Have we learnt nothing?

The Palace of the Republic could have been many things: A ruin reshaped by urban gardening, a house full of art studios, or a polished museum of GDR history. Instead, the parliament building, once intended as a “place of the people,” was demolished.

What remains beyond partly emotional memories and representations of history that never happened? A present with unbroken controversies about places, squares and spaces in many parts of the republic.  Whether in Berlin, Potsdam or Frankfurt, people everywhere are moved by construction projects and the way they deal with public places. Icons of East and West German post-war modernism continue to be demolished to make way for new old buildings, which may be described as historicist or revisionist. Social scientists and architects have long been debating the phenomenon of “right spaces” in this context. The focus is on the questions: what could have been and what should become in the future. In a mixture of art and discourse, the poetry slammers Aron Boks, Victoria Helene Bergemann and Kirsten Fuchs develop utopias for a place that has long since ceased to be.

Afterwards, architectural historian and monument conservator Daniela Spiegel, author and director in film, radio and theater Thomas Heise, architectural theorist Stephan Trüby and Aljoscha Begrich, founding member of the association KULTURPARK e. V. and part of the artistic direction of the festival OSTEN 2022 in Bitterfeld will discuss together with host Julia Menger about disappearing or staying, the sovereignty of interpretation over public places and the question of which social interests should prevail in the future.

A collaboration between the Stiftung Humboldt Forum and its partners the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and the Stadtmuseum Berlin.

Victoria Helene Bergemann, Kirsten Fuchs, Aron Boks

Julia Menger (radioeins und mdr Aktuell)