UrbanMetaMapping

FORGE 2025

2025-10-07T10:54:00+02:00

FORGE 2025

Anas und Klaus waren auf der FORGE 2025 in Rostock mit einem Vortrag zu historischen Karten als Geo-Datenbanken

Auf der Konferenz Forschungsdaten in den Geisteswissenschaften FORGE 25 treffen sich diejenigen aus Wissenschaftsunterstützung, Dateninfrastruktur und Forschung, die sich mit geisteswissenschaftlichen Forschungsdaten beschäftigen. Tagungsmotto dieses Jahres war Daten neu denken: wie Forschungsdaten in den Geisteswissenschaften anders gedacht und genutzt werden können.

Passend zum Konferenzthema ist natürlich auch das Book of Abstracts auf dem wohl bekanntesten allgemeinen Forschungsdatenrepositorium veröffentlicht.

In unserem Vortrag „Karten neu denken. Historische Geodatenbanken - Thematische Karten systematisch erfassen und analysieren“ zeigen wir, daß hostorische Papierkarten nicht nur zur Visualisierung geographischer Sachverhalte genutzt wurden, sondern sowohl zur Erfassung und „Speicherung“ von Geodaten als auch zur Analyse räumlicher Bezüge. Sie sind Geodatenbanken auf Papier, die erschlossen und mit modernen digitalen Werkzeugen (GIS) nutzbar gemacht werden sollten.

Unser Vortrag war der Einzige, der sich überhaupt mit Karten, mit Geodaten beschäftigte, aber zumindest gab es ein Poster zu geodatenspezifischem Forschungsdatenmanagement am Beispiel eines Kartenportals von der Universitätsbibliothek Bochum, das neue Ideen brachte.

Image Video

2025-10-06T13:01:00+02:00

Image Video

As some of you may already have noticed the UMM image video presenting the research of the UMM Transfer Team had its final cut and is online.

Breaking down years of research to a five minute video is a challenge on its own, and even though we are just talking about our topics, approaches and results there is some difference between giving a conference talk and acting in a video production.

But I should stop writing here, just have fun with the video:

UMM Image Video

DHd2025

2025-04-08T13:00:00+02:00

DHd 2025 Eröffnung

DHd 2025

Anfang März war ich (Anastasia Bauch) auf der Digital Humanities im deutschprachigen Raum 2025!, der Jahrestagung der DHd.

Für mich begann die Konferenz mit dem Workshop über Citizen Science in den Geschichtswissenschaften sowie dem Workshop des DiViAS Projektes über den Umgang mit raumzeitlicher Unschärfe am Beispiel von Ortsangaben aus historischen Logbüchern.

Die Keynote des Linguisten Mark Dingemanse, der seine Kritik am Umgang mit LLMs mit einem weiten Borgen von Adornos Reflektionen über Horoskope, über den Barnum Effekt und dem Märchen vom süßen Brei einleitete, eröffnete die Haupkonferenz. Seine These: Viele unserer positiven Eindrücke der Antworten aus LLM-Chats gehen auf den Barnum Effekt zurück - wir interpretieren die Antwort wohlwollend, die aus statistischen Wahrscheinlichkeiten zusammengeürfelt ist und so schwammig formuliert, dass sie so offen für Interpretationen ist, wie ein Horoskoptext. Und diese Sprachmodelle wachsen wie der süße Brei, ein Brei aus aus dem Kontext gerissenen Wörtern, die über semantische Ähnlichkeitsvektoren miteinander in Zusammenhang gebracht werden, selbst wenn sie, wie im Beispiel von Dingemanse über Weinhandlungen in London, gedankenlos geografische Grenzen wie den Ärmelkanal und die Pyrenäen überschreiten und spanische Beispiele unter die Empfehlungen mixen.
Neben diesen Hinweisen zum kritischen Umgang mit LLMs, besonders im Forschungskontext, wies Dingemanse abschließend, Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo zitierend, darauf hin, dass LLMs darauf basieren die durschschnittliche, die wahrscheinlichste Lösung zu finden und somit das Gegenteil eines kreativen Prozesses bilden, der auch das Unwahrscheinliche, seltsame erkundet in der Hoffnung auf Erkenntnisgewinn.

Der kritischen Keynote zum Trotz ist KI, oder zumindest Machine Learning, voll in der digitalen Geisteswissenschaft angekommen. Neben den weiterhin prominenten Fragestellungen zu Datenstrukturen – hier für die Datenmodellierung in QGIS besonders interessant die Beiträge über Unsicherheit und Ungenauigkeit, wie Schneider et al. und Junginger – arbeiten viele der vorgestellten Projekte mit der (Teil-)Automatisierung ihrer Vorverarbeitungsprozesse sowie ihrer eigentlichen Forschungvorhaben. Aber auch hierbei ist KI keine Wunderwaffe, wie das Beispiel aus dem Projekt über Naturbeschreibungen in Reiseberichten ONiT von Michaela Vignoli und Doris Gruber zeigt, deren Versuch ihre OCR Texte mit LLama 3.1:70b zu verbessern zu viele „Halluzinationen“ ergab, als dass das OCR-Ergebnis wirklich für die Forschungsansprüche verbessert worden wäre.

Neben KI bildete aber auch der politische Umschwung der USA ein tagungsübergreifendes Thema: Hier stellt sich die Frage welche Alternativen es zu amerikanischen Softwareanbietern gibt, denen man entsprechend sensible Forschungsdaten anvertrauen kann. Aber auch was die Forschungsinfrastruktur betrifft, stellt das anscheinend absehbare Entfernen bisher öffentlicher Datenbanken und das Streichen von Forschungsförderung (bishin zur Krebsforschung) einen schwerwiegenden Einschnitt für die internationale Froschung dar.

Während wir zur Politik nur mutmaßen können, arbeiten wir an etwas anderem: Mehr Spatial Humanities, denn die kamen definitiv zu kurz. Neben dem erähnten DiViAS, gab es einen Workshop zur Systematisierung historischer Ortsnamen. Dazu wurden Forschungsergebnisse in einigen Projekten räumlich visualisiert, die räumliche Analyse gehörte dagegen nicht zum Methodenkanon.

In ihrer Abschlusskeynote ermutigte Mareike König aber zum weiteren Ausprobieren und zum offenen Kommunizieren der Unfertgikeit in der Wissenschaft. Wozu sie nichtzuletzt mit der Beteiligung beim Aufbau der Blogplattform hypotheses.org beigetragen hat.

Entsprechend blicken wir auf das Motto für 2026 in Wien „Not only Text, not only Data“ und freuen uns auf „spatial relations, too“. Genau wie wir uns darauf freuen mit zwei Beiträgen auf der DH 2025 in Lissabon vertreten zu sein.

Insofern, safe the Dates:
DHd 2026 am 23.–27.Februar in Wien, Thema „Not Only Text, Not Only Data“.
Sowie die DHd 2027 1.–5. März in Marburg unter dem Thema „Mind the Gap- Wissen, Unsicherheit, Verantwortung“.

UMMT Kick-Off

2025-02-26T16:02:00+01:00

UMMT Kick-Off

The UMM transfer kick-off workshop connected reseachers interested in the field of urban spatial humanities.

The transfer phase of our project is running since November 2024 and after the formal setup we already hosted a on-site kick-off workshop on January 13.–14. as well as an online session today.

The transfer phase focuses on the following topics:

Further exploring historic city maps
Networking on urban spatial humanities
Cartographic machine learning (Carto-ML)
Utilize GIS for analysis of historic maps

We are happy to have you all here in person or online and look forward to further events and projects.

A first version of our Nürnberg GIS dataset is available as open data.

