor, material, and certainly also subjective reasons, they have remained unrealized.”38 In his opening talk, Peter Heldt agreed that the dream of saving Leipzig was “in keeping with an almost two-decade tradition of continuous reflection and activism for our city,” which had prompted him along with many formerly communist colleagues in the Cultural League, Artists Union, and League of Architects to “call into life the ‘Initiative to Save Leipzig’ on November 15, 1989.” Alongside that initiative, they had been pleased to find that their call for a First People’s Building Conference had “found considerable resonance among many citizens: impressively evident in the stream of people to the conference, the declarations of readiness, recommendations, opinions, and contributions from the media.” Although local planning elites and citizens had at times thrown blame at each other, the resulting discussions had shown that almost everyone was fundamentally on the same page about what the “saved city” should look like, namely that “retained, reconstructed, and new buildings should form a unity that creates a culturally vibrant living space: a cultural cityscape for Leipzig with all its economic, ecological, spiritual, and cultural components.”39 This aesthetic ideal—very much in tune with what Dietmar Fischer had hoped to create when he wrote his 1979 dissertation at the Dresden Technical University—could find only limited realization under the overcentralized, economically impoverished conditions of late communism. After so many disappointments, Fischer himself had wondered at the First People’s Building Conference whether his ambition had become a pipedream, and he feared that public input would only further weaken his

190    Ep i lo g u e

ability to act. Meanwhile, some of the conference participants had blamed “communists” writ large for urban dystopia—a narrative that only intensified as SED power faded as part of history. Out of this mutual distrust, however, one finds another potential continuity before and after 1989: in both eras, local planners and residents alike struggled to attain their visions of urban ingenuity in the face of proscriptions from the prevailing system and its unresponsiveness to public concerns. Before 1990, SED decrees had hampered local planning initiatives, which had in turn seldom heeded public input. Despite new economic and political possibilities after 1990, the tyranny of capitalist investors has further eviscerated local planning objectives and at times made them just as unresponsive to public sentiments. By the same token, however, when Leipzig planners have dialogued with engaged citizens, and when investors have retained an open mind, they have saved the city through creative solutions that would have excited participants back at the First People’s Building Conference in January 1990. This healthy spirit of compromise was exhibited in the shadow of Bach’s church. Although since the 1950s planners had intended to fill in the broad square between the Thomaskirche and market with a new building (in essence “restoring” a street plan bombed out in the war), a postcommunist reconstruction imperative for the area reversed course under public pressure. People had come to love the park that communist authorities had established as a temporary fix in 1974, when funds for a modern box on the site had proven lacking.40 Public outcry for retention of the status quo vied against demands from postcommunist planners and the Pro-Leipzig citizens’ initiative to build up the space. Proving his genuine interest in dialogue, Leipzig’s city planning chief Niels Gormsen organized a workshop in 1995 to bring “diverse interest groups around one table” and involve public voices.41 The resulting 1996 plan built up the southern part of the square with a postmodern synthesis of shops and apartments, covering the ugly backside of a prewar structure, but it retained most of the beloved park on the grounds that this would preserve “a familiar place with which people identify.”42 Further investment in 2011 enhanced the nameless green space with its innovative mix of modern and historic surroundings: today one of the loveliest and liveliest parks in the city. With just such an outcome in mind, Peter Heldt had predicted in January 1990 that, through collaboration, hard work, and goodwill, dreams could come true. “ ‘Can Leipzig still be saved?’ That’s the question on East German television,” he declared. “ ‘Leipzig must be saved, and Leipzig can be saved!’ This is our answer, the answer of Leipzigers.”43

Co n t i n u i t i es i n “ t h e Sav e d C i ty ”     191

Three decades of post-Wende reconstruction—with all its triumphs and mistakes—have shown that such optimism dies hard in a city where collaborative goodwill has restored so much of the architectural fabric that even Fischer had pronounced as impossible to save. When they have worked together, local political and planning elites, investors, and engaged citizens have become capable of urban ingenuity that has imbued vexed sites with new meanings and ultimately memories. Through a mix of creative planning, public input, and open-minded investors, perhaps Leipzig could even save its Bowlingtreff.

Notes

Introduction

  1.  Ruth Geist-Reithmeier, dir., Ist Leipzig noch zu retten? (Klartext: Das kritische Reportage-Magazin des DDR-Fernsehens, November 6, 1989), DVD (Berlin: Icestorm Distribution GmbH, 2010). For West German commentary on the film, see “Bilder, die weh tun. Horrorschau im DDR-Fernsehen: Drei Frauen filmten den Verfall von Leipzig,” Der Spiegel, November 13, 1989, 56–59. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.   2.  A.M., entry in visitor book for exhibition Bauplatz Leipzig, March 25–April 9, 1988, Leipzig Neues Rathaus, SpA 84/88, 6. Emphasis in original.   3.  For analysis of shifting central approaches to preservation in East Germany, see Brian William Campbell, “Resurrected from the Ruins, Turning to the Past: Historic Preservation in the SBZ/GDR 1945–1990” (PhD diss., University of Rochester, 2005).   4.  S.H. to M.A., November 9, 1989, ABL 04.27.049, 77.  5. Andrew Demshuk, Demolition on Karl Marx Square: Cultural Barbarism and the People’s State in 1968 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).   6.  Lena Kuhl and Oliver Werner,“ ‘Bezirke’ on Scale: Regional and Local Actors in East German ‘Democratic Centralism,’ ” Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung 42, no. 2 (160) (2017): 252. See also Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, Endspiel. Die Revolution von 1989 in der DDR (Berlin: Ch.Beck, 2015), 126; and Jeffrey Kopstein, The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany, 1945–1989 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 194.   7.  Brian Ladd, “Local Responses in Berlin to Urban Decay and the Demise of the German Democratic Republic,” in Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities, ed. John Czaplicka and Blair Ruble (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 278–79.   8.  Quoted in Richard Gray and Sabine Wilke, eds., German Unification and Its Discontents: Documents from the Peaceful Revolution (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 5–6.   9.  On the state of this literature, see Andrew Port’s introduction in Becoming East German: Socialist Structures and Sensibilities after Hitler, ed. Mary Fulbrook and Andrew Port (New York: Berghahn, 2013), 2. The middle ground between the classic totalitarian model and notion of the DDR as a social welfare state is further developed in Demshuk, Demolition on Karl Marx Square, and Eli Rubin, Synthetic Socialism: Plastics and Dictatorship in the German Democratic Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008).

193

194    NOTES

TO PAGES 5 – 6

10.  Mary Fulbrook, The People’s State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 13. 11. Demshuk, Demolition on Karl Marx Square, 4. 12.  Such change is noted in Mary Fulbrook’s conclusion in Fulbrook and Port, Becoming East German, 287. 13. Demshuk, Demolition on Karl Marx Square, 70. 14.  For this common dogma from architects about social progress, see Virág Molnár, Building the State: Architecture, Politics, and State Formation in Postwar Central Europe (New York: Routledge, 2013); Eli Rubin, Amnesiopolis: Modernity, Space, and Memory in East Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); and Annemarie Sammartino, “The New Socialist Man in the Plattenbau: The East German Housing Program and the Development of the Socialist Way of Life,” Journal of Urban History 22, no. 1 (2018): 78–94. James Scott argues that totalizing high modernism failed despite the best intentions of its practitioners. Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 4. 15.  Alf Lüdke’s concept of Eigen-Sinn was assessed in its East German context by the Potsdam Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung with findings compiled in Thomas Lindenberger, ed., Herrschaft und Eigen-Sinn in der Diktatur. Zu einer Gesellschaftsgeschichte der DDR (Cologne: Böhlau, 1999). 16.  Thomas Lindenberger, “Fragmented Society: ‘Societal Activism’ and Authority in GDR State Socialism,” Zeitgeschichte 37, no. 1 (2010): 4. Stefan Wolle portrays the late East German state as weak and accommodating to public concerns about housing, education, and various shortages in Die heile Welt der Diktatur. Alltag und Herrschaft in der DDR, 1971–1989 (Berlin: Ch.Links, 1998). A multitude of reminiscences, documentations, and microhistorical accounts have offered close-up detail on isolated cases amid the revolution. Patrik von zur Mühlen explores local societies, church circles, and half-official venues where public expression and even critique became possible by the last years of the DDR in Aufbruch und Umbruch in der DDR. Bürgerbewegungen, kritische Öffentlichkeit und Niedergang der SED-Herrschaft (Bonn: Dietz, 2000). Publications from Leipzig’s Archiv Bürgerbewegung have documented how local grassroots protest took shape and found expression. 17.  Von zur Mühlen, Aufbruch und Umbruch in der DDR; Wolle, Die heile Welt der Diktatur; Jeff Hayton, “Ignoring Dictatorship? Punk Rock, Subculture, and Entanglement in the GDR,” in Dropping Out of Socialism: The Creation of Alternative Spheres in the Soviet Bloc, ed. Juliane Fürst and Josie McLennan (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018), 207–32. 18.  Examining the admittedly miniscule membership in DDR Kulturbund organizations, Esther von Richthofen rightly emphasizes that Eigen-Sinn does not imply just a niche culture, but it is questionable whether the vast majority of East Germans outside official cultural circles embraced open dialogue with local functionaries. Bringing Culture to the Masses: Control, Compromise, and Participation in the GDR (New York: Berghahn, 2009), 14. 19.  The classic argument that East Germans retreated into their private niches to escape totalitarian repression was coined by the first West German representative in East Germany, Günter Gaus, in Wo Deutschland liegt: Eine Ortsbestimmung (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1983). Gaus imagined that East German niches attained a primitive idyll absent in Western consumerism.

NOTES TO PAGES 6 – 9     195

20.  Paul Betts, Within Walls: Private Life in the German Democratic Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 6. 21.  For Heimat culture in “participatory dictatorship,” see Jan Palmowski, Inventing a Socialist Nation: Heimat and the Politics of Everyday Life in the GDR, 1945–90 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 22.  Stephen Kotkin offers particularly brusque treatment of communist leaders across the East Bloc as an “uncivil society” of “incompetent, blinkered, and ultimately bankrupt communist establishments.” Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment (New York: Modern Library, 2009), xiv. For his take on East Germany’s dissolution as a result of SED misrule, see his chapter 2. 23.  Kuhl and Werner, “ ‘Bezirke’ on Scale,” 246. A series of administrative laws in 1957, 1973, and 1985 reaffirmed that local organs had to heed the will of centralized authorities, though to do this they were given increasing leeway. Kopstein, Politics of Economic Decline, 176. 24. Lena Kuhl, “Regionale Macht-Räume im Zentralismus? Die ‘Eigenverantwortung’ der örtlichen Organe der DDR,” Deutschland Archiv, July 14, 2016, 8, http://www.bpb.de/230157. 25.  See Christian Rau’s detailed analysis of “multilevel governance” in Leipzig’s housing sector in Stadtverwaltung im Staatssozialismus. Kommunalpolitik und Wohnungswesen in der DDR am Beispiel Leipzigs (1957–1989) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2017), 382. See also his “Socialism from Below: Kommunalpolitik in the East German Dictatorship between Discourse and Practice,” German History 36, no. 1 (2017): 62. 26. Kowalczuk, Endspiel, 315–18. 27.  For this argument in a local culture of worker activism, see Andrew Port, Conflict and Stability in the German Democratic Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 28.  Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 25. 29.  Although they offer a nuanced view of activist demands as unrest turned to mass protest and revolution in 1989, urban decay receives little mention in Konrad Jarausch, The Rush to German Unity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Kowalczuk, Endspiel; Charles Maier, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); von zur Mühlen, Aufbruch und Umbruch in der DDR; or Karl-Dieter Opp, Peter Voss, and Christiane Gern, Origins of a Spontaneous Revolution: East Germany, 1989 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995). Stefan Wolle gives only brief mention of decay and demolition in historic centers as a cause for civic activism in Die heile Welt der Diktatur, 187. 30. Deutsche Bauakademie Berlin, ed., Architektur und Städtebau in der DDR (Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1969), 13. As Winston Churchill famously declared in 1943, “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.” “Churchill and the Commons Chamber,” UK Parliament (website), accessed November 3, 2018, https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/building/palace/architecture/ palacestructure/churchill/. From the United Kingdom and United States to the Stalinist Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, the formative influence of urban space was a given. For a West German statement of the same theme, see Bundesminister für Städtebau und Wohnungswesen, Unsere Städte. Probleme von heute, Lösungen für morgen (Bad Godesberg: Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, 1970), 1.

196    NOTES

TO PAGES 9 – 1 4

31.  As Lena Kuhl argues, local authorities increasingly deviated from centralized dictates, especially in the realm of urban planning.“Regionale Macht-Räume im Zentralismus?,” 8. See also Gareth Dale’s observation that the party was increasingly divided about how to respond to problems on the eve of revolution in The East German Revolution of 1989 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 10. 32. Jarausch, Rush to German Unity, 5–6. 33.  Padraic Kenney, A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe, 1989, new ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 4, 12–13. 34.  The leading book on Berlin’s architectural history remains Brian Ladd’s classic The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Studies on Cold War Berlin (excluding anything outside the divided capital) include Emily Pugh, Architecture, Politics, and Identity in Divided Berlin (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014); Paul Stangl, Risen from the Ruins: The Cultural Politics of Rebuilding East Berlin (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018); Florian Urban, “The Invention of the Historic City: Building the Past in East Berlin, 1970–1990,” (PhD diss., TU Berlin, 2006). 35.  This book furthers the call for moving outside national capitals such as Berlin to understand trends in urban development writ large. See comparative case-study analyses such as Klaus von Beyme, Der Wiederaufbau: Architektur und Städtebaupolitik in beiden deutschen Staaten (Munich: R. Piper, 1987); Andrew Demshuk, “Rebuilding after the Reich: Sacred Sites in Frankfurt, Leipzig, and Wrocław, 1945–1949,” in War and the City: The Urban Context of Conflict and Mass Destruction, ed. Tim Keogh (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2019), 167–93; Jeffry Diefendorf, In the Wake of War: Reconstruction of German Cities after World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Paul Jaskot and Gavriel Rosenberg, eds., Beyond Berlin: Twelve German Cities Confront the Nazi Past (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008); Michael Meng, Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 36.  James Scott’s controversial book Seeing like a State assails high modernism for alleged authoritarian tendencies. 37.  “Leipzig 1989- Ein Film von Peter Wensierski,” YouTube, posted October 17, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhMUVAbvzi8&t=300s. 38.  Andreas Kalitynski, interview with Thomas Beyer and Adrian Dorschner, 2015. All interviews so noted were provided courtesy of Beyer and Dorschner. 39.  Andrew Demshuk, Three Cities after Hitler: Urban Reconstruction across Cold War Borders (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, forthcoming). 40.  Gregory Grossman, “The ‘Second Economy’ of the USSR,” Problems of Communism (September/October 1977): 26. Although he claims inspiration from antecedents, Grossman is credited with both coining the concept of a “command economy” in 1963 and nuancing it with the “second economy” in 1977. 41.  Gregory Grossman, “The Second Economy in the USSR and Eastern Europe: A Bibliography,” Berkeley-Duke Occasional Papers on the Second Economy in the USSR, paper 1 (September 1985): 1–13. For a survey of the Leonid Brezhnev administration’s willingness to allow the second economy, see James Millar, “The Little Deal: Brezhnev’s Contribution to Acquisitive Socialism,” Slavic Review 44, no. 4 (Winter 1985): 694–706. 42.  One promising approach has been the ongoing “Stadtwende” project hosted by the IRS in Erkner (2019–23), which has been conducting interviews with former

NOTES TO PAGES 1 6 – 2 3     197

SED and civic initiative players from cities across the former DDR. See “Forschungsprojekt ‘Stadtwende’ der historischen Forschungsstelle gestartet,” January 7, 2019, https://leibniz-irs.de/aktuelles/meldungen/2019/01/forschungsprojekt-stadt wende-der-historischen-forschungsstelle-gestartet/. 43.  For assessment of postcommunist Leipzig as “the saved city,” see Arnold Bartetzky, Die gerettete Stadt. Architektur und Stadtentwicklung in Leipzig seit 1989. ErfolgeRisiken-Verluste (Leipzig: Lehmstedt, 2015). 1. Survival and Despair in Dystopia

  1.  Andrew Demshuk, “Leipzig’s Karl Marx Monument and the Dustbin of History,” OUPblog, September 26, 2017, https://blog.oup.com/2017/09/leipzig-marxmonument/.   2.  Kahl randomly surveyed about one-quarter of the neighborhood residents. Alice Kahl, “Die Ostvorstadt—eine Bestandsaufnahme,” Leipziger Blätter 4 (Spring 1984): 47.   3.  For Eingaben as a source base for exploring state-citizen interchange, see Alf Lüdtke and Peter Becker, eds., Akten. Eingaben. Schaufenster. Die DDR und ihre Texte (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997); Patrick Major, Behind the Berlin Wall: East Germany and the Frontiers of Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); and Felix Mühlberg, “Informelle Konfliktbewältigung. Zur Geschichte der Eingabe in der DDR” (PhD diss., TU Chemnitz, 1999).  4. Jonathan Zatlin, The Currency of Socialism: Money and Political Culture in East Germany (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 235, 293–99.   5.  Report to Erich Honecker, “Information über eingegangene Eingaben im 1. Halbjahr 1983,” August 9, 1983, BAB DY 30/2590, fol. 87, 1–9.   6.  Brian Ladd, “Local Responses in Berlin to Urban Decay and the Demise of the German Democratic Republic,” in Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities, edited by John Czaplicka and Blair Ruble (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 267–68.   7.  Thomas Topfstedt, “Vom Bauen—ein Rückblick auf die Jahre 1945 bis 1989,” Leipziger Blätter 26 (Spring 1995): 32. See also Topfstedt’s reflections in Wolfgang Hocquél, “Thomas Topfstedt—ein profunder Kenner der DDR-Baugeschichte,” Leipziger Blätter 60 (Spring 2012): 52–53.   8.  This differs a bit from the assessment of Lena Kuhl and Oliver Werner, who argue that Eingaben “often helped solve regional problems.” “ ‘Bezirke’ on Scale: Regional and Local Actors in East German ‘Democratic Centralism,’ ” Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung 42, no. 2 (160) (2017): 260.   9.  Thousands of homes were nationalized in 1945, many of them former Jewish properties previously seized by the Nazis. In 1990, the Leipzig Housing and Construction Company (LWB) took over the GWL as a branch of the city government. Financial crises have since led the company to divest itself of many historic properties. 10.  Christian Rau, Stadtverwaltung im Staatssozialismus. Kommunalpolitik und Wohnungswesen in der DDR am Beispiel Leipzigs (1957–1989) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2017), 337–38.

198    NOTES

TO PAGES 2 3 – 2 6

11.  Schulze, Kombinatsdirektor, Mitteilung an Gen. Benseler, June 1, 1976, SächStAL 20733 VEB Baukombinat Leipzig 1036. 12.  Peter Angus Mitchell, “Socialism’s Empty Promise: Housing Vacancy and Squatting in the German Democratic Republic,” in Dropping Out of Socialism: The Creation of Alternative Spheres in the Soviet Bloc, ed. Juliane Fürst and Josie McLennan (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018), 291. 13.  Rat der Stadt Leipzig, Zahlen und Fakten zur Verwirklichung der Politik zum Wohle des Volkes in der Stadt Leipzig seit dem VIII. Parteitag der SED auf dem Wege zum 40. Jahrestag der DDR (Leipzig: Graphischer Großbetrieb, September 30, 1988), 19. 14.  “Problem zu niedriger Mieten in der DDR für Hauseigentümer,” December 17, 1989, ABL 04.27.392. Neues Forum was founded in September 1989, but only legalized after Leipzig’s Monday Demonstrations: peaceful marches that helped to topple communism. 15.  Rat der Stadt Leipzig, Zahlen und Fakten, 18. 16.  Christian Rau, “Socialism from Below: Kommunalpolitik in the East German Dictatorship between Discourse and Practice,” German History 36, no. 1 (2017): 71. 17. Rau, Stadtverwaltung im Staatssozialismus, 341. 18.  H. Schierz, amtlicher Direktor BfaK, an Frau M.W., “Philipp-Müller-Str. 41a (‘Bienenkorb’),” August 17, 1977, StadtAL BfaK, 14, 51. Further examples abound in the archives. 19.  Maaß, Beauftragter für Denkmalpflege der Stadt Leipzig, an der Stiftung zur Erbauung billiger Wohnungen, “Hoferstraße—Wohnblock Stötteritz—­Fensterersatzprobleme,” July 5, 1983, StadtAL Direktion Kulturbauten/Denkmale 47, 112. 20.  X an Stadtbaudirektor, Rat der Stadt, September 28, 1988, StadtAL Direktion Kulturbauten/Denkmale 43, 68. 21.  H. Röhl, Bereichsleiter Denkmalpflege, und J. Müller, Wissenschaftlicher Mittarbeiter, BfaK, an Rat des Stadtbezirkes Nord Abteilung Kultur, Stadtbezirksrätin Woyke, “Alte Ortslage Eutritzsch und Einzelobjekte Gräfestr. 13/15—­denkmalpflegerische Stellungnahme,” March 20, 1978, StadtAL BfaK 13, 56. 22.  R.P. to LVZ, sent to Kulturbund and then BfaK, January 5, 1978, StadtAL BfaK 13, 55. 23.  Müller, Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, BfaK, an R.P., March 27, 1978, StadtAL BfaK 13, 54. 24.  H.Z. an SED ZK, Abteilung Bauwesen, Haus des Zentralkomitees am MarxEngels-Platz, September 23, 1981, BAB DY 30/35923. 25. H. Panzer, 1. Sekretär, Leipzig Stadtbezirksleitung Südwest, an Genosse Trölitzsch, SED Zentralkomitee, Abteilung Bauwesen, “Eingabe des Bürgers H.Z., 7031 Leipzig, Gießerstr. 31,” August 5, 1983, BAB DY 30/35923. 26.  I.S., Elsbethstr. 10, an das Politbüro beim Zentralkomitee der SED MarxEngels-Platz Berlin 1020, August 19, 1987, BAB DY 30/35925. 27.  Berger, Sekretär der SED Bezirksleitung Leipzig an Genossen Trölitzsch, Abteilungsleiter Bauwesen, ZK der SED, “Eingabe der Bürgerin I.S., Elsbethstraße 10,” November 24, 1987, BAB DY 30/35925. 28.  I.S. an Herrn Genossen Trölitzsch, Politbüro beim Zentralkomitee der SED, December 21, 1987, BAB DY 30/35925. 29. G. Trölitzsch, Bauwesen, an Frau I.S., Berlin, January 4, 1988, BAB DY 30/35925.

NOTES TO PAGES 2 7 – 3 0     199

30.  Berger, Sekretär der SED Bezirksleitung Leipzig an Trölitzsch, ZK der SED Abteilung Bauwesen, “Eingabe der Bürgerin I.S.,” June 15, 1988, BAB DY 30/35925. 31.  Hausgemeinschaft Beethovenstraße 8 an GHG Obst und Gemüse Leipzig, “Kartoffel-Lieferung,” November 11, 1963, ABL Sammlung Zumpe. 32.  Wieland Zumpe, Mitteilung, November 26, 1984, ABL Sammlung Zumpe. 33.  Wieland Zumpe, Eingabe, January 11, 1987, ABL Sammlung Zumpe. 34.  Wieland Zumpe, “Die Situation unseres Hauses Beethovenstraße 8,” November 1987, ABL Sammlung Zumpe. 35. Volker Kretzschmar and Volker Schwarz, “Rekonstruktion im Leipziger Musikviertel,” Architektur der DDR 37, no. 9 (September 1988): 32. 36.  Dr. H.W., circa May 1989, ABL Sammlung Zumpe. 37.  Ihr Stadtreporter, “Mit Mißstand nicht abfinden,” LVZ, March 30, 1989, 12. 38.  Recent scholarship may take this rhetoric of a “better life” too much at face value. Building on Eli Rubin’s Amnesiopolis, Ari Sammartino has explored Plattenbau construction at Marzahn in Berlin, primarily through analysis of state publications. Such reliance on sources from central authorities and spokespeople leads her to conclude that prefab high-rise settlements were actually successful utopian residential spaces. In like manner, because East German planners read Jane Jacobs, their Plattenbau settlements are said to have actually achieved Jacobs’s precepts for neighborhood life. In fact, although new residents were happy to have hot water, my data has shown that they were seldom happy with the quality of their new homes and lamented the loss of their old neighborhood and urban life. Reinforcing the importance of looking at cases outside Berlin, Sammartino is also in danger of conflating the Marzahn showpiece with far more cash-strapped Plattenbau settlements across the rest of the republic. “The New Socialist Man in the Plattenbau: The East German Housing Program and the Development of the Socialist Way of Life,” Journal of Urban History 22, no. 1 (2018): 83. Further advocacy for the success of Plattenbau settlements (also through focus on Marzahn) is in her “Mass Housing, Late Modernism, and the Forging of Community in New York City and East Berlin, 1965–1989,” American Historical Review 121, no. 2 (2016): 492–521. 39.  Eli Rubin, “Concrete Utopia: Everyday Life and Socialism in Berlin-Marzahn,” in East German Material Culture and the Power of Memory, ed. Uta Balbier, Christina Cuevas-Wolf, and Joes Segal (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 2011), 31. 40.  Thomas Hoscislawski, “Grünau—geplantes und gebautes von 1959 bis 1990,” in Raster Beton. Vom Leben in Großwohnsiedlungen zwischen Kunst und Platte. LeipzigGrünau im internationalen Vergleich, ed. Juliane Richter, Tanja Scheffler, and Hannah Sieben (Weimar: M-Books, 2017), 26. Building plans from the 1960s had yielded little. The city’s 1970 General Building Plan sharpened focus on the area. 41.  Florian Urban, “The Invention of the Historic City: Building the Past in East Berlin, 1970–1990” (PhD diss., TU Berlin, 2006), 151. 42.  Eli Rubin, Amnesiopolis: Modernity, Space, and Memory in East Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 6. 43.  H.H., entry in visitor book for exhibition Bauplatz Leipzig, March 25–April 9, 1988, Leipzig Neues Rathaus, SpA 84/88, 7. 44.  Carlo Jordan and Michael Berger, Arche-Stadt-Bau-ökologie Gruppe Potsdam, “Arche deckt auf. Vom Wert unserer Gesetzte—Flächenabriß in Potsdam?” Arche Nova: Forum für ökologische Gestaltung und Gesellschaft 3 (February 1989): 14.

