The first portrait in a series of working women that the graphic designer and painter Lea Grundig produced in 1969 on a commission by the Democratic Women’s League of Germany presented the city architect of Neubrandenburg, Iris Dullin-Grund (born in 1933). While a published sketchA produced in April 1969 portrayed the architect very much as an urban planner, in front of site and floor plans of buildings up to 16 storeys high, the ultimately distributed lithograph of Iris Dullin-Grund presents her in front of three redbrick, medieval buildings in the city, as well as spectacular new buildings that one could describe cum grano salis as postmodern, also – or perhaps because – the term did not yet exist. The modern buildings on the painting were by no means imaginary: in the foreground, the snaking prefabricated housing known as Plattenbauten, with staggered heights, which had been built for the first time a year earlier on Berlin’s Leninplatz according to plans by Hermann Henselmann, can be seen along with other obtuse-angled housing rows. Together, Dullin-Grund had shaped them into the Oststadt neighbourhood in Neubrandenburg, along with a high-rise office tower placed upon a spherical triangle and a restaurant with a star-shaped floor plan, which one can recognise on the bottom left. Iris Dullin-Grund had begun her career in Neubrandenburg with the Haus für Kultur und Bildung (House for Culture and Education). Its tower concludes the left hand side of the painting. She had won the architectural competition in 1959 and the building was inaugurated in 1965.

Before her time in Neubrandenburg, Iris Dullin-Grund had briefly worked under Mart Stam, but above all at the Bauakademie under Hermann Henselmann, the architect whose buildings and projects were described in the 1970s by the doyen of GDR architectural theory, Bruno Flierl, as symbolic architecture. In doing so, he used a term that had been floated in architectural discourse since Kevin Lynch’s The image of the City (1960) and established itself as postmodern architecture in architecture parlante following Charles Jenck’s The language of postmoderne architecture (1977).1

Kissing in Hoyerswerda?

The designs for Neubrandenburg presented by Lea Grundig already reacted to a growing criticism of uniform, industrialised urban development, that became ever louder in the GDR from the mid-1960s onwards. It was an East German counterpart to Alexander Mitscherlich’s polemic criticism of the “Inhospitality of our cities”, which stemmed from what Heinrich Klotz would later call Bauwirtschaftsfunktionalimus (building-industry functionalism).2 However, there is one fundamental difference: criticism of urban development in the GDR was not primarily social criticism or a criticism of the system, even though the socialist bureaucracy of functionaries could only see it that way. This can clearly be seen in the example of the author Brigitte Reimanns (1933-1973). She followed the Bitterfelder Weg (or Bitterfeld Way, named after a conference of authors in Bitterfeld in the spring of 1959), moving into the first housing complex in Hoyerswerda Neustadt which had just been completed, in order to be close enough to the workers at the Schwarze Pumpe lignite works, which were being constructed at the time, in order to write about them. Although she was initially enthusiastic about the idea of the socialist city, after a few years, she recognised that it lacked intimacy, atmospheric density and indeed urbanity: “Every city that has grown organically, has its own smell, its own colour, and its architecture has its own unmistakeable magic.”3 The Lausitzer Rundschau transformed the idea into a memorable headline: asking whether one could kiss in Hoyerswerda-Neustadt. Reimann had therefore sparked a public debate that was important to architects such as Hermann Henselmann, on which the friendship between the East Berlin architect-in-chief and the author was based.D It formed the foundation of an ultimately unfinished, energy-charged novel (which one could even perhaps call postmodern due to its pluralistic stylistic methods) entitled Franziska Linkerhand. It was published posthumously in 1974 and has been numerously reprinted to this day. In it, Reimann fundamentally criticises the alienating, anti-urban qualities of socialist urban planning, as the author had experienced it in Hoyerswerda. At the same time, Reimann also penned the ideal image of an emancipated, young architect for whom architecture and urban planning is also a matter of building society, and who was not prepared to accept the crumbs of ministerial bureaucracy. Instead, she raised her objections under the firm conviction of developing a better socialism. It is not hard to recognise Iris Dullin-Grund in Franziska Linkerhand, whose work Reimann had been able to observe very closely since moving to Neubrandenburg in 1968.