SpatHum 2024

2024-06-29T16:47:00+02:00

Spatial Humanities 2024
Programme and Early Bird Registration

We are delighted to announce that the provisional programme for the Spatial Humanities conference (25^th–27^th September) is now available.

Please register until 14th July to take advantage of the early bird rate.

This year the conference will take place in Bamberg, Germany, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Accordingly, the conference will feature a special session with a focus on Spatial Humanities and Heritage.

Spatial Humanities is concerned with geospatial technologies, such as Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and what they have to contribute to humanities research. The main aim is to explore and demonstrate the contributions to knowledge enabled by these technologies, approaches and methods within and beyond the digital humanities.

This year’s keynote speakers will be Francesca Ammon (University of Pennsylvania) and Ross Purves (University of Zurich).

Interdisciplinary Studies on Spatial Dynamics and Marginalization in Central and Eastern Europe

2024-06-23T13:16:00+02:00

Interdisciplinary Studies on Spatial Dynamics and Marginalization in Central and Eastern Europe

A series edited by Elisa-Maria Hiemer and Magdalena Baran-Szołtys

Call for Proposals

The series Interdisciplinary Studies on Spatial Dynamics and Marginalization in Central and Eastern Europe is looking for interdisciplinary proposals. Manuscripts undergo a double blind peer review process. For further information feel free to contact editors Elisa-Maria Hiemer and Magdalena Baran-Szołtys directly.

About the Series (pdf)

Our series responds to the need for an interdisciplinary platform and invites scholars to contribute to a holistic understanding of the historical and contemporary complexities of Central and Eastern Europe—a region that has become pivotal to European and global relations in recent years.

The series is dedicated to studies using space as an analytic tool and a category to scrutinize the framing of minorities from the 19th century onward in both geographical and discursive spaces. Manuscripts investigate the factors that affect the perception and self-perception of groups that are considered minorities based on their ethnicity, language, social status, or gender. Possible topics include the dichotomy of overcoming peripheral positions versus cultivating in-between states, the agency of marginalized groups transitioning from the periphery of society to the center, and the dynamic redefinition, appropriation, and rebranding of geographical, social, or fictive spaces.

The series also invites exploration of the historical contexts and social dynamics that have shaped marginalization in Central and Eastern Europe, with the goal of providing a comprehensive understanding of the region's development and contemporary condition.

Contact the Editors

Elisa-Maria Hiemer at Elisa-Maria.Hiemer@herder-institut.de
Magdalena Baran-Szołtys at Magdalena.Baran-Szoltys@univie.ac.at
Flyer (pdf)
Rowman & Littlefield

FOSSGIS Conference 2024

2024-04-05T19:19:00+02:00

Answering questions from the audience (video)

FOSSGIS 2024

…and the slides

Two weeks ago Anas and Klaus went to Hamburg to meet around 600 people interested in open source, geographic information systems (GIS) and OpenStreetMap at the FOSSGIS 2024, and give a talk about our GIS work on WW II Nürnberg.

FOSSGIS e. V. is a German non-profit organization and the official local chapter for the OpenStreetMap project and the OSGeo foundation.

The yearly (German speaking) FOSSGIS conferences are a meeting point for all kinds of people interested in free and open source geo information systems, open (geo-)data, open source and OpenStreetMap with an OSM unconference on Saturday. So we met open source developers and consultants, geographers and cartographers, OSM mappers, researchers, geodata experts from public organizations, geodata companies, open source and open data activists and students showing their work in a special track.

Oh, and the catering was good and varied, too.

Nearly all FOSSIGIS conference talks are recorded and available online on the CCC media server (also linked from the program). We (will) use this to see some of the talks we missed from the broad range of topics from remote geodata servers, climate research, indoor navigation, tools, addon programming, public geodata, archeology, procedural art, …

During the presentation the audience (on site and online) could ask their questions by chat (and others could vote on them) so the most requested ones were answered first which worked fairly well.

On a panel discussion about sustainable procurement with an eye on open source we learned about how to bring open source solutions into the government, what the problems are, and how open source can improve sustainibility in various ways.

We are happy our talk „Zerstörte Städte: Historische Karten des Zweiten Weltkriegs in QGIS analysieren“ not only gained some audience but also lots of questions and discussions. There is interest in how to apply GIS to history research (in our case: historic maps), and we learned that we are on the right path. Our talk focussed on the GIS/technical side of our approach, we will present the results of our research at SpatHum 2024.

FOSSGIS 2024 was fun and interesting, we will attend the next one too!

We are somewhere on this picture CC-BY-SA FOSSGIS e.V.

City Transitions: society and the spatial and temporal dimensions of change

2024-03-15T12:34:00+01:00

Call for Abstracts – City Transitions: Society and the Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Change

We are delighted to announce the 4^th UrbanMetaMapping (UMM) international conference will be held at Saarland University (Saarbrücken, Germany) on September 12^th-13^th 2024.

The conference seeks to explore:

the social legacies of urban transformation and city transition,
the ways in which societal change can be mapped and investigated, and
how social maps shape our understanding of urban spaces.

The call for abstracts is now open!

Abstract submission deadline: 14^th April 2024

Please see the conference website for CfP and further details.

Summer School Residues of the Past: (De)constructing urban histories

2023-11-16T12:33:00+01:00

Summer School Residues of the Past: (De)constructing urban histories

The Summer School “Residues of the Past: (De)constructing urban histories” was hosted by Piotr Kisiel at the IRS Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space in Erkner, Germany. Doctoral and Masters students were selected not only on the basis of their general field of study, but also on the basis of their motivation letters, resulting in a broader mix of participants' specialisations such as history, geography, civil engineering, architecture and heritage studies. This, together with the international nature of the event, ensured that discussions continued not only during the lectures but also during the breaks.

Overall, the theme of reading the palimpsest of a city or a specific historical site was present in all the lectures, including the question of what a memorial is or how memory is linked to public spaces. Starting with Christian Lotz's keynote on how maps can show different temporal layers - both intentionally and unintentionally in comparison to other maps - participants learned to question the way maps are made and used. Carmen M. Enss, Piotr Kisiel, Laura Demeter, and Birgit Knauer from the UrbanMetaMapping team provided small hands-on exercises to practise analysing maps as a primary source as well as an aid to understanding other sources such as eyewitness accounts.

On the third day, two participants presented their current research on the history of contested cities: Sunjay Methuria's oral history approach, involving the city through walking interviews with his subjects, and Julian Schellong's more theoretical evaluation of earthquake-resistant conservation strategies. Gruia Bădescu then introduced the concept of difficult and contested heritage, which Aurélie Audeval illustrated with her work on 'martyred villages'. Aleksandra Szeczepan further explored working with historical eyewitnesses in confrontation with maps as memory aids.

On the final day, the group was divided into two workshops, either an introduction to GIS mapping or a closer look at the psychological understanding of human memory and working with eyewitnesses using the Hohenschönhausen Memorial as an example.

Thanks to the central location of Berlin, we were able to explore the city and nearby Potsdam after the official part of the workshop, seeing the remnants of the past and discussing the more or less missing parts of the city's history.

Cities in Transition: Program

2023-09-19T16:10:00+02:00

Cities in Transition

Conference flyer as pdf

A review of historical discourses, planning decisions and conservation strategies

We invite you to join us at
TU Wien, Prechtlsaal, Karlsplatz 13, 1040 Vienna
16.-17.11.2023 → CIT Conference Program

See the conference website for registration and other details.

Conservation of built heritage does not only occur through care and preservation measures and the application of protection instruments, but is evoked and influenced by different actions: through recording, documentation and the attribution of values, through the development and establishment of planning instruments, through social and professional discourses and, last but not least, through the use of visual media, through photography, film, maps and digital media. Often these processes occur in response to rapid structural changes, through targeted urban redevelopment processes, or the destruction caused by war and natural disasters. The lasting effect of these phenomena on the development of cities is particularly evident when looking back at historical processes, such as the reconstruction after the Second World War.