200    NOTES

TO PAGES 3 0 – 3 3

45.  Kahl, “Die Ostvorstadt,”47–48. 46.  Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961), 14. 47.  Johannes Schulze, interview with the author, June 18, 2018. 48.  See Paul Betts’s analysis of interior design catalogues for Plattenbau P2 settlements in “Building Socialism at Home: The Case of East German Interiors,” in Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics, ed. Paul Betts and Katherine Pence (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 96–132; and Betts, Within Walls: Private Life in the German Democratic Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), chapter 4. 49.  Stefan Wolle, Die heile Welt der Diktatur. Alltag und Herrschaft in der DDR, 1971– 1989 (Berlin: Ch.Links, 1998), 187. 50.  Alice Kahl, “Individuelles Wohnen im Neubau,” Wohnen (1982): cover page. 51. Alice Kahl, Wohnen im Neubaugebiet. Forschungsbericht Grünau, 1979–1987 (Leipzig, June 1989), 2. 52.  Alice Kahl, “Wie wohl fühlen sich die Grünauer?” Architektur der DDR 35, no. 5 (May 1986): 290–91. 53.  R.Z. an ZK der SED Berlin Abteilung Bürgereingaben, Leipzig, October 15, 1980, BAB DY 30/35924. 54.  Bergt, Abteilungsleiter Bauwesen, an VEB Baukombinat Leipzig, zentrale Parteileitung z.H. des Genossen Zetzsche, December 3, 1980, BAB DY 30/35924. 55.  See numerous accounts in BAB DY 30/35923. 56. Kahl, Wohnen im Neubaugebiet, 20. 57.  Kahl, 44, 79. 58.  Christoph Kaufmann, “40 Jahre Grünau—Die Geschichte einer Planung,” Leipziger Stadtgeschichte Jahrbuch (2016): 278. A 2016 arts festival celebrated life in Grünau. Richter, Scheffler, and Sieben, Raster Beton. 59.  Siegrun Kabisch and Katrin Großmann, “Intervallstudie Leipzig-Grünau. Empirische Langzeitstudie zur Wohnzufriedenheit in der Großwohnsiedlung,” Helmholtz Zentrum für Umweltforschung, http://www.ufz.de/index.php?de_36229, accessed July 10, 2018; “Grünau 2009. Einwohnerbefragung im Rahmen der Intervallstudie ‘Wohnen und Leben in Leipzig-Grünau,’ ” Helmholtz Zentrum für Umweltforschung, May 2010, https://www.ufz.de/export/data/2/100273_ Gruenau_2009_Ergebnisbericht2010_web.pdf. For a very positive outlook (and reminiscence) see interviews with Kabisch (Kahl’s long-standing assistant) in the film by Anja Thompson, Soziologie des Plattenbaus: Grünau ist ein lebenswerter Standort (2013), https://www.jeder-qm-du.de/ueber-die-platte/detail/sigrun-kabisch/. While Grünau has become a poorer district of pensioners, since 2015 it has also hosted a disproportionately high number of immigrants and asylum seekers, prompting racial tensions. 60. Klaus Rieche, “Erste Hilfe für Baudenkmäler. Gespräch mit einer Denkmalschützergruppe in Halle/S,” Arche Nova: Forum für ökologische Gestaltung und Gesellschaft 3 (February 1989): 29. 61.  Gregory Grossman, “The ‘Second Economy’ of the USSR,” Problems of Communism 26 (September/October 1977): 25. Emphasis in original. 62.  Grossman, 26, 30. 63.  Virág Molnár, Building the State: Architecture, Politics, and State Formation in Postwar Central Europe (New York: Routledge, 2013), 87–88.

NOTES TO PAGES 3 3 – 3 9     201

64.  Brigitte Le Normand, Designing Tito’s Capital: Urban Planning, Modernism, and Socialism in Belgrade (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), 159–60. 65.  Lena Kuhl observes this phenomenon in the case of Karl-Marx-Stadt. “Regionale Macht-Räume im Zentralismus? Die ‘Eigenverantwortung’ der örtlichen Organe der DDR,” Deutschland Archiv, July 14, 2016, 5–6, http://www.bpb.de/230157. See also Kuhl and Werner,“ ‘Bezirke’ on Scale,” 253. 66.  Wolfgang Hocquél, interview with the author, June 21, 2018. 67. Harry Ullich, “Das Bauwesen in den Stadtbezirken,” in Bauen in Leipzig, 1945–1990. Akteure und Zeitzeugen auf persönlichen Spuren der Leipziger Baugeschichte, ed. Joachim Tesch (Leipzig: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Sachsen, 2003), 420–21. 68.  ABL, Sammlung Matthias Wolf. 69.  Rat der Stadt Leipzig, Zahlen und Fakten, 20. 70.  Andreas Kalitynski, interview with Thomas Beyer and Adrian Dorschner, 2015. 71.  Kahl, “Die Ostvorstadt,” 48. 72.  Matthias Wolf, interview with the author, June 12, 2018. 73.  Christine Skodawessely, interview with the author, June 12, 2018. Wolf and Skodawessely work two floors down from the ABL, directing the Umweltsinstitut in the Haus der Demokratie. 74.  Wolf, interview, June 12, 2018. 75.  Skodawessely, interview, June 12, 2018. 76.  ABL, Sammlung Matthias Wolf; Wolf, interview, June 12, 2018. 77.  Albrecht Dohmann, Elmar Jansen, Hans Müller, and anonymous, Der Wiederaufbau der Kirchen in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Berlin: Union Verlag, 1964), 129–31. 78.  Horst Heimpert, Kirchen in Mitteldeutschland. Bestand—Vernichtung—­Erhaltung, Deutschland im Bild Sonderband 2 (Frankfurt/Main: Wolfgang Weidlich, 1962), 13. 79. Initiativgruppe 1. Leipziger Volksbaukonferenz, ed., 1. Volksbaukonferenz Leipzig 1990 (Merseburg: Mebu Druck, 1990), 98. 80.  Christian Führer and Friedrich Magirius, eds. Nikolaikirche: Offen für Alle. Eine Gemeinde im Zentrum der Wende (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1999), 82. 81.  Kalitynski, interview with Beyer and Dorschner, 2015. 82. Jacobs, Death and Life, 383–84. For the comment by Pasch, see Initiativgruppe 1. Leipziger Volksbaukonferenz, ed., 1. Volksbaukonferenz Leipzig 1990 (Merseburg: Mebu Druck, 1990), 98. 83.  Wilhelm Schlemmer, Lebensraum zwischen Barrikaden. Alltagsszenen aus einem Pfarrhaus in der DDR, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Frieling, 2009), 56. 84.  “Kletterei auf Kupferdach,” Die Union, Ausgabe Bezirk Leipzig, December 16, 1972, 12. 85.  Wilhelm Schlemmer, correspondence with the author, July 10, 2018. 86.  Receipt from donation register, April 11, 1977, KML 1977 Eingaben/Ausgaben. 87. Schlemmer, Lebensraum zwischen Barrikaden, 51. 88.  Wilhelm Schlemmer, correspondence with the author, July 26, 2018. 89.  Wilhelm Schlemmer, photograph, private collection. 90.  Gerhard Graf, receipt, “Reparatur der Schutzverglasung an den Kirchenfenstern,” April 4, 1977, KML 1977 Eingaben/Ausgaben. 91.  Rainer Kölle, Rechnung, September 28, 1978, KML 1977 Eingaben/Ausgaben; Wilhelm Obst, Rechnung für Michaeliskirche, October 31, 1978, KML 1977 Eingaben/ Ausgaben. Some handworkers sent in their last receipts after work had been completed.

202    NOTES

TO PAGES 3 9 – 4 9

  92.  Wilhelm Schlemmer, interview with the author, June 26, 2018.   93.  Pfarramt der Michaeliskirche, “Abrechnung der Gerüstarbeiten an der Michaeliskirche,” December 22, 1977, KML 1977 Eingaben/Ausgaben.   94.  Schlemmer, interview, June 26, 2018.   95.  As of 2018, the archival binder was located in a metal cabinet beside the organ in the Michaeliskirche loft, not in improvised wooden shelving units in the large closet behind the organ, where materials covered the eras before 1945 and after 1989.   96.  Wilhelm Schlemmer, correspondence with the author, July 11, 2018.   97.  Schlemmer, interview, June 26, 2018.   98.  Baupfleger Pasch an Pfarramt der Michaeliskirche, January 18, 1977, KML 1977 Eingaben/Ausgaben.   99.  Schlemmer, interview, June 26, 2018. 100. Dietmar Koenitz, “Der Umbau der Emmauskirche zum Gemeindezentrum, 1971–1981,” in 100 Jahre Emmauskirche 1900–2000, ed. Otti Margraf (Leipzig, 2000), n.p. The Emmauskirche restoration also converted part of the nave into a community center. 101.  Wolf, interview, June 12, 2018. 102.  “Neuregelung der Baumaßnahmen für Wiederinstandsetzung und Wiederaufbauarbeiten im Stadtgebiet Leipzig,” Amtliches Nachrichtenblatt, June 9, 1945, 3. 103.  A.B. an der ZK der SED, Leipzig, October 5, 1978, BAB DY 30/35923. 104.  Hubert Maaß, Beauftragter für Denkmalpflege, an Stadtrat für Kultur Wenzel, “Information zu Fragen der Sicherheit von Denkmalschutzobjekten, welche aus unterschiedlichen Gründen freigelenkt werden,” March 3, 1981, StadtAL Büro für architekturbezogene Kunst, Nr. 12, 3. 105.  Winfried Sziegoleit, interview with the author, June 26, 2018. 106.  Quoted in Rubin, Amnesiopolis, 109. 107. Rau, Stadtverwaltung im Staatssozialismus, 345. 108.  “Gebäudeteil Ecke Dimitroff/Grassistr.,” circa 1982, ABL 50.004.01.001. 109.  Grossman, “ ‘Second Economy’ of the USSR,” 29. 110.  Andrzej Korbonski, “The ‘Second Economy’ in Poland,” Journal of International Affairs 35, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1981): 4. 111.  Mitchell, “Socialism’s Empty Promise,” 283. 112.  Udo Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen. Die Unterwanderung der staatlichen Wohnraumlenkung in der DDR (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2011), 15. 113. Rau, Stadtverwaltung im Staatssozialismus, 366. 114.  Wolf, interview, June 12, 2018. 115.  Peter Wensierski, “Der Herbst ’89. Die WG der Rebellen,” Der Spiegel, October 3, 2014, http://www.spiegel.de/einestages/leipzig-wie-es-1989-zur-montags demonstration- kam-a-993513.html. 116. Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen, 83. 117.  Wensierski, “Der Herbst ’89.” 118. “Leipzig 1989- Ein Film von Peter Wensierski,” YouTube, posted October 17, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhMUVAbvzi8&t=300s. 119. Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen, 178. 120.  For the Häuserkampf in Frankfurt’s Westend neighborhood, see Andrew Demshuk, Three Cities after Hitler: Urban Reconstruction across Cold War Borders (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, forthcoming), chapter 5. For a comparison

NOTES TO PAGES 4 9 – 5 7     203

of Schwarzwohnen in East and West Berlin (in which squatters found the authorities far more tolerant under communism than capitalism), see Peter Angus Mitchell, “Contested Space: Squatting in Divided Berlin, 1970-1990” (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2015). 121.  For discussion of “die heimliche Herrschaft der Verwalter des Mangels,” see Wolle, Die heile Welt der Diktatur, 213. 122.  Rat der Stadt Leipzig, Zahlen und Fakten, 5. 123.  Rat der Stadt Leipzig, 17. 124. In Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district, Wohnbezirksausschuss activists successfully halted plans for demolitions on the Oderberger Straße in the 1980s that would have resulted in Plattenbauten. Such exceptional cases were deeply suspect for political nonconformity, since they pitted residents against the demands of central authorities. 125. Annette Lorenz, “Instandbesetzen!,” Die Andere Zeitung. Unabhängiges Wochenblatt im Forum Verlag Leipzig, February 15, 1990, 1. 126. Initiativgruppe, 1. Volksbaukonferenz Leipzig 1990, 73–74. 2. Urban Ingenuity in the System

  1. Peter Kahane, dir., Die Architekten (DEFA, 1990), DVD (Berlin: Icestorm Distribution GmbH, 2004).   2. Brigitte Reimann, Franziska Linkerhand, 13th ed. (Berlin: Aufbau, 2000). See Brian Ladd’s analysis in “Socialist Planning and the Rediscovery of the Old City in the German Democratic Republic,” Journal of Urban History 27, no. 5 ( July 2001): 589. Reimann’s novel was adapted into the film directed by Lothar Warneke, Unser kurzes Leben (DEFA, 1981), DVD (Berlin: Absolut Medien, 2015).    3.  “Dokumentation der Debatte im Kabarett Academixer-Keller zum Thema ‘Leipzig—Messemetropole oder Provinznest?’ am 5. November 1989,” in Redefreiheit. Öffentliche Debatten in Leipzig im Herbst 1989, ed. Thomas Ahbe, Michael Hofmann, and Volker Stiehler (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2014), 236, 238.    4.  Sebastian Redecke, “Trauer um Leipzig,” Bauwelt 81, no. 12 (1990): 561    5.  Wolfgang Gehrmann, “Stadt ohne Plan,” Die Zeit, January 22, 1993, https:// www.zeit.de/1993/04/stadt-ohne-plan/.    6.  For instance, in Hungary the so-called tulip debate of the mid-1970s saw architects try to humanize modernist blocks with tulip motifs that referenced Hungarian folk culture; though this approach was repressed, by the 1980s other “organic” national traditions were infused into Hungarian architecture. Virág Molnár, Building the State: Architecture, Politics, and State Formation in Postwar Central Europe (New York: Routledge, 2013), 105, 131.   7. Lena Kuhl, “Regionale Macht-Räume im Zentralismus? Die ‘Eigenverantwortung’ der örtlichen Organe der DDR,” Deutschland Archiv, July 14, 2016, 7, http://www.bpb.de/230157.    8.  Wolfgang Hocquél, interview with the author, June 21, 2018.   9. Thomas Topfstedt, Städtebau in der DDR, 1955–1971 (Leipzig: VEB E.A. Seemann, 1988), 62–63.   10.  Bruno Flierl, “Zur sozialistischen Architekturentwicklung in der DDR. Theoretische Probleme und Analysen der Praxis,” (PhD diss., Humboldt University, 1979), 127.

204    NOTES

TO PAGES 5 7 – 5 9

11.  Brian Ladd, “Local Responses in Berlin to Urban Decay and the Demise of the German Democratic Republic,” in Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities, ed. John Czaplicka and Blair Ruble (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 265. 12.  For comparison of urban planning and historic preservation in postwar West and East Germany, see Andrew Demshuk, “Preservationism, Postmodernism, and the Public across the Iron Curtain in Leipzig and Frankfurt/Main, 1968–1988,” in Re-framing Identities: Architecture’s Turn to History, ed. Ákos Moravánszky and Torsten Lange (Berlin: Birkhäuser and De Gruyter, 2016), 245–60. 13.  David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 38. 14.  By contrast, historic-looking modernism in Wrocław’s core yielded public appropriation, even though the city’s postwar Polish population lacked living memory of the urban landscape’s German past. Andrew Demshuk, Three Cities after Hitler: Urban Reconstruction across Cold War Borders (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, forthcoming). 15.  Klaus Rasche, “Gedanken zur Gründerzeitarchitektur,” Architektur der DDR 28, no. 11 (November 1979): 701. 16.  Walter Beyer, Die Bauplanung und Baupolitik Leipzigs, 1945–1949 (Leipzig, 1949), 12. 17.  Beyer, “Vortrag des Herrn Stadtbaurat Beyer in der Kongreßhalle des Zoo,” January 7, 1949, StadtAL StVuR 4768, 168. 18. Quoted in Albrecht Dohmann et al., Der Wiederaufbau der Kirchen in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Berlin: Union Verlag, 1964), 38. 19.  “Verordnung über die Pflege und den Schutz der Denkmale vom 28. September 1961,” Gesetzblatt der DDR 2, no. 72 (October 23, 1961): 475–78. 20. Topfstedt, Städtebau in der DDR, 54–55. 21.  Lucas, “Geborgene Bauteile zerstörter Baudenkmale,” February 10, 1961, StadtAL StVuR 4874, 97. 22.  Siegel, “Zur Auswertung der zentralen Ausstellung ‘Architektur und bildende Kunst’ 1969 in Berlin,” IRS-WS A_12 31, 3; part 2, 3. 23.  Andrew Demshuk, Demolition on Karl Marx Square: Cultural Barbarism and the People’s State in 1968 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), especially chapter 5. 24. Horst Siegel, “Generalbebauungsplanung—Ziele, Aussagen und Ergebnisse,” in Bauen in Leipzig, 1945–1990. Akteure und Zeitzeugen auf persönlichen Spuren der Leipziger Baugeschichte, ed. Joachim Tesch (Leipzig: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Sachsen, 2003), 165. 25.  Gerhart Pasch, “Alltag in der Denkmalpflege,” Leipziger Blätter 4 (1984): 20. 26.  “Auszug aus dem Denkmalpflege Gesetz vom 19.5.1975,” StadtAL BfaK, 4, 4. 27. Julianne Richter, “Experimente im Plattenbau,” in DDR-Architektur in der Leipziger Innenstadt, by Julianne Richter and Katja Weise (Weimar: Bauhaus Universitätsverlag, 2015), 138; Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, Endspiel. Die Revolution von 1989 in der DDR (Berlin: Ch.Beck, 2015), 113–19. 28. Thomas Hoscislawski, “Zwischen Vision und Wirklichkeit—Planungen für das Leipziger Stadtzentrum 1945 bis 1990,” Leipziger Stadtgeschichte Jahrbuch (2017): 249. 29.  Hocquél goes so far as to assert that “the big Baukombinat for Denkmalpflege was a monster! The bureaucracy was ten times as large as the labor force!” Interview with the author, June 21, 2018.

NOTES TO PAGES 5 9 – 6 2     205

30.  Pasch, “Alltag in der Denkmalpflege,” 20. 31.  Ev.-Luth Kirchenvorstand zu St. Nikolai an den Rat des Stadtbezirkes Mitte der Stadt Leipzig, Abteilung Inneres, Rat der Stadt Leipzig Abteilung Kultur, Abteilung Kirchenfragen, IfD, usw., “Kirchendach/Nikolaikirche,” March 25, 1976, StadtAL BfaK, 14, 99. 32.  Teufel, BfaK, Gehrke, Stadtrat für Kultur, “Rekonstruktionsgebiet Leipzig Ostvorstadt, Beispielplanung—Teilgebiet,” 1978, StadtAL BfaK, 5, 3; “Umgestaltungsgebiet Leipzig—Ostvorstadt. Modernisierungskomplex I. Konzeption über die komplexe Umweltgestaltung,” 1978, StadtAL BfaK, 5, 10. 33.  Horst Siegel, “Generalbebauungsplan der Stadtregion Leipzig,” Architektur der DDR 26, no. 6 ( June 1977): 333. 34.  Ladd, “Socialist Planning,” 594. 35.  “Grundsätze für die sozialistische Entwicklung von Städtebau und Architektur in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Beschluss des SED-Politbüros und des DDR-Ministerrats,” Neues Deutschland, May 29–30, 1982, 9. 36.  For discussion of preservation in Berlin, see Paul Stangl, Risen from the Ruins: The Cultural Politics of Rebuilding East Berlin (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018); and Florian Urban, “Invention of the Historic City: Building the Past in East Berlin, 1970–1990” (PhD diss., TU Berlin, 2006). 37.  Ulrike Rühlmann and Albrecht Pohlmann, “Zwischen Verfall und Rekonstruktion,” Die Leipziger Andere Zeitung. Unabhängiges Wochenblatt, June 7, 1990, 2. 38.  Henneberg, Leiter, Ministerium der Finanzen Staatliche Finanzrevision, “Information über die vorhandenen Kapazitäten und den volkswirtschaftlichen Aufwand auf dem Gebiet der Denkmalpflege,” August 12, 1987, BAB DY 30/6850. 39.  Höfner, Ministerrat der DDR, Ministerium der Finanzen, an Günter Mittag, Mitglied des Politbüros und Sekretär des ZK der SED, Berlin, August 13, 1987, BAB DY 30/6850. 40.  Erich Honecker auf der 8. Baukonferenz 1985, cited in Arche Nova: Forum für ökologische Gestaltung und Gesellschaft 3 (February 1989): 5. The speech was evidently leaked to the Soviet magazine Sputnik in February 1988. The glossy color paper had existed since January 1967 and, for its perestroika-era critiques, been banned from distribution to its 130,000 readers in the DDR since November 1988. Kowalczuk, Endspiel, 77–78. 41.  Ursula Waage, correspondence with the author, June 8, 2018; Ursula Waage, interview with the author, June 24, 2018. 42.  Campbell, “Resurrected from the Ruins,” 311. 43.  Ladd, “Socialist Planning,” 592. 44.  Johannes Schulze, interview with the author, June 18, 2018. 45.  Liesel Schön, interview with the author, June 28, 2018. 46.  Hocquél, interview, June 21, 2018. 47.  Liesel Schön, interview with the author, June 21, 2018. Tax revenues were always insufficient to cover costs, but additional revenues were taken, for instance, from earnings from combines. 48.  Lena Kuhl and Oliver Werner, “ ‘Bezirke’ on Scale: Regional and Local Actors in East German ‘Democratic Centralism,’ ” Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung 42, no. 2 (160) (2017): 251. 49.  Urban, “Invention of the Historic City,” 154, 156.

206    NOTES

TO PAGES 6 2 – 6 5

50.  Kuhl and Werner, “ ‘Bezirke’ on Scale,” 250. 51.  Ladd, “Socialist Planning,” 592–94. 52.  Florian Urban, Designing the Past in East Berlin before and after German Reunification (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2007), 12, 16–24. These observations are repeated in his Neo-historical East Berlin: Architecture and Urban Design in the German Democratic Republic, 1970–1990 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009). 53.  For this merging of history and Plattenbau, see Urban, “Invention of the Historic City,” 28. 54.  Wenzel, Stadtrat für Kultur, an Oberbürgermeister Müller, “Übersicht notwendiger Baureparaturen an 18 ausgewählten Objekten,” January 18, 1983, StadtAL StVuR 18286, 51–52. 55. VEB Denkmalpflege Leipzig, Denkmalpflege in Leipzig, 1978–1988 (Dessau: J. Wieprich, October 1987), 1. 56.  Karl-Heinz Blaurock, “Territorialplanung—Aufgaben, Erreichtes und Probleme,” in Tesch, Bauen in Leipzig, 110. 57.  Hubert Maaß, “Denkmalpflege als Konfliktfeld,” in Tesch, Bauen in Leipzig, 368. 58.  Beschluss, Rat der Stadt Leipzig, “Auszeichnung von 3 Stadtbezirken durch den Nationalrat, den Bezirksausschuß und den Stadtausschuß der Nationalen Front der DDR,” October 22, 1986, StadtAL StVuR 20857, 39–40. 59.  Mank, Rat der Stadt Abteilung Kultur: Stadtgestaltung Kultur/Denkmalpflege, “Jahresabschlußbericht 1985,” February 13, 1986, StadtAL Direktion Kulturbauten/ Denkmale 44, 104. 60.  See, for instance, “Philipp-Müller-Str. 41a (‘Bienenkorb’),” August 17, 1977, StadtAL BfaK, Nr. 14, 51. 61.  X an ZK der SED Abteilung Wohnungspolitik, “Eingabe zur Verbesserung des Wohnungszustandes in der Braustraße in Leipzig-Süd,” Leipzig, May 5, 1981, BAB DY 30/35924. 62.  Hans Feindt, 1. Sekretär SED Stadtbezirksleitung Leipzig Süd, an der SED Haus des ZK Berlin, Abteilung Bauwesen, “Eingabe der Familie X,” July 10, 1981, BAB DY 30/35924. 63.  X an ZK der SED, “Bevölkerungseingabe,” Leipzig, November 26, 1987, BAB DY 30/35925. 64.  Abteilungsleiter Bauwesen, SED Bezirksleitung Leipzig, an ZK der SED Abteilung Bauwesen Genosse Frank Albert, May 3, 1988, BAB DY 30/35925. 65.  For examples of similar discontent, see Eingaben in BAB DY 30/35923–35925. 66.  Entry in visitor book for exhibition Bauplatz Leipzig, March 25–April 9, 1988, SpA 84/88, 2–3. 67.  Dietmar Fischer, “Zum Bewahren des Charakters baulichen Erbes. Ein Problem der sozialistischen Aneignung baulichen Erbes. Architekturtheoretische Untersuchung des Charakterbegriffes und der Möglichkeiten der Charaktererkenntnis” (Dissertation Dipl. Ing., Technische Universität, Dresden, 1979). 68.  Annette Menting, “Neuanfänge und Kontinuitäten in Leipzig um 1989. Beiträge von Dietmar Fischer zu Architektur und Stadtgestaltung,” in Kunst und Architektur in Mitteldeutschland, ed. Nadja Horsch, Zita Pataki, and Thomas Pöpper (Leipzig: Plöttner, 2012), 266, 269; Dietmar Fischer, interview with the author, February 4, 2015. 69.  Siegel, “Generalbebauungsplan der Stadtregion Leipzig,” 333. 70.  Fischer, interview, February 4, 2015.

