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Copyright by Jan Uelzmann 2011 The Dissertation Committee for Jan Uelzmann Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Bonn, the Transitional Capital and its Founding Discourses, 1948-1963 Committee: Sabine Hake, Co- Supervisor Philip Broadbent, Co-Supervisor Katherine Arens Pascale Bos David Crew Bonn, the Transitional Capital and its Founding Discourses, 1948-1963 by Jan Uelzmann, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2011 Dedication For Berna and my family. Acknowledgements Researching and writing this dissertation would not have been possible without the support of many people. Most importantly, I would like to thank Sabine Hake and Philip Broadbent for having been such excellent dissertation advisors. Throughout this project, they have taught me first and foremost to trust my own intellectual instincts. They granted me the necessary freedom to find my own voice, but at the same time they were reliable intellectual partners against whose feedback and criticism this project took shape. I am immensely grateful for the expertise, enthusiasm and encouragement, but also for the patience and humor they brought to this project. Apart from my Doktoreltern, during my time at the Department of Germanic Studies, a number of faculty and fellow students have left a profound impact on my development as scholar and thus ultimately on this dissertation. When I came to the department in 2006, Janet Swaffar was extremely generous in offering her rich expertise on the postwar period and on academic writing. I am grateful for the many intellectual exchanges since then, which have profoundly shaped my thinking about the literature of the 1950s. Throughout my studies, Katherine Arens has played a crucial role in my intellectual development by graciously contributing her support and knowledge to a number of projects and endeavors, providing me with advice, guidance, and, most importantly of all, encouragement. Studying with David Crew has been an extraordinary experience that profoundly shaped the thematic scope of this dissertation. I am grateful for the opportunities to study and exchange ideas with Pascale Bos, Peter Hess, John Hoberman, Kit Belgum, and Marc Pierce. Werner Krauss, Mathias Rothe, and Per Urlaub have been crucial discussion partners, mentors, teachers, and friends, who each in their individual ways have helped my ideas grow and take shape. Lastly, I would like to thank v Berna Gueneli, Bradley Boovy, Mariana Ivanova, Rob Kohn, Lee Holt, Martin Kley, Karen Roesch, and Stine Skou Nielsen for their collegial support and personal friendship, which helped balance out the more detrimental effects of graduate studies. I am very grateful to Adam Johnson and Lee Holt for proofreading the manuscript. Through the years, the faculty and staff of my department, as well as the Graduate School of the University of Texas have supported my research in a number of ways. The Department of Germanic Studies has sponsored this dissertation through travel funding, generous fellowships and awards. In Fall of 2009 and Spring of 2010, I was lucky enough to be awarded the University Continuing Fellowship by the UT Graduate School, which allowed me to conduct archival research in Germany for this dissertation. I am also grateful for the help and support I received from many people in Germany, most importantly from the staffs at the Bundesarchiv Koblenz, the Deutsche Wochenschau Filmarchiv Hamburg, the Stadtarchiv and the Haus der Demokratie in Bonn, the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Carl von Ossietzky at the University of Hamburg, and the newspaper archive of the Staatsbibliothek Berlin. Lastly, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my family. My parents Renate and Wolfgang Ülzmann have always encouraged me to pursue an academic career. Their emotional and financial support has been crucial in putting me through the amazing yet challenging journey that is graduate school. My brother Nils has equally been an important source of inspiration and encouragement. Without them, this dissertation would not have been completed. vi Bonn, the Transitional Capital and its Founding Discourses, 1948-1963 Publication No._____________ Jan Uelzmann, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2011 Supervisors: Sabine Hake and Philip Broadbent My dissertation reconstructs sociopolitical new-beginning discourses pertaining to Bonn, the provisional West German capital, during the Federal Republic’s founding years. Combining approaches from history, cultural studies, and literary studies, I look at Bonn as a projection screen through which to explore the new-beginning discourses that challenged the FRG during its founding years. I argue that there exists a common pattern of contradiction throughout these discourses, as West Germans attempted to straddle the sociopolitical divides and contradictions between the Nazi past, and a now West-oriented future. With individual chapters addressing different cultural domains, my dissertation offers a cultural cross-section of how Bonn was instrumental in implementing a complex strategy for a new beginning in a post-fascist, war-torn society. Chapter one contextualizes the history of the search for a provisional capital of 1948/9 in symbolisms about Bonn that were seldom explicitly expressed, but which help explain the choice of Bonn as provisional capital, paying particular attention to the fact that it was a provincial city removed from the flashpoints of recent German history. The second chapter investigates city-planning debates about the Bonn federal district to vii highlight the dynamic ways in which West Germans negotiated the status of their provisional capital in relation to larger geopolitical questions of the Cold War and the division of Germany. Chapter three traces the complex genesis of the Neues Bauen- infused, modernist architecture employed by architect Hans Schwippert in the Bundeshaus and Palais Schaumburg renovations. It goes on to illustrate how the FRG’s early, official architectural stance is one based on contradiction and negotiation between two opposing conceptions of political architecture: the traditionalism of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Schwippert’s moderate modernism. The final chapter examines the spatial configurations of two “Bonn-novels,” Wolfgang Koeppen’s Das Treibhaus (1953) and Günter Weisenborn’s Auf Sand gebaut (1956) to argue that both “Bonn novels” portray the city as a topographical contradiction, divided between the “old Bonn” and the “political Bonn,” with corresponding, largely incompatible social spheres. Both novels exploit this characteristic to express a critique of the democratic process in Bonn. viii Table of Contents Introduction: Inherent Contradictions......................................................................1 Chapter One: Symbolically Distant, Geographically Close, Politically Convenient: Why Bonn became Provisional Capital....................................19 Introduction...................................................................................................19 a) Reading Bonn for Symbolic Meaning ......................................................21 Rebuilding Germany from the Margins: Bonn as “No Place”.............21 Bonn as “Western Capital” ..................................................................24 Avoiding Symbolic Over-Determination.............................................27 b) Political Waypoints on the Way to Bonn: Negotiations Between the Western Allies and West Germans ......................................................31 The Frankfurt Documents....................................................................31 West German-Allied Negotiations on the Road to the Parliamentary Council........................................................................................35 A Preliminary Decision for Bonn: Allied Preconceptions in the Race for the Seat of the Parliamentary Council..........................37 The Race for the Seat of Capital..........................................................39 Negotiations in the Parliamentary Council..........................................46 The Capital Commission .....................................................................49 Conclusions: Bonn, a New German Symbolism ..........................................53 Chapter Two: On the Way from Provisional Capital to Capital of Convenience: The Image of Bonn as Interim Solution in City Planning Debates Throughout the Adenauer Years, 1948-1963................................................56 Introduction...................................................................................................56 A New Periodization.....................................................................................57 A Capital on Hold .........................................................................................60 From Humble Beginnings to a Capital of Convenience: The Story of Bonn’s Consolidation as Federal Capital.............................................61 ix Stage One: Bad Press and Total Improvisation: The Beginnings of Planning the Capital, 1949-1950 ................................................63 Stage Two: Careful Build-up: The First New Constructions, 1950-1956 ...................................................................................71 Stage Three: Back to Berlin? 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