Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- Dedication
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: The Making and Remaking of Ideologies through Space
- 2 Municipal Socialism and Housing in Red Vienna (1919–1934)
- 3 Short-Lived Great Berlin : Tabula Rasa and the Reinvention of Nature (1945–1949)
- 4 Divided City I: East Berlin and the Construction of Socialism (1949–1970)
- 5 Divided City II: West Berlin and the Reconstruction of Liberalism (1949–1970)
- 6 Conclusion and Postcards from the Past
- References
- Index
1 - Introduction: The Making and Remaking of Ideologies through Space
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 November 2023
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- Dedication
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: The Making and Remaking of Ideologies through Space
- 2 Municipal Socialism and Housing in Red Vienna (1919–1934)
- 3 Short-Lived Great Berlin : Tabula Rasa and the Reinvention of Nature (1945–1949)
- 4 Divided City I: East Berlin and the Construction of Socialism (1949–1970)
- 5 Divided City II: West Berlin and the Reconstruction of Liberalism (1949–1970)
- 6 Conclusion and Postcards from the Past
- References
- Index
Summary
Abstract
In the twentieth century, the housing question served as a prominent battleground on which more was decided than simply the provision of shelter. It implied fundamental negotiations of how to ‘rebuild’ cities, citizens, and societies. This was the case in Vienna after WWI no less than in Berlin after WWII, where newly empowered political elites sought to anchor their respective visions of society in and through residential and urban space. This chapter makes the case for studying ideologies through space. This undertaking implies leaving behind the ‘great books of great thinkers’ approach, which is prominent in political theory, and delving into the ‘trialectical’ production of space: an interplay between grand visions of society and its spaces, existing spatial practices, and appropriations by inhabitants.
Keywords: political ideologies, the production of space, cities, mass housing, socialism, liberalism
‘Every society produces its own space’ (Lefebvre 1991, p. 31). Indeed, any society or ‘social existence’ that aspires to be real and to be reckoned with needs to produce its own space. Otherwise, it would constitute ‘a strange entity, a very peculiar kind of abstraction’, prone to ‘disappear altogether’ (ibid., p. 53). One way in which modern societies and ‘social existences’ (ibid.) such as political movements, parties, and states have sought to produce their own space and specific everyday realities has been the provision and regulation of mass housing. This was the case in Vienna after WWI no less than in Berlin after WWII. In both cities, the newly empowered political elites addressed the housing question head on. They did so because there was a dire need for housing. Yet they also did so because the provision of housing constituted a promising lever with which to anchor their respective visions of the society to come: socialism in Red Vienna and East Germany, and liberalism in West Germany. By rebuilding housing, Red Vienna’s Austro-Marxists – no less than East Germany’s socialists and West Germany’s Christian Democrats – sought to create ‘new men’ [Neue Menschen]. The respective capital cities served as both laboratories and stages for the pursued societal renewals.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Rebuilding Cities and CitizensMass Housing in Red Vienna and Cold War Berlin, pp. 13 - 26Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2023