NOTES TO PAGES 6 5 – 6 9     207

71. BCA, Ostvorstadt Leipzig. Leitplanung (Leipzig, 1976), 5. 72. BCA, Umgestaltung Leipzig Ostvorstadt. Beispielplanung Teilgebiet 1 (Leipzig, January 1978), 4, 11a, 27. 73.  Johannes Schulze and Manfred Denda, “Zur Umgestaltung der Ostvorstadt von Leipzig,” Architektur der DDR ( June 1977): 346. 74.  Horst Siegel, BCA, “Leipzig—Ostvorstadt, Wohnkomplex 2—Volkmarsdorf,” June 15, 1979, SpA, 1/79, 5, 1–2. 75.  Siegel, 11. 76.  Alice Kahl, “Die Ostvorstadt—eine Bestandsaufnahme,” Leipziger Blätter 4 (Spring 1984): 49. 77.  Dietmar Fischer, “Abreißen oder erhalten,” Leipziger Blätter 4 (1984): 50. 78.  Fischer, Leipzig Ostvorstadt, WK II Volkmarsdorf, Karte Abbruch, May 30, 1979, SpA 1/79. In this district, 54 percent of the property was owned by the state, and 46 percent was in private hands. Siegel, “Bebauungskonzeption Leipzig Ostvorstadt, Umgestaltungsgebiet WK 2 Volkmarsdorf,” July 4, 1985, SpA 45/85, 8. 79.  Thomas Topfstedt, interview with the author, June 27, 2018. 80.  Fischer, “Abreißen oder erhalten,” 50. 81. BCA, “Wohnkomplex Innere Westvorstadt. Städtebaulich-architektonischbildkünstlerische Studie,” April 15, 1975, SpA 4/82, 4, 11. 82. BCA, “Leipzig-Mitte Innere Westvorstadt Experimentalstandort Kolonnadenstraße,” September 13, 1982, SpA 4/82, 6. 83. Juliane Richter, “Innerstädtischer Wohnungsbau in der DDR und das Leipziger Kolonnadenviertel,” in Richter and Weise, DDR-Architektur in der Leipziger Innenstadt, 181. See also 91–219, especially 159–182. Led by Fischer, Siegfried Kober directed aesthetic considerations and Frieder Hofmann led a collective that drafted the Plattenbauten. 84. BCA, “Leipzig-Mitte Innere Westvorstadt Experimentalstandort Kolonnadenstraße,” 7–8. 85.  Siegel, “Konzeption Komplexe Stadtgestaltung zur Vorbereitung des innerstädtischen Wohnungsbaustandortes Leipzig Innere Westvorstadt,” December 15, 1983, StadtAL BCA V 670, 6. 86.  Mars and Venus had vanished. Landesamt für Volkskunde und Denkmalpflege, “Zwei Statuen: Jupiter und Juno (Sandstein) von Balthasar Permoser aus Apels Garten,” April 10, 1953, StadtAL BCA V 1.804, 1. 87.  BCA, “Überarbeitete Bebauungskonzeption Leipzig—Umgestaltungsgebiet Innere Westvorstadt 2. Baufeld/3. Bauabschnitt: Dorotheenplatz,” January 22, 1985, StadtAL BCA V 900.2, 23–29. 88.  BCA Chefarchitekt Siegel, “Stellungnahme zum Entwurf der Dokumentation zur Grundsatzentscheidung IWV, 2. Baufeld Dorotheenplatz,” September 11, 1985, StadtAL BCA V 900.2, 36. 89.  See, for instance, Stadtbaudirektor, “Entzug des Eigentumsrechts nach dem Baulandgesetz vom 15. Juni 1984,” StadtAL BCA V 2449, 13–17. 90.  VEB Baukombinat Leipzig, “Wohnkomplex Leipzig—Innere Westvorstadt, 2. Baufeld, 1. Ergänzung zur Bebauungsverdichtung/W 19.1–3,” September 23, 1987, StadtAL HAG 162, 57–58. 91.  Frieder Hofmann, “Innerstädtischer Wohnungsbau in der Kolonnadenstraße in Leipzig,” Architektur der DDR (November 1984): 644.

208    NOTES

TO PAGES 6 9 – 7 5

  92.  Frieder Hofmann, Dietmar Fischer, Siegfried Kober, “Innere Westvorstadt. Verbindung von Tradition und Gegenwart,” Leipziger Blätter (Fall 1985): 30–31.  93. Bauakademie, Fallstudie Leipzig zur 6. ECE-Konferenz über Städtebauforschung in Leipzig im Oktober 1988 (Berlin: Institut für Städtebau und Architektur, 1988), 8.   94.  Topfstedt, interview, June 27, 2018.   95.  Richter, “Innerstädtischer Wohnungsbau,” 165.   96.  Rat der Stadt Leipzig, Zahlen und Fakten zur Verwirklichung der Politik zum Wohle des Volkes in der Stadt Leipzig seit dem VIII. Parteitag der SED auf dem Wege zum 40. Jahrestag der DDR (Leipzig: Graphischer Großbetrieb, September 30, 1988), 16.   97.  Ruth Geist-Reithmeier, dir., Ist Leipzig noch zu retten? (Klartext: Das kritische Reportage-Magazin des DDR-Fernsehens, November 6, 1989), DVD (Berlin: Icestorm Distribution GmbH, 2010).   98.  BCA, “Bebauungskonzeption Leipzig—Umgestaltungsgebiet Innere Westvorstadt, 3. Baufeld, Nikischplatz,” November 30, 1983, StadtAL BCA V 370.2, 2.  99. Geist-Reithmeier, Wie ist Leipzig noch zu retten? (Klartext: Das kritische Reportage-Magazin des DDR-Fernsehens, November 20, 1989), DVD (Berlin: Icestorm Distribution GmbH, 2010). 100. BCA, “Leipzig-Mitte Innere Westvorstadt Experimentalstandort Kolonnadenstraße,” 7. 101.  Topfstedt, interview, June 27, 2018. 102.  Fischer et al., “Innerstädtischer Wohnungsbau in der Stadt Leipzig,” Architektur der DDR (September 1988): 8–11. 103.  Rat der Stadt Leipzig, Zahlen und Fakten, 17. 104.  Uta Nickel, interview with the author, June 21, 2018. 105. Geist-Reithmeier, Ist Leipzig noch zu retten? 106.  Gerhard Krenz, “Zum IX. Kongreß des Bundes der Architekten. Ideenreich und effektiv für das Wohl des Volkes bauen,” Neues Deutschland, June 6, 1987, 10. 107.  Hocquél, interview, June 21, 2018. 108.  Ladd, “Socialist Planning,” 595. 109.  Geldner, Lenz, and Fischer, BfaK, “Konzeption komplexe Stadtgestaltung, Teil architekturbezogene Kunst, Leipzig, Stadtbezirk Süd, Umgestaltungsgebiet Seeburgstraße,” October 19, 1984, SächStAL BfaK Bezirk Leipzig 415. 110.  Rat der Stadt Leipzig, Oberbürgermeister, “Vorlage für die Arbeitsgruppe Wohnungsbau des Vorsitzenden des Rates des Bezirkes am 1.9.1989 13.00,” July 17, 1989, SächStAL 21123 SED-Bezirksleitung Leipzig 933. 111.  Klaus von Beyme, Der Wiederaufbau: Architektur und Städtebaupolitik in beiden deutschen Staaten (Munich: R. Piper, 1987), 311. 112.  Heinz-Jürgen Böhme, “Bestandsaufnahme,” Leipziger Blätter 10 (Spring 1987): 7. 113.  Dietmar Fischer, “Organismus Stadt,” Leipziger Blätter 10 (Spring 1987): 10–11. 114.  BCA, “Gestaltungsmaßnahmen im Stadtzentrum von Leipzig,” Architektur der DDR 26, no. 6 (1977): 354–55. 115.  BCA, “Leipzig Stadtzentrum, Gestaltungskonzeption Nikolaistraße,” January 1982, SächStAL 21123 SED-Bezirksleitung Leipzig 907. Property on the street was both private and state-owned. 116.  Ulrich Kirchner and Hans-Kristian Sturm, “Thesen zur Diplomarbeit: ‘Passagen in Leipzig—Analyse, Gestaltungskonzeption und Entwurf für ein Raumsystem,’ ” HAB Weimar, July 1983, StadtAL BCA V Nr. 313.1, 9; HAB Weimar an BCA Leipzig, September 14, 1984, StadtAL BCA V Nr. 313.1, 71.

NOTES TO PAGES 7 5 – 7 7     209

117.  Fischer, interview, February 4, 2015. This statement was corroborated in Johannes Schulze, interview with the author, March 6, 2015. 118.  BCA, “Die weitere Gestaltung des Leipziger Stadtzentrums,” Architektur der DDR (September 1988): 16–18. 119. Horst Siegel, Chefarchitekt, BCA, “Stadtzentrum Leipzig Baulückenschließung Grimmaische Straße 17, 19, 28,” July 1975, StadtAL BCA V 1676.5, 1–10. 120.  Rat des Bezirkes Leipzig Aufbaustab, “Dokumentation für die Bebauung Grimmaische Straße 17/Nikolaistraße 1,” May 19, 1978, StadtAL BCA V 1676.1, 52. 121.  BCA Abteilung Hoheitsaufgaben und Stadtgestaltung, “Leipzig Stadtzentrum. Grimmaische Straße 17, Ideenvorschlag für eine interimsmäßige Gestaltung der Baulücke,” July 1980, StadtAL BCA V 1676.1, 23–24. 122. Wolfgang Petzold and Dieter Matthes, Bearbeitungskollektiv des BdA Bezirksgruppe Leipzig, “Studie zur Lückenschließung 1710 Leipzig, Grimmaische Straße 17,” February 10, 1981, StadtAL BCA V 1676.3, 1 4. See also blueprints in SächStAL BdA Bezirksgruppe Leipzig, 50. 123.  Schulze, interview, June 18, 2018. 124.  Schulze, Abteilungsleiter, BCA, “Baulückenschließung Grimmaische Str. 17. Situationsbericht vom 5.5.81,” May 11, 1981, StadtAL BCA V 1679.1, 10. 125.  Schulze, Abteilungsleiter, BCA, “Baulückenschließung Grimmaische Str. 17. Sachbestandsbericht,” May 25, 1981, StadtAL BCA V 1679.1, 11–12. 126.  Siegel an Stadtrat für Kultur Wenzel, “Fassadenwettbewerb Grimmaische Straße 17/Nikolaistraße 1,” December 17, 1983, StadtAL StVuR 18286, 54. 127. VEB Baukombinat Leipzig Kombinatsbetrieb Produktionsvorbereitung, “Bautechnische Studie zur Lückenschließung Grimmaische Straße 17. Ansicht von Osten,” August 6, 1982, StadtAL BCA V 1681, 40. 128.  “Grimmaische Straße 17,” May 12, 1987, StadtAL BCA V 1679.1, 121. 129. BfaK, “Konzeption architekturbezogene Kunst Stadtzentrum Leipzig Baulückenschließung Grimmaische Straße 17/Nikolaistraße 1,” August 19, 1985, SächStAL BfaK Bezirk Leipzig 281; Beschluss Rat der Stadt Leipzig, “Grundsatzentscheidung zum Wohnungsbauvorhaben Leipzig Stadtzentrum als Baulückenschließung Grimmaische Straße 17/Nikolaistraße 1 mit 50 WE und 162 m2 Verkaufsraumfläche,” April 6, 1983, SächStAL BfaK Bezirk Leipzig 281. 130. Geldner, Lenz, Fischer, BfaK, “Konzeption architekturbezogene Kunst, Baulückenschließung, Grimmaische Straße 17/Nikolaistraße 1,” August 19, 1985, SächStAL BfaK Bezirk Leipzig 415. 131.  Wolfgang Müller an Ullmann, Vorsitzenden des Bezirksvorstandes Leipzig der Gesellschaft für Denkmalpflege im Kulturbund der DDR, “Baulückenschließung Leipzig, Grimmaische Str. 17/Nikolaistraße 1. Anbringung des restaurierten Fürstenhaus-Erkers,” May 30, 1983, StadtAL BCA V 1679.1, 109–10; “Siegel über Stadtbaudirektor an Oberbürgermeister, Grimmaische Str. 17/Nikolaistraße 1,” November 6, 1982, StadtAL StVuR 18286, 53. 132.  VEB Denkmalpflege Leipzig Abteilung Projektierung Projekt Nr. P/3/83, “Bautechnische Dokumentation,” September 30, 1984, StadtAL BCA V 1704, 7. 133.  Schütze, “Aktennotiz über das am 29.7.1982 geführte Ferngespräch mit dem Steinmetz betrieb Hempel, Dresden, wegen Rekonstruktion des ‘Fürstenerkers’ für Neubau Grimmaische Straße 17/Nikolaistraße,” July 30, 1982, StadtAL StVuR 18286, 84. 134.  J. Müller, Bereichsleiter, Rat der Stadt Leipzig Abteilung Kultur, Bereich Denkmalpflege, “Niederschrift zum Arbeitsstand am Fürstenhauserker für die Lückenschließung

210    NOTES

TO PAGES 7 8 – 8 2

Grimmaische Straße 17/Nikolaistraße,” August 23, 1982, StadtAL StVuR 18286, 75–76. Turret construction cost 200,000 marks; transport and mounting, 276,000. Wenzel, Stadtrat für Kultur, “Fürstenerker,” April 15, 1983, StadtAL StVuR 18286, 6. 135. Johannes Schulze, Bereichsleiter, and Müller, Abteilungsleiter, Bereich Stadtzentrum und zentrale Bauten an VEB Denkmalpflege, “Lückenschließung Grimmaische Straße 17/Nikolaistraße 1. Naturstein-/Farbproblematik,” June 26, 1985, StadtAL BCA V 1676.1, 3–4. 136.  Anne Holtkötter and Michael Holtkötter, “Das Fürstenhaus in der Grimmaischen Straße,” Leipziger Blätter 7 (Fall 1985): 75. 137.  Rat der Stadt Leipzig, “Konzeption zur weiteren Gestaltung des Leipziger Stadtzentrums” March 31, 1987, StadtAL BCA V 125, 79–97. 138.  Johannes Schulze, “Mitteilung von Sekretär der Leitgruppe Stadtzentrum/ Stadtgestaltung an 1. Stellvertreter des OBM Gen. Schilling, Hinweise zur Beratung des Rates der Stadt am 6.11.1987 zum Thema ‘Stadtzentrum,’ ” November 5, 1987, StadtAL BCA V 125, 77–78. Emphasis in original. 139.  Rolf Opitz, “Bauen im Bezirk Leipzig,” Architektur der DDR (September 1988): 6. 140. Mank, Bereichsleiter, SKD, an BCA, Bereich Stadtzentrum und zentrale Bauten, “Nikolaistraße Stellungnahme zu den Studien Nr. 31 und 34,” October 21, 1985, StadtAL BCA V 1761.1, 145. 141.  Hofmann, Teilnehmer, Leipzig-Projekte, “Abstimmung zur architektonischen Lösung des Gebäudes Nikolaistraße 31 am 2.3.1990 (vor Ort),” March 7, 1990, StadtAL BCA V 1761.1, 5. 142. VEB Baukombinat Leipzig KB Produktionsvorbereitung, “Baulückenschließung Ritterstraße 12,” November 20, 1984, StadtAL BCA V 299.1, 1–7; BCA, “Leipzig—Mitte. Ritterstraße 12. Städtebauliche-Architektonische Vorgabe nach Wettbewerbsentscheid,” February 23, 1984, StadtAL BCA V 299.2, 61. 143.  For Ritterstraße 12, see Wendorf and Schulze, Bereich Stadtzentrum und zentrale Bauten, “Konsultation zur Baulückenschließung Ritterstraße 12 am 2.1.1985 im BCA,” January 7, 1985, StadtAL BCA V 299.2, 52–54; Wendorf, Abteilungsleiter, BCA Bereich Stadtzentrum, “Aktennotiz (innerbetrieblich) über Veränderungsvorschläge des BKL zur abgestimmten Studie des BCA vom 30.4.1985 für die Baulückenschließung Nikolaistraße 6/10,” August 23, 1985, StadtAL BCA V 291.1, 149; Wendorf, “Ritterstraße 12. Perspekt. Skizze,” September 2, 1986, StadtAL BCA V 299.2, 36. See also StadtAL BCA V 299.3 and 915.1. 144.  Topfstedt, interview, June 27, 2018. 145.  Projektanten am Objekt Niko 6–10 an Rat der Stadt Leipzig Herrn Oberbürgermeister Dr. Lehmann-Grube, June 8, 1990, StadtAL BCA V 291.2, 34–35. 146. Bartetzky, Die gerettete Stadt, 15. 147.  Th., entry in visitor book, Bauplatz Leipzig. 148.  Quoted in “Dokumentation der Debatte,” 227–28. 3. Utopian Visions in 1988

   1.  Werner Durth and Niels Gutschow, Träume in Trümmern. Planungen zum Wiederaufbau zerstörter Städte im Westen Deutschlands 1940–1950 (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1988).

NOTES TO PAGES 8 2 – 9 1     211

  2.  Wolfgang Gehrmann, “Stadt ohne Plan,” Die Zeit, January 22, 1993, https:// www.zeit.de/1993/04/stadt-ohne-plan/.   3.  Uta Nickel, interview with the author, June 21, 2018.   4.  Thomas Topfstedt, interview with the author, June 27, 2018.   5.  Entry in visitor book for exhibition Bauplatz Leipzig, March 25–April 9, 1988, Leipzig Neues Rathaus, SpA 84/88, 5–6.   6.  Dietmar Fischer, interview with the author, February 4, 2015.   7.  BdA Zentrale Fachgruppe Wohn- und Gesellschaftliche Bauten, “Vorschläge der Zentralen Fachgruppe ‘Wohn- und gesellschaftliche Bauten’ des BdA der DDR zur langfristigen Weiterentwicklung des Wohnungs- und Gesellschaftsbaues,” Weimar, 1987, SächStAL Bund der Architekten der DDR, Bezirksgruppe Leipzig 73.   8.  Chefarchitekt Dietmar Fischer, Rat der Stadt Leipzig, BCA, “Entwicklungskonzeption für das Leipziger Stadtzentrum, Entwurf,” October 15, 1987, StadtAL BCA 648.1, 3.  9. Fischer, 28–29. 10. Initiativgruppe 1. Leipziger Volksbaukonferenz, ed., 1. Volksbaukonferenz Leipzig 1990 (Merseburg: Mebu Druck, 1990), 103. 11.  Rat des Bezirkes Leipzig, Rat der Stadt Leipzig, “Konzeption zur Ausschreibung: Ideenwettbewerb zur weiteren städtebaulich architektonischen Gestaltung des Stadtzentrums der Messestadt Leipzig,” Leipzig, January 22, 1987, StadtAL BCA V Nr. 313.2, 2. 12.  Büro des Chefarchitekten, “Die weitere Gestaltung des Leipziger Stadtzentrums,” Architektur der DDR 37, no. 9 (September 1988): 16. 13. “Wettbewerb Stadtzentrum Leipzig 1988. Bericht der Vorprüfung,” August 24, 1988, IRS-WS A_12 U1, 3. 14.  “Ideenwettbewerb für die weitere städtebaulich-architektonische Gestaltung des Zentrums der Messestadt Leipzig. Bericht der Vorprüfung,” Leipzig, August 25, 1988, SpA 123a/89, 6. 15.  Fischer, interview, February 4, 2015. See also Dietmar Fischer and Ambros Gross, “Ideen für Leipzig. Wettbewerb für die Gestaltung des Zentrums,” Architektur der DDR 39, no. 3 (March 1990): 12–13. 16.  Büro des Chefarchitekten, “Die weitere Gestaltung des Leipziger Stadtzentrums.” See also “Wettbewerb Stadtzentrum Leipzig 1988. Bericht der Vorprüfung,” 2–3. 17.  Entries in visitor book, Bauplatz Leipzig, 2–3, 5, 7, 9, 11–12. 18. Dietmar Fischer and Bernd Grönwald, “Der Zustand unserer Stadt und städtebauliche Erneuerung,” LVZ, October 27, 1989, 6. 19.  Dietmar Fischer, “Zum DDR-offenen Architekturwettbewerb 1988,” Leipziger Blätter 15 (Fall 1989): 35. 20.  Ruth Geist-Reithmeier, dir., Ist Leipzig noch zu retten? (Klartext: Das kritische Reportage-Magazin des DDR-Fernsehens, November 6, 1989), DVD (Berlin: Icestorm Distribution GmbH, 2010). 21.  “Dokumentation der Debatte im Kabarett Academixer-Keller zum Thema ‘Leipzig—Messemetropole oder Provinznest?’ am 5. November 1989,” in Redefreiheit. Öffentliche Debatten in Leipzig im Herbst 1989, ed. Thomas Ahbe, Michael Hofmann, and Volker Stiehler (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2014), 229. 22. Geist-Reithmeier, Ist Leipzig noch zu retten?

212    NOTES

TO PAGES 9 1 – 9 8

23.  Fischer and Gross, “Ideen für Leipzig,” 9. 24.  Redaktion, “Ist Leipzig so zu retten? Kritik zu einem Wettbewerb,” Architektur der DDR (March 1990): 5. 25.  Fischer, interview, February 4, 2015. 26.  “Kostenvoranschlag für das gem. stadtplänerische Seminar der Städte Hannover, Frankfurt/M und Leipzig vom 23.4–26.4.90 in Leipzig,” April 2, 1990, StadtAL BCA V 980.2, 2. 27.  Fischer, interview, February 4, 2015. 28.  Entry in visitor book, Bauplatz Leipzig, 7. 4. Urban Ingenuity Underground

  1.  Used frequently in scholarship and pop culture since 1989, the term ostalgic (ostalgisch in German) combines nostalgic with Ost, implying sometimes playful nostalgia for East Germany.  2. “Eröffnungsrede Bowlingtreff am 25.7.1987,” SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22400, 5.  3. Jeffrey Kopstein, The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany, 1945–1989 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 10.   4.  This argument builds on Lena Kuhl’s finding that, while regional authorities never questioned the reigning system, their emphasis on local problems “contributed to the precarious stability of the DDR.” “Regionale Macht-Räume im Zentralismus? Die ‘Eigenverantwortung’ der örtlichen Organe der DDR,” Deutschland Archiv, July 14, 2016, 9, http://www.bpb.de/230157.  5. Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), chapter 5. According to Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, SED functionaries knew that over 90 percent of DDR citizens tuned in to Western television and radio. Endspiel: Die Revolution von 1989 in der DDR (Berlin: Ch.Beck, 2015), 76.   6.  This conclusion builds on Gleb Tsipursky’s finding that, during the post-Stalinist Thaw, Soviet citizens used state-led clubs for their own ends; it also answers his query about what happened next. Socialist Fun: Youth, Consumption, and State-Sponsored Culture in the Soviet Union, 1945–1970 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016), 4, 214. Some of the data and argumentation concerning Leipzig’s Bowlingtreff also appears in Andrew Demshuk, “The People’s Bowling Palace: Building Underground in Late Communist Leipzig,” Contemporary European History 29, no. 3 (August 2020).  7. The word Schwarzbau never appeared in any East German archival file, periodical, or publication I examined, nor did it register in reference to any East German structure during keyword searches in Neues Deutschland. Yet it was mentioned regularly by interviewees when they discussed legal and semilegal structures from that era.  8. Andrew Demshuk, Three Cities after Hitler: Urban Reconstruction across Cold War Borders (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, forthcoming), chapter 3.   9.  Lilly Maier, “Der Schwarzmarkt in der Möhlstraße und die Münchner Polizei— Eine Untersuchung im Spiegel der Akten der Polizeidirektion München,” Münchner Beiträge zur Jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur 12, no. 1 (2018): 37. 10.  Kuhl, “Regionale Macht-Räume im Zentralismus?,” 6–8.

NOTES TO PAGES 9 8 – 1 0 2     213

11.  Lena Kuhl and Oliver Werner, “ ‘Bezirke’ on Scale: Regional and Local Actors in East German ‘Democratic Centralism,’ ” Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung 42, no. 2 (160) (2017): 257. 12.  Liesel Schön, interview with the author, June 21, 2018. City council apparently complied with finance department recommendations. 13.  Kuhl and Werner,“ ‘Bezirke’ on Scale,” 245. 14.  Rat der Stadt Leipzig, Zahlen und Fakten zur Verwirklichung der Politik zum Wohle des Volkes in der Stadt Leipzig seit dem VIII. Parteitag der SED auf dem Wege zum 40. Jahrestag der DDR (Leipzig: Graphischer Großbetrieb, September 30, 1988), 59. 15.  Liesel Schön, “Entwicklung des Haushaltsplanes 1974–1990,” private paper. 16.  Schön, interview, June 21, 2018. 17.  Richard Ericson, “The ‘Second Economy’ and Resource Allocation under Central Planning,” Journal of Comparative Economics 8 (March 1984): 4, 6. 18.  Johannes Schulze, interview by the author, June 18, 2018. 19.  Schön, interview, June 21, 2018. 20.  Liesel Schön, interview with the author, June 28, 2018. 21.  Each day, Schön gave each Thomaner seven marks as pocket money, and many of them bought gifts to take back to their parents. Schön, interview, June 28, 2018. 22.  Schön, interview, June 21, 2018. 23.  Jonathan Zatlin, Currency of Socialism: Money and Political Culture in East Germany (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 3–4. 24.  Winfried Sziegoleit, interview with the author, June 30, 2017. 25.  Kuhl and Werner,“ ‘Bezirke’ on Scale,” 248. 26.  Waage was “Operativinstrukteurin für Wirtschaftsorganisation beim Rat des Bezirkes” (operational instructor for economic organizations at the Bezirk council). Ursula Waage, correspondence with the author, June 8, 2018. 27. “Leipzigs Oberbürgermeister. Die Sportfeststadt ist für Aktive und Gäste bereit. Zahlreiche Objekte neugeschaffen oder rekonstruiert,” Neues Deutschland, July 21, 1987, 7. 28.  Rat der Stadt Leipzig, Zahlen und Fakten, 21. 29.  Eli Rubin, Amnesiopolis: Modernity, Space, and Memory in East Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 108. 30.  Ursula Waage, correspondence with the author, June 15, 2018. For Waage’s deeply insightful childhood daybook during and after the destruction of Breslau, see Bleib übrig. Aus den Tagebuchaufzeichnungen in der Festung Breslau und der Nachkriegszeit von Januar 1945 bis April 1947 (Halle: Juco, 2004). 31.  Molly Johnson, Training Socialist Citizens: Sport and the State in East Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 108. 32.  Johnson, 116. Interviewees regularly referred to their youthful obligations with the word Subbotnik. Famed state-sponsored voluntary work projects included Berlin’s Stalinallee (1951) and Tierpark (1955), as well as the Buchenwald Memorial (1958). Leipzig students were often corralled into doing hard manual labor on farms and in forests to secure the next semester’s enrollment. 33.  Waage, correspondence, June 8, 2018. 34. Rubin, Amnesiopolis, 110–11.

