GLOBAL HISTORY OF GLOBAL CITIES October 31, 2016 Sebastian Schmidt Fellow, Weatherhead Initiative on Global History PhD Candidate, History, Theory & Criticism, MIT Architecture
[email protected] Note This paper is part of a larger project studying the relationship between WWII and cities. Specifically, I look at the ways in which urban thinking changed in response to the global scale of the war, and develop an approach of writing post-WWII urban history as global history. This paper uses the case of West Berlin to address these issues. On October 31, before the paper discussion, I will give a brief introduction explaining some of the historiographical stakes of the project. 1 Draft – do not cite or circulate Schmidt INTRODUCTION Fig. 1. Fred Thieler, Rotierend, 1959. Fred Thieler used only four colors for his 1959 painting Rotierend (Rotating)—red, white, black, and blue. (Fig. 1) The colorful contrasts, especially between the black and the brighter white and red, play an important role in revealing the mechanics of the painting’s production. Only the blue has largely sunk into the background, emerging in a few spots as a mere trace of a former 2 Draft – do not cite or circulate Schmidt participant in this labyrinthian discovery of the canvas. There is complexity at play in the relationship between color and the explorative—that is, rotating—means of its distribution. The painter’s actions on the canvas seem to work against the distinct presence of color, but they are also rendered all the more visible through the color contrasts that emerge. Color and motion are here fake opposites in that they don’t struggle with each other for domination of the canvas, but are instead intertwined in a struggle which, if it continued, has the potential to erase both of them.