The interdisciplinary conference asks: Which phenomena in society, planning and heritage conservation accompanied historical transformation processes of cities and, above all, (how) did they interact? What insights can be drawn from the observation of historical processes and what can be derived from them for current developments? The focus of interest lies on historical processes of evaluation, selection, and planning in the historic building stock and the discourses of different players – individuals, institutions, or organisations – that accompanied these processes. Also to be examined are the effects of planning and conservation decisions not only on the built but also on the social structure of cities.

Registration

To register, please send an email with your contact information and affiliation to conference.CIT@tuwien.ac.at by November 1, 2023 at the latest. Participation is free of charge, registration is mandatory for attendance.

Dr. Birgit Knauer, Chair of Heritage Conservation (TU Wien) in cooperation with University of Bamberg, Centre for Heritage Conservation Studies and Technologies (KDWT) and the research network UrbanMetaMapping.

Committee members:
Dr. Birgit Knauer (TU Wien, Chair of Heritage Conservation)
Dr. Carmen M. Enss and Dr. Laura Demeter (University of Bamberg, Urban Meta Mapping Research Network)

Studentische Hilfskraft – GIS

2023-08-10T11:03:00+02:00

Studentische Hilfskraft – GIS

Im Projekt „Quellenkritische Untersuchung von Stadtkarten des 20. Jahrhunderts mit Methoden von Historischem GIS (HGIS)“ am Kompetenzzentrum Denkmalwissenschaften und Denkmaltechnologien (KDWT) an der Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg ist zum 01.10.2023 zunächst bis 31.12.2023 die Stelle einer

Studentischen Hilfskraft
(25 Monatsstunden)

zu besetzen.

Für die Stadt Nürnberg wurden bis zum Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs regelmäßig Kriegsschadenskarten erstellt, so wird die fortschreitende Zerstörung nachvollziehbar. Auch die Enttrümmerung, die Behandlung von Baudenkmälern und der Wiederaufbaufortschritt wurden in Karten dokumentiert. Im Projekt wird am KDWT erprobt, wie Geoinformationssysteme genutzt werden können, um thematische Stadtkarten miteinander zu vergleichen. Auf diese Weise sollen die Karten und die historischen Ereignisse näher untersucht werden. Die Forschung erfolgt im Austausch mit dem UrbanMetaMapping-Verbund.

Aufgabenbeschreibung:

Nachzeichnung historischer Stadtkarten mit QGIS (Geographisches Informationssystem)
Archivrecherchen im Stadtarchiv Nürnberg
Übertragen von Aussagen/Informationen aus Karten in Datenbankstrukturen
Im Team: Erarbeitung eines weiterführenden Forschungsantrags

Anforderungsprofil:

Hohe Affinität zum Arbeiten mit Karten
Motivation zur Entwicklung von Forschungsfragen
Eigenständiges Arbeiten und Interesse daran, Neues zu lernen

Sie erhalten von uns eine Einarbeitung in die Projektarbeit mit QGIS. Die Arbeit ist im Büro oder im Homeoffice möglich, Präsenz zu wöchentlichen Besprechungen in der Regel erforderlich. Durch die Arbeit in der Projektgruppe erhalten Sie auch Einblicke zur Forschung im Großprojekt UrbanMetaMapping. Eine Verlängerung der Mitarbeit in 2024 ist voraussichtlich möglich.

Vorstellungsgespräche finden voraussichtlich am 5.-7. September, ggf. auch im August, in Bamberg statt. Bewerbungen (2 Seiten) mit kurzem Motivationsschreiben und Lebenslauf bitte an das Projektteam Anastasia Bauch, Dr. Carmen Enss und Dr. Klaus Stein bis zum 31. August 2023 an info.urbanmetamapping@uni-bamberg.de.

UMM talks at the ASEEES 2023

2023-05-10T15:07:00+02:00

Panoramic View of City of Philadelphia at Sunset Trev Adams, Pexels

UMM talks at the ASEEES

We are happy to annouce that the UMM members Elisa-Maria Hiemer and Laura Demeter were accepted to the Annual Conference of the Association for Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) taking place from Nov. 30–Dec. 3, 2023 in Philadelphia, US. They will present their studies on Romanian, Polish and Belarusian cities in the panel “Mapping Urban Space through Memory: Textual and Visual Stories Told about Contested Land”.

This panel brings together researchers from Canada, Germany, the UK and the US who will focus on urban spaces and identities lost, regained, or suppressed following wars and conquest. Starting from an theoretic introduction into mapping as a colonial tool, the visual and textual sources—from maps, to postcards, and other visual representations—explore the complexities of colonial spaces and the decolonisation of territories with multi-layered histories.

»Mapping As A Colonial Practise«

Laura Demeter

Throughout the 19^th and beginning of the 20^th centuries, mapping the ‘new world’ was a practice of colonial powers also in Europe. In Central and Eastern Europe, the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires expanded their spheres of influence until the end of the First World War, when the dissolution of the Habsburg dominance led to the claims for national identity and state formation in the region. This implicitly impacted how national borders and cities claimed their identity. Based on case study analysis from the newly created ‘Greater Romania’, this paper aims to critically discuss how different traditions of mapping, in the newly acquired territories such as Bessarabia, Bucovina and Transylvania have been dealt with in the process of integration in the administrative structures of the newly created Romanian-nation state.

Shifted Borders, Shifted Memories: “The East” In Polish And German Spatial Imaginaries

Elisa-Maria Hiemer

This paper investigates strategies for mapping lost homelands both from both the Polish and the German perspectives. It focuses on former Polish cities that were ceded to Belarus and former German cities that became Polish after 1945. Based on an analysis of different textual and visual sources, it seeks to define features of a rhetoric of loss and compares the strategies applied in both types of sources to emotionalize the city in question.

Cityscape of Philadelphia, PA, United States, with residential area and downtown Kelly Mlacy, Pexels

Schraffuren für die Trümmerlandschaft

2023-04-20T18:04:00+02:00

Schraffuren für die Trümmerlandschaft

Coverbild Atlas Kriegsschadenskarten Carmen Enss und Birgit Knauer, Bildgestaltung: Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH, Basel

Anläßlich des Erscheines des „Atlas Kriegsschadenskarten Deutschland“

sprach Adrian Franco für L.I.S.A., das Wissenschaftsportal der Gerda Henkel Stiftung

mit Georg-Felix Sedlmeyer über Kartenwissen für die Kriegsverwaltung und für den Wiederaufbau und die unterschiedlichen Prozeßstufen der Schadenskartierung.

Zum vollständigen Interview

Cities in Transition

2023-04-07T20:37:00+02:00

A call for papers (pdf: Deutsch, English) for the international conference

Cities in Transition

A review of historical discourses, planning decisions and conservation strategies

at the Research Department for Conservation, TU Wien, Prechtlsaal, Karlsplatz 13, 1040 Vienna.

November 16.-17. 2023

Abstract submission deadline: May 1, 2023

“The city as a whole is a ‘monument’”. This was an assessment of the Austrian Monuments Authority in 1947, when the guidelines for the reconstruction of the city of Vienna were under discussion and the rubble clearance had not yet been entirely completed. On the other hand, while plans were being made for reconstruction, measures were also being taken to preserve the city, through a first listing of possible “historic protection areas”. Years and decades later, the first protective instruments for the conservation of urban and village ensembles were established in many European cities, in response to the increasing loss of historic building fabric.