214    NOTES

TO PAGES 1 0 2 – 1 0 6

35.  Schön, interview, June 28, 2018. 36.  Uta Nickel, interview with the author, June 21, 2018. 37.  Thomas Beyer and Adrian Dorschner, dirs., Bowlingtreff (Beyer & Dorschner, MDR, NDR, 2016). 38.  Like Soviet Komsomol youth, Leipzigers demonstrated what Alexei Yurchak has called a performative shift, wherein people enacted “creative and unanticipated meanings and forms of everyday life that these ritualized acts and utterances enabled but did not determine in full.” Everything Was Forever, 80. 39.  Wolfgang Hocquél, interview with the author, June 21, 2018. 40.  Feierabendbrigaden were ubiquitous and helped with patchwork restoration of precarious historic monuments in villages. See, for instance, the Fulbright scholar Paul Gleye’s memories in early 1989 in Behind the Wall: An American in East Germany, 1988–1989 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), 1. 41.  For the building manager’s remark and Rau’s analysis, see Christian Rau, Stadtverwaltung im Staatssozialismus. Kommunalpolitik und Wohnungswesen in der DDR am Beispiel Leipzigs (1957–1989) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2017), 339. 42.  Gregory Grossman, “The ‘Second Economy’ of the USSR,” Problems of Communism 26 (September/October 1977): 30. Soviet after-hours workers were called shabashniki and sometimes freelanced during working hours. 43.  “Beschluß zur Erhöhung von Ordnung und Disziplin sowie zur Durchsetzung einer straffen Kontrolle bei Leistung zusätzlicher Arbeit vom 14. August 1975,” Gesetzblatt der DDR part I, section 35 (September 9, 1975): 631. 44.  Preceding laws from 1970 and 1972 had also allowed tax-free reimbursement for after-hours labor. Hourly wages for such labor were precisely stated, such as up to 4 marks per hour for roofing, heating, or plumbing; 5.50 for digging; 4.50 for craftsmanship; up to 6.50 for drafting, etc. General labor was 4–6 marks, and for work on Sundays one received one mark per hour extra (two on holidays). “Anordnung über die Zulässigkeit, Vergütung und Kontrolle von zusätzlicher Arbeit bei der Vorbereitung und Durchführung von Baumaßnahmen vom 25. August 1975,” Gesetzblatt der DDR, part I, section 35 (September 9, 1975): 632–34. 45.  Werner Kießling, correspondence with the author, July 29, 2018. 46.  The same period saw officials in other towns using free labor to build Schwarzbauten, such as a swimming pool in Wittenberg. Johnson, Training Socialist Citizens, 132. However, the sheer number of officially led illegal construction projects in Leipzig (peaking with the Bowlingtreff ) appears to have been high. 47.  Lucas an die Abteilung Kultur, “Wiederaufbau Moritzbastei,” April 6, 1959, StadtAL StVuR 17279, 288. 48.  VEB Hochbauprojektierung I, “Städtebauliche Voruntersuchung der künftigen Gestaltung und Nutzung der Moritzbastei. Bericht über eine Ortsbesichtigung des Bauvorhabens mit Vertretern der Behörden,” October 26, 1959, SächStAL StVuR 17279, 282–84. 49.  Ständige Kommission Kultur der Stadtverordnetenversammlung, “Beschluß­ vorlage: Die Konzeption für die künstlerische Ausgestaltung der Investvorhaben im Stadtzentrum,” February 27, 1964, SächStAL StVuR 4890, 73–74, 82; Rat der Stadt Leipzig, Oberbürgermeister Kresse, an Paul Fröhlich, “Aktennotiz: Hinweise zum Aufbau des Stadtzentrums,” March 5, 1964, SächStAL SED Bezirksleitung Nr. IV/A/2/06/262.

NOTES TO PAGES 1 0 6 – 1 1 1     215

50. Busch, Amtlicher Leiter Hauptplanträger, an Oberbürgermeister Kresse, “Ausbau Moritzbastei,” July 18, 1973, StadtAL StVuR 20633, 73. 51.  Stadtrat Stock an Kresse, “Stand Vorhaben Moritzbastei,” March 25, 1974, SächStAL StVuR 20633, 71–72. 52. Rektor Winkler an Chef des Militärbezirkes III der NVA Generalmajor Handke, June 13, 1974, UAL R.1019, 1. 53.  Ulrike Schuster, Moritzbastei Leipzig. Das planvolle Chaos einer Baugeschichte, 1974–9 (Berlin: Nora, 2003), 35. 54.  Peter Kunz and Susann Morgner, Die Moritzbastei in Leipzig (Leipzig: Lehmstedt, 2003), 98, 92–93. 55.  Quoted in Schuster, Moritzbastei Leipzig, 35. 56.  Schuster, 46. 57.  Kunz and Morgner, Die Moritzbastei in Leipzig, 101. 58.  Rat der Stadt and KMU, “Jahresprogramm 1974,” May 15, 1974, SächStAL SED-Kreisleitung KMU IV/C/4/14/085, 2; Kunz and Morgner, Die Moritzbastei in Leipzig, 140. 59. Kunz and Morgner, Die Moritzbastei in Leipzig, 97; Schuster, Moritzbastei Leipzig, 55–56. 60. Schuster, Moritzbastei Leipzig, 35. 61.  “Stellungnahme zu Punkt 1.7,” January 20, 1975, UAL R.1019, 3–5. The project only entered the official balance sheets in August 1978, when the East German company Investcommerz took over restoration efforts and completed basic utilities and furnishing. 62.  Kunz and Morgner, Die Moritzbastei in Leipzig, 97. 63. Schuster, Moritzbastei Leipzig, 101–2. 64.  Ministerrat der DDR Ministerium für Hoch- und Fachschulwesen Abteilung Grundfondsökonomie, Abteilungsleiter Hicke, an KMU 1. Prorektor H. Stein, Berlin, March 17, 1976, UAL R.1019. 65.  Schön, interview, June 28, 2018. With the end of SED rule, the Ratstonne was transferred to the university. 66.  “Dokumentation zur Vorbereitung der Grundsatzentscheidung für das Investvorhaben Jugend und Studentenzentrum Moritzbastei,” 1980, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 24927, 7–8; “Die ‘mb’—Europas größter Studentenclub,” MDR, March 20, 2014, http://www.mdr.de/damals/archiv/artikel91876.html. 67.  Late building activities are in SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 24928. 68. Schuster, Moritzbastei Leipzig, 190, 200. 69.  Schön, interview, June 28, 2018. 70.  Rat der Stadt Leipzig, Zahlen und Fakten, 42–43. 71.  Bert Prescha, “Wiederherstellung des Wildparkes im Connewitzer Wald als Naherholungsobjekt im südlichen Auewald von Leipzig,” May 14, 1970, StadtAL BCA V 364, 1, 39. 72.  Blaurock, Stellvertreter des OBM und Vorsitzender der Stadtplankommission, “II Bauabschnitt Wildpark Leipzig-Connewitz, Wildpark incl. Gaststätte,” September 17, 1975, StadtAL StVuR 27965, 1. 73. Drafter Richter, “Leipzig-Connewitz Wildpark Gestaltungsplan,” January 1974, StadtAL StVuR 27965, 2.

216    NOTES

TO PAGES 1 1 2 – 1 1 4

74.  Blaurock, “II Bauabschnitt Wildpark Leipzig-Connewitz,” 1. 75.  Müller, Oberbürgermeister, und Ullrich, Stadtrat für Internationale Arbeit und Erholungswesen, Beschluss Rat der Stadt Leipzig, “Grundsatzentscheidung für die Rekonstruktion Sommerbad Schönefeld,” StadtAL VEB Städtische Bäder Nr. 35, 90–98. 76.  Blaurock, Stellvertreter des OBM und Vorsitzender der Stadtplankommission, Rat der Stadt Leipzig Abteilung Internationale Arbeit und Erholungswesen, “Rekonstruktion Sommerbad Schönefeld,” May 26, 1981, StadtAL StVuR 27965, 21. 77.  Ullrich, Stadtrat für Internationale Arbeit und Erholungswesen, “Protokoll der Beratung am 20.11.1984—Investitionen 1985,” November 27, 1984, StadtAL VEB Städtische Bäder Nr. 35, 54–55. 78.  Weichsel, Rat der Stadt Abt. Ltr. Erholungswesen, “Niederschrift über ein Telefongespräch am 28.12.1983 zwischen Genossen Weichsel und der Genossin Wolf, Bezirksplankommission, über die Umsetzung materieller und finanzieller Kennziffern der Kohleersatzleistung für die Rekonstruktion Sommerbad Schönefeld,” December 28, 1983, StadtAL VEB Städtische Bäder Nr. 35, 85. 79.  Weichsel, Abteilung Leiter Erholungswesen, “Aktivitäten zur Vorbereitung der Baudurchführung für die Reko-Maßnahme ‘Sommerbad Schönefeld,’ ” 1984, StadtAL VEB Städtische Bäder Nr. 35, 56–60. 80.  OBM Müller an VEB Ingenieurbau Leipzig Genosse Philipp, July 16, 1984, StadtAL VEB Städtische Bäder Nr. 35, 65. Part of the difficulty was the shortage when the VEB Ingenieurbau failed to send thirty workers at the start of 1984; this was supplemented by Jungfacharbeiter from the VEB IBL (six in July) and three Arbeitskräften from Brigade Lohse. VEB Ingenieurbau an Stadtrat für Internationale Arbeit und Erholungswesen, “Sicherung der Bauleistung 1984 im Sommerbad Schönefeld,” June 14, 1984, StadtAL VEB Städtische Bäder Nr. 35, 72. 81. “Betr. Rekonstruktion Sommerbad Schönefeld,” 1986, StadtAL VEB Städtische Bäder Nr. 35, 26. 82.  Rohland, Oberbauleiter Abteilung Invest, Direktion Naherholung der Stadt Leipzig, “Vorhaben Rekonstruktionsmaßnahme Sommerbad Schönefeld,” February 17, 1986, StadtAL VEB Städtische Bäder Nr. 35, 12. 83.  OBM Müller, Ullrich, Stadtrat für Internationale Arbeit und Erholungswesen, Beschluss Rat der Stadt Leipzig, “Grundsatzentscheidung für die Rekonstruktion Sommerbad Schönefeld,” StadtAL VEB Städtische Bäder Nr. 35, 90–98. 84.  Herzog, Gala Leipzig, “Naherholungsgebiet Lößnig-Dölitz 1. Aufbaustufe, projektmäßige Bearbeitung,” January 31, 1983, StadtAL StVuR Nr. 3069, 5. 85.  Herzog, Gala Leipzig, 19. 86. Herzog, VEB Gala Leipzig, “Beratung mit Stadtrat Ullrich am 5. Juli, zum zukünftigen Erholungsgebiet Lößnig-Dölitz,” July 6, 1983, StadtAL StVuR Nr. 3069, 1–2. 87.  BCA, Leipzig-Stadt Stadtbezirke Süd und Südost, “Studie zur Gestaltung des Naherholungsgebietes Lößnig-Dölitz,” September 30, 1976, StadtAL BCA V 199.1, 9. 88.  Quoted in Demshuk, “A Polish Approach for German Cities? Cement Old Towns and the Search for Rootedness in Postwar Leipzig and Frankfurt/Main,” European History Quarterly 50, no. 1 (2020): 90. 89.  Andrew Demshuk, “Leipzig’s Karl Marx Monument and the Dustbin of History,” OUPblog, September 26, 2017, https://blog.oup.com/2017/09/leipzig-marxmonument/.

NOTES TO PAGES 1 1 5 – 1 2 0     217

  90.  Nickel, interview, June 21, 2018.   91.  “Dokumentation der Debatte im Kabarett Academixer-Keller zum Thema ‘Leipzig—Messemetropole oder Provinznest?’ am 5. November 1989,” in Redefreiheit. Öffentliche Debatten in Leipzig im Herbst 1989, ed. Thomas Ahbe, Michael Hofmann, and Volker Stiehler (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2014), 230.   92.  Werner Kießling, interview with Thomas Beyer and Adrian Dorschner, 2015.   93.  Anlage zum Schreiben vom 8.10.1970, StadtAL BCA V 1989, 28. For summary of plans, see Horst Siegel, “Wie das Neue Gewandhaus seinen Platz und seine Gestalt bekam,” Leipziger Blätter 1 (Fall 1982): 7–10.   94.  Stadtrat Hauptplanträger Stolle an Karl-Marx-Universität Rektor Winkler, “Bebauung Karl-Marx-Platz Südseite,” August 25, 1971, StadtAL BCA V 2087.3, 4.   95.  Esther von Richthofen, Bringing Culture to the Masses: Control, Compromise, and Participation in the GDR (New York: Berghahn, 2009), 8.   96.  Kießling, interview with Beyer and Dorschner, 2015.   97.  Wolfgang Horn, “Leipzig-Mitte Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz Unterwerk Mitte, Kellergeschoß Zentralmarkthalle: Studie über eine gesellschaftliche Nutzung beider Objekte,” April 1974, StadtAL BCA V 1247, 19.  98. Horn, 24.   99.  Horst Siegel, Chefarchitekt, an Rat der Stadt Abteilung Internat. Arbeit und Erholungswesen, “Freizeitzentrum Unterwerk Mitte, Roßplatz,” June 18, 1977, StadtAL BCA V 1247, 10. 100.  BCA Abt. Direktivplanung Dipl.-Ing. Wolfgang Horn, “Reisebericht über eine Dienstreise nach Berlin am 22. August 1974,” September 12, 1974, StadtAL BCA V 1247, 44–4. Valuta is the Italian word for “currency.” Along with the slang term Westgeld, it took on the meaning of “Western currency” in East German bureaucracy, likely because Valiuta was the Soviet term for foreign currencies. 101.  Ministerrat der DDR Ministerium für Hoch- und Fachschulwesen, Auftragsleiter für den Neubau der KMU Gerd Breitenfeld, an den Rat der Stadt Leipzig Hauptplanträger Stadtzentrum, Stadtrat Stolle, April 13, 1970, StadtAL BCA V Nr. 211.1, 90. 102.  Similarly, funds never came through for a parking garage under Karl Marx Square. This made a parking garage in the moldering market hall cellar less than unlikely. Stadtrat Hauptplanträger Stolle and Stadtrat für Verkehr, Straßenwesen und Wasserwirtschaft Schlosser, “Beschlußvorlage für die Ratssitzung am 25.3.70 über den Bau der unterirdischen Verkehrsanlagen am Karl-Marx-Platz,” StadtAL BCA V Nr. 211.1, 85–86. 103.  Blaurock, Stellvertreter des OBM und Vorsitzender der Stadtplankommission, “Standortbestätigung,” February 2, 1977, StadtAL StVuR 27965, 6. 104.  Oberst Lange, Bezirksbehörde Deutsche Volkspolizei Leipzig, “Festlegungsprotokoll für die Vorbereitung der Übergabe/Übernahme des Objektes UW Roßplatz,” July 27, 1976, StadtAL StVuR 27965, 11. The police were compensated with new storage facilities at the city’s permanently unfinished harbor. 105.  Ullrich, Stadtrat für Internationale Arbeit und Erholungswesen, an Stadtplankommission, “Antrag auf Standortbestätigung für den Bau des Freizeitzentrums Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz,” November 8, 1976, StadtAL StVuR 27965, 8. 106.  Horst Siegel, Chefarchitekt, an Abteilung Internat. Arbeit und Erholungswesen, “Baustelleneinrichtung für das künftige Freizeitzentrum Wilhelm-LeuschnerPlatz,” June 18, 1977, StadtAL BCA V 1247, 10.

218    NOTES

TO PAGES 1 2 0 – 1 2 3

107.  Bearbeiter Wendorf an Poller, “Ratstermin Obst- und Gemüsemarkt 30.11,” November 25, 1977, StadtAL BCA V 1247, 7. 108.  Schlorke an Abt. Erholungswesen, “Ausbau des Unterwerkes Mitte zum Freizeitzentrum,” November 25, 1977, StadtAL BCA V 1247, 6; Siegel, “Freizeitzentrum Leuschnerplatz, Beratung am 30.11.77 beim Stadtrat Ullrich,” November 30, 1977, StadtAL BCA V 1247, 9. 109.  Horst Siegel, “Befristete städtebauliche Bestätigung für Raumzellen VEB Innenprojekt BT Leipzig, Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz,” December 22, 1977, StadtAL BCA V 1247, 12. 110.  Stadtrat Ullrich an Oberbürgermeister Gen. Dr. Müller, “Umsetzung der Trafostation auf dem Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz,” January 17, 1978, StadtAL BCA V 1247, 1. 111.  “Freizeitzentrum,” April 6, 1978, StadtAL BCA V 1247, 2–3; Siegel an Rat der Stadt Abt. Erholungswesen, “Eingangsgebäude Freizeitzentrum am WilhelmLeuschner-Platz,” May 10, 1978, StadtAL BCA V 1247, 5; Chefarchitekt Siegel, “Eingangsgebäude Freizeitzentrum am Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz,” May 10, 1978, StadtAL StVuR 27965, 4. 112.  Ullrich, Stadtrat für Internationale Arbeit und Erholungswesen, “Information zum geplanten Freizeitzentrum, Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz,” April 16, 1984, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22400, 1. 113.  Winfried Sziegoleit, “Die Architektur entstand als ‘Schwarzbau,’ ” in Bowling Together! Bowlingtreff Leipzig. Eine Spielstätte auf Zeit, ed. Annette Menting (Leipzig: HTWK, 2007), 31–32. 114. Katrin Jordan, “Vom Hohenzollernschloss zum Volkspalast. Ein kurzer Abriss zur Geschichte des Schlossplatzes,” in Palast der Republik. Politischer Diskurs und private Erinnerung, ed. Alexander Schug (Berlin: Berlin Wissenschaftsverlag, 2007), 26; Anke Kuhrmann, Der Palast der Republik. Geschichte und Bedeutung des OstBerliner Parlaments- und Kulturhauses (Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2006), 62–63, 121. 115.  Martin Beerbaum and Heinz Graffunder, Der Palast der Republik (Leipzig: Seemann, 1979), 40–41. 116. Schug, Palast der Republik, 8. 117. Kalitynski recalls in his 2015 interview with Beyer and Dorschner that Leipzigers had “no chance to bowl” in Berlin, because it was impossible for ordinary outsiders to get tickets. 118.  Müller, Leiter des Aufbaustabes, Rat des Bezirkes, “Dokumentation zur Aufgabenstellung Volkssportzentrum Leipzig Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz,” February 28, 1985, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes Leipzig 24890, 16. 119.  Sziegoleit, “Die Architektur entstand als ‘Schwarzbau,’ ” 26. 120.  Thomas Topfstedt, “Der Leipziger Bowlingtreff. Nachbetrachtungen aus heutiger Sicht,” in Menting, Bowling Together!, 17. 121.  Thomas Topfstedt, interview with the author, June 27, 2018. 122.  Schulze, interview, June 18, 2018. Sziegoleit also recalls that Ullrich “politically organized everything to make things possible.” Interview, June 30, 2017. 123.  This dual collaboration was celebrated in the 1987 report. Bowlingtreff Leipzig, “Zur Eröffnung des Freizeitzentrums Bowlingtreff Leipzig am 25. Juli 1987,” StadtAL BCA V 987 100/88, 3. 124.  Sziegoleit, interview, June 30, 2017.

NOTES TO PAGES 1 2 3 – 1 2 7     219

125.  Sziegoleit recalls that the new Chefarchitekt organized the small internal competition and guided the whole endeavor. Interview, June 30, 2017. 126.  Werner Kießling, interview with Thomas Beyer and Adrian Dorschner, 2015. 127.  Ullrich, “Information zum geplanten Freizeitzentrum,” 4, 7. 128.  Nickel an Opitz, Mitglied des Rates für Finanzen, August 6, 1987, SächStAL 21123 SED-Bezirksleitung Leipzig 167. 129.  Bowlingtreff Leipzig, “Zur Eröffnung des Freizeitzentrums Bowlingtreff Leipzig,” 3. 130. Müller, Leiter des Aufbaustabes, “Dokumentation zur Aufgabenstellung Volkssportzentrum Leipzig Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz,” February 28, 1985, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 24890, 18. 131. Rat des Bezirkes Aufbaustab, “Dokumentation zur Aufgabenstellung Volkssportzentrum Leipzig, Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz,” February 28, 1985, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22400, 1–33. 132.  Ullrich an Draber, 1. Stellvertreter des Vorsitzenden des Rates des Bezirkes, “Information über den Stand der Vorbereitung für den Neubeginn der Investitionsmaßnahme ‘Volkssportobjekt Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz,’ ” April 1, 1985, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22401. 133.  Winfried Sziegoleit, interview with the author, June 26, 2018. 134.  Sziegoleit, interview. 135.  Sziegoleit, interview; Sziegoleit, “Die Architektur entstand als ‘Schwarzbau,’ ” 31–32; Topfstedt interprets Sziegoleit’s creation as postmodern in keeping with global aesthetics of the time. “Gepriesener Neubau Bowlingtreff,” Leipziger Blätter 16 (Spring 1990): 37. 136.  For discussion of how architectural styles take on national or otherwise ideological attributions, see, for instance, Arnold Bartetzky, “History Revised: National Style and National Heritage in Polish Architecture and Monument Protection— before and after World War II,” in Heritage, Ideology, and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe: Contested Pasts, Contested Presents, ed. Matthew Rampley (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2012), 93–113. 137.  Gewandhaus, SächStAL 20733 VEB Baukombinat Leipzig 1413; Ullrich, “Niederschrift über die 17. Beratung der AG Staatlicher Leiter ‘Bowlingtreff Leipzig’ vom 28.4.1987,” April 29, 1987, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 24890. 138.  Beyer and Dorschner, Bowlingtreff Leipzig. 139.  Kalitynski, interview with Beyer and Dorschner, 2015. 140.  Sziegoleit, interview, June 30, 2017. 141.  Nickel, interview, June 21, 2018. 142.  Oberbürgermeister, “Investitionsvorhaben, Freizeit, Volkssport, Zentrum: Aufgabenstellung für den Neubeginn des Ausbaues des ehemaligen Unterwerkes Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz zu einem Volkssportsobjekt,” April 4, 1985, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22400. 143.  Sziegoleit, interview, June 26, 2018. 144.  Bowlingtreff Leipzig, “Zur Eröffnung des Freizeitzentrums Bowlingtreff Leipzig,” 3. 145.  Ullrich an Draber, “Information über den Stand der Vorbereitung für den Neubeginn der Investitionsmaßnahme ‘Volkssportobjekt Wilhelm-LeuschnerPlatz,’ ” April 1, 1985, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22401.

220    NOTES

TO PAGES 1 2 7 – 1 3 1

146.  Beschluß, Rat des Bezirkes, “1. Teil-Grundsatzentscheidung für den Ausbau des ehemaligen Unterwerkes Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz zum Bowlingtreff Leipzig,” Beschluß-Nr. 184/85, November 29, 1985, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 18931, 161–69. 147.  Müller, Leiter des Aufbaustabes, “Grundlagen für den Informationsbericht zum Vorhaben ‘Bowlingtreff Leipzig’ in der Beratung am 17.6.1986 unter Leitung des 1. Stellvertreters des Vorsitzenden des Rates des Bezirkes Leipzig, Genosse Draber,” June 17, 1986, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22401. 148.  Radtke, Oberst der VP, an Rat der Stadt Leipzig Abt. Erholungswesen, “Ausbau des ehemaligen Unterwerkes Mitte zu einem Freizeitzentrum,” February 23, 1976; Rat des Bezirkes Aufbaustab, Betriebsleiter Vorbereitung, Kollegen Göschel und Müller, an Bezirksbehörde der Deutschen Volkspolizei, “Freizeitzentrum Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz, Standortgenehmigung,” April 22, 1985; Burghardt, Oberst der VP, an Rat des Bezirkes Aufbaustab, Betriebsleiter Vorbereitung, “Standortgenehmigung Freizeitzentrum Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz,” May 31, 1985, SächStAL 20250 Bezirksbehörde der Deutschen Volkspolizei Leipzig 1562. 149.  Sziegoleit, “Die Architektur entstand als ‘Schwarzbau,’ ” 32–33. 150.  Ullrich an Draber, August 28, 1985, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22401. 151.  Sziegoleit, interview, June 26, 2018. 152.  Kalitynski, interview with Beyer and Dorschner, 2015. 153.  Kießling, interview with Beyer and Dorschner, 2015. 154.  Kalitynski, interview with Beyer and Dorschner, 2015. 155.  For models, see SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag 22402. 156. “Ausgewählte Fakten für das Interview des Vorsitzenden des Rates des Bezirkes anläßlich der Übergabe des ‘Bowlingtreff Leipzig,’ am 25.7.1987,” July 24, 1987, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22400, 2. 157.  Eva Wolf, interview with Thomas Beyer and Adrian Dorschner, 2015. 158.  Sziegoleit, interview, June 26, 2018. 159.  Müller, Leiter des Aufbaustabes, Rat des Bezirkes, an Theo Ullrich, Stadtrat für Internationale Arbeit und Erholungswesen, “Volkssportobjekt Leipzig WilhelmLeuschner-Platz,” August 29, 1985, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22401. 160.  Ullrich an Draber, January 21, 1986, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22401. 161.  Beyer and Dorschner, Bowlingtreff Leipzig. 162.  Ullrich, “Niederschrift über die 6. Beratung zum ‘Bowlingtreff Leipzig’ vom 13.5.1956,” May 13, 1986, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22401. 163.  Hempel, Mitglied des Rates, an VEB Bau- und Montagekombinat LeipzigSüd Kombinatsbetrieb Industriebau Produktionsbereich I, z.H. Genossen Peter Kunze, May 27, 1986, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22401; Hempel, Rat des Bezirkes und Schneider, Leiter OP-Stab Sommerinitiative an Rat des Bezirkes Leiter Aufbaustab Müller, “Einsatz der Studenten während der Sommerinitiative Objekt Bowlingtreff Leipzig,” July 9, 1986, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22401. 164.  Waage, correspondence, June 8, 2018.

