The numerous efforts to rebuild cities constituted a thick thread in the tapestry of European recovery after World War II. Many cities had experienced widespread devastation as a consequence of extensive aerial bombardments. Given the fact that the flight from cities that had occurred in many places during the war was not a viable long-term option, urban areas not only in Germany but also in many other countries stood in need of repair and renewal. The articulation and pursuit of competing visions of urban health and well-being within the framework of postwar recuperation is a theme that demands the attention of urban and architectural historians, as well as their colleagues in the areas of economic, social, and cultural history.

Building on standard works on German developments, such as those written by Klaus von Beyme (Der Wiederaufbau. Architektur und Städtebaupolitik in beiden deutschen Staaten, 1987) and Jeffry M. Diefendorf (In the Wake of War: The Reconstruction of German Cities after World War II, 1993), the authors of this edited volume follow in the footsteps of the contributors to Diefendorf's Rebuilding Europe's Bombed Cities (1990). They combine coverage of developments in the two Germanies with treatment of comparable events elsewhere. Of the nineteen studies that follow the volume's long and thoughtful introduction, ten focus on German cities. Eight of these concentrate on a single urban area, ranging in size from major metropolises, such as Berlin and Hamburg, to less well-known places, like the smaller cities of Schwedt and Pforzheim. The two additional essays dealing with Germany include a combined analysis of eight cities by the volume's editor and a thematic essay on photographic images of West German cities. Another piece compares developments in Normandy (focusing on Le Havre and Rouen) with developments in Lower Saxony (especially in Hanover), while the remaining eight essays in the collection deal with individual cities in countries other than Germany. Two of these are devoted to the Netherlands (Rotterdam) and another two to Italy (Brescia and Milan); the rest deal with Britain (London), Poland (Warsaw), the Soviet Union (Tallinn in Estonia), and the United States (Philadelphia). This last city did not experience wartime destruction but did undergo ambitious interventions by urban planners during the postwar period. It is easy to think of other places, such as Munich and Dresden, that might fruitfully have been included, but any collection of case studies is necessarily selective. What is offered here constitutes an international survey and analysis of urban reconstruction that is both broad and deep, with case studies that illustrate controversies and processes present in a great many European cities for several decades after 1945.

Terms such as rebuilding and reconstruction signify sets of urban practices that pointed in a wide variety of directions. A basic distinction that operates within, as well as among, the essays in this volume has to do with whether further efforts would entail making cities, or parts thereof, look as they had looked before the war—once the rubble had been cleaned up—or whether the focus would instead be on innovation. Should what was old be repaired and saved, or even, in cases where buildings had been completely leveled, be rebuilt according to prewar drawings and photographs? Or should even those buildings that could have been repaired without undue expense be demolished so that the cityscapes they had once adorned would be more responsive to the practical as well as aesthetic concerns that numerous critics of cities had already expressed before 1939? Such conflicting options were widely discussed by ordinary city dwellers, as well as by architects, planners, and urban officials, in debates that dealt not only with how scarce resources should be allocated but also with identities and emotions, as Europeans sought to situate themselves between the claims of the past and those of the future.

The strongest currents narrated here flowed toward modernist innovation rather than historical preservation. In German-speaking Central Europe, the practice of tearing down damaged buildings so that they could be replaced with structures departing radically from historic styles was particularly evident in East Germany. Here, an architectural break with the past paralleled and reinforced other efforts to leave behind a discredited old order and forge a new one. Public buildings stood out as targets of innovative zeal, and churches and especially palaces were particularly at risk. Though not discussed in this volume, the most familiar example of a demolished royal residence was the Berlin palace built for the Hohenzollerns. In this volume, we learn instead about the destruction of the castle in Schwedt. Communists in the East also pushed successfully for the demolition of numerous churches in Magdeburg, whether or not they could have been salvaged. Similar if less thorough demolition took place in Pforzheim in West Germany, where a church tower fell to the wrecker's ball some years after the war's end. It also occurred in many other places, which, like Hanover, experienced far-reaching modernization. The leveling of wartime ruins was by no means peculiar to Germany. In London and Rotterdam, as well as in Warsaw and Tallinn, wartime destruction was grasped as an opportunity for postwar reconstruction of a modernist—or, in the case of Tallinn, of a Stalinist—sort.

Meanwhile, competing impulses also made themselves felt, as large numbers of city dwellers expressed their desire for cityscapes in which they could feel at home psychologically and emotionally. Wanting their built surroundings to enhance a sense of identity based in large part on continuities with the past, they mobilized in favor of retention, repair, and restoration. Efforts at historic preservation became prominent in Britain in the 1970s. Throughout the postwar period, Italians were particularly energetic in defending their urban patrimonies. In West Germany, burghers in cities such as Hildesheim and Lübeck fought successfully to save threatened churches. The partial restoration of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in West Berlin similarly evinced a desire to maintain a connection with the past, however troubled that past had been. The Nikolaiviertel in East Berlin also embodied historical impulses: built from scratch in the 1980s instead of having been rebuilt, it reflected a realization among East German leaders that, for the purpose of maintaining public support, genuflecting in the direction of the German past was just as important as proclaiming the supposed virtues of Communism.

Restorative tendencies both contributed to and were nourished by German reunification. Prominent examples of such forces include the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche in Dresden and, today, the beginning of reconstruction of the former royal palace in Berlin, completion of which is expected by 2019. The desire to assert—through city planning and urban architecture—connectedness to the urban past lives on in the Erinnerungskultur that figures markedly in this book as a counterweight to the pursuit of urban modernity.