This interdisciplinary conference, realised in cooperation with the University of Bamberg (KDWT) and the research network UrbanMetaMapping asks: Which phenomena in society, planning and heritage conservation accompanied historical transformation processes of cities and, above all, (how) did they interact? What insights can be drawn from the observation of historical processes and what can be derived from them for current developments? The focus of interest lies on historical processes of evaluation, selection, and planning in the historic building stock and the discourses of different players – individuals, institutions, or organisations – that accompanied these processes. Also to be examined are the effects of planning and conservation decisions not only on the built but also on the social structure of cities.

Submission

This Call for Papers is intended for representatives of historical, cultural, social, and engineering disciplines whose research topics address aspects of architectural and urban history, heritage conservation or urban design and planning history. Please send a short abstract (max. 300 words) for a 20-minute presentation (English) along with a biographical note and your contact information (email, phone, affiliation) to
birgit.knauer@tuwien.ac.at by May 1, 2023.

Notification of acceptance will be made by May 22, 2023.

Format and conference language

The conference will be held in presence. The language of presentation and conversation (discussions) will be English.

Venue

Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), Karlsplatz 13, 1040 Vienna, Prechtlsaal

Bombed Cities: Legacies of Post-War Planning on the Contemporary Urban and Social Fabric

2023-03-09T12:27:00+01:00

Special Issue Publication: Bombed Cities

Special Issue Front Cover

We are pleased to announce that the international journal, Urban Planning, has just released our special issue, Bombed Cities: Legacies of Post-War Planning on the Contemporary Urban and Social Fabric. It is fully open access, and all articles are free for all to read, download and share.

Follow the links below to download the complete issue or individual articles:

Edited by Seraphim Alvanides and Carol Ludwig

Bombed Cities: Legacies of Post-War Planning on the Contemporary Urban and Social Fabric
By Seraphim Alvanides and Carol Ludwig
Revisioning and Rebuilding Britain's War-Damaged Cities
By Peter J. Larkham and David Adams
Post-Second World War Reconstruction of Polish Cities: The Interplay Between Politics and Paradigms
By Łukasz Bugalski and Piotr Lorens
From Reconstruction to Urban Preservation: Negotiating Built Heritage After the Second World War
By Birgit Knauer
"Reconstructionism": A Strategy to Improve Outdated Attempts of Modernist Post-War Planning?
By Uwe Altrock
Intelligibility of Post-War Reconstruction in French Bombed Cities
By Alice Vialard
A Spatio-Temporal Analysis of the Urban Fabric of Nuremberg From the 1940s Onwards Using Historical Maps
By Carol Ludwig and Seraphim Alvanides
Dockers in Poplar: The Legacy of the London County Council's Replanning of Poplar, East London
By Rosamund Lily West
Post-War Architecture and Urban Planning as Means of Reinventing Opole's Past and Identity
By Barbara Szczepańska

UMM Semester Talks WS2023/24 Call for Application

2023-03-08T13:15:00+01:00

UMM Semester Talks Call for Application (pdf)

The UrbanMetaMapping Research Consortium warmly invites applications from scholars interested in presenting their research at the UMM Seminar Talks.

We are open for projects dealing with mapping man-made and natural catastrophes, issues of heritage and urban planning in the context of such disasters, as well as digital tools used for researching these themes. We are interested in research projects without any geographical and temporal limitations. The Call for Application is open to all scholars (from PhD students upwards). The language of the seminar is English.

Meetings take place every first Wednesday of each month at 11⁰⁰ am – 12⁰⁰ pm (Central European (Summer) Time (CET/CEST)). They will last for an hour (including Q&A) and will provide an exciting platform to discuss with international scholars their research and exchange ideas.

We invite proposals for a 30-minute presentation in English to be sent in one text document (.doc, .docx, .odt, .rtf) containing:

Title and abstract of 300 words maximum (no references),
3-5 keywords,
the author’s name with current affiliation, contact details (email) and a short biographical note (around 200 words),
an indication when the presentation could take place.

Available dates are:
6. Sep. 2023 6. Dec. 2023 3. Jan. 2024 7. Feb. 2024 6. Mar. 2024 3. Apr. 2024 8. Mai 2024 5. Jun. 2024
(Please note that we shifted the time to 11⁰⁰ am CE(S)T).

Proposals should be submitted to talks.urbanmetamapping@uni-bamberg.de (Piotr Kisiel) no later than 30. April 2023.

Notification of acceptance will be sent by 14. May 2023.

War damage and destruction maps – Representations of cities, 1939–194

2023-02-27T13:41:00+01:00

War damage and destruction maps – Representations of cities, 1939–1945

A lecture by Dr. Carmen Enss at the Institute of History, Czech Academy of Sciences and online on March 22, 2023, 15⁰⁰

prednaska_war_damage_pozvanka_ENG1.pdf

More and more cities destroyed during the Second World War are uncovering war damage maps from their archives, such as the London County Council Bomb Damage Maps (1939–1945). The first bomb incident maps were created in larger European cities at the start of the air raids. Subsequently, city authorities carried out damage surveys throughout the war. They continued to produce and update damage maps after the end of the war.

While damage maps from London and Warsaw have been examined in detail, most maps from local archives in Central Europe are still difficult to decipher due to a lack of dates, legends and supporting written sources. The research project Recording War Damage in World War II Europe at the University of Bamberg has now published 65 damage maps from Essen, Freiburg im Breisgau, Hamburg, Hanover, Leipzig and Nuremberg in an atlas. The publication enables comparative research into mapping strategies, the social functions of maps and the use of maps during and after the war in Germany. While some of the maps were drawn for disaster management, most of them laid the foundation for post-war reconstruction planning.

Dr. Carmen Enss provides an outlook on current research on damage maps for smaller cities in Poland by the UrbanMetaMapping research consortium and discusses the reliability of statistical data presented in war damage maps

at the Institute of History, Czech Academy of Sciences, room 205, Národní 3, Prague 1

on March 22, 2023, 15⁰⁰.

The lecture will be in hybrid format, for online access please contact Dr. Jitka Močičková (mocickova@hiu.cas.cz).

Book Launch: Atlas Kriegsschadenskarten

2023-01-17T10:56:00+01:00

Book Launch: Atlas Kriegsschadenskarten

Unser Atlas Kriegsschadenskarten Deutschland ist nun gedruckt!

Wir laden zum Launch unseres Buches „Atlas Kriegsschadenskarten Deutschland“ ganz herzlich ein!

Wann und wo

Die Veranstaltung findet an der Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg statt und wird zusätzlich als Stream online übertragen.

Am 25. 1. 2023, 18³⁰ Uhr
Bamberg, An der Universität 7, U7/01.05
Online auf Zoom: 591 861 8110, Kenncode: F81+LB

Was

Das Buch präsentiert Schadenskarten aus Essen, Freiburg im Breisgau, Hamburg, Hannover, Leipzig und Nürnberg auf großformatigen Doppelseiten. Die Karten stammen aus den 1940er und 1950er Jahren, sie liegen heute in Archiven und wurden für das Buch gescannt. Die wissenschaftliche Edition beinhaltet neben dem Kartenkatalog auch Aufsätze von Carmen M. Enss, Birgit Knauer und Georg-Felix Sedlmeyer. In diesen Texten wird beschrieben, wie die Schäden aufgenommen und kartiert wurden und welche Funktionen die Karten bei der Trümmerräumung und für die Aufbauplanung hatten. Besonders interessiert hat uns, wie Baudenkmäler und bauliches Erbe in den Karten dargestellt wurden. Kartieren bedeutete auch Heritage Making, es wurde verzeichnet, was in Krieg und Wiederaufbau als Erbe angesehen wurde.

Das Buch ist bei Birkhäuser sowohl als Hardcover als auch Open Access als PDF erhältlich.

Wir würden uns freuen, Sie und Euch in Bamberg oder online begrüßen zu dürfen!

