Dr. Sebastian Haumann

Publication on Protest and Space

Sat, 19 May 2012 12:27:05 +0200

An edited volume to wich I contributed together with my colleague Susanne Schregel has been published. In an attempt to analyze how space was conceptualized and used by protest movement in the early 1980s we drew together material from the squatters’ movement and the movement for nuclear free zones.

(with Susanne Schregel) Andere Räume, andere Städte und die Transformation der Gesellschaft. Besetzte Häuser und Atomwaffenfreie Zonen als alternative Raumpraktiken, in: Hanno Balz and Jan-Henrik Friedrichs (eds.): „All We Ever Wanted…“. Eine Kulturgeschichte europäischer Protestbewegungen der 1980er Jahre, Berlin 2012, 53–72.

The Making of Landscapes

Sat, 19 May 2012 12:22:00 +0200

Now I am already back from St Andrews for over a week and finally find the time to write some lines about the conference I attended there: “The Making of Landscapes”. Generally it was a very interesting set of presentations and lively discussions. Despite the fact that most contributions were very well researched and presented, I always wonder how it is possible to speak of landscapes only in terms of their cultural representation. Isn’t it relevant to give the physical shape and the physical properties of landscape more relevance than serving just as a backdrop for projections? Than again, we only know about landscapes through representations - don’t we?

RWWA

Tue, 08 May 2012 19:38:03 +0200

Finally found good sources on companies that struggled to get access to lime deposits. The Rheinisch Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv in Cologne holds the records of Gutehoffnungshütte, a major steel-company in the Ruhr, and the lesser known company Matthes und Weber that specialized in the production of basic chemicals. To my surprise they also had a high demand for lime and even operated their own quarry in the 1920s.

Review of Klemek (2011)

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 20:01:34 +0200

My review of Chris Klemek’s book has just been published in the April issue of the American Historical Review:

Christopher Klemek: The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal. Postwar Urbanism from New York to Berlin, Chicago 2011, in: American Historical Review 117 (2012), 496-497.

ThyssenKrupp Konzenrarchiv

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:52:39 +0200

Compkete my research at the ThyssenKrupp Konzernarchiv today. Found lots of great an diverse material, especially on the Rheinische Kalksteinwerke from their founding year 1903 well into the 1920s. But there were also lots of smaller bits and pieces that were important to get a fuller picture of how steel companies operated in the regional lime market in the 19th century. I was especially happy to find out about an early operation by the Friedrich Wilhelms Hütte which shed some light on the 1850s. I also spent a day finding out about the actual consumption of lime by various steelworks and will be able to contrast this information with data about the extraction in several quarries.

Fellowships at Graduate School "Topology of Technology" available

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:46:00 +0200

Topology of Technology

The interdisciplinary graduate program “Topology of Technology” at the Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany, announces 11 doctoral fellowships, starting Oct. 1, 2012, and running for a maximum of 3 years.

The program is organized by teachers from the subjects of history, sociology, philosophy, mechanical engineering, computer science, sports science, and the planning sciences. It focuses on the relationship between technology and space—at present, in history, and in a possible future. It has four thematic foci:

- The Persistence and Routinization of Daily Life in Technical Surroundings
- The Formation and Limitations of Action in Spatial-Technological Settings
- The Planning and Design of Technologies in a Spatial Context
- The Modeling and Simulation of Spatial Relations by Technological Means

The program (GRK 1343) is primarily financed by the German Research Council (DFG); see: http://www.dfg.de

Monthly stipends are 1,365 euros (parents receive additional child allowances).
There are no tax reductions; however, fellows have to finance their own health insurance.

Since course work and seminars are carried out in both German and English, it is expected that applicants are willing to learn to read and understand spoken German. Fellows are expected to work together in our common office downtown Darmstadt and thus need to take up their residence in the city or the vicinity.

