Neubau Atmospheres
East German Cultural Remediations of Modernist Architecture
Published on 1. October 2025
Book
Hardback
296 pages
978-1-83695-179-7 (ISBN)
Description
The artistic potential modern, urban housing ("Neubau") offered to writers and directors in East Germany from the 1960s to 1980s remains underexplored. Neubau Atmospheres seeks to bridge that gap by providing an incisive analysis of East German cinematic, literary, and architectural case studies, highlighting how the modernist housing of the GDR provided a potent vehicle for mediating the emotional and social experience of its denizens. Considering how these cinematic and literary representations focalized ideas of class, gender, and age, author Stephan Ehrig makes a compelling case for viewing this engagement with the urban environment as a cultural genre in its own right.
Reviews / Votes
"This [...] is an impressive piece of scholarship that promises to be the standard study on East German architecture and its depiction in literature and DEFA film. This is a consummately researched work that demonstrates a level of expertise when it comes to socialist architectural theory, and film and literary analysis." * Jason Doerre, Trinity College"This is an original and readable study, one that combines deep knowledge of socio-cultural developments with political and ideological contexts in the GDR to examine a range of East German texts and films which either thematize the socialist city or in which the built environment plays a significant role." * Nick Hodgin, Cardiff University
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Library binding
Illustrations
20 Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
543 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-83695-179-7 (9781836951797)
DOI
10.3167/9781836951797
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2025
1st Edition
Berghahn Books
€24.49
Available for download
E-Book
10/2025
1st Edition
Berghahn Books
€24.49
Available for download
Person
Stephan Ehrig is a Lecturer in German at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. His research focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to East German cultural production pre- and post-1990, as well as on nineteenth to twenty-first-century literature, theatre and film. He is the author of Der dialektische Kleist (Transcript, 2018) and the co-editor (with Marcel Thomas and David Zell) of The GDR Today: New Interdisciplinary Approaches to East German History, Memory and Culture (Peter Lang, 2018), and (with Benjamin Schaper and Elizabeth Ward) of Entertaining German Culture: Contemporary Transnational Television and Film (Berghahn Books, 2023).
Content
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Notes on Translation
Introduction: Aufbau, Ankunft, Alltag, Neubau.Experiencing and Remediating East German Modernist Architecture
SECTION I: GENDER & CLASS
Chapter 1. Genesis of the New Town Everyday
Chapter 2. Halle-Neustadt Polyphony
Chapter 3. Female Urban Planning, Walking, and Desire
SECTION II: CHILDREN & YOUTH
Chapter 4. Appropriating the Unfinished Modernist New Town
Chapter 5. Obsolescence and the Museal Gaze
Chapter 6. The "Fischerinsel Trilogy"
Afterword: Shifting Gazes and Perceptions
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Notes on Translation
Introduction: Aufbau, Ankunft, Alltag, Neubau.Experiencing and Remediating East German Modernist Architecture
SECTION I: GENDER & CLASS
Chapter 1. Genesis of the New Town Everyday
Chapter 2. Halle-Neustadt Polyphony
Chapter 3. Female Urban Planning, Walking, and Desire
SECTION II: CHILDREN & YOUTH
Chapter 4. Appropriating the Unfinished Modernist New Town
Chapter 5. Obsolescence and the Museal Gaze
Chapter 6. The "Fischerinsel Trilogy"
Afterword: Shifting Gazes and Perceptions
Bibliography
Index