Endless beginning

The upheaval of 1989/90 led to a watershed in urban development throughout Eastern Germany, especially for industrial cities in peripheral locations. Industrial and commercial closure, migration and declining birth rates are causing shrinking cities, demolition and urban transformation. How will these cities cope in the years ahead? Can history reveal specific opportunities for the future? The Museum of Utopia and Daily Life invites visitors, residents and experts to jointly consider these questions and develop ideas.

Eisenhüttenstadt is an especially suitable example: planned as a “new type of city”, the first housing blocks of the socialist model city were developed here 70 years ago. The exhibition takes comparative perspectives on Nowa Huta in Poland and Schwedt in Brandenburg: how are these cities shaping social transformation? The exhibition also presents plans, models and photographs, as well as the artistic installation “DDR NOIR” by the artist Henrike Naumann.

The exhibition project “Endless Beginning. The transformation of the socialist city” is supported by the Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Eastern Germany and was developed in cooperation with the Department of Visual Communication at the weißensee academy of art berlin. Also in cooperation with the City of Eisenhüttenstadt and the Städtisches Museum Eisenhüttenstadt, City Archive Department. Media partner: Das Magazin.