Although their criticism of the homogeneous city, which had no sense of home, no coherence and allowed no identification with it, is equally evident in Reimann, Henselmann and Dullin-Grund, the latter even becoming renowned for her restoration of the medieval buildings in Neubrandenburg, they ultimately remain thoughts that are dedicated to achieving modern, socialist urban planning for the city centre. For instance, when Linkerhand was not commissioned to plan the new neighbourhood and instead was tasked with “developing plans for the renovation of the old town”, she protested that she had been condemned to carry out one of the, “dreariest, stupidest tasks one could imagine: a grind of blueprints, coloured pens and spreadsheets, a tedious task for a 3rd-semester student.”4

Old town affords a sense of identity

In subsequent years, however, an increasing awareness of the old town’s identity-strengthening role emerged throughout the GDR. This process, which developed out of an urban-planning approach that largely negated historical urban structures in the 1960s and 1970s, before moving on to the complex reconstruction of inner-urban old structures in the 1980s, is demonstrated in the Leipzig neighbourhood known as the Kolonnadenviertel.

The early history of the Leipzig’s Innere Westvorstadt (inner western citycenter), of which today’s Kolonnadenstrasse has formed the central axis since its construction in the early 19th century, reaches back to the year 1700. At the time, the merchant Andreas Dietrich Apel bought a garden outside the Thomaspförtchen portal. Further purchases allowed him to develop it in a fan-shaped organisation. By the 19th century, it had become a near-central housing and workers’ quarter.B During World War II, three bombing raids had torn large holes into the Wilhelminian development of the Innere Westvorstadt, destroying over 50 percent of the historical building fabric. As Juliane Richter has investigated, only a few years after the war, the Innere Westvorstadt was selected as the only area directly connected to the city centre that was to be comprehensively reorganised and the subject of urban-planning experimentation.5

The key event in this respect was the design colloquium entitled “Innere Westvorstadt Leipzig” in the autumn of 1966, its results forming the basis of a coordination agreement in July 1967 to establish a research group. Its aim was to gather experience in modernising old town areas and develop industrial processes that could be applied there. The research work led to a design conceived in 1970 by Hermann Henselmann and his employees at the Experimental Workshop of the Institute for Urban Planning and Architecture at the Deutsche Bauakademie in collaboration with the office of the architect-in-chief of the City of Leipzig, Horst Siegel.C It presents precisely the diversity of forms that Lea Grundig had highlighted with respect to Dullin-Grund’s Neubrandenburg plans (she had also graduated from Henselmann’s school). In Leipzig, it conformed to the diversity of functions, consisting of recreation, housing, the arts and working areas: snake-shaped Plattenbauten as major housing complexes, which in Leipzig enabled convex, square-like extensions to the street space, complex floor plans that highlighted individual buildings and also modelled the transition to the old town, buildings of differing heights and height-dominant features – albeit while still ignoring the historical street development and the existent old development.

In 1975, the office of the architect-in-chief of the City of Leipzig published a further study on the redesign of the Westvorstadt and the construction of 1,650 apartments. Unlike Henselmann’s proposal, however, it respected the historical street routes. Nevertheless, its implementation would have meant the demolition of old buildings and the establishment of monotonous urban development of type-specific housing not very much unlike the Plattenbau estates on the outskirts of the city. The housing was to be recessed from the street, which facilitated industrial production, but would undoubtedly have undermined the urban space.6

Shift towards complex reconstruction

In the mid-1970s, however, a paradigm shift occurred during the leadership of Erich Honecker, who took over from Walter Ulbricht as the Head of State in 1971. In 1973, a housing development programme was passed with the aim of building three million homes by 1990, entitled “Unity of new building, modernisation and preservation”, thereby explicitly addressing renovation and the closure of development gaps in inner city areas. The programme was flanked by the first heritage preservation law in the GDR, which required, “the conceptual integration of historical building fabric into urban planning.”7 However, the state construction companies no longer had the necessary means to maintain the areas with older housing, so many of them fell into decay.

In Leipzig, the new general development plan reacted to that situation in 1976. It was aimed at closing inner-urban development gaps with similarly scaled new buildings, whereby for economic reasons, new construction meant Plattenbauten.8 Older buildings were to be modernised, and their historical character preserved.9 The key considerations of the 1975 study on the Innere Westvorstadt were assumed by the general development plan of 1976.