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Carmen M. Enss, Birgit Knauer, Georg-Felix Sedlmeyer und Frauke Michler,

Für das Vorbereitungsteam Laura Grallert, Luisa Omonsky, Daniel Meier

Programm

18³⁰ Uhr – Vorstellung des Buches durch die Autor*innen,
anschließend Podiumsdiskussion mit den Gästen
Dr. Christa Kamleithner (Universität Konstanz),
Prof. Dr. Johanna Blokker (BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg) und
Dr. Walter Bauernfeind (Stadtarchiv Nürnberg).
Moderation: Prof. Dr. Gerhard Vinken

Anschließend möchten wir bei einem Sektempfang mit Ihnen und Euch zum Buch ins Gespräch kommen und gemeinsam feiern.

Conference: Contested World Orders

2022-11-17T09:41:00+01:00

We are happy to share with you the invitation to join us at the conference

Contested World Orders. The Global Heritage Discourse and Practice in Times of Crises and Conflict

in Bamberg and online at 2^nd and 3^rd of December 2022, organized by the Centre for Heritage Conservation Studies and Technologies (KDWT).

Registration deadlines are Nov. 21 (on site) and Nov. 30 (online).

See the program for details.

We are looking forward to meeting you soon,

Sincerely,

Laura Demeter and Sophie Stackmann

Remainder: »Mapping “Post-Conflict” Cities« registration deadline approaching

2022-09-13T23:30:00+02:00

Remainder: »Mapping “Post-Conflict” Cities« registration deadline approaching

Department of Loiret. City of Meung-sur-Loire. Reconstruction and development plan (1942). 1:5000, National Library of France

Please don’t forget to register for the 2022 UMM conference »Mapping “Post-Conflict” Cities« (20.-21.10.22)!

Join discussion with international scholars on how post-conflict situations were dealt with in peripheral towns from Northern Ireland and Germany, to India and Myanmar. The topics will range from urban planning and politics to memory and narrative framing. The detailed program can be found online.

The deadline is 25.09.2022 for on-site participation and 16.10.2022 for online participation. There are no fees and you can register by simply sending an email to conference.urbanmetamapping@leibniz-irs.de.

We look forward to meeting you in Erkner!

Hilfskraft-Stelle ab Oktober

2022-08-22T19:12:00+02:00

Hilfskraft-Stelle ab Oktober

Im Bamberger UMM Teilprojekt is zum 1. Oktober 2022 eine studentische Hilfskraftstelle (40h/Monat) zu besetzen.

Das UMM-Projekt beschäftigt sich mit kriegsbeschädigten Städten und damit, wie diese in Karten wiedergegeben werden. Wir fragen danach, wie kulturelles Erbe in den Karten der Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit sichtbar wird. Dafür werten wir die Karten, auch mithilfe von GIS-Analysen, aus und bereiten wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen vor. Das Projekt ist am Kompetenzzentrum für Denkmalwissenschaften und Denkmaltechnologien (KDWT) und am Lehrstuhl für Denkmalpflege angesiedelt. Wir sind ein interdisziplinäres Team mit verschiedenen Hintergründen: Stadtgeschichte, Denkmalpflege, Städtebau, Architektur- und Baugeschichte, Informatik, Geographie und Memory Studies.

Aufgabenbeschreibung

Kartenbeschreibung und -Verzeichnung
Grafische Arbeiten, evtl. Arbeiten mit historischem GIS
Literaturrecherche und Literaturbeschaffung
Organisation von Workshops, Kommunikation
Mitarbeit bei der Redaktion von Publikationen

Anforderungsprofil

Hohe Eigenständigkeit
Bereitschaft zur Einarbeitung und Arbeit mit gängigen Grafikprogrammen
Hohe Affinität zum Arbeiten mit Karten
Gute Englischkenntnisse für die Kommunikation im Verbund
Präzision bei wissenschaftlicher Recherche
Historisches Wissen im 20. Jahrhundert

Rückfragen gern ab 29. August an carmen.enss@uni-bamberg.de.
Vorstellungsgespräche finden voraussichtlich am 12. oder 13. September in Bamberg statt.

Wenn Ihr Profil und Interesse zu dem der Kolleginnen und Kollegen auf der Webseite passt, schicken Sie uns gern Ihre Bewerbung (2 Seiten) mit kurzem Motivationsschreiben und Lebenslauf bis zum 6. September 2022 an pa.urbanmetamapping@uni-bamberg.de.

Vorankündigung: Atlas Kriegsschadenskarten Deutschland

2022-07-18T21:30:00+02:00

Demnächst erhältlich: Atlas Kriegsschadenskarten Deutschland

Wir freuen uns, dass unser Atlas Kriegsschadenskarten Deutschland Ende des Jahres 2022 publiziert werden wird – als Buch und auch Open Access. Wir haben eine prominente Seite im Verlagsprospekt bekommen!

Darin zu finden sind Texte von Carmen M. Enss, Birgit Knauer, und Georg-Felix Sedlmeyer. Vielen Dank, Frauke Michler, für die hervorragende Projektsteuerung. Herzlichen Dank auch unseren Superhero-Hiwis Laura Grallert und Luisa Omonsky!

Ohne die Forschungsplattform MapMyMaps, die Klaus Stein gerade entwickelt und deren Prototyp wir bereits verwenden können, wäre die ganze Forschung nicht möglich gewesen. Nun sind wir gespannt, was sich daraus noch entwickeln wird.

Der Atlas im Verlagsprospekt

Ukraine

2022-03-04T10:32:00+01:00

The war in Ukraine is a threat to intellectual freedom

Image source: Canva

The Russian aggression and invasion on the territory of Ukraine leaves me speechless. February 24 showed that Europe clearly underestimated Putin’s expansionist plans and his worldview that puts the peace in Europe at risk. Although I wished to avoid the rhetoric of an East-West-divide of Europe, it is particularly painful to see that the Western European countries ignored the warnings of Poland and the Baltic states and their request for strengthening military presence at the Eastern EU borders. The unconditional will of disarmament stood above the realistic assessments of Russian foreign policy plans.

For academia, the war will have far-ranging consequences as the ongoing attacks on civil infrastructure are destroying also libraries, archives, universities. War thus always is a threat to culture and knowledge production; it is targeting national memory and identity which is based not only on rich collections of historic documents but first and foremost on the people shaping this part of Ukrainian culture with their research. It is the people behind academic titles and degrees who ensure the place of Ukraine in international academia: through innovative ways of thinking, cutting-edge research, transnational exchange of knowledge, and cross-border collaboration. International funding institutions should give preference to Ukrainian applicants. It is the least contribution to preserve the intellectual and educational freedom of the country.

There are more important things these days than the future of a research project but the war will affect my academic work too: My project was supposed to include Belarusian and Ukrainian cities. Right now, research trips to both countries are impossible. I am in the privileged position to explain my adaptions, to look for other ways to conduct my research. But in the face of the war cruelties, these issues seem trivial. My thoughts are with all Ukrainian researchers and their families.

Elisa-Maria Hiemer
(on behalf of the UMM Team)

UMM conference »Mapping “Post-Conflict” Cities«

2022-02-25T19:34:00+01:00

A Call for Papers for the upcoming

UMM conference »Mapping “Post-Conflict” Cities«

Department of Loiret. City of Meung-sur-Loire. Reconstruction and development plan (1942). 1:5000, National Library of France

at Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS) and online, 19.–21. October 2022

Building on the knowledge gathered from academic literature as well as from the first UrbanMetaMapping conference “Cartographies of Catastrophes” in Bamberg (2021) this conference will examine mapping of “post-conflict” cities from the 19^th century until the present day in different geographic settings. Firstly, we want to focus particularly on the question of continuities and ruptures relating to urban planning in those cases when end of conflict coincided with a change of socio-political regime. Secondly, we want to move away from the iconic cities, capitals in particular, and focus instead on less known case studies. We are therefore particularly interested in mapping of “peripheral” cities and their experience of “post-conflict” periods.

