The project

Introduction:

We are a group of six students in our third year of studying communication, culture and media at Coventry University. Over the next two terms we are using this blog to archive all of our research on Berlin and discovering if the city is divided. We aim to investigate into the question of Berlin: A city divided? We will achieve this by means of analysing the perceptions and representation of the city through the affect of Berlin’s history, music, film, art, political, architecture, Berlin today in contemporary society, geography, culture and heritage.

 

Below is the full project brief and details:

Project Three: A Divided City

Venue: Berlin

 

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!
Fremde, etranger, stranger.
Gluklich zu sehen, je suis enchante,
Happy to see you, bleibe, reste, stay…

Leave your troubles outside!
So – life is disappointing? Forget it!
We have no troubles here! Here life is beautiful…
The girls are beautiful…
Even the orchestra is beautiful

 

“Berlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu sein” (“Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.”)

(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)

 

Throughout the 20^th C., from the First World War, through the liberalism of the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich and its demise and the Cold War, Berlin has been a city of conflict and tension. This tension has been simultaneously political and cultural, a clash between the extreme forms of liberal decadence and fascist ideology, and between the communist dogma of the Soviet regime and that of liberal capitalism.

This project asks you to explore the character and nature of the ‘habitus’ of Berlin: what is it that makes Berlin different from any other German, or even European city? Why has Berlin so often been the site of a rich flourishing of artistic activity (for example during the Weimar years or David Bowie’s Berlin period)? How do ordinary Berliners position themselves culturally to the rest of Germany and the world? How has Berlin’s extraordinary modern history shaped and conditioned the culture of the people who inhabit its boundaries.

 

Specifically the project invites you to undertake a research project that considers:

• how is Berlin typically represented in media and artistic form (eg in news media, in spy novels, in film etc)?
• how does the ‘real’ Berlin differ from these representations as a lived human experience? (You may wish to consider undertaking a derive (see Debord) through Berlin to achieve this)
• what are the manifest cultural signs in Berlin that bear witness and testimony to its divided past?
• how does the rest of Germany (and perhaps Europe) commonly perceive Berlin?
• How is the habitus of Berlin embodied symbolically in its concrete forms such as its architecture and street layout?
• What is Berlin’s attitude to its own heritage?

 

 

 

Please explore the rest of the blog and leave a comment if you wish.

(Rebecca)