This new trend towards “complex reconstruction” is also apparent in the urban development principles passed in 1982 by the politburo (unification of all state offices in the GDR): future plans were to be moved to the city centres. Aspects of heritage preservation, social considerations and increased effectiveness were now equally important. However, the first building project for inner-urban areas in the 1970s only led to unsatisfactory solutions, since the building fabric could not be preserved after all, for economic reasons, and replacement buildings were constructed as Type WBS 70 Plattenbauten (WBS: Wohnbausystem, Residential Cnstruction System), which were too monotonous. Thus, a new Plattenbau type was to be developed that could react diversely and in a differentiated way to the surroundings. In these modified Type WBS 70 Plattenbauten, the ground floor was often higher. Offset façades, varying numbers of floors, vertical wall incisions and mansard-like roofs ensured a more varied design. One important contributing factor in this respect was the GDR-wide competition for ideas entitled “Variable building solutions in major Plattenbau estates for inner-urban construction”, which was carried out in 1982/83. Its submissions showed how inner-urban new buildings can react to the historical fabric, integrate shops and taverns into the standardised Plattenbauten and assume local characteristics.

In Leipzig’s Innere Westvorstadt, further planning now had to take the area’s earlier history into account and also examine how efficient such inner-urban development can be. The revival of cultural traditions of the Baroque garden suburb become an overriding theme for all building measures. The historical triple-pronged street network of the 19th century was preserved. The “experiment measure for Leipzig/Kolonnadenstrasse” had begun.10

Kolonnadenviertel as an experimental location

The Kolonnadenviertel is situated in the so-called Sub-Area I of the Innere Westvorstadt and comprises several building sites for which building concepts were produced from 1983 to 1985. Planning was completed between 1983 and 1990. The company Baukombinat Leipzig collaborated with the Institute for Building and Social Development of the Bauakademie, as well as the Cottbus School of Engineering to develop a modified type of the WBS 70, which was later also constructed in other cities in the GDR like Wendisches Viertel in Cottbus or Frankfurter Allee in Berlin.11

For the first building site at the southernmost edge of the area, five nine-storey point buildings were initially planned together with a kindergarten in a loosely scattered development. The park planned in the south was to pick up on the landscape gardening principles of the Johannapark established by Peter Joseph Lenné in the 19th century. Traces of these ideas can be found today in the so-called Plastikpark, which was opened in 1987 with an outdoor exhibition. Ultimately, the point buildings were never built, so that only the kindergarten, a school and a sports hall were constructed there between 1984 and 1986.12

The urban planning for the Innere Westvorstadt was therefore more focused on the northern areas, namely Dorotheenplatz at the centre of the Innere Westvorstadt, from where Kolonnadenstrasse leads westwards, and Nikischplatz even further north. Dorotheenplatz, the centre of the Kolonnadenviertel, was to apply the ideas of the garden suburb known as the Leipziger Gartenvorstadt. Urban planning qualities from the Baroque period were picked up on and newly conceptualised: the fan-shaped system of streets and the circus make up a quarter of an octagon, later known as the Reichelschen Garten, with sculptures by Balthasar Permoser. From there, the Kolonnadenviertel can be accessed from the three-pronged street network established in the 18th century. Dorotheenplatz therefore represents the urban planning beginning of the quarter. The transition from Dorotheenplatz to Kolonnadenstrasse is accentuated by two obtuse-angled Plattenbauten that frame the square to the west. On the opposite side, the open space is outlined by two further 1980s Plattenbauten that pick up on the radial street lines emanating from the square. At the centre, a green area with a network of footpaths that makes the acutely approaching three-pronged street network recognisable and therefore marks the end of the quarter. Globosum maple trees were planted along the western perimeter, while the eastern edge is decorated with two sculptures made of Cotta sandstone. They are copies of works by the sculptor Balthasar Permoser, dating back to 1705/06: Juno and Jupiter flank the Baroque-influenced prestigious entrance to the Kolonnadenviertel.

The façades of the six-storey Plattenbauten have a zone for shops on the ground floor, above which the standard floors are highlighted by reddish-brown tiled areas. They are framed on the corner situations and on the attic level by grey exposed-concrete surfaces. The corners of the western buildings feature a projecting oriel zone that is crowned by a sheet-metal roof. The attic level of all the buildings around a square are set apart from the standard floors by a large concrete cornice. The ground floor zone distinguishes itself from level of the street and square by means of raised terracing. The terraces in front of the buildings are entered via steps situated at their corners and also provide access to the building’s entrance portals. The raised areas are covered using a new interpretation of colonnades. The reinforced concrete structures of the western colonnades also act as supports for the balcony zone of the first floor. All supports are made of exposed concrete. By contrast, the upper reinforced concrete conclusions were painted white. The conclusion to the covering is formed by slanting wired-glass surfaces that are attached to the concrete elements, adding rhythm to the floors. In the front area of the terracing, exposed-concrete plant pots were placed between the columns. They were conceived for privacy and as ornamental elements of the terraced zone.