The deadline for the Call for Papers is 15. April 2022.

The Cartographies of Catastrophes

2021-12-11T12:56:00+01:00

The Cartographies of Catastrophes

Welcome to the conference

Bamberg, 23.–24. November 2021

The conference at the Bamberg University examined maps and other related methods of documenting urban destruction in different temporal and spatial contexts: from 19th century Central Asia to contemporary Spain.

Firstly, there was a strong focus on the content of the maps themselves and the question of whose perspectives are portrayed in the maps? Whose views are championed? We can think of them as maps of arguments or argumentation. For example, Mohamed Fareed (Cairo) argued that maps of East Jerusalem are used as tools to communicate narratives of the past and claims to space, whereas in the case of Calcutta Subhasree Ghosh showed how these complex and multilayered narratives and realities were obscured, omitted and therefore hidden from conventional maps. Similarly, examples from Polish cities destroyed during the Second World War, Warsaw (Anna Seidel) and Frampol (Noemi Quagliati), challenged the idea of ‘truthful documentation’, by confronting those depictions with an analysis of literary and photodocumentary sources. Aleksandra Szczepan brought to the discussion the personal perspective of the Holocaust survivors, whose hand-drawn maps based on their memories, differed sharply from the technocratic and precise maps of their oppressors.

Bamberg city tour, Regnitz river

During the discussion the notion of counter cartography or counter-mapping emerged. This is described as a form of mapping which aims to map the world from marginalized perspectives. It is a form of socio-political mapping in contested space, linked to power and territory. In the case of East Jerusalem, maps of the old city prepared on the one-hand by the Israelis and on the other-hand by the Palestinians show the disputed claims to the city and are interpreted as unspoken, explicit attempts to destroy the others’ claims to identity.

Secondly, maps of destructions were often intimately bound with the vision for reconstruction. There was a consistent idea that reconstruction should represent an improvement on what was there before, with straplines such as “Build back better” in the UK, and the will to remove inner-city slum areas, which were deemed unhygienic and breeding grounds for infectious diseases (John Pendlebury and Peter J. Larkham). The 1947 Town and Country Planning Act in the UK, for example, led to more technical, technocratic mapping, and as a result, became more removed from public involvement and scrutiny. Moreover, while the postwar period was a period of rapid transformation, we need to remember that many plans had a long, 20–50-year implementation period. Cleared bomb sites therefore became part of the urban landscape for decades in many cities and often serious redevelopment and modernization did not commence until the 1970s, as in the case of Rijeka’s old town (Gruia Bădescu). Finally, in discussing the legacy of the reconstruction process another important point we shouldn’t forget is that the war also left a legacy on unbombed towns, which did not want to be left behind socially or economically and aspired to modernization expressed in the reconstruction plans of the war-torn cities (Peter J. Larkham).

The context and implementation of plans was not only marked by radical and utopian comprehensive development plans inspired by the international modernism movement of the pre-war period but also high pragmatism. Barbara Szczepańska argued that despite the ostentatious anti-German rhetoric in the post-war Opole, pre-war German plans not only for individual buildings, but also for the whole city were appreciated and appropriated by the new Polish administration.

Bamberg dome physical 3d map

Thirdly, the conference problematized the documentation of destruction in a historical context, starting with the French mission to Greece in the 19th century (Eleni Gkadolou) until the 20th monuments destruction in Soviet Russia (Anna Vyazemtseva). In the Greek case, the French experts documenting destruction in the newly established kingdom aspired the technical mastery and scientific objectivity, but their maps revealed as much as they concealed, as the categories used were not really explained or precise, but rather applied to in a generalizing manner. The 19th century imperial methodology was also examined by Inessa Kouteinikova, this time in the context of the Russian Turkmenistan and focused on the precise issue of what such sources do not show. Anna Vyazemtseva’s presentation focused on Alexei Schusev's drawings, which in her view are an essential tool to understand the destruction in Istra, due to the lack of reliable cartographic data available. Nicolás Mariné’s presentation also questioned the existing maps of war destruction, but this time in the context of the Spanish civil war. Using digital technologies allows one to re-examine the frontline in the surroundings of Madrid and reconceptualize the cultural landscape of the war. Finally, Lora Sariaslan provided an insight into how a contemporary Turkish artist uses language of cartography and map-making for his works, which challenges the familiar categories of borders and patterns.

Last but not least, Stefanie Plappert from the German Film Museum took the participants of the conference on the virtual tour of the exhibition “Catastrophe. What Comes after the End?” which is currently in Frankfurt am Main. Fictional depiction of large-scale disasters not only was a fascinating counterpart to the scientific discussions, but also invited the participants to reflect on narrative frames used to present “catastrophes”.

MaHeT Meeting Nov. 2021

2021-11-30T13:38:00+01:00

Mapping Heritage Transformation Network (MaHeT) Meeting (25th Nov. 2021)

After the Cartographies of Catastrophes conference the members of the UMM research Consortium together with Gruia Bădescu (Konstanz), Jules Deschepper (Florence/Paris), Aleksandra Paradowska (Poznań), Aleksandra Szczepan (Kraków), Barbara Szczepańska (Wrocław), Małgorzata Popiołek-Roßkamp (Erkner/Berlin) and Anna Vyazemtseva (Moscow/Rome) discussed the best way forward for the MaHeT Network.

A briefing was provided by Dr. Kinzler (University of Bamberg) on the different national and international funding streams available to the network and this valuable input helped shape the discussions, leading to the agreement of a chosen strategy. It was agreed that the formal establishment and strengthening of the Network should take priority, supported by an appropriate funding package. This would serve to facilitate common activities, such as on-site visits to different historic cities, methodological training events and workshops. The focus on knowledge transfer of methodological strategies and tools used for interdisciplinary research on heritage and urban transformations (in Europe and beyond) is what the Network members wish to focus on in this initial stage of the cooperation. This grounding will provide a solid foundation for potential substantial future research collaborations.

UMM Seminar Talks

2021-08-24T17:53:00+02:00

UMM Seminar Talks

The UrbanMetaMapping Research Consortium warmly invites you to our online, midday academic talks on issues connected to our research interests on mapping man-made and natural catastrophes, heritage, urban planning, and digital tools used for researching these.

The researchers of the UrbanMetaMapping are not only focused on their own research, but are also interested in learning from other scholars, in debating ideas and concepts and engraining in scholarly exchange. This was the reason why we decided to open up our seminars to the external guests and the wider public.

The UrbanMetaMapping Seminar Series focuses on topics of mapping man-made and natural catastrophes, heritage, urban planning, and digital tools used for researching these. This reflects the interdisciplinary character of our group and is aimed at providing us with new insights into those topics. We hope that those encounters will be also interesting and beneficial for other like-minded scholars.

It’s not a secret that academics don’t have much time, so even exciting events and inspiring papers are sometimes missed due to the lack of time. This is precisely why we decided to make our Semester Talks concise: one hour (including Q&A) at midday, once a month (every third Wednesday). We hope that this format is manageable for interested scholars, but at the same time give enough time to engage in a meaningful conversation of topics that drive our research.

We look forward to you joining us for the UrbanMetaMapping Seminar Series!

