Post-War Cities
On Wednesday, October 18th, the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest hosted Dr. Emma Elfversson (Uppsala University) and Dr. Andrew Demshuk (American University) for a virtual panel discussion looking at the history of how cities respond to experiences of war. The panel was moderated by VU History Professor Dr. Paul Steege.
Watch a video recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIX3J76ZKZM&list=PL_Z9mt0HJesnqXQRRe8bYlPcFpOOi6KTc&index=4
On October 18th, The Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest hosted Dr. Emma Elfversson and Dr. Andrew Demshuk for a panel discussion on cities in a post-war climate. The panelists addressed the cultural and sociopolitical developments in cities following the ravages of war. The presentations addressed the process of cultural identity reconstruction following wars and offered insights into the brutal violence that occurs during these periods.
Dr. Demshuk started by presenting a section from his most recent book, 3 Cities After Hitler, where he covered the foundation of sacred sites (symbolic, but not necessarily religious, architectural sites meant to symbolize the identity of a post-war city) after the fall of Nazism in postwar Germany. Dr. Demshuk studied urban reconstruction by comparing cities in West Germany (Frankfurt), East Germany (Leipzig), and part of Germany that was incorporated into Poland (Breslau/Wrocław). As an architectural historian, Dr. Demshuk studied these cities through the lens of urban reconstruction, Dr. Demshuk demonstrated how disparate territories can be rejoined following a devastating war like World War II.
Dr. Demshuk’s research was predicated on one overarching question, “What is a common narrative for trifold-divided lands that had been part of interwar Germany?”. Dr. Demshuk defined five characteristics for answering this question: shared physical/material destruction, shared prevalence of difficult heritage, shared forms of top-down decision making, shared aesthetic/symbolic uncertainties across Cold-War borders, and differing ideological messages (marking a prevalent distinction between the three cities). Dr. Demshuk described the post-war period as one of redemptive reconstruction (the construction of past culture while eliminating unsavory elements). In each city, the city halls were damaged greatly during the war, but their modern appearances differ vastly. This imagery is indicative of the cultural identity formed in a period of redemptive reconstruction, drawing upon national history while eliminating negative Nazi culture. Dr. Demshuk emphasized how cultural identity took precedent over more urgent projects like the reconstruction of housing because these cities prioritized a post-Nazi identity.
In the West German Frankfurt, Dr. Demshuk provided two examples of sacred sites redemptively reconstructed to represent the city as the home of Democratic Humanism. First, the church of St. Paul was reconstructed in 1948, 100 years after the construction of the Frankfurt parliament, the first democratic parliament in German history. This represented the idea of democracy as a German tradition, ideologically opposing fascist ideals prevalent during World War II by redefining Frankfurt as a hub of democracy. Second, the Goethehaus, the birthplace of famed Philosopher Goethe, was reconstructed in 1949 as an ode to post-war humanism. The goal of the house’s benefactors was to represent humanism after Hitler’s ideology maliciously dominated German philosophy.
In the East German Leipzig, Dr. Demshuk offered examples of sacred sites representing the city’s musical culture. Johann Sebastian Bach was a lynchpin and a cultural icon of the musical culture of Leipzig as a city. During the reconstruction of the church of St. John, Leipzig’s architects proposed Bach’s mausoleum be placed there. The church was in the center of the main intersection of the town, which would have placed Bach in the center of traffic in the city, demonstrating his focal role in the city’s culture. In 1950, Bach was officially reburied in the church of St. Thomas, where the composer had conducted the Thomas Boys Choir. With Bach being reburied elsewhere, the church of St. John was demolished in 1963. Dr. Demshuk asserted that the building had lost its symbolic value as a historical site, which led to it being torn down after Bach was reburied elsewhere, exemplifying the interplay of redemptive reconstruction and sacred sites.
