WarSaw ReConstructed

by Juan Mejia

Weimar is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the European Capitals of Culture. It has been a place of particular importance in recent German history, but reference is made mostly to its classical period and to the early years of the Bauhaus school. The iconography generated from prominent historical figures such as Goethe, Schiller, Gropius and Liszt is widespread through the city, and marketed abroad making the city a key element of Germany’s cultural and tourist industry.

But the city as a space of historical accumulation, contains many elements that become polemical and contradictory within the scope of current political intentions that concentrate on fueling the city’s economy through the exploitation of a particular image of culture.

That city has intended to fabricate a narrative that segregates its cultural past from its political history, implying that these can be understood independently. There is a “cultural” tour and a “political” tour of Weimar creating an imposed and artificial dichotomy.

At the heart of the city center we find the newly baptized and refurbished Weimarplatz - the result of an architectural proposal that intends to give new meaning to a space that is charged with historical conflict. This plaza was created as the Adolf Hitler Platz during National Socialism and adopted by the subsequent totalitarian socialist regime under the name of Karl-Marx-Platz. Now, it has been dispossessed of its strong symbolic power, isolated from its monumental scale, and rearticulated only through its programmatic functional elements – shopping mall and parking space. The place appears invisible, one where the view is lost in the immensity of its scale and the disarticulated elements at the background that conform to it.

In an upcoming essay, I will use Weimarplatz as an example to expose how a city is reshaped to render its history visible or invisible, and the methods Weimar has used to pursue new political goals.