UMM conference »Cartographies of Catastrophes«

2021-07-15T11:46:00+02:00

UMM conference »Cartographies of Catastrophes«

Effects of air attack on urban complex Tokyo-Kawasaki-Yokohama. Map of the U.S. strategic bombing campaign on Tokyo from November 29, 1944 - May 25, 1945 United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Urban Areas Division

at Bamberg University and online, 23.–25. November 2021

Existing historical sources of urban damage cartography for various cities generated during and after wars and conflicts have been identified and researched, such as those affected during the Second World War in Europe (Austria, Germany, Poland, United Kingdom). Building on this knowledge, the conference aims to problematise cartographies of catastrophes from the 19th century until the present time in the global context, from wide interdisciplinary perspectives. By focusing on damage maps from past and recent conflicts and catastrophes, this conference interrogates whether maps just show past conditions, or do they foresee and predetermine future conditions?

For further information see the conference page
(Call for Papers deadline: 15. Sep. 2021).

Interrupted Spaces, Engineered Traditions

2021-06-24T12:29:00+02:00

Interrupted Spaces, Engineered Traditions

International conference in Bamberg / online, 30 June 2021.

Co-organized by the History Department (Heléna Tóth) and the Centre for Heritage Conservation Studies and Technologies (Carmen Enss), the conference explores spatial interruption as a practice for creating/erasing political or cultural identity.

Since the first pioneering studies on cultural memory and the invention of traditions, scholars of this field have consistently turned to spatial references to frame their research questions. As the study of cultural memory is expanding conceptually to include processes of “social forgetting” (Guy Beiner), urban space continues to be a promising field of study for understanding how the contours of memory cultures are drawn (Jan Assmann) or, in our case, engineered.

The international conference “Interrupted Spaces, Engineered Traditions” examines case studies, where spatial interruption was used as an opportunity or was deployed as a tool for creating/erasing political or cultural identity. Interruptions of the cityscape were non-linear processes leading to a variety of outcomes. In each case, however, the moment of interruption itself became a cardinal point in emerging, often conflicting narratives. It is the relationship between the interpretation of moments of spatial interruptions and political culture that our conference seeks to examine.

Elisa ist @researching.poland

2021-06-14T23:14:00+02:00

Elisa ist @researching.poland

Interessiert an aktueller Forschung zur polnischen Geschichte und Literatur? Oder an den kleinen Hürden, Zufallsfunden und Kuriositäten, die einem bei der Forschung tagtäglich begegnen? Elisa-Maria Hiemer (Leiterin des Teilprojektes Diskurs) hat kürzlich ihren Blog rund um ihre Forschung und den Arbeitsalltag dahinter gestartet. Mehr dazu bei Instagram: @researching.poland

Symposium „Erbe in Trümmern“ ein voller Erfolg

2021-06-14T10:16:00+02:00

Erfolgreiches Symposium „Erbe in Trümmern“

Von Rebecca Müller.

Am Donnerstag den 20. Mai richtete das Kompetenzzentrum Denkmalwissenschaften und Denkmaltechnologien (KDWT) unter der Leitung von Carmen Enss (Universität Bamberg) im Rahmen des DFG-Projekts „Kriegsschadensaufnahme des Zweiten Weltkriegs als Heritage-Making Moment“ ein Online-Symposium aus. Expert*innen aus den Bereichen Denkmalpflege, Kunstgeschichte, Urbanistik und Architekturgeschichte beleuchteten den Umgang mit und die Dokumentation von kriegszerstörten Städten aus der Zeit um 1945. Neben einer breiten Fachöffentlichkeit waren auch Student*innen der Denkmalwissenschaften unter den Zuhörer*innen vertreten. Die Themenauswahl der Fachvorträge deckte ein breites interdisziplinäres sowie internationales Spektrum ab. Die Referent*innen stellten einige Formen von Wiederaufbau vor, beleuchteten Argumente der Planer und zeigten kulturelle Aneignung betroffener Städte durch die Bevölkerung damals und heute.

Wie in den Denkmalwissenschaften nicht unüblich, zeigte sich die Komplexität des Themas in divergierenden Ansichten, welche die an die Vorträge anschließenden Diskussionsrunden belebten. Gleich der erste Beitrag von Jörn Düwel (Universität Hamburg) holte die Zuhörerschaft mit dem provokanten Titel „Die ersehnte Katastrophe. Städtebau und Zukunftskrieg. Planungen nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg.“ vor den Bildschirmen ab und regte zum verbalen Austausch an. Für die Studierenden war besonders spannend, Sichtweisen von Expert*innen außerhalb der eigenen Universität zu hören. Wie sehr die Wahrnehmung kriegszerstörter Städte darüber hinaus auch vom politischen Umfeld beeinflusst wird, machte Małgorzata Popiołek-Roßkamp (IRS Leibniz-Institut) mit ihrem Vortrag „Die argumentative Macht der Karten beim Wiederaufbau von Warschau“ deutlich.

In der zweiten Vortragssektion berichtete Birgit Knauer (Universität Bamberg/TU Wien, Vortragsthema: „‚Juwelen in eine neue Fassung bringen.‘ Gebautes Erbe und Transformation im Rahmen des Wiederaufbaus“) über Bewertungs- und Aneignungsprozesse kriegszerstörter Städte und Eva von Engelberg (Universität Siegen) über „Die Tradition der fiktiven Altstadt Heritage Making als Konstante der Moderne“.

Im Laufe des Tages zeigte sich nachdrücklich, wie wichtig das am KDWT angesiedelte DFG-Projekt zu Kriegsschadensaufnahmen für das Verständnis und somit auch den bewussten Umgang mit kriegszerstörten und wiederaufgebauten Städten ist. Einige der Haupterkenntnisse dieses Projekts stellte Georg-Felix Sedlmeyer (Universität Bamberg) in seinem Vortrag „Kriegsschadensaufnahmen: Entwicklung – Typen – Ziele – Funktionen“ vor. Das umfangreiche Kartenmaterial, welches während des Projekts zusammengetragen und analysiert wurde, wird in Zukunft als Forschungsgrundlage die Arbeit der Denkmalpflege, der Kunst- und Architekturgeschichte sowie zahlreicher weiterer Disziplinen erweitern und fördern.

CfP Bombed Cities: Legacies of Post-War Planning on the Contemporary Urban and Social Fabric

2021-06-02T17:25:00+02:00

CfP Bombed Cities

(see as PDF)

In conjunction with the international, peer-reviewed, open access journal Urban Planning we are excited to launch a call for papers for a special thematic issue:

Bombed Cities: Legacies of Post-War Planning on the Contemporary Urban and Social Fabric.

Post-Second World War reconstruction is now an important field of research around the world, with strands of enquiry investigating architecture, urban archaeology, heritage studies, urban design, city planning, critical cartography, and social geography. This thematic issue seeks to provide a critical statement on mid-twentieth century urban planning, starting from the period of the Second World War.

We are looking for contributions that examine post-war reconstruction visions and strategies and how the early planning visions and decisions have been imprinted on today’s urban and social fabric of various bombed cities. The emphasis of the thematic issue is on empirically driven studies of post-catastrophic damage and reconstruction, actualised through qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methodologies.

→ full CfP

Editors

Seraphim Alvanides (Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK)
Carol Ludwig (GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany)

Submitting Papers

The submission period for abstracts (max. 250 words) is 15–31 October 2021. Please follow the journal’s author instructions and submit through the abstracts system. The deadline for full papers is Summer 2022, with a planned publication in early 2023. For information about Urban Planning’s open access policy, please see “open access” below. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Carol.

We look forward to receiving your abstracts.

Best wishes,

Carol and Seraphim

Open Access

Urban Planning provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. The journal has an article publication fee to cover its costs and guarantee that the article can be accessed free of charge (€900, plus VAT, following peer review and acceptance). Authors who cannot afford the article processing charge can apply for a waiver during the article submission procedure (waiver requests during or after peer-review will not be considered). Authors affiliated with the journal’s institutional members do not incur article processing charges.