NOTES TO PAGES 1 3 1 – 1 3 4     221

165.  Müller, Leiter des Aufbaustabes, “Informationsbericht für die Kontrollberatung zum Vorhaben ‘Bowlingtreff Leipzig’ am 23.9.86 unter Leitung des 1. Stellvertreters des Vorsitzenden des Rates des Bezirkes Leipzig, Genosse Draber,” September 23, 1986, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22401. 166.  Beyer and Dorschner, Bowlingtreff Leipzig. 167.  Annemarie Pester, 1. Sekretär, Freie Deutsche Jugend Bezirksleitung Leipzig an 1. Sekretär der FDJ-KL KMU GO-Sekretär HS/FS, Leipzig, October 22, 1986, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 24890. 168.  Bowlingtreff Leipzig, “Zur Eröffnung des Freizeitzentrums Bowlingtreff Leipzig,” 3. 169.  Winter, Sekretär des Rates, an Mitglieder des Rates Hempel, September 5, 1986, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 24890. 170.  Schulze, interview, June 18, 2018. 171.  Ullrich, “Niederschrift über die 17. Beratung der AG Staatlicher Leiter ‘Bowlingtreff Leipzig.’ ” 172.  Ullrich, “Niederschrift über die 18. Beratung der AG Staatlichter Leiter Bowlingtreff Leipzig vom 19.5.1987,” May 20, 1987, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22401. 173.  Veranstaltungen zum VIII. Turn- und Sportfest 1987, SächStAL 21123 SEDBezirksleitung Leipzig 490. 174.  Bowlingtreff Leipzig, “Zur Eröffnung des Freizeitzentrums Bowlingtreff Leipzig,” 3. 175.  Büro des Sekretariats, Ablaufprotokoll für das Dankeschön des Sekretariats der SED-Bezirksleitung und des Rates des Bezirkes am 6.8.1987 im Bowlingtreff um 15.00 Uhr, August 4, 1987, SächStAL 21123 SED-Bezirksleitung 490. 176.  “Mit dem Architekturpreis des Bezirkes Leipzig 1987 ausgezeichnet: Bowlingtreff Leipzig. Dipl.-Ing. Volker Sieg, Dipl.-Ing. Winfried Sziegoleit, Rat des Bezirkes, Aufbaustab,” 1987, SächStAL Bund der Architekten der DDR, Bezirksgruppe Leipzig 74. As a further sign of shifting priorities away from massive prefab estates, the 1988 architectural prize in Bezirk Leipzig went to the reconstruction of the Altenburg old town. 177.  “Rede zur Begegnung mit den Bauschaffenden anläßlich der Fertigstellung ‘Bowlingtreff,’ ” July 1987, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22400. 178. Draber, Erster Stellvertreter des Vorsitzenden des Rates des Bezirkes Leipzig, “Beschluß: Konzeption zur Übergabe und Eröffnung des Objektes ‘Bowlingtreff Leipzig’ und Konzeption zur Nutzung des ‘Bowlingtreff Leipzig,’ ” July 3, 1987, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22400, 4. 179.  “Banner der Arbeit, Stufe III,” July 1987, SächStAL 20237 Bezirkstag und Rat des Bezirkes 22400. 180.  Draber, “Beschluß: Konzeption zur Übergabe und Eröffnung des Objektes ‘Bowlingtreff Leipzig,’ ” 13. 181.  Quoted in Jürgen Holz, “Kugeln rollen in zwei Etagen unter der Erde. ‘Bowlingtreff ’ am Leuschnerplatz zum ‘VIII.’ eingeweiht,” Neues Deutschland, July 27, 1987, 7. 182.  Kießling, interview with Beyer and Dorschner, 2015. This story may be apocryphal.

222    NOTES

TO PAGES 1 3 5 – 1 4 0

183.  Sziegoleit, interview, June 30, 2017. 184.  R. Opitz an Scharfenstein, Leiter der Instrukteurabteilung beim Vorsitzenden des Ministerrates, Berlin, August 25, 1987, SächStAL 21123 SED-Bezirksleitung 167. 185. Nickel, Mitglied des Rates für Finanzen und Preise, an Opitz, Rat des Bezirkes, August 4, 1987, SächStAL 21123 SED-Bezirksleitung 167; Nickel an Opitz, August 6, 1987, SächStAL 21123 SED-Bezirksleitung 167. 186.  Nickel, interview, June 21, 2018. 187.  Abteilung XX/1, “Information zu einigen Problemen Rat des Bezirkes,” August 7, 1987, BStU MfS BV Lpz. Abteilung XX 00810, 32–33. 188.  Dr. zur Linden, Stellvertreter des Vorsitzenden der Bezirksplankommission und Ltr. Der Abteilung Territorialplanung, “Abschlußgespräch mit dem Genossen des Ministeriums für Bauwesen zum Bowlingzentrum am 4.8.1987,” August 5, 1987, SächStAL 21123 SED-Bezirksleitung 167. 189.  Kalitynski, interview with Beyer and Dorschner, 2015. 190.  Kießling, interview with Beyer and Dorschner, 2015. 191.  Robert Putnam famously decried the decline of league bowling as a sign of America’s lost communal life. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 112–13. 192. Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, chapter 5. 193.  Kießling, interview with Beyer and Dorschner, 2015. 194.  Kalitynski, interview with Beyer and Dorschner, 2015. 195.  Kießling, interview with Beyer and Dorschner, 2015. 196.  Kießling, correspondence with the author, July 14, 2018. 197.  Draber, “Beschluß: Konzeption zur Übergabe und Eröffnung des Objektes ‘Bowlingtreff Leipzig,’ ” 10–11. The Stasi also noted that the Bowlingtreff was legally obliged to leave one lane free at all times for Bezirk and city personnel. Krogull, BV für Staatssicherheit Leipzig Bezirkskoordinierungsgruppe, “Lageeinschätzung zu Übersiedlungsersuchenden im Bowlingtreff und Auswertung des OV Feuer der KD Leipzig-Stadt,” November 2, 1988, BStU MfS BV Lpz. AKG 01029, 1. 198.  Armin Mitter and Stefan Wolle, eds., Ich liebe euch doch alle! Befehle und Lageberichte des MfS Januar-November 1989 (Berlin: BasisDruck, 1990), 82. 199.  Along with the SED and FDJ, these included the Society for German-Soviet Friendship (DSF), German Gymnastics and Sporting League (DTSB), and Cultural League (KB). 200.  Major Eberhardt, KD Leipzig-Stadt, “ÜSE X/HOG Bowlingtreff,” December 3, 1987, BStU MfS BV Lpz. AIM 477/88.1, 39; Major Eberhardt, KD Leipzig-Stadt, “Auszug aus einem Treffbericht mit IMS ‘Walter’ (IM unter ÜSE) vom 26.11.87,” December 3, 1987, BStU MfS BV Lpz. AIM 477/88.1, 40. 201. “Sofortmeldung gem. 3.1.—Verdacht des ungesetzlichen Grenzübertrittes gem. 213 stgb-Nichtrückkehr,” November 1987, BStU MfS BV Lpz. ZMA BKG 557/87, 2. 202.  Major Krogull, “Lageeinschätzung zu Übersiedlungsersuchenden im ‘Bowlingtreff,’ ” 1–4. 203.  Wolf, interview with Beyer and Dorschner, 2015. 204.  Major Krogull, “Lageeinschätzung zu Übersiedlungsersuchenden im ‘Bowlingtreff,’ ” 2–4. Jens Gieseke observes that by the 1980s applications for family reunification had spiraled out of control; by 1984 over ten thousand East Germans were using such grounds to leave the DDR each year. He concludes that such emigration

NOTES TO PAGES 1 4 0 – 1 4 6     223

was less a challenge to the system than a rejection of it. The History of the Stasi: East Germany’s Secret Police, 1945–1990 (New York: Berghahn, 2014), 134. In The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), Gary Bruce details how the Stasi terrorized citizens who attempted to flee. 205.  Major Krogull, “Lageeinschätzung zu Übersiedlungsersuchenden im ‘Bowlingtreff,’ ” 5. 206. Because of confidentiality rules at the BStU, the pseudonyms Andreas, Bernd, and Christoph (ABC) have been applied for the three individuals involved. 207.  Oberrat Etzold, Leiter der Bezirksverwaltung, Abteilung IX, “ErstmeldungFahndung,” November 11, 1988, BStU MfS BV Lpz. Abteilung IX ZA-F, 77/88, 10–14; Oberleutnant Käseberg and Hauptmann Pflug, “Untersuchungsbericht,” BStU MfS BV Lpz. Abteilung IX ZA-F, 77/88, 15–20. 208.  MfS Abteilung Grenzsicherheit, “Dokumention zum ungesetzlichen Grenzübertritt DDR-BRD 27.10.1988 ca. 700 m südwestlich der Ortschaft Döhlau, Abschnitt der 1.GK Rückerswind, GR-15 Sonneberg,” BStU MfS HA I Nr. 5794.1, 184–90. 209.  Major Krogull, “Lageeinschätzung zu Übersiedlungsersuchenden im ‘Bowlingtreff,’ ” 1. 210.  Krogull, 9. 211.  Krogull, 10. 212.  KD Leipzig-Stadt, “Treffbericht IMS ‘Andreas Lazarewitz,’ IMK ‘Nord,’ 19.12.88 12.45–13.25 Uhr,” December 20, 1988, BStU MfS BV Leipzig, AIM 1468/89, 9–10. 213.  Oberfeldwebel Fichtner, KD Leipzig-Stadt, “Treffbericht IMS ‘Andreas Lazarewitz,’ IMK ‘Roß,’ 28.6.89 9.45–10.45 Uhr,” June 28, 1989, BStU MfS BV Leipzig, AIM 1468/89, 19–20. 214.  “Rede zur Begegnung mit den Bauschaffenden anläßlich der Fertigstellung ‘Bowlingtreff.’ ” 215.  Kießling, interview with Beyer and Dorschner, 2015. 216.  Entry in visitor book for exhibition Bauplatz Leipzig, March 25–April 9, 1988, Leipzig Neues Rathaus, SpA 84/88, 16. 217.  Winfried Sziegoleit, “Die Architektur entstand als ‘Schwarzbau,’ ” 32–33. 218.  Topfstedt, “Der Leipziger Bowlingtreff,” 17. 219.  Kießling, interview with Beyer and Dorschner, 2015. In her interview, Eva Wolf also recalls as a member of the service personnel that, despite competition with new capitalist ventures across Leipzig, the Bowlingtreff remained filled with customers. 220.  Annette Menting, “Eine Spielstätte auf Zeit. Begegnungen mit dem Bowlingtreff Leipzig,” in Menting, Bowling Together, 50, 55. 221.  Christian Kummich and Antje Zimmerling, “Statements vor Ort 2007,” in “. . . bauen mit Steinen, die man hat”. Der Leipziger Architekt Winfried Sziegoleit, ed. Wolfgang Hocquél and Annette Menting (Leipzig: Kulturstiftung, 2008), 66–69. 222.  Wolfgang Hocquél, Demokratie wagen, Kultur stiften. Chronik der Kulturstiftung Leipzig (Leipzig: Fritsch, 2017), 90. 223.  Resolution RBIV-1374/08 (November 20, 2008) and A-00702/14 (November 19, 2015), https://ratsinfo.leipzig.de/bi/vo020.asp?VOLFDNR=1000921. 224.  Beyer and Dorschner, Bowlingtreff Leipzig. 225.  Evelyn Vehn, “94 Tonnen Schrott aus Leipziger Bowlingtreff geräumt,” LVZ, August 10, 2018, http://www.lvz.de/Leipzig/Lokales/94-Tonnen-Schrott-aus-LeipzigerBowlingtreff-geraeumt.

224    NOTES

TO PAGES 1 4 6 – 1 5 1

226.  Schulze, interview, June 18, 2018. 227.  Kießling, interview with Beyer and Dorschner, 2015. 228.  Thomas Topfstedt, “Genutzte und vertane Chancen. Der Umgang mit dem Bauerbe des Sozialismus in Leipzig,” in Von der Ablehnung zur Abneigung? Das Architektonische Erbe des Sozialismus in Mittel- und Osteuropa, ed. Arnold Bartetzky, Christian Dietz, and Jörg Haspel (Cologne: Böhlau, 2014), 108. 229.  Topfstedt, interview, June 27, 2018. 230. For instance, Charles Maier wonders amid economic failures by 1987, “What would it take to move this discouraged population from apathy, resignation, and grumbling dissatisfaction to the belief that mass protest might force a transformation?” Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 107. See also Konrad Jarausch, The Rush to German Unity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 5–6. 231.  Fischer an Ullrich, Stadtrat für Internationale Arbeit und Erholungswesen, “Stadtzentrum Leipzig/Dringliche Rekonstruktionsobjekte—Übernahme durch polnisches Kultur—und Informationszentrum,” February 20, 1986, StadtAL BCA V 125, 182; Ullrich an Oberbürgermeister Seidel, “Aktennotiz über das Arbeitsgespräch des Oberbürgermeisters mit der Vorsitzenden der Stadtplankommission am 14.2.1986,” March 7, 1986, StadtAL BCA V 125, 182. The Polish Cultural and Information Center ultimately moved into a modern box on Saxon Square. 232.  Oberbürgermeister Leipzig, Generaldirektor, Kombinatsdirektor, “Vereinbarung über die territorial Zusammenarbeit des Rates der Stadt Leipzig mit den Leipziger Kombinaten zur weiteren Verbesserung der Arbeits- und Lebensbedingungen und zur Erhöhung der Attraktivität der Bezirks- und Messestadt Leipzig,” circa February 1987, StadtAL BCA V 125, 147. 233. Boegelsack, General Direktor VEB Kombinat Rundfunk und Fernsehen Staßfurt an Rat der Stadt Leipzig Oberbürgermeister Seidel, February 25, 1987, StadtAL BCA V 125, 144. 234. Although in fact both were still in ruinous condition, VEB Kombinat Leipziger Metallbau theoretically touched up Nikolaistraße 16 (Goldene Hand) and VEB Schwermaschinenbaukombinat TAKRAF claimed to have repaired Klostergasse 5. Rat der Stadt Leipzig, Zahlen und Fakten, 10. 235.  Kuhl, “Regionale Macht-Räume im Zentralismus?,” 7. 5. The City as Stage in Revolution

   1.  Quoted in Andreas Peter Pausch, Widerstehen. Pfarrer Christoph Wonneberger, Archiv Bürgerbewegung Leipzig e.V. (Berlin: Metropol, 2014), 106.   2. Pausch, 109.    3.  Brigitte Moritz, “Christoph Wonneberger und die Lukaskirchgemeinde 1987 bis 1991,” in Pausch, Widerstehen, 185.    4.  Armin Mitter and Stefan Wolle, eds., Ich liebe euch doch alle! Befehle und Lageberichte des MfS Januar-November 1989 (Berlin: BasisDruck, 1990), 82, 182.    5.  Even if citizens were politically indifferent, an escalating sense of crisis formed a precondition for 1989. See Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk’s cursory observation in Endspiel. Die Revolution von 1989 in der DDR (Berlin: Ch.Beck, 2015), 127.

NOTES TO PAGES 1 5 1 – 1 5 7     225

 6. Hope Harrison, After the Berlin Wall: Memory and the Making of the New Germany, 1989 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 13.   7.  Rolf Opitz, “Bauen im Bezirk Leipzig,” Architektur der DDR 37, no. 9 (September 1988): 6.   8.  “Was nutzt eine schöne Kirche, wenn das Land ringsum verkommt.” Quoted in Christian Führer and Friedrich Magirius, eds., Nikolaikirche: Offen für Alle. Eine Gemeinde im Zentrum der Wende (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1999), 101.   9.  G.K. an Rat der Stadt Leipzig/Oberbürgermeister, February 12, 1990, ABL 04.27.325. 10.  Brian Ladd, “Socialist Planning and the Rediscovery of the Old City in the German Democratic Republic,” Journal of Urban History 27, no. 5 ( July 2001): 599. 11.  This was the assessment of the city planner Marta Doehler-Behzadi. Quoted in Arnold Bartetzky, Die gerettete Stadt: Architektur und Stadtentwicklung in Leipzig seit 1989. Erfolge-Risiken-Verluste (Leipzig: Lehmstedt, 2015), 12. 12. Kowalczuk, Endspiel, 126. 13.  Wolfgang Gehrmann, “Stadt ohne Plan,” Die Zeit, January 22, 1993, https:// www.zeit.de/1993/04/stadt-ohne-plan/. 14.  Leipzig’s rivalry with Berlin spiked again during the twenty-year anniversary commemorations of the Peaceful Revolution in fall 2009, as each city fought for preeminence in historical memory for having brought about the end of communism. Harrison, After the Berlin Wall, 345. 15.  Peter Wensierski, “Der Herbst ’89. Die WG der Rebellen,” Der Spiegel, October 3, 2014, http://www.spiegel.de/einestages/leipzig-wie-es-1989-zur-montags demonstration- kam-a-993513.html. Accessible by subscription. 16. Kowalczuk, Endspiel, 366. 17.  Quoted in Wensierski, “Der Herbst ’89.” 18.  “Leipzig 1989- Ein Film von Peter Wensierski,” YouTube, posted October 17, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhMUVAbvzi8&t=300s. 19. Foreword, Arche Nova: Forum für ökologische Gestaltung und Gesellschaft 3 (February 1989): 4. 20.  Thomas Topfstedt, Städtebau in der DDR, 1955–1971 (Leipzig: VEB E.A. Seemann, 1988), 25. 21.  Topfstedt, 116; Thomas Topfstedt, interview with the author, June 27, 2018. 22.  Wolfgang Hocquél, interview with the author, June 21, 2018. 23.  Quoted in Brian William Campbell, “Resurrected from the Ruins, Turning to the Past: Historic Preservation in the SBZ/GDR 1945–1990” (PhD diss., University of Rochester, 2005), 295. 24. Klaus Rieche, “Erste Hilfe für Baudenkmäler. Gespräch mit einer Denkmalschützergruppe in Halle/S,” Arche Nova: Forum für ökologische Gestaltung und Gesellschaft 3 (February 1989): 30. 25.  Carlo Jordan and Michael Berger, Arche-Stadt-Bau-ökologie Gruppe Potsdam, “Arche deckt auf: Vom Wert unserer Gesetzte—Flächenabriß in Potsdam?,” Arche Nova: Forum für ökologische Gestaltung und Gesellschaft 3 (February 1989): 14. 26.  Beverly Heckart, “The Battle of Jena: Opposition to ‘Socialist’ Urban Planning in the German Democratic Republic,” Journal of Urban History 32, no. 4 (May 2006): 570. 27. Monika Langer, “Görlitz wartet nach auf einen Märchenprinzen,” Arche Nova: Forum für ökologische Gestaltung und Gesellschaft 3 (February 1989): 35–36.

226    NOTES

TO PAGES 1 5 7 – 1 6 0

28.  Jordan and Berger, “Arche deckt auf,” 17–18. 29.  Dr. Wolfgang Hocquél, “Neue Baupolitik für Leipzig,” circa late January 1990, ABL 04.29.150, 4. 30.  For ecological devastation in the ethnically cleansed Sudetenland, see Eagle Glassheim, Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands: Migration, Environment, and Health in the Former Sudetenland (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016), especially chapter 5. See also Mateˇj Spurný, Making the Most of Tomorrow: A Laboratory of Socialist Modernity in Czechoslovakia (Prague: Karolinum, 2019). 31.  Christoph Kaufmann, “40 Jahre Grünau—Die Geschichte einer Planung,” Leipziger Stadtgeschichte (2016): 264. 32.  Rat der Stadt Leipzig, Zahlen und Fakten zur Verwirklichung der Politik zum Wohle des Volkes in der Stadt Leipzig seit dem VIII. Parteitag der SED auf dem Wege zum 40. Jahrestag der DDR (Leipzig: Graphischer Großbetrieb, September 30, 1988), 43. 33.  This common catchphrase is quoted in Kowalczuk, Endspiel, 128. 34.  Bert Prescha, “Wiederherstellung des Wildparkes im Connewitzer Wald als Naherholungsobjekt im südlichen Auewald von Leipzig,” May 14, 1970, StadtAL BCA V 364, 4. 35.  BStU, MfS, BV Lpz., Abt. XX, 97, 110–11, 311. 36.  For a copy of the city council informational note on the march on the Pleiße, see Pausch, Widerstehen, 244. 37.  Peter Wensierski, Die unheimliche Leichtigkeit der Revolution. Wie eine Gruppe junger Leipziger die Revolution in der DDR wagte (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2017), 81. 38. Harald Wagner, “Friedensgebete: Symbol der Befreiung,” in Freunde und Feinde. Friedensgebete in Leipzig zwischen 1981 und dem 9. Oktober 1989, ed. Christian Dietrich and Uwe Schwabe, Archiv Bürgerbewegung e.V. Leipzig (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt GmbH, 1994), 14. 39.  Here I build on Charles Maier’s efforts to humanize the crowds in Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), and Gareth Dale’s attempt to rehabilitate midlevel functionaries in The East German Revolution of 1989 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 32. For overview of civic unrest in Leipzig based on extensive Stasi and Archiv Bürgerbewegung materials, see Rainer Eckert, Opposition, Widerstand und Revolution. Widerständiges Verhalten in Leipzig im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2014). For speeches from Leipzig’s Monday Demonstrations, see Achim Beier and Uwe Schwabe, eds., Wir haben nur die Straße. Die Reden auf den Leipziger Montagsdemonstrationen 1989/90. Eine Dokumentation. Archiv Bürgerbewegung e.V. Leipzig (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2016). For analysis of protest during the Peaceful Revolution as a “civic initiative,” see Karsten Timmer, Vom Aufbruch zum Umbruch. die Bürgerbewegung in der DDR 1989 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 17. For an at times controversial analysis of the revolution in Saxony, see Michael Richter, Die Friedliche Revolution. Aufbruch zur Demokratie in Sachsen 1989/90, 2 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009). 40.  Although it is hard to measure to what extent the peace prayers helped topple the SED regime, they certainly became a decisive symbol for the populace’s desire to organize. Wagner, “Friedensgebete,” 24. 41.  Dietrich and Schwabe, Freunde und Feinde, 88–89.

NOTES TO PAGES 1 6 1 – 1 6 8     227

42.  Ruth Geist-Reithmeier, dir., Ist Leipzig noch zu retten? (Klartext: Das kritische Reportage-Magazin des DDR-Fernsehens, November 6, 1989), DVD (Berlin: Icestorm Distribution GmbH, 2010). 43.  Dietmar Fischer, “Innerstädtischer Wohnungsbau in der Stadt Leipzig,” Architektur der DDR 37, no. 9 (September 1988): 8. 44.  “Dokumentation der Debatte im Kabarett Academixer-Keller zum Thema ‘Leipzig—Messemetropole oder Provinznest?’ am 5. November 1989,” in Redefreiheit. Öffentliche Debatten in Leipzig im Herbst 1989, ed. Thomas Ahbe, Michael Hofmann, and Volker Stiehler (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2014), 229. 45.  “Dokumentation der Debatte,” 231–32. 46.  “Dokumentation der Debatte,” 260–61. 47.  “Dokumentation der Debatte,” 262. 48.  Opitz an Stoph, November 1, 1989, quoted in Beier and Schwabe, Wir haben nur die Straße, 26. 49.  Günter Hädrich, November 6, 1989, quoted in Beier and Schwabe, 57–58. 50.  Rolf Haupt (Arzt), November 6, 1989, quoted in Beier and Schwabe, 64–65. 51.  Fred, November 20, 1989, quoted in Beier and Schwabe, 105. This hopeless youth culture was displayed at the Leipzig movie theater Capitol on November 24 in the film Leipzig in Fall, which featured October 1989 footage from the slums of historic Leipzig neighborhoods. Andreas Voigt and Gert Kroske, dirs., Leipzig im Herbst. Aufbruch 89 (DEFA, 1989), DVD (Berlin: Icestorm Entertainment GmbH, 2009). 52.  Beier and Schwabe, Wir haben nur die Straße, 117. 53.  Quoted in Beier and Schwabe, 134–35. 54.  Topfstedt, interview, June 27, 2018. 55.  Kirstin Angermann and Tabea Hilse, Altstadtplatten. “Komplexe Rekonstruktion” in den Innenstädten von Erfurt und Halle (Weimar: Bauhaus Universitätsverlag, 2014), 49. 56.  As Lutz Penske concludes, “the politics of architecture in the DDR with the goal of ‘solving the housing question as a social problem’ through Plattenbau had failed. Hardly any other branch of the economy was so close in its ideological connection to the political Wende as urban planning.” “Stadtbaupolitik und Denkmalschutz 1970 bis 1990,” in Alte Stadt mit neuer Hoffnung (Görlitz: Stadtverwaltung Görlitz, 2000), 13, 18. 57.  For a brief history of the Alte Nikolaischule and plea for its restoration, see Harry Schilka, “Die alte Nikolaischule,” Leipziger Blätter 15 (Fall 1989): 42–46. 58.  VEB (k) Hochbau und Rekonstruktion Grimma Abteilung PV, “Bauvorhaben Stadtzentrum Leipzig, Nikolaistraße 6–10, Ansicht Nikolaistr. 4–22,” March 9, 1978, StadtAL BCA V 791.1, 4. 59.  BCA Bereich Stadtzentrum, “Nikolaistraße 6/10: Städtebauliche Grundkonzeption,” August 20, 1987, StadtAL BCA V 291.1, 55. 60.  Rat der Stadt Leipzig, “Grundkonzeption für die Lückenschließung Stadtzentrum Nikolaistraße 6/10,” May 26, 1988, StadtAL BCA V 291.1, 22–23. 61.  Fischer, Chefarchitekt, an Rat des Bezirkes Leipzig, “Baulückenschließung Wohnungsbau Nikolaistraße 6/10,” March 9, 1990, StadtAL BCA V 969.1, 12–13. 62.  Hädrich an Rat des Bezirkes, Leiter des Aufbaustabes, “Wohnungsbau Nikolaistraße 6/10,” March 23, 1990, StadtAL BCA V 969.1, 14. 63.  Kurt Masur, Präsident, Kulturstiftung Leipzig, “Antrag an den Oberbürgermeister der Stadt Leipzig,” June 26, 1990, StadtAL BCA V 291.2, 5.

228    NOTES

TO PAGES 1 6 8 – 1 7 5

64.  Wolfgang Hocquél, Demokratie wagen, Kultur stiften. Chronik der Kulturstiftung Leipzig (Leipzig: Fritsch, 2017), 14. 65.  Riedel, Greiner, Murzik, “Städtebauliche Vorgabe für die Bauvorhaben Nikolaistraße 6–10, Alte Nikolaischule, Ritterstraße 7,” June 24, 1990, StadtAL BCA V 752.2, 1–8. 66.  Projektanten am Objekt Niko 6–10 an Rat der Stadt Leipzig Herrn Oberbürgermeister Dr. Lehmann-Grube, June 8, 1990, StadtAL BCA V 291.2, 34–35. 67.  Projektanten am Objekt Niko 6–10, 36–37. Emphasis in original. 68.  Sebastian Redecke, “Trauer um Leipzig,” Bauwelt 81, no. 12 (1990): 553, 561. 69.  Gormsen, Stadtrat für Stadtentwicklung und Raumplanung, “Aktenvermerk: Alte Nikolaischule und Grundstücke Nikolaistraße 6–10,” August 22, 1990, StadtAL BCA V 291.2, 3–4. For a detailed recounting of the restoration process, as well as a history of the structure, see Kulturstiftung Leipzig, ed., Alte Nikolaischule Leipzig (Leipzig: Edition Leipzig, 1994). See also Sabine Hocquél-Schneider, “Die Alte Nikolaischule am Ende der Sanierung,” Leipziger Blätter 24 (Spring 1994): 4–7; Wolfgang Hocquél, “Die Alte Nikolaischule. Eine Baugeschichte,” Leipziger Blätter 60 (Spring 2012): 4–8. 70. Hocquél, Demokratie wagen, 14. 71.  Ambros Gross and Heike Scheller, BCA Bereich Stadtzentrum und zentrale Bauten an BfaK, “Stellungnahme zum Abbruch und Wiederaufbau Ritterstraße 7,” May 31, 1989, SächStAL BfaK 261; Damrau, Stellvertretender Direktor, an BCA, “Stellungnahme zum Abbruch und Wiederaufbau Ritterstraße 7,” July 3, 1989, SächStAL BfaK 261. 72.  Friedrich Magirius, “Vorwort,” in Kulturstiftung Leipzig, Alte Nikolaischule Leipzig, 8–9. 73.  Initiativgruppe 1. Leipziger Volksbaukonferenz, ed., 1. Volksbaukonferenz Leipzig 1990 (Merseburg: Mebu Druck, 1990), 10. The poster is affixed to the podium in figure 39. 74.  Topfstedt, interview, June 27, 2018. 75. Bartetzky, Die gerettete Stadt, 35. 76.  Redecke, “Trauer um Leipzig,” 552. 77. Initiativgruppe, 1. Volksbaukonferenz Leipzig 1990, 75. 78.  Redaktion, “Ist Leipzig so zu retten? Kritik zu einem Wettbewerb,” Architektur der DDR (March 1990): 5. 79. Initiativgruppe, 1. Volksbaukonferenz Leipzig 1990, 105–106. 80.  Initiativgruppe, 49. 81.  Initiativgruppe, 14. 82.  Initiativgruppe, 31–41. 83.  Redecke, “Trauer um Leipzig,” 553. 84. Initiativgruppe, 1. Volksbaukonferenz Leipzig 1990, 3. 85.  Initiativgruppe, 185. 86.  Initiativgruppe, 90. 87.  Initiativgruppe, 59–62. 88.  Initiativgruppe, 65–66. 89.  Initiativgruppe, 107–8. 90.  Initiativgruppe, 75. 91.  Initiativgruppe, 11–12. 92.  Initiativgruppe, 92.

