„For a Decent Quality of Life“: Environmental Groups in East and West Berlin
Since the 1970s urban spaces have increasingly been the focal point of conflict for politically active groups. Berlin, because of its occupied status, was in some aspects distinct from any other East or West German city, which is evident in the continuous negotiations between the municipal administrations and politics of both city halves to cope with the historical situation of the city. Though historical scholarship points to the transfers that occurred between East and West Berlin, this article claims that the Wall was not as permeable as the research suggests. Indeed contacts were scarce between East and West Berlin activist groups. The reason for only sporadic contact was not the Wall as such, but much more that the political groups on each side of the Wall had their own agendas. Given that East Berlin environmental groups have been the focus of a number of historical studies, this article will place the West Berlin protagonists and their actions at the center of the paper and analyze three ways of cooperation between two communal administrations and different environmental groups in East and West Berlin. It explores the circumstances under which reciprocal transfers between the different groups in East and West Berlin were possible and investigates how the environmental situation on one side of the city could influence the official politics on the other side through the geographic proximity and the common history of both city halves. It also explores the political groups and their environmental goals during the 1980s and locates these within the context of urban Berlin.
Quelle: http://juh.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/41/4/625?rss=1
Remembrance of Revolutions Past–A Democratic Resource? 1989–Space of Remembrance in the „Hero Cities“ of Leipzig and Timişoara
Almost twenty-five years after the mass protest of 1989 against the socialist regimes, the relationship between individual and official memory has reached a crucial point. The question of what narrative or interpretation of past events is memorialized in the urban landscape—in cities where the actual protest and dissent took place—should be determined at both the national and local level. Do the protesters of the 1980s feel that their political actions are being accurately represented by official museums, monuments, and commemorative practices? Is the new post-socialist generation of youth interested in the way the past is inscribed onto their cities? This article compares how memory and place are connected in Leipzig, Germany, and Timişoara, Romania, two countries in which the challenges to commemorating protest have taken different forms since the transition to democracy.
Quelle: http://juh.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/41/4/679?rss=1
Pandemonium Britain: Interactions between Formal and Informal Places of Governance in the 1980s
This article explores what many now perceive as a recurrent problem in Britain: urban riots. It was under Thatcher and her neoliberal policies that this phenomenon increased in scale: the inner cities of London and Birmingham (at the time undergoing urban renewal), for example, regularly experienced riots bringing into conflict various communities or youths and policemen, just as in the inner cities of other areas, despite the adoption of specific measures. The issue at the time was, Should the events be read in terms of violent lawless unemployed black youths enjoying wreaking havoc on cities or instead be read in terms of a section of British society claiming recognition as fully fledged citizens of a multiethnic and multicultural country? I provide an overview of the most emblematic riots and the copycat uproars that followed. The riots led to the publication of reports commissioned by the Conservative government. This article investigates the underlying causes of the 1980s riots, and seeks to ask if the social and economic policies put in place by the Conservatives as a remedy to the riots were in keeping with the conclusions of the enquiry reports; or if such policies instead constituted part of a democratic solution to endemic violence or rather an additional source of revolt.
Quelle: http://juh.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/41/4/607?rss=1
Civil Society from the Underground: The Alternative Antifa Network in the GDR
In the 1980s, the "red border town," as Potsdam was called then, was a center of the East German left-wing punk and skinhead movement; as a countermovement it soon became a location for right-wing extremist violence and counter-violence. To confront right-wing organizing, Antifa groups were established in Potsdam and other towns nearby, bringing the taboo topic of neo-Nazism as a social problem to the public’s attention. Initially, the SED state tried to downplay the confrontations as typical conflicts between youth groups; however, the newly founded Antifa groups were openly criminalized from the start. This course of action led to protests by both the left-wing alternative scene and the political civil rights movement. In memorandums and practical political actions, the Antifa groups fundamentally criticized the state, its failure to mold a socialist people, its militarization of society, and the state-enforced consensus of silence. In 1989, this critical approach became a part of the revolutionary, pro-democratic protest and reform movement, and Potsdam’s anti-Nazi League itself became an active factor of local revolutionary upheaval, a factor that has been largely ignored by research as well as memorial culture. This article uses the city of Potsdam as an example of how communication—a democratic process in itself—between subcultures and information transfer occurred between the center and periphery, that is, socialist capital, district town and surroundings. In addition, the article will also analyze the Antifa movement as a political and urban phenomenon of town environments and follows the question as to which locations the confrontations arose and why.
Quelle: http://juh.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/41/4/647?rss=1