In Polish Wrocław, Dr. Demshuk analyzed how redemptive reconstruction highlighted the city’s place as the home of Poland’s ancient Piast dynasty as a Polish city that had been under German occupation for 800 years. Wrocław’s city hall before 1945 had gothic peaks, representing an ancient German architectural style; these peaks were later replaced by rounded “polish attics” to make the structure appear Polish rather than German. Similar structures like cathedrals, universities and opera houses had Prussian symbolism like the Habsburg eagle and statues of swordsmen appropriated into a Polish style, adopting Prussian imagery and redefining it as Polish. Wrocław punctuated Dr. Demshuk’s assertion that sacred sites played a focal role in redefining these cities’ history following the end of World War II. By constructing historical narratives that separate the city’s history from Nazi pasts, architects were able to create sacred sites that evoke a positive culture entirely distinct from the city’s Nazi near-past.
Dr. Elfversson spoke next, presenting a research project she conducted with her colleague Ivan Gusich. This presentation offered a political scientist’s perspective on understanding patterns of conflict-related violence in postwar cities (cities which have experienced war, no longer do, but to which order and peace have not been fully restored) after 1989. Dr. Elfversson’s research is focused on societies affected by state-based war (war between the state and one or more rebels groups). Unlike Dr. Demshuk’s analysis of the cultural significance of architecture, Dr. Elfversson’s research studied the role of sociopolitical dynamics in cities and how they influence post-war violence. This research revolved around a central research question, “Why do we often see high levels of violence in cities after war, and how can we make sense of this violence in post war cities?”.
The end of war rarely leads to violence ceasing, and Dr. Elfversson asserted that this violence disproportionately affects cities. The disproportionality of urban violence can be attributed to a few factors. Cities’ ease of mobility and density allow for citizens to congregate, forming group-based grievances based on social and political factors within cities. Urban density also places “incompatible groups” close together, causing them to live as “intimate adversaries”. Additionally, unintegrated former fighters move to cities to capitalize on economic opportunities in the post-war period, leading to the formation of organized crime networks and forming tensions over the distribution of economic resources. Lastly, postwar cities often have unresolved conflicts that arise during periods of war, and the denizens of cities clash over the sociopolitical and economic makeup of a city in a postwar period.
Dr. Elfversson focused on the most visible forms of violence, admittedly leaving out instances of everyday threats. This violence was explicitly linked to politics in a postwar period, including through crimes linked to formerly warring parties, social identity lines central to the war, or whose actors that made statements connecting the violence to the war. Like Dr. Demshuk’s presentation, the cities Dr. Elfversson developed culturally following the war; however, the cities Dr. Elfversson analyzed had far more sociopolitical tension than the Nazi cities Dr. Demshuk analyzed. Violence was high in the cities Dr. Elfversson studied in the years following war but would spike at later times based on resurgences of political, social economic, and religious conflict. For instance, violence spiked 7 years after the end of the first Ivorian Civil War(2002–2007) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire because of the first post-war elections, and violence in Belfast spiked a decade into the post-war period from tensions arising around a Catholic school located in a Protestant section of the religiously segregated city.
Dr. Elfversson used maps to demonstrate how the geography of post-war violent crimes depended on internal factors. The first Ivorian civil war was fought over central power in government, so Abidjan’s post-war violence was mapped according to different factions carving out spheres of influence in different parts of the city. Following the end of the Kosovo War (1998–1999) in the city of Mitrovica, the Ibar Bridge divided Serbian northern Mitrovica and Kosovo Albanian south Mitrovica, making the bridge a high-crime area between these formerly warring factions.
Dr. Elfversson also divided these forms of contestation into internal and external categories, varying based on frequency of state-mandated violence, sociopolitical division, divisions over ownership of the city itself, and level of polarization. By analyzing timeframes of violence, distribution of violence, and the categorization of contestation in post-war cities, Dr. Elfversson provided rounded analysis on the complex sociopolitical contexts which create violence in post-war cities.
Research like Dr. Demshuk’s and Dr. Elfversson’s offer valuable insights into the sociopolitical and cultural development of post-war cities. Dr. Demshuk’s analysis of three different post-war German cities showed how culture develops in the wake of war, as cities clamor to redemptively reconstruct their identity through the construction of sacred sites. Dr. Elfversson’s research into the circumstances, distribution, and categorization of violence in post-war cities exemplified the sociopolitical turmoil in post-war cities while analyzing when and why that violence occurs. Together, Drs. Demshuk and Elfversson tell a holistic tale of cities developing culturally but struggling internally in post-war periods due to ongoing conflict and reconstruction of identity.