NOTES TO PAGES 1 7 5 – 1 8 2     229

  93.  Topfstedt, interview, June 27, 2018.   94.  Hocquél, “Neue Baupolitik für Leipzig,” 1. Copied in ABL 1989/12/20.  95. Information: “Kulturprojekt Waldstraßenviertel Leipzig,” 1990, StadtAL Direktion Kulturbauten/Denkmale 43, 24.   96.  Peter Salden, “Fortschritte beim Bauen in der Messestadt. 1362 neue Wohnungen für Leipziger in Volkmarsdorf. Stärkere Konzentration auf die Rekonstruktion älterer Stadtviertel,” Neues Deutschland (August 23, 1989), 3. Emphasis mine.   97.  Magirius, “Vorwort,” 8–9.  98. Hocquél, Demokratie wagen, 10. This volume offers a history of the foundation’s activities.   99.  Hocquél, interview, June 21, 2018. 100.  “25 Jahre Pro Leipzig,” Pro-Leipzig e.V., accessed June 8, 2018, http://www. proleipzig.eu/Aktuelles/. 101.  Wolfgang Hocquél, “Adieu, tristesse! Eine Zukunft für das größte Sanierungsgebiet Europas?” Leipziger Blätter 20 (Spring 1992): 33. Epilogue

  1. Ruth Geist-Reithmeier, dir., Ist Leipzig noch zu retten? (Klartext: Das kritische Reportage-Magazin des DDR-Fernsehens, November 6, 1989), DVD (Berlin: Icestorm Distribution GmbH, 2010).    2.  Quoted in Michael Froth, “Reisefreiheit und Mauerfall. Verzweifelte Genossen im SED-Zentralkomittee,” Deutschlandfunk, October 3, 2019, https://www. deutschlandfunk.de/reisefreiheit-und-mauerfall-verzweifelte-genossen-im-sed.724. de.html?dram:article_id=302668.    3.  Quoted in Lena Kuhl and Oliver Werner,“ ‘Bezirke’ on Scale: Regional and Local Actors in East German ‘Democratic Centralism,’ ” Historical Social Research/ Historische Sozialforschung 42, no. 2 (160) (2017): 251.    4.  Joachim Tesch, “Planen, Bauen und Gestaltung—Bedingungen und Ergebnisse,” in Bauen in Leipzig, 1945–1990. Akteure und Zeitzeugen auf persönlichen Spuren der Leipziger Baugeschichte (Leipzig: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Sachsen, 2003), 47–48.    5.  Liesel Schön, interview with the author, June 28, 2018.    6.  For thorough analysis of reconstruction in Leipzig after 1989, see Arnold Bartetzky, Die gerettete Stadt. Architektur und Stadtentwicklung in Leipzig seit 1989. Erfolge-Risiken-Verluste (Leipzig: Lehmstedt, 2015). See also John Paul Kleiner, “Historical Memory and the Editing of the Socialist Cityscape in Post-Wende Leipzig” (MA thesis, York University, Canada, 2004).    7.  Thomas Hoscislawski, “Zwischen Vision und Wirklichkeit—Planungen für das Leipziger Stadtzentrum 1945 bis 1990,” Leipziger Stadtgeschichte (2017): 256.   8. Annette Menting, “Neuanfänge und Kontinuitäten in Leipzig um 1989. Beiträge von Dietmar Fischer zu Architektur und Stadtgestaltung,” in Kunst und Architektur in Mitteldeutschland, ed. Nadja Horsch, Zita Pataki, and Thomas Pöpper (Leipzig: Plöttner, 2012), 265.   9. Klaus von Beyme, Der Wiederaufbau. Architektur und Städtebaupolitik in beiden deutschen Staaten (Munich: R. Piper, 1987), 325.   10.  Wolfgang Hocquél, “Thomas Topfstedt—ein profunder Kenner der DDRBaugeschichte,” Leipziger Blätter 60 (Spring 2012): 52.

230    NOTES

TO PAGES 1 8 2 – 1 8 7

11.  “Kostenvoranschlag für das gem. stadtplänerische Seminar der Städte Hannover, Frankfurt/M und Leipzig vom 23.4–26.4.90 in Leipzig,” April 2, 1990, StadtAL BCA V 980.2, 2. 12.  Quoted in Bartetzky, Die gerettete Stadt, 43. 13.  Wolfgang Gehrmann, “Stadt ohne Plan,” Die Zeit, January 22, 1993, https:// www.zeit.de/1993/04/stadt-ohne-plan/. 14.  Heike Scheller, interview with the author, January 20, 2015. 15.  Dietmar Fischer, interview with the author, February 4, 2015. 16. Leipziger Architektur- und Planungsbüro Göschel-Schiegoleit GMBH, “Arkaden-Boutiquen Richard-Wagner-Straße 12–14 Leipzig, Studie,” August 16, 1990, StadtAL BCA V 752.4, 1–7. 17.  Uta Nickel, interview with the author, June 21, 2018. 18.  Hocquél, Bezirksdenkmalpfleger, Rat des Bezirkes Leipzig Abteilung Kultur, “Niederschrift zur Beratung zu organisatorischen Fragen der Denkmalpflege in Bezirk Leipzig und der Abstimmung mit dem Institut für Denkmalpflege am 14.02.1989,” March 1, 1989, StadtAL Direktion Kulturbauten/Denkmale 43, 40. 19.  Wolfgang Hocquél, interview with the author, June 21, 2018. 20. Geist-Reithmeier, Ist Leipzig noch zu retten?; Ruth Geist-Reithmeier, dir., Wie ist Leipzig noch zu retten? (Klartext: Das kritische Reportage-Magazin des DDRFernsehens, November 20, 1989), DVD (Berlin: Icestorm Distribution GmbH, 2010). 21.  Udo Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen. Die Unterwanderung der staatlichen Wohnraumlenkung in der DDR (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2011), 55. 22.  As my landlady and friend, Frau Donath has provided considerable insights about this process through informal interviews with me since 2006. 23.  See exhaustive post-1990 correspondence in ABL Sammlung Zumpe. 24.  For extensive evidence of Wieland Zumpe’s past and ongoing pursuits (which also resulted in his eventual break with the Paulinerverein), see his website, “Mit Geschichte Zukunft gestalten,” accessed May 1, 2018, http://www.paulinerkirche. org/index.html. 25.  Birk Engmann, Der große Wurf. Vom schwierigen Weg zur neuen Leipziger Universität (Beucha: Sax, 2008), 56. 26.  Schlosser, Rat des Bezirkes, “Information zum Stand der Vorbereitung der Verkehrsbaumaßnahme ‘Messemagistrale Leninstraße,’ ” June 6, 1988, SächStAL 21123 SED-Bezirksleitung Leipzig 933. 27.  Sebastian Redecke, “Trauer um Leipzig,” Bauwelt 81, no. 12 (1990): 553. 28.  For an example of protest against such extreme gutting, see Wolfgang Hocquél, “Wieviel Denkmalschutz können wir uns leisten? Oder: Nicht jede Frage ist produktiv!,” Leipziger Blätter 22 (Spring 1993): 12–13; and Hocquél, “Thomas Topfstedt,” 52–53. 29.  Quoted in Gehrmann, “Stadt ohne Plan.” 30.  For a survey detailing the controversial realization of this deeply original specimen of “postmodern Gothic,” see Andrew Demshuk, Demolition on Karl Marx Square: Cultural Barbarism and the People’s State in 1968 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), epilogue. 31.  Arnold Bartetzky, Nation—Staat—Stadt. Architektur, Denkmalpflege und visuelle Geschichtskultur vom 19. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert (Cologne: Böhlau, 2012), 206.

NOTES TO PAGES 1 8 7 – 1 9 0     231

32.  For debates on whether to retain or destroy the structure, see Jens Rometsch, “Was wird aus Leipzigs früherer Stasi-Zentrale,” LVZ, August 29, 2017, http://www. lvz.de/Leipzig/Lokales/Was-wird-aus-Leipzigs-frueherer-Stasi-Zentrale. 33.  Thomas Hoscislawski, correspondence with the author, October 25, 2019. 34.  Thomas Topfstedt, “Genutzte und vertane Chancen. Der Umgang mit dem Bauerbe des Sozialismus in Leipzig,” in Von der Ablehnung zur Abneigung? Das Architektonische Erbe des Sozialismus in Mittel- und Osteuropa, ed. Arnold Bartetzky, Christian Dietz, and Jörg Haspel (Cologne: Böhlau, 2014), 108. 35.  Thomas Topfstedt, “Vom Bauen—ein Rückblick auf die Jahre 1945 bis 1989,” Leipziger Blätter 26 (Spring 1995): 32. 36.  Gehrmann, “Stadt ohne Plan.” 37.  Büro des Chefarchitekten der Stadt Leipzig, “Entwicklungskonzeption für das Leipziger Stadtzentrum. Entwurf,” September 1987, SpA, 5–6. 38. Initiativgruppe 1. Leipziger Volksbaukonferenz, ed., 1. Volksbaukonferenz Leipzig 1990 (Merseburg: Mebu Druck, 1990), 85. 39.  Initiativgruppe, 9–12. 40.  “Bald grünt es im Zentrum,” LVZ, June 21, 1974, SpA-Z. 41.  Quoted in Andrea Richter, “Das Grün am Thomaskirchhof bleibt weiterhin umstritten,” LVZ, May 6, 1995, SpA-Z. 42.  Quoted in “Es grünt so grün,” LVZ, Immobilienbeilage, July 2015, SpA-Z; see also “Rathaus: Das Grün am Thomaskirchof bleibt,” LVZ, October 4, 1996, SpA-Z. 43. Initiativgruppe, 1. Volksbaukonferenz Leipzig 1990, 9.

B i bl i og raphy

Archives

Archiv Bürgerbewegung, Leipzig Archiv Paulinerverein, Leipzig Bundesarchiv, Berlin-Lichterfelde Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR Kirchenarchiv Michaeliskirche am Nordplatz, Leipzig Leibniz-Institut für Raumbezogene Sozialforschung, Erkner Sächsisches Staatsarchiv, Außenstelle Leipzig Stadtarchiv, Leipzig Stadtplanungsamtsarchiv, Leipzig Universitätsarchiv, Leipzig Named Interview Partners

Renate Donath Dietmar Fischer Martin Helmstedt Wolfgang Hocquél Maximilian Maaß Uta Nickel Heike Scheller Annette Schlemmer and Wilhelm Schlemmer Liesel Schön Johannes Schulze and Jutta Schulze Horst Siegel Christine Skodawessely Winfried Sziegoleit Thomas Topfstedt Ursula Waage Matthias Wolf Wieland Zumpe Periodicals

Arche Nova: Forum für ökologische Gestaltung und Gesellschaft Bauwelt

233

234    B i b l i o g r a p h y

Deutsche Architektur (1952–74) / Architektur der DDR (1974–90) Leipziger Blätter Leipziger Stadtgeschichte Jahrbuch Leipziger Volkszeitung Neues Deutschland Der Spiegel Der Tagesspiegel Die Welt Wohnen Die Zeit Published Primary Material

“25 Jahre Pro Leipzig.” Pro-Leipzig e.V. Accessed June 8, 2018. http://www.pro leipzig.eu/Aktuelles/. Ahbe, Thomas, Michael Hofmann, and Volker Stiehler, eds. Redefreiheit. Öffentliche Debatten in Leipzig im Herbst 1989. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2014. Bauakademie der DDR. Architekturführer DDR-Bezirk Leipzig. Berlin: Verlag für Bauwesen, 1976. Beerbaum, Martin, and Heinz Graffunder. Der Palast der Republik. Leipzig: Seemann, 1979. Beyer, Thomas, and Adrian Dorschner, dirs. Bowlingtreff. Beyer & Dorschner, MDR, NDR, 2016. Beyer, Walter. Die Bauplanung und Baupolitik Leipzigs, 1945–1949. Leipzig, April 1949. “Bilder, die weh tun. Horrorschau im DDR-Fernsehen. Drei Frauen filmten den Verfall von Leipzig.” Der Spiegel, November 13, 1989, 56–59. Bolz, Lothar. Von deutschem Bauen. Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1951. Büro des Chefarchitekten. “Die weitere Gestaltung des Leipziger Stadtzentrums.” Architektur der DDR 37, no. 9 (September 1988): 16–18. Deutsche Bauakademie Berlin, ed. Architektur und Städtebau in der DDR. Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1969. ——. Die Aufgaben von Städtebau und Architektur beim umfassenden Aufbau des Sozialismus. Arbeitsmaterial zum Hauptreferat für die 9. Plenartagung der Deutschen Bauakademie. Circa 1964. Dohmann, Albrecht, Elmar Jansen, and Hans Müller. Der Wiederaufbau der Kirchen in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. Berlin: Union Verlag, 1964. Fischer, Dietmar. “Abreißen oder erhalten.” Leipziger Blätter 4 (Spring 1984): 50–51. ——. “Innerstädtischer Wohnungsbau in der Stadt Leipzig.” Architektur der DDR 37, no. 9 (September 1988): 8–11. ——. “Zum Bewahren des Charakters baulichen Erbes. Ein Problem der sozialistischen Aneignung baulichen Erbes. Architekturtheoretische Untersuchung des Charakterbegriffes und der Möglichkeiten der Charaktererkenntnis.” Dissertation Dipl. Ing., Technische Universität, Dresden, 1979. ——. “Zum DDR-offenen Architekturwettbewerb 1988. Ideen für das Stadtzentrum.” Leipziger Blätter 15 (Fall 1989): 33–41. Fischer, Dietmar, and Ambros Gross. “Ideen für Leipzig. Wettbewerb für die Gestaltung des Zentrums.” Architektur der DDR 39, no. 3 (March 1990): 9–13.

B i b l i o g r a p h y     235

Geist-Reithmeier, Ruth, dir. Ist Leipzig noch zu retten? Klartext: Das kritische ReportageMagazin des DDR-Fernsehens. November 6, 1989. DVD. Berlin: Icestorm Distribution GmbH, 2010. ——, dir. Wie ist Leipzig noch zu retten? Klartext: Das kritische Reportage-Magazin des DDR-Fernsehens, November 20, 1989. Berlin: Icestorm Distribution GmbH, 2010. DVD. “Grundsätze für die sozialistische Entwicklung von Städtebau und Architektur in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Beschluss des SED-Politbüros und des DDR-Ministerrats.” Neues Deutschland, May 29–30, 1982, 9–10. Heimpert, Horst. Kirchen in Mitteldeutschland. Bestand—Vernichtung—Erhaltung. Deutschland im Bild Sonderband 2. Frankfurt/Main: Wolfang Weidlich, 1962. Hocquél, Wolfgang. “Adieu, Tristesse! Eine Zukunft für das größte Sanierungsgebiet Europas?” Leipziger Blätter 20 (Spring 1992): 33–35. ——. “Die Alte Nikolaischule. Eine Baugeschichte.” Leipziger Blätter 60 (Spring 2012): 4–8. ——. Demokratie wagen, Kultur stiften. Chronik der Kulturstiftung Leipzig. Leipzig: Fritsch, 2017. ——, ed. Leipzig. Leipzig: Seemann, 1983. ——. “Thomas Topfstedt—ein profunder Kenner der DDR-Baugeschichte.” Leipziger Blätter 60 (Spring 2012): 52–53. ——. “Wieviel Denkmalschutz können wir uns leisten? Oder: Nicht jede Frage ist produktiv!” Leipziger Blätter 22 (Spring 1993): 12–13. Hocquél, Wolfgang, and Gerhart Pasch. Leipziger Baudenkmäler. Leipzig-Information und Gesellschaft für Denkmalpflege beim Kulturbund der DDR. Leipzig: Nexö, 1985. Hocquél-Schneider, Sabine. “Die Alte Nikolaischule am Ende der Sanierung.” Leipziger Blätter 24 (Spring 1994): 4–7. Hoffmann, Frieder, Dietmar Fischer, and Siegfried Kaber. “Innere Westvorstadt. Verbindung von Tradition und Gegenwart.” Leipziger Blätter 7 (Fall 1985): 26–32. Holtkötter, Anne, and Michael Holtkötter. “Das Fürstenhaus in der Grimmaischen Straße.” Leipziger Blätter 7 (Fall 1985): 74–75. Initiativgruppe 1. Leipziger Volksbaukonferenz, ed. 1. Volksbaukonferenz Leipzig 1990. Merseburg: Mebu Druck, 1990. Institut für Denkmalpflege. Denkmale der Geschichte und Kultur. Ihre Erhaltung und Pflege in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. 2nd ed. Berlin: Henschel, 1974. Kahane, Peter, dir. Die Architekten. DEFA, 1990. Berlin: Icestorm Distribution GmbH, 2004. DVD. Kahl, Alice. “Individuelles Wohnen im Neubau.” Wohnen (1982): cover page. ——. “Die Ostvorstadt—eine Bestandsaufnahme.” Leipziger Blätter 4 (Spring 1984): 47–50. ——. “Wie wohl fühlen sich die Grünauer?” Architektur der DDR 35, no. 5 (May 1986): 290–91. ——. Wohnen im Neubaugebiet. Forschungsbericht Grünau, 1979–1987. Leipzig, June 1989. Krenz, Gerhard. Architektur zwischen gestern und morgen. Ein Vierteljahrhundert Architekturentwicklung in der DDR. Berlin: VEB Verlag für Bauwesen, 1974. Krenz, Gerhard, Walter Stiebitz, and Claus Weidner. Städte und Stadtzentren in der DDR. Ergebnisse und reale Perspektiven des Städtebaus in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. Berlin: VEB Verlag für Bauwesen, 1968.

236    B i b l i o g r a p h y

Kretzschmar, Volker, and Volker Schwarz. “Rekonstruktion im Leipziger Musikviertel.” Architektur der DDR 37, no. 9 (September 1988): 32. Opitz, Rolf. “Bauen im Bezirk Leipzig.” Architektur der DDR 37, no. 9 (September 1988): 6. Pasch, Gerhart. “Alltag in der Denkmalpflege.” Leipziger Blätter 4 (Spring 1984): 20–21. Rasche, Klaus. “Gedanken zur Gründerzeitarchitektur.” Architektur der DDR 28, no. 11 (November 1979): 701. Rat der Stadt Leipzig. Zahlen und Fakten zur Verwirklichung der Politik zum Wohle des Volkes in der Stadt Leipzig seit dem VIII. Parteitag der SED auf dem Wege zum 40. Jahrestag der DDR. Leipzig: Graphischer Großbetrieb, September 30, 1988. Redecke, Sebastian. “Trauer um Leipzig.” Bauwelt 81, no. 12 (1990): 552–61. Schilka, Harry. “Die alte Nikolaischule.” Leipziger Blätter 15 (Fall 1989): 42–46. Schlemmer, Wilhelm. Lebensraum zwischen Barrikaden. Alltagsszenen aus einem Pfarrhaus in der DDR. 2nd ed. Berlin: Frieling, 2009. Siegel, Horst. “Generalbebauungsplan der Stadtregion Leipzig.” Architektur der DDR 26, no. 6 ( June 1977): 328–33. ——. “Wie das Gewandhaus seinen Platz und seine Gestalt bekam.” Leipziger Blätter 1 (Fall 1982): 7–13. Stadt Leipzig. Generalbebauungsplan, Generalverkehrsplan, Generalplan der technischen Versorgung. Leipzig, June 1970. ——. Neuordnung und Gestaltung der inneren Altstadt von Leipzig. Bebauungsplan mit Sanierungsplan und Satzung. No. 56 des Gesamtplanes. Leipzig: Rat der Stadt, Bauaufsichtsamt, 1949. VEB Denkmalpflege Leipzig. Denkmalpflege in Leipzig, 1978–1988. Dessau: Druckerei J. Wieprich, October 1987. Voigt, Andreas, and Gert Kroske, dir. Leipzig im Herbst. Aufbruch 89. DEFA, 1989; Berlin: Icestorm Entertainment GmbH, 2009. DVD. Published Secondary Material

Alte Stadt mit neuer Hoffnung.10 Jahre Stadtsanierung in Görlitz. Görlitz: Stadtverwaltung Görlitz, 2000. Angermann, Kirstin, and Tabea Hilse. Altstadtplatten. “Komplexe Rekonstruktion” in den Innenstädten von Erfurt und Halle. Weimar: Bauhaus Universitätsverlag, 2014. Bartetzky, Arnold. Die gerettete Stadt. Architektur und Stadtentwicklung in Leipzig seit 1989. Erfolge-Risiken-Verluste. Leipzig: Lehmstedt, 2015. ——. “History Revised: National Style and National Heritage in Polish Architecture and Monument Protection—before and after World War II.” In Heritage, Ideology, and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe: Contested Pasts, Contested Presents, edited by Matthew Rampley, 93–113. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2012. ——. Nation—Staat—Stadt. Architektur, Denkmalpflege und visuelle Geschichtskultur vom 19. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert. Cologne: Böhlau, 2012. Beier, Achim, and Uwe Schwabe, eds. Wir haben nur die Straße. Die Reden auf den Leipziger Montagsdemonstrationen 1989/90. Eine Dokumentation. Archiv Bürgerbewegung e.V. Leipzig. Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2016. Bessel, Richard, and Ralph Jessen, eds. Die Grenzen der Diktatur. Staat und Gesellschaft in der DDR. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996.

B i b l i o g r a p h y     237

Betts, Paul. Within Walls: Private Life in the German Democratic Republic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Betts, Paul, and Katherine Pence, eds. Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007. Bruce, Gary. The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Campbell, Brian William. “Resurrected from the Ruins, Turning to the Past: Historic Preservation in the SBZ/GDR 1945–1990.” PhD diss., University of Rochester, 2005. Czaplicka, John, and Blair Ruble, eds. Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Dale, Gareth. The East German Revolution of 1989. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006. Demshuk, Andrew. Demolition on Karl Marx Square: Cultural Barbarism and the People’s State in 1968. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. ——. “The People’s Bowling Palace: Building Underground in Late Communist Leipzig.” Contemporary European History 29, no. 3 (August 2020). ——. “A Polish Approach for German Cities? Cement Old Towns and the Search for Rootedness in Postwar Leipzig and Frankfurt/Main.” European History Quarterly 50, no. 1 (2020): 88–127. ——. “Preservationism, Postmodernism, and the Public across the Iron Curtain in Leipzig and Frankfurt/Main, 1968–1988.” In Re-framing Identities: Architecture’s Turn to History, edited by Ákos Moravánszky and Torsten Lange, 245–60. Berlin: Birkhäuser and De Gruyter, 2016. ——. “Rebuilding after the Reich: Sacred Sites in Frankfurt, Leipzig, and Wrocław, 1945–1949.” In War and the City: The Urban Context of Conflict and Mass Destruction, edited by Tim Keogh, 167–93. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2019. ——. Three Cities after Hitler: Urban Reconstruction across Cold War Borders. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, forthcoming. Diefendorf, Jeffry. In the Wake of War: Reconstruction of German Cities after World War II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Dietrich, Christian, and Uwe Schwabe, eds. Freunde und Feinde. Friedensgebete in Leipzig zwischen 1981 und dem 9. Oktober 1989. Archiv Bürgerbewegung e.V. Leipzig. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt GmbH, 1994. Durth, Werner, and Niels Gutschow. Träume in Trümmern. Planungen zum Wiederaufbau zerstörter Städte im Westen Deutschlands 1940–1950. Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1988. Engmann, Birk. Der große Wurf. Vom schwierigen Weg zur neuen Leipziger Universität. Beucha: Sax, 2008. Eppelmann, Rainer, Bernd Faulenbach, and Ulrich Mählert, eds. Bilanz und Pespektiven der DDR-Forschung. Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003. Ericson, Richard. “The ‘Second Economy’ and Resource Allocation under Central Planning.” Journal of Comparative Economics 8 (March 1984): 1–24. Flierl, Bruno. “Zur sozialistischen Architekturentwicklung in der DDR. Theoretische Probleme und Analysen der Praxis.” PhD diss, Humboldt University, 1979. Führer, Christian, and Friedrich Magirius, eds. Nikolaikirche: Offen für Alle. Eine Gemeinde im Zentrum der Wende. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1999.

