The Streets Echoed with Chants: The Urban Experience of Post-War West Berlin by Laura Bowie (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Streets Echoed with Chants: The Urban Experience of Post-War West Berlin by Laura Bowie Alexandria N. Ruble The Streets Echoed with Chants: The Urban Experience of Post-War West Berlin. By Laura Bowie. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2022. Pp 302. 9781789975819. $70.00. The physical destructionand division of Berlin after World War II is well documented, with scars that remain today. Laura Bowie's intriguing new monograph explores how 1968ers envisioned West Berlin's future and reshaped the urban landscape surrounding them. Bowie depicts West Berlin as a product of social, political, and intellectual impulses on a global scale. Her case study is Aktion 507, a group comprised of 120 architectural students at the Technical University of Berlin who sought to highlight the problems with Berlin's urban planning and, by extension, its social and political ailments. To understand 1968, she contends, we must examine micropolitics and everyday life in West Berlin. Dividing the book into three sections, Bowie begins with "The Present." The first chapter, "Urban Planning and the Formulation of Society," explores the impact of the modernist movement on postwar architecture. Prior to the war, the Nazis had wanted to demolish cities to construct the perfect modernist cityscape. Ironically, this wish came true; by 1945, destroyed cities gave postwar architects their opening to redesign urban landscapes. While some city planners had radical visions for a new Berlin, geopolitical realities of occupation and division soon tempered their whims. In addition, the demolition of working-class neighborhoods (such as Wedding and Kreuzberg) and the relocation of their residents were controversial. Planned districts such as Gropiusstadt and the Märkisches Viertel were then developed, but demand for more housing in West Berlin quickly led to revised blueprints and, consequently, unanticipated social problems. Chapter Two, "Colour in the City," covers the use of color in urban planning. Postwar modernists traded prewar ornamentation for bright splashes of color. If drab [End Page 511] colors represented the fascist past and the depressing circumstances of war, then color signified a democratic and bright future. Moreover, color was inexpensive compared to stone carvings. Aktion 507, meanwhile, rejected the premise of city planners prescribing colors for buildings, arguing that it was an inadequate replacement for real social services, such as transportation and kindergartens. Furthermore, they claimed that color had to be determined by the residents, not imposed on them by authorities. Chapter Three, "Functionalism under Attack," begins by placing Aktion 507's critiques in a transnational context. Sociologists worldwide noted that postwar urban environments were not pleasing to their inhabitants, but as Bowie points out, local context mattered. Aktion 507 took several different approaches to criticizing the new urban landscape surrounding them. For example, TU students and professors organized an exhibition in a building under construction as a form of critique. In addition, Aktion 507 members attended meetings with residents complaining about different aspects of developments such as the Märkisches Viertel. Aktion 507 members saw this as an opportunity to record residents' experiences. Meanwhile, the mainstream media, such as Der Spiegel, brought attention to the housing developments by highlighting the high levels of graffiti, alcoholism, and domestic abuse. The second section, "The Past," explores how the recent Nazi past factored into emotional responses to the immediate environment. Chapter Four, "Entangled Politics in Post-War Germany," examines how the architecture students and faculty of Aktion 507 identified urban planning as another way of discouraging public engagement with the past. According to Aktion 507, by prescribing to the public what new construction should look like, urban planners were replicating the authoritarianism of the past and feeding ulterior capitalist motives to profit from the destroyed city. Chapter Five, "The Post-War Psyche and Politics Aestheticized," covers the myriad ways the fascist past and its obsession with aesthetics informed postwar politics. Aktion 507 drew direct connections between the Nazi past and the present politics of 1968 in advertisements and art. '68ers also argued that urban environments, if designed properly, could facilitate engaged democratic conscientiousness, thus preventing individuals from leaning into their basest temptations. According to Aktion 507, residents of quarters such as Märkisches Viertel experienced alienation and restlessness because of the authoritarian state, which actively sought...