→ Further information about the journal's open access charges and institutional members

Open CfP: “Interrupted Spaces, Engineered Traditions”

2021-04-23T17:30:00+02:00

CfP: “Interrupted Spaces, Engineered Traditions”

Conference to be held at the Bamberg University via Zoom, June 30 2021.

The international conference “Interrupted Spaces, Engineered Traditions” examines case studies, where spatial interruption was used as an opportunity or was deployed as a tool for creating/erasing political or cultural identity. The organizers understand the term „spatial interruption” as radical reconfigurations of established spatial frames of political culture whether precipitated by war or natural disasters or change of political regimes.

Deadline Extension: May 9, 2021

Carmen Enss and Heléna Tóth invite you to contribute to the following topics:

how interruption of urban place was read as a metaphor for political change
instances of spatial interruption as disruptive and/or constitutive acts that make political practice visible.
the resilience of spatial memory.

Neue studentische Hilfskräfte

2021-04-10T14:10:00+02:00

Neue studentische Hilfskräfte im Team

Mit Luisa Omonsky und Rebecca Müller haben wir seit April zwei neue studentische Hilfskräfte. Willkommen im Team!

Rebecca Müller

Rebecca Müller machte 2019 ihren Bachelorabschluss im Fach Kunstgeschichte am Karlsruher Institut für Technologie. Derzeit studiert sie Denkmalpflege im Master an der Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg. Nach ihrem Abitur absolvierte sie ein Freiwilliges Jahr in der Denkmalpflege bei einem Restaurator für Gemälde und Skulpturen. Während ihres Bachelorstudiums arbeitete sie als Hilfswissenschaftlerin bei der Verwaltung staatlicher Schlösser und Gärten Baden-Württembergs.

Luisa Omonsky

Luisa Omonsky hat 2020 ihren Bachelorabschluss im Fach Urbanistik an der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar gemacht und studiert derzeit Denkmalpflege und Kunstgeschichte im Master an der Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg. In ihrer Bachelorthesis hat sie sich mit den städtebaulichen Entwicklungen zur Zeit der SBZ und DDR auf der Alten Messe in Leipzig beschäftigt.

Erbe in Trümmern

2021-03-18T22:50:00+01:00

Erbe in Trümmern

Im Rahmen des DFG-Projekts „Kriegsschadensaufnahme des Zweiten Weltkriegs als Heritage-Making Moment“ lädt das KDWT zum Online-Symposium „Erbe in Trümmern“.

Das Symposium zu Schadensbild, Transformation und Heritage Making in kriegszerstörten Städten um 1945 betrachtet Handlungsschritte und -strategien für den Wiederaufbau beschädigter Städte im Kontext des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Bewertungs- und Aneignungsprozesse von Kulturerbe in Städten, die vom Krieg bedroht oder beschädigt waren, werden analysiert und diskutiert.

Tagungseinladung Erbe in Trümmern (pdf)

„Zerstörung ist relativ“

2021-02-16T00:00:00+01:00

„Zerstörung ist relativ“

(“Destruction is relative”)

In an interview for the Süddeutsche Zeitung (German) Carmen Enss talks about war damage and the project.

Carmen Enss discusses the approaches the different damaged cities like Bamberg, Kassel, Regensburg and Nürnberg used: reconstruction of the old versus development and creation.

UMM on Twitter

2021-01-27T20:00:00+01:00

UMM on Twitter

To celebrate the UrbanMetaMapping project launch event we decided we need a Twitter account.

Find us on Twitter as @umm_project.

Tweets will be in German or English. We will try to give some insights in our project but I don't assume we'll tweet alot.

UMM Project Launch

2021-01-27T19:03:00+01:00

UMM Project Launch

The official project launch event for the UrbanMetaMapping project attracted an interested audience.

Due to the current situation we unfortunately could not meet in Bamberg so the launch was an online event – which may have allowed some more people to join us.

We had greetings from Kai Fischbach (President of the University of Bamberg), an introduction and overview on the project and the sub-projects from Carmen Enss, Pjotr Kisiel, and Carol Ludwig.

Pieces from the discussion:

“Maps are not only information but also art!”
“War damage maps are also highly political up to now”

Launch event invitation (pdf)

UrbanMetaMapping

FORGE 2025

FORGE 2025

Image Video

Image Video

DHd2025

DHd 2025

UMMT Kick-Off

UMMT Kick-Off

SpatHum 2024

Spatial Humanities 2024Programme and Early Bird Registration

Interdisciplinary Studies on Spatial Dynamics and Marginalization in Central and Eastern Europe

Interdisciplinary Studies on Spatial Dynamics and Marginalization in Central and Eastern Europe

Call for Proposals

About the Series (pdf)

Contact the Editors

FOSSGIS Conference 2024

FOSSGIS 2024

City Transitions: society and the spatial and temporal dimensions of change

Call for Abstracts – City Transitions: Society and the Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Change

Summer School Residues of the Past: (De)constructing urban histories

Summer School Residues of the Past: (De)constructing urban histories

Cities in Transition: Program

Cities in Transition

Registration

Studentische Hilfskraft – GIS

Studentische Hilfskraft – GIS

UMM talks at the ASEEES 2023

UMM talks at the ASEEES

»Mapping As A Colonial Practise«

Shifted Borders, Shifted Memories: “The East” In Polish And German Spatial Imaginaries

Schraffuren für die Trümmerlandschaft

Schraffuren für die Trümmerlandschaft

Cities in Transition

Cities in Transition

Submission

Format and conference language

Venue

Bombed Cities: Legacies of Post-War Planning on the Contemporary Urban and Social Fabric

Special Issue Publication: Bombed Cities

Bombed Cities: Legacies of Post-War Planning on the Contemporary Urban and Social Fabric (2023, Volume 8, Issue 1)

Table of Contents:

UMM Semester Talks WS2023/24 Call for Application

UMM Semester Talks Call for Application (pdf)

War damage and destruction maps – Representations of cities, 1939–194

War damage and destruction maps – Representations of cities, 1939–1945

Book Launch: Atlas Kriegsschadenskarten

Book Launch: Atlas Kriegsschadenskarten

Wann und wo

Was

Programm

Conference: Contested World Orders

Contested World Orders. The Global Heritage Discourse and Practice in Times of Crises and Conflict

Remainder: »Mapping “Post-Conflict” Cities« registration deadline approaching

Remainder: »Mapping “Post-Conflict” Cities« registration deadline approaching

Hilfskraft-Stelle ab Oktober

Hilfskraft-Stelle ab Oktober

Aufgabenbeschreibung

Anforderungsprofil

Vorankündigung: Atlas Kriegsschadenskarten Deutschland

Demnächst erhältlich: Atlas Kriegsschadenskarten Deutschland

Ukraine

The war in Ukraine is a threat to intellectual freedom

UMM conference »Mapping “Post-Conflict” Cities«

UMM conference »Mapping “Post-Conflict” Cities«

The Cartographies of Catastrophes

The Cartographies of Catastrophes

MaHeT Meeting Nov. 2021

Mapping Heritage Transformation Network (MaHeT) Meeting (25th Nov. 2021)

UMM Seminar Talks

UMM Seminar Talks

UMM conference »Cartographies of Catastrophes«

UMM conference »Cartographies of Catastrophes«

Interrupted Spaces, Engineered Traditions

Interrupted Spaces, Engineered Traditions

Elisa ist @researching.poland

Elisa ist @researching.poland

Symposium „Erbe in Trümmern“ ein voller Erfolg

Erfolgreiches Symposium „Erbe in Trümmern“

CfP Bombed Cities: Legacies of Post-War Planning on the Contemporary Urban and Social Fabric

Spatial Humanities 2024
Programme and Early Bird Registration