238    B i b l i o g r a p h y

Fulbrook, Mary. The People’s State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. Fulbrook, Mary, and Andrew Port, eds. Becoming East German: Socialist Structures and Sensibilities after Hitler. New York: Berghahn, 2013. Fürst, Juliane, and Josie McLennan. Dropping Out of Socialism: The Creation of Alternative Spheres in the Soviet Bloc. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018. Gieseke, Jens. The History of the Stasi: East Germany’s Secret Police, 1945–1990. New York: Berghahn, 2014. Glassheim, Eagle. Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands: Migration, Environment, and Health in the Former Sudetenland. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016. Gleye, Paul. Behind the Wall: An American in East Germany, 1988–1989. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. Gormsen, Niels. Leipzig—Stadt, Handel, Messe. Die städtebauliche Entwicklung der Stadt Leipzig als Handels—und Messestadt. Leipzig: Institut für Landeskunde, 1996. Grashoff, Udo. Schwarzwohnen. Die Unterwanderung der staatlichen Wohnraumlenkung in der DDR. Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2011. Gray, Richard, and Sabine Wilke, eds. German Unification and Its Discontents: Documents from the Peaceful Revolution. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996. Grossman, Gregory. “The Second Economy in the USSR and Eastern Europe: A Bibliography.” Berkeley-Duke Occasional Papers on the Second Economy in the USSR. Paper 1 (September 1985): 1–13. ——. “The ‘Second Economy’ of the USSR.” Problems of Communism 26 (September/ October 1977): 25–40. Harrison, Hope. After the Berlin Wall: Memory and the Making of the New Germany, 1989 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Heckart, Beverly. “The Battle of Jena: Opposition to ‘Socialist’ Urban Planning in the German Democratic Republic.” Journal of Urban History 32, no. 4 (May 2006): 546–81. Hoscislawski, Thomas. Bauen zwischen Macht und Ohnmacht. Architektur und Städtebau in der DDR. Berlin: Verlag für Bauwesen, 1991. ——. “Grünau—geplantes und gebautes von 1959 bis 1990.” In Raster Beton. Vom Leben in Großwohnsiedlungen zwischen Kunst und Platte. Leipzig-Grünau im internationalen Vergleich, edited by Juliane Richter, Tanja Scheffler, and Hannah Sieben, 25–33. Weimar: M-Books, 2017. ——. “Zwischen Vision und Wirklichkeit—Planungen für das Leipziger Stadtzentrum 1945 bis 1990.” Leipziger Stadtgeschichte Jahrbuch (2017): 231–57. Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961. Jarausch, Konrad. The Rush to German Unity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Jaskot, Paul, and Gavriel Rosenberg, eds. Beyond Berlin: Twelve German Cities Confront the Nazi Past. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008. Johnson, Molly. Training Socialist Citizens: Sport and the State in East Germany. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Kaufmann, Christoph. “40 Jahre Grünau—Die Geschichte einer Planung.” Leipziger Stadtgeschichte Jahrbuch (2016): 251–76. Kenney, Padraic. A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe, 1989. New ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.

B i b l i o g r a p h y     239

Kleiner, John Paul. “Historical Memory and the Editing of the Socialist Cityscape in Post-Wende Leipzig.” MA thesis, York University, Canada, 2004. Kopstein, Jeffrey. The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany, 1945–1989. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Korbonski, Andrzej. “The ‘Second Economy’ in Poland.” Journal of International Affairs 35, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1981): 1–15. Kotkin, Stephen. Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment. New York: Modern Library, 2009. Kowalczuk, Ilko-Sascha. Endspiel. Die Revolution von 1989 in der DDR. Berlin: Ch.Beck, 2015. Kuhl, Lena. “Regionale Macht-Räume im Zentralismus? Die ‘Eigenverantwortung’ der örtlichen Organe der DDR.” Deutschland Archiv. July 14, 2016. http:// www.bpb.de/230157. Kuhl, Lena, and Oliver Werner. “ ‘Bezirke’ on Scale: Regional and Local Actors in East German ‘Democratic Centralism.’ ” Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung 42, no. 2 (160) (2017): 243–66. Kuhrmann, Anke. Der Palast der Republik. Geschichte und Bedeutung des Ost-Berliner Parlaments- und Kulturhauses. Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2006. Kulturstiftung Leipzig, ed. Alte Nikolaischule Leipzig. Leipzig: Edition Leipzig, 1994. Kunz, Peter, and Susann Morgner. Die Moritzbastei in Leipzig. Leipzig: Lehmstedt, 2003. Ladd, Brian. The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. ——. “Local Responses in Berlin to Urban Decay and the Demise of the German Democratic Republic.” In Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities, edited by John Czaplicka and Blair Ruble, 263–86. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. ——. “Socialist Planning and the Rediscovery of the Old City in the German Democratic Republic.” Journal of Urban History 27, no. 5 ( July 2001): 584–603. Le Normand, Brigitte. Designing Tito’s Capital: Urban Planning, Modernism, and Socialism in Belgrade. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014. Lindenberger, Thomas, ed., “Fragmented Society: ‘Societal Activism’ and Authority in GDR State Socialism.” Zeitgeschichte 37, no. 1 (2010): 3–20. ——. Herrschaft und Eigen-Sinn in der Diktatur. Zu einer Gesellschaftsgeschichte der DDR. Cologne: Böhlau, 1999. ——. “Ist die DDR ausgeforscht? Phasen, Trends und ein optimistischer Ausblick.” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 64, no. 24–26 ( June 2014): 27–32. Lüdtke, Alf, and Peter Becker, eds. Akten. Eingaben. Schaufenster. Die DDR und ihre Texte. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997. Magirius, Heinrich. Die Geschichte der Denkmalpflege Sachsens, 1945–1989. Arbeitshefte des Landesamtes für Denkmalpflege Sachsen. Dresden: Sandstein Verlag, 2010. Maier, Charles. Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Maier, Lilly. “Der Schwarzmarkt in der Möhlstraße und die Münchner Polizei—Eine Untersuchung im Spiegel der Akten der Polizeidirektion München.” Münchner Beiträge zur Jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur 12, no. 1 (2018): 35–51 Margraf, Otti, ed. 100 Jahre Emmauskirche 1900–2000. Leipzig, 2000.

240    B i b l i o g r a p h y

Meng, Michael. Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Menting, Annette, ed. Bowling Together! Bowlingtreff Leipzig. Eine Spielstätte auf Zeit. Leipzig: HTWK, 2007. ——. “Neuanfänge und Kontinuitäten in Leipzig um 1989. Beiträge von Dietmar Fischer zu Architektur und Stadtgestaltung.” In Kunst und Architektur in Mitteldeutschland, edited by Nadja Horsch, Zita Pataki, and Thomas Pöpper, 260–73. Leipzig: Plöttner, 2012. Menting, Annette, and Wolfgang Hocquél, eds. “. . . bauen mit Steinen, die man hat”. Der Leipziger Architekt Winfried Sziegoleit. Leipzig: Kulturstiftung, 2008. Millar, James. “The Little Deal: Brezhnev’s Contribution to Acquisitive Socialism.” Slavic Review 44, no. 4 (Winter 1985): 694–706. Mitchell, Peter Angus. “Contested Space: Squatting in Divided Berlin, 1970–1990.” PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2015. Mitter, Armin, and Stefan Wolle, eds. Ich liebe euch doch alle! Befehle und Lageberichte des MfS Januar-November 1989. Berlin: BasisDruck, 1990. Molnár, Virág. Building the State: Architecture, Politics, and State Formation in Postwar Central Europe. New York: Routledge, 2013. Mühlberg, Felix. “Informelle Konfliktbewältigung. Zur Geschichte der Eingabe in der DDR.” PhD diss., TU Chemnitz, 1999. Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 7–24. Opp, Karl-Dieter, Peter Voss, and Christiane Gern. Origins of a Spontaneous Revolution: East Germany, 1989. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995. Palmowski, Jan. Inventing a Socialist Nation: Heimat and the Politics of Everyday Life in the GDR, 1945–1990. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pausch, Andreas Peter. Widerstehen. Pfarrer Christoph Wonneberger. Archiv Bürgerbewegung Leipzig e.V. Berlin: Metropol, 2014. Port, Andrew. Conflict and Stability in the German Democratic Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pugh, Emily. Architecture, Politics, and Identity in Divided Berlin. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014. Putnam, Robert. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Rau, Christian. “Socialism from Below: Kommunalpolitik in the East German Dictatorship between Discourse and Practice.” German History 36, no. 1 (2017): 60–77. ——. Stadtverwaltung im Staatssozialismus. Kommunalpolitik und Wohnungswesen in der DDR am Beispiel Leipzigs (1957–1989). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2017. Reimann, Brigitte. Franziska Linkerhand. 13th ed. Berlin: Aufbau, 2000. Richter, Juliane, and Katja Weise. DDR-Architektur in der Leipziger Innenstadt. Weimar: Bauhaus Universitätsverlag, 2015. Richter, Michael. Die Friedliche Revolution. Aufbruch zur Demokratie in Sachsen 1989/90. 2 vols. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009. Ross, Corey. The East German Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of the GDR. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Rubin, Eli. Amnesiopolis: Modernity, Space, and Memory in East Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

B i b l i o g r a p h y     241

——. “Concrete Utopia: Everyday Life and Socialism in Berlin-Marzahn.” In East German Material Culture and the Power of Memory, edited by Uta Balbier, Christina Cuevas-Wolf, and Joes Segal, 29–45. Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 2011. ——. Synthetic Socialism: Plastics and Dictatorship in the German Democratic Republic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. Sammartino, Annemarie. “Mass Housing, Late Modernism, and the Forging of Community in New York City and East Berlin, 1965–1989.” American Historical Review 121, no. 2 (2016): 492–521. ——. “The New Socialist Man in the Plattenbau: The East German Housing Program and the Development of the Socialist Way of Life.” Journal of Urban History 22, no. 1 (2018): 78–94. Schöller, Peter. Städtepolitik, Stadtumbau und Stadterhaltung in der DDR. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1986. Schug, Alexander, ed. Palast der Republik. Politischer Diskurs und private Erinnerung. Berlin: Berlin Wissenschaftsverlag, 2007. Schuster, Ulrike. Moritzbastei Leipzig. Das planvolle Chaos einer Baugeschichte, 1974–9. Berlin: Nora, 2003. Scott, James. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. Siegel, Horst. “Leipzig und sein Wohnbauprogramm. Zur Entwicklung und Gestaltung unserer Stadt seit dem Bestehen der DDR.” In Leipzig aus Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, 25–53. Leipzig: VEB Fachbuchverlag, 1984. Spurný, Mateˇj. Making the Most of Tomorrow: A Laboratory of Socialist Modernity in Czechoslovakia. Prague: Karolinum, 2019. Stangl, Paul. Risen from the Ruins: The Cultural Politics of Rebuilding East Berlin. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018. Tesch, Joachim, ed. Bauen in Leipzig, 1945–1990. Akteure und Zeitzeugen auf persönlichen Spuren der Leipziger Baugeschichte. Leipzig: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Sachsen, 2003. Timmer, Karsten. Vom Aufbruch zum Umbruch. die Bürgerbewegung in der DDR 1989. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000. Topfstedt, Thomas. “Enttäuschte Erwartungen. Stadtdenkmalpflege und Baupolitik in der DDR während der 1970er und 1980er Jahre.” In Denkmalpflege. Kontinuität und Avantgarde, edited by Thüringisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie, 26–36. Erfurt: E. Reinhold, 2014. ——. “Genutzte und vertane Chancen. Der Umgang mit dem Bauerbe des Sozialismus in Leipzig.” In Von der Ablehnung zur Abneigung? Das Architektonische Erbe des Sozialismus in Mittel- und Osteuropa, edited by Arnold Bartetzky, Christian Dietz, and Jörg Haspel, 94–111. Cologne: Böhlau, 2014. ——. “Gepriesener Neubau Bowlingtreff.” Leipziger Blätter 16 (Spring 1990): 35–37. ——. “Leipzig: Messestadt im Ring.” In Neue Städte aus Ruinen. Deutscher Städtebau der Nachkriegszeit, edited by Werner Durth, Niels Gutschow, Winfried Nerdinger, and Thomas Topfstedt, 183–96. Munich: Prestel, 1992. ——. Städtebau in der DDR, 1955–1971. Leipzig: VEB E.A. Seemann, 1988. ——. “Vom Bauen—ein Rückblick auf die Jahre 1945 bis 1989.” Leipziger Blätter 26 (Spring 1995): 28–32.

242    B i b l i o g r a p h y

——. “Zukunftsfähig? Zum Umgang mit dem Baulichen Erbe der ostdeutschen Nachkriegsarchitektur.” In Labor der Moderne. Nachkriegsarchitektur in Europa, edited by Ingrid Sonntag, 52–63. Dresden: Sächsische Akademie der Künste, 2014. Tsipursky, Gleb. Socialist Fun: Youth, Consumption, and State-Sponsored Culture in the Soviet Union, 1945–1970. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016. Urban, Florian. Designing the Past in East Berlin before and after German Reunification. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2007. ——. “The Invention of the Historic City: Building the Past in East Berlin, 1970– 1990.” PhD diss., TU Berlin, 2006. ——. Neo-historical East Berlin: Architecture and Urban Design in the German Democratic Republic, 1970–1990. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009. von Beyme, Klaus. Der Wiederaufbau. Architektur und Städtebaupolitik in beiden deutschen Staaten. Munich: R. Piper, 1987. von der Goltz, Anna. “Making Sense of East Germany’s 1968: Multiple Trajectories and Contrasting Memories.” Memory Studies 6, no. 1 (2013): 53–69. von Richthofen, Esther. Bringing Culture to the Masses: Control, Compromise, and Participation in the GDR. New York: Berghahn, 2009. von zur Mühlen, Patrik. Aufbruch und Umbruch in der DDR. Bürgerbewegungen, kritische Öffentlichkeit und Niedergang der SED-Herrschaft. Bonn: Dietz, 2000. Wensierski, Peter. Die unheimliche Leichtigkeit der Revolution. Wie eine Gruppe junger Leipziger die Revolution in der DDR wagte. Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2017. Werner, Frank. Stadt und Städtebau. Architektur in der DDR. Aspekte der Stadtgeographie, Stadtplanung und Forschungspolitik. Erlangen: Institut für Gesellschaft und Wissenschaft an der Universität Nürnberg-Erlangen, 1981. Werner, Oliver. “Zwischen Konsolidierung, Bedeutungsverlust und Stagnation. Die Stadt Leipzig in der Planwirtschaft der DDR.” In Leipzigs Wirtschaft in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Akteure, Handlungsspielräume, Wirkungen, edited by Suzanne Schötz, 355–63. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2012. Wolle, Stefan. Die heile Welt der Diktatur. Alltag und Herrschaft in der DDR, 1971–1989. Berlin: Ch.Links, 1998. Yurchak, Alexei. Everything Was Forever until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Zatlin, Jonathan. The Currency of Socialism: Money and Political Culture in East Germany. Washington, DC: German Historical Institute; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

In dex

Page numbers for definitions are in boldface. 1953 Uprising, x, 147, 154 1968 demolition. See University Church 1970 Leipzig city plan, 11, 59, 67, 199n40 1975 East German Historic Preservation Law, 24, 25, 59, 61, 63, 74. See also historic preservation 1982 Principles for the Socialist Development of Urban Planning, 60 1987 BCA planning conception, 15, 78, 84 – 90, 183, 186, 189. See also 1988 spring planning exhibition 1988 Leipzig planning competition, 15, 82 – 90 legacies of, 91 – 94, 152 – 153, 161, 172, 181, 183, 186 1988 Leipzig financial report, 23, 34, 51, 70, 72, 99, 101, 111, 148, 158 1988 spring planning exhibition, 1, 9, 11, 15, 82 – 86 as venue for critique, 1, 15, 29, 64, 80, 84, 89 – 90, 93, 143 See also urban ingenuity 1989 revolution, ix, 1, 6, 8, 16, 150, 160 – 164, 180, 226n39 continuities before and after, 9 – 10, 16, 47, 51, 81, 151, 180 – 186, 189 – 190 as a historical break, 9 – 10 origins of, 3 – 6, 9 – 10, 64, 147, 151 – 160 See also Nikolaikirche; Wende Academixer, as venue in 1989, 161 after-hours labor, 23, 103 – 105, 112 – 113, 214n40, 214n44. See also Schwarzbau; Subbotnik Altenburg, 156, 221n176 Alte Nikolaischule, 16, 75, 79, 151, 160, 165 – 170, 177, 184, 227n57, 228n69 Amnesiopolis, 29, 153 Apels Garten, 68

Architekten, die (film), 53 – 54, 56, 72 Architektur der DDR, 28, 58, 65, 69, 71, 74, 75, 78, 86, 88, 91, 172 Auerbach, Dieter, 149 Auerbachs Keller, 182 Aufbaustab (District Building Staff ), 75, 123, 127, 130, 131 Ausbauwohnung, 33 – 36 Bartetzky, Arnold, 80, 171, 180, 187, 219n136 Barthels Hof, 61, 183, 189 Battle of Nations monument, 181 – 182 Bauakademie (East German) 1988 competition contribution, 84 – 85, 87 – 88 and historic suburbs, 65, 67, 69 urban planning philosophy, 9 Baukombinat Leipzig and 1989 revolution, 153, 165 – 168, 183 critiques of, 66, 72, 78, 174, 204n29 and demolitions, 51, 72 repair petitions to, 22 – 23 role in prefab building, 29, 61, 66, 72, 75 – 79 and Schwarzbauten, 111, 123, 167 See also Plattenbau Baumgärtel, Gerhard, 172 – 173 BCA (Büro des Chefarchitekten). See Office of the Chief Architect BDA (Bund Deutscher Architekten). See League of German Architects Beethovenstraße-8, 19, 27 – 28, 31, 185. See also Music District; Zumpe, Wieland Bentzien, Hans, 58 Berlin, 10, 196n34 750th anniversary, 122, 154 Arnimplatz, 55 bowling in, 118, 121 – 122, 124, 127, 129 Communal Housing Collective, 23

243

244    I n d e x

Berlin (continued) diversion of resources to, 10, 60, 62 – 63, 73, 96, 115, 119, 121 – 122, 129, 138, 151, 154, 163, 171 – 172, 177 Kunsthochschule, 87 preservation in, 203n124, 205n36 rivalry with Leipzig, 3 – 4, 10, 16, 115, 133, 150 – 154, 163, 171, 225n14 (see also democratic centralism) Wall, 3, 54, 81, 91, 151, 161, 180 See also Marzahn; Nikolaiviertel; Palace of the Republic Beyer, Thomas, 146, 196n38 Beyer, Walter, 58 von Beyme, Klaus, 183 Bezirke bauen in Berlin, Die, 62, 180. See also Berlin: diversion of resources to; democratic centralism BfaK (Büro für architekturbezogene Kunst). See Office of Architectural Art black market. See second economy Blaurock, Karl-Heinz, 63 “Blue Wonder” footbridge, 19, 188 BMK (VEB Bau- und Montagekombinat) (Construction and Assembly Collective), 130 – 131, 134 Böhme, Heinz-Jürgen, 170, 173, 208n112 Bowlingtreff (Leipzig), 19 and 1989 revolution, 110, 142 – 144, 147, 150, 153 and “bowling for communism,” xi, 96 – 97, 138 as center for Republikflucht, xi, 138 – 142 construction of, x, 5, 37, 126 – 132 documentary film on, xii, 103, 146 and illegal construction, 8, 11, 15, 20, 33, 44, 100 – 101, 108, 123, 126, 135 – 136, 148 inauguration of, 85, 95, 101, 112, 132 – 134 versus Kegeln, 129 and local pride, 5, 7, 85, 101, 123, 127, 133, 163 planning of, 112 – 126 as postmodern, ix, 15, 124 – 126, 146 – 147, 219n135 as prizewinner, 133 as recreational pastime, 18, 136 – 138, 146 relationship to Gewandhaus, 37, 116, 123, 125 – 129, 137, 143, 150, 187 as a ruin, ix, xii, 144 – 147 and Stasi, 101, 135, 138 – 142, 222n197 volunteer labor on, x – xi, 5, 9, 42, 103 – 104, 130 – 132 (see also Subbotnik) versus Western bowling centers, 96 – 97, 124, 136 – 137

See also Schwarzbau; Sieg, Volker; Subbotnik; Sziegoleit, Winfried Breslau. See Wrocław Brno, 85 Brühl (Karl-Marx Stadt), 55, 73 Building Ministry (DDR), 86, 135 Café Coffebaum, 13, 177 Café Venus (Bowlingtreff ), 133, 144 Can Leipzig Still Be Saved? (film), 1 – 3, 12, 49, 56, 70 – 72, 74, 92, 163, 172, 174, 178, 179, 184, 193n1 CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union), East German, 38 Central Stadium (Leipzig), 102 – 103 coal mines (Leipzig) collectives from, 148 devastation from, ix, 143, 157 – 158 dust from, 2, 11, 38, 70 and Plattenbau construction, 29, 157 and Schwarzbau construction, 111, 113 See also environmental crisis communism architectural heritage of, 186 – 188 as empty rhetoric, x – xi, 8, 26, 96 – 97, 111, 188 versus local identity, 6, 103, 172 loss of belief in, x, 2 – 3, 17, 20, 143 power structures and corruption, 3 – 5, 21, 108, 137, 147 (see also democratic centralism) and utopian aesthetics, 3, 72 See also Berlin; Socialist Unity Party Connewitz (Leipzig neighborhood), 177 and demolitions, 73, 92, 111, 174 – 175 and squatting, 50 – 51 Construction and Assembly Collective (BMK), 130 – 131, 134 Cotta, 127 Cracow, 85 craftsmen. See handicrafts Cultural League (DDR), 59, 189, 194n18 Cultural Ministry (DDR), 63 Dächer dicht campaign, 23, 33 – 34, 60, 63 DEFA (DDR Film Company), 53, 203n2, 227n51 Demele, Ernst, 155 democratic centralism, 4 – 10, 16, 18, 55, 60, 62 – 63, 73, 83, 93, 96 – 99, 111, 115 – 116, 119, 135, 138, 150 – 154, 157, 160, 163, 171 – 172, 177, 180 See also Berlin: rivalry with Leipzig; Bezirke bauen in Berlin; communism:

I n d e x     245 power structures and corruption; Politburo; Socialist Unity Party; urban planning Denkmalpflege. See historic preservation Deutrichs Hof (Leipzig), 85, 186 Deutscher Hof (Leipzig), 177 Doehler-Behzadi, Marta, 225n11 Donath, Renate, 185, 230n22 Dorotheenplatz, 15, 18 – 19, 54, 67 – 71, 73, 80, 84, 85, 93, 143. See also Fischer, Dietmar; Kaiser-era architecture; Plattenbau construction: integration with history Dorschner, Adrian, 146, 196n38 Draber, Jochen, 122, 127, 128, 131, 132 – 134, 137, 142 – 144, 160 Dresden preferential treatment of, 63, 115 (see also Berlin: diversion of resources to) student club, 107 wartime damage, 10 Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), 88 – 89 Eigen-Sinn, 6 – 7, 103, 110, 194n15, 194n18 Eighth Gymnastics and Sport Festival, Leipzig hosting of, 96, 127 – 128, 132, 134 – 135 Eingaben, 8 – 9, 20 – 27, 31, 33, 37, 44, 64, 150, 184, 197n3, 197n8 Emmauskirche (Leipzig) 37, 42 Engmann, Birk, 185 environmental crisis as cause for protest, 2, 10 – 11, 68, 151, 155, 159, 164, 174 interconnection with urban decay, 157 – 160, 163, 177, 189 and Schwarzbauten, 111 in Sudetenland, 226n30 See also coal mines; Espenhain power plant; Wonneberger, Christoph Erfurt, preservation in, 164 Espenhain power plant, 143, 157. See also coal mines; environmental crisis Eutritzsch (Leipzig), 25 FDJ (Freie Deutsche Jugend). See Free ­German Youth First People’s Building Conference, 16, 37, 51, 80, 152, 167, 170 – 177, 184, 189 – 190. See also 1989 revolution; ­urban ingenuity; Wende First Pleiße Memorial March, 159, 226n36. See also environmental crisis; Wonneberger, Christoph

Fischer, Dietmar, 5, 28, 64 – 62, 79, 82 – 93, 147, 160, 166 – 168, 191 architectural philosophy, 15, 64, 75, 153, 181, 183, 189 and Architekten, 53 – 54, 56, 72 and Bowlingtreff, 182 and demolitions, 56, 74, 91, 149, 176 denunciations of, 54, 74, 89 – 90, 161 – 162, 168 – 169, 172 – 173, 175 and politics, 65, 92, 160, 168 postcommunist success, 93, 181 – 183 See also 1988 Leipzig planning competition; Alte Nikolaischule; Dorotheenplatz; Office of the Chief Architect; urban planning Flierl, Bruno, 57 Frankfurt/Main assistance to Leipzig, 93, 168 – 169, 177, 182 demolitions in, 11, 97, 182 urban discontent in, 12 – 13, 49, 202n120 as urban success, 84 Frankfurt/Oder, 98 Free German Youth (FDJ), 105, 139, 163 and Bowlingtreff, 130 – 132 and Moritzbastei, 106 – 107, 110 and roof repairs, 23, 63 free labor. See Subbotnik Fröhlich, Paul, 5 Fulbrook, Mary, 4 – 5 Fürstenhaus, 59, 75 – 78, 80, 105 Gehrmann, Wolfgang, 188 Geist-Reithmeier, Ruth, 1, 72, 161. See also Can Leipzig Still Be Saved? Gera, demolitions in, 156, 164 Gewandhaus, Second, 19, 27, 116. See also Music District Gewandhaus, Third, 18, 19, 106, 115 – 116, 123, 125 – 129, 137, 161, 187. See also Skoda, Rudolf; Sziegoleit, Winfried von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 25, 183 Goodbye Lenin (film), 95 Gorbachev, Mikhail, x, 12, 150, 160 Görlitz, decay in, 3, 156 – 157, 164 Gormsen, Niels, 182 – 183, 186, 190 Gosenschänke pub, 25 Graf, Gerhard, 39 – 40, 42 Grashoff, Udo, 46 – 47, 49 Greifswald, prefab old town, 62, 73 Grimmaische Straße. See Fürstenhaus Grossman, Gregory, 13, 32, 45, 104, 196n40. See also Schwarzbau; second economy

246    I n d e x

Grünau (Leipzig Plattenbau district) origins and conditions, 29 – 31, 57, 157 as state priority, 2, 72, 74 as unattractive, 26 – 27, 80, 81, 89, 115, 143, 158, 200n59 See also Kahl, Alice; modern architecture; Plattenbau; urban planning GWL (VEB Gebäudewirtschaft Leipzig). See Leipzig Building Management Hädrich, Günther, 163 Halle demolitions in, 156 – 157, 164 laborers in Berlin, 62 Neustadt, 57 preservation efforts in, 32, 60 student club, 107 wartime devastation in, 73 Handelshof, 100 handicrafts brigades, 32, 33, 37 – 42, 104, 128 – 129 collectivization of, 23, 61 demise of, 9, 34, 36, 45, 57 – 58, 61 – 63, 78, 157 self-education in, 35 See also Schwarzbau; second economy Hannover assistance to Leipzig, 93, 169, 177, 180, 182 demolitions in, 11 as urban success, 84 Vinnhorst, 38 – 39 Hartmann, Helmut, 174 Harvey, David, 57 Haupt, Rolf, 163 Heimat, 7, 195n21 aesthetic stereotype of, 175 as public motivator, 7, 97 in urban planning, 54, 55 See also historyness; urban planning: and appropriation of space Heldt, Peter, 170, 175, 189 – 190 Hempel, Werner and Christoph, 77 Henselmann, Hermann, 119 Herrschaft als soziale Praxis, 6 historic preservation (DDR), 2 – 3, 193n3, 205n36 1952 Preservation Edict, 58 1975 Preservation Law, 24, 25, 59, 61, 63, 74 compared to West, xi, 57, 204n12 as hollow rhetoric, 2, 24 – 26, 63, 67, 154

inadequacy of, 15, 18, 23 – 28, 43, 56, 58 – 61, 63, 73 – 75, 77 – 81, 85, 106, 108, 145 – 146, 187, 224n234 in law (DDR), 24, 25, 58 – 61, 63 – 64, 74 Institut für Denkmalpflege (IfD, Dresden), 77, 184 local support for, 3, 11, 22, 33, 154, 157, 162, 165, 171, 175, 177 and Plattenbau methods, 55, 64 – 73, 75 – 78 and politics, 184 VEB Denkmalpflege, 59, 60, 63, 204n29 VEB Kombinat für Baureparaturen, 61, 108 See also Hocquél, Wolfgang; Kaiserera architecture; Maaß, Hubert; Pasch, Gerhart; Plattenbau; Schulze, Johannes; Schüppel, Hans; Topfstedt, Thomas; urban planning historyness, 113 – 114. See also Heimat; urban planning: and appropriation of space Hocquél, Wolfgang, 184 on civic activism, 103, 177 – 178 critiques of communist-era planning, 33, 54 – 56, 61 – 62, 73, 157, 162, 176, 184, 204n29 and Kulturstiftung, 146 as preservationist in DDR, 156, 184 transition to capitalism, 184 See also historic preservation; Office of Architectural Art Hoffmann, Eva, 102 Hofmann, Frieder, 123, 207n83 Honecker, Erich, 2, 11, 28, 29, 56, 59, 61, 84, 92, 99, 107, 116, 134, 150, 179 Horn, Wolfgang, 118 – 121 Hoscislawski, Thomas, 29, 181 How We Live Here: Frustration and Decay in Leipzig (film), 11, 49, 155 Hoyerswerda Plattenbau district, 57 Hungary 1956 in, 10 second economy in, 32 “tulip debate” about humanizing modernism, 203n6 “Imaginary West,” 97, 129, 136 – 138, 147, 150 Initiative to Save Leipzig, 170, 184, 189 Institut für Denkmalpflege (IfD). See historic preservation Ist Leipzig noch zu retten? See Can Leipzig Still be Saved?

