Course Description
This course examines the urban experience of Berlin through four lenses: (1) East Berlin behind the Wall, a “parallel universe” of socialist modernity from 1961 to 1989; (2) the countercultural and multicultural West Berlin of the same period; (3) the highly modernized capital of the postreunification period, one that underwent a dramatic reshaping in the decades after 1989; and (4) the contemporary city in its relation to the EU and the rest of the world. At the end, we include a flashback to the reconstruction of Berlin and other German cities after World War II, seeking lessons on the contemporary destruction and future rebuilding of Ukrainian cities. Along the way, we draw insights from architecture, urban planning, literature, politics, public policy, social and cultural history, and more.