Post-Wall Berlin

Written by a leading historian of urban visual culture, Janet Ward's Post-Wall Berlin: Borders, Space and Identity demonstrates how the reunified German capital, in its bid to overcome its legacy of Cold-War division, has faced many new frontiers and boundaries on social, economic, architectural and infrastructural levels.

'Berlin is not merely a failed boomtown, but also, as Janet Ward shows, the exemplary postmodern place where spectacular projects have failed to erase a painful history. There has been so much written on this fascinating city, and Janet Ward has read it all so you don't have to. She transforms the story of post-Wall Berlin into an extended meditation on the meaning of urban life in our media age. Her fluent and intelligent analysis of architecture, memorials, and urban marketing gives us a cautiously optimistic vision for the much-maligned German capital. This book is an intellectual feast for anyone interested in Berlin, global cities, or the search for identity in a virtual world.'

- Brian Ladd, author of The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape

'With theoretical sophistication and a keen eye for detail, Janet Ward deftly guides readers through Berlin's endlessly fascinating spaces, illuminating their origins and assessing their significance with admirable thoroughness. Post-Wall Berlin is a learned and impressive work that does much to clarify the liminality at the core of Berlin's identity."

- Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, author of Munich and Memory: Architecture, Monuments, and the Legacy of the Third Reich

'Post-Wall Berlin is imaginative, provocative, and thoroughly engaging. Based on extensive knowledge of the scholarship and theory in multiple fields including urban and planning history, architecture, cultural and visual studies, and fiction Ward elucidates more than a century of efforts to define and redefine Berlin's identity. The Wall, and the voids it left, forms but one part of this story.'

- Jeffry M. Diefendorf, author of In the Wake of War: The Reconstruction of German Cities after World War II

'The author shows herself to be well informed and always up to date with the most recent, even daily, developments in the debate. The book could thus well be read as a critical travel guide to the New Berlin.' - German Historical Institute Bulletin

JANET WARD is Associate Professor of History at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, USA. She is the author of Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany and co-editor of German Studies in the Post-Holocaust Age, as well as Agonistics: Arenas of Creative Contest and the forthcoming Walls, Borders, Boundaries: Spatial and Cultural Practices in Europe. She has published a wide range of interdisciplinary work in edited collections and journals such as New German Critique, Journal of Visual Culture, Screen, and History and Technology. Her current project is a comparative study of urban destruction and reconstruction.