[spectre] CONF: Contact - Demarcation - Imaginations (Lueneburg, 8 Oct 25)

[Andreas Broeckmann LEU]

From: Katja Bernhardt
Date: Sep 24, 2025
Subject: CONF: Contact - Demarcation - Imaginations (Lueneburg, 8 Oct 25)

Lüneburg, Nordost-Institut (IKGN e.V.), Oct 08, 2025

Contact – Demarcation – Imaginations. Spatial Practices in the Occupied 
City under National Socialism.

In recent years, research into everyday life under National Socialism 
has questioned the dichotomous juxtaposition of the occupied and the 
occupying, instead focusing on questions of interaction within societies 
in the state of occupation and the varying degrees of scopes of action 
(Handlungsspielraum). In our workshop, we combine that notion with that 
of space of imagination (Imaginationsraum), and start form the initial 
thesis that both were interrelated. Thus, on the one hand, we ask about 
practical interventions by the occupiers in the spatial and symbolic 
configurations of the occupied cities or rural settlements, and their 
impact on the socio-spatial organisation of everyday life. But we also 
ask about the forms in which resistance to German dominance over space 
evolved and was articulated. On the other hand, we want to relate these 
spaces of action to imaginative spaces, for instance articulated within 
various forms of media. These may be media that aimed to condition 
behaviour and interaction between different groups in public, 
semi-public, and private spaces. However, we are also thinking of 
imaginations that could serve to cope with the occupation, and thus as a 
means of ‘settling in’ ("Sich-Einrichten", Jan Philipp Reemtsma) in the 
given situation.

The workshop is the third in a series of workshops on architecture and 
urban planning in Eastern Europe occupied by the National Socialists 
(https://arthist.net/archive/41437; https://arthist.net/archive/43440). 
The outlined theoretical programme of the workshop is interwoven with 
two objectives of this series. Firstly, we want to discuss sources that 
have received little attention to date in the history of Nazi 
architecture and urban space planning. Secondly, we want to engage in a 
methodological-theoretical discussion about whether and how the notions 
‘space for action’ and ‘space of imagination’ could be used to relate 
different sources to each other, theoretically and methodologically. 
These objectives are intended to contrast the history of planning based 
on sources of German provenance, with sources and approaches to 
architectural and urban history that allow the multi-layered spatial 
practices of the occupying society to be analysed and represented.

Programme

9:00 a.m.
Welcome

9:15 – 10:30 a.m.
Introduction: Theoretical questions/methodological approaches
Katja Bernhardt (Berlin)

Männer und Maiden or Returning to the Sources
Hanna Grzeszczuk-Brendel (Poznań)

11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Kraków or Krakau? Real and symbolic struggles for urban space as 
exemplified by occupied Kraków, 1939–1945
Anna Czocher (Kraków)

Photographing architecture during the occupation, exemplified by an 
archival find
Żanna Komar (Kraków)

The German population in Nazi settlement policy in Ukraine, 1941–1944. 
Plans, expectations, discrepancies
Dmytro Myeshkov (Lüneburg)

2:30 p.m – 4:00 p.m
Design and Reality of Territorial, Administrative Governmentality. The 
Case for Lithuania
Waltraud Indrist (Wien)

Visions of Urban Planning in Lithuania under Nazi Occupation
Marija Drėmaitė (Vilnius)

4:30 p.m. – 5:15 p.m.
Introduction into the collection of the Nordost-Library

5:15 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Final discussion

Concept an organisation: Katja Bernhardt and Hanna Grzeszczuk-Brendel.

The workshop is an event organised by the Nordost-Institut (IKGN e.V., 
Lüneburg) in cooperation with the Poznań University of Technology. The 
event is sponsored by the German-Polish Science Foundation.


Reference / Quellennachweis:
CONF: Contact – Demarcation – Imaginations (Lüneburg, 8 Oct 25). In: 
ArtHist.net, Sep 24, 2025. <https://arthist.net/archive/50695>.