Applications are only accepted in electronic form. They should include (1) a CV, (2) scanned copies of academic diplomas, (3) a short description (max. 5 pages) of the planned doctoral dissertation, and (4) the names and addresses of two university professors who are willing to act as reference persons (please merge the documents into one single file in PDF format). Please send your application no later than

June 1, 2012

to topologie@ifs.tu-darmstadt.de. Please make sure that it includes a personally formulated explanation why you are particularly interested in the topic of the program and to which thematic focus your research will, in the first instance, contribute. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact one of the directors: Petra Gehring (gehring@phil.tu-darmstadt.de) or Mikael Hård (hard@ifs.tu-darmstadt.de).

More information about the research and teaching program can be found under
http://www.ifs.tu-darmstadt.de/index.php?id=1921&L=2

Düsseldorf, April 19, 2012 Rheinpark, Hofgarten, Köbogen The...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 19:41:00 +0200

Düsseldorf, April 19, 2012

Rheinpark, Hofgarten, Köbogen

The first time in ages that I had time to just walk around and take pictures.

Landesarchiv NRW

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:38:45 +0200

Another week at the Landesarchiv NRW. Found some material on Landscape conservation in the 1920s that relates to the greening of top soil dumps. Besides these discoveries work has been somewhat tedious - a lot of reports on local economic development which might be useful in the end but is rather boring to collect.

Leerstandsmelder

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 19:43:43 +0200

Leerstandsmelder:

Interesting project: collecting information on unused real estate. Reminds me a lot of squatters’ information networks of the 1980s. Anyway, I am not exactly sure what purpose this site wants to serve - is it a means to enhance the real-estate market by helping making supply and demand meet, or does it want to demonstrate that the real-estate market is unjust? I doubt that the makers of the website will confirm either one of these purposes.

Why Preserve Public Housing?

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:34:54 +0200

Why Preserve Public Housing?:

Apparently the questions we are currently raising about large housing estates are becoming acute in other parts of the world as well.

Middle Class Homes

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 18:41:30 +0100

Middle Class Homes:

Sometimes you are really surprised about research project that you should have known about earlier. This one seems like a substantial and interesting project with an interdisciplinary setup that is very similar to what we are doing around large housing estates.

CfP: Community Spaces

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 11:48:09 +0100

Network 45plus: Post-War Architecture in Europe

Community Spaces

Conception – Appropriation – Identity

Darmstadt, Germany, September 7-8, 2012.

Large housing estates of the post-war era have shaped the face of many cities throughout Europe. In the original plans of the 1950s-1980s they were to amend the urban structure and in many cases they were expected to enable a superior form of communality and urbanity. The estates were built to ease the housing shortage, but were also thought to quite literally become the home for a “new society”, be it under socialist regimes or the democratic welfare state. The reformation of society was linked to plans for a constructed environment and was expected to be supported by the environment of the estates and, most crucially, their community spaces.

By focusing on community spaces, such as community centers, schools, churches, hospitals, shopping districts but also parks, open spaces and sport-grounds, this 45plus conference addresses spaces that were thought to be a particularly important points of identification for the “new societies” these estates were expected to foster. Community spaces were planned in order to hold the housing estates together – as well designed and attractive built environments, as social hubs and especially as symbolic anchors. Quite often, they boasted prominent design features, intended to serve as recognisable markers of the estates and their programmatic subtexts. While planners and politicians conceptualized community spaces with their potential to shape identification in view, communities tended to appropriate such spaces in different ways and to reinterpret their meanings. In short, local inhabitants – as well as the broader public – possibly identified with community spaces, their individual features and with the ideas and practices they associated with them in significantly different ways than originally intended. Today, the continuing tension between intention and appropriation of community spaces can be understood as an indicator of identification processes and appears to be one of the major challenges in the redevelopment of large housing estates, but might also provide unexpected opportunities.

