In recent years, research into everyday life under National Socialism has questioned the dichotomous juxtaposition of the occupied and the occupying, instead focusing on questions of interaction within societies in the state of occupation and the varying degrees of rooms for manoeuvre (Handlungsspielraum). In our workshop, we combine the notion of rooms for manoeuvre (Handlungsspielraum) with that of space of imagination (Imaginationsraum). Our initial thesis is that both were interrelated. Thus, on the one hand, we ask about practical interventions by the occupiers in the spatial and symbolic configurations of the occupied cities or rural settlements, and their impact on the socio-spatial organisation of everyday life. But we also ask about the forms in which resistance to German dominance over space evolved and was articulated. On the other hand, we want to relate these spaces of action to imaginative spaces, for instance articulated within various forms of media. These may be media that aimed to condition behaviour and interaction between different groups in public, semi-public, and private spaces. However, we are also thinking of imaginations that could serve to cope with the occupation, and thus as a means of ‘settling in’ (Sich-Einrichten, Jan Philipp Reemtsma) in the given situation.

The workshop is the third in a series of workshops on architecture and urban planning in Eastern Europe occupied by the National Socialists. The outlined theoretical programme of the workshop is interwoven with two objectives of this series. Firstly, we want to discuss sources that have received little attention to date in the history of Nazi architecture and urban space planning. Secondly, we want to engage in a methodological-theoretical discussion about whether and how the notions ‘space for action’ and ‘space of imagination’ could be used to relate different sources to each other, theoretically and methodologically. These objectives are intended to contrast the history of planning based on sources of German provenance, with sources and approaches to architectural and urban history that allow the multi-layered spatial practices of the occupying society to be analysed and represented.

9:00 a.m. Welcome
 

9:15 – 10:30 a.m.

Katja Bernhardt (Berlin)

Introduction: Theoretical Questions/Methodological Approaches

Hanna Grzeszczuk-Brendel (Poznań)

Männer und Maiden -or Returning to the Sources

10:30 a.m. Coffee Break

11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Anna Czocher (Kraków)

Kraków or Krakau? Real and Symbolic Struggles for Urban Space as Exemplified by Occupied Kraków, 1939–1945

Żanna Komar (Kraków)

Photographing Architecture during the Occupation, Exemplified by an Archival Find

Dmytro Myeshkov (Lüneburg)

The German Population in Nazi Settlement Policy in Ukraine, 1941–1944. Plans, Expectations, Discrepancies

1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. Lunch

2:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. 

Waltraud Indrist (Wien)

Design and Reality of Territorial, Administrative Governmentality. The Case for Lithuania

Marija Drėmaitė (Vilnius)

Visions of Urban Planning in Lithuania under Nazi Occupation

4:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Coffee Break

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

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

Der Workshop ist eine Veranstaltung des Nordost-Instituts in Kooperation mit Dr. Katja Bernhardt (k-bernhardt@web.de) und der Politechnika Poznańska (Prof. Dr. Hanna Grzeszczuk-Brendel). Die Veranstaltung wird gefördert von der Deutsch-Polnischen Wissenschaftsstiftung.