History and Culture in North Eastern Europe - Between Reconstruction and Modernization

The conference will address and compare public debates about historic city centers the the Baltic Sea region in the 20th and 21th centuries.
In particular, the destructions caused by World War II in Europe have led to intense professional and public debates on how to interpret the results of those devastations as well as on guidelines for the reconstruction of historic city centers. These debates often became long-lasting discourses to date and have even gained intensity in recent years, not least due to the fact that solutions from the first phase of reconstruction after 1945 are now increasingly questioned. Those concepts are generally speaking marked by a tension between conservation and renewal. Whereas in the first decades after 1945 modernizing solutions prevailed, on may state that during the past 30 years concepts of a historicizing appropriation have become increasingly important.
The conference will discuss social, aesthetic and political foundations and implica-tions of these developments from 1945 to the recent past with regard to examples from the Baltic Sea region.

It consists of four sections:

• Legacies and appropriations. Public debates on historic city centers
• Modern redesigns of historic city centers
• Reconstructions and the return of historic topographies
• (Re-)constructing nations

The conference is directed to experts in the fields of urban history (architecture and art) as well as experts in cultural and social studies.

Information:
http://www.joerghackmann.de/Joerg_Hackmann/tallinn_viii.html

Programme:
http://www.joerghackmann.de/Joerg_Hackmann/tallinn_viii_files/tallinn_viii_program_new.pdf