Rebuilding 1945–1955
Urban Design
Urban development model of Stalinallee in German Sports Centre
Image: Albert Kolbe, 1951. Leibniz-Institut, Erkner/Wiss. Samml., Dok. Stalinallee (Sign. A 13-160) A13-278
Monumental boulevard axis
When rebuilding European cites destroyed in the war, the two antithetical principles of urban development in east and west were juxtaposed: the lightly developed urban landscape in the west and the street’s built-up development in the east.
In 1950, a group of GDR architects and functionaries travelled to Moscow. Lothar Bolz, the Minister for Rebuilding, drew up ‘16 principles of urban development’ for rebuilding in the GDR. The principles prescribed references to the “historically shaped structure of the city”. The heavily damaged Frankfurter Allee – called Stalinallee from december 1949 on – was developed as the “first socialist street”.
Discover more about this topic in the following short films, the web stories:
Urban visions of modernism in reconstruction
Formats: video/mp4
Residential cell, homestead, Herzenstein: The collective plan becomes a reality
Formats: video/mp4
Reconstruction in West Germany: between new beginnings and history – Münster as an example
Formats: video/mp4