For the conference we are seeking papers on community spaces in large-scale housing estates of the 1950s-1980s that either explore the original conceptualization or the subsequent appropriation in their relevance for the development of and especially the identification with the estates. We specifically encourage contributions that compare and contrast intended and actual processes of identification and appropriation. As an interdisciplinary endeavor, the conference aims to draw together architectural analyses of individual buildings, public spaces, the morphology of the estates and their urban design on the one hand and research on the conception, the public perception, and the use of individual features as well as complete ensembles of community spaces from historical, sociological and political backgrounds on the other hand.

Proposals should be submitted to 45plus@fgstadt.org by April 22, 2012.

We will notify accepted paper-givers by May 6, 2012.

The organizing committee: Maren Harnack (FH Frankfurt am Main), Sebastian Haumann (TU Darmstadt), Mario Tvrtkovic (TU Darmstadt), Tobias Michael Wolf (Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Hessen)

Turn of the Century Journals on Quarrying

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 11:46:04 +0100

I was surprised how many journals are available especially from the 1900s and 1910s that focus entirely on the quarrying business. I spent much of last Thursday and Friday browsing through “Der Steinbruch” and “Steinbruch und Sandgrube”. Complementary, journals such as the “Mitteilungen des Rheinischen Vereins für Denkmalpflege und Heimatschutz” document the perspectives and worldview of a very different set of actors, namely of those with an interest in nature preservation. All this is really exciting and readily available source material which I wish I had more time to analyze systematically.

Geologischer Dienst NRW

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 10:22:47 +0100

The state Geological authority of North Rhine-Westfalia (Geologischer Dienst NRW) has a great collection of original material from geological surveys dating back to the early 20th century. Especially interesting are the reports commissioned by mining companies to counter claims that they were endangering the environment but also expertise about the expected exploitability of deposits. The archives of the Geological authority unfortunately are not well known among historians, but they are definitively worth exploring.

Hidden City Philadelphia

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:23:09 +0100

Hidden City Philadelphia:

Discovered a great website: Hidden City Philadelphia.

I am fascinated by the explorations of the legacies of the “failures” of urban development. Maybe there is something to learn from it, or to spark some ideas for the future. Besides, Philadelphia is just an interesting place to explore.

Conference on Industrial Disasters

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:24:18 +0100

Conference on Industrial Disasters:

The program for the conference “Wahrnehmung, Kommunikation und Bewaeltigung industrieller Katastrophen vom 18. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert. Bergbau - Chemieindustrie - Kernenergie” in Konstanz has been published. I will contribute a presentation on the strategies and policies that prevented disasters in the lime mining industry.

Conference Report on GSU Nachwuchstagung

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:16:39 +0100

My conference report on the young researchers’ conference of the Gesellschaft für Stadtgeschichte und Urbanisierungsforschung has just been published in the latest issue of the Informationen zur modernen Stadtgeschichte.

Tagungsbericht: GSU-Nachwuchstagung und Workshop „Stadt und Moderne“, Darmstadt (22.-23.9.2011), in: Informationen zur modernen Stadtgeschichte 2011/2, 105-107.

“Lime-land”, Wuppertal-Dornap

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:10:09 +0100

“Lime-land”, Wuppertal-Dornap

Förderinitiative Interdisziplinäre Forschung

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:18:42 +0100

Submitted a proposal for the Förderinitiative Interdisziplinäre Forschung at TU Darmstadt together with Maren Harnack, Mario Tvrtković and Tobias Wolf. The proposal is now off and on its way. If we succeed we will receive a nice little grant to explore processes and chances of identification with the built environment of large scale housing estates of the 1960s and 1970s.

Article for SGWSG Jahrbuch

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:58:00 +0100

Working on a contribution to the 2013 Volume of the Schweizerisches Jahrbuch für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte. The article is based on a presentation I gave in Bern last May at a conference on “habitation”. The article on citizens’ initiatives’ strategies for low income housing is going to be along the lines of the presentation, with some considerable amendments relating to the prevailing market conditions. This point was stressed in the discussion following the presentation and I am thankful for the suggestions.