I n d e x     247 Jacobs, Jane, 30, 38, 57, 199n38 Jena, demolitions in, 56, 157 Johnson, Molly, 102 Junker, Wolfgang, 85, 179 – 180 Kahl, Alice critique of DDR housing, 99 findings in Grünau, 30 – 31, 200n59 findings in Ostvorstadt, 19 – 20, 30, 34, 66, 197n2 Kaiser-era architecture concentration in Leipzig, 10, 18, 57, 65 decay of, 1, 18, 22 – 23, 64, 67, 94, 161 disdain for, 57 – 58, 64 as Leipzig’s cultural identity, 22, 54, 72, 81, 174, 176, 185 restoration of, 55, 58, 60, 65 – 66, 71, 74, 93, 174, 177, 182 (see also Plattenbau: integration with history) as tenements, 1, 35, 55, 74 See also Dorotheenplatz; historic preservation; Ostvorstadt; Plagwitz; Rasche, Klaus; Thonberg; Volkmarsdorf; Waldstraßenviertel Kalitynski, Andreas, 11, 34, 37, 136 – 137, 218n117 Karl Marx monument (Leipzig), 18, 114, 150 Karl Marx Square (Leipzig) and 1973 university ensemble, 3, 87, 119 and Eighth Gymnastics and Sport Festival, 132 as high modernist mistake, 59 layout of, 18, 19 and mass protest, 154, 160 and Moritzbastei, 106 and pedestrian traffic, 75 and planned parking garage under, 217n102 and Third Gewandhaus, 115 – 116 See also University Church Karl-Marx-Stadt bowling in, 122 opera house renovation, 98 preservation in, 55, 73 Schwarzbauten in, 148 self-initiative in, 201n65 Karl Marx University (KMU), 39, 105, 159, 165 Kießling, Werner on Bowlingtreff, 123, 129, 136 – 138, 142, 144, 146 and Lawbook 35, 104 on monotony, 115

Kiev, 85 Klartext film. See Can Leipzig Still Be Saved? Klenner, Wilfried, 44 Koenitz, Dietmar, 42 Kolonnadenstraße. See Dorotheenplatz Kopstein, Jeffrey, 96, 195n23 Kowalczuk, Ilko-Sascha, 7, 155, 212n5, 224n5 Krenz, Egon, 164, 179 Krenz, Gerhard, 72 – 73 Kuhl, Lena, 3, 7, 55, 98, 148, 196n31, 197n8, 212n4 Kulturbund der DDR. See Cultural League Kulturstiftung Leipzig and Alte Nikolaischule, 165, 168 – 170 and Bowlingtreff, 145 – 146 founding of, 165, 177, 184 Kuntzsch, Dietmar, 87 Kunz, Peter, 107 – 108 Kunze, Peter, 104, 123, 131, 136 Ladd, Brian, 3, 22, 57, 154, 196n34 Lawbook 35, 214n44 frustrations with, 164 intentions of, 104 on overpayment, 42, 104, 164 on untaxed labor, 36, 104 See also Schwarzbau; Subbotnik League of German Architects, 72, 84, 144, 174, 189 Lehmann-Grube, Hinrich, 168, 180, 182 Leipzig as case for state-civic interchange, 3, 10 – 13 civic pride in, 4, 7, 11, 18 – 20, 31, 54, 97, 103, 108, 131, 163, 168 – 169, 172, 176 – 178 (see also Berlin: rivalry with Leipzig; Bowlingtreff: and local pride; Socialist Unity Party: local reformers in) description of, 17 – 19, 182 – 183 as “hero city,” 152, 170, 188 nostalgia for heyday, 5, 56, 81, 182 passage tradition, 18, 74 – 75, 86 – 88, 126, 165 – 167, 170, 182 – 183, 185, 186 population decline, 22, 31, 182 as the “saved city,” 16, 80, 174 – 175, 180 – 181, 185, 189, 197n43 urban decay in (see urban dystopia) wartime bombardment and rubble clearance, 2, 10, 18, 27, 77 – 78, 82, 149, 175 Leipzig Building Management (GWL), 22 – 24, 27 – 28, 33 – 36, 61, 184 – 185, 197n9 Leipzig im Herbst (film), 227n51

248    I n d e x

Leipziger Blätter, 66, 69, 73 – 74, 78, 90, 177, 188 Leipziger Volkszeitung (LVZ), 28, 31, 90, 155, 187 Licht, Hugo, 18 Liebknecht, Karl, 64 Lindenberger, Thomas, 6 Löber, Jürgen, 173 Lößnig-Dölitz (Leipzig park), 111 – 115 Lotter, Hieronymus, 105, 108 Lucas, Walter, 58, 106 Lukaskirche (Leipzig), 19, 65 – 67, 149 – 150, 160, 176. See also Ostvorstadt; Wonneberger, Christoph Maaß, Hubert, 43 – 44, 63, 85, 183. See also historic preservation Mach mit campaign, 102 and free labor, 33 – 34, 42, 102, 104 as insufficient, 33 and plunder, 44 as successor to National Reconstruction Effort, 102 and tax-free labor, 104 as tired rhetoric, x, 63, 153, 159 See also Dächer dicht campaign; National Front Mädler Passage, 183 Magdeburg, Schwarzbauten in, 119 Magirius, Friedrich, 37, 170, 177 Mariannenstraße, squatting settlement at, 47, 49, 154 – 155, 159 Markuskirche (Leipzig), 36 – 37 Marzahn (Berlin Plattenbau district), 29, 62, 71, 102, 199n38 Masur, Kurt, 116, 160, 177 memory and Bowlingtreff, 137, 145 critical analysis of, 4, 225n14 and Heimat, 7 invention of, 68, 113 – 114, 191 and nostalgia, 4, 58, 93, 175 (see also ostalgie) ruptures with, 29, 204n14 selectiveness of, 4, 186 Menting, Annette, 144 Merkel, Angela, 110 Merseberg, prefab old town, 73, 156, 164 Messe, Leipziger. See trade fair Messeamt, 85, 87, 175, 187 Messehaus am Markt, 177, 188 Michaeliskirche (Leipzig), 19, 36 – 42, 149, 202n95. See also Schlemmer, Wilhelm; Schwarzbau

Ministry for State Security (MfS). See Stasi modern architecture comforts in, 14, 20, 30, 31, 99 destructive aspects, 1, 3, 10, 15, 18, 53, 56 – 57, 59, 84, 194n14, 196n36 diversity of forms, 10 as endangered heritage, 187 – 189 fusion with history, xi, 11, 14, 15, 18, 55 – 58, 64 – 81, 85 – 86, 93, 153, 174 – 175, 181, 183, 190, 203n6 similarities East and West, xi, 11, 29, 57, 204n12 See also Grünau; historyness; Plattenbau; postmodern architecture; urban dystopia Molnár, Virág, 33, 203n6 Monday Demonstrations. See 1989 revolution Moritzbastei, 19, 105 – 111, 115, 138 and 1989, 110, 161 as architectural triumph, 101 funds for, 100 and Fürstenhaus fragments, 77, 105 and “Imaginary West,” 147 as Schwarzbau, 101, 103 – 105, 130 Most (Czechoslovakia), 158 Müller, Karl-Heinz, 23, 34, 60, 63, 126 Müller, Wolfgang, 77, 85 Music District (Leipzig), 27, 31, 116. See also Beethovenstraße-8; Gewandhaus, Second; Zumpe, Wieland National Front (DDR), 42, 49, 134. See also Mach mit campaign Nazism, 102, 181, 213, 197n9 Neues Forum (Leipzig), 4, 23, 153, 198n14 Nickel, Uta, 98 – 100 on 1988 Leipzig planning competition, 83 and 1989, 183 – 184 on Baukombinat construction, 72, 115 on Bowlingtreff, 122, 127, 135 on free labor, 103 See also Schwarzbau Nikolaikirche (Leipzig), 19 botched repairs to, 60 guest book, 153 and Monday Demonstrations, 160 – 161 postcommunist construction near, 188 See also 1989 revolution; Alte Nikolaischule; University Guesthouse Nikolaistraße (Leipzig), 17, 19, 59, 74 – 80, 165 – 170, 175. See also Alte Nikolaischule; Fürstenhaus; Nikolaikirche

I n d e x     249 Nikolaiviertel (Berlin), 62, 73, 96, 122. See also Berlin: 750th anniversary Nordplatz (Leipzig). See Michaeliskirche Office of Architectural Art (BfaK) founding of, 59 and historic replicas, 77, 170 preservation lapses, 24 – 25, 59 – 60 See also Hocquél, Wolfgang Office of the Chief Architect (BCA), 30, 74 – 79, 182, 189 after 1989, 183 and planned economy, 23 and Plattenbau construction, 34 public outreach, 28 and Schwarzbau approval, 111 – 113 See also 1988 Leipzig planning competition; Alte Nikolaischule; Bowlingtreff; Fischer, Dietmar; modern architecture; Ostvorstadt; postmodern architecture; Schulze, Johannes; Siegel, Horst Olympics, Leipzig bid for, 90, 92 – 93, 155 Opitz, Rolf, 78, 95 – 97, 112, 122, 127, 134 – 135, 153, 160, 162 – 163 ostalgie, 95 – 96, 180, 212n1. See also memory: and nostalgia Ostvorstadt (Leipzig), 19 – 20, 30, 34, 65 – 67, 80, 149 – 150. See also Thonberg; Volkmarsdorf Palace of the Republic (Berlin), 96, 119, 121 Pasch, Gerhart, 37 – 39, 59 Paulinerkirche. See University Church Peaceful Revolution. See 1989 revolution People’s Police (VP), 14, 38, 43, 44, 47, 101, 118, 119, 123, 128, 135, 159, 160, 217n104 Perestroika, x, 54, 150, 155, 205n40 Peterskirche (Leipzig), 39 petitions. See Eingaben Petzold, Wolfgang, 75 – 76 Plagwitz (Leipzig) complaints with housing in, 25 decay in, 1 – 2, 74 Heine Canal, 174 planned demolition of, 56, 91, 161 – 162, 174, 182 Plattenbau construction, 28 – 31 as desirable, 14, 20, 26, 30, 35, 102, 172, 199n38, 200n48 diversion of resources to, 2, 20, 22 – 23, 28 – 29, 37, 56 – 57, 59, 61, 72, 74, 83, 119, 135, 153, 172

integration with history, 8 – 9, 15, 55, 62 – 80, 167, 206n53 (see also Dorotheenplatz; Ostvorstadt) and modernism, 10 “neo-traditional” style, 62, 79 opposition to, 5, 6 – 7, 20, 26, 51, 55, 80, 89, 115, 142 – 143, 154, 163 – 164, 171, 174 – 176, 199n38 termination of, 167, 181, 185, 221n176 and urban destruction, 5, 8 – 9, 15 – 16, 30 – 31, 51, 56 – 57, 73, 80 – 81, 93 – 94, 150, 153, 156 – 158, 166, 172 – 173, 183, 185 – 186, 203n124, 227n56 WBS-70 series, 65 – 66, 69, 84, 156 See also Grünau; Halle: Neustadt; historic preservation; Hoyerswerda; Marzahn; modern architecture; Office of the Chief Architect; urban dystopia Plewe, Reinhard, 107 Plovdiv, 85 Poland national identity, 13 second economy, 45 urban planning, 12, 204n14 See also Wrocław Polish Cultural and Information Center, 140, 147, 224n231 Politburo 1950 Sixteen Fundamentals of Urban Planning, 58 1982 Principles for the Socialist Development of Urban Planning, 60 local relationship with, xi, 5, 8, 64, 84 petitions to, 25, 26, 43, 64 on planning and preservation, 58 – 61, 65, 157 See also democratic centralism; urban planning: and historical buildings Poly-Play video game machines, 95, 132 Porphyr, 77 postmodern architecture (in DDR), ix, 15, 79, 83, 87, 89, 116, 126, 146 – 147, 170, 186, 219n135. See also modernism; Office of the Chief Architect Potsdam, planning in, 29 – 30, 56, 156 – 157 Prager Straße (Leipzig), 175, 185 Pro-Leipzig initiative, 177, 185, 190 Rasche, Klaus, 58 Rau, Christian, 7, 22 – 23, 44, 47, 103 – 104, 195n25 Redecke, Sebastian, 54, 169, 171, 173, 185 Reimann, Brigitte, 54

250    I n d e x

rent compared to West Germany, 23 in Grünau, 31 rates in East Germany, 23, 47, 62, 155 See also Schwarzwohnen Republikflucht, 141, 222n204. See also West Germany Reudnitz (Leipzig), 36 – 37, 65 Roßbach, Arwed, 27 Rostock bowling in, 122 demolitions in, 56 and neotraditional Plattenbau, 55, 62, 72 – 73 Rubin, Eli, 29, 44, 102 Runde Ecke. See Stasi: headquarters samizdat, 29 – 30, 32, 155 – 157, 160 Saxon Square (Leipzig) elimination of, 87, 186 as high modernist mistake, 18 – 19, 59, 175 Leipzig information center at, 129 – 130, 136 Polish Cultural and Information Center on, 224n231 postcommunist changes to, 183, 186 Potemkin village on western side, 18, 63 Schäferei, zur, 111 – 115 Scheller, Heike, 183 Schilka, Harry, 171, 175 Schlemmer, Wilhelm, 13, 37 – 43, 149. See also Michaeliskirche Schlosser, Wilfried, 107 – 108 Schmiechen, Karl, 86 Schneider, Jürgen, 183 Schön, Liesel, 98 – 100 and Bowlingtreff, 122 on budgetary allocations, 62 on free labor, 102 and Moritzbastei, 109, 111 retirement, 180 and Schwarzbauten, 107 – 108, 111 trips to the West, 100, 213n21 Schönefeld swimming pool, 101, 111 – 112, 115 Schöner unsere Städte und Gemeinden. See Mach mit campaign Schorlemmer, Friedrich, 155 Schulze, Johannes and 1988 Leipzig planning competition, 85, 173 and Alte Nikolaischule, 165

on Baukombinat methods, 76 and Bowlingtreff, 122, 132, 146 postcommunist influence, 183 on Schwarzbau methods, 100, 122, 218n122 on urban decay, 30, 61, 65, 85 See also historic preservation; Office of the Chief Architect Schulze, Martin, 23 Schumann, Horst, 85, 122, 132 Schüppel, Hans, 106 Schuster, Ulrike, 107, 110 Schwabe, Uwe, 49, 143, 155, 159 Schwarzbau, 15, 43 – 46, 97 – 101, 105 – 115, 212n7 and after-hours labor, 103 – 104, 112 – 113, 214n40, 214n44 (see also Lawbook 35) creative potential, 33, 97 critiques of, 15, 28, 84, 104, 143, 147 – 148 diversion of resources to, 62, 98 – 101, 108 and free labor, 101 – 103, 129 – 132 (see also Subbotnik) as palliative, 15, 83, 143, 147, 153 as personal initiative, 20 – 21, 39 – 40, 103 See also after-hours labor; Bowlingtreff; Lawbook 35; Lößnig-Dölitz; Michaeliskirche; Moritzbastei; Schönefeld; urban ingenuity; Wildpark Schwarzwohnen, 8, 14, 21, 35, 46 – 49, 51, 64, 97, 151, 159, 163, 184, 202n120. See also rent; second economy second economy, 11, 13, 14 – 15, 20 – 21, 32 – 33, 49, 196n40 – 41 and after-hours labor, 103 – 105 research methods for, 13 – 14 and stealing, 43 – 47, 104 See also Bowlingtreff: and illegal construction; Grossman, Gregory; Schwarzbau; Schwarzwohnen; Subbotnik; urban ingenuity SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands). See Socialist Unity Party Seeburgstraße (Leipzig), 56, 67, 73, 80, 164, 175 Seidel, Bernd, 101, 163 Sieg, Volker, 112, 116, 123 – 124. See also Bowlingtreff Siegel, Horst, 25, 29, 59 – 60, 65, 67, 75 – 76, 118 – 121, 123, 166. See also Grünau; modern architecture; Office of the Chief Architect Siegenbruk, Hans-Wolfgang, 108 Sikora, Bernd, 173, 175

I n d e x     251 Skoda, Rudolf, 116, 189. See also Gewandhaus, Third Skodawessely, Christine, 35 – 36 Socialist Unity Party (SED) critique within, 143 – 144, 159, 172 and historic preservation, 60 – 62, 104 local reformers in, 7, 72, 143, 147, 162 – 163 (see also urban ingenuity) members and preferential treatment, 20, 25 – 27, 43 postcommunist clichés about, 54 – 55, 168, 176, 190, 195n22 and religion, 160 as weak, 33, 49, 164 See also Berlin; communism; democratic centralism Socialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands. See Socialist Unity Party Sonneberg border area, 140 Soviet Union contributions to Palace of the Republic, 121 and foreign currency, 217n100 late-communist ritualization, 8 and perestroika, 10, 150, 160, 205n40 performative shift in, 214n38 recreation in, 212n6 and second economy, 13, 32, 45, 99, 104 and unofficial labor, 101, 214n42 Specks Hof, 75, 185 Sputnik (Soviet Magazine), 205n40 squatting. See Schwarzwohnen Stadtwende project (IRS, Erkner), 196n42 Stasi, 222n204 and 1989 revolution, 9, 151, 154 – 155, 160, 226n39 Bezirkszentrale annex, 115, 116, 187 and Bowlingtreff, 101, 135, 138 – 142, 222n197 and environmentalists, 159 headquarters (Runde Ecke), 18 – 19, 187 and squatters, 47, 49, 154 – 155 and volunteer labor, 102 Stoph, Willi, 162 Straße des 18. Oktober, 181 strip mines. See coal mines Subbotnik (free labor), ix, 9, 15, 34, 42, 101, 101 – 103, 105, 110, 129 – 132, 184, 213n32, 214n42. See also after-hours labor; Bowlingtreff: volunteer labor on; Lawbook 35; Schwarzbau: and free labor; second economy

Sziegoleit, Winfried and free labor, 130 planning Bowlingtreff, 122 – 128 postcommunist activities, 144 – 146, 173 – 174, 183 and shortage economy, 44, 101, 121 and Third Gewandhaus, 116 and Wildpark, 112 See also Bowlingtreff; Office of the Chief Architect; Gewandhaus, Third teatime, the importance of, 13 – 14 Teichmann, Werner, 107 Tesch, Joachim, 180 Thomaskirche (Leipzig), 19, 36, 39, 188, 190 Thonberg (Leipzig), 12, 56, 174, 185, 186. See also Ostvorstadt Tollert, Paul, 39 Topfstedt, Thomas on 1988 Leipzig planning competition, 83 on BCA attempts to merge history with Plattenbau, 66, 70 – 71, 80 on Bowlingtreff, 122, 144, 146 – 147, 219n135 on communist modernist heritage, 187 on Dietmar Fischer, 66, 162 on First People’s Building Conference, 171, 175 interchange with Western colleagues, 183 on prefab monotony, 56, 81, 156 on preservation lapses, 58, 156, 164 and Waldstraßenviertel, 176 trade fair (Leipziger Messe), 10, 11, 17, 61, 82, 86, 109, 127 – 129, 134, 161, 179, 181, 186, 189 train station, main (Leipzig), 17, 19, 35, 60, 181, 182 Träume in Trümmern, 82 – 84, 171, 183 Ulbricht, Walter, 56, 61, 115, 119 Ullich, Harry, 34 Ullrich, Theo and Bowlingtreff, 119 – 124, 127, 131 – 132, 134, 218n122 and environmentalism, 159 personality and guile, 100, 107, 116, 180 Schwarzbau projects, 111 – 113 See also Bowlingtreff; Lößnig-Dölitz; Schönefeld; Schwarzbau; Wildpark UNESCO, 107 Unification, German, xi, 11, 168, 172, 175, 177, 181

252    I n d e x

University Church (Leipzig), x, 3, 5, 13, 18, 59, 107, 114, 147, 150, 154, 187 University Guesthouse (Ritterstraße 12), 79, 160, 161 Urban, Florian, 29, 62 urban dystopia, 3, 3 – 12, 94, 153, 159, 189 and 1989 revolution, 49, 64, 151, 155, 190 See also modern architecture; Plattenbau; urban ingenuity urban ingenuity, xi, 4, 13, 14, 15 – 16, 190 – 191 continuities after 1989, 16, 152, 165, 176 – 178, 181, 190 and Eigen-Sinn, 6 – 7 beyond Leipzig, 12 private versus official, 6 – 8, 21 and systemic reform, 11 – 12 See also 1988 Leipzig planning competition; First People’s Building Conference; Schwarzbau; second economy; Socialist Unity Party: local reformers in; urban dystopia; urban planning urban planning after 1989, 9, 180 – 182, 190 and appropriation of space, 6, 30, 97, 113 – 114, 126, 162, 175, 204n14 (see also Heimat; historyness) break between party secretaries, 56 formative influence of, 9, 58, 195n30 and historical buildings, 56 – 64, 72 – 73 (see also historic preservation; modern architecture; Plattenbau; Politburo) public scorn for, x, 3, 5, 59, 81 See also 1988 Leipzig planning competition; Architekten; Berlin; democratic centralism; Fischer, Dietmar; Grünau; Office of the Chief Architect; Schwarzbau; second economy; Siegel, Horst; urban ingenuity Valuta, 119, 121, 135, 143, 217n100 VEB Bau- und Montagekombinat, 130 – 131, 134 VEB Garden and Landscaping, 113 Volkmarsdorf (Leipzig), 56, 65 – 67, 84 – 85, 149 – 150, 164, 174, 176. See also Ostvorstadt 1. Volksbaukonferenz. See First People’s Building Conference VP (Volkspolizei). See People’s Police Waage, Ursula as district party official, 14, 213n26

and free labor, 102 on legality of Bowlingtreff, 101, 131 Waldstraßenviertel (Leipzig), 176 – 177 Wandelt, Angelika, 174 Weigel, Wolfgang, 87 Weimar architectural school, 53, 74 – 75, 85, 123 student club, 107 Wende, die. 9, 16, 49, 151 – 152, 164 – 165, 177, 182, 186 – 187, 191, 227n56 continuities across, 51, 168, 183 – 186 See also 1989 revolution Wensierski, Peter, 49, 155 Werner, Oliver, 3, 7, 98, 197n8 West Germany (BRD) aid to East Germans, 38 – 39, 42, 164, 182 building materials in DDR, 121 escape to, xi, 101, 139 – 141 perceptions of DDR, 36, 54, 153 – 155, 169, 173, 182 – 183, 185, 194n19 planning influence after 1989, 182 – 183 rental conditions, 23 squatting in, 49, 97 television signals from, 136, 141, 150, 155, 193n1 (see also “Imaginary West”) urban destruction in, 11, 57, 82 urban success in, 84 Western currency. See Valuta Westvorstadt. See Dorotheenplatz Wie ist Leipzig noch zu retten? 71, 184 Wildpark (Leipzig), 111 – 112, 115, 122, 159 Wilhelm Leuschner Square (Leipzig) as cover name for Bowlingtreff, 119 imagery of, 133, 139 lack of total plan for, 124 location, 18, 19 postcommunist planning of, 144, 146 prewar, 118, 119 underground halls, 18, 123 Winkler, Gerhard, 106, 109 Wintergarten Hochhaus, 17, 19 Wolf, Eva, 129 – 130, 139 – 140 Wolf, Matthias, 34 – 36, 42 – 43, 47, 154 Wolle, Stefan, 30, 194n16, 195n29 Wonneberger, Christoph and 1989 revolution, 150 – 151, 153, 176 and First Pleiße Memorial March, 159 as Lukaskirche pastor, 67, 149 – 150 See also 1989 revolution; environmental crisis; Lukaskirche; Ostvorstadt

I n d e x     253 World War II bombing damage, 2, 10, 27, 38, 75, 77, 78, 84, 105, 111, 149, 175 repairs after, 10, 17 resistance during, 73 trauma after, 5 Wrocław, 13 – 14, 102, 204n14

Yugoslavia contributions to Palace of the Republic, 121 second economy in, 33 Yurchak, Alexei, 8, 97, 136, 150, 214n38. See also Imaginary West Zumpe, Wieland, 27 – 28, 35, 44 – 46, 185, 230n24. See also Beethovenstraße-8; Music District