Postmodern Plattenbauten

Kolonnadenstrasse was especially suitable as an experimental site to investigate to what extent industrial building can work in historical neighbourhoods, because it was broad enough for the crane bed, but narrow enough to construct Plattenbauten using a crane on both sides of the street.F From an urban planning perspective, the east-west Kolonnadenstrasse acts as the boulevard of the neighbourhood. Between 1983 and 1985, eight old buildings were renovated there and 52 apartments were modernised, including the ground-floor zones. The architects worked with a team of art historians and cultural scientists to conceive the “complex urban design”, with the aim of enhancing the street and ground-floor areas as a pedestrian zone.13

In Kolonnadenstrasse, three different types of Plattenbautypen are evident. The first type was placed in four development gaps created by wartime damage. These six-storey buildings all have a similar appearance: the slightly recessed top floor is characterised by dark grey exposed-concrete surfaces. The façade of the standard floors is defined by reddish-brown tiles and refer to the new buildings on Dorotheenplatz and the historical clinker-brick façades of the neighbouring old buildings. Above the building entrances, the windows are highlighted by ornamented concrete-slab elements, while the ground-floor zone is accentuated by corrugated concrete elements. Large shop windows characterise the façades of the stores. The entrances (mezzanines with steps) are recessed into the interior of the building’s front zone. Four- to five-storey older buildings stand beside the GDR Plattenbauten. Rich architectural sculptures decorate the façades (gargoyles, profile cornices, etc.). The shop zone on the ground floors is mostly accentuated by plastered bossage. By contrast, reddish clinker masonry was used for the standard floors. Triangular and rectangular oriels project into the street space. Dark grey shingles characterise the exterior appearance of the inclined attic levels crowned by dormers.

Further west, Kolonnadenstrasse crosses Max-Beckmann-Strasse, resulting in a new urban-planning situation. On the eastern side of the junction, the street space is extended by two angled corner buildings to create a small square. The northern buildings is a plastered older building, while its counterpart on the south side is from the 1980s. Opposite, to the west, two seven-storey Type WBS 70 Plattenbauten were positioned so that their narrow sides are recessed from Max-Beckmann-Strasse. They define the end of Kolonnadenstrasse towards the Westplatz.

Since the mid-1970s, criticism of the monotony of Plattenbauten, which had been expressed since the 1960s, led to the enhancement of inner cities and their historical fabric, which was supported by policy under Honecker and was above all implemented in projects during the 1980s.

International efforts to gently renew urban centres, as we know from the IBA Alt in West Berlin in 1987, also had its counterpart in the GDR, although the participatory aspect, which was especially prominent in West Berlin’s Kreuzberg, did not feature in the GDR. Indeed it was impossible, since the official doctrine of a state of workers and farmers that was carried by everyone made it by definition participatory.

In a article published in 1982 in the journal Architektur der DDR, the Swiss architect and architectural theoretician Claude Schnaidt stressed that architectural postmodernity was not compatible with the values and socialist goals of the GDR, since it instead encouraged a reactionary building policy because it had emerged from a crisis situation caused by western capitalism. Christian Schädlich, who taught at the university in Weimar, seconded that rejection of postmodernity.14 Nevertheless, the reference to the past and historical values in urban planning, heritage preservation and architecture are relevant – aspects that were connected to postmodernity in the West.

An article published by Hermann Wirth in the same issue of the journal, with a title that translates as “Historical values in contemporary architectural work”, states that historical values were expressed in two trends in plans by the GDR: in the supplementation of existing areas and also in newly developed areas through the “re-use of preserved […] original pieces”, as well as new construction concepts with a “clear formally historical reference”.15

Exactly the same could be said of the Prager Platz in West Berlin, a model “IBA Neu” project of “critical reconstruction” that is comparable to the Kolonnadenviertel, in which Gottfried Böhm, Rob Krier and Carlo Aymonino, three significant postmodern architects, typologically reinterpret the war-damaged block-perimeter development on the footprint of the historical city.16 In that respect, complex reconstruction in the GDR and critical reconstruction in the West go hand in hand as manifestations of postmodernity.

In addition to the Leipzig City Archive and City Planning Office, special thanks are due to Juliane Richter, whose work and image archive form the basis for this article. The inner-city prefabricated buildings in Leipzig's Kolonnadenviertel were examined in her publication “DDR-Architektur in der Leipziger Innenstadt”. This publication was published by Bauhaus-Universitätsverlag in 2015 and also includes a work by Katja Weise on other GDR buildings in Leipzig's city center.