Neubau Atmospheres

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).

• List of FiguresAcknowledgmentsNotes on TranslationIntroduction: Aufbau, Ankunft, Alltag, Neubau.Experiencing and Remediating East German Modernist ArchitectureSECTION I: GENDER & CLASSChapter 1. Genesis of the New Town EverydayChapter 2. Halle-Neustadt PolyphonyChapter 3. Female Urban Planning, Walking, and DesireSECTION II: CHILDREN & YOUTHChapter 4. Appropriating the Unfinished Modernist New TownChapter 5. Obsolescence and the Museal GazeChapter 6. The “Fischerinsel Trilogy”Afterword: Shifting Gazes and PerceptionsBibliographyIndex

“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